Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing cannot accept any country acting as the “world’s judge” after the United States captured Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The world’s second-largest economy has provided Venezuela with an economic lifeline since the U.S. and its allies ramped up sanctions in 2017, purchasing roughly $1.6 billion worth of goods in 2024, the most recent full-year data available.
Almost half of China’s purchases were crude oil, customs data shows, while its state-owned oil giants had invested around $4.6 billion in Venezuela by 2018, according to data from the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which tracks Chinese overseas corporate investment.
And china are right in this case. They’re just also assholes
China is hypocritical as FUCK
They take Tibet, they take Hong Kong despite practically the entire island coming out to say no thanks, they threaten Taiwan every second day, and the only reason they haven’t taken Taiwan is because they wouldn’t have been able to hold it against the west
Now they see how weak Europe is and the nutter in command of the US, and their plans have accelerated, this is simply an opportunity to further push propaganda on something they were always going to do
On top of that I actually wouldn’t mind if we had a judge that aligns closer to American/Western values
China is literally right next to the totalitarian dystopian hellscape that is North Korea
Executions for watching south korean tv, 3 generations of jail as punishment for committing crimes
i would have no problems if even china which is not great even by itself could bring some sense to north korea
They’re also trying to erase the Cantonese Language from existence… 🫤
Yes, they are hypocritical but they are also right - a unilateral invasion like that is baaad:
.Edit: image is directed at China, not ikt.
the only reason they haven’t taken Taiwan is because they wouldn’t have been able to hold it against the west
Eeeeh I’m not so sure about that anymore.
I suspect losing trading partners is the biggest deterrent. As soon as controlling the supply of Taiwanese microchips becomes more financially viable than making billions of tons of cheap goods every year, China will take Taiwan. And the US naval fleet will either be cruise missiled to the bottom of the ocean or we’ll just quietly walk back our threats to defend it.
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??? who are you?
Did you reply to the wrong comment?
Yikes chill a little… You actually believe that nonsense about North Korea?
The nonsense about the dictatorship in North Korea?
If only they said the same about Ukraine and Taiwan
For anyone that thinks otherwise I guarantee this opens the door for China to begin their assault on Taiwan.
China claims Taiwan is theirs. Invading their own country to free it doesn’t really need any extra motive (even if there is) like what Trump needed, and is not playing world police.
100% agree, also China’s outrage is in name only. They provided 1.6 Billion in relief in the form of buying oil lol.
And now I’m agreeing with China.
Thanks, Trump.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship that tramples human rights and treats its citizens like resources and speed-bumps and treats “free speech” as the joke it actually is.
All that said, they are pulling ahead on the world stage by miles. We don’t see it in the US because again… freedom of speech isn’t real, media is filtered, but if you travel you see whole other angles on the entire planet and just how much we don’t get shown.
For example, you rarely see news about it, but China has launched 3 space stations in the time it took us to make just the documentaries about the ISS and how huuuuge of an accomplishment it was for the world. They are going to be launching probes and setting up smart, realistic goals for exploring the solar system. That’s just not the kind high-tech, ambitious, modern project that we associate with our stereotypical imagery of China that we get fed here, but if you actually walk around in any of their new cities you will feel a distinct, sinking sensation that we’ve already lost.
Is bombing other countries, killing civilians and installing puppet leaders not a violation of human rights?
Two things can be true at once
Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others.
Kay, I’m not chinese or american, so, both the us and china do horrendous things. It’s not a shittiness competition
As an American I can say that the US and China are both bad…
It’s like saying a slap on the wrist vs shooting someone with a gun are equally bad.
I think you’re missing a lot of US History in your knowledge base. The US have committed atrocities for centuries. Are you forgetting the genocide of native americans? Slavery? All the meddling in Latin America and southeast Asia? This is just some of the bigger examples.
False equivalency and a fascist talking point
No, and no.
No that’s just freedom, freedoming places that needed to be freedomed. Oohrah.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship that tramples human rights and treats its citizens like resources and speed-bumps and treats “free speech” as the joke it actually is.
if you switched “China” to “The USA” in this sentence, I would have to find details to see if the scale is different but both do exactly the same
Yep. There is no government that actually serves the people, governments serve self-preservation and they tend to do heinous shit to succeed at that. We are not an evolved species but really only because we lack the will to be better broadly.
