the anti-CCP opinion I hear going around is basically "the US elite is bought by the Chinese government, won't say anti-China things, and it got a lot of people killed because admitting a Chinese virus was serious would have made China look bad."
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
Obviously, racism against Chinese-Americans is still, in fact, bad. (& tbh I'm not crazy about calls to demonize the nation of China either.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
what's going on at a political level is that China-bashing isn't about the Chinese. it's a populist thing against the "international" class. seems like the account you replied to is a black populist/nationalist, hence the "hotep."
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
China prospered *seriously* in the 1990's-2000's, after market reforms, and a bunch of people with the means to do so wanted to get in on that. From the perspective of someone doing business internationally, the emotion is YAY THERE IS SO MUCH MONEY NOW. WHEEEE.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
New markets. New industrial bases. New funders. All of whom are getting more sophisticated as partners every day, but who are still (at least, were) easy for a Westerner to impress.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
(I'm into perfume, and you can see new international markets in the perfume trends. Back in 2005-2010, the world's nouveau riche were the Arab gulf states, so you saw a lot of pseudo-oudh perfumes. Now it's the Chinese, and so you see a lot of pale watery perfumes.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
nationalists have kind of consolidated around anti-China because a.) trade with China really did cause US manufacturing job loss, it seems; b.) the CCP really does do some bad things; c.) it's hard to see China as a pitiful victim when they're obviously an ambitious nation
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
and d.) all politics is local, the real antipathy is against *rich people* who went "ooh shiny, $$$" when not everybody has that option. (I'm sure literal anti-Chinese racism is a thing but it seems dumb and I don't see nearly as much of it myself.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
ofc, I don't think the "ooh shiny, a new opportunity for profit!" impulse is something that should be squashed, because it's pretty central to how I go through life, and it seems like it brings a lot of good things.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
but the nationalists' concerns are that too many people went "wheee! $$$" and didn't pay enough attention to second-order effects on other Americans and on discourse norms. (If you're too heavily invested in China, you can't break with the CCP party line.)
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the canonical "classical liberal" thing to do is to have a set of principles, and then jump at opportunities that don't violate your principles, and stop when they do.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
this, however, places some limits on growth if your principles aren't widely shared. eg if the CEO of a company wants to challenge China even though that'll lose money, he'd better actually have enough control over the board, or have a board that understands his choice.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ben_r_hoffman and
if there's a critical mass of $$$ in the hands of "squishy" people who literally don't have *any* principles or even specific preferences, growth will go to the squishiest...until the "squishiness" crashes against an actual bad consequence.
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