Noam Chomsky on the essence of the China threat and the main point of contention | October 6 2021
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- full source: • Noam Chomsky - Challen...
the Paul Keating article he quotes: www.smh.com.au...
The Brian Toohey article he quotes: johnmenadue.co...
more about China from an April 23 2021 interview with NYT's Ezra Klein:
www.nytimes.co...
noam chomsky: China is becoming more authoritarian internally. I think that’s pretty bad. Is it a threat to us? No, it’s not a threat to us. Let’s take what’s happening with the Uyghur. Pretty hard to get good evidence, but there’s enough evidence to show that there’s very severe repression going on. Let me ask you a simple question. Is the situation of the Uyghurs, a million people who’ve been through education camps, is that worse than the situation of, say, two million and twice that many people in Gaza? I mean, are the Uyghur having their power plants destroyed, their sewage plants destroyed, subjected to regular bombing? Is it not happening to them? Not to my knowledge. So yes, it shouldn’t be happening. We should protest it. It has one crucial difference from Gaza. Namely, in the Uyghur case, there’s not a lot that we can do about it, unfortunately. In the Gaza case, we can do everything about it since we were responsible for it, we can stop it tomorrow. That’s the difference. OK? So yes, that’s a very bad thing among other bad things in the world. But to say that it’s a threat to us is a little misleading. Well, let’s talk to the one case of expansionism, which is real. The South China Sea, that’s real. China is taking actions in violation of international law. It’s trying to take control of the South China Sea. Or to put it differently, it’s trying to do what we do in all of the oceans of the world, including the Western Pacific. They’re trying to do that in the South China Sea. And they shouldn’t be doing that. That’s for sure. It’s crucially important for their security. That’s where all their commercial traffic goes right through - South China Sea, Straits of Malacca, which are controlled by Chinese enemies or allies. So yeah, they’re doing the wrong thing there. That’s the thing that’s a little bit familiar to us because we do it all over the world, OK? And that’s the kind of threat that should be dealt with by diplomacy and negotiations.
noam chomsky: I don’t think we can move that fast. Almost every phrase you use I think requires questions. So what American values do we impose when we run the world? Let’s take Latin America nearby. What American values have we demonstrated in Latin America? Hideous crimes and atrocities, those are our values, what we impose. What I just mentioned in Gaza is our values. And that’s what we impose. So when we talk about our values, let’s look at what they are. Actually, I gave a talk to some Latin American scholars a couple of days ago. And I brought up a discussion that appeared actually in The New York Times, which was kind of along these lines, one foreign policy writer wrote something about how there’s this danger that the United States won’t be able to bring its values to the world. They all burst out laughing. And they know what American values are, not the rhetoric, what happens, OK? So first of all, should any country have domination of the world? I don’t think so. Should it be a country that has a record of destruction, violence, and repression? No, it shouldn’t. Should it be China? No, certainly not. Is there any sign of China taking dominant control of the world? Not that I can see. South China Sea, yes. And they shouldn’t be doing that. No, we should deal with it by diplomacy and negotiations, just like much else in the world. Much of the rest of what they’re doing is what we call soft power. So the Belt and Road Initiative is soft power. Maybe we think it’s wrong. But that’s the kind of thing we approve of when we do it. So I’m still asking, where’s the threat? I don’t like what happens in China. I think it’s rotten. That’s one of the most repressive governments anywhere. But I’m asking another question, we talk uniformly without exception about the Chinese threat, what are we talking about? In fact, just as a rule of thumb, if anything is discussed as if it’s just obvious, we don’t have to talk about it, everyone agrees, but we know it’s complicated. In any such situation, we should be asking, what’s going on? Nothing complicated can have that degree of uniformity about it. So some scam is underway.
Somebody please help Noam and change his smoke detector batteries.
This treasure must be protected at all costs!
I really wish people would focus on global collaboration rather than desperately clinging to the fallen glory of imperialism and colonialism. The cold war against China has already begun and continuing on the offensive towards China will impede the global collaboration we need and distracts from the peril we as a species face. We need to focus on humanities pressing concerns rather than promoting narratives that weaken our ability to collaborate. We don't have time to waste and the threat of climate change is not looming. It is already here. Our lives are at stake! How can we get people to understand that?
How many top linguistic professors does it take to change a battery in a smoke detector?
China has 3 overseas military bases. Why get such a basic fact wrong? Kinda disappointing
wow! can u link me to something showing that very basic fact?!?!
China has exactly ONE overseas base, in Djibouti. ZbjetisGod doesn’t know what he’s talking about.