113
Putin is de facto leader for more than 3 mandates (not much big difference from "for life") and I do not remember to be illustrated so harshly
Consider revisiting your news sources somewhat. There was an international outcry at the time (in the West anyway), because he had the constitution changed to stay in power.
Plus, whataboutism is a logical fallacy.
...
84
Trade surplus/deficit
Devaluing one's currency means mostly one thing: It becomes more expensive to import products from abroad, while one's own products become comparably cheaper to buy on the world market. That means a country which exports lots of goods wants to devalue their currency while a country which imports lots of goods does not.
In 2016, Turkey ...
81
There are some assumptions being made by this question that don't reflect how the international economic order works.
Countries do not ever have to pay off all of their debt
A nation's finances are not like a person's. A person has a finite lifespan, and creditors take this into account when giving a loan. A country does not have a finite lifespan, and ...
74
Other than the reasons of practicality mentioned, there is also the issue of international laws and treaties, specifically on the issue of "successor states." There definitely was some debate, as the situation in China is not considered a traditional succession of states scenario. But most legal scholars at the time agreed that the current "government in ...
68
"Only 250"?
That's plenty for their purposes. Nukes are meant to be seen, not heard. Even if the US could intercept 99/100 missiles, having 250 means china can deliver a devastating enough attack that the US is encouraged to avoid the scenario at almost all costs. That's reasonable deterrence for their particular threat model, and for a fledgling ...
67
Why is the United States voluntarily funding the World Health Organization 60 times more than China?
Partial frame challenge if you like. Fox News has chosen an interesting year to highlight. As you can see, US voluntary contributions have varied a lot; only $112 million in 2011 (and similar in 2014) for example.
A portion of these are also "earmarked funds", i.e. WHO can't spend them as they please, but only as the donor specifies, so e.g. the US DoD ...
63
Genocide Defined
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the international law defining the crime of genocide) says that genocide is:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
(a) ...
55
But where exactly is the line North Korea must cross?
Line setting is generally acknowledged as a bad idea. For example, Barack Obama set a red line in Syria about chemical weapons. Then they used chemical weapons. And Obama looked like an idiot when he did not respond with military force.
Lines are bad for two reasons. One, they force action if the ...
54
Just to clarify, this isn't at all like the GPS Selective Availability case where bits were unavailable unless you knew the key. The Chinese don't have their own GPS satellites (duh) setting these coordinates. What this GCJ-02 business is is a non-disclosed, but not-so-hard-to-reverse engineer conversion algorithm from other coordinates. The big picture ...
54
The Chinese government has spent the last decade and more very actively pursuing the extension of their territorial waters into what is commonly accepted to be international waters, or even the territorial waters of other sovereign nations. Mostly within the South China Sea.
They do this by arbitrarily claiming islands, or by creating artificial islands ...
54
Arguably, the United States of America has. Sort of. It's confusing.
The federal government, or rather the president and some of his cabinet, has largely left the response up to individual states. It's less of a conclusion, and more a result of chaos and denial at the Federal level.
It is difficult to write this up in a neutral tone, to find sources with ...
52
No, dropping the ROC name makes the situation worse as the PRC claims that China is indivisible and that the island of Taiwan is part of China. Hence, the usual threat is that they will launch an invasion immediately if Taiwan claims independence. By sticking to the ROC name, both sides can pretend they are working towards reconciliation and reunification.
48
There will be others wanting power in China. If the President has a 10 year maximum term then those others can hope to gain power keeping out of trouble, biding their time, building networks of support. I.e. playing the usual political games.
If the President cannot be removed by constitutional means, then the only way for him to be removed is extra-...
47
The question you added in comments I think is more specifically interesting; We mostly know why the CCP does what it does in Xinjiang (GC Campbell comment), but following that logic, it would do the same in Tibet.
The answer is they did! And the same Party member that was in charge of developing the surveilllance state and re-education camps in Tibet (Chen ...
