If what you're looking for is to avoid fallout from US politics, then its chief geopolitical rival seems like one of the worst options tbh. If you want an AES state, I'd consider Vietnam, or better yet Laos since everyone forgets it exists.
"If you want to avoid the consequences of US foreign policy move to Vietnam or Laos" would've been such a funny statement a few decades ago lol.
Well, that's kind of the point of why they're well situated now. They've been invaded by basically everyone and nobody wants to do it again, and they've been diplomatically isolated in the past so they've kept a focus on self-sufficiency while maintaining decent enough relations with everyone.
As Civ 4 taught me, "It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls."
If the United States' Cold War with China turns hot, Vietnam will be 50/50 on whether it would side with the US or China.
Vietnam's maritime interests are incompatible with China's, and Vietnam is absolutely pissed at China for all the dams on the Mekong river.
Better to look at some place like India. India is too far away to get pulled into a war with China over Taiwan.
Lot to gain if China or the US are offering up modern armor or planes. Vietnam is 20 years behind the curve at least.
During the Cold War the US and the USSR gave away billions in defense equipment to gain allies in the Global South.
Doubtful China or the US would launch a land invasion of SE Asia again, but crazier things have happened.
China doesn't have the deep strike capability to neutralize armor without getting owned by AA, and the US bombing Vietnam would be a very bad look.
I think you're neglecting the damage that could be done by (another) bombing campaign. Yeah it wasn't enough to win the war the first time and it probably wouldn't a second time, but it certainly made life hell and caused a lot of problems that has taken Vietnam a long time to even begin to recover from. It's definitely enough of a risk that it'd take more than some military equipment to get Vietnam to pick a side, because it wouldn't change anything about their strategic position.
If the US is going to war with China in this scenario then we're way past the point of anyone caring what's a bad look.
Vietnam is doing alright with native naval production, but lacks heavy armor manufacturing, and it will be a long, long time before Russia is exporting tanks again in any significant numbers.
Same problem in most of SE Asia. They became dependent on the USSR for so long they hobbled their native industries when the USSR collapsed. Most tanks in Vietnam were made before the end of the Vietnam war.
Modern armor is a big carrot and both the US and China can easily pick up where Russia/USSR left off.
What exactly is the use case for a Vietnamese tank? I cannot imagine any situation in which having modern tanks makes any difference whatsoever in Vietnam's geopolitical situation, unless they're concerned about like, Cambodia or something. Obviously they will never compete with the US or China in terms of manufacturing and in any war where that matters they'd be steamrolled regardless of how modern their armor is. Which might have something to do with why they're so far behind in the first place.
Maintaining relations with both sides is way more strategically important than modern armor, it's not remotely close.
Way cheaper to maintain a single modern platform. Vietnam's current tanks range from 1950's relics to a few dozen modern T-90s. Logistically it is a nightmare to maintain. Vietnam has like ten different tank systems at the moment, and maybe 5% could engage a modern MBT like a T-72. Vietnam's lack of modern armor production means if free tanks are being handed out they will likely take them. Same with planes.
If the US and China go to war all of SE Asia will be picking sides. That is why we are seeing the largest increase in naval power in the region since WWII. The Taiwanese strait and the three major SE Asian straits are where half of the world's shipping from/for China goes through. In a hot war China has to either ally with SE Asia or take islands from Vietnam, Malaysia, etc to guarantee access to oil from the Middle East. Without that, China would be stuck in the same place that Japan was during WWII.
I'm not asking about logistics I'm asking about purpose. If Vietnam had modern tanks, do you think they could stand up to China or the US in an open confrontation? If they had more modern aircraft, do you think they could seriously challenge US air superiority? Because I don't.
Vietnam has two defensive avenues. The first is asymetric warfare using similar tactics to what they did in the past, where tanks and aircraft are not a major part of their strategy because they don't have the resources to maintain them, and you can't drive them into a tunnel anyway. The second is their naval power, where a smaller force can still cause problems for a larger one because it can be very mobile and the enemy can't be everywhere at once.
