Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on. Let us hope they do so as quickly as possible, not least for the sake of the Chinese people themselves. And let us work to improve our example and unity too in countries where we do have these things, however imperfectly.

Whether China liberalise is a red herring.

This is a geopolitical clash of power. It's not about respective political regimes, it's about relative power and influence. If China liberalises tomorrow none of the fundamental issues will change and China will still be a threat to the US. The only thing that will change is that the US will have to find something else in order to label China 'evil'.

This is a good analysis. You aren't seeing a constant drumbeat of bad China news because the US suddenly cares very deeply about Muslim lives - otherwise we'd be hearing a lot more about India, for example. China threatens the US' global hegemony. To the extent people in power care about China's political system, it is used to rope in liberals to an anti-China stance and manufacture consent for various measures against them, military or otherwise.

This is why the Chinese strategy is not to give in to US bullying but create an alternative order in the world. Either the US comes to terms with it or we see the US empire lash out even harder

> If China liberalises tomorrow none of the fundamental issues will change and China will still be a threat to the US. The only thing that will change is that the US will have to find something else in order to label China 'evil'.

Cite please. And won't the best way to debunk the "propaganda" be to just liberalize right? So ... everybody is waiting and has been waiting for decades, China should stop making excuses and get on with it.

I think the simplistic sort of thinking that capitalism and human rights are 'inseparable' from each other and can be 'exported' like Coca Cola or Blue Jeans is just a leftover from the Cold War. The reality is much more complicated unfortunately, together with the slowly growing realisation that the USA has quickly lost it's 'role model' status as the leader of the 'Free World' after the Cold War has ended.

The West needed 30 years to realize that (some are still working on this I think) because it thought that it had actually 'won' the Cold War through it's actions during the Cold War, when the reality was much more likely that the East had collapsed also without much 'help' from the West.

The countries on the 'losing side' in this battle of ideologies (like the Soviet Union and China) had adapted to this new reality much more quickly, both in different ways though, but none of them copied the 'obviously superior' model of the Free West.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes I've got the impression that many people in the West still wear their rose-tinted Cold War glasses ;)

Yes, nobody's hands are clean here.

There is, however, a pretty big gulf between the stuff the US has done and engaging in ethnic cleansing and running concentration camps as a matter of policy.

The difference is massive, and well known. Please don't try to falsely equate the two.

The comparison with India is wrong, or you don't understand the scale of what is happening in China. For starters, India is not re-educating anyone.

The US seems to be stuck in the 1950s, with much of the infrastructure and the attitudes in a similar state of stasis. The US however hasn't lost its role model status, despite embarrassments like Bush (unless your definition is different). The petrodollar is just as powerful as ever, the dollar is the most powerful currency still, and US hedgemony is just as powerful.

> It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities.

Very simple explanation: it's impossible, unless the West can mow the rogue regimes left, and right, and is ready for a war with a nuclear power to do that.

> When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has.

Expecting a communist party to "liberalise" is effectively to expect it to kick itself out of power. The moment they loose power, their people will murder them. And if people wouldn't, then it would be their internal factions who will strangle each other without an iron handed big boss at the top maintaining internal order.

There is no way out for them. Their only way to avoid being torn apart alive is to stay in power, and their only way to stay in power is to exert, push, and expand it.

For them, to stop repressions, means to let their enemies to take the proverbial rifle from which barrel's the power grows, and to seal their fate, essentially to voluntarily chose death.

Any totalitarian system has an expiration date for this very reason.

In case of China, what that means is an instant gulag, or worse for 5 political dynasties:

1. Few remnants of Mao, and his wife's reign, and their confidants for, well, everything.

2. Deng Xiaoping's era communist billionaires, who will have to return millions they stole from the state in eighties.

3. Shanghai people, and Jiang, who will have to at least surrender their posts, and titles which they bought, and sold illegally, and all privileges coming with them.

4. Hu's clique, whose members will have to surrender their businesses, and stocks which they got through connections

5. And finally, Xi, and his friends, who managed to make a bigger mess in their 8 years in power, than the three previous dynasties combined.

Put it simply, do you expect a thief to voluntarily give a gun to the person whom he just robbed? An expectation that the West can share the planet with rogue regimes, is an expectation that a kleptomaniac, and a really rich person can live under the same roof. Even if the later can keep the former compliant under a gunpoint for some time, eventually the former succumbs to his urges, and the later has to shoot.

