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China

It goes beyond that: in the West, the concept of Limited Liability is so strong that the very worst a CEO or company owner will face will be a few years in prison after a decade of litigation for causing the deaths of thousands - or more likely settle.
In China, without a proper trial, CEOs who have caused havoc will be arrested, tortured, executed and their bodies returned to their families for a large sum of money.

It is qualitatively something different.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
It goes beyond that: in the West, the concept of Limited Liability is so strong that the very worst a CEO or company owner will face will be a few years in prison after a decade of litigation for causing the deaths of thousands - or more likely settle.
In China, without a proper trial, CEOs who have caused havoc will be arrested, tortured, executed and their bodies returned to their families for a large sum of money.

It is qualitatively something different.
Click to expand...
Indeed. In China, only government officials get killed kill thousands or even millions of their own citizens without consequences.
 
I would argue that there's two things being discussed and occasionally conflated here.

1. Is China currently a more reliable trading partner than the US?

2. Is China currently a better option as an ally than the US?


I would argue that 1 is a yes given the temper tantrum tariffs being handed out left right and centre from the corpulent twat in the White House. Xi isn't an entirely stable trading partner and he's liable to have severe issues with corruption and cooking the books, but he also seems considerably more calm and collected as a trading partner than TACO, who is liable to throw a huge hissy fit whenever he thinks anyone isn't giving him the proper respect he feels he's earned.

I would argue that 2 is a big no. China is a hellscape dump of a country, geopolitically speaking. A badly run authoritarian dictatorship with heinous human rights, a near total lack of transparency, a bloated economy that is only being kept moving through inertia and an overstuffed paper tiger military with rusting nukes and marginably more competence and less corruption than Russia. It also has its sights set on a rising China eclipsing the US role in the world which would be very very bad news for people who don't like getting their fingernails ripped out for daring to criticise their government.

The trouble is just because China is a worse potential ally than the US doesn't mean the US isn't an awful, incompetent, flaky liability of an ally with TACO and his far--right loons and conspiracy theorists in charge. Which is why Europe is looking into going it without the help of either of them as more than trading partners.
 
Ziggurat said:
Indeed. In China, only government officials get killed kill thousands or even millions of their own citizens without consequences.
Click to expand...

Sounds like they're becoming more American every day, although America does kill more non-citizens without due process by a wide margin.
 
No, it's power plays, of course.

Still, it's useful to show that even the powerful and mighty can fall - hard.
Might stop some from being too openly corrupt.
 
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Like everywhere else China is a mixed conflicting good and bad.

The world runs on cheap Chinese goods, or better rebranded Chinese goods.
My most recent big purchases are mostly Chinese in origin. It was the affordable option. They work as advertised.

Politically they are playing every side for themselves in war and trade, getting caught doing things that go against the nations they are also working with. It's like they have multiple personalities all going at the same time.
How anyone trusts them at all amazes me.
 
they are accepted because (until very recently) they have delivered on their promise of continuous improvement of living standards.
 
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