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America Can’t Surpass China’s Power in Asia, But It Can Still Prevent Chinese Hegemony
(www.foreignaffairs.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Remember when the USA stopped supplying the Japanese with oil during world War 2? The USA has a gigantic military presence in Japan and laws governing their military, you want them to just leave and let Japan "do their thing"?
The US was literally a state sponsor of Japan's invasion of China, over the course of which more Chinese people were murdered than during the Great Leap Forward. The US was the single primary supplier of oil, steel, iron, copper, and essentially everything that Japan needed to wage war in China from 1937 until 1941 (when the bulk of Chinese casualties occurred due Japanese atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre). Without the US, Japan would not have stood a chance.
Henceforth why the USA did an oil embargo on Japan. Then Japan sneaked attacked the USA for doing that (pearl harbor). Sucks what happened to China, but not everything is America's fault.
Ok, maybe I wasn't clear enough for you.
80% of Japan's oil was from the US. Similar numbers held for steel, iron, bauxite, etc. The US wasn't a war profiteerer in a sea of war profiteers, but the sole reason Japan was able to invade mainland China in the first place. If the US had not supplied Japan, the Pacific Theatre would not exist. 20 million Chinese civilians need not have died.
It's absurd the level of apologism some people have for what was plainly genocidal foreign policy. If the war had ended in November of 1941, America would have been remembered as the key foundation of the Axis Powers in the Pacific.
There's a theory that the US, UK, and France were in fact not perturbed by the rise of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The primary geopolitical foe of Germany was the Soviet Union, and of Japan was China. Both these countries were, if not governed by communists, seeing communism rise rapidly. They were also clear targets, given their richness of resources and geographical proximity. That's why the UK and France signed the Munich Agreement and the US supplied Japan to such a degree - the hope being that the fighting would stamp out the communist threat and allow the "civilized" powers to sweep in and subjugate a battered Germany and Japan. In fact, this isn't really a theory: French and British leaders at the time basically admitted as much.
America seems to think that, just because they were the global hegemon, that any rising power also seeks hegemony by military power.
Historically, this is supported by the post-Cold War context: the Warsaw Pact, NATO, and US enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine maintained American dominance in the West.
But then, the USSR collapsed. It's a new world, old man.
It’s the projection of hegemonic capitalist imperialism, that can’t see things through any other lens than capitalist imperialism. It’s so hegemonic that even most of the non-wealthy see it this way, be they “conservative,” “liberal,” or even “ultra-leftist”.
Is there any evidence that China wouldn't want to be a hegemon?
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Their latest official map.
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A lot of people focus on China's actions in Africa as China being peaceful, but China has border disputes with most nations surrounding it, including adding more claims recently. It also has claims to the South China Sea that are well beyond any other kind of claims that other countries have. It also tends to treat a lot of those claims rather aggressively with its surrounding nations, trying to isolate each neighbor and use the size disparity to get a favorable agreement.
5 words:
- Tibet
- Hong Kong
- Taiwan
- Macau
Past, recent past, near future, and the next in line.
The whole One Belt One Road initiative?
I've followed the developing belt and road initiative and it works like this: China invests in various countries' infrastructure to expand trade capacity. So far the only criticism the western media has leveled at it is that it is supposedly a debt trap. And the big evidence for that is Sri Lanka's port. However, the majority of Sri Lankan debt is held by Western banks. The Chinese loan was not at a higher interest rate. Yet somehow, China is to blame? In what way do you consider the BRI to be a hegemonic project?
That's a very naive take. Even if BRI was only meant for trade - so much influence on trade necessarily means that China will have greater political power over included countries. The debt trap thing is also true - the westerners noticed it because they employed the same tactics to gain influence over other countries. These are pretty hegemonic things to do.
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Found the white supremacist. "China bad because I just know they are."
Dont even bother citing your state department propaganda, you're a misanthrope.
Fyi, The peoples liberation army is one of the most capable armies in the world. You just never notice it because China is a peace first nation in nearly all of its foreign policy encounters including Palestine and Taiwan.
Hopefully they’re one of the most capable armies, and hopefully we never have to find out.
The country that reveals the most corruption is likely to be less corrupt than the country that reveals the least corruption.