You're not understanding what listening to the Pope before the govt meant. I mean in all matters, church or state. Half the American Catholics I know ask their Bishop who to vote for.

And estimated 1/13 of china is christian. So yes correlation definitely doesnt equal causation in this case. Think, if ever single christian in america stood up and went on strike when bush went to war with iraq how different america would be. But Christians in america are americans before christians. And the pro-life candidates are only pro-life for unborn. They seem to be pro-death for anyone who is living. I say pro-life across the board.

China overtook the US in military power 4 years ago

I find that impossible to believe, both as a Catholic and a person alive in the 21st century.

At any rate, the Pope's in Rome while the PLA is down the road with lots of guns. Take a guess at which is more likely to influence the actions of Catholics in China.

Shut up, Fasces349. China has fewer nuclear weapons, no finished aircraft carriers, and less advanced aircraft. I bet they don't even have reversed engineered alien technology.

China's a serious military power, but in conventional warfare the United States has no peer. It might not always be so, but it will be for awhile still.

@Invictus How about you read reports and look into the news. I am Catholic also and the faith of the christians in china is astounding. Its not that they are listening so much to the CCP, its that they are running things themselves. Thats what the pope is annoyed about. And what do you find hard to believe?

There are no Catholics in China.

Exactly. "Running things themselves" means submitting to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a front for the Communist Party. It's a way for the government to control doctrine and worship. Even if it were just a bunch of well meaning people of faith going their own way, Catholics don't get to run things for themselves. That's what Apostolic Succession is all about. The only reason these people are not held to be schismatic is that the CPCA is imposed by an authoritarian dictatorship and the Church would rather not pick a fight and make a lot of new martyrs.

You're not understanding me. In China, the goverment tells you how to be a Christian. There's no reason to even bring up that "x percent of China is Christian" because its all political.

It's the opposite of being a Catholic, where the religion controls the populace above their government.

Ah the smell of American pride in this thread. In this day and age it is so pitiful it is almost amusing.

^^ Agree.

A Catholic Prussian? I don't believe it. Next you'll be telling me there are Protestant Bavarians!

Is there a Tea Party in China? Maybe the communist prussian christians will listen to Sarah instead of the Pope! Can we now quantify how much all the tea on China is?

er, the US is atleast a couple decades ahead of China (and the rest of the world) in terms of military technology....

Churches were the vanguard of colonialism in China, using "religious freedom" as a pretext for intervention, extraterritoriality, unfair treaties, land grabs, and in general using Chinese "churches" as colonial fiefdoms within China. The Vatican can kindly kiss China's ass and preoccupy itself with its more important activities like beautifying Nazis and spreading AIDs in Africa.

What day and age is it that makes pride for ones country sad, Damian?

The age when your country is collapsing into an economic and political cesspool. And still likes to delude itself into think it will hold importance for much longer.

I hate America so much. Idiotic foreign policy, pathetic domestic policy, absurd culture, terrifying society to live in, and now an economic wreck courtesy of the multi-nationals your domestic policy spawned. The age of America mattering is finally nearing an end and I say thank goodness.

Not that my opinions on America are really relevant to the thread. My original post was more a comment on how Americans have trouble excepting they are entering decline and that China has the potential to be greater then them very rapidly.

If you hate America so much, then you'll hate even more what would come after in a post-American world. It's not like Europe and Japan are fighting fit to take up the reins. You'd see the world dominated by authoritarian capitalist regimes like China and Russia, with nihilistic Salafi Muslims holding power in the Middle East, and a general period of instability in the international order. Be careful what you wish for, damian. There are worse things in the world than America.

Yep. But things will work themselves out into a better world. Humanity is progressing, and will continue to progress as we evolve as a species. Change/revolution is good. The chaos that goes with it isn't but the change in the end will be worth it,.

Where do you live? A real American collapse would mean the possibility of conflict even in areas where it's unthinkable now, like Europe or large parts of the Pacific, to say nothing of North America.

I for one would rather avoid the sort of unsettled international order which made the world wars of the last century possible. I don't share your belief that every change and revolution is for the good. Women in Iran used to really have equal rights, albeit under a nasty dictatorship. Before Putin Russia had a real shot a democracy, but now that time has past. Hell, before slavery existed in human societies slavery didn't exist. Things can go really bad for a really long time, as we saw with Nazism and fascism in general in the first half of the last century. The fact that you can be so nonchalant about the total collapse of America shows how much its done to provide an unheard of measure of stability to a great part of the world. We're in the longest period of peace in Europe and peace between great powers in human history. For all the many flaws of this country that ought to count for something, and we'd miss it if it went away. We'd miss it a lot.

Do people realize it was Yeltsin who crafted the current constitution, in order to take power away from the Communists in parliament? Do people realize it was Yeltsin who brought in the tanks and fired on parliament, killing nearly 200 people and wounding around 400 more? Do people realize Yeltsin was a wholly owned subsidiary of the oligarchs?

I think people suffer from serious amnesia.

I'm curious as to how exactly the US is promoting peace among the great powers. That's the crux of the argument, isn't it? During the Russia-Georgia crisis, who was it that tried to expand the conflict into a major war between NATO and Russia? How is NATO expansion helping to prevent possible conflicts between NATO and Russia? How is stationing anti-missile systems in the Czech Republic and Poland doing that?