Different != Improper.

They're not perfect, but over the last 30 years they lifted half a billion out of poverty and didn't wage war all over the world.

Not everything needs to be wrapped in our style of propaganda, sometimes it can be wrapped in other brands instead.

Percentagewise, China hasn't done any better than South Korea or Taiwan at lifting their populace out of poverty. So I don't see how that comes anywhere close to excusing China's human rights abuses. And while SK and Taiwan only became democracies relatively recently, their human rights abuses even before then pale in comparison to what China is currently doing to Uighurs, Tibetans, and religious minorities in general. So yes, if anything improper is putting things too lightly.

It's not like the UK is a paragon of freedom of expression.

> "Proper civil society and human rights" - like the ones afforded to Julian Assange? Or the treatment of the Grenfell tower victims' families?

Now imagine a society where every dissident is treated like Assange, and every poor nobody is treated like the Grenfell tower residents. And with no recourse. And no free media to spread the outrage. And no reasonable expectation of privacy to even discuss the matter privately as a third party with other third parties. And no way to even talk about voting out those responsible.

That's China. Take your false equivalence elsewhere.

I think you're understating the human rights impact of going from third world to first world living standards. You like having your teeth?

paragon

This reminds me of a joke:

During Soviet times, a Russian man was arguing with a British man over whether their respective countries had freedom of speech. The British man said "I can go to the Houses of Parliament and call Margaret Thatcher an idiot". To which the Soviet man said "It's the same for us. I can go to Red Square and call Margaret Thatcher an idiot".

Thanks :)

Now imagine after you posted your comment some men bust down your door take you in, torture you. Not some sleep depravation, but hammer to your knees and electrodes to your testicles. See difference? Oh and yeah nobody will ever see you again, cause well you are just gone.

No, I'm saying that similar countries were able to lift their populations out of poverty without creating concentration camps for millions of political dissidents and religious minorities in the process. China's economic success isn't tied to its authoritarian regime, and it's actually pretty easy to argue that they would have lifted even more of their population out of poverty even faster if they hadn't had harebrained/genocidal schemes like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and communism in general. China didn't begin to see any significant economic success until after they abandoned most of their communist policies and began liberalizing markets in the late 80's and early 90's.

And no newspapers write about your mysterious disappearance, and your best friends and family can't even discuss it quietly among themselves without fear.

:-)

The US government is stagnated by politics and the current political culture focuses on screwing over the opposing party above all else. On the surface it seems like the grumpy old men in charge are just being stubborn and exercising their power to ensure their opponents lose, but if you look at the legislation that does get passed you start to see something very different.

Most of the legislation passed revolves around redistribution of wealth, and it's not taking from the rich and giving to the poor but quite the opposite. Any and all amassed wealth is being extracted from the poor and being given out to businesses in the form of lucrative contracts or, more recently, bailouts. The companies that receive this money promise that it's going to trickle down while they fill Golden Parachutes, perform stock buy backs, and find other ways to funnel that money to their wealthy share holders.

The message for decades was that the government was inefficient and wasteful, and that private business can do it better. We've all heard the stories of the $300 hammer. But when things are privatized things generally get worse. Fewer workers earning lower wages doing more work but the overall product is worse and it's usually not cheaper. Any and all reductions in cost are just converted into profit margin.

The US is being sucked dry and when there's nothing left, the globalist in charge will just up and move on.

I don't think it's that cut and dry. If people are being oppressed, why don't they leave? The innovations and benefits must outweigh the problems. I'm happy to be a US citizen, with excellent buying power.

What product is worst and more expensive that you have in mind?

> If people are being oppressed, why don't they leave?

It's not that easy. Assuming they can afford to leave, most cannot, the fact that they've lived their entire lives here and their whole support system resides here makes it hard. Many people aren't upwardly mobile, and things aren't bad enough to make them desperate.

> What product is worst and more expensive that you have in mind?

Privatized utilities. The pitch in the 90s was that you'd have a bunch of providers competing to offer lower rates and the result would be lower prices. The reality is that you pay a very high base fee (no longer subsidized in the rate), and then you pay a service fee to your provider. Most rates are promotional so once a year you shop around or call up your gas provider to negotiate like you would your ISP. Switching providers usually results in activation fees and other costs.

