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US pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia as Trump focuses on Iran and the Western Hemisphere (apnews.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.

“The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Instead, the U.S. is “doing the exact opposite” of its previously expressed goal of pulling out of the Middle East.

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[–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There was a lot of hysterical social media and agitation on behalf of a vocal minority inside Hong Kong. Even then, Hong Kong was already a police state under UK rule. It was one of the reasons Western libertarians loved the place (and it's spiritual twin Singapore).

The idea that a Chinese aligned government would need to extradite someone from Hong Kong to the mainland only makes sense if the person in question was a fugitive from the mainland hiding specifically in Hong Kong. Which would make about as much sense as an American fleeing the US criminal justice system in Guam or Puerto Rico.

As to

China has stated it would recognize not so much independence of Hong Kong but its self autonomy that allows it to run.

The Hong Kong political structure remains intact. The leadership has all rolled over to Chinese aligned bureaucrats. And the modern-day pro-Democracy protests are an echo of the same pro-Democracy movement that sprang up under British rule back in the 1980s.

This is where Western spin sells people on "Evil China" by neatly sweeping the history of these regions under the rug. You get an earful about China being anti-democratic, when it inherits an anti-democratic UK colony that it promises not to reform. You get an earful about abhorrent Chinese labor practices (the 996) that predate the hand-over and are exempted from mainland labor protections for the same reason. You read about an extradition from Hong Kong to Taiwan and get an earful of spin about how this threatens people in Hong Kong from Hong Kong. And then you read about a Hong Kong riot that kills a couple of Hong Kong cops, rephrased as Tiananmen Square 2.

All this on the back of Chinese reforms that prohibit crypto-scams, crack down on medical quackery, reform predatory loans in the housing market, and dramatically improve labor and environmental standards nationwide, which just so happen to rub a bunch of MAGA-aligned US mega-corps the wrong way.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I'll not argue part of the reason for the portrayal of China in a lot of particularly USA media is to keep establishing that they're an enemy we need to be ready to might. Much like the Soviets, North Vietnamese, and North Koreans. And I will not deny that the USA has a shit history of conquering people.

    That said China is not wholly innocent in not doing the same. They still push for influence for soft power, so does the USA, control colonies which the USA does as well, commits genocide which the USA has done. I honestly see them more as rivals than enemies to be destroyed, and rivalries aren't inherently bad. When they become heavily antagonistic, which I'm certain both country's medias love to play up, is where it goes from rivalry to cold warfare.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago*

    That said China is not wholly innocent in not doing the same.

    I mean, the fact that you've got to caveat your caveats on this illustrates the dynamic at play. Chinese bureaucrats are focused on land and sea borders, building trans-Asiatic trade routes, and securing friendly relations with rich underdeveloped nations in the Global South. American bureaucrats are ambushing fishing boats, kidnapping presidents, starving entire islands of people, and bombing hospitals and schools.

    They still push for influence for soft power

    To what end, though? Not to be That Guy, but...

    One of these countries is pursuing a very explicit policy of ethnic cleansing for the purpose of resource extraction and white nationalist enrichment. The other is doing industrial development, domestic enrichment, and cultural preservation, with an explicit but ultimately benign bias towards the national leadership.

    At some point, Westerners criticizing China sound like the KKK - hoods and burning crosses and all - denouncing the NYPD while reading chapters from Howard Zinn's People's History. Even if you do land on a salient point, it comes across as nakedly opportunistic and insincere. Even more so when you're doing Woke Land Acknowledgement for Tibet, while orchestrating fascist regime change all over Latin America.

    And then what comes of it? Now we've got a Canadian PM stuck banning Chinese EVs to prop up the American gas-guzzler industry in the name of... national sovereignty? Economic independence? The newest Philippian dictator is fighting a turf war over a string of Pacific Islands for the benefit of who? Six billionaire families that run the island nation like their own private fief? In the name of... freedom and justice for all? American aircraft carriers lining up to flatten wedding parties in Yemen, before a glide bomb connects with their laundry room or the crew mutinies over half-rations of dog food?

    Who is this critique of China in service of, exactly? Nobody in the know seriously believes these criticisms are coming from civil libertarians or liberal democrats. Everything is just in service to the all-consuming machine of techno-feudal corporate expansion for a handful of white nationalist oligarchs.

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