A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
I am not sure anyone is saying we should not have a China policy. As a pragmatist I am certainly in the camp who want to rule out extremely implausible policies just because they make us feel good about doing something though.
The only solution to the China problem is a slow removal of China from Western supply chains and isolating any country which allies with them with economic sanctions.
Who will pick up the bill for this?
Everyone. We're just going to have to live with a bit of extra inflation.
Hmmm. So you're a business making a product and you have to unilaterally switch suppliers to an unfamiliar and potentially slower, inferior or more costly alternative and then pass on the costs to the consumer.
I am not sure that I can see that happening somehow.
I said slowly, not overnight.
Slowly or quickly, I still can't see that happening. You need to deal a fundamental fact. China makes good products at a fraction of the price elsewhere. If your competitors are free to use them, so will you.
Yes, I meant it as a Western response, not just one or two countries acting alone. It's, as I said in a different post, the kind of stuff Boris and Joe need to be talking about. How can we extricate western supply chains from China in the least damaging way possible and put up investment barriers against China in Western countries do our IP doesn't fall into their hands.
It could well be already too late in lots of sectors e.g. try removing Tencent investment in the video games market, they have tentacles everywhere.
It's not that difficult, you turn them into forced sellers.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
China is China. If the Communist Party fell, to be replaced by a western-style democracy and (its current) unalloyed capitalism, how would that change the economic relationship with the West? It wouldn't change China selling us things we want to buy. It might trim some of the excesses of state espionage against competitors. Maybe. But otherwsie, I don't see what would change - other than cutting off our option to be outraged at the way they conduct their internal affairs.
The only way you "defeat" China is to be build better quality, better priced, latest fashion products. And we have some inherent problems in achieving that.
Absolutely right. And, simply, with the manpower and cost advantage they have the problems are simply not soluble in the next 50-100 years by which time every nation will be "post-industrial".
A big thing that should really concern western countries is China is investing heavily in AI tech....some get all worked up about a Google AI project being racist, but those companies have oversight and ethics committees and we have a free society that can pick up on this and influence the likes of Google to work harder to make these projects fairer.
Lets just imagine China manages to get to the same stage of market dominance in AI products as it does in cheap plastic crap and low end electronics. We very nearly signed up for their 5G, what if we sign up to their AI products that are a bit more crucial than which stupid dance video to be suggested next by TikTok?
AI has the potential of the development of Dreadnoughts, an upgrade in effectiveness that almost all existing ships became obsolete overnight, making it far more difficult for us to maintain our 2 other navies policy. It runs the risk of making much of existing US military might and equipment similarly redundant.
"Banning the use of the Uighur language" says Cyclefree. So how come shops in major cities such as Kashgar and Hami have signs in both Chinese and Uighur languages? Just as shops in Lhasa have signs in Chinese and Tibetan languages
My dear "Malkie" you're really going to have to up your game with such poor quality trolling. Frankly it's embarrassing and you'll find that PB has little time to educate the terminally stupid.
Best wishes for a democratic 2021 to you and your revolting communist friends in The Dictatorship of China.
So, log-off now for a few minutes, look in the mirror, and - if nothing else - have a think about yourself and how you'd want to be seen in the history books.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
It's amazing to think that we are already half way through the 50 years.
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
Honestly, unlike you, you are making irrational posts this morning. There (spelt correctly) may well be IT problems at the French customs. No doubt they are having issues with new systems. BUT we choose unnecessarily to expose ourselves to those issues.
But those French IT problems will get resolved. Next week will be better than last week, next month better than this.
I can pity poor Faisal, trying to make noise when the only story in the world is America toying with overthrowing democracy. But really, that is all it is - noise, to pursue an agenda that Brexit is going to be a never-ending shitfest. Yawn.
Again, the French have not been doing the full checks that we require them to do as part of the deal. They will be next week. And traffic is 15% of normal.
This not an IT issue that just gets fixed and then shout at remoaners. This is very real and you sir will be paying for it as the cost of most things goes up.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
What exactly is the battleground? Plastic toys? VW cars? Fab plants?
The only solution to the China problem is a slow removal of China from Western supply chains and isolating any country which allies with them with economic sanctions.
Who will pick up the bill for this?
Everyone. We're just going to have to live with a bit of extra inflation.
Hmmm. So you're a business making a product and you have to unilaterally switch suppliers to an unfamiliar and potentially slower, inferior or more costly alternative and then pass on the costs to the consumer.
I am not sure that I can see that happening somehow.
I said slowly, not overnight.
Slowly or quickly, I still can't see that happening. You need to deal a fundamental fact. China makes good products at a fraction of the price elsewhere. If your competitors are free to use them, so will you.
And have not been punished in any way for stealing western IP that has allowed them a big leap forward. They know they can just do it again if they fall behind in a sector.
Again you're really rather missing the point. You might want to call for the ref, but there is no ref.
If we are operating a free market, companies will be free to purchase from Chinese suppliers. Are you arguing for govt intervention? Are you arguing for tariffs rules limiting free trade? If you are, you had better make sure they are applied globally.
No, I am saying what the state of play is. As you say there is no ref and the west have shown they won't act as one, so China know they can play fair and win, and if they don't, they can steal to win with no punishment in any form.
The devices we are all using right now are built from components made in China. These components are not easy (possibly impossible) to source elsewhere and certainly instrumental to the cost of the device.
Companies are locked into the economy and there is no consumer choice. There is little to no commercial pressure anyone can assert on China until that is dealt with.
It's all very well stating action is required, but until you unlock that core dependency nothing will change.
The trouble is, is that there is no free market option to deal with it as far as I can see, so we're in the realm of international and/or govt intervention and talking lots and lots of money that we do not have.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
What exactly is the battleground? Plastic toys? VW cars? Fab plants?
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
It's amazing to think that we are already half way through the 50 years.
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
It is not something a civilised government like our own would ever consider!
