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What the hell is happening in China? Dragging residents out of their apts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2022/apr/14/police-in-hazmat-suits-scuffle-with-people-in-shanghai-video“Police in hazmat suits were filmed grabbing screaming Shanghai residents in a video circulated on Chinese social media on Thursday. Users of the Chinese microblogging site Weibo claimed that local authorities had decided to take over several residential buildings in Zhangjiang county in Pudong district to quarantine Covid patients.
Videos show residents kneeling on the ground, begging the police not to take them away, and dozens of officers scuffling with civilians and dragging some of them to the middle of the street”
25 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
I heard some jagoff saying that he thinks Fauci would love to do this in America.
Well, see what happens IF republicans win back in '22 or '24.
Don't know about you, but I have never trusted republicans for the last 6 decades to do anything but follow a fascist playbook.
started making the rounds of Wuhan they welded everyone's doors shut. That's a little harsh too. The Chinese government does not fuck around.
And this totalitarian bullshit looks good to certain right-wing nutsacks in our country? 
The World According To China
Elizabeth C. Economy
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781509537495
Description
An economic and military superpower with 20 percent of the world's population, China has the wherewithal to transform the international system. Xi Jinping's bold calls for China to "lead in the reform of the global governance system" suggest that he has just such an ambition. But how does he plan to realize it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world?
In this compelling book, Elizabeth Economy reveals China's ambitious new strategy to reclaim the country's past glory and reshape the geostrategic landscape in dramatic new ways. Xi's vision is one of Chinese centrality on the global stage, in which the mainland has realized its sovereignty claims over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea, deepened its global political, economic, and security reach through its grand-scale Belt and Road Initiative, and used its leadership in the United Nations and other institutions to align international norms and values, particularly around human rights, with those of China. It is a world radically different from that of today. The international community needs to understand and respond to the great risks, as well as the potential opportunities, of a world rebuilt by China.
Polity Press, 9781509537495, 304pp.
Publication Date: January 4, 2022
China’s true ambitions, and what they mean for the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/28/chinas-true-ambitions-what-they-mean-us/
That China’s rise poses a deep challenge to the United States is a belief now widely shared among policymakers and the public, with roughly 9 in 10 Americans viewing the country as a threat or a competitor, according to a recent Pew survey. Too often what is lacking, however, is the “why,” with China portrayed as a one-dimensional villain out to eat our lunch, a framing all too common in Washington these days. That simplistic characterization ignores a much more complicated reality in which both countries’ economies and societies are deeply entwined, and it avoids considering what drives Beijing’s deeply ambitious leaders and what they hope to achieve. That is an obstacle to effective policymaking.
“The World According to China,” a new book by Elizabeth C. Economy, goes a long way toward addressing that problem. By carefully examining Chinese leaders’ economic, political and military goals and explaining how they aim to displace the United States from its ascendant status, Economy has written a guidebook to understanding and dealing with this rising superpower. Economy, on leave from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution while she serves as a senior adviser at the Commerce Department, makes it painfully clear that the earlier policy of strategic engagement, which was behind the decision to welcome China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, is badly outdated. Inevitably, Washington and Beijing will increasingly butt heads over global leadership, with President Xi Jinping aiming for no less than the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” as he has put it. “The world according to China — one which celebrates Chinese centrality as a geographic, as well as political and economic construct — is one that leaves little room for the United States, its allies, and the values and norms they support,” Economy writes.
As China pushes to expand its influence around the world, Economy distinguishes among its uses of three kinds of power. Soft power is seen in Beijing’s efforts to boost its international reputation by presenting its authoritarian governing style as a model for dealing with the pandemic, including by providing vaccines to countries around the world, and in the expansion of its state-owned media outlets to reach new audiences in Africa and Latin America. Hard power is on display in its ongoing military intimidation of Taiwan and the squelching of Hong Kong democracy, as well as the construction of airstrips on reefs in the contested South China Sea and the opening of its first overseas military logistics base, in Djibouti. In one of many instances where Economy describes her interactions with key actors in the rise of China, something that makes her book even more convincing, she recounts talking to two military scholars in Beijing who casually tell her that their country eventually should have just as many military bases around the world as the United States does.