Tanks and aircraft are big expensive targets that require intact supply lines, and they're not super useful from the standpoint of asymetric warfare. Vietnam's existing defensive options are thorny enough that there's a good chance that they can negotiate their way out of a war, and maintaining neutrality would absolutely be in their best interests and would be the route they try to pursue.
Absolutely no country in SE Asia would able to stand up to either the US or China, but having those modern tanks makes an invasion from China or the US less likely, and since everyone in SE Asia will be forced to pick sides in a shooting war over Taiwan Vietnam isn't going to leave free military hardware on the table.
The chance of any major power launching a land invasion in SE Asia is very small. Relatively resource poor countries besides some offshore oil/gas. There would be no point.
I really just don't see tanks being at all a consideration if a major power sets its eyes on Vietnam. The deterrents are, like you say, the lack of resources, and like I say, guerrilla warfare and naval harassment. There will never be a situation where anybody's sitting in a war room and going like, "I dunno about invading Vietnam, they just got some new tanks." Agree to disagree I guess because this doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Better to look at some place like India. India is too far away to get pulled into a war with China over Taiwan.
Escape the effects of encroaching fascism by moving to a place with equally bad manifestations of fascism is... a take.
Like yeah Indian fascism is not likely to target the average white guy but is "im okay with fascism as long as it doesnt target me" a good stance to promote?
India has border skirmishes with China already, but yeah, Vietnam and Laos have reasons to be wary of China .
Those border skirmishes will never engulf the entire country though.
Bangalore and most of Southern India is like half of the price of Vietnam and Laos for a similar city.
Weather sucks half of the year though.
No. As an American communist, I have a duty to fight for the liberation of the American peoples from the parasitic grasp of one of the most evil imperial states to exist on this planet. I would only go to China as a visitor, a representative, or as a student pursuing a degree in Marxist-Leninist studies.
But Vermont is nice to live in, or so I hear from Vermonters.
Same, I'm working on an escape plan now. After spending my life escaping a shitty situation growing up and then transitioning after, I'm not giving my life for the US lol
"Immigrants"? China is a non-immigration country. I think you meant "expatriate workers".
Just being honest: China doesn't want you, or me. Immigration is very tough there.
I have. I really like Chinese language, food, and history.
However, moving to China would be giving up on doing politics. I'm committed to organizing in the belly of the beast. The Chinese don't need a random USian to help them do politics.
I would recommend it for a year or two, just for expanding your horizons, it’s a very different place culturally… ime Chinese people are super friendly, many speak English and it’s not hard to make friends
You can always come back. You probably will. Living over there is hard, there will be lots of stuff you miss. Like it or not this shithole is your home
I think they just mean the place you've grown up in and lived for most of your life is what you're acclimated to. You can always acclimate to something else, but that's a lifelong process and not something that fully goes away. If you're from America, you're permanently American in a lot of ways. You might miss something as simple as reminiscing about the Simpsons with someone you meet, or you might miss something that seems innocuous here like a brand of gum.
I'm from a completely reactionary shit hole in the American south and despite how much I hate it for being infested with Klansmen, meth kitchens, and overall misery, I still get a pang of regret for leaving whenever I smell pine trees. They're not coming where I live now. Looking at creeks will do that to me as well, makes me remember when I used to love my family and we'd spend nights on the sand looking at stars.
I can expand upon this for others if it might make it a little easier to understand. When I was a kid in Australia a Lebanese friend I went to school with taught me a phrase when I asked if he missed his home. There's a an Arabic or Persian word "Qarib" which means near or familiar and "Gharib" means strange or stranger and the difference in the two is often imperceptible even to native speakers in both how they're written and pronounced. I don't remember the actual phrase now and I'm sure there's multiple but it's a play on words that conveys the meaning of feeling like a stranger in a familiar place, somewhere you never felt out of place before. Longing to return home only to go and find out the longing doesn't leave. I always got the gist of what he meant but I never internalized it until I moved to the United States. I know both where I came from and where I ended up are shitty anglo empires built on the backs of genocide and I'm not here to defend the nationalism or nations themselves, that's entirely missing the point and I'd be the last person to appeal to patsoc shit.
