[Closed] Is China about to give Britain a kicking

Brexies not the smartest shocker.

We depend too much on cheap imports from China - ppe?? We need to bring more business back into the UK.

Yup, we intend to import the Hang Seng index to the Uk, lock stock and barrel.

I've been wondering for years whether the Chinese have some unconscious mass ambition to wipe out Britain in revenge for Britain having destroyed Chinese society in the Opium Wars. Then I look at the way China behaves in every other country in the world and I realise it's not just Britain.

Well when the food/water wars start I doubt there’ll be any country able to stop China.

We have already sold them a lot of our gas/electric/water networks, so all they need to do is turn the supplies off and we’ll surrender quite quickly I’d imagine.

I'd suggest that they have been doing that for some time. As we are witnessing a change to the world order we need to get used to it. If we treat China as an enemy or friend, they will be reminding us of who is now in charge.

I think the Boris and Co. are about to find their place in the world and that we have no leverage when it comes to negotiating - stupid UK exceptionalism. When we last sent a gunboat up the Yangtse it didn't work out well

I have a bad feeling that we are about to get a kicking from more than just China.
I just hope those who voted for Brexit have a shred of self-awareness and realise its on them.

I think the Boris and Co. are about to find their place in the world and that we have no leverage when it comes to negotiating – stupid UK exceptionalism

Thing is, this was utterly obvious to anyone with half a brain cell from day 1. Johnson was happy to jump on the stupidity bandwagon as it was his ticket to number 10 and he doesn't care two hoots about the consequences. No idea what Cummings grand plan is, I get the impression he just wants to set fire to things and watch them burn.

It’s like the rest of the world was grown up enough to ignore our exceptionalist mindset, up until we started being a short arsed gobshite about it.

(This thought is accompanied by a mental image of talking sausage Mark Francois).

I think China could well give Britain a kicking. But in our favour China seems hell bent on falling out with the entire world at the moment...

Yep not a good time to pick a fight, they are ratcheting up tge tension with Hauwei as well. Its like the little shouty man down the pub thinks he's hard until the quiet, big guy turns around and walloops him.

Actually I'm not sure much of the rest of the world will wade in to give us a kicking but I think we're about to realise we have very few friends out there when we need them.

I was actually quite impressed with the announcement to let HK residents come here.

Rather than the portrayal given in the posts above I see it as standing up to the bully and saying no.

But hey. We all need our cheap plastic tat. So let's turn a blind eye and let China imprison anyone believing in democracy or just anyone for anything for that matter as that is essentially what the new law allows.

Also. If in the future after we've been invaded by the Chinese, they happen to read this and trace it back to me. It was my neighbor who typed it. He always was a filthy freedom lover. I'm a good little Comrade.. Honest.

Rather than the portrayal given in the posts above I see it as standing up to the bully and saying no.

Great until the bulky gives you a beating that takes x years to recover from.

But hey. We all need our cheap plastic tat

Yup, that’s the only reason anyone is concerned about falling out with China

China has the ability to inflict significant economic damage on the UK; either a short short shock to teach us a lesson or something more sustained.
They usually play a long game so the end of the Brexit transition period would be perfect timing for them as EU protections will then be non-existent and the UK will be seen, even more, as an ex-colonial faded power.
China are market leading in AI, consumer electronics, telecoms (Huawei, for example), cotton textiles; major manufacturer of shoes and toys.
They are also a growing presence in power generation.
Suspend an export licence here and there; delay a few container ships - you get the picture.
If only we depended on them for nothing more than cheap plastic tat but those days have long gone.
They have a massive sovereign wealth fund and what is effectively a command and control economy.
Their activities in the Spratley Islands and S China Sea generally show they their only interest is self-interest and they have no respect for or fear of trump.
They are rapidly moving to becoming the second great power; Russia has oil and gas reserves but is nothing more than Putin's personal possession so is no longer a great power.
Pres Xi has total control.
I think the HK residents issue will be much more significant than Huawei.

Britain is basically schizophrenic init? It's either the best in the world, or a 2 pun weaklin! 😆 and all this framed in a world of goodies and baddies! 😆

We have already sold them a lot of our gas/electric/water networks, so all they need to do is turn the supplies off and we’ll surrender quite quickly I’d imagine.

Other than in a plot in a holiday trash novel it's not going to happen

Disconnecting strategically from a state like China is probably the best thing to do, they are not democratic, they are expansionist, have ambitious territorial claims that will potentially lead to a conflict going kinetic with India, Taiwan, Japan etc they regularly exercise cyber warfare against corporates and states. They manage to censor free speech both in and outside China.

The question should be why are we doing business with them, we wouldn't have used russian Comms technology in the first cold war

China are probably fourth in the ‘big powers we are exposed to and at the mercy of’ list.

I see the UK being used in a proxy "war" over the next decade or so.

"Fought" over/exploited by the US, EU, Russia and China to weaken another opponent or simply destabilise them by forming a perceived alignment with us.