And with China, who was it that immediately after taking office tried to transform the Hainan spy plane incident into a major imbroglio? Who is it that is constantly threatening a trade war with China over unsubstantiated accusations like currency manipulation?

And with Europe, the US has made it a policy goal to divide Europe in order to forestall the rise of a new rival. The US is what has kept Europe from reaching their full military potential, by actively blocking the formation of an independent European military command and keeping Europe subservient to NATO.

Typical.

Yeltsin was not a great guy. But these communists were the same people who ran the Soviet Union and tried to pull off a coup only two years before. In a choice between a flawed democracy and a communist reaction I'd say the Yeltsin side wins out.

Perhaps you are talking about a different war with regards to Russia and NATO. I certainly remember no attempt to expand it into a NATO war. A few battleships in the Black Sea to send a message that the Russians shouldn't go all the way to the capital, but nothing more. Expanding NATO was to extend the umbrella of US protection to other states in Europe to prevent Russia from using force to regain its domination of them. The Georgia War vindicates this. Stationing the missile systems was a deterrent against Iranian attack as much as Russian.

Look the results for the US allowing for a long period of great power peace. No major nation has fought a war with another since World War II. That's a BFD.

Hainan was a major deal. The Chinese were holding American airmen and kept the goddamn plane!

If you really think that about Europe, then I don't know what to say to you. Europe has chosen to let its militaries atrophy since the United States is there to keep the Russians out and keep them from going at each other. Europe is subservient by choice. That's a big reason for the unprecedented period of peace, and for Europe's total ineffectivness in the Libya intervention.

It is completely understandable American power couldn't last forever. My hope is that we do not experience times of suffering in the road ahead. So long as the world has peace and the majority of people are happy (and free), I couldn't care less if China becomes a super power with equal (or more) strength than the US.

Geofram there are an estimated 30 million catholics in China. An estimated 130 million christians.

You're counting Hong Kong.

"Yeltsin was not a great guy. But these communists were the same people who ran the Soviet Union and tried to pull off a coup only two years before. In a choice between a flawed democracy and a communist reaction I'd say the Yeltsin side wins out."

So apparently you're all for killing hundreds of people in order to force through a constitution that you claim today is undemocratic, but then yet you whine about Putin for Russia not being a democracy. Typical. Try to have it both ways while pretending you're some kind of democrat. If Yeltsin's policies were self-evidently popular he would have waited for new elections to take place instead of murdering his political opponents in order to grant him more power. The idea that Putin is responsible for the death of democracy in Russia is a butchering of history that I've gotten use to from you. The leaders of the 'coup' never fired tanks on their political opponents. Neither did Putin. But somehow Yeltsin is the democrat and the Communists and Putin are the authoritarians. Makes perfect sense.

"Perhaps you are talking about a different war with regards to Russia and NATO. I certainly remember no attempt to expand it into a NATO war."

That's because you were too busy cleaning your pom poms for America.
The whole reason there was a crisis to begin with was because Saakashvili was armed to the teeth by the US in the years leading up to the flattening of Tsinkvali and was given assurances just weeks prior to their invasion of South Ossetia and murder of Russian peacekeepers that the US would defend them if Russia threatened to intervene (Rice went to Tblisi when tensions were reaching a boiling point, Saakashvili thanked Rice for America's unwavering support for Georgian "territorial integrity").

The European Union has since confirmed that, despite the western media propaganda effort to portray Georgia as some innocent victim, Georgia was responsible for starting the war.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,578273-2,00.html

Georgia would only had made this reckless decision if they had some reason to believe they had backing from some powerful third party, and as the US had been championing the thug Saakashvili ever since he came to power in a 2005 coup, Georgia had every reason to believe that third party would be America. Furthermore the US had high profile officials running around in the Ukraine and Georgia declaring that "we are all Georgians", and encouraging the two hotheads to act more bellicose and aggressive. The current US administration has continued to call the presence of Russian peacekeepers in Abhkazia and South Ossetia as an "occupation". I guess that's their way of making sure cooler heads prevail.

And you think the crisis vindicates the view that Russia's neighbors, their territorial disputes included, belong in NATO? Really that's why the other NATO powers are chomping at the bit to give these countries security guarantees. If Georgia had been a NATO member Russia would not have been deterred from coming to the defense of Ossetians being slaughtered, and the choice have been A) not coming to the aid of Georgia and exposing NATO for being the joke that it is or B) coming to the aid of Georgia and igniting WWIII. That's your idea of stability I guess.

"Look the results for the US allowing for a long period of great power peace. No major nation has fought a war with another since World War II. That's a BFD."

You're simply assuming the US is responsible for that. You're going to have to explain Kennedy's placing of missiles in Turkey and threats of nuclear war over Cuba, not to mention the various crises around Berlin. You can't simultaneously whine about Europe's lack of desire to up a bigger role for its own security while defending the US's opposition to an independent European military command.

You simply attribute to the US everything that happens in the world, while ignoring US efforts to destabilize the international order.

And let me ask, are Iran and Iraq not major nations? Aren't you one of those people who claims Iraq was the 4th largest military power in 1990? What counts as a major nation?

2003 coup rather

China's massive army and decent tanks should make anyone who has a land border with China sweat, but China is no threat to America. China has no blue-water navy that could even consider engaging the US Navy. China also lacks the air reach to transport airborne troops to America, assuming that they wouldn't get shot down before Japan.