Economy does a masterful job of explaining China’s use of sharp power, which “centers on distraction and manipulation,” as the Journal of Democracy put it in a 2018 report describing the new concept. Sharp power is increasingly on display as Beijing uses access to China’s vast market as leverage over multinational corporations. When, for example, international airlines’ websites seemed to suggest that Taiwan was separate from China, and when global brands publicly stated their concern about human rights abuses against the Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang, consumer boycotts organized on China’s tightly controlled Internet were wielded to ensure that those companies quickly reversed course and toed the party’s line. Similarly, the longtime practice of “coerced” technology transfer, or demanding that multinationals transfer technology as the price of doing business in China’s enticing market, falls into this category.
snip
Elizabeth C. Economy
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781509537495
Description
An economic and military superpower with 20 percent of the world's population, China has the wherewithal to transform the international system. Xi Jinping's bold calls for China to "lead in the reform of the global governance system" suggest that he has just such an ambition. But how does he plan to realize it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world?
In this compelling book, Elizabeth Economy reveals China's ambitious new strategy to reclaim the country's past glory and reshape the geostrategic landscape in dramatic new ways. Xi's vision is one of Chinese centrality on the global stage, in which the mainland has realized its sovereignty claims over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea, deepened its global political, economic, and security reach through its grand-scale Belt and Road Initiative, and used its leadership in the United Nations and other institutions to align international norms and values, particularly around human rights, with those of China. It is a world radically different from that of today. The international community needs to understand and respond to the great risks, as well as the potential opportunities, of a world rebuilt by China.
Polity Press, 9781509537495, 304pp.
Publication Date: January 4, 2022
China’s true ambitions, and what they mean for the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/28/chinas-true-ambitions-what-they-mean-us/
That China’s rise poses a deep challenge to the United States is a belief now widely shared among policymakers and the public, with roughly 9 in 10 Americans viewing the country as a threat or a competitor, according to a recent Pew survey. Too often what is lacking, however, is the “why,” with China portrayed as a one-dimensional villain out to eat our lunch, a framing all too common in Washington these days. That simplistic characterization ignores a much more complicated reality in which both countries’ economies and societies are deeply entwined, and it avoids considering what drives Beijing’s deeply ambitious leaders and what they hope to achieve. That is an obstacle to effective policymaking.
“The World According to China,” a new book by Elizabeth C. Economy, goes a long way toward addressing that problem. By carefully examining Chinese leaders’ economic, political and military goals and explaining how they aim to displace the United States from its ascendant status, Economy has written a guidebook to understanding and dealing with this rising superpower. Economy, on leave from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution while she serves as a senior adviser at the Commerce Department, makes it painfully clear that the earlier policy of strategic engagement, which was behind the decision to welcome China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, is badly outdated. Inevitably, Washington and Beijing will increasingly butt heads over global leadership, with President Xi Jinping aiming for no less than the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” as he has put it. “The world according to China — one which celebrates Chinese centrality as a geographic, as well as political and economic construct — is one that leaves little room for the United States, its allies, and the values and norms they support,” Economy writes.
As China pushes to expand its influence around the world, Economy distinguishes among its uses of three kinds of power. Soft power is seen in Beijing’s efforts to boost its international reputation by presenting its authoritarian governing style as a model for dealing with the pandemic, including by providing vaccines to countries around the world, and in the expansion of its state-owned media outlets to reach new audiences in Africa and Latin America. Hard power is on display in its ongoing military intimidation of Taiwan and the squelching of Hong Kong democracy, as well as the construction of airstrips on reefs in the contested South China Sea and the opening of its first overseas military logistics base, in Djibouti. In one of many instances where Economy describes her interactions with key actors in the rise of China, something that makes her book even more convincing, she recounts talking to two military scholars in Beijing who casually tell her that their country eventually should have just as many military bases around the world as the United States does.
Economy does a masterful job of explaining China’s use of sharp power, which “centers on distraction and manipulation,” as the Journal of Democracy put it in a 2018 report describing the new concept. Sharp power is increasingly on display as Beijing uses access to China’s vast market as leverage over multinational corporations. When, for example, international airlines’ websites seemed to suggest that Taiwan was separate from China, and when global brands publicly stated their concern about human rights abuses against the Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang, consumer boycotts organized on China’s tightly controlled Internet were wielded to ensure that those companies quickly reversed course and toed the party’s line. Similarly, the longtime practice of “coerced” technology transfer, or demanding that multinationals transfer technology as the price of doing business in China’s enticing market, falls into this category.
snip
