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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic - I'm not sure I've heard the gov stating it plainly in the recent years: "the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States" (from the bill). Did I just miss it / glance over, or is this out of character for officially released gov documents?

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A governor of s state =/= the federal government. the US Constitution vests the management of foreign affairs in the President. The Governor of Montana is just a public official expressing a private opinion, and has no official standing.

Consider the possibility that Greg Gianforte is angling for a cabinet job in a hoped-for future GOP administration, since his brash style is popular with many voters in that party, notwithstanding its sometimes criminal manifestation: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/12/532613316...

There are often a lot of weasel words used instead. In US Defense circles China has been described as a "pacing threat" over the past few years: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/26...

I guess that's one way to describe the tense rivalry without completely calling your most important trade partner an "adversary".

After narrowly lagging behind China in 2022, Mexico officially became the US’s largest trading partner at the start of 2023, according to new US Census Bureau figures. https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/may-2023/mexico-overtakes-chi...

China should fall pretty quickly behind Europe as well this year. China's economy has fallen off the cliff - 80% decrease in foreign orders, 20% official youth unemployment rate, 50% reduction in home prices, 80% decrease in government land sales

China is no longer a partner to US, but a competitor and adversary. To Europe and Japan as well. China made that very clear when they announced unlimited friendship with Russia last year.

It's Russia + China + Iran vs Europe + US + Japan + Taiwan + South Korea + Australia + Canada

> China made that very clear when they announced unlimited friendship with Russia last year.

To be clear, this was before the war and China has since walked it back a bit.

4/23/23: China's cooperation with Europe and other nations is "endless" just as its ties with Russia are "unlimited", China's envoy to the European Union said https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-cooperation-with-europe...

I get the feeling you intended this quote as a gotcha, but it actually appears to be a manifestation of how they "walked it back" considering that "China's cooperation with Europe and other nations is 'endless'".

My quote was to prove China is still maintaining that ties with Russia are "unlimited". I don't care what lies China is telling Europe :)

>80% decrease in foreign orders, 20% official youth unemployment rate, 50% reduction in home prices, 80% decrease in government land sales

I do not find these figures to be credible. They would an indicate a cataclysmic, wartime level sort of economic collapse that I see no evidence of.

Since you post this kind of stuff all the time, I can't help but feel that you have an axe to grind. Not that I would blame you for hating the Chinese government, but still... are you sure that you are not being irrational about its prospects?

How is China the most important? Measured in dollars, a brief search seems to show that we trade more with Canada?

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/t...

China is biggest imports. Canada and Mexico are biggest total trade, although it is really close. Canada and Mexico are the biggest exports.

In my mind it's where we get the most stuff that we couldn't get elsewhere. Sure, we can harvest more or less hardwood, or import more or less from Canada, Sure, if we have issues with Guatemala we can buy our t-shirts from somewhere else. But if we want the devices that our information economy requires, there seems to be no where else to build them. Apple's attempts to build iPhones in India for example: https://www.firstpost.com/world/apples-india-production-face...

Kinda scary that civilian is more hawkish than the military.

That line caught me as well - seems Montana at least has a designated enemy even if federal offices don’t state it that way. However the DoD in their recent zero trust framework document basically pointed all the fingers at China as well.

Not enemy, adversary. A much softer claim and one I'm pretty sure has been taken for granted for a while.

The state of Montana doesn't speak for the federal government.

Federal gov employees also can't use tiktok on any device that is in the general vicinity of gov property.

Yeah. A lot of state and other local government are coming out with these policies as well. In Arizona we aren’t allowed to have TikTok on any government issued devices or on any device that accesses government resources (so personal device that you use to access work gmail or outlook).

Sure, but the federal government isn't trying to forbid the American public from deciding what private decisions to make.

I wonder how many Chinese-manufactured goods the state of Montana bought yesterday while issuing this statement.

Trading with your adversaries is a good way to not start a war.

A $250b/year trade deficit will weaken you over time while you might just be kicking the can down the road. The generation having to fight the war will have lesser chances of winning it.

Trade (especially massively imbalanced trade) with a communist dictatorship is not a good idea.

“The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” - Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania

It can cut both ways, though. If your primary source for a crucial resource is a country that could potentially benefit from harming you, that can be strategically intolerable and eventually lead to finding an excuse to start a war.

Can state how your wondering is relavant or what argument or point you are alluding to?