The only solution to the China problem is a slow removal of China from Western supply chains and isolating any country which allies with them with economic sanctions.
Who will pick up the bill for this?
Everyone. We're just going to have to live with a bit of extra inflation.
Hmmm. So you're a business making a product and you have to unilaterally switch suppliers to an unfamiliar and potentially slower, inferior or more costly alternative and then pass on the costs to the consumer.
I am not sure that I can see that happening somehow.
I said slowly, not overnight.
Slowly or quickly, I still can't see that happening. You need to deal a fundamental fact. China makes good products at a fraction of the price elsewhere. If your competitors are free to use them, so will you.
And have not been punished in any way for stealing western IP that has allowed them a big leap forward. They know they can just do it again if they fall behind in a sector.
Again you're really rather missing the point. You might want to call for the ref, but there is no ref.
If we are operating a free market, companies will be free to purchase from Chinese suppliers. Are you arguing for govt intervention? Are you arguing for tariffs rules limiting free trade? If you are, you had better make sure they are applied globally.
No, I am saying what the state of play is. As you say there is no ref and the west have shown they won't act as one, so China know they can play fair and win, and if they don't, they can steal to win with no punishment in any form.
The devices we are all using right now are built from components made in China. These components are not easy (possibly impossible) to source elsewhere and certainly instrumental to the cost of the device.
Companies are locked into the economy and there is no consumer choice. There is little to no commercial pressure anyone can assert on China until that is dealt with.
It's all very well stating action is required, but until you unlock that core dependency nothing will change.
The trouble is, is that there is no free market option to deal with it as far as I can see, so we're in the realm of international and/or govt intervention and talking lots and lots of money that we do not have.
You seem to think I am disagreeing with you, when I am actually agreeing with you.
I am pointing out that due to previous inaction, the Chinese know they can't lose. Win fairly with better products (many jump started by stolen IP), or steal IP when they fall behind / a new sector opens up.
The state also closely control their currency to ensure products always remain competitive. Again something the West can't really do.
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
It's amazing to think that we are already half way through the 50 years.
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
It is not something a civilised government like our own would ever consider!
The CCP are no doubt only breaking the agreement in a "limited and specific way"
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
Excellent thread, Cyclefree. Simply superb. I agree with every word.
China under the CCP represents a clear and present danger to the future freedom, liberty and security of humanity. All of us.
Forget Brexit. Forget Trump. Forget the EU. Forget Wokeism. Forget Sindyref. Forget any of our relentless introspective obsessions. Forget the tedious mudslinging we all through at each other each and every day. And I'd argue this is even important in winning the ultimate battle against climate change.
This should be the *number one* focus of Western foreign policy, now, with the same level of attention and focus that the Soviet Union had from 1948 to 1991. On a global level.
It's that serious.
We're in for the long haul and, if we want a future world of freedom and democracy, and if we want to stop our independent economies and securities being destroyed, we need to stop ourselves being slowly boiled in the saucepan.
Today. No excuses. No equivocation.
Er, no.
China is simply righting what it perceives to be centuries of wrongs and, because of its size, has realised that it is the 600lb gorilla.
It has very little expansionist ambition and simply wants to redress what it perceives to be historical iniquities (eg. Taiwan, the Spratlys) as well as maintaining its own internal order.
Is it repressive, violent, anti-democratic but it believes it has a greater purpose which is to bring, kicking and screaming if necessary, the country into the modern age to be a global competitor (not aggressor).
And as people on here have already noted, when you think that 20,000 people a day were dying in Shanghai pre-1949, the country has come a long way.
I always liken it to a blind giant bumbling along a narrow corridor. It bumps into the sides often but the direction is forward.
Yes, that's the propaganda it puts out.
The more interesting question is why you believe it.
Any excuse for present behaviour based on 19th century wrongs is horsecrap and theres not a hope in hell that the Chinese regime itself believes that. Governments aren't that stupid, but they know it's useful, everyone does it to a degree, but we shouldn't buy such talk.
Of course they believe it - and harbour much more recent resentment of US efforts to maintain control of China in the first half of the 20th Century. Casino can probably understand that aspect of national identity better than you.
The Chinese are intensely pragmatic in some things, but they experience the same atavistic motivations as the rest of us.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
Indeed and the Soviet Union was much closer to us than China is, Communist China is more of a direct threat to Japan, Australia and South Korea than it is to us.
Plus just as with the Soviet Union we are not big enough to take them on alone, that is why NATO was created to contain the USSR by western European powers including us and the US and Canada, it may be a new NATO equivalent will be needed in East Asia to contain China involving India, Japan, Australia, South Korea etc supported by the USA.
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
It's amazing to think that we are already half way through the 50 years.
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
It is not something a civilised government like our own would ever consider!
The CCP are no doubt only breaking the agreement in a "limited and specific way"
And were doing so before the IMB was wisely published. It is what countries do.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
I guess that is theoretically possible, but without draconian restrictions on business and an acceptance of huge increases in inflation for consumer goods it is difficult to imagine it really working. I personally think that while the Chinese regime definitely stinks, the West should simply bide it's time. Eventually their form of capitalism, highly corrupt though it is, will drive political change. Let us not forget that our very imperfect system of democracy has evolved that way largely gradually over the last 150 years. It is underpinned by a system of law that the Chinese are a long way off. That said, we still have a long way to go!
Another immediate move would be to block Chinese state companies from investing here and elsewhere in the west and put up barriers for non-state Chinese companies as well. Our companies will just have to deal with the blowback. It's the kind of stuff Boris and Joe need to be discussing in a couple of weeks to ensure that Western companies don't fall into the hands of the Chinese state. The EU is very clearly an unreliable partner in this.
Boris has an opportunity over China for the UK to mend fences with Biden, given the way the EU has sought to throw its hat in with Xi. Be fascinating to see how it plays out.
Yes, Godwin's Law etc. but for once it's appropriate.
China is Germany in 1936.
