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> which not only completely ignores mistreatment of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities - from imprisonment but the US statistics on imprisonment of minori

> which not only completely ignores mistreatment of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities - from imprisonment but the US statistics on imprisonment of minorities is no better. > For example the frequent adulteration of food (including baby food) with poisons all major countries have scares and recalls due to contamination > The panopticon surveillance really? After all the details come out in the last 5 years, surveillance cannot be thrown at the Chinese alone. UK leads CCTV per population (or some metric). NSA data slurping revelations... > and the inevitable lack of reforms to public health and safety. why do you think the Chinese do not make improvements to public health and safety? Of course they do. > Increasing nationalism, police observation and 'patriotic' violent attacks on foreigners errr are you blind to the rise of this in the US since Trump and UK since brexit? > Violence against medical professionals when patients feel Bombing abortion clinics comes to mind > The rise of an unelected dictator forming a cult of personality and the subsequent reinvigoration of anti-foreign, nativist han Chinese sentiment, and the increased suppression of minorities and dissent that has resulted. Change unelected to "unelected by the majority" in higly disputed elections countrywide with many cases of fraud and vote tampering and I can think of another country this applies to Anyway, why does the above mean there is no "American Dream" in China, when most the accusations you make can be levelled (in some form) to the US as well

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Cherry-picking? Some of the objections are reasonably reflected back at the Western world, but most are nowhere to the degree perfected in China. War on Muslims (systematic destruction of Mosques etc); military conflict with Tibet (their own people?); the astonishing 'social credit score' system. Sure there may be an American Dream in China, if you line up with the acceptable profile of citizen. But the Dream is supposed to be for everybody; that's foundational to the idea.
hnbroseph 7y ago
> Anyway, why does the above mean there is no "American Dream" in China, when most the accusations you make can be levelled (in some form) to the US as well this seems fallacious. it's not clear how the various whataboutisms you're engaging in establishes or relates to "the american dream in china" actually existing or not.
dbspin 7y ago
This is the definition of whataboutery. 'America is bad to', is not an argument against any critique of China. Any US or European citizen can travel freely throughout their country or to most countries in the world. While the US carceral state is indeed abominable and a continuation of the suppression of African Americans, America does not have prison camps holding a million members of an ethnic minority. The NSA surveillance programme revealed by Snowdon and Manning is awful, as are the continuing attempts to prosecute and silence whistle blowers. Fortunately the US does not regularly send police officers to harass citizens based on their expressed political beliefs. Nor does it scrub political communication and expression from the internet or censor it from public media. Electoral fraud and gerrymandering are awful. They are in no sense comparable to actual dictatorship however. Critiques of murderous dictatorships like those in Russia, China and North Korea are always side tracked like this. No one is disputing the many and varied faults of liberal democracies. But to hold them up as equivalent to the imprisonment of Uyghurs, the harvesting of prisoner organs and so on is disingenuous to say the least. Not least because we in the west have the privilege of making these critiques, which Chinese do not.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

Cherry-picking? Some of the objections are reasonably reflected back at the Western world, but most are nowhere to the degree perfected in China. War on Muslims (systematic destruction of Mosques etc); military conflict with Tibet (their own people?); the astonishing 'social credit score' system. Sure there may be an American Dream in China, if you line up with the acceptable profile of citizen. But the Dream is supposed to be for everybody; that's foundational to the idea.

hnbroseph 7y ago

> Anyway, why does the above mean there is no "American Dream" in China, when most the accusations you make can be levelled (in some form) to the US as well this seems fallacious. it's not clear how the various whataboutisms you're engaging in establishes or relates to "the american dream in china" actually existing or not.

dbspin 7y ago

This is the definition of whataboutery. 'America is bad to', is not an argument against any critique of China. Any US or European citizen can travel freely throughout their country or to most countries in the world. While the US carceral state is indeed abominable and a continuation of the suppression of African Americans, America does not have prison camps holding a million members of an ethnic minority. The NSA surveillance programme revealed by Snowdon and Manning is awful, as are the continuing attempts to prosecute and silence whistle blowers. Fortunately the US does not regularly send police officers to harass citizens based on their expressed political beliefs. Nor does it scrub political communication and expression from the internet or censor it from public media. Electoral fraud and gerrymandering are awful. They are in no sense comparable to actual dictatorship however. Critiques of murderous dictatorships like those in Russia, China and North Korea are always side tracked like this. No one is disputing the many and varied faults of liberal democracies. But to hold them up as equivalent to the imprisonment of Uyghurs, the harvesting of prisoner organs and so on is disingenuous to say the least. Not least because we in the west have the privilege of making these critiques, which Chinese do not.