Why Not Tie Your Boat to China over the US?
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If you don’t travel abroad much, you probably have no idea how much the Chinese auto industry is now eating the world. From Ireland to Mexico I’ve ridden in Chinese cars. In Chile, I drove one for a weekend, as I explored the wine country of Chile and, more interestingly to me than wine, found an amazing valley in the Andean foothills for a hike that was truly astounding. Imagine a huge western valley surrounded by high mountains like on the Western Slope of Colorado. Then add enormous cacti and flocks of parrots everywhere. That’s Chile. It’s great. Anyway, I didn’t intentionally rent a Chinese car, it’s just what I was given. I didn’t necessarily love driving it, but it was basically as fine as any other car. The Chinese cars are filled with tech and are much cheaper than other nations. So why not go with Chinese cars?
I feel this way about much of China when it comes to the rest of the world. China is just eating the American lunch in the Global South because China provides the goods around ideas of order whereas the U.S. ping-pongs between rationality and insanity, democracy and authoritarianism, engagement and isolationism. I’ve been on some of the Belt to Road infrastructure and, well, it’s a lot better than the nothing the U.S. provided nations like Cambodia. Plus of the course the Chinese aren’t going to put any pressure on your political system so long as you don’t get in the way of their dominating the project. Democracy, not a democracy, they don’t really care that much.
The world has largely viewed the U.S. more favorably than China for years, but those opinions have flipped in Beijing’s favor this year, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, a remarkable shift driven in part by tensions between the Trump administration and U.S. allies.
More people have favorable views of China than the U.S. in 25 out of the 36 countries and territories that were surveyed, including Canada and Mexico. The poll was conducted from February to May, a period when the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran.
In only six countries do people still see the U.S. more positively than China, according to the findings released Wednesday.
Views in 22 out of the 36 countries and territories also are more favorable of Chinese leader Xi Jinping than U.S. President Donald Trump, including in Canada, Mexico and major European powers including France, Germany and the U.K. However, people in many of the countries have low confidence in both men.
It marks the first time in the roughly 20 years Pew has been tracking global opinions that China has been viewed more positively than the U.S., said Laura Silver, associate director of Pew’s Global Attitudes Research and one of the researchers on the study. Views of Beijing and Washington have been very similar at some points in the past but have not been significantly more favorable for China until now, she said.
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Aside from benefiting from the fading memory of the pandemic, China appears to have gained from comparison with the U.S., Silver said.
“By comparison, we know that China is seen to be a more reliable partner in many places. It’s more likely to be seen to contribute to global peace and stability,” the researcher said.
Again, it makes sense to me and you don’t have to be a defender of Xi or anything about the Chinese government to believe so. Why would you possibly see the United States as a nation you wanted anything to do with except because the current global system is geared to have it at the center of its institutions? It’s rapidly declining, unreliable, aggressive, stupid, and controlled by an insane person.