Are you trying to say all states use coercion, or actually trying to draw parallels between Chinese and US government's methodology for suppressing dissent? Bec

Are you trying to say all states use coercion, or actually trying to draw parallels between Chinese and US government's methodology for suppressing dissent? Because if it's the latter, they are not comparable. You wouldn't even hear of a Chinese soldier who did what Manning did, regardless of motivations and how wrong the military's exposed actions were. Neither would his family hear about him, ever again. People have been executed in China for far less, sometimes simply for losing a high-stakes political game. The larger point I was trying to make is that having the rule of law usually moderates the severity of repression, sure, but it's not just a difference in degree. It's a difference in kind - it prevents arbitrary oppression. You can fault the US for suppressing whistle-blowers/leakers, but you cannot tell me those whistle-blowers/leakers simply stumbled into their actions without knowing they'll get in trouble. They knew the game, and knowingly broke its rules. Are there rules in China? Maybe, until there aren't. Ask the two Canadians being held in isolation without even the right to a book, just because their files turned up at the wrong bureaucrats desk and became needed to send a message to the Canadian government. This is also why I won't set foot in the PRC if I can help it. I don't want to be used as a message to my government, no matter how unlikely it is for an insignificant pawn like me to get caught up in something like that. I'll limit my travel to places where I can read up on rules beforehand, and those rules are actually followed.