The move followed the announcement of a U.S. arms-sale package valued at more than $10 billion that drew an angry response from China, which claims Taiwan as its own.
Beijing imposed sanctions on Friday against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington announced large-scale arms sales to Taiwan.
The sanctions entail freezing the companies’ assets in China and banning individuals and organizations from dealing with them, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
The companies include Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, L3Harris Maritime Services and Boeing in St. Louis, while defense firm Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey is one of the executives sanctioned, who can no longer do business in China and are barred from entering the country. Their assets in the East Asian country have also been frozen.
The announcement of the U.S. arms-sale package, valued at more than $10 billion, has drawn an angry response from China, which claims Taiwan as its own and says it must come under its control.
My sympathies are absolutely with Taiwan in this.
I hope when Xi is out that maybe China will finally recognize Taiwan as an independent country.Regarding China sanctioning American companies over this, they are just using the American rule book, that USA has so often used against China. So there is no reasonable way we can call foul over that.
Considering they are weapons manufacturers, were they likely to be selling anything to China? I know we spread the weapons around, but I thought we specifically don’t sell to China, Russia, Iran, and some others.
Who you mean by “they” is a bit unclear to me, but I bet neither USA or Taiwan are selling weapons to China.
I am also sure that part of the increased tension is because USA has sanctioned TSMC from selling high grade chips to for instance Huawei.
China has had good reason to be pissed at the “west” for a long time, unfortunately they now behave just as bad.
But as I see it, USA absolutely started this shitshow.PS: Recently there were talks that even Turkey who is a NATO member couldn’t be allowed to receive high tech NATO weapons. Because they made an agreement buying Russian equipment that required Russian technicians to teach their use.
This was considered a security risk, as it might give Russians access to sites that had NATO equipment.
So most definitely no NATO country is selling weapons to China, Russia, North Korea or Iran. I think Taiwan has a defense agreement with USA, that would prevent them too even if they wanted to. But I doubt they want to give weapons to their biggest security threat.The they I was referring to are the defence manufacturers that China just slapped with tariffs. Seems to be performative.
Whether they deliver to China is completely irrelevant in that respect.
It’s what they buy from China that is important. And it’s also what their suppliers buy and sell to China.
China has monopolies on rare earth elements that may be very tough for some of these companies to lose access to.
Don’t for a second think that USA has the upper hand in this situation, because that time has passed, on international trade China is now their equal, and on rare earth resources China has a very decisive upper hand.
For instance the very powerful magnets needed for much high tech equipment, is near impossible to make in quantity without access to rare earth minerals that China control.Looks like some “independent” corporations will need to make some rare earth pizza ovens then, since they applied them to corporations, and not the US as a whole. As I said, performative. Looks like China is trying to get trump to apply a ton of tarrifs, so that they have cassus belli, or reasons to continue the trade war.
Hold on… You’re still expecting reasonability?
China was progressing before Xi, before Xi relations between Taiwan and China were a lot better than they are now.
I hope they can be better again after Xi.You think the issue is Xi? From 1950 to 1992 the KMT was a fascist government on Taiwan killing political dissidents under martial law. The only reason that it wasn’t stopped is because the UK and US protected the KMT from the minute they lost the civil war.
The reason there is greater tension with Taiwan under Xi is because the US has ramped up its rhetoric, its military collaboration, and its diplomacy with Taiwan while Xi is in office. The CPC has always considered Taiwan part of China, and the KMT have always considered Taiwan part of China. The problem has always been the West intervening to create conflict and protect fascists.
Both sides were way worse in the past, but no it is not the west or USA that has been feeding this dispute.
Both sides need to recognize the current situation of China and Taiwan being autonomous states as the status quo. And that from a humanitarian perspective both sides are best served by staying separate.
But today Taiwan is a democracy AFAIK, with elections every 4 years. While China remains totalitarian. So the fascism in the form of totalitarianism is clearly on the Chinese side now, even though they call it Communism, it’s actually closer to Fascist Germany during WW2, than it is to anything normal people would call socialism.Taiwan is a Western-style parliamentary democracy. This is not the only way to run a democracy. China is a Communist democracy, with elections being only one of the ways that people can have influence over there governance. There’s a reason why 95% of Chinese citizens are happy with their government (these numbers come from a study Harvard conducted over 15 years and do not reflect Chinese government reports).
