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Yes the west is not perfect either, but let's not pretend as if Chinese citizens enjoy even a fraction of the freedom and liberty as Americans in the U.S. In on
by JSavageOne 6y ago
Yes the west is not perfect either, but let's not pretend as if Chinese citizens enjoy even a fraction of the freedom and liberty as Americans in the U.S. In one of these countries they kidnap you if you criticize the government, guess which.
- Klinky 6y agoThe US government was kidnapping people to torture them, and some people still believe it wasn't real torture. Gitmo is still open. The US prison system is often used as a tool against minorities. NSA reach is always growing. Corporate retaliation to silence dissenters is real, as highlighted in this very article. Yes CCP is worse on many fronts, but we can't do much other than unwind our ties to China, which corporate America does not want to do, and fix our own backyard. Anything else just sounds like someone looking for a convenient excuse and scapegoat.
- yters 6y agoI dont't know why we don't use our economic clout to make life better for Chinese citizens. It is the CCP that needs our money, not the other way around.
- Klinky 6y agoCorporations need the cheap repressed labor as much as China needs US Dollars. It's the perverse incentives of capitalism. Quality of life and human rights crusades are a potential byproduct of capitalism, not the goal, nor in anyway guaranteed. Maybe you'll hear some corp heads beat the anti-China drum, but they'll silently be reviewing their quarterly earnings report to make sure overseas labor expenses aren't eroding profit margins.
- yters 6y agoCheap labor does not require brutal repression, massive concentration camps, nor organ harvesting and execution of dissidents. Cheap labor is just a function of cost of living imbalance, and is available in many non repressive regimes. If we eliminated the oppressive CCP, we would still have massive amounts of cheap labor in China, just like we do in India.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoWe do - that's the natural consequence of our economic interdependence with China, and one of the strongest arguments for it. Despite CCP oppression, the average Chinese citizen has had a rapidly increasing quality of life over the past few decades.
- yters 6y agoAnd despite the southern oppression of slaves, the average quality of life for a non-enslaved southerner, especially the plantation owners, increased rapidly. I guess we also won't count the massive famines that killed millions of Chinese, brought about by Communist collective farming.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoWe were talking about our economic clout. Those famines were pretty bad, but they weren't caused by that.
- Klinky 6y agoI would be leery of saying we're doing anything other than feeding the beast at the moment. Yes common citizens may have seen some improvement in QoL, but the regime is more powerful than ever.
- JSavageOne 6y agoAgain, the atrocities committed by the CCP are in a whole different league. For example I post on Twitter all the time criticizing President Trump and the U.S. government. If I were a Chinese citizen in China criticizing Xi Jinping, first of all Twitter is blocked (as is Google, Facebook, and basically half the internet), and I'd be kidnapped and never seen again. Again the U.S. has a ton of problems. But equating them to the CCP is like equating Trump or Hillary Clinton to Hitler. I don't like Trump, but he is an angel compared to Hitler.
- Klinky 6y agoThen why is any corporation or person allowed any involvement with China? Where are the heavy-duty sanctions to punish China and those businesses who interact with it? You'll hear this big anti-China talk, but no one actually wants to shutdown trade with China. It is too lucrative. It just sounds like a bunch of people complaining about China to distract from domestic problems.
- JSavageOne 6y agoI never said that we should ban trade with China or impose sanctions. I don't see how that's relevant.
- Klinky 6y agoThen how do you punish China for their actions? Right now the way the US behaves only further encourages their behavior. There is an economic price to pay to take the moral high ground, and it's a price that no one seems to want to pay.
- pinkfoot 6y agoAnd the CCP an Iran are a human rights paradise compared to Saudi Arabia. If we are talking about principles here.