Sabotage? But that's an internal project, there should no reason to sabotage it. Other than sheer spitefulness. Not to mention, there should be tons of paper trails, so the offender should be easy to expose.
Aww... Wasted roll. Still, I'm curious as to who it might be. The teenage Kim? Someone from the ambassadorial staff? Perhaps some well-connected Korean general? Or, dare I even think of it, the mahjong tournament was taking place and we allowed to join.
There's plenty of reason to sabotage it for the communists. On a departmental level, they want to replace us and/or create instability and I doubt they like us as a person. On a national level, the communists want the current government to fail to deliver the same economic growth that China had under the communists in order to discredit the new regime.
Yes, but consider that not publishing the White Paper isn't going to be seen as problematic. Unless I'm mistaken MOFCOM was not in the habit or releasing them, so we can hardly be blamed for not doing something that wasn't being done before. Why not sabotage actual policies instead? Could it be that the saboteour is hard-core bureaucrat and considers papers to be so important? Or perhaps doesn't wish to harm the citizens via bad policies and restrains himself to internal sabotage?
despite us not being communist it is frankly in our best interest to work with north korea, potentially even make a serious investment in helping modernise their nation and more importantly their agriculture.
That hasn't worked out so well in our world. The country is a vast money sink that funnels most of what money or aid it receives to the ruling dynasty and the party faithful that support it in Pyongyang while the rest of the country is left to decay. The "Democratic People's Republic" does not give a whisper of a damn about its people, any money that we send just prolongs (and, I would argue, worsens) that archaic state's eventual collapse. It's politically advantageous to not be the person in office when that collapse happens, sure, but don't lie to yourself and say that it's best for the nation's interests to have North Korea latched onto us as a festering leech while the prosperous South grows ever more distant.
You know, entirely legitimate concerns for the supposedly democratic New China.
This is repugnant on many levels. What capacity do the North Korean people have to choose their own path while held captive by their brutal state? You are advocating that we provide tools and information to their oppressors, what do you think will happen with that to the people you proclaim to be our friends and brothers? Nothing brotherly, I can assure you. This is also distressingly close to the rhetoric of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere developed by Japan to justify their attempted domination of Asia, and you can bet for sure that Koreans of all stripes will pick up on this and not be fans, to say nothing of other nations hesitant about the "eldest and strongest sibling". Nationalists of a great many countries are also not likely to be pleased.
...The current administration in China is aware of all this, yet it still consistently makes the geopolitical calculation that propping up the North Korean dictatorship is important to them. They're not idiots, nor are they suicidal.
Many states do things for short-terms benefits and the careers of the reigning politicians that are not perhaps the greatest of measures for the long-term. The perpetuation of the North Korean state is a black mark on all parties involved with it, though I remain well aware of why no one wishes to potentially upset the status quo. It's a ticking time bomb of a state that's gone by far enough so that any dismantling is going to cause a disaster for the powers of the time... and yet, it will cause all the more damage the further it is postponed.
Correlation does not imply causation, the cause of China's issues were not through simply having a border with western powers. If that was the root cause, how would those borders have been established in the first place far across the waves from the European powers? Why did China have it rough in those times? Because China was weak, the end result of sealing herself off from the world and new knowledge under the conservative and isolationist reigns of the Ming and Qing dynasties. No value was seen in the foreign ways because China was wealthy and powerful on her own, and by the time the cracks finally started to show she was far behind. Even so China would probably have made out OK except for the enormous internal discontentment that would lead to many nationalist rebellions and eventually end the Qing dynasty, creating a power vacuum that was filled with countless warlords that were difficult for the central government to stamp out.
Another great example of a power continuously shooting themselves in the foot for a short-term advantage. I know what the status quo is and why, and I'm not satisfied with it. I think we can dare to dream bigger, certainly in a fiction that presents such a fantasy wish-fulfillment as China being a new democracy on this time scale.
I've mentioned as such more than a few times by this point. We know it's going to happen sooner or later, and it's not getting any better with time. The escaped North Koreans are still going to be at the lowest reach of dirt poor, a gulf that will widen as China advances, and the population is increasing over time despite the ruling dynasty's best efforts. The sooner it happens the better it will be for China particularly if arrangements can be made with South Korea... but of course, it's not in anyone's interests to undertake measures that could lead to them being considered responsible for such a collapse.
Except the Kims are going nuts, have nuclear weapons, and are going nuts.
Why couldn't we have had a sane candidate?
...I'm all-the-more eagerly awaiting an update to Karvoka's quest. Seriously, I need an outlet for my distress over this election results.
Sorry, man. Been buried by exams. On the bright side, they finish tomorrow!
I found North Korea ... Interesting.
Three months work on the white paper specifically. Not all work!
