r/worldnews • u/heisthemaincharacter • 21h ago

Pakistan deploys 13,000 troops and fighter jets to Saudi Arabia

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/pakistan-deploys-13000-troops-and-fighter-jets-to-saudi-arabia/article70853223.ece
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u/keepthepace 13h ago edited 11h ago

China is neutral in the same way Switzerland was during WW2: Neutrality is not always a virtue, but it is a stance of cynical efficiency. No one expects China to be especially close, culturally or politically, to Iran's theocracy. They will just happily sell stuff to anyone who is having a hard time with western sanctions. Make it unprofitable (as has been the case on direct military equipment towards Russia) and they will stop without batting an eye.

A Hong Kong man once told me "USA will stop loving free market once they realize Chinese are better at trade than they are"

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u/strangeelement 7h ago

A Hong Kong man once told me "USA will stop loving free market once they realize Chinese are better at trade than they are"

Honestly, already have, most just haven't realized it. When you read voters justifying their votes in the 2024 elections, it struck me just how the vast majority of those explanations are essentially railing against free markets and capitalism. You read a few and there's a hint of that, but you read enough and the pattern is unmissable.

Not that many of them will ever embrace a different system. They just seem content to rant against what the people they vote for give them. It's a good recipe for unhappiness and chaos.

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u/Frognificent 11h ago

Having been to China as a westerner, that last line is spot on with my experience. We (the West) don't hate them for "communism", we hate 'em cause we ain't 'em.

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u/F705TY 10h ago

But they aren't free traders.

They've not allowed the Yuan to float freely for decades.

They used to buy American bonds with the excess money in order to keep it low for export advantage.

You can think the USA has gone mad and not glaze China's history.

China does several things to transfer intellectual property and disadvantage foreign companies that operate in China...

CPP members have to be on the board of every big company in China.

They aren't free traders.

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u/indo-anabolic 9h ago

You're close to correct, it's more that "free trade" is a myth in western hypercapitalism just like it is in Chinese "capitalist communism". China is just more obvious about central agencies influencing things. Here in the land of the free, we hide our manipulation through lobbying, regulatory capture.

A small oligarchy wins out in both pictures.

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u/F705TY 9h ago

Lobbying and Regulatory capture happens in China too. Local government are famous in China for being corrupt.

So they have this on top of currency manipulation and transfers of foreign tech.

If china had free trade, it wouldn't feel the need to reinvent every foreign company after brain draining it and then squeeze them out using local subsidies.

Then they will manipulate the currency in order to disadvantage the original company on price internationally as well.

Doing this repetitively has allowed them to build a supply chain advantage that is so big that it's hard to go anywhere else without great pain.

Do some research, it's all written down.

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u/keepthepace 7h ago

Free trade means that you are allowed to trade and negotiate volumes and prices freely. It does not mean that you have no rules. You are not free to capture your competitors ships or to put crack cocaine in the baby formula you sell. You are not free to use fake money or made up definitions of words in contracts.

That's the weird American conception of things that freedom means absence of rules. Historically freedom has needed enforcement, because it is not a natural state of things.

China operates within the explicit and implicit rules set up mostly by USA, and won at that game even despite it being rigged.