This works great for large consumers (e.g. factories, businesses) who pay lower overall rates but the poor suffer. An example, I used $1.76 in natural gas last month but my bill was $36. I paid more in taxes ($2.04) than I paid for the gas. People in my state pay $32 a month in fees for the privilege of being able to pay for gas. That's on top of the deposit people with poor credit have to put down.

Jeez as a Chinese person who lives in USA I find this comment very condescending and offensive.

> But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on.

I don’t want to get into a whataboutism debate about all the human rights violations the USA has engaged in (yes Trump but Obama as well and W before him and etc). But really I’ll just focus on “proper civil society”. Jfc is the sinophobia getting overt around here.

Even if I take the good faith argument that “it’s commentary about CCP not Chinese people” as I often hear after racist remarks, I’ll just point out I’ve been hearing comments like this all my life in all sorts condescending ways. Most of the time in bad faith. So I don’t give a shit about how you “intend” it to be.

How is democracy working out in Arab spring countries or Eastern European countries? Most westerners have it wrong where they think Democracy --> Economic prosperity, where in fact it's quite the opposite. Economic prosperity --> Strong government --> Democracy. If you don't have a strong state, Democracy (or any political system) just leads to widespread corruption.

If you're interested in learning more about how China, America, UK, etc were able to rise to power, I recommend checking out this paper: https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2015/2015-00...

i doubt you understand the "fact" you are talking about in person, rather than from some "news".

India is not re-educating anyone, but rules out muslim from citizenship? Not even mention the caste system, which is way worse than the color discrimination in US. When India became the 2nd biggest power in the world, all these will become target

Your arguments lack context. India isn't ruling out Muslims from citizenship. While the CAA is a very bad step forward, and has several problems, it is about what criteria satisfying refugees are available for quick citizenship, and doesn't apply to citizens of the country. India is certainly not running anything close to the camps China is running for Uyighurs.

India is actively trying to fix disparities caused by the caste system. It took the US 200 years to get civil rights, India had affirmative action from day one, and one of the biggest examples of affirmative action at that. The caste system is horrendous, but social change can never be brought so quickly ( atleast in a democratic way, we certainly don't want Stalin or Mao style quick changes)

The caste system, while bad, isn't in any way worse than color discrimination in the US. To quote just one example, India has very strong laws against caste based violence.

India has it's own shares of issues, but it's still an order of magnitude better than the Chinese Government.

Lifting 100 millions people out of poverty is totally different from lifting 1 millions people out of poverty. Moving a car involves much more engineering than moving a carpet.

If they haven't done great leap forward and cultural revolution it would be better, that is true. But by "abandoning all communist policies and began liberalizing markets", not all countries see economic success, ukraine, iraq and all recent "liberated" countries, and russian living quality in 90s was even worse than their late 80s.

And ironically enough, the fast developing era of taiwan, south korea, by today's standard, are not under any form of democracy.

> Your arguments lack context. India isn't ruling out Muslims from citizenship. While the CAA is a very bad step forward, and has several problems, it is about what criteria satisfying refugees are available for quick citizenship, and doesn't apply to citizens of the country. India is certainly not running anything close to the camps China is running for Uyighurs.

I could argue the same, the so-called reeducation camps only applies to xinjiang province, and for those could only get education from religion maniacs, rather than a normal school. And there were numbers of attack events were caused by it. Keep in mind Uyighurs are not only living in xinjiang, there are uyighurs living in rest parts of China and doing well.

> India is actively trying to fix disparities caused by the caste system. It took the US 200 years to get civil rights, India had affirmative action from day one, and one of the biggest examples of affirmative action at that. The caste system is horrendous, but social change can never be brought so quickly ( atleast in a democratic way, we certainly don't want Stalin or Mao style quick changes)

Aye aye, it took 200 years for the US to have civil rights for all (still problematic), and Inida takes 70+ years still working on the caste problems, when it reaches China, which was founded after India, we are suddenly asking for all equal society. Yes, unwillingly education is bad, but keeping them blank and poor is evil. Learning skills to fit into a society, even it doesn't fit into your propaganda, is not wrong.

> The caste system, while bad, isn't in any way worse than color discrimination in the US. To quote just one example, India has very strong laws against caste based violence.

US also has strong anti hate crime law, and is one of countries offers most assistance for anti-discrimination, law doesn't help unless vast majority are educated to do so, and vast majority has economy power to do so.

