Because there's context around these topics beyond just China did something bad or the US did something bad, which is that China and the US are locked in a comp

Because there's context around these topics beyond just China did something bad or the US did something bad, which is that China and the US are locked in a competition. In a competition, if you hobble yourself and your opponent doesn't, you lose. Not comparing the actions of both sides and only focusing on the actions of one is like judging a race by scrutinizing every detail of one racer while ignoring the other one doping himself either now or in the past and getting a major lead. It offends the fundamental human instinct for fairness. I'm reminded of this article that was posted a while ago: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/why-we-fightand-can-we-stop/309525/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/why-we-... TLDR: Everyone has an innate sense of justice and fairness, which drives us to engage in cooperative behavior and punish self-serving behavior and allows us to cooperate. However, we also tend to weigh our own good behavior more heavily and downplay our bad behaviors, and we do the opposite for others. This is necessary for us to push for harder bargains when cooperation is over and it's time to split the spoils. Claiming whataboutism seems like a major case of downplaying bad and unfair behavior when it is pointed out by brushing it off as nonexistent or not relevant to the debate over spoils.