Think of the proxy war in Yemen with different players and no overt conflict but a country being used as a pawn in a far larger/higher stakes game non the less.

In the list of great powers there are only two and China are currently bottom of the list.
Russia are no longer, by any definition, a great power.
As for 'big powers' that's not a recognised term but...I'm assuming you mean US, China, EU, Russia.
India haven't made it - yet.

Russia have done more damage to us in the past 10 years than the USA, EU or China.

And I used “big powers”, because neither Russia or the EU fit into more defined terms, such as “super powers”, but they are the large international interests we are most exposed to.

I don't see the EU having done us any damage to be honest, other that inconsequential due to simply being a member of a club in which you have to compromise on occasion.

However, we've now set ourselves up as a competitor to them, right on their door step. They also know we are ripe to be used to further weaken the them (the EU) over the years to come, so must do what they can to mitigate that.

I'll never see the EU as the enemy though. Rather, we've made ourselves their enemy which they now need to manage.

Yes, they have but that wasn't relevant to the thread title or my post.

Agreed. I was including the EU going forward… we are now far more exposed to what they do (without us having a controlling interest in that) than what China does. It’s worth being cautious with China… but what Russia, the USA and the EU choose to do in coming years should be of far bigger concern.

^^ Yep,I agree mate.

I note that we also stuck two fingers up to various others today, in the form of sanctions on human rights violators amongst which were 25 Russians, presumably with assets squireled away here...

China would be giving us a kicking anyway (along with many other Western capitalist democracies) sooner or later. They're players of the long game and fundamentally don't believe in capitalism but will use it as a tool to dominate us as their opposition.

Chinese capital is everywhere now and they can most certainly use it to turn the screws on us. They'd do so with Putin's blessings, Donald hardly noticing and having alienated them, our EU allies taking little interest...

I was actually quite impressed with the announcement to let HK residents come here.

Rather than the portrayal given in the posts above I see it as standing up to the bully and saying no.

I don't know about being impressed, but there is a degree of honour still in offering the BNO in HK sanctuary. We lack the ability to enforce those broken agreements any other way now. But it will cost us as a nation...

UK adopting the Magnitsky regs is a long way overdue; still the preferred option for libel tourism - Private Eye passim and ad nauseam.

I would have thought Cummings /Government plan of telling 3.5 million of its citizens to come to blighty would have annoyed the Chinese.

We've offered HK residents UK visas, we haven't told them to come to the UK.

I reckon the Chinese are far more pissed off about Huawei being kicked off our 5G infrastructure than us offering 0.16% of their population UK visas.

I see no harm in us distancing ourselves economically from an expansionist totalitarian state like China. Hopefully the Covid 19 pandemic will teach us that we should build a more resilient economy less dependent on supply chains from the other side of the world sourced in countries like China.

As for Russia, they have an economy slightly bigger than Italy's and defense spending only 33% larger than the UK so apart from a few nukes they hardly qualify as a superpower these days.

I just hope those who voted for Brexit have a shred of self-awareness and realise its on them.

First rule of Brexit Club: ‘Blame foreigners’

Self-awareness (AFAIK) doesn’t feature (necessarily so)

Wetherspoons’ll fix it.

If you were a Chinese national with a knowledge of history wouldn't you be loving the opportunity?

Or to invert it, imagine if El Chapo with the help of his govt had invaded the UK, deliberately razed and plundered London all to enforce the sale of drugs to our population. Wouldn't you be licking your chops at the prospect of being able to administer a thorough kicking?

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. We're about to pay the price of Empire.

Can we pause the fight with China until after the screw press BB86 extractor I’ve just ordered arrives?

I try the BB86 punch style extractor and it’s pretty solid. I’ll scooby the frame if I hit the punch much harder.

China has the ability to inflict significant economic damage on the UK

Hmmm, China trade is about 6% of our imports. about £44 Billion. It can do us some harm, if that stops but not an insignificant cost to it's self. Why would it jeopardise that?

As for Russia

An economic minnow that knows how to disturb and diminish other countries. Ask Arron Banks and Dominic Cummings how this works, if you haven’t understood so far.

Some amazing opinions on here, why do you lot hate the UK so much?

I don't see anyone in this thread 'hating the UK'. What should they be saying instead?

If you were a Chinese national with a knowledge of history wouldn’t you be loving the opportunity?

Or to invert it, imagine if El Chapo with the help of his govt had invaded the UK, deliberately razed and plundered London all to enforce the sale of drugs to our population. Wouldn’t you be licking your chops at the prospect of being able to administer a thorough kicking?

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. We’re about to pay the price of Empire.

This thread is great for holiday read plots

China doesn't want to destroy the west, it quite likes having all it can provide offshore. It does want to control the West as an extension of its internal controls. Every company or country that bows to pressure to not recognise Taiwan or pro democracy HK etc are a demonstration of this policy

An economic minnow that knows how to disturb and diminish other countries. Ask Arron Banks and Dominic Cummings how this works, if you haven’t understood so far.