1. I agree that "proper civil society" is rather questionable as criticism of China goes, but do the others not apply? I think they clearly seem to be points of commentary on the Chinese political system, which isn't a reflection of a race/ethnicity. I have no trouble believing that comments that you have received throughout your life were in bad faith. I've heard similar (at least in sentiment) comments about the society in my parents' country of origin. However, I think the majority of those comments (as with the ones in question here) fit into the bucket of clearly criticizing a social structure that applies to but does not immutably define the people living in it, and certainly doesn't apply to you if you live outside of it.

2. On a slightly different note, I think that while whataboutism is generally neither productive nor relevant, in this case a small amount could be relevant because the implication is that some other countries have developed to a state of "proper civil society, [...] democracy, and so on" while China has not. If the claim relates China to some base standard in the author's mind, then pointing out failings in those places seems like an attack on the point itself, but I don't know whether the US was at the top of their mind when crafting that sentence.

> There is, however, a pretty big gulf between the stuff the US has done and engaging in ethnic cleansing and running concentration camps as a matter of policy.

A big gulf. Hmm. A big gulf. Umm, maybe you mean the Gulf of Aden? That's kind of big, and it's right near where the US participating and supporting the ethnic-cleansing-level siege and bombardment of Yemen by Saudi Arabia.

Remember most states of the US were founded on ethnic cleansing. The US supported Pol Pot, a notorious cleanser (although more of a self-ethnic-cleansing); it carried out mass bombing and poisoning campaigns in the same region of SE Asia, which constitute ethnic cleansing; it starved out the Iraqi people for years, which is borderline ethnic cleansing; it's doing the same to Venezuela right now; it supports Israel, an ethnic/religious-supremacy state held up by keeping the indigenous people of the country outside of it, as refugees - to ensure a demographic majority for the privileged group; it has supported Myanmar/Burma, while it ethnically cleanses the Rohingya; it has supported and still occasionally supports Sunni fundamentalists who aim to cleanse non-Muslims, Shia etc.

As for concentration camps - the US is infamous for its concentration camps. Mostly in countries it occupies, but also for a significant fraction of its citizenry - over 1% if I'm not mistaken. They're more class-based than strictly race-based, but still.

Hypocrisy.

Looks good to exibit tolerancy between like minded friends about accepted topics, abortion, sexual orientation, skin color and the like... But about a different political system other than western liberal democracy? No way!

And it's not like Chinas Communist Party (from Deng Xiaopin on) has not good credentials. It might be the more succesfull regime in the history of humanity if we talk about taking people out of poverty. Which system has improved the life of millions like the party?

But it doesn't matter. The aglosphere keeps with its cultural war against the new enemy. What are the signs that the Chinese want to export their way of life? Any recent war launched by China? Any attempt to force a Western goverment to accept their condicions? They are not the ones messing with other countries democracies.

Anyway, there are plenty of things not to like about the Communist Party, but seriously, the propaganda is out of control.

An alternative where criticizing the CCP or that Pooh will end you up in jail? An alternative where China claim my country's ocean, far from its Mainland?

No thank you. Stop pushing "China is victim of bully" or "China is here to save you from evil West" rhetoric.

Considering the actions of these capitalist nations during Cold War it's pretty clear in retrospective that promoting human rights and democracy wasn't very high priority. Propping up dictators and terrorist don't seem very much in those lines.

It's not sinophobia. I've got _zero_ issue with Chinese Americans as long as their English is good enough that their primary news sources still don't still sit in China (for example second generation or greater Chinese Americans). It's the legitimate concern about China pushing remote spying into its software and hardware that is sold overseas as well as the manipulation of people through companies like TikTok aka ByteDance.

You've got it completely backwards. Strong government leads to the corruption of society and a reduction in freedom. If you have weaker government then there is more freedom for everyone and greater economic prosperity.

Community owned ISPs seem to outperform privatized providers in terms of customer value, even if achieving sustainable cash flow can prove challenging.

-- https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:34623859

-- https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/6611-report-municipal-f...

> Now imagine a society where every dissident is treated like Assange, and every poor nobody is treated like the Grenfell tower residents

The British colonies over the years? Possibly Britain itself as far as the treatment of poor nobodies.

Look, China's a repressive regime, but: (1.) A bit less so than it's described by Western media, and (2.) Britain and the US are not categorically different, they're just, well, different in the contexts and degrees in which they oppress more and less.

> The British colonies over the years?

Sure. I don't see anyone here defending that in this thread.

