> debts in terms of ecology disasters They may have made missteps along the way, but if Flint, Michigan or Puerto Rico were in China, they'd both be fixed by n

> debts in terms of ecology disasters They may have made missteps along the way, but if Flint, Michigan or Puerto Rico were in China, they'd both be fixed by now... Though hypotheticals are unhelpful, I know. > suicide sprees routinely making headlines. Suicide prevention nets, I haven't ever heard about something like that in any other country Bashing Foxconn (a Taiwanese company) is often done in the same vein as China-bashing. Even before the suicide nets, the suicide rates were lower than the population at large. It's just that when you have a large enough population working at the same company, any number seems like a lot. Even without accounting for the suicide clustering effect, the rate was lower than similar-age populations at universities. After the nets went up, the suicide rate became almost negligible, similar to the prevention methods installed at the Golden Gate bridge. > Because today you don't need a massive army to be a formidable power. Until someone fear-mongers you into a plausible enemy. And then you're screwed. Prepare for another century of bloodletting? (Shudders.) > How does China measure up to that? > ignore any progress in human rights A lot of the progress simply doesn't get reported in the West because it's not China-bashing enough to get eyeballs. There is this popular perception that freedom of assembly doesn't exist or that all protests get cracked down on. In recent memory, there was a strike of factory workers in Beijing and Shanghai, and it resulted in better working conditions and a higher minimum wage. There's lots of progress, but we just don't hear about it here. You should have seen the state of human rights during my grandparents' time when the KMT (the political party that self-exiled to Taiwan and was the official China internationally for a generation) was in charge. I'm glad we live in modern times and not those times.