As individuals we each have vast capacity for learning, caring and understanding the world around us. As a generalized population we are a liquid that flows to the lowest point and erodes everything it touches.
I agree… but my point here is that it does not matter it was China who said “x”, in this instance “x” is right and people are dismissing it because “cHiNA” but the reality is that every country, powerful enough, acts pretty much the same so I am attempting to split the source from the message
Three what now? Do you mean three modules for one station? Or three consecutive stations, one testing technology for the next? E.g. a short time station, e.g. a crew vehicle? I am only aware of one station, Tiangong. Do I have to do another web search? :(
There’s just the one.
It can only house three people.
Yeah, that is what I thought. Still, I was impressed when they launched it as announced.
He may have meant one space station and some extra moon missions or something? They have been popping off a fair bit.
Honestly, I don’t care what country dominates and wins the space race, i will just be impressed that we don’t kill each other trying.
I would prefer for it to be an international cooperation - but we’re just fucking this up big time :/
I feel like that astronaut ‘always-has-been’ meme would drop pretty hard right now
The current monster they have completed in 2022, Tiangong, was the third in a series of stations, the previous Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 stations were mostly meant to test technique and technology but were remarkable achievements in their own right. They currently have the largest and most active space program in the world. I didn’t even touch on their lunar program, their heavy satellite capability and their list of recent and upcoming solar-system probes.
- I don’t think monster is an appropriate word for a space station.
- so yeah, Tiangong-1 & -2 were single vehicle modules for technology evaluation. Similar to Skylab in concept (single launch, test docking technologies & crewed missions)
- as impressive as the Chinese space program is, the ISS is substantially bigger. Sadly, the world has not gotten their shit together in time for a follow-up station, and Gateway is pretty much dead-at-conception.
Oh the ISS is definitely bigger than anything ever sent to space, as I would expect from an international project that was built by a coalition of countries in better days, but it doesn’t really compare to China’s long-term goals and plans that have been on schedule. China is absolutely dominating space right now and will be into the future unless the US just suddenly gets it shit together and elects people who care about science and exploration, and even then it will take many years or decades now to undo the damage that trumpism has done to the US’s global leadership in space science.
The ISS is going to be deorbited in 2031, and I am not expecting a bigger, newer project to replace it. At this point I am not expecting to have access to health care broadly in 2031 in the US.
No argument there. China definitely has the better and more advanced space program. The ISS might get extended again if it doesn’t break and once people realize there is nothing comparable ready by 2030/31, but yes, eventually, there will be no international nor western space station in orbit for the foreseeable future.
So what if they do a little authoritarianism? They are attempting to make goddamn fusions reactors, for fucks sake
It’s important to point out balancing factors when discussing the accomplishments of any entity or state.
China is doing amazing things and will likely dominate the coming century, but that doesn’t mean we should look at them like heroes or champions, and we need to hold our leaders accountable for wrongs.
It’s possible they will get better as they take on more of a global role in the absence of the US hegemony that will likely start to crumble over the next several decades. I hope they give their people more rights and become leaders of world stability, but part of why they’re escaping the destabilizing forces that are crushing democratic countries is precisely because they have such an oppressive stranglehold on their own culture. It’s a complex situation.
whoosh
All this time you’ve been agreeing with a terrorist organisation, you just didn’t know it.
Sanction them then?
“cannot accept” = asking them nicely to stop. It’s a nothing burger
Diplomats do not speak the same language as you and I sitting around sipping beer and bullshitting. In diplomatic terms that means, “We’re pissed off, though we’re not taking immediate action. Keep going, FAFO.”
No, this amounts to “Please stop you’re dismantling our client state, we can’t actually stop you though.”
It would appear that the US got tired of all the jokes comparing them to the movie Idiocracy, so they decided to make themselves into Team America: World Police instead.
