This is such a wildly naive and orientalist view of the Middle East. If you actually studied the modern history of the region you would know that since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire western powers have ceaselessly meddled in the affairs of the people there.

They’ve supported coups in order to overthrow democratic governments. They funded right wing jihadis including the precursors to and allies of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. They’ve enabled war crimes left and right. They even invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and continues to bomb the whole region with an extensive and secretive drone program. Even now the west continues to defend authoritarian and genocidal regimes like Saudi Arabia or Israel as long as they serve their western interests regardless of their destabilizing effect.

The reality is you have no idea what a Middle East would look like without western intervention. To pretend that you do only reveals your complete ignorance and racist arrogance.

Well part of it is China was a severely underdeveloped country. They had to play catch up and so they traded access to their large labor market in exchange for technology transfers agreements.

That said, I think it would be incorrect to say their economy is currently based on copying. They publish more high impact research papers these days than any other country and are technological leaders particularly in green energy. This has been such a rapid change though that I think people’s perceptions of the Chinese economy lag the reality.

Then I’m not sure you know much about the motivations of Xi, the CPC, or the US for that matter. Since the 80s both sides only real interest has been economic growth. The US was fine with Chinas growth for decades as long as they provide the US a source of cheap labor. However now, China’s economy is actually larger than the US’s in terms of purchase power parity. If left unchecked China would become the economic center of the world without firing a single shot.

The US is clearly worried about losing it’s economic dominance as the worlds only superpower. That’s why it’s made contingency plans for how to confront China militarily. If they tried to subdue China through an invasion it wouldn’t work. China is a nuclear power and that would spell the end of the world. What they could do instead is use islands off the coast of China to enforce a naval blockade of the mainland. From South Korea, to Japan including Okinawa, to the Philippines the US is stationing military assets all the way down the coast. Taiwan would serve as the linch pin to that plan.

Again I have to repeat the US is not the defender of liberal democracy that they claim to be. The people of Taiwan should be clear eyed about that.

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Sure but the tensions between China and the US never went away. You may not have Chiang Kai Shek seeking US support in order to invade the mainland. That much is true. However, the US is still very much interested in keeping Taiwan within its sphere of influence as part of a militaristic strategy of containment aimed at China.

I don’t think the US state department cares much for the welfare of Taiwanese people in all of this. If you have any doubts about how the US operates all you have to do is look at its relationship with Israel today.

You’re not wrong. The CPC see Taiwanese independence as a threat because the US prevented them from taking it during the Chinese civil war. The US knows this and clearly intends to use Taiwan as a pressure point to gain diplomatic leverage against China. That makes it a high stakes game with the Taiwanese people caught in the middle and no resolution in sight.

Given that context, it’s not surprising most people in Taiwan want to maintain the status quo and prevent any escalation. However, as tensions rise between the US and China the political tensions in Taiwan rise with them.

They treat Taiwan that way because the Chinese civil war was never fully resolved. The US interfered to prevent the communists from taking Taiwan and ousting Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist KMT. As such, the CPC sees persistent US support for Taiwanese independence as an implicit threat against their sovereignty.

Early in the pandemic the rate of death was much higher than it is now. That’s because nobody had immunity and we didn’t know how to treat people with covid. Doctors treating the initial outbreak were also probably exposed to a large dose of virus all at once making their survival less likely.

Wow really? I couldn’t tell.

He was never actually arrested though as far as I can tell. The local police basically gave him a warning against spreading rumors of an SARS outbreak because they were worried it would cause a panic. This was an overstep and the police later apologized and admitted they were in the wrong.

Sorry, I thought when you asked “what gives?” you wanted an actual answer. My bad.

I think a lot of the problem is western media seems particularly lazy when reporting on China. It allows far right wing or US government outlets to control the narrative and make China look like a real life 1984 to a western audience. That makes it’s difficult for people to discern legitimate critique from misinformation. I understand why some may just avoid criticizing China altogether rather than risk playing into the misinformation that’s out there.

I just clicked through to a guardian link that talked about why she was initially convicted. It’s harder to pin down exactly what misinformation she was accused of spreading though since most western outlets are causally dismissive of the claims.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/citizen-journalist-facing-jail-in-china-for-wuhan-covid-reporting-zhang-zhan

That said, this guardian article references interviews she did with VoA, an American government outlet, and The Epoch Times, a far right wing outlet run by the Falun Gong cult. The Epoch Times I know in particular has promoted antivax or anti lockdown conspiracies in the US, as well as other stuff like with Qanon and the idea that Trump actually won in 2020. It wouldn’t surprise me to know she was promoting similar anti lockdown conspiracies but just in China.

It seems she was detained for spreading misinformation about the pandemic when the initial outbreak was at its peak. That may not be illegal in the US. However, plenty of countries have such laws that go into effect during emergency situations.

I think it’s worth discussing the merits of those laws and how effective they are. However, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to use this case as a way to imply that China is silencing journalists when they report on inconvenient truths.

Hong Kong was never a vision for what China could be though. British rule was also very authoritarian. Much of the repression of free speech today is being done using laws the British enacted. Even when the British decided to introduce democratic reforms to HK, they explicitly gave outsized control of the city to corporations.

I imagine that’s the likely reason the IDF was attacking and occupying hospitals in Gaza. If there is nobody to count the bodies then Israel can keep the reported death count low as they continue their genocide.

Yes just like Al Qaeda and the Taliban…

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Hamas or another Palestinian group that attacked either. However, I don’t think it would be without reason.

The problem is if the pier is completed then it offers a route for an aid other than the Rafah crossing. That would give Israel an excuse to invade Rafah and take control of the border with Egypt. If they succeed, Israel would finally have full control over Gaza’s food supply which would allow them to use starvation as a weapon. If you want to genocide a people starving them is far more efficient than bombs and bullets. This is a future Palestinians desperately want to avoid.

In most cases yes. However there is a range to that success. Some developments have been in such high demand that they’re now expanding. Others are still struggling.

The US definitely had its fair share of housing developments that were basically real estate investment scams. Most of the endless suburban sprawl in California was developed that way. One of my favorite examples is California City. It’s still mostly empty and is located in the middle of the desert. Also if you ever watched the show Arrested Development, it was making fun of the people who ran these kinds of real estate scams.

What’s happening in China isn’t all that different. It’s just happening on a much larger scale given the population size and the kind of urban density China is targeting. That’s what I think is shocking to anyone not looking at numbers. Instead of empty blocks of houses you might get empty apartment buildings instead.