47
The US had five(now four) consulates in China: Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang, Wuhan. The United States also has an embassy in Beijing. They all have their own consular/embassy district, just like this picture quoted from Wikipedia:
You can see: Xinjiang is included in the Beijing consular district. Tibet is in Chengdu consular district. If Chengdu ...
42
It's true there is a clause stating extradition from Hong Kong to China cannot be based on political motives. However, there are worries the Chinese government would fabricate charges just to get dissidents over to China, as they have done or tried to do before. In general, it's very problematic to determine whether the charges are truly not political.
...
42
How far applicable the law of a country is is decided by the law of that country. If other countries disagree, they can obviously decline to assist in the enforcement of those laws, and disallow the agents of the first country to act on their territory.
There even is precedent that a country outlaws behaviour not related to it at all. For example, German law ...
37
Doesn't China have to comply with this closure order?
I'd say so. Per Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, of which China is a signatory:
TERMINATION OF THE FUNCTIONS OF A MEMBER OF A CONSULAR POST
The functions of a member of a consular post shall come to an end inter alia:
(a) on notification by the sending State to the receiving State that his
...
36
To add to Gramatiks' excellent answer, the question makes another incorrect assumption, that China is somehow doing US a favor by lending money.
On one hand, US clearly benefits by having more demand for its debt (and thus, duh, having the debt being cheaper - finance/economics 101). On the other hand, China is not doing this out of being nice, but of ...
36
Without privileged diplomatic information, it's impossible to answer this question definitively. Diplomatic decisions of this sort are carefully weighed so that they appear as an equal response, not an escalation or capitulation, but no one outside the inner circles knows exactly what factors are being weighed in the decision. However, it is worth noting ...
33
Peter Navarro, the White House National Trade Council and Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director, put out a report called "How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World". In it there are many specific accusations against Chinese "economic aggression", with evidence cited for ...
29
It is quite common for countries to prosecute both actions by and against their nationals as soon as the perpetrator enters their jurisdiction. Some will also prosecute certain crimes by anyone who is presently in their jurisdiction, no matter where they happened.
Some key points to take away:
For some crimes (a citizen of country A murders a citizen of ...
28
There are different approaches to nuclear strategy, deterrence, and warfighting.
For deterrence, you want a credibly survivable second strike capability. That is, so many and so well hidden or hardened missiles that you can inflict unacceptable damage to the enemy even after the enemy strikes you first, without warning.
Estimate how many major cities would ...
28
Arguably, Russia did.
Traditional Russian response to any problem in the last 20 years is to do everything on federal level to be able to praise V. V. Putin. All decision making process is centralized.
However, nCoV pandemic with its restrictions of public freedoms and economic activity seems to be too toxic for that, so it's one of very rare cases where ...
27
I wonder if there is a branch of feminism which has taken up the cause against sex-selective abortion?
All branches of feminism are against infanticide, and many are against sex-selective abortions. However, most western feminist groups are unlikely to make it the center of their activism, as it is not a large problem in the west.
One example of a ...
25
The United States would do what any other nation would do: Borrow the money from someone else. Either from other governments, from private banks or from private people. Governments do this by issuing government bonds. These are openly traded financial instruments. The government motivates people to buy these from them by guaranteeing an interest rate. When ...
25
Elections in China (PRC) are hierarchical. Local districts can elect representatives, however a complex system of committees and primary elections ensures that only Communist-party backed candidates can appear in the election.
Higher levels of government are chosen by local government groups, further ensuring that the Communist Party retains control. Thus ...
25
China is actively terminating the future of an ethnic minority:
The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.
While individual women have spoken out before ...
24
Not taking over North Korea is not exactly because of the difficulties involved, since the Chinese have a relatively powerful military currently.
Rather, it doesn't benefit China much. Firstly, China would have to inherit the whole North Korean population and provide them with food, necessities, etc. It may even result in a refugee crisis for China should ...
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