The idea that China is fascist is laughable.
If that’s what you believe, then it’s no wonder you think Taiwan should be independent. It’s not true, but it’s understandable.
In theory you could have democracy with only one party, but AFAIK that’s not really how it works in China.
Who people can vote for is decided by the party, and AFAIK not everybody can become a member of the party, and participate in that decision.
Also only one party means only one party program, and that can never be democracy, as when people vote, there is only one party program to vote for.
It’s also not a democracy if certain viewpoints are oppressed, which is very much the case in China, and which we have seen very clearly in Hong Kong.
But yes China has some level of a very very flawed democracy, and there is a visible path for improvement within the system, when the political landscape allows for it.
But as we have seen with the American flawed democracy, the powers that be may be very hesitant to yield power to a more democratic structure. In that way USA has failed for about 200 years. Hopefully the Chinese model allows for a bit more progress than we’ve seen in USA.Regarding the 95%, that is very high, but I have no doubt that the government/CCP is very popular, after half a century of strong economic progress, with actual progress to the population too, I’ll even go so far as to say it’s well deserved.
But on the humanitarian side, and respect for minorities, China is still way behind. It is also a country with death penalty, which is clearly contrary to democratic values.The idea that China is fascist is laughable.
The most visible signs are oppression of opposition, which is 100% undeniable. And also oppression of the truth through censorship, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre is still illegal to even talk about. So no processing of the mistakes, and no learning from them. These are the 2 clearest markers of a totalitarian system.
As I wrote, fascist as in authoritarian, and it is a fact, IDK why you consider facts laughable?Who people can vote for is decided by the party, and AFAIK not everybody can become a member of the party, and participate in that decision.
Who people can vote for is decided by the party, but that decision making process involved elections within the party. You are correct that there is not universal participation in the party in China due to the requirements of becoming a party member. There are 100M citizens in the party, which is a small percentage of the population.
This is where words matter. The system is, in fact, democratic, but governing power is not universal. This is true of all democracies all over the world, including Western ones. The question becomes one of the size and influence of the franchise, not a question of whether its democratic. The size of the party in China is small, and there are efforts underway to increase it They added 1M members to the party in 2024. That’s too little, but it is openly discussed and the party is clear that both they need to expand the party and they have to prevent disruption of the revolutionary government by outside forces. It is a delicate balance when only 70 years ago they were a peasant society undergoing a civil war in which the Western imperialists were invested. It’s made much more difficult by the subsequent years in which the US destroyed Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, trained and airlifted terrorists into Tibet, built a massive drug running operation through Thailand, etc.
However, the other question about democracy is whether the demos, the people, actually can change the policies of the state, the kratos. And as it turns out, the party is incredibly responsive to the people. That’s why the people approve of the work the party is doing - because the party listens to the people. As you say:
Also only one party means only one party program, and that can never be democracy, as when people vote, there is only one party program to vote for.
This isn’t really true in one-party systems. One-party systems have factions and the factions all fight for their program within the party. It’s a governed form of conflict, and it works because it doesn’t really afford for the sorts of manipulation that we see in the West. Factions have to fight for their platform according to rules of engagement, and the platforms that rise to the top are the ones that run the party. There is accountability at the platform level in these systems. Again, unlike in the West where it is very well understood that people will campaign on a platform and then not implement any of it and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
The joke is that in the US, you can change the party but cannot change the policies, while in China you can change the policies but cannot change the party. And the question is - which one is more democratic? Is it the country where the popular will of the people is what drives the policies or is it the country where the popular will of the people only drives which people inhabit offices but where the majority of people actually oppose the policies?
That’s not a theoretical question either. Research from Princeton shows that popular opinion does not matter at all in the US. Laws pass at the same rate whether they are popular or unpopular. They also shows that the primary determinant of a law passing is whether the top 1% of wealth holders approve of it. This is not true in China. The Harvard study that showed that 95% of Chinese citizens approve of their government is because it is responsive to their needs, which means they voice their opinion and their opinion is incorporated into policies.
It’s also not a democracy if certain viewpoints are oppressed, which is very much the case in China, and which we have seen very clearly in Hong Kong.
The US outlawed the communist party, blacklisted every communist sympathizer they could find, killed black organizers, and has been oppressing viewpoints for a century, but because you can elect different parties, people think its a democracy.