> Possibly Britain itself as far as the treatment of poor nobodies.

Currently? Are you serious?

> Look, China's a repressive regime, but: (1.) A bit less so than it's described by Western media,

"Western media" is such a large set as to be meaningless. If you mean the mainstream media, please provide an example of two of where they claim China is more oppressive than it actually is.

> and (2.) Britain and the US are not categorically different, they're just, well, different in the contexts and degrees in which they oppress more and less.

No. There is a categorical difference between being democracies with major flaws and being a totalitarian state, between having real struggles in their open and adversarial justice systems and having arbitrary arrests as the norm, between abhorrent detention of immigrants and outright concentration camps based on ethnicity.

Placing the dystopian hellhole that is China in the same category as Western democracies is an affront to those that suffer under CCP rule and highly unproductive with regards to fixing the serious problems we have at home.

The US destroyed Iranian democracy and replaced it by the Shah, a brutal autocratic leader whose abuse of power and violation of human rights led to the rise of the current far-right Islamic theocracy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

The US destroyed Bolivia, replacing an elected government that was legally found to be allowed to run, with a far-right nationalist military-backed junta that refuses to hold elections : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bolivian_political_crisis

The US installed a brutal dictator in Chile, with the coup killing the legitimately elected president and overthrowing the liberal democracy, replacing it with dictatorship : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende

No, it is entirely clear to anyone in the world that the US will destroy your country and kill you if you oppose, no matter how liberal it is, if it suits their geopolitical interests.

China claiming your ocean is exactly the same political power clashing as US claiming UK’s 5G networks.

I lifted myself out of poverty. You canmt exactly compare myself (population of 1) with the efforts to move a country of over 1 billion people out of poverty. It's not as if I have somehow figured this out and can scale this up to 1 billion people.

Well the dominant class in America is white western European. So effectively race-based superiority which is why we have the BLM movement right now.

There’s no way defend against your accusations. It essentially boils down to “you’ve been brainwashed.” You’ve already decided your viewpoint is right and anything against it has read too much Chinese language news (whether true or not).

The “manipulation” you speak of is more hypothetical. If anything Facebook has done more manipulative harm thus far.

One way to think about this is what exactly would TikTok have to do to satisfy your accusations of them “manipulating” people? How does Huawei stop spying on Americans? If there is no answer then you can see not only how it is pointless to argue, but that your primary motivation is actually to prevent the shift of power, rather than based on any actual infractions by Huawei or TikTok. So should the Chinese just sit out of global economics because they could threaten US dominance and potentially spy on or manipulate US people? The current dialogue is centers on future power, not on any actual abuse of power by these companies. Not like the US actually spying on Angela Merkel.

America had to undergo a great amount of social change too before it came out the winner. With groups like the Black Panthers carrying around Mao's little red book, it seems to me that America had to (was forced to) become more inclusive to build allies and compete with the soviet union.

> And ironically enough, the fast developing era of taiwan, south korea, by today's standard, are not under any form of democracy.

This is I think an under-appreciated point... Taiwan and SK both made the most economic gains under military dictatorships. Social liberalization followed economic growth.

Something similar might have happened in Singapore, they're technically a democracy but have been governed by the PAP forever and don't really subscribe to freedom of press in the way the US does (but have their own ways of building accountability).

All very fascinating stuff. 10 years ago I would have said that China would follow the same path but in that case social liberalization still hasn't come yet. Certainly the GDP per capita has not yet caught up but the PPP was pretty close last I checked.

Surely this is a joke right? The white terror in Taiwan on a per capita basis was more brutal than anything in China. People were summarily executed, jailed, and robbed for even the slightest hints of anti-establishment sympathies.

No it's not. The US isn't claiming the UK's 5G networks. The alternative solution providers such as Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia are not US companies.

China is using its military to forcibly steal territory the size of France from neighboring nations. That territory does not belong to China.

The US can rightfully sanction any nation that uses its technology and its currency. Those things belong to the US. The sea territory that China is stealing does not belong to it.

Other nations do not have to obey US sanctions. They're free to abandon all US technology and abandon the US dollar and its banking structures. Go for it.

> What are the signs that the Chinese want to export their way of life? Any recent war launched by China? Any attempt to force a Western goverment to accept their condicions?

There are two distinct reasons I see:

1. Some people read recent actions like "investing in a deepwater navy", "setting up economic relations with Africa", and "forcing trading partners to not recognize Taiwan" as doing exactly those things.

