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Originally Posted by Traum
The Business Insider link that you included here didn't work, but I am guessing it is this, right?
https://www.businessinsider.com/trum...project-2018-5
The conflict of interest allegations are disconcerting, and I wouldn't rule it out as one of the reasons that Trump has given it a pass. At the same time, I would also say that ZTE may not be the biggest fish to catch because that honour falls on Huawei, and Trump has literally squeezed Huawei to death.
I seem to recall that ZTE was one of the earlier tech companies that the Trump administration went after. Potentially, I'd say we can view that as a warning shot fired to threaten China into submitting to the US. Now that the history is behind us, we can say that warning shot might have failed, but that's OK too because the Trump gov went after Huawei hard afterwards.
As a major developer for 5G tech, including infrastructure, Huawei was the crown jewel of China's international level company, and its international success plays very much into China's worldwide ambitions. Hunting it down resulted in world-wide consequences and ruined China's plans to gain control and influence at the international level. This was something that happened under Trump.
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Traum, I see what you're saying here, but I believe you're looking at it in a very narrow way. Ultimately we're debating the very idea of supporting a racist demagogue such as Trump simply because a perceived adverse effect he's had on a Chinese telecom company. A company that you, myself, will never have a direct connection with, nor be engaged with in any meaningful way.
What Trump represented, what his supporters represented are so intrinsically evil in their overall beliefs, this issue far supersedes such a meaningless subject -- and the overall pointlessness to continue a grasping of straws to validate this man in the first place.
We can get into the policy wonk side of political debate, and in fact, that's where we should be. We can never have these debates when one party and its elected representative utilizes xenophobia and racism as its primary agenda. Trump was an absolute and total disaster, these outcoming elections highlighted that, none of that should be overshadowed.
I've always said, come to this side for now, once the other side cleans up their act, we can have the true policy wonk debates of the future. This China stance really isn't the overarching argument to me for his support. If you feel that way, that's your position. We'll see have to see how Biden engages with China and see if that meets your expectations.