The point I'm trying to make is the place you grew up, the place you call home even if it's through gritted teeth and seething venom, there'll be a time when you sit and realize what you left there isn't there any more. Those memories will always be in the past and they're as distant as a lost loved one. You can remember them so clearly, almost feel their echo or smell them but you can't quite ever touch them again. You're never quite "From here" in your new home, and the home you left will never come back. I still wake up over a decade later having trouble sleeping without hearing the waves. Without being able to smell sugarcane and rainforest and ocean. The stars are different. The bugs sound wrong. The sky is too closed in.
There's nothing left in my home town for me, and there won't ever be again, but I'll never belong here either. I will always be Australian in ways that the material reality I grew up in shaped and formed thoughts and feelings and emotions and experiences that will impact all kinds of things. People will never not see me as Australian either. Americans have made that exceptionally clear to me in good and bad ways but both in spades. I didn't end up a commie until after moving to the states so I can promise "in what way it impacts you" is really up to the person, but the 'flavor' of them will always be shaped by those memories and that sense of longing for something you left but know isn't waiting for you if you return.
I know this isn't a unique experience in the slightest, I've shared this conversation with friends I've made in the states from Syria, from Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, China, Trinidad, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Nepal, and they all know exactly what I mean seconds into the conversation. I understand a lot of this is still a really privileged position in the first place, especially as a white guy from a settler colonial shithole built in an invaded paradise, but it's one of the few ways in which I can ALMOST understand what it's like to feel displaced, not to compare them in scale but to be able to more easily put myself in the shoes of others and START to understand the stronger version of this they go through.
It's this that makes me feel like if you have any possibility to travel when you're young especially, do it. Leave just go where-ever the fuck else you can and see as much of the world as you're able. Meet people and try and understand the world through their eyes. Actually put yourself into the world and lose pieces of you while gaining new ones from your new experiences. Reminisce and introspect. See the world through as many other eyes as you can until you're as far away from being relatable to the anglo empire that indoctrinated you from birth that you can be. You'll forever feel that loss but that pinprick of pain will do wonders to inoculate you from closing your heart to all those you meet that the empire would otherwise have indoctrinated you to be unable to relate to. You'll always be a shitty American or a shitty Australian or whatever else but you'll also never be those things again. Not like you were.
I'm sorry if this felt dismissive of anyone who went through these feelings without having had the option of doing it as their choice. I didn't mean to bring up complex feelings or feel like my relatively privileged international move was in any way comparable, I just wanted to illustrate the best I could that it's a complex difficult thing for people who have never experienced these things, even when you don't feel like it is at the time. Even when it's just a friendly jaunt around the world it will change you forever. I would only bet far more so when the trip isn't so friendly and of your own will. Nothing but love for you all. Never stop trying to be internationalists.
It’s hard to explain fully, but to put it concisely it’s “culture shock”
You have to constantly be calibrating when you are immersed in a foreign culture, and that takes a lot of mental work. You make cultural blunders and don’t even know it.
Everything you want to do is harder. Let’s say you have a cold here, you go to the pharmacy and buy DayQuil or whatever. Now imagine you are sick in China, you go to the pharmacy, and you can’t read anything; none of the boxes, the signs over the aisles, anything. So you have to find a shop keeper and mime your symptoms, she hands you a box, you hope it’s right… how much do you take? What do you take it with?
You go to wash your clothes, there’s no dryer, so you have to hang it out to dry, but it’s summer and super humid so the only way to dry your stuff is on a line inside so the A/C can dry it out, and now you have clotheslines across your ceiling.
You go to cook a meal and there’s one burner.
You go to take a shower and hot water is very limited, so you have to be done in 5 minutes.
You go to take a dump in a public place and there’s a squat toilet.
These are a few examples but everything takes work. None of these things are bad per se, if you’re Chinese from China it’s just what you’re used to, no biggie. But for you it’s completely different.
It’s worth it for the experience, but there’s an ease to life that accompanies being where you are from that is easy to underestimate until you don’t have it anymore, particularly in an environment as foreign as China.
