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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 ...
72
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 ...
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"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 ...
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 ...
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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 ...
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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.
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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 ...
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-...
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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.
...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
23
Before we discuss qualitative "fairness", there's a practical reason to single China out even if it's not qualitatively different: scale.
US trade deficit is $795B total. Of that, $375B or 47%, is with China (source: Wikipedia) - dwarfing deficit with any other country (more than twice the size of next biggest entity, EU, and more than 5 times the deficit ...
23
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 ...
22
First of all, for clarity, China never claimed to be communist.
I have reviewed the full text of Chinese Constitution (both the China's Constitution of 1982 with Amendments through 2004, as well as 2017 changes published by Xinhua).
It does not mention China being a Communist country anywhere. As a matter of fact, the only time the word "communis(m|t)" ...
22
Why "president for life" in China is such a big deal?
— Because the increasing shift towards a dictatorship state¹ may trigger a chain of uncontrolled events that, in turn, would undermine the Western investments and the international trade.
TL;DR
The logic is fairly simple:
In any country, the government is a mixture of various groups of influence;
...
answered Mar 13 '18 at 7:12
bytebuster for Long Usernames
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22
The key is that extradition hearings are not trials that establish innocence or guilt. From your quote, the requirement for extradition is that there is:
sufficient prima facie evidence that there is a possible case
To people who think that China is willing to occasionally forge evidence and hold mock trials, that is equivalent to "prolonged imprisonment ...
22
Yes the Senate bill can be framed as an attempt by the U.S. to influence China. Whether that is a bad thing or not depends on your own beliefs. The U.S. commonly uses trade restrictions and sanctions to attempt to bring about change in other nations that it believes are acting against the interests of the U.S.. Iran continually faces sanctions for their ...
21
Two of the longest rivers in China originate in Tibetan Plateau. China could face very dangerous threats without Tibet under its control:
Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly
in present-day Qinghai Province). These include the Yangtze (longest river in Asia, Yellow
River (third longest river in Asia, Indus River, ...
21
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 ...
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Assuming your question is to be interpreted as "show me examples", what happened more recently that's reasonably relevant to a scenario like you propose was Wukan, in which local anti-corruption and to a certain extent pro-[local]-democracy activists were eventually suppressed:
During the 2011 protests, Zhuang helped barricade the coastal hamlet of 15,000 ...
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Not a complete answer, but elements of thoughts:
Even if China could somehow kill Kim Jong Un and get away with it, would that mean the collapse of NK regime? After all, it has survived the successive deaths of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il without major changes in its shape.
NK can be a pain in the neck for China, but it sure is a bigger problem for the US ...
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The "We Are Still In" campaign is more of a statement than an agreement for concrete action or cooperation. From the press release that they issued, it's basically to "declare that we (they) will continue to support climate action to meet the Paris Agreement":
The statement calls “The Trump administration’s announcement [one that] undermines a key pillar ...
18
Why didn't the USA (west) take measures to stop China from became the new superpower while they can?
Because, as your own subsequent question points out, China is (or, at least, in 1950s, was) a more acceptable superpower, unlike Russia; or for that matter a lot further from becoming a superpower, acceptable or not.
Why is the US so aggressive against ...
18
The National Interest covers the invasion scenario nicely here. It is unlikely, due to the atomic weapons N Korea has, and probably a substantial supply of chemical weapons as well. The heavily populated city of Seoul is very close to the border, and would likely become a target of revenge with very high civilian casualties.
China recently positioned a ...
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