We can see the aggressive dictator in power. We know the Nuremberg laws were enacted last year (banning anti-patriotic sentiment, and the camps in Xinjang). We can see the violation of the Treaty of Versailles (the trashing of the Anglo-Sino agreement and the rule of law) we can see Germany reoccupying the Rhineland (military aggression in the South China Sea, and near Taiwan and the huge expansion of its navy) and we can see the Anti-Comintern Pacts being signed (China with other central asian and African nations).
Of course, by 1941 everyone *knew* what Hitler was like, and it got worse, and know we now think anyone who "couldn't see it coming" in the 1930s must have been a complete idiot. Because we all now KNOW.
So, log-off now for a few minutes, look in the mirror, and - if nothing else - have a think about yourself and how you'd want to be seen in the history books.
What do you want to be? Someone who saw this coming when the evidence was staring you right in the face?
Or an idiot?
Uh-oh I see you're off on one of your moments again.
TAAAKE COOVVVEERRRRRR
I'm curious. What exactly is the argument that what China is doing to the Uighurs is not genocide?
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
Indeed and the Soviet Union was much closer to us than China is, Communist China is more of a direct threat to Japan, Australia and South Korea than it is to us.
Plus just as with the Soviet Union we are not big enough to take them on alone, that is why NATO was created to contain the USSR by western European powers including us and the US and Canada, it may be a new NATO equivalent will be needed in East Asia to contain China involving India, Japan, Australia, South Korea etc supported by the USA.
The USSR was lately dependent on the West for grain shipments. This actually made things worse - the hard liners there assumed that the West would use this for leverage. So they prepared for what they thought was inevitable.
They kept on being astonished by the fact that grain was never embargoed - even when Afghanistan was invaded.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
What exactly is the battleground? Plastic toys? VW cars? Fab plants?
The economic future of the west.
Mate, it's the ineluctable march of history. We can't, Canute-like (I know, I know he was proving a point) sit on the beach pushing back the waves.
It's happening. They are huge and they are on the move.
It's why there are weight categories in boxing. Ryan Garcia is a great fighter but Tyson (Fury or Mike) would spark him out in a moment.
30 years ago it was toys from China. Now? No limit. We need to accommodate and work with them. The more we integrate them into our processes the better chance of global success. Look at the post-Berlin Wall attitude to Russia. We continued to see them as an enemy and guess what?
This thread is half a dozen mice complaining that the elephant to whom they voluntarily ceded control of their food supplies several generations ago is well out of order, and Something Must Be Done. And that is weeks after withdrawing from the mouse massive membership of which was the only thing that made them visible to the elephant's naked eye.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
If they were to retake Taiwan any time soon, that would be almost impossible.
And that is a territorial ambition they definitely have.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
What exactly is the battleground? Plastic toys? VW cars? Fab plants?
The interesting thing to me is that this "cold war" is clearly Economic rather than "ideological" - we do precious little about the things to which we are culturally opposed, and focus almost exclusively on the economic. And we are rubbish at the economics; we are consistently out-manoeuvred. Simon Wardley is very interesting on that topic in threads such as this:
DeVos was the pioneer of school vouchers in Michigan. Everyone who is in favour of school vouchers in America says '... but don't look at Michigan, they completely fucked up school vouchetrs'
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
I'm not sure China has broken its international agreement with the UK. It explicitly made no commitment in the Joint Declaration to elections or liberal democracy and reserved the right to impose whatever political system it sees fit on Hong Kong. There is a question whether locking up political activists breached the commitment it did make for freedom of assembly, rather than as punishment for infringement of some specific law.
In other words, it is in breach of the spirit of the agreement rather than the letter. It is the letter that China will go on particularly when it is generally accused of failing to keep commitments that it explicitly did not make.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
Economically, the impact is that British jobs lose productivity and - in time - reduced salary growth.
It’s depressing that Brexit - largely voted for by the economically inactive - will be paid for by those who make money and pay taxes.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
"This isn't the Brexit we voted for" is already the cry. From the fishing industry that has gone from emaciated to dying. From importers and exporters. From supply chains who suddenly find themselves unable to function - the "how do we export to Ireland" story involves "new" problems long since identified and dismissed as remoaner project fear.
And that's just week 1. With cross border traffic significantly and unsustainably low. In not very long we will have to try and run trucks across the border and that's where the real crisis kicks in. So availability will drop - significantly in some sectors - and prices will go up - so significantly that nobody will pay it in some sectors.
When we get through covid people will go on holiday. Sob stories of dogs not allowed into France or even Northern Ireland. People standing in 2 hour immigration queues. Someone facing a vast medical bill because no health insurance and EHIC expired. The Daily Mail will have an absolute field day.
If we get that far. The expectation of common sense now being applied has been slapped down. Yes the new arrangements don't work. But that is the deal that we not only signed but actively demanded. So we can't go and ask for a load of waivers and variances - its OUR deal. Would have helped had the politicians commissioning the deal had a fucking clue how (fuck) business works.
Well done Cyclefree on generating some lively debate on fresh ground. It's amazing how much UK attitudes to China have changed... just 5 years ago John McDonnell was trying to mock Osborne for his willingness to flog state assets to China.
Personally I'd prefer to see the UK aiming to ally with democracies. For all China's economic strength, democracies are still the majority of world GDP and hopefully will be for the rest of my lifetime.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
It's amazing to think that we are already half way through the 50 years.
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
It is not something a civilised government like our own would ever consider!
The CCP are no doubt only breaking the agreement in a "limited and specific way"
And were doing so before the IMB was wisely published. It is what countries do.
Corrupt ones that are not based on the principles of law do. Britain should not. Populists, fascists, Faragists and Trumpians like this type of approach, i.e. "the law does not apply to us, particularly if it inconveniences us". Hence the very strong similarity between Trump supporters and people such as yourself. Your stated dislike of Trump is as phoney as Boris Johnson's marriage vows or Jeffrey Archer's CV. MAGA fanatics are your US equivalent. Just admit it, you are not ashamed of your other ridiculous positions, why so of your love of Trump?
