Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "Why won't China Surpass the United States? - VisualPolitik EN" video.
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@SuperLol Of course Switzerland isn't a superpower because it's smaller. But that argument applies at all levels, not just to small countries and then magically stops at large ones. In the case of China versus the US, China needs only about 15% or thereabouts of the US' per capita prosperity in order to exceed it in total. That's my point - China doesn't need to match the US on efficiency or wealth in order to exceed it overall. That's why it's projected to be the worlds' biggest economy before the decade is out, not because it's gonna be richer than the US by then in average terms.
And btw the Russians did get to space before the Americans - in fact almost all the early space firsts were Russian. The moon landings were one of the only American achievements where they beat the Russians, but they turned it into a big spectacle so as to sell it as a victory. Anyway China is getting more efficient - every economy does as it develops. It won't be more efficient than America for a long time, if ever, but it doesn't need to be in order to be the biggest.
You're mistaken about superpowers through history btw. And indeed about nations in general. Yes some empires have been big, but one thing has stayed relatively unchanged about most nations while another has changed drastically. The thing that's changed is the need for territorial expansion in order to exert power. It's no accident that America doesn't seek to expand its territory yet is still well accepted as a superpower - cos it doesn't need to. Direct control of territory isn't the key to power anymore, and in fact is often a burden - even Afghanistan just recently showed that. Despite that the US has still waged war all over the world, because intimidation and reshaping of regions is important even if you don't intend to annex them.
However the thing that hasn't changed much is that most nations past and present wage wars on their borders. In this China is standard while the US is not. Indeed the US is very much an aberration in this regard - it and a handful of colonial empires are the only ones who've often waged 'expeditionary warfare' i.e. war far from your home territory. This is otherwise more of an exception than the rule. Indeed most modern armies aren't even designed for it, including for the most part China's military. And that's cos they don't even wish to do it. America is one of the only countries in the world that does. So even if China could beat America in the South China Sea (as they want to be able to), it doesn't mean they could easily invade Brazil (which they've no interest in doing). So a strong China is mainly of concern to its neighbours, not the world at large. The US is of concern to everyone. And China's military is geared towards that - for instance even now its fleet is mostly a brown or green water navy, not a blue water one like America. They aren't trying to match America, for good reason.
What reason? Consider military spending per capita. That accounts for differences in the size of economies, letting smaller economies rise up in order to show who's really the most committed to its defense spending. The US comes second in the world, despite not having been invaded on its homeland for over 150 years and being in one of the safest geographic positions on Earth (two massive oceans on either side, and two weak neighbours to the north and south). The only one who beats it is Israel, who has far more reason to be paranoid than America ever had. But China? It's 58th, behind Azerbaijan! For context, Russia is 25th. The kind of spending China would have to make in order to do what America does is stupid. America's own level of spending is stupid. So they've made a far more pragmatic choice - be strong enough to rebuff US aggression on their home turf, and then focus the rest of our resources on economic projects (like the BRI).
Keep in mind China's position. And that of Russia for that matter. Both of them have American military bases close to their borders. When the Russians put assets close to America - specifically on Cuba - the US flipped out over it (and Cuba has been made to pay for that to this day). Now consider how the Chinese and Russians would feel about it.
In other words, this video supposedly busts a myth of Chinese military supremacy that it invents in the first place - the Chinese themselves aren't even aiming for that. That whole claim is nothing but a strawman. The Chinese do boast about their strength - to defeat America close to home. They've never claimed they could invade, say, Algeria as well as the Americans can. In fact the Chinese don't even talk about becoming the new world superpower - that's almost entirely rhetoric that comes from western channels. Chinese statements almost always use a certain phrase - a 'multi polar world order' (as opposed to the unipolar one we've had since the fall of the USSR). In other words, America can't throw its weight around as much anymore. This video says China is at best a regional power as if that's some big correction, despite that the Chinese themselves don't say any different - they just want to be able to defy the US, unlike most other countries, not to replace it. Cos replacing it is simply stupidly expensive.
