China is not an aggressive nation at all. As far as I can tell, China has literally never attacked a non-bordering country in its entire history
The “non-bordering” part is doing an enormous amount of work here. Choosing only to attack bordering countries is perfectly compatible with conquering much of the world. Arguably, if conquering the world were a country’s sole goal, then going after immediate neighbors one at a time is usually the best strategy.
nor have they ever tried to overthrow a foreign government by covert or manipulative means
Hong Kong? Taiwan? (In both cases, the “foreign” part is kind of in dispute, Hong Kong more so.) The fact that the post doesn’t mention Taiwan at all raises my eyebrow.
China is a very inward-looking country compared to other major powers. Only 0.1% of Chinese residents were born abroad, much fewer than the 15% in America and 14% in France
The fact that China lets in very few immigrants does not provide evidence against the hypothesis that they think they’re better than everyone else and that the world should belong to them. If they also had near-zero emigration and trade with the outside world, then the term “inward-looking” would fit. But this is about as far from “inward-looking” as you can get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
It’s true that China doesn’t practice liberal governance. The core of liberalism is freedom of contract, limitations on government interference, and equal access to independent courts. In China, the CCP explicitly rejects limited government and exercises highly invasive control over business, speech, association, and religion.
This is understating the case. The post does not mention disappearing dissidents, Uyghurs, or reeducation camps. I’ll also point at CCP attempts to police speech across the globe, such as by pressuring companies to not mention Taiwan as a nation separate from China.
Choosing only to attack bordering countries is perfectly compatible with conquering much of the world
While that is true, even in that case I don’t think China would be a threat to the United States based on an analysis of the world map.
The fact that the post doesn’t mention Taiwan at all raises my eyebrow.
The Chinese disputes with Taiwan, or on the Indian border, aren’t a threat to the West. Likewise, the Chinese conflicts involving Uyghurs, Tibetans, and to a lesser degree their maritime borders don’t reflect the kind of foreign meddling that I’m talking about, which is ideologically motivated overseas intervention or conspiracy of the kind practiced by America, the Soviet Union, and the British and French Empires.
This is also not the kind of “universalist missionary ideology” behavior I’m referring to. My understanding is that Belt and Road is a bunch of construction ($800B) and investment ($600B) contracts and that the largest recipients are Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, and then other recipients include Indonesia, Iraq, and the Congo.
Random details:
The fact that China lets in very few immigrants does not provide evidence against the hypothesis that they think they’re better than everyone else and that the world should belong to them
You didn’t say this outright but I would flag that “thinking you’re better than everyone else” doesn’t imply “thinking the world should belong to you.” Many cultures think they are the best.
I’ll also point at CCP attempts to police speech across the globe, such as by pressuring companies to not mention Taiwan as a nation separate from China.
I do agree with a counterargument you didn’t make, which is that China is just militarily and especially navally weak, but that basically all countries that become rich and powerful become aggressive even if they’re peaceful beforehand. One could say that in 1895 it would be wrong to predict “Who cares about American industrialization? They have almost no army at all and have barely left their far-away continent” when in reality Americans would be dismantling their regimes and empires after becoming more powerful. I’m not sure how to evaluate this general notion but maybe it’s true.
The Chinese disputes with Taiwan, or on the Indian border, aren’t a threat to the West
China siezing control of Taiwan would in fact be a threat to the West, it’s the primary point of discussion as far as I’m aware given Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductor manufacturing. This isn’t some in the weeds point either, this is like, the main point of geopolitical contention and a constant point of discussion.
This kind of “foreign policy via psychologizing a whole country” seems like a very strange way to think about geopolitics and I would imagine a very bad predictive model compared to like “what gives one superpower strategic advantage over another”.
I don’t think China wants Taiwan due to strategic advantage over other superpowers. I think the PRC is actually approaching the situation with Taiwan much more cautiously than they would in the alternative world where semiconductor manufacturing does not take place in Taiwan, due to its geopolitical importance and the concomitant risks.
