> You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.
It's not clear that europe even trusts europe anymore. Especially with french and german economic dominance looking shakier than ever, debt financing an unpopular war in the east piling up, mounting deficits, industry collapse, youth unemployment... european countries (or greenland for that matter) could do a whole lot worse than turning to china.
Agreed, though, that reliance on US is foolhardy. I can't make any sense of why we're trying to saw the feet off our own economy.
Yea, in 29 Germany, France and UK will have elections, and far-right parties with anti-EU and partially pro-Russian attitudes are leading the polls. If they win, there will be hardly any unified "Europe" left. Why would I then trust Germany ruled by AfD over MAGA-America?
At least with China there's some consistency. I can reliably trust them not to give a shit about me or my privacy, and to further their geopolitical interests. Meanwhile populists in the West aren't really even acting rationally from geopolitical perspective, they're more unpredictable.
Are you talking about the same China which has repeatedly performed industrial espionage, embedded surveillance into products, and supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
I'm sorry, did we already forget about the NSA literally running the biggest dragnet the world has ever known and the US CLOUD Act that allows them to spy into absolutely any US company anywhere in the world ?
>supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
As regrettable as it is, China's "support" of the invasion is mostly a matter of them both not giving a shit about the situation, and it helping them geopolitically with regards to Taiwan. They sold weapons. Just like France sold weapons to north african regimes when they were brutally repressing their protesters. The vast majority of Europe is doing the bare minimum for ukraine to keep the fight away without being actually involved.
Countries are not moral, and will do what benefits them. Some of them are more ruthless than others, but as it stands the vast majority of Europeans are considering the US as a greater threat to democracy and general life quality than China.
China is just not compatible with us ideologically. Freedom of speech, surveillance, state control. That stuff won't work here. It works in China because they've been under it for thousands of years.
It's not clear that europe even trusts europe anymore. Especially with french and german economic dominance looking shakier than ever, debt financing an unpopular war in the east piling up, mounting deficits, industry collapse, youth unemployment... european countries (or greenland for that matter) could do a whole lot worse than turning to china.
Agreed, though, that reliance on US is foolhardy. I can't make any sense of why we're trying to saw the feet off our own economy.