>>13061845>founded on the principle that Chinese are the smartest, bravest raceUnlike most of the world they could have industrialized first, there are many reasons for why Europe beat them but it's not like China was too culturally backwards or too undeveloped to pull it off. And it was mostly 'Western' powers who turned China into the basket case that lead to the rise of the CCP in the first place. You can't really blame them for developing and catching up, it's only natural that they strive to renege on unequal treaties that were forced upon them when they were weak.
It's like expecting the US to stop meddling in middle America or Russia to give up their great power ambitions in central Asia and eastern Europe. We cannot deny them their sphere of influence or impose regime change on them but that's ok.
>So why is China building a space station when there are clearly more reasonable goals for their space program? Because it legitimizes the CCP. Everything that is allowed to happen in China happens for that reason: it legitimizes the CCP.What makes you think that they wouldn't do the same thing if China was a liberal democracy? Why aren't the US and the EU outsourcing all engineering and construction to Russia but developing their own space industries?
Policies that work also legitimize the CCP. In fact I'd say that's the main reason the CCP is in power still: for the vast majority of Chinese the good out weights the downsides.
