Well part of it is China was a severely underdeveloped country. They had to play catch up and so they traded access to their large labor market in exchange for technology transfers agreements.

That said, I think it would be incorrect to say their economy is currently based on copying. They publish more high impact research papers these days than any other country and are technological leaders particularly in green energy. This has been such a rapid change though that I think people’s perceptions of the Chinese economy lag the reality.

Then I’m not sure you know much about the motivations of Xi, the CPC, or the US for that matter. Since the 80s both sides only real interest has been economic growth. The US was fine with Chinas growth for decades as long as they provide the US a source of cheap labor. However now, China’s economy is actually larger than the US’s in terms of purchase power parity. If left unchecked China would become the economic center of the world without firing a single shot.

The US is clearly worried about losing it’s economic dominance as the worlds only superpower. That’s why it’s made contingency plans for how to confront China militarily. If they tried to subdue China through an invasion it wouldn’t work. China is a nuclear power and that would spell the end of the world. What they could do instead is use islands off the coast of China to enforce a naval blockade of the mainland. From South Korea, to Japan including Okinawa, to the Philippines the US is stationing military assets all the way down the coast. Taiwan would serve as the linch pin to that plan.

Again I have to repeat the US is not the defender of liberal democracy that they claim to be. The people of Taiwan should be clear eyed about that.

Sure but the tensions between China and the US never went away. You may not have Chiang Kai Shek seeking US support in order to invade the mainland. That much is true. However, the US is still very much interested in keeping Taiwan within its sphere of influence as part of a militaristic strategy of containment aimed at China.

I don’t think the US state department cares much for the welfare of Taiwanese people in all of this. If you have any doubts about how the US operates all you have to do is look at its relationship with Israel today.

They treat Taiwan that way because the Chinese civil war was never fully resolved. The US interfered to prevent the communists from taking Taiwan and ousting Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist KMT. As such, the CPC sees persistent US support for Taiwanese independence as an implicit threat against their sovereignty.

Don’t worry, Biden just imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs so they can rest easy now.

It’s complicated. Chiang Kai-shek was a historical adversary of the CPC and is viewed as a traitor and war criminal in the PRC. However, his nationalist party, the KMT, is alive and well in Taiwan. The CPC currently favors the KMT even though they were former adversaries because the KMT advocates for deepening economic ties to the PRC.

With this context I’m guessing the KMT’s primary opposition, the DPP, wants to highlight the KMT’s fascist legacy while also conflating the KMT’s and the CPC’s expression of Chinese nationalism. Making that false equivalency is easier because of the KMT’s interest in building stronger economic ties with the mainland.

Western media usually frames issues from the DPP’s perspective which would explain the commentary in the article.

Good luck with that. The US is the world’s largest oil producer and therefore it has a vested interest in preventing the development of sustainable energy alternatives.

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Yes and no. Deng was definitely a strong advocate for market reforms. However, if you ask any Chinese economist from that era they would say reform was inevitable.

Also the strategies Deng advocated for were similar to the failed shock therapy programs that Eastern European countries underwent following the collapse of the USSR. In doing so he risked the stability of the Chinese economy.

That said, he also helped keep political control out of capitalist hands. That allowed China to course correct when some of their reforms induced economic instability.

Which by all indications was something he didn’t actually want to do in the first place. It’s just the west wasn’t ready to give up exploiting the people of the former USSR. If Putin allowed that to continue he would have likely lost his power just as Yeltsin had.

Sure but it’s always like one small step forward and two large steps back. Abortion was made illegal in many states. US domestic surveillance of its own citizens has increased dramatically and gone unchallenged. Housing and healthcare costs have continued to outpace wage growth. Inequality has increased unabated. Green energy remains woefully underfunded. I could go on.

Well that’s exactly the problem. If people use AI generated images for commercial purposes they may accidentally infringe on someone else’s copyright. Since AI models are a black box there isn’t really a good way to avoid this.

This nihilistic right wing nonsense is just an excuse not to attempt to build something better. It’s lazy thinking and deeply unscientific.

It’s not Islam that’s the problem. Rather the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the partition of India were decisions made by western governments, primarily the British. It was a classic colonial tactic to set the interests of various ethnic and religious groups against each other in order to maintain colonial domination. The British were experts at it.

They no longer had the capacity to maintain an empire after WW2 but they still wanted to maintain some level of economic domination over their former colonies. As such, they made sure to draw borders and empower certain ethnic groups in such a way that it would almost guarantee future conflict. The US inherited this strategy and has been deploying it ever since.

The Korean War never actually ended. It’s a frozen conflict with the demilitarized zone serving as a defacto border. Because of this, both the south and the north never demilitarized. The US and South Korea still to this day conduct massive military exercises which, from North Koreas perspective, could be used as cover for an invasion. While Americans have largely forgotten about the war, it still plays a large role in Korean policy decisions on both sides of the divide.

The Houthis are still not representative of Yemen and still are not the government of Yemen.

For all intents and purposes they do and they are.

The US supported Saudi Arabia in their bombing campaign and also participated in the blockade of Yemen.

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I just learned South Africa is Hamas and now this?!

Maybe if you’re running a protection racket