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I do not like this "you started it first", "no, you started it first" nonsense. As with every competition before and after this one, the situation is complicated and dynamic. It does not have a simple, elegant explanation you can point to and say, "this is why we hate them!". I do not want to waste your time or mine digging up why the Chinese think it was the Americans who failed us. You can try asking Claude or ChatGPT or GLM or whatever, it will give you our point of view more eloquently than I can. It's a paralyzing train of thought, and it is why I think many disputes can never get resolved, whether Republican-Democrat fissures or the conflicts in the Middle East.
It means nothing to me, because it is not constructive. Where we go from here, and how people can solve this without putting everyone's lives on this planet at risk, that is what matters.
I don't intend this as confrontational, but you are also controlled by ideologically driven politicians. This is a simple fact. You yourself are also likely not one of those ideologically driven politicians. Your position is not meaningfully different from that of the Chinese businessman you disagreed with.
I have never understood this point about "being controlled by X". What does that even mean? Everything is "controlled" by something else if you think about it long enough. What is the whole point of pretending to have "individual thoughts" (of course it brings you comfort and I think that's good) in a debate? Have you ever thought about where those individual thoughts come from?
Speaking in terms of industry, China did, indeed, start it first. China can claim the british/japanese started things even firster, but excepting perhaps the boxer rebellion, the United States didn't make any particular effort to stifle china's economic growth until well after china began it history of stealing american IP. I don't judge china for doing that because intellectually property law-- i.e. government-issued monopolies on ideas-- is fundamentally bullshit rent-seeking. But relative to the diplomatic agreements in place, the chinese government promised one thing and delivered another.
This isn't even going to be a debate in 100 years-- just like Americans don't bother denying our rampant theft of british IP during the early industrial revolution.
I don't count Japanese crimes as American crimes. I don't really think British crimes should be laid at American hands either, though Britain is no longer a country I can hold a grudge against. For many people, everything white people did naturally falls on the major white country with agency, but I don't agree with that view.
I agree with you that the Americans were particularly benevolent even during the most chaotic years of the Chinese nation. Of all the powers, America perhaps took the least advantage of us and helped us the most, owing partly to the missionaries and the old China hands. I think the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program is obvious evidence of that. It is taught in Chinese schools.
I disagree. The US was hostile toward communist China well before China began its history of stealing American IP. You can argue the hostility was directed at communism, not at the Chinese people, but for the Chinese people, like the Iranian people right now, what difference does that really make? Should we really say thank you?
Anyways, I don't think this discussion is particularly fruitful. These "who's to blame" questions make my country revanchist and give us an inferiority complex that's hard to root out. It's also not helpful for Americans to see things through that lens, for the reasons I've already said.
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