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China rams Philippine ship while 60 Minutes on board; South China Sea tensions could draw U.S. in (www.cbsnews.com)
submitted 3 months ago by MicroWave to c/world
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An escalating series of clashes in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China could draw the U.S., which has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, into the conflict.

A 60 Minutes crew got a close look at the tense situation when traveling on a Philippine Coast Guard ship that was rammed by the Chinese Coast Guard.

China has repeatedly rammed Philippine ships and blasted them with water cannons over the last two years. There are ongoing conversations between Washington and Manila about which scenarios would trigger U.S. involvement, Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview.

"I really don't know the end state," Teodoro said. "All I know is that we cannot let them get away with what they're doing."

China as "the proverbial schoolyard bully"

China claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion in goods flow annually. But in 2016, an international tribunal at the Hague ruled the Philippines has exclusive economic rights in a 200-mile zone that includes the area where the ship with the 60 Minutes team on board got rammed.

China does not recognize the international tribunal's ruling.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Your first link shows exactly why the CCP wasn't a dictatorship in the era the preceded Xi, and your second link has nothing to do with that era at all.

I have an academic background in this field, so the idea that my understanding is based on reading a single sentence, or a few Wikipedia entries, is amusing.

Here's a nice simple infographic article that would be a good starting point before jumping into any dry academic readings.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My first link has the following quote:

Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian,[1] and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, personalist dictatorships, or absolute monarchies. (emphasis mine)

China has been a one-party state for the last 75 years, so the only question is whether or not it was also a dictatorship.

My second link has an infographic labeling China as a civilian dictatorship in 1988, which is prior to Xi putting himself in absolute authority, so how does it have nothing to do with the era prior to Xi taking absolute authority?

As for the handy little link you provided, that only talks about Xi, and we're agreed that he is a dictator running a dictatorship, so, while it's interesting, I'm not sure of the relevance unless your proposal is the the only thing that qualifies as a dictatorship is if it's run by a single individual. In which case, it seems there are a number of people in your purported field who disagree with that stance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

So....you couldn't even be bothered to read more than a few paragraphs?

The Communist Party has long been the ultimate decision maker in China. But after Mao died, Deng Xiaoping and his successors built some checks against excessive power, hoping to avoid a repeat of Mao’s turbulent rule.

The party and government systems worked in tandem. Party leaders often set broad policy, and government ministries and agencies refined and implemented their goals, sending feedback to the leaders.

Dictatorships don't have legal and systemic checks against the autocratic rule, which is why Xi removed them.

You're using a lot of words, but they're based on your lack of understanding post-Mao CCP goverence that Xi upended when he seized power.

But I'm done going back and forth on this. You should feel free to go on believing that I am wrong, and that you are right, because I have no confidence that you would read any dry academic writings on the topic that I respond with, as you couldn't even make it through a few hundred words of a NYT article.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, any question I ask that has a simple answer is ignored. Why was it commonly believed that China was a civilian dictatorship in 1988, more than a few years after Mao and Dengs time? Why is the one-party state of China not considered a dictatorship when one-party states are?

This entire conversation has been moving goalposts, and every time I defined the goalposts clearly enough to not be moved, you simply ran in another direction. I may not have gotten a university degree, but you've still done an amazingly poor job of defending your thesis.

I will give you points on the checks and balances applied after Mao reducing the risks of harm from the dictatorship of China, but the definition of a dictatorship doesn't rely on the benevolence of the leadership, merely the lack of power of the people to change it, which was not negated by dividing the powers of government between different levels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I imagine that doing research on the fly for a back and forth on CCP governance, forced you to rapidly consume a bunch of half-assed Wikipedia articles, and that flood of new information felt similar to a moving goal post of sorts, but that's in your head.

Regardless, I started, and ended, at the same position... It's the same one that I will lay out one final time: post-Mao, pre-Xi China was not a dictatorship.

From your source:

A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials.

Now, you saw the word uniparty on the Wikipedia entry for dictatorships, and assumed that applied to all uniparty government's, but it does not.

Other metrics have to be met before it can be considered a dictatorship, for example the USSR under Stalin was a dictatorship, but not under Gorbachev. The USSR was still a repressive authoritarian one-party state, but Gorbachev was not an unaccountable autocrat without systemic checks or limits on his power.

So, back to China:

Here's a list of Chinese presidents, but you can probably skip down to the 4th Constitution, which is the start of the era you keep bringing up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_China

Notice that these leaders come from competing factions and groups within the CCP, some more conservative, some more liberal, but more importantly, they transition power at regular intervals, well, until Xi.

So you can call them totalitarian technocrats, or authoritarian capitalists, but you can't call them communists, and you definitely cannot call them dictators.

All that aside, I don't know why some factual inaccuracies become commonly believed, but I guess the simple answer would be a lack of education, or interest.

Maybe a better question would be why it is you put so much faith in the average layperson's understanding of subjects such as the history of CCP governance, or the political economies of post-Mao China...?

Edit: this isn't a thesis I'm defending, it's a non-controversial fact, that I resent spending so much effort to reiterate, but that's my fault for engaging.

Imagine that your position is that the Earth is flat, and no matter what I say, you respond by telling me that my thesis regarding a theory of a round earth hasn't been sufficiently argued.

Because that's what's been going on here, you're a flat earther of post-Mao Chinese political theory.