10
votes
One Belt, One Road: Victoria (Australia) signs Memorandum of Understanding to join China's controversial global trade initiative
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Victoria to sign up for China's controversial One Belt, One Road global trade initiative
- Published
- Oct 26 2018
- Word count
- 419 words
Good. We're part of Asia, why are we so anti-China in general and yet we let the US pillage our economy, personal data, culture, etc etc?
I think we should absolutely be doing more mutually beneficial (keyword: mutually) partnerships with Asian countries in general. They're our neighbours, they're not going anywhere, and there's a wealth of benefits in working closer with our neighbours rather than bending over backwards to let the US suck us dry and drag us down with them.
Maybe because China is doing bad stuff to us? They're bribing our politicians, they're buying influence in our governments, they're influencing our universities, they're hacking our computer networks, and so on. There was one academic who couldn't get his book published because it was critical of China, so no publishing house would touch it because they were afraid of Chinese backlash. Maybe that's why we're anti-China...
Except the US does all that stuff too?
I'm not saying China are the good guys at all, I'm saying the US is just as evil and yet no one seems to talk about that anywhere near as much as "China = bad". I don't see China as any worse than the US, which is not saying that either are good, it's saying that they're both just as fucked up as each other.
This agreement seems to be one that will massively benefit Australia, and yet people are upset "because China". It's incredibly hypocritical, that's my only point.
Personally I'd rather we were a lot more independent, and stopped trying to latch on to either of them. We've given up most of our culture for the American one (wtf is with Halloween being a thing here now?!), and constantly let ourselves get taken advantage of by both sides.
We are a mid-level power that occasionally punches above our weight but, when push comes to shove, we're not powerful enough to stand on our own. We can't be independent.
We therefore have to choose the lesser of two evils as an ally. I don't disagree that the USA has its problems but at least it shares some of our values and principles (when it's not being ruled by an idiotic fascist-wannabe).