Unthinking Majority wrote:China has never been subservient to western powers
Unthinking Majority wrote:especially since after the establishment of the UN post-WWII
An arbitrary cut-off.
Unthinking Majority wrote:China was given a permanent seat on the UN Security Council along with the USSR.
Not mainland China, but sure, a good start.
Unthinking Majority wrote:Are you so sure that the US/West were the first ones to lie and cheat and undermine the rules-based order they created in the first place in good faith?
Yes. The US established a rules-based order and then declared itself above it by refusing to sign on to the treaties it promoted. It refuses to sign on to things that would limit its sovereignty or freedom of action, such as the Law of the Sea, while demanding globally that other countries do exactly that. It is hypocritical, and can't be surprised when other powers deciede to do the same. The US, as the premier hegemonic power, should take the first step in good faith of implementing an international order that
constrains itself as it demands other powers be constrained.
Should the US fall behind, and other powers such as China and India rise to supplant it, they should also use their position of power to do what the US did not. If or when they don't, I will criticize them. But that's a hypothetical future.
Unthinking Majority wrote:massively enrich their population and help lift a billion and half out of poverty
This is a perfect example of the colonial mindset - the bad things developing countries do is their fault; the good is a consequence of our good will, and only as long as it benefits us as well. Countries which refuse to "be enriched" in a way compatible with "also enriching the West" find their governments sanctioned, and leaders assassinated. It is natural that there is no trust for the West's good intentions in much of the developing world.
Unthinking Majority wrote:Can you name some actions Western nations have done post Cold War to harm China internally, besides annoy them about their human rights abuses?
The US actively funds dissident groups within China with the aim of replacing the Chinese government. The House passed just last week a modified CHIPS Act that allocated $600 million specifically to USAGM to fund anti-Chinese propoganda aimed at countries willingly participating in the Belt and Road. The US spent millions financing ETIM before it joined with Al Qaeda, including training militants (Operation Cyclone).
Lawrence Wilkerson, Chief of Staff of Colin Powell wrote:the third reason we were there [in Afghanistan] is because there are 20 million Uyghurs [in Xinjiang]. The CIA would want to destabilize China and that would be the best way to do it to foment unrest and to join with those Uyghurs in pushing the Han Chinese in Beijing from internal places rather than external.
Unthinking Majority wrote:NATO members have similar interests on security and trade.
Not in all matters.
Unthinking Majority wrote: China has no inherent right whatsoever to have a say in who Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan align with. They will not ever agree on that. China has no inherent right to determine who can or can't sail through international waters, only who may encroach their coastline waters per international law.
Building trust isn't done in a week. China has no right to stop the US from sailing in the Taiwan Strait - nonetheless, it would be a good first step for the US to inform China of its movements of troops and ships in that area; and to give advance warning of training operations in the region.
The reverse is true - I would hope that if China chooses to start sailing PLAN vessels through the Florida-Cuba strait that it would ring ahead.
Unthinking Majority wrote:Do you expect western countries to simply sit around and do nothing, and call China a poor victim?
I have said before - the US and the West are stronger than China. The stronger state needs to take the first step, to actually build trust - if the weaker state does so, it is under a cloud of coercion. We have to take the first steps to behave better - if, once those steps have been taken, China does not reciprocate, then so be it. Do not take further steps forward. Do not, also, go back to bad behavior. This would just validate China's position and make future internal review of its decisions impossible. Xi won't be a leader forever, and sometimes we have to wait things out.
How are we defining IP theft, by the way? Obviously, outright hacking or stealing of internal documents is bad (and the West does their fair share of this, especially re: green technologies. If a company willingly gives China its IP to work in the Chinese market, is this IP theft? If former engineers of TMSC decide they want to work in China for better pay/conditions, is this IP theft? From your example on Nortel:
National Post wrote:In Nortel’s waning days, Huawei reportedly backed a bid to keep it alive, only to ultimately walk away. And then snap up many of the bankrupt firm’s most-skilled staff.
"What people need to hear is that economic espionage caused Nortel’s failure"
That’s by no means a universally held view.
Nortel had in fact been in trouble for years, suffering huge losses when the dot.com bubble burst, never recovering from that disaster and making widely criticized management decisions during its final years.
In a major study into the reasons behind the company’s demise, Calof and colleagues at his university’s Telfer School of Management did not even mention the hacking or other espionage. Despite its stellar reputation for developing cutting-edge technology, customers eventually just weren’t buying what it had to sell, he said.
“They lost sales not because of technology copying, not because of inferior technology, they lost because the customers lost faith in them,” says Calof. “They did not believe that Nortel would be alive in 10 years.”
These days, many thought leaders living in the West are graduates from Chinese universities and Chinese education. A look at many of Tesla's patents reveal Chinese engineers who used to work in the Chinese battery market, and are now working at Tesla. Are these resulting patents the result of IP theft?