2. Even if you ignore those things, if you believe the western powers have done these things already in the 20th century like "investing in a huge carrier fleet and naval bases around the world", "setting up colonies and promoting democracy around the world, sometimes through force", and "forcing trading partners into labor standards including pay and hours, bundled into a package we call human rights", then it's probably easier to assume others are capable of doing similar.

At that point it's a clash of values.

> please provide an example of two of where they claim China is more oppressive than it actually is

I'll give you one. Pretty much every single mainstream media basically says religion is banned in China. However to my detriment, every time I go back to China to visit my paternal grandma (who is a catholic), I get asked to go to Sunday mass with her. So, where is religion banned in China? Let me know your thoughts about this, do you think religion is banned in China?

> adversarial justice systems

You do realise that "adversarial justice systems" only pretty much exist in Common Law countries right? Whereas Civil Law countries don't use an adversarial system, which is pretty much the legal system of the whole of the EU and pretty much all of Asia including China. I've even read arguments from British barristers that the adversarial system can be an inferior system. I mean, the adversarial justice system certainly didn't do too well for the incarceration rate of black people in America now did it?

Chinese Americans are cool because they can read English, which is real news. I won't bother reading anything in Chinese or learn Chinese values, but I can judge them according to my beliefs because the English one is far superior.

Sounds kinda sinophobia to me.

Dont you talk about black panthers in this manner.

> The US destroyed Iranian democracy and replaced it by the Shah

Iran had no democracy. Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister by the Shah, he was not democratically elected by the people of Iran. The Majlis that nominated him were a collection of feudal lords that dominated Iranian politics, they were not democratically elected by the people of Iran, they co-ruled Iran as a feudal kingdom.

If Iran were a democracy the Shah wouldn't have been appointing the Prime Minister.

It has been 40 years, and just look at Iran today: zero human rights. You're going to try to blame the US for four decades of theocratic dictatorship? Laughable. The timer on that excuse has long since expired. Iran is responsible for the condition of Iran today, and the people that installed the theocracy are solely responsible for that too.

> The US destroyed Bolivia, replacing an elected government

That's an entirely false, invented claim. Which is why you didn't even try to support it.

From the numbers I can find from a cursory search, the upper estimates for deaths caused by the White Terror is ~32,000 (28k from the massacre that kicked it off plus 4,000 executed in camps). That's about .35% of Taiwan's then population of ~9 million.

By contrast, the Great Leap Forward alone killed 16 million, and that's at the lower end of estimates. The population of China at the end of this was ~665 million, meaning they killed 2.7% of their population just in the Great Leap Forward.

So even with the numbers most favorable to China and least favorable to Taiwan, Taiwan comes out ahead by an order of magnitude.

> Iran had no democracy. Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister by the Shah, he was not democratically elected by the people of Iran. The Majlis that nominated him were a collection of feudal lords that dominated Iranian politics, they were not democratically elected by the people of Iran, they co-ruled Iran as a feudal kingdom.

The Majles was literally an elected body. Yes, he was appointed by the Shah after being nominated by the parliament. That's how constitutional monarchies work. Justin Trudeau also was elected by a parliament and then appointed by the Queen.

The fact that a lot of the people in the Iranian parliament had feudal land is completely orthogonal here. They were still elected. A lot of the people in the US Congress are also incredibly wealthy.

Mossadegh was elected fair and square. He was overthrown and replaced by a puppet when he went against Western interests.

As for Bolivia, Morales was a legitimate, elected president of Bolivia. Under US pressure and support, the OAS fabricated evidence that the election was illegitimate, and the US backed a millitary coup. It was a coup orchestrated and following the interests of the US. Here is my source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/02/the-oa...

All of that information is also in the link I provided.

But you hadn't even heard of that. Or the gwangju massacre in korea. Right?

Why is that? How come some things are marketed extensively to the American public but others are never mentioned?

(Also, if the goal is to criticize maoist China, I'd go with the cultural revolution instead of the great leap forward)

> Of course hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes I've got the impression that many people in the West still wear their rose-tinted Cold War glasses ;)

In the UK we haven't got past the rose-tinted WW2 glasses (especially those born from 1940-1970 who grew up with tales of WW2 as kids)

They might be able to take some inspiration from the KMT slowly giving up power in the ROC without being eaten alive by their enemies afterwards.