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@wayne1516 Lol no! That you make such a big deal out of censorship while discounting millions of deaths in so many wars is telling of just how warped your ideologically inclined thinking is. And the censorship you posit won't even be a thing to begin with, because you people literally invent doomsday narratives to fuel your paranoia. China doesn't even aspire to have that level of global control - it literally views it as an unaffordable and idiotic expense. This video makes the same mistake when it talks about the Chinese military versus the American one, pretending the Chinese are gonna have massive blue water fleets like America does. In reality China is 58th in the world in military spending per capita, behind Azerbaijan lol! America is second, behind only Israel (Russia is 25th, for context). And this despite America being in a far more secure geopolitical position than China or indeed most countries in the world are - that shows how militarist they are that they spend so much anyway.
China has better things to do. They want security of their region, which means being able to beat the Americans in their own backyard. Beyond that, they'd rather focus on economic programs both locally and internationally (like the BRI) as a way of exercising power. You're making the dumb assumption of a binary choice, as if China is just gonna take over America's role if it becomes the big kahoona. Hardly.
And Youtube is an American company, which means China will never have much control over speech on here - pretty much only as much as Google allows it to, in order to get access to the Chinese market (in other words, the same situation as today). So I'm hardly afraid of censorship on Youtube if China succeeds, as they simply won't have the same level of hegemony. Indeed they won't even have hegemony - they'll counterbalance the US.
Now YOU prove your point. America has way more blood on its hands than China does thanks to its endless foreign wars - something China can't even do in most countries even if it wanted to. Preferably without falling back on a half century old dead man who still didn't kill via foreign wars. There are broken countries all over the world thanks to American hegemony, so kindly drop the self-centered whining about speech online and deal with the corpses. Cos all that vaunted free speech and democratic accountability still hasn't stopped the US from constantly going to war everywhere, despite having had decades to do so. While authoritarian China hasn't been to war in decades.
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@matthewaurelio8406 Are you? Cute little language games you got there. I wonder if you even know what that word means. It has a definition you know, under which China gets the label but the US escapes it thanks to a technicality. Yes, you heard that right. Who do you think has killed more Muslims? Cos I can tell you right now it isn't China. Go ahead, look up the death tolls - China in Xinjiang versus the US in Iraq and Afghanistan - and see which is bigger. That's why it's called a genocide all the time, rather than just saying the number. Cos the number isn't bad enough compared to the US one.
What about all the people locked up you say? How many? A million is the figure bandied about. So how bad is that? Pretty bad actually, compared to the world at large. But compared to America? China as a whole has 1.6 million people in prison, out of a population of 1.4 billion. America has 2.3 million, out of just 330 million. And that's according to an American policy institute btw, so don't go making the 'we can't trust China's numbers' excuse with me (never mind how much blind acceptance there is of American claims despite so many infamous fake ones). So who's being genocidal now? Do you know why America escapes the label? Cos the definition is centered around ethnic targeting, which means being an equal opportunity killer cum incarcerator or doing it via 'collateral damage' lets you get away with it.
And need I remind you that issue was who'd treated the world better, not which country is a nicer place to live. Xinjiang is in China ergo it isn't a foreign operation.
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@Wolfun1t I've already seen Polymatter's video series in full. To his credit, he's far more restrained in the video than his viewership is, as you seem to be as well. The vid is okay, the comments are terrible.
And I'm aware of the Pew study you're bringing up. It only covers 14 countries, almost all of them western and all of them American allies. It's literally just Western Europe, US, Canada, Japan, S. Korea and Australia. Hell, it doesn't even cover my country (not that we would buck the trend, but it shows just how cavalier its idea of 'the world' is). The survey I mention is just around half a decade old, when China's military was already long since the second strongest. It also covers a far more representative section of the world, including more of Asia and S.E. Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and even some countries in Africa. THAT'S far more illuminating than just what the West thinks.
I don't doubt that the West hates China more than anything. But the claim that's constantly spouted is that the 'whole world' hates China more than anything. Last I checked, the West is NOT the whole world, as much as it likes to imagine it is (or speaks for it).
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