Yes, Godwin's Law etc. but for once it's appropriate.
China is Germany in 1936.
We can see the aggressive dictator in power. We know the Nuremberg laws were enacted last year (banning anti-patriotic sentiment, and the camps in Xinjang). We can see the violation of the Treaty of Versailles (the trashing of the Anglo-Sino agreement and the rule of law) we can see Germany reoccupying the Rhineland (military aggression in the South China Sea, and near Taiwan and the huge expansion of its navy) and we can see the Anti-Comintern Pacts being signed (China with other central asian and African nations).
Of course, by 1941 everyone *knew* what Hitler was like, and it got worse, and know we now think anyone who "couldn't see it coming" in the 1930s must have been a complete idiot. Because we all now KNOW.
So, log-off now for a few minutes, look in the mirror, and - if nothing else - have a think about yourself and how you'd want to be seen in the history books.
What do you want to be? Someone who saw this coming when the evidence was staring you right in the face?
Or an idiot?
Uh-oh I see you're off on one of your moments again.
TAAAKE COOVVVEERRRRRR
I'm curious. What exactly is the argument that what China is doing to the Uighurs is not genocide?
Yes. It's disgusting. I'm not seeking to excuse it, I'm seeking to explain it.
China, via the CPC, is extremely nervous of internal dissent or as we might term it "freedom". They are cracking down hard on what they perceive to be a threat to the integrity of their country in the name, as they see it, of progress. They have done it constantly since 1949 sometimes willfully sometimes incidentally.
And of course we can and should register our objections, as Raab and other nations have done. But we are talking about a global behemoth which is likely to dominate the global economy for decades to come. Pretending we can send the gunboats back in with Captain Casino on the foredeck is, sadly, adding nothing to the discourse.
Another immediate move would be to block Chinese state companies from investing here and elsewhere in the west and put up barriers for non-state Chinese companies as well. Our companies will just have to deal with the blowback. It's the kind of stuff Boris and Joe need to be discussing in a couple of weeks to ensure that Western companies don't fall into the hands of the Chinese state. The EU is very clearly an unreliable partner in this.
Boris has an opportunity over China for the UK to mend fences with Biden, given the way the EU has sought to throw its hat in with Xi. Be fascinating to see how it plays out.
Why on earth should we need to 'mend fences' with him, what are we meant to have done?
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
It's amazing to think that we are already half way through the 50 years.
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
It is not something a civilised government like our own would ever consider!
The CCP are no doubt only breaking the agreement in a "limited and specific way"
And were doing so before the IMB was wisely published. It is what countries do.
Corrupt ones that are not based on the principles of law do. Britain should not. Populists, fascists, Faragists and Trumpians like this type of approach, i.e. "the law does not apply to us, particularly if it inconveniences us". Hence the very strong similarity between Trump supporters and people such as yourself. Your stated dislike of Trump is as phoney as Boris Johnson's marriage vows or Jeffrey Archer's CV. MAGA fanatics are your US equivalent. Just admit it, you are not ashamed of your other ridiculous positions, why so of your love of Trump?
Your trolling is so obvious that it won't get under my skin just give it up.
All countries prioritise their own laws. Germany did it recently too. The UK has done it before and will do it again. International law is as my avatar says more like guidelines than actual law.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It's much, much easier to stop a deal than to get one or amend one to add something new in.
The only solution to the China problem is a slow removal of China from Western supply chains and isolating any country which allies with them with economic sanctions.
Who will pick up the bill for this?
Everyone. We're just going to have to live with a bit of extra inflation.
Hmmm. So you're a business making a product and you have to unilaterally switch suppliers to an unfamiliar and potentially slower, inferior or more costly alternative and then pass on the costs to the consumer.
I am not sure that I can see that happening somehow.
I said slowly, not overnight.
Slowly or quickly, I still can't see that happening. You need to deal a fundamental fact. China makes good products at a fraction of the price elsewhere. If your competitors are free to use them, so will you.
And have not been punished in any way for stealing western IP that has allowed them a big leap forward. They know they can just do it again if they fall behind in a sector.
Again you're really rather missing the point. You might want to call for the ref, but there is no ref.
If we are operating a free market, companies will be free to purchase from Chinese suppliers. Are you arguing for govt intervention? Are you arguing for tariffs rules limiting free trade? If you are, you had better make sure they are applied globally.
No, I am saying what the state of play is. As you say there is no ref and the west have shown they won't act as one, so China know they can play fair and win, and if they don't, they can steal to win with no punishment in any form.
The devices we are all using right now are built from components made in China. These components are not easy (possibly impossible) to source elsewhere and certainly instrumental to the cost of the device.
Companies are locked into the economy and there is no consumer choice. There is little to no commercial pressure anyone can assert on China until that is dealt with.
It's all very well stating action is required, but until you unlock that core dependency nothing will change.
The trouble is, is that there is no free market option to deal with it as far as I can see, so we're in the realm of international and/or govt intervention and talking lots and lots of money that we do not have.
Quite. And the problem is structural *and* cultural.
Talk to the people involved with the Raspberry PI project. Essentially, tariffs on components from China were higher than finished goods. They wanted to move to making Pis in the UK, using imported (at first) resistors, transistors etc
So they suggested equalising the tariffs.
When they talked to the government, they were told, in tones approaching horror - "But that would upset the Chinese!"
A generation or 2 of businessmen, politicians, journalists etc have absorbed into their bones that outsourcing is inevitable and must not be challenged.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
I'd be happiest with our power generated not by Chinese-of-whatever-flavour nuclear, in cahoots with the French, but from our tides using our own domestic engineering resources. Similarly, once your lights staying on is dependant upon the whims of Putin not turning the gas taps off, you are already strategically compromised.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
We can actually change China in the long run, at least having some influence in where it goes. But it is done subtly through culture and science not aggressively through defence and the economy.