This is exactly what I was going to say. I lived in a different country for a year while I worked as an English teacher, and I both loved and hated the "everything is an adventure" aspect of daily life. Need to talk to your bank? You'd better fucking focus, because you're about to use vocabulary that you don't use on a daily basis. Going to the grocery store? Oh shit, the way they have their register set up, I can't just read the total so now I have to focus because numbers are hard because there's no context to give you a nudge if you forget a word for a second. They're making an announcement on the train? You'd better listen up, because the sound quality isn't good and there's no face to look at to help with understanding. Also, there's a big difference between knowing enough of a language and get by in daily life and being fluent enough to have real conversations beyond the weather so you can actually make friends. I'm glad I went and I had a lot of experiences I value, but it was also the loneliest I've ever been and it was really tiring. I remember landing at O'Hare and riding the tram, an announcement came over the PA system, and I realized I was understanding everything without trying, and I was just like, "holy shit this is SO EASY." Same thing the first time I went grocery shopping back in the states, "this is so easy." I kind of missed the aspect of IT'S ADVENTURE TIME BABY, LET'S GO GROCERY SHOPPING, but damn it was nice just sliding back into a culture where I knew how to do things and how to respond appropriately without effort.
Everything is Google translate now. Illiterate foreigners have never had it easier.
Oh word I didn’t think of that
General sentiment still applies though, you gotta pull out your phone, type some shit in, show it to the lady, she has to type some shit in, it’s all annoying compared to just walking in and getting what you need
Tacos. Do you like tacos? Prepare for a life without tacos.
That's just an example. There are thousands of other differences that will infuriate you in China.
It’s not about allegiance, we are internationalists, but more so about comfort and convenience
There’s another comment in here that talks about the sense of adventure of living somewhere new, some people are built like you and get addicted to it, moving every couple of years, and becoming permanent travelers. I definitely get that
Wanderlust
I think anyone living in modern capitalism has that to a degree, which is what makes apocalyptic fiction so appealing
In today’s era of mass surveillance capitalism and global communication the bottom falling out is the only way left to achieve what used to be a basic right we all took for granted… the ability to have a fresh start
I like stuff that is banned or highly restricted in China, so I guess not.
same. plus i doubt i'd even be allowed to visit for long ago legal reasons
The time of period until you have a solid grasp on the language is miserable.
I went through it in Germany, but a non-Indo-European speaking country? That'd be even more of a challenge.
Plenty of Chinese move to America and don't bother learning English.
"Be a burden to everyone around you for months or years, especially if those people are already likely to be materially less well off than you."
Who would they be a burden to? The cashier trying to understand their broken sentences?
better to find out whether you're even able to learn it before you commit to moving to a country where you'd be functionally illiterate and unable to talk to most people. you think isolation is bad it' s a thousand times worse if you don't know what the sign on a building says and can't ask anyone
Same, my only concern would be getting things fucked up during hurricanes, but if the government actually handles them then perhaps they wouldn't be as bad.
They love Ph.Ds. Get that and you're in. You can get tea easily shipped from Taobao resellers.
Do you speak the language? Have you visited? Maybe try visiting once or twice if possible before making a larger decision?
I’d rather move to Cuba tbh. I know many people who have visited and it sounds amazing. Plus I’m sure I’d be able to learn Spanish a lot easier than mandarin.
I don't know. It's probably the propaganda getting to me but I'm not as convinced as most leftists that's it's actually all that great a place to live. Better than here? Maybe. But probably not for somebody like me who doesn't speak the language and would have a hard time finding work or developing friendships. Plus, and it sucks this is a factor, but I do have it pretty good here as a white guy.
It is still a poor country. So there are problems. However the US is mostly a poor country so it probably feels similar to most places. China tries to do good by people. Doesn't always work but I can't imagine living in a place that even tried.
I'd love to visit, maybe even stay a while. Every transphobic bill being put up for discussion makes leaving this country more and more appealing, and I've been studying Mandarin for a little bit now. There's a lot I could get over, and I wouldn't worry about making new social connections or anything.
But tbh, they don't want me. I'm just a thirtysomething queer social worker with no personal or business connections in the country. It's a very desirable "flee the pogroms" location for me, but I don't think a realistic one.
Maybe if I retrained into something STEMmy and started working for a Chinese company, but that's just as big an upheaval as the move itself would be.