I mean…that’s why that movie was made to begin with…
Trey Parker and Matt Stone should make the movie free for the week in honor of Team America World Police being back in action.
The anus calling the butthole an asshole situation here.
according to data from the American Enterprise Institute
Don’t ask who pays their bills
While I agree you always need to look at who is saying what and what their motivations are, China has been investing in Venezuela, just as they have in many other countries.
Investing in Venezuela instead of sanctioning them until they bow to your will? Terrible.
The largest outside investment in Venezuela has come from California based multinationals. China’s a very recent entrant into the Venezuelan market, owing in large part to the rising tide of US sanctions that prevents western businesses from doing the kind of trade they were already enthusiastic about.
Incidentally, the American Enterprise Institute operates as a lobbyist on behalf of many of those California businesses.
Nobody is crying wolf here, this is just a statement of imports and exports based on publicly available data giving context to China’s interests in the region. Is admitting that China works for their own geopolitical interests too much for you? We’re now down to dismissing public customs and OPEC data because engaging in foreign economic interests is a little too close to American imperialism for comfort?
China is the world’s largest economy by every meaningful metric. No serious economist uses GDP as a metric for actual economic production. Can we please at least use GDP (PPP)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
It’s still not a good metric but at least it actually allows a means to compare countries to one another more accurately.
The US economy is 10 major tech corporations doing essentially this with AI right now.
Okay but what metric should we use for the average American median voter who just wants to see China enter a wrestling ring with pyrotechnics and then rock and roll music plays and we see the US hit them with a steel chair.
Even that might be too nuanced and complex for the average American voter.
No serious economist uses GDP as a metric for actual economic production. Can we please at least use GDP (PPP)?
In terms of flexing on foreign countries on the international stage, though, raw GDP (or at least imports and exports) is pretty important.
The PPP calculation comparing China to the United States may tell us a lot about how much a resident of either country can expect to experience using the local currency domestically, but if we’re talking about influence over a third country, in that third country’s local currency, then I think each respective PPP back home doesn’t matter as much.
If we’re not comparing the ability of a citizen to buy things with the fruit of their labor. What are we comparing?
I get what you’re saying. But it comes down to a fundamental problem with liberal (using the classical sense of the word) economist and what they are “flexing” about.
The “economy” to the average voter is how much the groceries and rent are.
Not even mentioning the “eating shit” problem of GDP. GDP PPP is far more meaningful to quality of life. Though still flawed. The normal person isn’t trying to understand the power of a currency on the world stage. They are using it to buy eggs.
If we’re not comparing the ability of a citizen to buy things with the fruit of their labor. What are we comparing?
In this particular case? I think we’re comparing Chinese and American ability to project economic influence (from trade or aid, to outright bribes or coercion or boycotts or sanctions or everything in between) over Venezuela.
The normal person
But the normal person has nothing to do with governments dealing with other governments on the global stage. And that’s what this story is about, Venezuela being caught between two competing visions of their future in the international order.
If a country wants to build an airport in their capital city using the resources of foreign governments seeking to influence them, the question isn’t about how many eggs the citizens of those countries can buy in their home turf, but about how much concrete and steel and heavy machinery those other countries can provide in the country considering offers.
Do you think America competes at all in its ability to produce heavy machinery, concrete, and steel when compared to China?
We are far beyond the GDP vs. GDP(PPP) that started this. But, you brought it up. The US’s main problem is it’s lack of industrial production. It’s an almost entirely finance based economy. Which is something that causes its GDP to be heavily inflated. The AI companies trading the same billions in a circle with no actual material production happening in the country right now. The US economy is built on financial speculation. China’s is built on industrial production. Something GDP doesn’t account for at all.
That was my entire frustration with using GDP as a metric in the first place. I said “at least use GDP(PPP)” because at least it takes into account the populations purchasing power of goods.
On the world stage, as an economic power, the US is losing to China. It’s why it’s using its military to invade South American countries that trade with China. It has no real way to compete. So it’s falling back on it’s methods of imperialism.
We are far beyond the GDP vs. GDP(PPP) that started this.
