Originally Posted by MercifulZidane
Here’s a full reply, couldn’t edit the old one :
I’m not whataboutinganything , and if you want to hide behind narrow logical fallacies to defend hypocrisy, fine. I’m just pointing out the fact that most westerners/Europeans have not a leg to stand on when decrying human rights and other types of abuses in other countries (China). You of course have the freedom to do so, but from my point of view this is an ultimate hypocrisy and at times, laughable.
I realize Americans, with an American education, are biased and mostly taught, from childhood, about the positive aspects of their country, historical and otherwise. China is not the only country that indoctrinates their citizens, every country does to a certain extent. As a child I lived and went to school in Canada, in the US, and in Mexico, as well as college in the US. I experienced, first hand, how history “changes” and historical events are “different” depending on which country you are in. In History classes in elementary school in the US, I experienced firsthand how children are taught that the nukes were dropped on Japan out of necessity and to save lives, but in Mexico, Canada , and many other places , history says that the war was already won and that the nukes were dropped to demoralize and make an example - but I digress.
Yes, the Chinese government is very unlike western governments in many aspects, and yes, they often do horrendous things. Yes, it is useful to point out these things, but it is not truthful to paint China as an evil caricature. For example, imagine if the city of New York, like Hong Kong, was faced with massive, disruptive, economy-paralyzing protests . Imagine if these protests lasted for months and often devolved into violence and chaos. How would the US government react? During the Ferguson unrest in 2014, a de-facto martial law was declared, and this was a much smaller scale event than a hypothetical New York scenario.
The Hong Kong police, along with the Chinese government, have handled the Hong Kong crisis very professionally, but (going back to my point about bias and caricaturization), if one reads western media and comments by westerners, these are often tinged by language and words such as “authoritarian”, “fascist”, “dictatorship”, “autocratic”, etc. In reality the situation has been handled not unlike many western governments have handled similar situations (the yellow vest movement in Paris, during which the western media treated the French government much more fairly).
As another example, people in the US often decry Chinese prisons and detention camps. Yes, the Chinese government is no saint. China has had many severe problems (riots) with certain sectors of the Muslim population and the reaction of the CCP has been to “re-educate” these people with questionable methods. One must realize that the CCP officially espouses state atheism and I suppose that it is natural that a government with such a high degree of control would resort to methods such as the Uyghur re-education camps to clamp down on what it considers unreasonable conduct. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy being one of these Muslims, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t enjoy being an African American stuck in the ghetto, with a super high chance of imprisonment, either. The distinction here is that the Chinese government wields a higher degree of control over its (nearly 1.5 billion) populace, and thus imprisons them with a purpose, while on the other hand, the US government, or society, through negligence, doesn’t care enough about their citizenry to educate them enough to prevent them from ending up in prison. The result is very much the same on both sides - large amounts of minorities imprisoned. Few countries have the moral high ground to credibly denounce Chinese prison camps (Norway, with its extremely humane prison system would be one of the few).
Again, I’m not saying the Chinese government is “good” or that the US government is “bad”. In my cynical view, they are all “bad”, and I think most governments are borderline highbrow criminal organizations. What took me by surprise was the extreme bias contained in this thread, and other similar discussions, and the western media in general, when talking about China. It is at times, laughable, how people latch on to these du jour issues and instead of attempting to be objective , they only spout idealistic propaganda .