One example is Chinese students, over half a million students travel to the West every year, they will be disproportionately influential both in Chinese domestic politics and Chinese-Western trade over the next 50 years. Our security services should be seeing this as a fantastic opportunity to directly recruit, and on a bigger scale millions more can be indirectly recruited as fans of western values.
Is that process more likely to be successful in an anti-China world or a world that treats China pragmatically as a country with a mix of good and bad?
Yes, Godwin's Law etc. but for once it's appropriate.
China is Germany in 1936.
We can see the aggressive dictator in power. We know the Nuremberg laws were enacted last year (banning anti-patriotic sentiment, and the camps in Xinjang). We can see the violation of the Treaty of Versailles (the trashing of the Anglo-Sino agreement and the rule of law) we can see Germany reoccupying the Rhineland (military aggression in the South China Sea, and near Taiwan and the huge expansion of its navy) and we can see the Anti-Comintern Pacts being signed (China with other central asian and African nations).
Of course, by 1941 everyone *knew* what Hitler was like, and it got worse, and know we now think anyone who "couldn't see it coming" in the 1930s must have been a complete idiot. Because we all now KNOW.
So, log-off now for a few minutes, look in the mirror, and - if nothing else - have a think about yourself and how you'd want to be seen in the history books.
What do you want to be? Someone who saw this coming when the evidence was staring you right in the face?
Or an idiot?
Uh-oh I see you're off on one of your moments again.
TAAAKE COOVVVEERRRRRR
I'm curious. What exactly is the argument that what China is doing to the Uighurs is not genocide?
Yes. It's disgusting. I'm not seeking to excuse it, I'm seeking to explain it.
China, via the CPC, is extremely nervous of internal dissent or as we might term it "freedom". They are cracking down hard on what they perceive to be a threat to the integrity of their country in the name, as they see it, of progress. They have done it constantly since 1949 sometimes willfully sometimes incidentally.
And of course we can and should register our objections, as Raab and other nations have done. But we are talking about a global behemoth which is likely to dominate the global economy for decades to come. Pretending we can send the gunboats back in with Captain Casino on the foredeck is, sadly, adding nothing to the discourse.
Fair enough. I agree the situations are different to the extent that different responses are called for. It does seem we could be doing rather more than we currently are though, both in terms of rhetoric and actions.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
I guess that is theoretically possible, but without draconian restrictions on business and an acceptance of huge increases in inflation for consumer goods it is difficult to imagine it really working. I personally think that while the Chinese regime definitely stinks, the West should simply bide it's time. Eventually their form of capitalism, highly corrupt though it is, will drive political change. Let us not forget that our very imperfect system of democracy has evolved that way largely gradually over the last 150 years. It is underpinned by a system of law that the Chinese are a long way off. That said, we still have a long way to go!
Legally enforce standards for companies outsourcing - if your phone is made with slave labour, you get fined.
Think of it as a Morality Tax, to go with Carbon Taxes.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When Russia, China and North Korea scrap their nuclear weapons
This thread is half a dozen mice complaining that the elephant to whom they voluntarily ceded control of their food supplies several generations ago is well out of order, and Something Must Be Done. And that is weeks after withdrawing from the mouse massive membership of which was the only thing that made them visible to the elephant's naked eye.
It is very heartening to see that despite initial hiccoughs on the border, the much-hyped supply shortages of hackneyed metaphors for remainers have not materialised - despite a huge spike in demand.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
"This isn't the Brexit we voted for" is already the cry. From the fishing industry that has gone from emaciated to dying. From importers and exporters. From supply chains who suddenly find themselves unable to function - the "how do we export to Ireland" story involves "new" problems long since identified and dismissed as remoaner project fear.
And that's just week 1. With cross border traffic significantly and unsustainably low. In not very long we will have to try and run trucks across the border and that's where the real crisis kicks in. So availability will drop - significantly in some sectors - and prices will go up - so significantly that nobody will pay it in some sectors.
When we get through covid people will go on holiday. Sob stories of dogs not allowed into France or even Northern Ireland. People standing in 2 hour immigration queues. Someone facing a vast medical bill because no health insurance and EHIC expired. The Daily Mail will have an absolute field day.
If we get that far. The expectation of common sense now being applied has been slapped down. Yes the new arrangements don't work. But that is the deal that we not only signed but actively demanded. So we can't go and ask for a load of waivers and variances - its OUR deal. Would have helped had the politicians commissioning the deal had a fucking clue how (fuck) business works.
2 hr immigration queues certainly impact the weekender type holiday, fly out Friday afternoon to enjoy Friday evening, now becomes fly out Friday afternoon to queue in a depressing building Friday evening and still have to pay for Friday nights hotel.
This thread is half a dozen mice complaining that the elephant to whom they voluntarily ceded control of their food supplies several generations ago is well out of order, and Something Must Be Done. And that is weeks after withdrawing from the mouse massive membership of which was the only thing that made them visible to the elephant's naked eye.
Thankfully the real world - and the EU-China Agreement in particular - shows what a load of absolute garbage you last sentence is.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
What would Canada have had to concede to conclude a financial services FTA with the EU or with the UK alone? People talk about services as if all you need to do is prioritise it and miraculously third parties will accept our terms.
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
It's amazing to think that we are already half way through the 50 years.
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
It is not something a civilised government like our own would ever consider!
The CCP are no doubt only breaking the agreement in a "limited and specific way"
And were doing so before the IMB was wisely published. It is what countries do.
Corrupt ones that are not based on the principles of law do. Britain should not. Populists, fascists, Faragists and Trumpians like this type of approach, i.e. "the law does not apply to us, particularly if it inconveniences us". Hence the very strong similarity between Trump supporters and people such as yourself. Your stated dislike of Trump is as phoney as Boris Johnson's marriage vows or Jeffrey Archer's CV. MAGA fanatics are your US equivalent. Just admit it, you are not ashamed of your other ridiculous positions, why so of your love of Trump?
