China's 'assertiveness' threatens Asian security, European interests
www.manilatimes.net
JAKARTA — China’s assertiveness in the disputed South China Sea and tensions in the Taiwan Strait threaten international security and European interests, Germany’s top diplomat said on Wednesday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/40829809

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China’s assertiveness in the disputed South China Sea and tensions in the Taiwan Strait threaten international security and European interests, Germany’s top diplomat said on Wednesday.

“What happens here in the Indo-Pacific has a direct impact on European security and vice versa,” Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said in a speech in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, using an alternative description for the Asia-Pacific region.

“China’s growing military assertiveness in the South China Sea not only threatens Asia’s security, but also undermines the international rules-based order,” he said after talks with his Indonesian counterpart Sugiono, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.

“With essential trade routes running right through this area, it also constitutes an economic risk,” he added.

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  • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
    2·
    17 days ago

    Perhaps shouldn’t have made such a “rules-based order” that it depends on one alliance’s full domination and rules made to mirror its interests.

    Perhaps shouldn’t also have made that domination based on outsourcing industries, so that the metropoly would receive cheap goods and live well, and its inhabitants would mostly work white collar jobs.

    Perhaps shouldn’t have assumed that said domination will be perpetual.

    Anyway. Now do Caribbean and Mediterranean. Who’s “assertive” there?

    I’m having a weird feeling, too good to be true, that Americans and Europeans have finally dug a pit for themselves with this global trade and outsourcing manufacturing thing. Yeah, helps shut up socialists when everyone is paid well, at the expense of some people in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Yeah, helps to achieve level of life most of the world only sees in movies. Yeah, helps feel yourself powerful, “exporting intellectual property and innovation” instead of working your ass off at some factory (I’m not a proletarian too, guilty as well). And yeah, with the network effect and IP laws in place this allows for those who came there first to still dominate relevant industries.

    Except there’s the long-term result of not having manufacturing, not having working unions and customer associations, having people completely unprepared for real hardship, depending on secondary sectors of economics and having a political system owned by oligopolies. Now imagine those global trade and IP ties stop being beneficial for the other side, and imagine with what will those western countries remain.