It is worth keeping in mind that reunification is a live debate even in Taiwan, though certainly most Taiwanese would rather not reunify. But the reasons that motivate China to want Taiwan are pretty unique and are significantly less likely to generalize than e.g. the reasons the U.S. wants Greenland, for example.
I think the PRC is actually approaching the situation with Taiwan much more cautiously than they would in the alternative world where semiconductor manufacturing does not take place in Taiwan, due to its geopolitical importance and the concomitant risks.
This is compatible with almost any model though
I don’t think China wants Taiwan due to strategic advantage over other superpowers.
This is very obviously (conditional on them taking decisive military action), why they would be willing to take action despite retaliation from the United States.
I think a historically well performing prior for modeling the foreign policy of superpowers is “what is in their geopolitical interest”. I’d privledge it pretty highly over arbitrary narratives, as psychologizing like “America has a missionary ideology” for say “democracy” would lead you to making a lot of bad predictions about American foreign policy. Superpowers in general operate in a pretty realpolitik way, like I don’t think it’s worth it trying to dissect “why does Putin say the invasion of Ukraine was justified actually”.
Oh yeah definitely agree with this, should’ve included that as well. I generally was trying to point towards “I think a realpolitik model of thinking about foreign policy is a better predictive model than trying to ascribe broad traits to a whole nation like ‘how inward looking are they’ or looking at stated motivations by leaders without interpreting that via the incentive structures at play”.
Why, though? What are the arguments that make you support the conclusion, if the post was disappointing in its argumentation? If you mean that you’re convinced by other arguments in the post not addressed by Localdeity’s comment (e.g., the argument from military spending and foreign bases, or Kissinger’s articulation of the difference between missionary and cultural exceptionalism), it would be more informative to say which ones, because rationalists care about what arguments and evidence exist, not which conclusions to support: unless you can establish yourself as an authority whom people should defer to without evidence, there’s no reason anyone should care what conclusions you support, which means your comment is lowering the forum’s signal-to-noise ratio and is therefore a bad comment.
I’m a supporter of helping protect Taiwan, but it’s useful to know the Chinese view is that Taiwan is a part of their country going back to the civil war, one they have never officially conceded as having ended and have never acknowledged Taiwan as anything but an internal issue to them.
Sure at some point it gets kinda silly to keep insisting “someday we’ll get them” instead of just giving up, but that does mean it’s not a good example of China being hostile towards foreign powers.
The epistemics at work here...
The “non-bordering” part is doing an enormous amount of work here. Choosing only to attack bordering countries is perfectly compatible with conquering much of the world. Arguably, if conquering the world were a country’s sole goal, then going after immediate neighbors one at a time is usually the best strategy.
Hong Kong? Taiwan? (In both cases, the “foreign” part is kind of in dispute, Hong Kong more so.) The fact that the post doesn’t mention Taiwan at all raises my eyebrow.
The fact that China lets in very few immigrants does not provide evidence against the hypothesis that they think they’re better than everyone else and that the world should belong to them. If they also had near-zero emigration and trade with the outside world, then the term “inward-looking” would fit. But this is about as far from “inward-looking” as you can get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
This is understating the case. The post does not mention disappearing dissidents, Uyghurs, or reeducation camps. I’ll also point at CCP attempts to police speech across the globe, such as by pressuring companies to not mention Taiwan as a nation separate from China.
While that is true, even in that case I don’t think China would be a threat to the United States based on an analysis of the world map.
The Chinese disputes with Taiwan, or on the Indian border, aren’t a threat to the West. Likewise, the Chinese conflicts involving Uyghurs, Tibetans, and to a lesser degree their maritime borders don’t reflect the kind of foreign meddling that I’m talking about, which is ideologically motivated overseas intervention or conspiracy of the kind practiced by America, the Soviet Union, and the British and French Empires.
