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Waiting For A Call
"There's no difference between China and any other country except they are much larger."
That's a q
To Kolanovic’s point, Xi may need the American consumer a lot less after Liberation Day than before it. I’m sure Europe could find some Chinese crap they want to buy in exchange for a long-term Airbus deal.
“For now, The White House is adamant that Beijing has to make the first call — that Xi has to reach out. But China takes the concept of “mutual respect” deadly serious. They don’t like to be belittled, and Xi can’t be made to look weak domestically.”
Gosh … we’ve come down to a battle over who, as you put it, flinches first! Or through an Asian prism, who is willing to lose face. Xie is not in a position to lose face with the populace, especially to a white foreigner. Schools still remind students of the sign in the park in the western quarter of Shanghai back in the 1920s: No Dogs or Chinese Allowed.
Lest we ridicule the idea of anyone bearing a century-old gridge, take a trip down to the deep south in the US where resentment against “the war of northern aggression” still holds sway.
The “No-dogs” sign is poignant reminder of the submissive and sometimes catastrophic history of China’s relationship with the West. It runs much deeper than the sign. The Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, and a long series of threats and interventions shape the collective Chinese psyche. When we speak of losing face it’s worth remembering there was a century of face lost in a way that is not quickly forgotten. I suspect that Xi and the entire Chinese population believe there is much more at stake for them than lost trade. It is inherited humiliation and the associated latent anger that is lost on many of the rest of us.
This comment is in no way an endorsement of the CCP, the PRC, or any of their history or current policies. It is instead a suspicion that President Trump has no idea of the breadth and depth of the issues he is confronting.
Perhaps a neutral party can broker talks? The Saudis? Trump has proven to be amenable to similar arrangements.
H-Man, I thought Marko K had retired. Is he just publishing a newsletter or working for a firm?
Marko still very active voicing opinions on X, him and a handful of fintweet accounts are the main reason I have not deleted the damned right wing propaganda app from my phone.
Wish they’d move to Bluesky. Some have.
X is acting weirdly. After I hid a Musk tweet that appeared on my timeline, all my fintwit follows disappeared, but my sports and general news follows remained – but this change was only on my iOS app, not on desktop. Very weird. Rather than try to rebuild my follow list, I’ll probably just remove the app from my phone.
Americans can’t out work or out last the Chinese. Americans have consistently misunderstood a good portion of the world for at least 70 years. Most here don’t know how good we’ve had it and it’s made us blind to how the rest of the world feels and thinks, perfectly modeling Trump. There’s a lot of resentment out there about our imperiousness and China is more than happy to take us on and now they’ve got a growing number of collaborators who wouldn’t mind this country being taken down a peg or three.
I don’t think anybody can talk Donny down from the ledge.
When will people understand that China has been producing art for 5000 years. The US has no real cultural history beyond a couple of minor contributions to the world in that last couple hundred years. The Chinese are a people that know how to wait. Americans are not among those who wait. They run all the stop signs they see. They break all the laws they want to. They cut you off on the road if you go less than10 mph over the limit. We want instant answers to everything, and we rarely get them. That’s OK. We will be gone soon. That’s Trump’s strategy, after all. Damage us all and keep the spoils for himself, personally.