China isn't just a large economy. If it was the European Union buying interest in Reddit, nobody would bat an eye, because Europe shares America's values of freedom, rights, and equality as cornerstones of society, arguably moreso. China is a repressive one-party state where dissidents are regularly silenced by imprisonment or "disappearing", citizens are ranked for party loyalty the same way Americans are ranked in economic creditworthiness, and ethnic minorities are imprisoned in concentration camps. They are the last people we want to be running prominent public forums.
This x100. Unfortunately China is pulling too many strings to ever be punished for these behaviors. Let's hope they start getting some backlash from citizens about these practices.
Otherwise it's going to be an interesting power-war between China and the USA, and it's unclear on which side the EU will fall.
China's problems are routinely exaggerated and "othered" far in excess of Western problems. After all, we understand the context for Western missteps. "Its complicated."
For example, can you believe that China is overreacting and violating civil rights after terror attacks from Central Asian Muslims? I've never heard of such a thing. Certainly no Western country aside from the USA, Russia, the UK and France would do that.
Meanwhile, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty doesn't seem to count for much.
They have a different history, different culture and different challenges. Demonization is not only wrong, it's a surefire way to mishandle the situation out of ignorance.
For one thing, that's not an example of "overexaggeration in excess of western problems". Just because Chinese crimes against humanity in their western provinces is new to you doesn't mean they are new.
Do you think the Dalai Lama is living in India because he likes the weather?
When was the last time America rolled tanks onto their university campuses to shoot students until they fell in line?
I think you misunderstood my sarcasm. Edited parent post to make it clearer, thanks.
America invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of unrelated Arabs last time we were attacked by Central Asian Muslims.
Russia? The UK? They've done plenty too, in response to very specifically the same broad ethnic group.
So how come only China gets a daily 2 minutes' hate on hacker news?
Maybe it's nationalism and the thucydides trap?
EDIT responding to below, I'm rate limited, have a good night:
I'm saying that:
1) There's no genocide. There's a mass internment. You're proving my point about bias by using that word.
2) I'm not qualified to judge relative morality of mass internment of your own citizens vs mass death of foreigners.
But most importantly,
3) I'm not even talking about China so much as I am about hacker news. At least nationalist conservatives are honest about their motivations.
If America's government were like Chinas, secret police would be knocking down your door for daring to criticize the government's warmaking decisions.
Tangentially, the 9/11 attackers were Arab, not Central Asian, and the decision to invade Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, not even as an excuse.
Regardless, you're trying to tell me that invading another country on poor pretenses and botching the occupation is totally the same thing as committing genocide of your own citizens, and then murdering anyone who says fie?
China is a terrible country to be a minority or dissident. But then again so is much of the world, even developed countries, only a few decades ago to be a black person in the US was horrendous even though the country itself was incredibly wealthy, and while most of China was living in extreme poverty. This attitude of "but we are better" reeks of an adult abusing a child because they can't run as fast.
Take Singapore for example: consistently ranks in the top of quality of life, yet an incredibly dangerous place to practice dissent. China is trying to emulate that model.[0] There's big investments from the Middle East in other social media platforms and I'm yet to see any of them clamping down on content criticising the Saudis.
> because Europe shares America's values of freedom
Interesting take. We certainly look and speak similarly, but there's plenty of differences. Regarding healthcare and education policies who do you think Europe is more similar to: the US or China?
Regarding censorship who do you think is closer again? European states regularly demand removal of social media content, prohibit news outlets reporting certain stories and imprison people for speech that would be clearly protected in the US. [1][2]
In the UK and Australia there are defamation laws that will bankrupt people for simply stating a provably true fact.[3]
The right to bear arms is virtually non-existent, especially for handguns and assault rifles.
The 4th amendment is likewise barely applicable in most Western countries, though sadly that seems to be the case in the US too nowadays.
Things like racial discrimination and LBGT rights certainly are similar. Workers rights too, though I'd call that more a function of national wealth rather than culture.
> ethnic minorities are imprisoned [4]
I'd like to put to you a hypothetical situation where a large region of the USA has a majority Muslim population which has been waging a low level terror campaign for 3 decades? What do you think the response would be? It certainly wouldn't be pretty, the US has no qualms about killing US citizens in assassinations without trial.[5]
Given the prison population in Iraq and Afghanistan during wartime and the horrors[6] found there, it's perhaps a case of walking in their shoes for a day. Democracy won't solve this, the majority of people in China support what's happening in Xinjiang. Anti-muslim sentiment is incredibly common.
> To Americans, the idea of the government forcing social media to censor posts may seem to resemble China’s internet censorship. Such legislation wouldn’t just be unconstitutional; it would be almost unthinkable.
> Google, Facebook, and Twitter announced in December that they would work to delete anti-migrant sentiments voiced on their networks within 24 hours of request
> he was within eyesight in Yemen of about 12 Yemeni intelligence agents and four CIA agents, all of whom collectively could have arrested him. He was not engaged in any unlawful behavior. He was unarmed and sitting at an outdoor cafe with a friend and his teenage son and the son's friend. All four, Americans all, were murdered by the drones dispatched from Virginia.
> nearly 2.2 million adults were held in America's prisons... nearly half of all inmates are locked up for drug charges...African-Americans continue to make up a disproportionate amount of the prison population
Highly recommend the book National Security Cinema by Tom Secker and Matthew Alfred.
They trawled through FOI documents to uncover a lengthy history of US intelligence agencies having holywood scripts changed to suit their needs.
> the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.
> Vietnam is evidently another sore topic for the US military, which also removed a reference to the war from the screenplay for Hulk (2003)
> It seems that any reference to military suicide — even an off-hand remark in a superhero action-comedy adventure — is something the DOD’s Hollywood office will not allow.
> If there are characters, action or dialogue that the DOD don’t approve of then the film-maker has to make changes to accommodate the military’s demands. If they refuse then the Pentagon packs up its toys and goes home. To obtain full cooperation the producers have to sign contracts — Production Assistance Agreements — which lock them into using a military-approved version of the script.
> Strangely, Phil Strub denied that there was any support for Tomorrow Never Dies. But the DOD are credited at the end of the film and we obtained a copy of the Production Assistance Agreement between the producers and the Pentagon.
> changing the code name of the military operation to capture the Hulk from ‘Ranch Hand’ to ‘Angry Man’.
‘Ranch Hand’ is the name of a real military operation that saw the US Air Force dump millions of gallons of pesticides and other poisons onto the Vietnamese countryside, rendering millions of acres of farmland poisoned and infertile.
> They also removed dialogue referring to ‘all those boys, guinea pigs, dying from radiation, and germ warfare’, an apparent reference to covert military experiments on human subjects.
China and Russia really have no qualms about being explicit in their censorship ways, most the population are aware of it. The Americans generally stay coy and go to great lengths to hide or at least minimise knowledge of what they are doing propaganda-wise because culturally it's an embarrassment and would be politically unpalatable to a country where freedom of speech and freedom from government interference are expected.
All of that is frankly irrelevant because it’s entirely voluntary. Any movie that wants to criticize the government/military is perfectly free to do so, it just doesn’t get support from the military in the form of shooting military equipment. That’s not really surprising.
Do you think McDonald’s is going to actively support a movie critical of McDonald’s?
World's largest economy is shocked and outraged.