I've you've never had to do business with people you don't like, color me impressed

People you don't like =/= adversaries

Chinese subsidy and abuse of global trade systems is a big part of what makes them an adversary.

The $5/dozen t-shirt has little possibility of collecting private data and sending it to the mother ship

How does a hypothetical data collection warrant a ban, while a real illegal data collection associated with illegal voter manipulation and illegal campaign financing, like the Cambridge Analytica—a British company—scandal, doesn’t?

I suspect there’s at least some “think of the children” motivation behind this, even if it’s not explicit.

Well, Cambridge Analytica has been disbanded since 2018 so there would be little use in banning it.

Sounds like a problem.

I guess we need more laws like this then to solve it, then.

"the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States"

- sent from my iPhone

They threaten regularly to go to war with us over Taiwan. People before WW1 thought war was impossible thanks to how the economy was so interconnected.

Russia invaded Ukraine despite how tied they were to Europe economically.

To suggest China can't be an adversary just because we trade is a blunder made many times in history, and it fails, time and time again. Don't fall for it.

No one is saying that China can't be an adversary. People are saying that maybe US politicians shouldn't be blatantly labeling them as an adversary just to score some sinophobic rageporn points with Fox News viewers.

> No one is saying that China can't be an adversary.

I think anyone who says they aren't is lying to themselves.

This is a far bigger trend than just some fox News viewers. Opposition to China has become bilateral and is very well supported by most in America.

You can only spend so long pretending to be a friend while also opposing the United States in basically every possible way until the United States wakes up and calls the quacking thing a duck. Seeing reality, we are burning bridges.

TikTok is one of those bridges. The chip export bans are another. Expect them to continue until China's trade with America resembles our trade with the soviets in the 80s.

They're mostly the same country they were 10 years ago. Compare the media coverage then and now -- they didn't change, we just ran out of war on terror and needed a new enemy.

> They're mostly the same country they were 10 years ago.

Oh, I strongly agree with you there. This was obvious in 2013 as well.

Xi and his arrogant actions on the world stage have been a big help in creating opposition though.

Then don't compare the media coverage. Instead look at the actions of both countries. Read proposed legislation from US lawmakers going back almost two decades addressing the game theory between both nations. Read about the rampant IP theft that China has committed over the years, particularly in US-tax funded institutions. The US is simply planning ahead and severing ties which have kept us in a compromised position.

Sure, maybe some people are warhawking but most of the concerned people are focused on trade dependence and worried that China will take over Tiawan's production as a last resort. Is that an unreasonable view? What happens if they do decide to do that? Just let them do it?

Don't worry - as soon as the american war machine gets the green light everyone else will become hawkish sinophobes too. Many such cases.

sinophobic rageporn

Yes, if the genocidal tyrants in Beijing were white we'd have no problem with them.

China is an adversary and has been for a long time for many countries. They don't say that for no good reason, and yes, it's not about sinophobia.

Nukes are a reason why China won't go to war with the US, same as Russia. Unfortunately for Ukraine, they gave up their nukes.

Taiwan lacks nukes and China is rapidly building out it's nuclear umbrella. I believe they absolutely intend to try to use that same nuclear threat to enable their invasion of Taiwan without American intervention.

If China successfully invades Taiwan, using nukes or not, nothing and nobody will be able to stop Japan and South Korea from building their own nukes.

I'm certain both countries could get at least one working nuke within a day if they had to.

Notwithstanding that Japan already "has" plenty of nukes, they just happen to be on American submarines.

> People before WW1 thought war was impossible thanks to how the economy was so interconnected

That is not why everybody thought war was impossible. The reason they thought war was impossible was the King of England, the Kaiser of Germany, and the Tsar of Russia, i.e. the major belligerents in WWI, were all cousins. They were Queen Victoria's grandchildren. Those weren't the only grandchildren on the throne who ended up taking up arms and entering the war. Given how a total of seven of the belligerents were related, including the 3 largest belligerents, nobody thought the family would go to war with one another.

They thought wrong.

I'd love to see what would happen if Walmart got banned in the same way.

Things are changing. Today I went to buy a water bottle. Name brand, made in China: $8. Generic, made in USA: $4.

It's an entirely meaningless declaration that carries 0 real weight, because foreign policy is exclusively in the federal government's ballpark.

All it means is that "the people of Montana really don't like China", but more officially.

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