The Chinese government literally has a 95.5% approval rating as researched by Harvard University over 15 years. The party is not terribly worried about criticism. In fact, because the party is structured with a bunch of internal factions, they are constantly experiencing criticism.
China has a pretty strict policy about not allowing anything that is anti-social and can be used to create mass unrest. A generative AI that can produce millions of fake news stories about political leaders is one of those anti-social things. It was one of the reasons OpenAI was so terrified of the possibilities of what they figured out. China just made it policy instead of sitting idly by whole bad actors automated incendiary publishing.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Then they said, “Oh God. The Germans were supposed to defeat those commies but now the commies are on track to win the entire war themselves!”
So they jumped in, fought less than 20% of the Nazis, got to Berlin long after the Russians liberated it, and then claimed that the US are the anti-fascist heroes after dropping nukes on hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians while in the middle of a negotiation with Japan.
I agree. I think there’s two considerations that could flip Russia.
Military exhaustion. If the US can create a viable strategic threat to Russia, Russia may choose junior partner status over war. I think this is unlikely given the USA’s performance in Ukraine, but I know these games are played at the intelligence level and the USA may still be able to show Russian intelligence some form of dangerous strategic threat either in domestic irregulars or to Russia’s interests in Africa and SE Asia.
Financial gain for a younger faction of Russian bourgeoisie. Euromaidan showed us that despite decades of anti-West sentiment and Western duplicity, there was still enough support in Ukraine for a Western rapprochement. I imagine there is likely a faction in Russia that is similar. If the USA can offer junior imperial status to them, it might convince them to seize power. I think this unlikely due to the failure of Western sanctions but it’s possible that some of the younger and willing bourgeoisie are in fact hurting and that the older bourgeoisie are dominating the partnerships with China. These would be conditions that could cause such a realignment.
Yog, you think this is going to be rapproachement to ask Russia if they want to join the club? I hope Russia is hardened against the possibility by previous betrayals, but I have been worried since 2016 that the move has always been getting Russia to turn against China.
My confirmation-biased logic tells me Russia and China are only getting closer and Russia is building more dependencies on China, but my gut has been saying for almost 10 years that the only move the USA has ever had was to get Russia to join them against China. Maybe what I was sensing wasn’t world historical movements but merely the unspoken ambition of the new guard, but I have to imagine that if I am picking up on that ambition, they must have some reason to believe it’s possible to enlist Russia.
This will be interesting to monitor. Seems like a potential test balloon for China to observe the effects on these companies and map out what kind of leverage China actually has on the defense industry.
I think the unraveling of US imperialism is a result of China, and subsequently BRICS, outmaneuvering the entire Atlantic Empire. Trump is just overseeing it and giving it a spin. The empire was going to continue its decline regardless who was in office. The speed with which the empire is reconfiguring itself, though, could really only happen under Trump, as Harris would have been too status quo.