No, you started talking about PPP in response to a news story that described the United States and China competing over influence over the Venezuelan economy: Chinese aid and investment in response to United States sanctions. Those are essentially going to be dollar denominated, and PPP doesn’t matter. I’ve been saying from the beginning that you were wrong to bring PPP into the discussion, because this discussion, in this thread, isn’t about domestic consumption in either China or the U.S.
The US’s main problem is it’s lack of industrial production.
Again, when talking about the effects of sanctions and foreign aid and investment, we should be talking about transactions that occur in the currency at issue. If China wants to provide aid to Venezuela in RMB, Venezuela will either need to spend that on Chinese producers or exchange for another currency to spend elsewhere (including Venezuelan Bolivars being spent domestically). If there’s going to be a currency exchange, then PPP of the aid providing nation doesn’t matter. A million USD from China is worth the exact same amount as a million USD from the U.S.
On the world stage, as an economic power, the US is losing to China.
I think if we’re talking about on the world stage, as an economic power, the interconnected West is best understood as a power bloc. U.S. inconsistency and unpredictability on things like Russian sanctions actually show the limits of U.S. unilateral power while still showing the power of the broader Western order. Yes, China and Russia want to provide the world with an alternative multipolar order, and fragmentation of the Western powers may open up opportunities for that vision, but that competition is playing out along alliances, not isolated nations. In any event, PPP doesn’t have anything to do with that particular competition.
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’m not going to bang my head against the wall trying to explain it to you. But I’ll give it one more shot.
The fact that you see PPP as only relevant in a bubble inside the country is just idiotic. China PRODUCES things. Literally most of its aid and initiatives are in the form of resources and infrastructure projects. There is no USD involved. That’s literally the entire Belt and Road project.
I’m sorry. But it seems like you’re trying to project what you know about US trade and neoliberal economic policies onto China. You clearly know enough about US trade and how it uses the dollar for dominance on world markets. But China doesn’t have to play that game anymore. That’s literally the shift in global economic trade that has happened. The world is not being held hostage by US dollar dominance anymore. They have an alternative in China.
And PPP is a much better means of showing why this is. It’s BECAUSE China actually makes shit. It’s not just a finance and consumption economy. It makes stuff more affordable for its population AND it’s able to use this same massive industrial power to work on industrial projects with other countries.
You are explaining a world that existed 20-30 years ago.
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree.
I think that’s right. To summarize, here’s where I think we agree and disagree:
We agree: GDP is not a particularly good metric for measuring international economic influence.
We disagree: You think adjusting GDP by PPP makes it better for this context, and I think that adjustment makes it even worse.
We agree: Exports matter for discussing economic power on the international stage.
We disagree: I think imports and investment also matter. You clearly don’t, by dismissing them as mere consumption and financial engineering.
We agree: United States economic power overseas is in decline, including in the hegemony of the US Dollar, and its importance/influence through organizations like the World Bank, IMF, WTO, or even things like the SWIFT banking network.
We disagree: I think the United States is still much, much stronger than China on global economic influence. The lines may cross, where China overtakes the United States, but I think that would be in the future, whereas your comment suggests you believe those lines crossed in the past.
In the end, a country like Venezuela wants to sell barrels of oil to buyers, for a good price. That means things like U.S. sanctions (especially when enforced by the entire west) will hurt more than Chinese aid helps. At least as of 2026.
China has 4x the population of the US. It should have 4x the GDP of the US to be truly equivalent.
You might want to let the people that studied econ beyond a lemonade stand just talk next time. You don’t need to type out every thought in your head.
You just gave the ultimate dumb guy response. Congratulations.
We’re discussing Calculus and you just responded with “yeah, well 2 + 2 = 4. I don’t know why those letters are in your math with that weird squiggly line at the start.”.
You clearly have no idea what we’re even discussing in this thread.
China should dump all of its U.S. treasuries
They literally can’t. Nor can the US dump theirs.
The US, the EU, and China are economically tied to one another. One of the reasons there hasn’t been a shooting war between the East and West is how much we depend on the other’s economy. Without foreign backed assets, there’s nothing to trade against.
