Who is praising the CCP's economic rise? The American consensus as far as I can tell is that we need to shut them out and push them into decline.
The West should brain drain the best and brightest from China.
Did you miss the last 40 years in which US economic policy was underpinned by the thesis that shipping manufacturing jobs to China would give rise to a middle class that supports democracy?
Well, here's a reminder if you needed it.
A majority of Americans until relatively recently? China was seen favorably by most Americans until the last decade. An economic world power that we should strengthen relations with if polls are to be believed.
For example:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-vi...
The only set of charts that matches your description re: Americans viewing China favorably is the first set of charts, which is in response to question 8b, do you view China _unfavorably_, for a worldwide survey broken down by country.
Question framing matters a lot on surveys, particularly for questions outside people's daily concerns. you'll get dramatically different distributions on the questions "do you view china favorably" or "do you view china favorably"
That doest' mean we should praise the CCP (at least not in its current form!), though. Far from it!! Now that people have a decent life standard, they should, and probably will, raise against injustices being committed by the governing party.
Maybe they don't want a democracy modelled on the West, and that's ok!! We need to understand that there may be other ways to govern a country as big as China. But everyone in China definitely wants to be given a fair go to live their lives as best as they can, and to have at least a level of freedom that lets them live a happy life without causing problems to others (after the last few days, even the most avid defender of free speech in the US seems to agree a level of moderation in the public discourse is required, the only point of disagreement seems to be in how much).
It is really painful to see China moving back to authoritarianism in this way after a couple of decades in which it looked like they were embracing, slowly but surely, more freedoms and human rights. Let's hope that they find a way out of this instead of incessantly criticising them as if they were the devil all the time!! I honestly believe that even the CCP highest party members want to see the improvement of the Chinese people's lives, it would be completely irrational to believe otherwise... they are just humans like all of us... the problem cannot that they are evil!! The problem is that they have misguided fears of what may happen if the people is given too much freedom and try to mercilessly prevent their fears from becoming reality (like, you know, a revolutionary government taking power by force, which is the worse that could happen anywhere, even in China).
This has not happened at all in the US with 5X the income per capita (at least in nominal terms), why are you expecting to happen in China?Maybe the relationship is inverse, the more money the Chinese have the less probable they will rebel, same as in America and the rest of the world
> It is really painful to see China moving back to authoritarianism in this way after a couple of decades in which it looked like they were embracing, slowly but surely, more freedoms and human rights.
No country moves in a straight line (assuming you can even trace its "movement"), you should notice that easily with the US. Compared to 30 years ago China is better in almost all indicators, and yes that includes things like freedom of expression, because despite of still having an iron hand on censorship the CCP cannot avoid the common folk to communicate among themselves in million ways. Western people are too naive or arrogant if they think the regular Chinese just buy wholesale everything that is told. This does not mean the other naive take of course, that they dont buy anything that the politicians say and they will align with the western countries if they just had the chance. It turns out, surprise surprise, chinese are as much people as the Americans.
> The problem is that they have misguided fears of what may happen if the people is given too much freedom and try to mercilessly prevent their fears from becoming reality
This fear is not misguided and it is not exclusive to the Chinese by the way. The external threat is very real, and the CCP as every power structure takes very seriously the internal threats too. If you think the US is different I kindly invite you to revise the history on how any political movement not called mainstream Democrat/Republican party has been treated covertly and in the open by the power structures in America. So again, you are not saying nothing new or particular about China that you could not repeat about your own country.
I'd argue against it on the grounds that the planet doesn't have enough resources for everyone to live a middle class lifestyle.
Where is the basis of this not enough resources for middle class life style?
Tell me, what is middle class life style anyway? If you are talking about the American consumerism middle class life style, sure, I think most educated people nowadays do not really like that form of life style, or find it actually comfortable.
And even if that's the style everyone wants to. With tech advancement, why cannot everyone afford that, while still keep the environment health and sustainable for human?
Please enlighten me...
It's completely rational to, especially now, when Chinese analogue of bolsheviks are now in power in the party.
USSR's elites lived in the most obscene luxuries, and the CPC has beaten that few times over.
Their raison d'etre was to get more of that.
Chinese civil wars (for lack of a better term to capture the sheer scale and complexity) have had body counts that make the American Civil War look like a drunken bar fight.
Probably people who have some axe to grind about poverty.
China's rate of extreme poverty from 1990-2016 declined from 66% to 0.7%
During that time the US rate of extreme poverty more than doubled, from .5% to 1.2%
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin...
If people counter me and reiterate stating that the EU deal is going to miraculously discipline China somewhat, boy do I have a bridge to sell to you. Maybe some gutter oil to go along with it too.
I will answer that: no it shouldn't. You can have a certain level of engagement even when you strongly disagree with another country. Showing aggressive behaviour, specially taking into account the history of agression and colonisation by the West as recently as 50 years ago, will not do anything at all to make life better to the victims of Chinese prosecution. By engaging with the Chinese, the EU may at least have some leverage to politely request that the Chinese , as sovereign people, start displaying a little more respect to other cultures within their own borders.
Now, with technology, in fact things are getting worse. Everyone is required to have a cell phone, everyone is spied upon, a "social score" is maintained and if your score dips below a certain threshold, you may not travel etc.
If the EU thinks that making more trade deals with China is going to temper any of these, they're naive indeed.
Yes. Sanctions can be very effective in curbing China's outsize influence worldwide and cut their economy by half. Just embargo them as long as they persecute Uighurs and HKers.
Unfortunately that can't be done, since American and European companies were too stupid to give away their schematics and let the Chinese copy them outright, while also simultaneously reducing their indigenous production capabilities in important sectors such as rare earths mining and refining, solar manufacturing and extraction technologies.