I have never seen any evidence of insincerity from Philip_Thompson and he seems quite comfortable arguing in favour of popular and unpopular points of view.
Perhaps your nutshell-theory of who is in the same camp as whom is broken?
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Yes, Godwin's Law etc. but for once it's appropriate.
China is Germany in 1936.
We can see the aggressive dictator in power. We know the Nuremberg laws were enacted last year (banning anti-patriotic sentiment, and the camps in Xinjang). We can see the violation of the Treaty of Versailles (the trashing of the Anglo-Sino agreement and the rule of law) we can see Germany reoccupying the Rhineland (military aggression in the South China Sea, and near Taiwan and the huge expansion of its navy) and we can see the Anti-Comintern Pacts being signed (China with other central asian and African nations).
Of course, by 1941 everyone *knew* what Hitler was like, and it got worse, and know we now think anyone who "couldn't see it coming" in the 1930s must have been a complete idiot. Because we all now KNOW.
So, log-off now for a few minutes, look in the mirror, and - if nothing else - have a think about yourself and how you'd want to be seen in the history books.
What do you want to be? Someone who saw this coming when the evidence was staring you right in the face?
Or an idiot?
Uh-oh I see you're off on one of your moments again.
TAAAKE COOVVVEERRRRRR
I'm curious. What exactly is the argument that what China is doing to the Uighurs is not genocide?
Yes. It's disgusting. I'm not seeking to excuse it, I'm seeking to explain it.
China, via the CPC, is extremely nervous of internal dissent or as we might term it "freedom". They are cracking down hard on what they perceive to be a threat to the integrity of their country in the name, as they see it, of progress. They have done it constantly since 1949 sometimes willfully sometimes incidentally.
And of course we can and should register our objections, as Raab and other nations have done. But we are talking about a global behemoth which is likely to dominate the global economy for decades to come. Pretending we can send the gunboats back in with Captain Casino on the foredeck is, sadly, adding nothing to the discourse.
Fair enough. I agree the situations are different to the extent that different responses are called for. It does seem we could be doing rather more than we currently are though, both in terms of rhetoric and actions.
One thing we could do is have a zero tolerance to China's headlong rush to plunder our IP. We could refuse to import goods that use that stolen IP. Or if they do come here, allow the rightful owners of that IP to impound and destroy/sell as its own those goods. I suspect that might have an impact.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
I guess that is theoretically possible, but without draconian restrictions on business and an acceptance of huge increases in inflation for consumer goods it is difficult to imagine it really working. I personally think that while the Chinese regime definitely stinks, the West should simply bide it's time. Eventually their form of capitalism, highly corrupt though it is, will drive political change. Let us not forget that our very imperfect system of democracy has evolved that way largely gradually over the last 150 years. It is underpinned by a system of law that the Chinese are a long way off. That said, we still have a long way to go!
Legally enforce standards for companies outsourcing - if your phone is made with slave labour, you get fined.
Think of it as a Morality Tax, to go with Carbon Taxes.
Yes I think that is sensible. The issue is, however, that China will pretty soon move out of the "slave labour" phase. I put it in quotation marks because I don't know specific examples although I'm sure there are many. It will move to the next phase where Chinese workers all have some kind of economic power.
So saying this anti-Slave Labour measure will protect us is a bit Maginot Line-ish.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
I'd be happiest with our power generated not by Chinese-of-whatever-flavour nuclear, in cahoots with the French, but from our tides using our own domestic engineering resources. Similarly, once your lights staying on is dependant upon the whims of Putin not turning the gas taps off, you are already strategically compromised.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When Russia, China and North Korea scrap their nuclear weapons
OK. I wasn't advocating we scrap it BTW (I mean, I think it's probably a waste of money but I don't feel that strongly about it). I was simply making the point that retaining Trident isn't really compatible with our not being overly dependent on any other country.
Trump and his family and inner core watching all the action from a tent, a curious combination of a Bond villain and his bunker but with Laura Branigan's 'Gloria' playing in the background closer to Dr Evil in Austin Powers
Yes. Oh what a circus. Btw, post "storming" do you now share my view that the Trumps are over in politics? Or are you still seeing a realistic path for him or Jnr to run in 24?
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
This thread is half a dozen mice complaining that the elephant to whom they voluntarily ceded control of their food supplies several generations ago is well out of order, and Something Must Be Done. And that is weeks after withdrawing from the mouse massive membership of which was the only thing that made them visible to the elephant's naked eye.
Thankfully the real world - and the EU-China Agreement in particular - shows what a load of absolute garbage you last sentence is.
Trump and his family and inner core watching all the action from a tent, a curious combination of a Bond villain and his bunker but with Laura Branigan's 'Gloria' playing in the background closer to Dr Evil in Austin Powers
Yes. Oh what a circus. Btw, post "storming" do you now share my view that the Trumps are over in politics? Or are you still seeing a realistic path for him or Jnr to run in 24?
On the latest polling the Trumps certainly have a path to win the GOP nomination again in 2024 if they want it and provided he is not successfully impeached before he leaves office which would prevent him seeking public office again.
Is it now safe to assume that Trump has no chance of being the Republican 2024 nominee?
Yes. And I think this has become clear to everyone now. Which is a shame for me, bettingwise, since imo he had no chance before this latest outrage and I was looking forward to laying him at a false skinny price when the market formed.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When Russia, China and North Korea scrap their nuclear weapons
... Storming the Capitol itself does nothing. You needed to be storming it and then holding it long enough for Martial Law to seem reasonable. "We're staying here all night" was the word from inside, reported on CNN. The problem is that some berk managed to call the National Guard.
The failure was that the Capitol Police managed to evacuate all the Senators and Representatives.
If they'd managed to take a dozen hostages then they get to hold the building for longer, the legal process of certifying the result is indefinitely suspended. Whole different situation.