Russia post WW2 has always waged asymmetric warfare, what happened in Ukraine was a threat that we were actively planning for in the nineties. We know they had mapped all of Europe in detail in upto the late eighties with people on the ground.

We have educated them that we will do little in response to these asymmetric activities, which is why so many people seem to jump from balconies or end up with obscure radioactive compounds in them

I expect China will expand their rendition program to include these in time

aP. Its just the consensus that I get from a lot of threads on here, it always seems people actually want the UK to fail, I find it strange. Some of the talk of opium wars, gunboats, empire, wetherspoons above sort of reinforces that in my mind. Oh and the title of the thread, why would the UK be singled out for a kicking? The visa thing? Surely we are doing China a favour by offering to take a dissenting part of their population?

big_n_daft
China doesn’t want to destroy the west,

Of course they're not plotting to do that, why destroy your market?

But a bit of retaliatory humiliation would be a karmic side dish...

dougiedogg

...it always seems people actually want the UK to fail...

It has failed already, and is about to be disunited. The UK is a laughing stock at the moment. Maybe an independent England could regain some status with realistic leadership.

I don't think anyone in here (except for the Russian bots) wants the UK to fail. However, the direction the country has been led/ manipulated over the last 10 years or so results quite appropriately in a high level of cynicism over our current leadership and their capabilities added to the uncertainty of the post January 2021 future.

aP. Its just the consensus that I get from a lot of threads on here, it always seems people actually want the UK to fail, I find it strange. Some of the talk of opium wars, gunboats, empire, wetherspoons above sort of reinforces that in my mind.

It seems to me that they are frustrated by the current failures of the U.K. government, and want more reality based policy making which will show real benefits. At present we seem to be suffering the results of exceptionalism, and this is storing up problems for us down the line.

By its nature the legacy of empire is a mixed one around the world, and remaining blinkered to this hinders our modern day relationships, not helped by reference to things like Empire 2.0.

Russia have done more damage to us in the past 10 years than the USA, EU or China.

Yep, only country to have deployed Nuclear and chemical weapons on British soil....

it always seems people actually want the UK to fail, I find it strange

I think it's the natural reaction to deeply held jingoism, anti-jingoism I suppose.

Its just the consensus that I get from a lot of threads on here, it always seems people actually want the UK to fail, I find it strange.

You get the wrong consensus.

I see massive frustration at the cynical self serving leadership who have manipulated the lowest common denominator into believing the UK is the biglyest most besty awesomez and doesn't need the rest of the world, because foreigners and dambusters and stuff and build a wall and hide from everything and go la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you.

Whereas we could have had a decent leadership who prioritised cooperation with allies and neighbours and this would sigificantly enhance the standing of the UK within the local power block, who in turn would also be stronger for our playing with them.

So now we've told our nice friends who played nicely with us to go do one and have tried cosying up to a couple of big bullies who look at us like we are the next meal. Europe is now the A and C ark, we're the B ark. And it sucks.

I don't want the UK to fail. Its home. I love the place. It has a lot going for it. True, lots of problems. But we are our own worst enemy. I want it to wake up and stop going the wrong way and vote in some decent leadership who want to fix the problems and not shit the whole place up.

If it could dish us a kicking we should just take it and move on. The Chinese are a horrendous abuser of human rights and attempt to bully any country that questions them.

Surely we are doing China a favour...

See... we love the UK (well, I do)... just because we don't go in for this kind of nonsense doesn't mean we're anti-UK, or want it to fail. We fear that the stupid led by the corrupt will be our undoing, not a lack of blind faith in the power of the UK over all others.

I think we're doing the right thing as regards visas (should be extended to all HK residents, not just those the right age though)... but we are not "doing China a favour", and need to be ready for reciprocal actions.

The Chinese 17th-19th century British are a horrendous abuser of human rights and attempt to bully any country that questions them.

To be fair most countries have their dark periods but the UK end of the BLM movement and the historical reasons (still echoing today) behind it ought to make us think carefully about our well glazed house before chucking rocks.

When a state decide to enter the international joshing club, they need to know when to retort and when to shrug. The Chinese state doesn't know how to shrug.

The CCP needs China. At some point, China will realise it really doesn't need the CCP.

^^What? We agree to protect the rights of Hong Kong citizens, the Chinese renege but we should stay quiet because of what happened more than a century ago? On another continent. Get a grip.
I'm sure the demonstrators will understand that we might not want to look a bit silly whilst they're being bundled into the back of the van.

the Chinese renege but we should stay quiet because of what happened more than a century ago?

Who said that? I think everyone has welcomed the UK government’s proposals on visas… some are just giving some background on why China may not be happy about our ‘interference’ as they will see it.

I'd say China are gonna try & give every country a kicking, not just the UK. They'r trying to win WW3 without firing a shot, (as a for instance).
I'm trying (impossible not to though) not to buy Chinese stuff as I think we've had a bellyful of Chinese imports this year, don't you? Me not buying a Chinese made bike frame won't make a slightest difference to their economy but It'll make me feel a lot better.