I had, in fact, heard of the White Terror, and the suppression of the island's indiginous people. I had not heard of the Gwangju Massacre.

There are two reasons why they aren't mentioned as much as Mao's atrocities. One is that those countries are our allies, and as a result we are more willing to overlook their faults. And I don't think that's necessarily right, but it's part of human nature to overlook the faults and flaws of friends and allies. But the second reason is that, even ignoring those effects, Mao killed far more of his citizens (and far more per capita), making it a much more interesting and disturbing event in history. The atrocities of Taiwan and South Korea come across as "run of the mill authoritarian leaders violently cracking down on dissent" while the atrocities of Mao's China are on a whole different level.

FWIW, as far as dictators and genociders go I think Pol Pot gets the least attention relative to the scale of his atrocities since he wiped out 25% of the population, and in extremely brutal and arbitrary ways.

The cultural revolution is interesting. Yet another famine exacerbated by govt screwups is a lot less so.

Like you said, it's all about which side people are on. And I agree on pol pot. The only self-genocide I'm aware of in the record.

CCP views religion just like any other technology. It can be useful, as long as it furthers the goals of the Party. Once it stops doing that - or becomes a threat - it's dealt with, and severely in the case of Uyhur Muslims[1].

It's also worth noting that the Catholic Church in China is actually a state sanctioned organization that is not in Communion with the Holy See. There exists an underground Catholic Church that is in Communion with Rome, but, for obvious reasons, it's much smaller.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/ch...

Not a good example. Have the KMT top brass made it a raison de etre to live off their privileges? No.

KMT is a way different fruit than the CPC.

According to their report to the ministry of the interior, the KMT had more than 21 billion Taiwan dollars (more than 700 million US dollars) in 2020, which is maybe not a lot, but on the other hand Taiwan isn't that big and those are just the party assets. Individual party members had plenty of opportunity to turn their influence into cash as well. https://party.moi.gov.tw/pgms/politics/finance!partyList.act...

> Iran had no democracy

Oh, it’s totally fine then.

I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish but the wiki articles you list don't support the point you are making.

The US isn't responsible for the 2019 Bolivan political crisis and certainly didn't destroy Bolivia. I have to believe you are just trolling with language like, "The US destroyed Bolivia". Unless you call supporting the second round of elections (along with the European Union) the cause of the crisis they had. I've been in Bolivia recently, they will be just fine.

Not sure what you are implying wrt the Chilean coup d'état - the US didn't like Salvador Allende but he was overthrown by his own military.

The UK support of the Iranian coup d'etat in the 1950 (post WWII) was due to a conflict with AIOC (a British corporation) and US supported in turn. Not a good look by any means but also not a pattern of machinations as you make it out to be.

I'd recommend reading the paper I linked. If you disagree with what the paper says, I'd be happy to discuss!

In the minds of the people at the time Communism was such a great evil and afront to personal freedom, that "propping up dictators and terrorist" was seen as the lesser evil and preferable.

It's perhaps easy to forget now, but during the 30s, 40s, and 50s the face and "leader" of communism was Stalin – not exactly a friendly chap – and things like China's Great Leap Forward left over 20 million dead (mostly due to incompetence, not malice), and let's not forget Cambodia.

Details differ per care of course, but in quite a few cases all of this was done in the name of "freedom and democracy", which was perhaps not entirely unreasonable too. I'm not saying that it was the right thing to do (many other issues like national sovereignty etc. which come in to play), but I do think it's a bit more complex than your comment. I'm not sure if idly sitting by and doing nothing would have been that great of an option either.

There's a reason that communist symbolism and the like is considered taboo in many formerly communist Eastern European countries, somewhat akin to Nazi symbolism.

English is the lingua franca of the world and is the basis for the most accurate information in the world.

> One way to think about this is what exactly would TikTok have to do to satisfy your accusations of them “manipulating” people?

Set up a subsidiary that's subject to US law and rather than Chinese law and also has majority ownership in America. It's what the China enforces on foreign companies, so fair is fair.

> So should the Chinese just sit out of global economics because they could threaten US dominance and potentially spy on or manipulate US people?

I have no problem with Chinese companies participating in global economics as long as they're not based on stolen technology. Also it's not "potential", this has already happened extensively. China rose to prominence by extensive state funded industrial espionage and US companies were too blinded by greed to counter it. The US needs more laws in place to prevent this type of behavior and more retaliatory action when it's committed.