The much derided Capitol Police may have lost the building - but they thwarted the coup.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
A few years ago Mrs C and I stayed in her brother's caravan on Llyn fairly late in the season, and one night I got talking to a local in the pub. Have a look, he said, down the roads here now. Every house is dark. Population drops 70% when the English go home for the winter. It's crippling the village. Now I live in a small town in N Essex and while we don't quite have that problem there's a clear difference between those who live here and work in the area and those who work in London. And when we moved here from S Essex but I still worked there, the A12 was absolute murder on a Friday night with cars loaded up with families heading for Suffolk.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
A lot of those protestors will now see how Trump has taken them for patsies.
One would hope so but the vox pops I've heard are disheartening. These people seem to be disconnected from reality. Often it makes me angry, or contemptuous, but when listening to some of them yesterday I had a flash of compassion. The phrase that popped into my mind, replacing the usual "racist scum" and "maximum morons", was "vulnerable adults".
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
We hurt, the EU hurts, and the Chinese look on and smile. Well done, Brexiteers.
A lot of those protestors will now see how Trump has taken them for patsies.
One would hope so but the vox pops I've heard are disheartening. These people seem to be disconnected from reality. Often it makes me angry, or contemptuous, but when listening to some of them yesterday I had a flash of compassion. The phrase that popped into my mind, replacing the usual "racist scum" and "maximum morons", was "vulnerable adults".
Yes, there's quite a lot of perfectly humane people. They want to believe, need to believe.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
Indeed. The thing is that, as with every other culture on the planet, if you actually bother to meet the locals and talk to them as if they *might possibly* be human... well they quite often respond in kind. As if you *might* be human as well.
Treat them in the style of Sanders of the River - well don't be surprised if the drums start.
When I lived in Wiltshire the Town vs Gown (I was bought up in Oxford) was startling at first. I was... not quite told off, by some other incomers for for drinking in a "Town" pub.
I used to think China would rise quietly, and benignly. Under Xi, however, it is aggressive, expansionist and hostile to many freedoms we hold dear. It has already, in effect, destroyed Hong Kong.
I predict in the end the West will be forced to unite, much more than now, to confront it. The US, Oz, UK, EU. etc. The big question is where major nations like Brazil, Russia, India, Nigeria, Indonesia, will then position themselves.
Thank you.
Just to be pedantic this piece is 40% shorter than my usual ones. I am trying to be as crisp as the ice outside my front door.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It's much, much easier to stop a deal than to get one or amend one to add something new in.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
Depends. During Gulf 1 the GOC issued an order please no more SF we need MBTs here as every country was sending their black ops, super army soldier units when we were facing, as it was thought, a very conventional and capable armoured enemy.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
I am pro nuclear and anti-Trident. We literally would not use Trident even in a nuclear war as its a 2nd strike platform. Its use is also the end of the western world as once they fly everyone's missiles are flying.
We could go back to developing an RAF nuclear capability. Gravity bombs (B61-Mod12 variants as an example) which we could drop from our F35s or Typhoons.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
I'd be happiest with our power generated not by Chinese-of-whatever-flavour nuclear, in cahoots with the French, but from our tides using our own domestic engineering resources. Similarly, once your lights staying on is dependant upon the whims of Putin not turning the gas taps off, you are already strategically compromised.
Agreed on all counts.
The Hinckley Point project has always looked bizarre to me, I have never understood it. Another bad decision from the Cameron-Osborne era.
Germany reports its highest 24-hour death toll so far – 1,188. There were 31,849 new infections, the Robert Koch Institute reports, but the actual figures may be higher still because of fewer tests done over Christmas
BBC - EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has agreed to buy an extra 300 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, doubling the amount of that vaccine available to EU citizens.
...when though?
The additional doses will be delivered starting in the second quarter of 2021,” the EU said.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
What would Canada have had to concede to conclude a financial services FTA with the EU or with the UK alone? People talk about services as if all you need to do is prioritise it and miraculously third parties will accept our terms.
You're probably right, but an equally pertinent question would be, "what would the UK have had to concede to get the EU to drop a (presumably hugely mutually beneficial) deal with China, over our non-economic concerns"?
A tale of two cities: Liverpool and Manchester. One in tier 2 from the end of lockdown lite at Dec 2 until Dec 30, then tier 3 until the current lockdown. The other in tier 3 then 4.
Liverpool went from half Manchester's case level to double in the space of three and a half weeks. Now looking likely to get worse than London.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
I'd be happiest with our power generated not by Chinese-of-whatever-flavour nuclear, in cahoots with the French, but from our tides using our own domestic engineering resources. Similarly, once your lights staying on is dependant upon the whims of Putin not turning the gas taps off, you are already strategically compromised.
Agreed on all counts.
The Hinckley Point project has always looked bizarre to me, I have never understood it. Another bad decision from the Cameron-Osborne era.
Why invest in our own nuclear capabilies with Forgemasters when we can pay the French and Chinese a multi x markup to have them do it for us?
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
You think Boris Johnson has sufficient political principles to be categorised?
I reckon "chancer" is the only category it would be safe to put him into.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
Comments
Best wishes for a democratic 2021 to you and your revolting communist friends in The Dictatorship of China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXi-nWuzAG4
And you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous that any country should think of reneging on any internationally signed agreement. Ridiculous, I tell you.
This not an IT issue that just gets fixed and then shout at remoaners. This is very real and you sir will be paying for it as the cost of most things goes up.
Shocked I tell you......
Companies are locked into the economy and there is no consumer choice. There is little to no commercial pressure anyone can assert on China until that is dealt with.
It's all very well stating action is required, but until you unlock that core dependency nothing will change.
The trouble is, is that there is no free market option to deal with it as far as I can see, so we're in the realm of international and/or govt intervention and talking lots and lots of money that we do not have.
I am pointing out that due to previous inaction, the Chinese know they can't lose. Win fairly with better products (many jump started by stolen IP), or steal IP when they fall behind / a new sector opens up.
