China

I don't necessarily disagree with the article, I just want to point out that outside of the US others will readily view this line of thought as hypocritical and self-serving.

As a US citizen, I try to consider how the rest of the world may view our actions (glass houses and all). Following the logic here it would make sense for the rest of the world to cutoff trade with the United States due to the Iraq war, which has caused many civilian deaths.

But if you agree that the rest of the world should have sanctioned the US for the Iraq war (among other things) then there might be a consistency with trying to sanction China.

The Iraq war is just one example out of the many atrocities that the US has committed around the world. (as we speak, the US is currently supporting coups in Latin America).

So even though the US has absolutely no moral high ground - I still think that it is important for individual Americans to take a stand against atrocities around the world. I don't think we can discredit Drew's post based on the fact that the US government is just as (or more) evil than the Chinese government.

I do think that special care needs to be taken to avoid the hypocrisy and call out US atrocities as they happen - but calling out the Chinese crimes is very important in the current global climate.

> outside of the US others will readily view this line of thought as hypocritical and self-serving

Sitting here in a former eastern block country I completely disagree. It is absolutely obvious that communism is by far humanity's greatest moral failure and China just proves it again.

United States would need need to start dropping nukes on cities to even approach communism's death toll. A regime change, however misguided, here and there won't be enough for centuries.

The US has always valued "principle" over actual results. In Iraq, Saddam was "evil", so he had to go, even though it would leave the entire country in the power vacuum and destroy the livelihoods of the average Iraqi. Ditto for Gaddafi in Libya.

This post is much the same way. A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom. This happened in South Korea, which many forget used to be a brutal military dictatorship.

This line of thinking just makes people sit on their hands. Individual citizens can always urge their Government to take actions against atrocities such as being committed by China.

The fact that I, a non-citizen can live in US and call out its mass killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan denotes the difference between US and China.

> Many forget

They never knew, if lying by omission is a crime, all media is guilty of it.

I am sure the relatives of the mass killings in Iraq and Afghanistan appreciate this subtle difference.

"A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom."

We've been testing that theory for decades with negative results.

Maybe it works other places, but it doesn't seem to be working in China.

Perhaps you just need to wait longer?

There's no moral equivalence between China's totalitarianism and the U.S. China is worse by orders of magnitude both in degree and kind.

Comparing the two is just an excuse to do nothing.

In the meantime, feel free (pun intended) to protest misdeeds by the U.S., vote for new leaders, organize with like-minded individuals, or buy weapons.

(Aside: many people feel like buying weapons is completely futile against oppression. But it reduces your dependence on the government for protection, and makes it harder for the federal government to convince local police to carry out their dirty work. Also, really bad governments never seem to want citizens to be armed, so perhaps there's a reason for that.)

Baby steps. China has fewer political prisoners than they did during the Cultural Revolution. Crowd control uses rubber bullets instead of metal ones. They even allegedly stopped using execution victims' organs 2015, which is doubtful, but they most likely aren't doing it as often (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China).

South Korea achieved democracy when their GDP per capita was $4k. China's GDP per capita is approaching $9k. When will they be rich enough that they yearn for democracy?

Meta: I think the rhetoric of humility is more powerful here.

"We are not perfect, but we can't stand by. We have sins of our own that we are trying to rectify, but we cannot allow what you're doing."

The flaw in mutual criticism without admission of guilt is that saying "we're good" even in comparison is so obviously self-serving that it gives your opponent a trivial excuse to dismiss you.

>A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom.

This was the lie told to the American people in the 90s to justify PNTR with the PRC. We know it was a bald-faced lie now. Why are you saying this?

The PRC will most likely not escape the Middle Income Trap before their population pyramid massively inverts. No other country has aged so quickly at such a large scale before. Their population and working age groups are at the largest they will ever be right now and will steadily decline starting in 5-10 years.

I think collapse of the current government is more likely than a peaceful ROC-esque (Taiwan) transition from dictatorship to democracy.

> the US is currently supporting coups in Latin America

Should it support popular coups (that promise elections as soon as they take over) or dictatorships?

I'd argue that the ROC transition was not peaceful at all. Thousands of civilians were killed in the February 28 massacre [1] and tens of thousands imprisoned in the ensuing White Terror [2], and martial law did not end until 30+ years later. But now I think Taiwan is by far the leading democracy in east Asia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28_incident [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)

Well, "peaceful" relative to historical Chinese government transitions at least. :D

I hope so. But we have to start considering the possibility that we are causing more harm than good.

For instance, if China's economic influence is stifling free speech in the west, that's a pretty disturbing trend.

Americans are admitting our flaws, constantly. And when we do that, we don't compare ourselves to China to divert the issue. But debates about China always end up with this diversion into US flaws.

This is an example of whataboutery, a fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Not its not, but even if it was - so what? Since when did pointing out double standards become trivially dismissable by a single word?

Its seems to be a very recent American phenomenon.

Where I live it is shameful and very damaging to one's credibility to be exposed for maintaining double standards.

Given that the USA has federal and state laws preventing and punishing even muttering an idea about not selling to Israel, I'd say you should consider adding a few names to that list.

If its actually free speech you care about.