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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30406 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Never... It'd actually be kindof interesting on the 1% this is the thing that Berlin wall's China: The western elite would either have to pivot really fast ,spin hard, or put up with the newly opened China basically being the first of the new generation of revolutionary governments who reject the technocratic class.

Same way monarchist Europe all fretted about Constitutional brittain and then America... then Brittain and the Dutch and the rest became the old guard against republican France... then all the contitutional, repulican, and remaining absolutists all tried to contain bismarkian nationalist Germany then they all were allies almost imediately after ww1 to try and contain socialism... then swung back again to contain fascism... then again to contain internationalist post-war industrialized communism...

Its very likely a chinese revolution would bring in an ideology going hard on right wing Arch-American slogans, the kind our elite loath in their own population, you see it not just in this case but the Hong Kong protests waved American revolutionary slogans, the Chinese Expat and nationalist community, especially the falun gong, is littered with major American-Patriot influence... the Taiwanese swing this way on a lot of stuff.

And right as our own elite are doubling down on treating these as hate symbols, and these sentiments as dangerous extremism... (not to mention what would be revealled if it came out every western figure China was funding or buying off, something the new revolutionaries might tweet out before any of their leaders can tell them no those are their bargaining chips)

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There's a real chance our elites would try t snuff that revolution out rather than let every ideal they ever scorned coalesce there.

They've long seen the chinese leadership as people like them or even people to be admired (remember all the glowing new york times pieces on how China was a model for how the us should run its economy back in the 2010s?)... And they'd rightly perceive that a full throated movement rejecting the CCP and the Chinese bureaucracy could easily coalesce into a wider movement rejecting them...

There's a reason the US prefers former communist countries to become failed states and only became more aggressive against Russia after it converted to capitalism and nominal democracy... young systems of governments run off ideas, and the most prominent ideas are always the ones taboo elsewhere

There's a real chance our elites would try t snuff that revolution out rather than let every ideal they ever scorned coalesce there.

Our elietes aren't going to look a gift horse like 'China unironically embracing The West' in the mouth. It would be a huge vindication for liberal values. It would be a geopolitical upset.

remember all the glowing new york times pieces on how China was a model for how the us should run its economy back in the 2010s

That was off the back of more liberal Hu Jintao. Xi has proven to be more authoritarian and more inclined to sabre rattle.

Our elietes aren't going to look a gift horse like 'China unironically embracing The West' in the mouth. It would be a huge vindication for liberal values. It would be a geopolitical upset.

I've seen no evidence that our elites hold liberal values, so I don't how China embracing them would be equivalent to embracing the West, and if China went actually liberal, we'd probably see hostilities increase.

The problem is that The West these protesters want to embrace already ceased to exist.

Well jeez, nobody tell them that!

What's left of the west would probably still be an improvement in many ways over what they have right now.

But it would have big ramifications for whether our elites would welcome this new China with open arms. Lets put it this way. Wildest dream outcome for the protesters, Xi is overthrown and a new government founded on individual liberties and the rejection of technocrats replaces it. This would be so appealing to me that I'd immediately start learning Mandarin so I can move there / defect to China.

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