Lam Sze Hong

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre of International Law, NUS
Ph.D (Leiden) l LL.M (Leiden) l LL.B (HKU)

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@Gangetic_Turtle @HaydnBelfield @DrewPavlou how can you be so confidently wrong?

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@CillianMcLough1 @donaldcclarke Why is it always the Irish left?

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@ni_erich @RushDoshi The lack of ability versus the lack of will.

[Rush Doshi @RushDoshi]

The point at issue here was not US interventionism.

It was Jostein’s flawed claim: “China didn’t actively start looking for weapons in trade policy — such as the critical minerals card — until the first Trump administration applied steep tariffs.”

That statement is demonstrably false and ahistoric, as experts in Chinese foreign policy could easily tell you. Jostein later acknowledges his error: “That said, Rush’s point on the timeline of China’s trade policy should not be dismissed.”

My concern is that Jostein’s argument resembles an increasingly common kind of “neo-orientalism.” The argument is China is and will always be an exception to logics of power because of some innate “Chinese” quality. Never mind that the materialists who built modern China would reject this kind of thinking.

Jostein concedes the economic point but opens a new argument: China is less interventionist than the US.

This is almost certainly true. But it tells us little, because China has also been less powerful than the US. The better test is probably whether it is less interventionist than the other post-war great powers, and those with limited capability, like India. Here, Jostein’s argument is less clear: from Maoist revolution across Africa and Asia (see Peter Van Ness) to the Korean War to island seizures in the South China Sea to escalation against the Soviets to clashes with India on the border, China has exhibited variation across time in its penchant for intervention.

We should keep in mind that intentions do change: The US was not globally interventionist until it was, and China too may change as it pursues overseas military bases, builds a nine-carrier navy, widens its definition of “overseas interests,” and changes its stance on “non-interventionism,” all trends long underway as I discuss in my book The Long Game.

The assumption that great power logics are “Western” is also flawed. Chinese empires, like the Romans and various Indian empires (e.g., Cholas) also pursued economic coercion and intervention.

In sum, rather than assert China is exceptional (the neo-Orientalist move), we should test it dispassionately and with humility about the future. That kind of rigorous analysis is not as common as charged political rhetoric.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@yuanyi_z 百年未有之大变局

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@yuanyi_z "political economy"

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@yuanyi_z These people assess how 'developed' a city is by counting how many skyrises there are in the central part of that city, instead of look at the numbers.

[Sir Humphrey @pinstripedline]

This TOP SECRET map from 1954 shows how the UK MOD planned for New Zealand to assume defence responsibility for UK and allied islands in the South Pacific in the event of WW3.

Short thread on how even in the 1950s, the UK saw NZ as a key partner in the event of global war.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@DerekPederson3 Yes for Mosaddegh, but Ho Chi Minh is hardly a liberal.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@yuanyi_z Waiting for you to write a new book called the 80 years of crisis

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@AlejandroATMES2 They didn't exist anymore largely because of the genocide committed by the Revolutionaries after 1911 and the societal repression that forced them into 'blending in' with the Han majority, there were another series of repression after the Second World War.

[Joel Atkinson @Joel_P_Atkinson]

The educated and the wealthy are the most hawkish on using force against Taiwan

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@SandyofCthulhu Maybe that's why this model is particularly attractive to Western Champagne communists, they get to keep their lifestyles untouched under the pretence of a particular kind of 'socialism'.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@Pouriaaa Probably all going back to Stephen Kinzer's book "All the Shah's Men"

[Niall Ferguson @nfergus]

The war may last days, but replenishment of the American arsenal will take months.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@geogvma Looks like someone is still very upset that Serbia lost.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

A small glimpse of hope.

[Woofers @NotWoofers]

Azerbaijan thanking Armenia. What a world we live in.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@saharasajjadii The 'noble savage' myth went deep into their psyches without them noticing.

[Lam Sze Hong @OOceanocean]

@JaiSaini3008 They see the Islamists as the only remaining 'revolutionary' forces following the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the communist blocs.