"I'm going to admit it: I'm one of those who can see all the BS marketing propaganda about Russia & Ukraine - yet I remain deeply sceptical about China."
You should be. China isn't led by paragons of ethical probity. But we should all be suspicious of media lynch mobs, which I'm sure you are. Also, I don't think that the Chinese leadership is outright insane. I do think the US leadership class is.
Each set of oligarchs are constrained by different forces. The US oligarchs are limited by the decline in American industrial capacity (which is needed to generate real military power) while the Chinese are limited by their dependency on foreign resources and markets. The 'dance of death' between the two is a threat to ordinary people everywhere. That is the issue. The survival of our masters is not our cause.
It's the ethics, morals, and social codes of the west that are capitalist and thus insane, the leadership just reflects it. North Asia for 2500 years has as it's bases for the same Confucian ethics firmly rooted in all it's cultural points. In times of crisis they often deviated from them, but at least have as firm anchors to return to. It's not just the leaders of western society, but the whole society that has a terminal sickness, with the most diseased specimens in North America, then Britain, and Western Europe. Chris Arnade catches the pathos in his latest posts on walkingtheworld.substack.com Vietnam, hardly a sycophant to China, shows it's Sinophile socialist roots in the social group activities (Chinese chess, communal dining, taichi) striving against the social ills of consumerism driven by western psychology driven advertisement mind polluting games(and winning so far). Meanwhile on George Galloways show a caller in explained how guns were necessary because one has to fear ones neighbors in "Mericuh".
The true Iron Curtain of today is between those societies that have substantially dissolved the bonds of trust, respect and cooperation between neighbours and strangers and those that have not.
"I'm going to admit it: I'm one of those who can see all the BS marketing propaganda about Russia & Ukraine - yet I remain deeply sceptical about China."
You should be. China isn't led by paragons of ethical probity. But we should all be suspicious of media lynch mobs, which I'm sure you are. Also, I don't think that the Chinese leadership is outright insane. I do think the US leadership class is.
Each set of oligarchs are constrained by different forces. The US oligarchs are limited by the decline in American industrial capacity (which is needed to generate real military power) while the Chinese are limited by their dependency on foreign resources and markets. The 'dance of death' between the two is a threat to ordinary people everywhere. That is the issue. The survival of our masters is not our cause.
It's the ethics, morals, and social codes of the west that are capitalist and thus insane, the leadership just reflects it. North Asia for 2500 years has as it's bases for the same Confucian ethics firmly rooted in all it's cultural points. In times of crisis they often deviated from them, but at least have as firm anchors to return to. It's not just the leaders of western society, but the whole society that has a terminal sickness, with the most diseased specimens in North America, then Britain, and Western Europe. Chris Arnade catches the pathos in his latest posts on walkingtheworld.substack.com Vietnam, hardly a sycophant to China, shows it's Sinophile socialist roots in the social group activities (Chinese chess, communal dining, taichi) striving against the social ills of consumerism driven by western psychology driven advertisement mind polluting games(and winning so far). Meanwhile on George Galloways show a caller in explained how guns were necessary because one has to fear ones neighbors in "Mericuh".
The true Iron Curtain of today is between those societies that have substantially dissolved the bonds of trust, respect and cooperation between neighbours and strangers and those that have not.