Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

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the reality distortion is pretty astonishing. This is clearly retaliation for the American policy of containment. The US for several years has now openly made it its goal to try to strangle Chinese technological development, most importantly in the chips sector. It's actually surprising how little response up until now came out of China.

In the world overall nobody actually perceives this as China overplaying its hand, but as a consequence of the US weaponizing trade, and the result all over the world economy will be a shift away from the US with the exception of its core military allies. The shift is already obvious in the Middle East and Africa. France(!) just settled an LNG trade with China in Yuan for the first time[1].

The American behavior is bad for everyone. The US will lose its pretty comfortable position in global trade due to the prominence of the dollar, everyone else is simply hurt by the economic fallout of trade wars.

[1]https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/china-completes-first-yuan-s...

People have been predicting that the US dollar will stop being the dominant global currency for a VERY long time.

What are your thoughts on China's treatment of the Uighurs?

Morally I think the treatment of the Uighurs is pretty awful, geopolitically it's irrelevant. Made obvious by the indifference to it even in the Islamic world. And if you think American behavior is determined by the plight of the Uighurs rather than anxiety over losing its hegeomnic position, I have a bridge to sell you.

And yes people have prematurely talked about the end of the dollar mostly for ideological reasons, but now the situation is very different. If you had told me a few years ago that over the course of weeks France will settle gas trades in the UAE in Yuan while Iran and Saudi Arabia restore relations brokered by China with Washington sidelined I would have looked at you funny. This time the world has changed. It's not gonna happen tomorrow or next year, but if the US continues to weaponize its economy to enforce its own politics on other countries, it's a matter of when and not if.

Are you aware of just how strong the US dollar is right now?

It depends on how you look at it. But I am getting less and less CHF for the dollars I am earning and this is going on since Trump.

From my POV dollar is losing value nearly the same rate as the euro.

What can realistically replace the dollar as the global reserve currency?

LOL.

the strength of the dollar is exactly why people want to move away from it.

financing domestic purchases with a foreign currency is expensive.

The Muslim world is famous for their own huge human rights abuses, both to different sects of Muslims, but also don't forget the recent treatment of guest workers who were building the world cup facilities.

Some Americans are worried about their strength in the world, some are concerned about the Uighurs.

"Uyghur Genocide" is as fake as Saddam's WMDs and Gaddafi's "viagra gangs."

https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/

That people constantly raise, "What about the Uyghurs?" in conversations about the US and China constantly amazes me. After 20 years of constant war in the Middle East, including the illegal invasion of Iraq (consequence: several hundred thousand deaths), the overthrow of the Libyan government (consequence: a decade of civil war and a complete collapse of living standards), and the two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan (right across the border from Xinjiang), you'd think Americans would be a bit more self-critical and aware.

That invasion was "war"; which I am and was against. The Chinese government is repressing their own citizens. So why downplay the subjugation and genocide of the Uyghurs? (And I'm not American)

The "Uyghur genocide" has a death toll of zero, even according to the people calling it a "genocide." Words like "genocide" shouldn't be thrown around in bad faith.

I don't know what's more incredible: that anyone actually bought the "genocide" allegations, or how quickly the media has forgotten about it and moved on to the next hot-button China issue, Taiwan.

Modern definition of genocide include intentional destruction of culture, which is exactly what the Chinese are doing.

If you take a word that originally meant the mass murder of an entire ethnic group, and then use it to refer to destruction of culture, you're just trying to confuse people. The whole point of calling it the "Uyghur genocide" is to fool people into thinking that China is carrying out mass murder - which is isn't. The retreat to, "I'm talking about cultural genocide" is a bait-and-switch, used once the original accusation of "genocide" is challenged.

Even the accusations of "destruction of culture" are incredibly fuzzy. I think most people who believe in the "genocide" accusation would be very surprised to learn that the Uyghur language is still extensively taught in schools in Xinjiang, and is, in fact, still the primary language of education for most Uyghur children. They might also be surprised to learn that some of China's most popular celebrities are Uyghurs, and that Uyghur culture is actually pretty popular in China.

The "genocide" accusation is simply made in bad faith. One could actually talk about real political repression in Xinjiang, but that would be much less shocking and sensationalist than making up false accusations of "genocide."

OK, lets use the phrase "severe opression" instead of genocide.

There's a massive difference between those two phrases.

On the one hand, you have political repression of the sort that is common throughout the world, including in democracies like India (see Kashmir). On the other hand, you have the mass murder of millions of people. Somewhere in between, you have the sorts of bloody wars the US has engaged in throughout the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of people die.

I don't see the words 'US' or 'America' in that article.

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