The state also closely control their currency to ensure products always remain competitive. Again something the West can't really do.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
Casino can probably understand that aspect of national identity better than you.
The Chinese are intensely pragmatic in some things, but they experience the same atavistic motivations as the rest of us.
Plus just as with the Soviet Union we are not big enough to take them on alone, that is why NATO was created to contain the USSR by western European powers including us and the US and Canada, it may be a new NATO equivalent will be needed in East Asia to contain China involving India, Japan, Australia, South Korea etc supported by the USA.
And the EU, given they know Trump's leaving yet still signed up to the Chinese deal.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
They kept on being astonished by the fact that grain was never embargoed - even when Afghanistan was invaded.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
It's happening. They are huge and they are on the move.
It's why there are weight categories in boxing. Ryan Garcia is a great fighter but Tyson (Fury or Mike) would spark him out in a moment.
30 years ago it was toys from China. Now? No limit. We need to accommodate and work with them. The more we integrate them into our processes the better chance of global success. Look at the post-Berlin Wall attitude to Russia. We continued to see them as an enemy and guess what?
And that is a territorial ambition they definitely have.
https://twitter.com/swardley/status/1213858285822119936
In other words, it is in breach of the spirit of the agreement rather than the letter. It is the letter that China will go on particularly when it is generally accused of failing to keep commitments that it explicitly did not make.
It’s depressing that Brexit - largely voted for by the economically inactive - will be paid for by those who make money and pay taxes.
And that's just week 1. With cross border traffic significantly and unsustainably low. In not very long we will have to try and run trucks across the border and that's where the real crisis kicks in. So availability will drop - significantly in some sectors - and prices will go up - so significantly that nobody will pay it in some sectors.
When we get through covid people will go on holiday. Sob stories of dogs not allowed into France or even Northern Ireland. People standing in 2 hour immigration queues. Someone facing a vast medical bill because no health insurance and EHIC expired. The Daily Mail will have an absolute field day.
If we get that far. The expectation of common sense now being applied has been slapped down. Yes the new arrangements don't work. But that is the deal that we not only signed but actively demanded. So we can't go and ask for a load of waivers and variances - its OUR deal. Would have helped had the politicians commissioning the deal had a fucking clue how (fuck) business works.
Personally I'd prefer to see the UK aiming to ally with democracies. For all China's economic strength, democracies are still the majority of world GDP and hopefully will be for the rest of my lifetime.
China, via the CPC, is extremely nervous of internal dissent or as we might term it "freedom". They are cracking down hard on what they perceive to be a threat to the integrity of their country in the name, as they see it, of progress. They have done it constantly since 1949 sometimes willfully sometimes incidentally.
And of course we can and should register our objections, as Raab and other nations have done. But we are talking about a global behemoth which is likely to dominate the global economy for decades to come. Pretending we can send the gunboats back in with Captain Casino on the foredeck is, sadly, adding nothing to the discourse.
All countries prioritise their own laws. Germany did it recently too. The UK has done it before and will do it again. International law is as my avatar says more like guidelines than actual law.
Talk to the people involved with the Raspberry PI project. Essentially, tariffs on components from China were higher than finished goods. They wanted to move to making Pis in the UK, using imported (at first) resistors, transistors etc
So they suggested equalising the tariffs.
When they talked to the government, they were told, in tones approaching horror - "But that would upset the Chinese!"
A generation or 2 of businessmen, politicians, journalists etc have absorbed into their bones that outsourcing is inevitable and must not be challenged.
One example is Chinese students, over half a million students travel to the West every year, they will be disproportionately influential both in Chinese domestic politics and Chinese-Western trade over the next 50 years. Our security services should be seeing this as a fantastic opportunity to directly recruit, and on a bigger scale millions more can be indirectly recruited as fans of western values.
Is that process more likely to be successful in an anti-China world or a world that treats China pragmatically as a country with a mix of good and bad?
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course.
However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Think of it as a Morality Tax, to go with Carbon Taxes.
Perhaps your nutshell-theory of who is in the same camp as whom is broken?
So saying this anti-Slave Labour measure will protect us is a bit Maginot Line-ish.
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism).
Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
https://twitter.com/YouGovAmerica/status/1347304607765180416?s=20
https://twitter.com/YouGovAmerica/status/1346979225962749953?s=20
However it would likely end in defeat in the general election again even if they did
If they'd managed to take a dozen hostages then they get to hold the building for longer, the legal process of certifying the result is indefinitely suspended. Whole different situation.
The much derided Capitol Police may have lost the building - but they thwarted the coup.
Now I live in a small town in N Essex and while we don't quite have that problem there's a clear difference between those who live here and work in the area and those who work in London. And when we moved here from S Essex but I still worked there, the A12 was absolute murder on a Friday night with cars loaded up with families heading for Suffolk.
And good morning (just about) everybody.
The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
(Oh, that's almost a haiku
Indeed. The thing is that, as with every other culture on the planet, if you actually bother to meet the locals and talk to them as if they *might possibly* be human... well they quite often respond in kind. As if you *might* be human as well.
Treat them in the style of Sanders of the River - well don't be surprised if the drums start.
When I lived in Wiltshire the Town vs Gown (I was bought up in Oxford) was startling at first. I was... not quite told off, by some other incomers for for drinking in a "Town" pub.
Just to be pedantic this piece is 40% shorter than my usual ones. I am trying to be as crisp as the ice outside my front door.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
We could go back to developing an RAF nuclear capability. Gravity bombs (B61-Mod12 variants as an example) which we could drop from our F35s or Typhoons.
...when though?
The additional doses will be delivered starting in the second quarter of 2021,” the EU said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/latest-calif-nurses-asked-patients-75127603
Liverpool went from half Manchester's case level to double in the space of three and a half weeks. Now looking likely to get worse than London.
I reckon "chancer" is the only category it would be safe to put him into.