Thread by @BretDevereaux

From foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/29/ukr…

I find myself more than a bit frustrated by this phrasing, "sovereign but deferential" and the degree it implicitly accepts the PRC's framing of the point rather than acknowledging that to many countries 'deferential' means 'not sovereign.' 1/6

I'm not saying journalists need to be as skeptical as we'd expect, say, US government officials to be, but China's record in all of this isn't great! The Xinjiang and Tibetan autonomous regions...aren't very autonomous. "One China, two systems" turned out to also be BS. 2/6

China's long list of territorial disputes, with India, Japan, Vietnam, Bhutan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei all seem to suggest that 'deference' would be understood to include territorial adjustments which wouldn't favor those countries. 3/6

Meanwhile, PRC efforts to chill speech *within* countries like Australia and New Zealand suggest that 'deference' would mean an implicit demand by the PRC that certain core traditional rights of free societies near them be suspended to avoid 'offending the Chinese people.' 4/6

(which of course often just means 'offending the leadership of the PRC)

All of those things could be defined as infringements on sovereignty, some of them quite gross infringements - nor does China have a good track record of keeping its bargains in this regard, as noted. 5/6

Consequently, "the PRC says 'deference' but means 'vassalage'" ought to be at least a distinct acknowledged possibility when laying out what a 'sphere of influence' in the Pacific might look like and thus why other countries might be so unwelcoming to the idea. end/6