So many Chinese people I see online seem to think that the US is scared of China becoming more powerful economical or some other nonsense. The US created current Chinese economic prosperity through extensive work by Nixon and others in that era. That was all a massive mistake based on the mistaken idea that if China became more economically powerful they would become more democratic and more freedom oriented. That has failed to be the case and it's time to rethink how the US has handled China historically.

So when the OAS [0] fraudulently, according to the Guardian, the New York Times, and every subsequent study, accuses the legitimate Bolivian elections to be fraudulent, after which a well-coordinated coup by the military and the far-right establishes a dictatorship that keeps postponing elections (Haven't seen that happen in Egypt before), that is also completely coincidentally the group supported by the government of the United States despite the press, academia and intelligentsia of the country recognizing that the elections were legitimate, that is not a US-backed coup?

Because it seems to me that it was a coup. That was backed by the US. Which makes it a US backed coup.

[0] The OAS is a cold-war era organization that was literally founded in order to instrumentalize the Monroe Doctrine. Moreover, the current chairman of the OAS publicly states his support for regime change, and the organization is largely funded by the US. It was designed in order, and still largely acts, to implement US foreign policy.

The CIA literally had a budget in order to remove Allende from power. One of their top priorities was to fund, cause, and instrumentalize a military coup in order to remove Allende, which happened exactly in the timeframe they planned, and was executed by the actors that they had counselled and financed for the past two decades in the goal of removing any left-wing president : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_.... It is absolutely certain that the US was instrumental in the overthrow of Allende, with the CIA even publicly taking credit for creating the conditions that led to the coup. After the coup, the US politically and economically backed the military dictatorship. So yes, the US caused, and backed the coup. He was overthrown by his own military, that were organized to perpetrate a coup by the US.

It is literally a pattern of machinations. There aren't a series of dozens of coup d'états that mysteriously happen in countries with CIA activity that also happened to be against US interests, and that turned out exactly to further US interests. The CIA didn't make contacts in the militaries, in supranational organizations, and with local interest groups for fun.

>> please provide an example of two of where they claim China is more oppressive than it actually is

> I'll give you one. Pretty much every single mainstream media basically says religion is banned in China. However to my detriment, every time I go back to China to visit my paternal grandma (who is a catholic), I get asked to go to Sunday mass with her. So, where is religion banned in China? Let me know your thoughts about this, do you think religion is banned in China?

First of all, I can't remember ever seeing Western MSM saying religion is banned in China. Would you be so kind as to provide an example?

Second, while religion is clearly not banned in China, there isn't freedom of religion. I care very little about the rigmarole of religious people, but I do care about their freedom to keep those. China whitelists a set of religions, religious practices and religious institutions. As with so many other things in China, if you happen to find what you want within such an approved space, you enjoy freedoms. Outside of those preapproved boxes, there isn't freedom of religion in China.

You yourself bring up catholicism. I am not here to defend the catholic church (yuck!), but the approved catholic church in China is not allowed to have the same relationship with the Vatican as ordinary catholic churces elsewhere. This is not freedom of religion. And let's not even get started with islam, or let alone falun gong! You've got to be kidding me.

So, no, religion isn't banned in China. I've never claimed it is, nor do MSM tend to claim it is. The claim is rather that there is very little freedom of religion in China.

>> adversarial justice systems

> You do realise that "adversarial justice systems" only pretty much exist in Common Law countries right? Whereas Civil Law countries don't use an adversarial system, which is pretty much the legal system of the whole of the EU and pretty much all of Asia including China.

I'm sorry. As somone from a civil law country who usually gets quite annoyed by common law people assuming that common law is the system everywhere, I should have been a lot more careful with my wording. I should have said "justice systems where there is a true burden of proof on the prosecuting authority" instead.

> I've even read arguments from British barristers that the adversarial system can be an inferior system. I mean, the adversarial justice system certainly didn't do too well for the incarceration rate of black people in America now did it?

Here we go again. There's a lot that's wrong with the American justice system. The Chinese justice system is fundamentally flawed, to the point of being a worthless sham that merely rubberstamps the arbitrary "justice" of the CCP. If you cannot see that enormous chasm between these two, then I don't know how to get through to you.

It's a little bit disingenuous to compare the White Terror to the Great Leap Forward, no? As per your original post, we are comparing the brutality and political suppression of the respective regimes, not their governing abilities.