I wouldn't draw the parallels between China today and Germany in the 1930s, but I do see similarities to Germany before WWI.
Like China Germany just went through a break-neck pace industrialization to the point where it became a major competitor to the other great powers. It even had its own 'century of humiliation' in the 17th century starting with the Thirty Years' War. There was a lot of nationalism and ressentiment in Germany towards France and UK at the time and I do feel similar things are going on in China today.
This is a much more reasonable comparison, but I think the big difference is that the mad imperial dash already happened. (Also, nuclear weapons, but let's leave that aside for now.) Some like to call initiatives like Belt and Road "soft colonialism" but doing so completely undersells the massive brutality and enormous wealth extraction of what these people would presumably call "hard colonialism." In other words, I don't think there's enough to fight over for major powers to go to war.
>Germans were starving in the 20s too due to the outcome of WWI. The Nazi 'fixed' that.
Yeah, so? Many countries "fixed that" - the New Deal fixed that for the starving Americans for example. Post-war German government "fixed that" for starving post-WWII Germans.
Especially since China went to more open from the 60s to 2020, not less, so the opposite direction.
>And since we're talking about people starving, why don't we talk about the Great Leap forward and the massive famines caused by CCP policy?
They're somewhat like the famines caused by the British imperial policy in India, but in this case due to bad policy, not intentional colonial profiteering.
And, Chinese policy and results went to the other direction, not just eliminating those famines, but raising a population 2 times the US into middle class, and raising more from proverty.
> Germans were starving in the 20s too due to the outcome of WWI. The Nazi 'fixed' that.
It sure seems like a reach to say that China in the 2020s is like Germany in the 1930s because Chinese were starving in the 1960s (and, to lesser extents, the 1970s and 1980s) and Germans were starving in the 1920s. Wouldn't it follow that China in the 1970s (or 1980s or 1990s) is analogous to Germany in 1930s? Oh wait, of course not, because it's an absurd analogy in the first place.
> And since we're talking about people starving, why don't we talk about the Great Leap forward and the massive famines caused by CCP policy?
Sure, but I'm not sure what there is to say about it as I don't think anyone is going to argue that the Great Leap Forward was sensible policy or that famine is a good thing...
It's an absurd analogy only if you're in denial about the horrors of extreme nationalism or ideologies coupled with authoritarianism.
You even seem to deny that today's CCP is the same CCP as the one that cause the Great Leap Forward. In many ways, the CCP of today is more like the CCP of the 50s than the 90s.
I agree that the CCP is, on balance, worse (e.g. more socially repressive) today than in the 90s but I don't think it's about to return to the bad old days of Red Guards and struggle sessions, or the really bad old days of farm collectivization and mass famine. I also don't think comparisons to Weimar or Nazi Germany are remotely appropriate. The state nutures nationalism, but so do most others. (B2 bombers flying over sports games? Subtle!) The major difference is many Chinese have experienced a sharp increase in standard of living within their lifetimes, so they are more likely to be nationalistic true believers.
Ordinarily, this would subside in later generations, but my fear is that western jingoism and igorance about China is delaying or even reversing this process. There is a recent research paper which presents data showing Chinese international students were less likely to adopt liberal positions when confronted with anti-China attitudes. This matches my anecdotal experiences where people proselytizing the superiority of western systems of government (and/or the evils of the Chinese one) get basic facts wrong and completely alienate their targets.
