The US pot calling the China kettle black. The US “well deserved criticism” is not justice for pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation that had not committed any act of aggression against the US. C’mon.
There was no justice for Iraq, but again, this does not excuse the Chinese. I am perfectly capable of condemning both the US and the CCP.
The point of Russia being the greater threat was in the current context, which I made clear, to which you added the qualifier of the nuclear option. As if that’s no big deal. It doesn’t count. Not fair to consider that. You can't pretend the ace of nukes doesn't exist in the equation of the current threat. In the current context, which of the countries is the greater threat?
As with China, despite the constant bluffing and posturing Russia, will not use nukes unless the West does something egregiously stupid and aggressive (which it will not), so I don't really consider this a real point of consideration.
I’d say that China is particularly good at “think tomorrow” vs “think today” based on over the yrs they’ve become #2 in GDP and #1 in GDP PPP. That reflects long term strategic planning. That they’ve become the #1 world threat, as you admit, and my means other than just militarily, would indicate being particularly good at forward looking. What is your evidence otherwise?
The fact that their worst problems are directly tracable to their policies and leadership would be the best contrarian argument to the notion they're actually good at forward thinking.
Their success in terms of economic expansion is due overwhelmingly to the following:
1. An abundance of population.
2. An abundance of resources.
3. Nixon committing one of the greatest and most idiotic historical blunders of all time in normalizing trade with China in exchange for virtually nothing, which allowed for the trade and foreign investment that allowed China to fully utilize 1 and 2. This was in large part thanks to in-vogue neoliberal thinking at the time naively believing that economic liberalization would beget political liberalization (or merely using that as a rationalization to fulfill their free trade ideology/get rich through exploitation of cheap and abundant Chinese labour).
Much as I wouldn't credit any presidents with the majority of booms and busts in American history, I wouldn't credit Chinese leadership save for the most basic and broad strokes of getting out of the way of development (until recently, hence the mass and pending migration of industry on the basis of political risk).
China is anything buy myopic. You’ve absolutely zero evidence to support what you say. Even you implied China was forward looking. Now you say they are short-sighted.
I'm saying they're forward looking, but are pretty bad at it; a myopic person can look off into the distance but see only blurs; so too is it with China. The most compelling evidence of this is that the vast majority of their worst ongoing problems are self-owns/own goals.
Much of what China does is unsophisticated and ham-handed. But in how they conduct themselves via relationships and patience in taking action has them considering the west is rather unsophisticated. The rest of what you say is true, about half of which the US is complicit in and/or allows, such as IP theft and leveraging of economic largesse. The US no doubt uses its power and throws its weight around.
The US doesn't allow IP theft so much as individual corporations chose not to make the necessary investments in security. Fortunately with the recognition of the threat China poses, there have been substantial improvements on this front. If you're talking about IP theft from others, this is true to an extent, but we're talking orders of magnitude of difference between the US and China in this regard, and typically there is legal recourse for those who have their IPs infringed upon by American actors.
I don't disagree that the US shares culpability in many of these things, but at the end of the day, the practical reality is that there is always going to be a top dog who will leveraging its power in injust ways; the overwhelming majority of human history has been a cycle of empires doing exactly that. I think it is pretty clear that of the options, China presents by far the worst given its complete and demonstrable indifference towards its own people and the value of human life, and its explicit and ongoing willingness to tyrannize people in every dimension and facet of their lives, having created a suffocating police state the likes of which is beyond even Orwell's worst imaginings.