I've been seeing a huge amount of anti-Chinese sentiment online, from obvious places like reddit, to even misinformed friends on social media falling victim to viral posts filled with misinformation.
What are we to make of this? Is this the slow march to war, by portraying them as pure evil, à la the fake story of Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies to help get the public on board with our military response? It seems disadvantageous for the US and their allies to fight China, as we are incredibly reliant upon them economically and don't stand to gain much from the conflict.
Are these the irrational decisions of a dying empire? Or is there something else at play?
This has fortunately been my experience, too. The material reality of it is that most of the bits of productive industry we have left source loads of what they need from China and even the chuds know that's what's putting food on the table. I worked a warehouse job moving what I eventually found out were off the shelf components for navy shit (and left when that realization happened lol) and I was literally relabeling boxes straight from southern China it was hilarious. Trade relationships can of course change but I don't know if the rest of the world has the industrial capacity to feed the glutton that is the American economy if we cut out China.