As for Hong Kong, we can learn a lot about Chinese politics by examining it. The Hong Kong protests raged for weeks with protestors throwing fire bombs at police. That would never happen in the US because the US would brutally put such protests down very quickly. Chinese police, however, we given orders to disengage when things got too violent. Their role in Hong Kong was to prevent the protests from getting totally out of control, essentially to let the protestors express their anger for as long as they needed for it calm down and become more civil.
We can also learn a lot about it from the commentary of the citizens there. The people of Hong Kong that were protesting were a small minority and mostly in a specific age range between late teens and mid 30s. The elders were not protesting and in fact shunned many of their own young family members who protested. And the reason is because of the way Hong Kong “democracy” came about. Hong Kong was ripped away from China by the British as part of the British’s spoils from the Opium Wars. Brits in Hong Kong were immune to the law. They would abuse the residents without consequence, and the Chinese living there were living mean lives.
That changed when the Brits realized they would not be able to keep Hong Kong. As soon as they realized China was on the rise and intended to not renew their lease of the island, the first thing the Brits did was consider if they could force China to renew the lease by force, but the analysis was that this would be a bad idea. So instead, the Brits completely reformed Hong Kong and created a middle class, and elevated the most loyal servants of the Brits into bankers to give them huge salaries and bonuses, and they created a parliamentary democracy that they controlled and propagandized everyone through their control of the schools. And they did this specifically to make reintegration with China as hard as humanly possible.
And China knew this. And they knew they had to balance national security and the self-determination of the people of Hong Kong. They knew eventually they would come around to Chinese governance, but that they couldn’t force it. But they also knew that if they let Hong Kong be totally free it would be used as a launching point for Western terrorism and separatism, just like the Brits and Americans always do. So when China passed a law cementing the national security rules they felt were necessary, it sparked a protest, and it was couched in the language of “pro democracy” even though the Hong Kong governance structure was being left in place.
To me, that’s not totalitarianism. To me, that’s measured governance.
But yes China has some level of a very very flawed democracy, and there is a visible path for improvement within the system, when the political landscape allows for it. But as we have seen with the American flawed democracy, the powers that be may be very hesitant to yield power to a more democratic structure. In that way USA has failed for about 200 years. Hopefully the Chinese model allows for a bit more progress than we’ve seen in USA.
But these are two very different experiences. China is under siege, being surrounded by nuclear military bases. The US has no such threat. Similarly, the powers that be in the US do not listen to the people at all, and consistently have terrible approval ratings, whereas the Chinese government is constantly working on their process of listening to and addressing the needs of the people. The flaws are in no way equivalent.
But on the humanitarian side, and respect for minorities, China is still way behind. It is also a country with death penalty, which is clearly contrary to democratic values.
We can have this discussion, but it’s very fraught. The reality is that Tibetans have their own autonomous state within China, they educate their children with the Tibetan language and their culture thrives, whereas in the US Indian reservations are horrible places where traditional religions are barely hobbling along and languages are dying because of the repression. Structurally, China is far better for multiculturalism than the US is. As for the death penalty, I disagree it’s contrary to democratic values. Democracies around the world and throughout history have had the death penalty and it didn’t make them undemocratic. China’s use of the death penalty to protect the public good from people who betray the public trust is sort of wonderful compared to the fact that we fine businessmen a few million when they kill a thousand people through deliberate negligence just to make some money.
As I wrote, fascist as in authoritarian, and it is a fact, IDK why you consider facts laughable?
At this point, you’re just smearing your words together. It sounds like you’re saying Totalitarian == Fascism == Authoritarian
That’s just not how I’ve seen these words get developed. Authoritarian is the systemic use of authority to achieve goals. America is more authoritarian than China - it imprisons more of its people, it uses violence against the entire world, and it even has official decrees from the president called executive orders. China, on the other hand, does not allow the president to issue unilateral executive orders, but instead requires all such decrees to go through the structures and processes of the party. It has fewer of its people in prison, and its prisons are focused on rehabilitation instead of authoritative retribution, as evidence by its very low recidivism rates. It also hasn’t dropped a bomb since 1989.
I’m out of space. But suffice to say these words aren’t equivalent, and nearly everything you can point to about China can be applied to the US, to the UK, etc, and often in worse ways. The systems are different, they have different shapes and manifestations, but China is not somehow obviously evil compared to the West.
Awesome
