I was just saying that a military/geo-political forum like PDF should be a place to learn and discuss about truth. We all can't really make a genuine friendship here since most of us will never meet in real life anyway. So if we are to discuss about the truth, then it's better to have people like BoQ77 who speak calmly and respectfully. Or do you prefer members here to twist the truth and speak nice but false things about you to make you feel happy? That's what we do in real life (or facebook), but a geo-political forum should be a place for everyone to discuss about things truthfully. In real life, we don't usually have much chance to do that, people will always avoid political chit chat or twist the truth/hide their true views in order to avoid personal hostility.
So we should appreciate people speaking about the truth here, even if the truth won't be good to hear. As long as they are not giving disinformation, we should appreciate it. We Vietnamese are just naturally curious about the truth and like to discuss them. But most Chinese members here consider it as hostile or trolling. The reality is, we just want to discuss it and learn from it. I've previously made plenty of threads on some undesirable truth about VietNam.
@BoQ77 even created a special thread dedicated to ugly truths about Vietnam.
And naturally, we are also curious about truths from other countries and would like to discuss it and learn from other members here. A lot of us Vietnamese have Chinese friends in real life, but they will never talk about their true political views in order not to harm our personal friendships. So for us, forums like PDF, should be the place to discuss geo-politics calmly
and truthfully, then we can all learn from each other.
I'll give you an example, I once talked about China's non-interventionism and question whether that policy will be sustainable. I then supported that question by providing an academic source in which an Arab scholar talks about the current affairs in the M.E., how they view China as an interventionist power, and their negative perspective on China. Then a whole bunch of Chinese members jumped in to call me a China basher, an Indian promoting anti-China western propaganda, etc. And do you know what the funny thing is?? Some of those Chinese members are now here in this thread asking the question, "why does Jordan and Egypt hate us? This is beyond my comprehension."
That's why, I appreciate members like BoQ77, Lux de Veritas, NiceGuy, etc. They may sometime talk about unconvienient and undesirable truths, but they are still truths that we can discuss and learn from.
As for the China VietNam friendship, I was referring to
true friendship as opposed to "friendship of convenience" or "fair-weather friends." I raised the "China collapse" scenario to use as an example because it is often in times of difficulties that we find out who are our
true friends and who are merely our "fair-weather friends." So how can Vietnamese feel sad when China collapse? Well, I once wrote that Vietnamese anti-China sentiment is primarily political, it is a response to political events, specifically the SCS skirmishes. So if China collapses, do you think those political sentiments will still linger? No, because China will no longer have the time and resource to focus on the SCS dispute in such scenario, this means that the Vietnamese anti-China sentiment which originated from the SCS skirmishes will also disappear. You can check for yourself the surveys before 2008 and see that Vietnamese rated China highly back then.
But I agree with you, at the rate and direction of how things are going, the SCS dispute will escalate and I'm not feeling optimistic about this political issues getting solved anytime soon. We just have to accept the truth. In fact, someone just created a thread on how a Chinese Coast Guard has just blasted a Filipino fishing boat with water cannon. So for the foreseeable future, I see the political sentiments in each dispute country will linger on. But I retain my belief that in times of trouble, for example if China collapses, VietNam will turn out to be a
true friend of China. I'm not saying VietNam can save China, but that VietNam will truely feel sad about what China will go through...while some other countries will just think who they should do business with next.
But honestly, reading the comments in this thread from the Chinese members, it sounds like China is one of those people that is extremely hard to make friends with. It's like a person sitting in one corner and no matter how hard other people tries to approach him, he still think they cannot be true friends and give 101 reasons why. See, a Japanese member gave rational reasons why China-Japan can be good friends but some Chinese member said, nope I don't believe you, not good enough! I give my own explanation how VN-CN is true friends based on sentimental and emotional values, but still, that's not good enough. So now, I really have no idea.
Look at the Chinese member above me, he attacked us even though no Vietnamese or Japanese member in this thread has provoked him.