Chinese made goods are bought with American dollars. If they’re not putting them back in to the US, there’s no need to take them in the first place. And then who, exactly, would China be making all that crap for?
We agree, so let’s discuss the Chinese police stations in countries that are clearly not China.
Let’s discuss the American military bases in countries that are clearly not America.
They must’ve not watchec this completely true documentary.
The other day i was explaining my (teenager) kids how it was in the early 2000s and instead of a history lesson, i watched this with them. One of the best summariesof that age.
Imagine how much Freedom™ costs now with all the inflation?
All we know is: it isn’t free :)
In any case, Mainland China still wants to supplant the US as a world power, so any failings of the Americans will be advantageous to Chinese regardless of its own domestic issues, as it does business with mostly countries rejected by the Americans as “enemy states” and undeserving of its support.
edit: To that particular someone who says to the contrary believing Americans remain strong, the Mainlanders still have their presence known in my country, especially as far as trade is concerned; walk into any street market and Mainland goods are cheap and present in huge volumes, and to boycott their goods will be next to impossible, having completely captured my country’s market.
China obviously doesn’t give af about supplanting the US as a world power. If they did they would actually do stuff internationally. There is no Chinese equivalent to NATO. All they will do in regards to Venezuelan president being kidnapped is strongly condemn it. They won’t even offer PSUV any security guarantees. Literally all the Chinese government believes in is (1) trading with as many people as possible and (2) reuniting its breakaway territories. They have no ambitions beyond that. It is not true that China does business mostly with countries rejected by the Americans, but it does business with literally everyone. Chinese love to trade with everyone. While Americans media constantly criticizes China on every calling for regime change attacking their political system their leaders etc, the only time you ever hear criticism of the US on Chinese media is when the US does something that is viewed as harming trade, like the tariffs.
TIL BRICS doesn’t exist.
Multipolarity bros really need to stop fantasizing about BRICS being some sort of anti-imperialist military alliance It’s just delusion, BRICS isn’t a military bloc, it is about trade. It technically isn’t even a trading bloc either as it is literally just a forum to discuss trade relations. If you think any member of BRICS has defense obligations to one another then you are incredibly disconnected from reality.
Tell it to Tibet, ya clanker
The British Empire, whistling innocently.
Your whataboutism is immaculate, but I’m not sure you’re actually helping here, Lockwarden.
whataboutism Lockwarden
So you know the greater context then, of the British in Tibet, at the very least.
Then why is China building aircraft carriers?
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Unless it’s China whose the judge, of course. They seem to find no issue judging the Uygurs as needing to die and Taiwan as their property, or the the South China Sea as their waters, or all the fish in the world as theirs to make extinct.
They seem to find no issue judging the Uygurs as needing to die
Are they killing Uyghurs by the millions or teaching them Mandarin?
So much of the hysteria around China seems to stem from domestic campaigns of infrastructure development. The Three Gourges Dam, the rapid expansion of urban infrastructure, development of schools and hospitals in the historically rural corners of the country, expansion of universities, trade with East Africa, the BRI - all described as brutal forms of colonial oppression by a savage and sadistic Far-Left Totalitarian Communist government.
Nobody described Bolsonaro’s Brazil in these terms, as his administration clear cut the Amazon and rapidly displaced tens of thousands of migrants. Nobody described The Phillipines or Indonesia this way, even as Red Tagging was used as an excuse for vigilante executions and toxic dumping sent cancer rates stratospheric. Hell, its hard enough to get Israel described in these terms in any major western publication of record, and they’re outright shooting children in the head before labeling them “Hamas Terrorists”.
Why are liberals so eager to re-characterize literacy programs as a form of holocaust? Why do they seem so gleeful at the prospect of a China-Taiwan hot war? Why do we have a President threatening to invade Venezuela, Nigeria, and Greenland all at once, while his biggest “critics” complain that he’s not bellicose enough?
Fucking wild times.
different from other imperialists nations, how?
Yet this is exactly the kind of action they fully supproted when Russia attempted the exactly same thing in 2022. And then several times since. Plus a few other atrocities.
Since Taiwan is “already part” of China, that would just be internal affairs too.
