by liberal japonicus
Can you show me the shine in your Japan
The sparkle of your China, can you show me
Bodhisattva,
This Klein interview with Thomas Friedman is quite interesting. (the link to the transcript is here, put a gift link in the comments and I'll change it) I've never been a fan of the Moustache of Understanding, (see here and here, I'm not going to link to Taibibi's review of his book) but in this, he hits a lot of notes I agree with but the conversation is all over the place. As an attempt to entice you to listen, from 32:00 for about 3 minutes is where Friedman, as they say in the UK, he loses his rag, check it out.
It starts off with Klein questioning the consensus around China, and, though I appreciate his commentary, this tendency to be driven not by an examination of the problem but of setting oneself opposed to whatever one feels is the 'consensus' is a lot of what got us into this societal dumpster fire (cf vax-questioning, climate change skepticism as examples that come to mind). But I do think the opening observation is right on
What if you get into a trade war with China and you lose. i don't think people are thinking enough about how possible that really is And one of the reasons it's possible isn't just because Donald Trump's trade war is ill thought through and ill defined and not well planned for. [...] I fear that America is trying to fight the China of the '90s or the 2000s with a very very very poor understanding of what China's become today.
Of course, the Moustache of Understanding opens with a grand sweeping statement and an metaphor so bad, it has to be noted
All the American business executives in China left China during Covid, virtually all of them, and then after covid, we began this process of decoupling. So you basically had six years with very very little American presence there. When I was in China last year, I felt like I was the only American in China. You just didn't see any other Americans, not tourists, not business people, not nobody. I wrote then that it was like America and China were two elephants looking at each other through a straw. Having just been there two weeks ago I would say now they're like two elephants looking at each other through a needle, the aperture has just gotten tiny.
I got physically sick thinking about that last attempt at a metaphor. I assume that it is because Chinese taxis are self driving and he can't get inspiration from the drivers.
But move past Friedman's tired rhetorical moves, there are some interesting points, though you have to work hard to get to them. Friedman says that Huawei engaged in a lot of industrial espionage, which helped it overcome US attempts to kill the company, which then culminates in a suggestion that I have to quote because you won't believe how blindingly stupid it is
I would say to Huawei here's the deal, we're going to let you wire Wyoming Montana and Idaho. You can sell your technology in those three states. We're going to watch you for three years We're going to see how you handle that. We're going to see how you handle the data If you do well we're going to give you two other states
I lost 10 IQ points just pulling that out of the transcript. If Friedman might pause to think how that would, in any reality, actually work, he might realize that the internet and networked economy was a large reason why Huawei was able to do what they did. Now, I know that IP is a touchy subject here, but Friedman might consider how the whole IP enterprise is actually an upgrading of colonialism, making sure that countries like China are constantly paying tribute to the West. (see
here and
here as two examples at random). Because of the whole patent system, you get comments like the Josh Hawley line, noted by Klein at the beginning, "China can't really innovate. They can just steal."
Friedman also talks about how Chinese smartphone makers went to car manufacturing. He's not wrong about this, but I think this is a more
insightful take, from Asianometry.
There is more, but I'll leave it for all of you to take up in the comments. As a little amuse-bouche, check out this
article about Chinese memes about the US, which has this quote from Press Secretary Leavitt ""I have seen the videos. We're not sure who made the videos or if we can verify the authenticity." Someone should clue her in to the fact that sarcasm is not based on authenticity.
been on my mind watching the Trump administration light the confidence the rest of the world has had in America on fire and call it greatness
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