And ponder not just that, but ponder why–like the Dalits of India–this obvious and vast case of systemic human rights abuses is never in the news. You know why. Ponder the ethical capacities, though, of those capable of such atrocities–to be clear, covering up an atrocity is itself a journalistic atrocity.
China depends nearly entirely on trade with the United States. They need us to buy their stuff. We don’t sell very much into China–in my understanding–so we have much less to lose in a trade war. Certainly the trade imbalance means they make much more money off us than we make off them. We would have less CCC, as I call it–Cheap Chinese Crap–but we have lots of idled factories around we could start back up.
China is in no position to make demands. China also is continuing to play the role of Imperialistic Aggressor, if I might use their own language. They have no real claim on Taiwan, any more than they had on Tibet. The people of Taiwan are not now, and do not want to be in the future, vassals of the Communist elite. China has literally nothing to say. They are being bullies and aspiring to be criminals, again, in another nation.
Tibet has benefited from being “rescued” from their “oppression” so much that they have a signalling system in place in all the big cities so that if ANOTHER person sets themselves on fire in protest, they can have them out and hustled out of the public space within five minutes. That’s the sort of place we all want to live in, right? Somewhere where suicide seems the only option, and the official response is to hide the evidence as well and as quickly as possible.
Fuck the Chinese.
Edit: and what if we started supplying arms to the tens of millions of people who hate the regime? Who hate the idle elite who are ten times worse than the worst Robber Barons in the worst stages of American “Capitalism”? What would they do? We are a much more powerful military power, and Trump is going to make us even better. A war would not serve the interests of either nation.
I think perhaps not being fucking psychopaths is the best way for the rulers to hang onto power. I think compromise and human decency would be the best policy.