This is also not the kind of “universalist missionary ideology” behavior I’m referring to. My understanding is that Belt and Road is a bunch of construction ($800B) and investment ($600B) contracts and that the largest recipients are Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, and then other recipients include Indonesia, Iraq, and the Congo.
Random details:
You didn’t say this outright but I would flag that “thinking you’re better than everyone else” doesn’t imply “thinking the world should belong to you.” Many cultures think they are the best.
I do agree with a counterargument you didn’t make, which is that China is just militarily and especially navally weak, but that basically all countries that become rich and powerful become aggressive even if they’re peaceful beforehand. One could say that in 1895 it would be wrong to predict “Who cares about American industrialization? They have almost no army at all and have barely left their far-away continent” when in reality Americans would be dismantling their regimes and empires after becoming more powerful. I’m not sure how to evaluate this general notion but maybe it’s true.
China siezing control of Taiwan would in fact be a threat to the West, it’s the primary point of discussion as far as I’m aware given Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductor manufacturing. This isn’t some in the weeds point either, this is like, the main point of geopolitical contention and a constant point of discussion.
This kind of “foreign policy via psychologizing a whole country” seems like a very strange way to think about geopolitics and I would imagine a very bad predictive model compared to like “what gives one superpower strategic advantage over another”.
I don’t think China wants Taiwan due to strategic advantage over other superpowers. I think the PRC is actually approaching the situation with Taiwan much more cautiously than they would in the alternative world where semiconductor manufacturing does not take place in Taiwan, due to its geopolitical importance and the concomitant risks.
It is worth keeping in mind that reunification is a live debate even in Taiwan, though certainly most Taiwanese would rather not reunify. But the reasons that motivate China to want Taiwan are pretty unique and are significantly less likely to generalize than e.g. the reasons the U.S. wants Greenland, for example.
This is compatible with almost any model though
This is very obviously (conditional on them taking decisive military action), why they would be willing to take action despite retaliation from the United States.
I think a historically well performing prior for modeling the foreign policy of superpowers is “what is in their geopolitical interest”. I’d privledge it pretty highly over arbitrary narratives, as psychologizing like “America has a missionary ideology” for say “democracy” would lead you to making a lot of bad predictions about American foreign policy. Superpowers in general operate in a pretty realpolitik way, like I don’t think it’s worth it trying to dissect “why does Putin say the invasion of Ukraine was justified actually”.
I don’t think you can accurately predict what superpowers do when you ignore their internal politics.
If you take the invasion of Ukraine by Russia it’s worth understanding why Putin gained an increase in both domestic approval and power through it.
Oh yeah definitely agree with this, should’ve included that as well. I generally was trying to point towards “I think a realpolitik model of thinking about foreign policy is a better predictive model than trying to ascribe broad traits to a whole nation like ‘how inward looking are they’ or looking at stated motivations by leaders without interpreting that via the incentive structures at play”.
I found this post was pretty disappointing in its argumentation, for reasons you describe, and I fairly strongly support its conclusion.
Why, though? What are the arguments that make you support the conclusion, if the post was disappointing in its argumentation? If you mean that you’re convinced by other arguments in the post not addressed by Localdeity’s comment (e.g., the argument from military spending and foreign bases, or Kissinger’s articulation of the difference between missionary and cultural exceptionalism), it would be more informative to say which ones, because rationalists care about what arguments and evidence exist, not which conclusions to support: unless you can establish yourself as an authority whom people should defer to without evidence, there’s no reason anyone should care what conclusions you support, which means your comment is lowering the forum’s signal-to-noise ratio and is therefore a bad comment.
I’m a supporter of helping protect Taiwan, but it’s useful to know the Chinese view is that Taiwan is a part of their country going back to the civil war, one they have never officially conceded as having ended and have never acknowledged Taiwan as anything but an internal issue to them.
Sure at some point it gets kinda silly to keep insisting “someday we’ll get them” instead of just giving up, but that does mean it’s not a good example of China being hostile towards foreign powers.