China's military space station

[Boris_Badenov]

gunsandrockets, neutrino78x, how dare you use facts to respond to baseless agitprop. :shock:

 

[asj2010]

I stand by my comments.

Any quick look at the even the last hundred years will show that the USA and Europe have been significantly more militarily aggressive and prone to invading other countries. This is in fact the reason why Europe had empires, subjugating other countries for internal gain, why the USA extended its own empire by facilitating the Spanish-American war, stole american indian lands and drove them away into reservations or massacred them, facilitated the spread of US corporations in the early 20th century by military means in Central America, and more recently overthrew democratically-elected leaders in South America, invaded Iraq (against the wishes of the UN and the world community) and fought in Vietnam in the 1960s (not to mention supporting REALLY bad guys like Marcos of the Philippines after WW2).

As to your contention that the Chinese are the "bad guys", perhaps you don't realize it, but to the Chinese people WE are the bad guys...it's all relative. In fact, during the Bush years, when America was throwing its weight around and heeding no one, many people around the world actually preferred China to the USA (it was funny to see headlines in British papers making fun of americans and how China was ahead of the USA in the Olympics)

Again, my point is that unless people try to see the other side, we're forever going to be making monsters out of shadows. I've been to China many times, have many Chinese friends, and am astonished how hard working, patriotic, and exuberant the Chinese are with regards to their future. They know their country is going in the right direction, and are proud of it. We're all people wishing for the same things.. Jingoism and attacks on people you have no idea about makes no sense.

 

[asj2010]

Some points to consider:

1. China is at this point a socialist country, not a communist one. The economic model of communism has been transformed into one that is a mixture of capitalism and communism.

2. "One interesting fact is that of the nearly 100 million people killed by communists during the 20th century, most of those killed were Chinese and their killers were Chinese communists."

In fact, the vast majority who died in China after WW2 (perhaps 20 million, although no one actually knows, it could have been much less than this due to propaganda from the US) died of starvation because of foolish policies, NOT because they were killed like the Germans disposed of the Jews.

3. "Again, we are a free country. China is not. There is no ambiguity here: we are the good guys, China is the bad guys."

Actually, there is always ambiguity...the policies of the USA in the last few decades has been in fact more like the "bad guys" than China, which always seeks compromise when dealing with external countries. This is why most of the rest of the world trust the Chinese more than the USA, and vote accordingly in the UN. This is fact, not wishful thinking, or moralizing.

Note that the ability of americans to directly vote for the presidency did NOT prevent the country from doing stupid things like Iraq. That is, complete political freedom does not necessarily equate to smart policies. In fact, the wishy washy policies of the country as it goes from administration to administration is perhaps one failing of the system.

4. "But judging from this post, you are probably a communist."

Calling people names is so uncool, especially considering that I'm a business owner, am convinced of the efficiency of the market systems (with the right controls) and am therefore very unlikely to be "communist".

 

[Boris_Badenov]

asj2010, this conversation belongs in FreeSpace. With that said; People have a tendancy to vote with their feet. How many people in the World want to & try to move to the US every year? How many people from the US, or for that matter any other country in the World, move to China?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Indeed is does belong in Free Space. I'm trying to decide whether there's a thread that can remain here if split, or if the whole thread needs to be moved...

 

[gunsandrockets]

"Indeed is does belong in Free Space. I'm trying to decide whether there's a thread that can remain here if split, or if the whole thread needs to be moved..."

You can afford to move the whole thread since the thread was already pretty much dead and the original topic beaten to death. Then asj2010 came along and resurrected the thread with his absurd 'attack the West' defense of China.