(Preferably with sources)
I've overcorrected from "China bad" to "China is infallible." I know that's incorrect, but it's hard to decipher US propaganda from actual issues.
In discussions in the past, providing a positive counterpoint is plenty, but since more folks are already realizing the narrative about China is incorrect I would like to have more nuanced discussions where I can present both praise and criticism. I think it's also important that we don't end up in a USSR situation where Communism is synonymous with the actions of a single country.
- I know they're trading with the genocidal zionist entity. Even if their policy is to be apolitical, that's very bad.
- I'm unsure of what the internal restrictions look like in general
- I saw that the "social credit score" was a small experiment in one province that got way overblown
- Great firewall...? I know it's a thing, iiuc you can use a VPN to get around it, but only ones provided by the state (which could easily backdoor them)?
- Limitations on speech? Do people get disappeared?
- Are they monitoring everyone? "You can't monitor 1.5 billion people" idk computers are pretty fast. Also you can def use big data to find the people you do need to monitor more closely
- Dengism? Reintroducing capitalism looks like a retreat at face value and has the obvious problems of capitalism, but I saw someone on here talking about it being a genius way of deindustrializing capitalist nations while building China's own capacity
Are there others? I'm happy if you also include justification for their policies, but I do want to know where you genuinely think they're making mistakes.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
They need to begin militarizing their society for the coming storm. The time of hiding our strength and biding our time is coming to an end. We all saw what happened with Venezuela and see what's happening in Iran. This means building a blue water navy to rival the US naval fleet (the USN has 11 carriers on paper, so the PLAN needs to have 11 carriers for real instead of the 3 they have now), building their nuclear arsenal (the PRC needs 4-digit number of nuclear warheads to match the US's nuclear arsenal), building military bases outside of the Mainland itself (the PRC only has around ~2 versus 600+ for the US), brokering actual military alliances with other countries (BRICS and the SCO aren't military alliances), etc.
People go on about the PRC's lack of internationalism relative to the late SU, but the SU also had a much larger military than the PRC, especially when you count the entire Warsaw Pact vs NATO. This will open your eyes on everything: https://archives.nato.int/uploads/r/null/1/3/137855/0293_Force_comparison_1987-NATO_and_the_Warsaw_Pact_1988_ENG.pdf
The WP had 69k tanks ready to liberate the European working class from their bourgeoisie. 69k goddamn tanks build from socialist workers and crewed by socialist soldiers on the Euroasian continent ready to push West towards Lisbon to end European capitalism. Meanwhile, NATO had only 28k tanks, much of which is located in the US that had to be ferried across the Atlantic. If you flip through the report, NATO only had a stronger navy while the WP was stronger in everything else. You want Soviet internationalism, this is how you get Soviet internationalism. States with 69k tanks and thousands of ICBMs can throw their weight around while states without a strong military issue strongly worded letters to the UN.
Why do you think the PRC wasn't able to "save" Venezuela? It has very little to do with ideology and much to do with the PRC not having the military means of actually "saving" Venezuela. The PLAN isn't going to sail three quarters around the globe (they can't sail through the Panama Canal and can't sail through the Tierra del Fuego) especially when the PRC is being encircled by the island chains and AA has reached enough sophistication that the PRC can't just ship a bunch of AA platforms to Venezuela and call it a day. It would require military training and knowledge transfer from Chinese soldiers to Venezuelan soldiers, which means a Chinese military base in Venezuela, which means some sort of military alliance between the PRC and Venezuela.
The good news is that the CPC or at least Xi recognizes this deficiency. This is why he purged top generals of the Central Military Commission. IMHO, Xi purged doves who refused to change course after Maduro was abducted. The timing makes complete sense: Maduro got abducted early January and the doves got purged late January.
The timing for this lines up, but I'm doubtful that it is that simple, replacing a high ranking government official would probably take months if not years of proper investigation into them and any potential replacement, to make sure the changeover is smooth and doesn't cause more problems and that the replacement is able to do a more effective job. This was likely something that has been in the works for a while, one thing you certainly can't accuse Xi's administration of, is being too hasty.
And I mean no offence by this, but this sounds a little like insisting the allies need to build bigger battleships to match the Bismark and the Yamato in WW2. While I agree that China will need to shift their industrial base to a more military footing since the US is almost certainly going to attack them, it does seem like they are focusing more on capabilities that focus on their own strengths, rather than just trying to outmatch their enemies on their strongest front. While we don't know what 1000 white-water gunboats can do to an aircraft carrier yet, China does seem confident that they would be more useful for their military goals, rather than building more carriers, which are expensive and costly to maintain and only really good if you like indiscriminately bombing countries on the other side of the world (or "power projection" if you're writing about it in western newspapers).
Though I do think China is watching this war with Iran very closely and examining US tactics and strategy as best as they can in order to counter it, the US strategy of attacking, then pulling back and stalling for time, before attacking again is certainly one that they would need to be wary of, especially if the US views a war with China as an existential one, and even if they don't, relying on their enemies to have basic human decency and to respect ceasefires is something that I imagine a lot of war room talks in China are discussing right now.
Yes, it's complete speculation on my part. The perhaps coincidental timing is what really sticks out.
IMHO, the biggest strength of the US are its hundreds of military bases that blight the globe. The PRC cannot hope to compete in this arena with hundreds of Chinese military bases because those US bases only exist because of US imperialism. Therefore, the PLA has to make up this disadvantage somehow with their own trump card. Right now, the main advantages the PLA has over the US military are its progression in 6th generation fighters, drone warfare and production, ship production, and the general fitness of its troops. As for aircraft carriers themselves, I guess it's an agree to disagree type of thing. I certainly don't think it's a huge priority relative to other things.
Yeah, no disagreements here, my thoughts on carriers are more "They might be obsolete, they might still have some kind of niche, or they might still be the backbone of any navy." I just don't have enough info to know for sure, most US bombing operations happen through mid-air refueling these days already, but like you said, they only have the power to do that thanks to their numerous military bases around the world. Personally I'm not really a fan of using "trump card" to describe anything relating to wars, a bit too close to "wunderwaffen" for my tastes, it's logistics and production that win wars, not having some superweapon (not that I mean to imply that's what you were saying, you literally listed off multiple aspects of China's industrial strength in your examples there.)
My biggest worry with the whole thing is the US just recognising that they can't win a war with China and just nuking them, and relying on China's patience and hesitation so that they won't be attacked in retaliation.
They did, the Iowa class was larger. I don't get why the Bismark/Tirpitz get the reputation as some kind of super-battleship, when it was a tad bigger than Britain's big battleships and smaller than America's big battleships.
The Yamato ofc was like 30% larger than the next largest battleship.
Nazi propaganda mostly, which is why it is so funny that it got sunk by an old, outdated WW1 Biplane.
I guess. It's just funny that it gets built up while it was never able to leave port without knowing the British surface fleet was away, meanwhile the actual biggest ship, with the biggest guns, had an actual strategic use and is right there. Also getting sunk on a mission to beach yourself is somehow funnier than getting sunk by biplanes.
Do you have any good links for the purges described at the end of your comment? I’d be interested in reading about that!
They were officially removed for being corrupt. Western MSM do their usual dance of "Xi consolidating power." Them being doves is speculation on my part. The anti-corruption campaign against the PLA is ongoing: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3358586/china-removes-6-generals-legislature-military-anti-corruption-drive-continues
It really does sound like the CPC is gearing up for war. The fat is being trimmed.
Thanks!