I will certainly not defend the US (or France, my second country) for having been exemplary in the past. Both have ventured into their specific form of imperialism, at different times. Both have directed or contributed to coups against democratically elected governments (Central & South America, Africa). Both have helped infamous dictators to stay in power.
However... China's imperialism is a real threat. I don't think that the citizens of the western quite imperfect "democracies" have just knowledge of the Chinese grievances against us.
The West immensely abused China during the XIXth century. On all levels: economically first, but also culturally. The resentment of the Chinese people is both very vivid and grounded on very factual facts.
Putin has shown where resentment leads. We thought that he would not invade Ukraine for the benefits were low in comparison to risks, e.g. large sanctions. But he did nevertheless, for Ukraine is - in his view - a central issue in the identity of Russia.
When we sacked the "Old Summer Palace" during the opiums wars, it's as if the Louvre in Paris, the Palace in Versailles and the castle of Chambord had been voluntarily plundered and destroyed. The Opium Wars meant we put millions of Chinese into addiction in order to counterbalance our commercial balance.
Putin's claims on Ukraine have no historical grounds, whatever he and many Russians think. But Chinese resentment towards the West are quite understandable.
Furthermore, Japan devastated China between 1937 and 1945 - with a rare level of atrocity. The Cold War has now made Japan an ally of the US, and of the West more generally.
Most people in the West have no clue about that part of History. It's not taught at school, or in passing. Which makes it even worse for many Chinese: not even knowing what our countries did to them is the worse insult possible. We also don't push Japan to acknowledge their outrageous war crimes.
If we want peace with China in the coming 50 years, we should start acknowledging what we did and ask for forgiveness - e.g. demonstrating our respect. Being able to apologize with very official, large ceremonies is not a sign of weakness.
And since this must not be taken as such, we need to be military ready, to be economically ready (not depending on China industry as we do nowadays) and socially ready.
By socially, I mean to be capable as societies to endure tough times. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that we don't care enough about democracy to stop the flow of petrol and gas from Russia. The EU pays Russia 600 million euros * per day* for it. We are not ready to go through an economic recession in order to save Ukraine.
We are weak.
We provide a big amount of weapons - but that's not a huge one. No planes, no tanks. We even stop ex-army volunteers to join the Ukrainian army! We could perfectly give temporary vacations to volunteers from our armies, as long as they disperse and go there by their own means.
So we need to stand up against Putin much more clearly than we do, just keeping the few legal appearances to avoid OTAN's country to be implied as an official belligerent. We can do much more and we don't. We could decide to limit the temperature in our homes to 16ºC. But our politicians are no Churchills.
China is looking. China wants revenge and I find it quite understandable - even if I despise violence to solve issues. We should prove our strength, our will to keep up collectively with China and its vassals (Russia becoming one of them very soon). And ask the Chinese people for forgiveness for our past behaviors, by providing all the symbolic reparations they rightly deserve.
True adults know when to apologize and when a bully needs to be stopped.
Our Western politicians have not enough courage for any of these necessary acts.
Let's hope that the coming war with China will stay "cold". Or that a common enemy appears to force us to cooperate. Aliens would be fun but, well, improbable... :-) Climate dereliction has the potential to be bad enough to collectively get our priorities right.
For sure, nor our politicians neither the Chinese are doing what is necessary, so huge "natural" disasters are on their way. Like Greta Thunberg repeats: that's what Science predicts, not a point of view of mine.
I envy my fellow country people who do not even think about these issues and can live in bliss. There is an issue of knowing too much and being depressed. As someone who is a minority in the US, I am forced to learn about these issues.
I am familiar with China's history with the west, there are plenty of Youtube videos that cover this topic so I think more "online citizens" are informed than you might think.
The US should pressure Britain to apologize to China. These days the US says jump and Britain says "how high?" I'm guessing that there isn't enough political capital that is willing to be spent to make this happen.
You could argue that HK 97 was a first step even though it has caused a lot of trouble looking back.
The US has a history of uniting when under siege and it is amazing what they can accomplish. Whether this will be effective against China's long game remains to be seen.
Climate change could trigger the war. China has a lot to lose (arguable more than the US).
Britain should apologize, but France as well and all other countries implicated (I reckon I don't know which).
The US and the democracies in general ought to put a huge pressure on Japan. I don't feel that we belong in the same alliance if the Japanese people don't do their homework. It will be very difficult for them, but a necessity however. I'm not holding my breath.
The whole thing is indeed depressing.
Everyone has a right to criticize China, it's a very disingenuous idea that you need a flawless past to levy criticism at an obviously bad actor. The CCP would love the advance that idea because it knows that practically no country, especially any country of importance, is perfectly innocent which I guess means no one can criticize anyone huh? Very convenient for China's abuses.
The West continually makes mistakes and is held accountable by its liberal democracy. Even anti-BDS laws which are IMO as deserving of criticism and as anti-liberal as anything else, they are moderated by democratic institutions and democratic laws. Anti-BDS laws are controversial even in the US where it happens on the provincial level. It also receives parliamentary condemnation and oppositional lobbying across the West in the US and powerful US-allied countries like France and Germany. Practically all US anti-BDS bills at the Federal level were either symbolic or failed to pass. Israel is hardly untouchable, it's controversial to the point of partisanship in the US.
And you'll have to elaborate on "targeting" by intelligence agencies. That's a pretty broad term. I'll tell you what China means when they "target" nonviolent foreign resident dissidents in Operation Foxhunt. They contact them to tell them that they have three choices: they can commit suicide, or they can return to China to be apprehended, or they can live knowing that any family they have in China will suffer violent consequences.
This is a perfect example of how authoritarian sympathizers twist and equivocate common criticisms so they can construct a false equivalence between imperfections by liberal democracies with the much more severe abuses by autocratic regimes like China and Russia. Not only does scale matter, it also matters that liberal democracies have the capacity to change. The US in particular receives criticisms from allies and non-allies alike, its disastrous second Iraq war has weighed heavily on American democratic politics and its citizens influence new behavior like withdrawing from Afghanistan. China has the right to engage in such criticism as well, it does not have the right to deflect its own criticisms and it does not have the right to dismiss its criticisms without demonstrating a capacity to change as a totalitarian illiberal democracy.
You are absolutely right in that everyone has a right to criticize China. They have done unspeakable things to groups like the uyghurs. As someone who is a minority, I understand full well how much I have it better in the US compared to a place like China. However that does not excuse the growing trend in the wrong direction of where the west is going. I've always thought that if anything will bring down the west, it is corruption or said in other terms: moving away from the values that made it great in the first place.
Each generation has to fight to move the needle in the right direction a bit further. The civil rights generation fought to allow people like me to be able to type this here today. The "greatest generation" before them fought to even have a country for the civil rights generation to build upon. Time will tell if BLM or some other forthcoming movement was the trigger that we can look back to and see that it advanced the country forward.
>The West continually makes mistakes and is held accountable by its liberal democracy. Even anti-BDS laws which are IMO as deserving of criticism and as anti-liberal as anything else, they are moderated by democratic institutions and democratic laws.Anti-BDS laws are controversial even in the US where it happens on the provincial level. It also receives parliamentary condemnation and oppositional lobbying across the West in the US and powerful US-allied countries like France and Germany. Practically all US anti-BDS bills at the Federal level were either symbolic or failed to pass.
This is not entirely true. The way these laws are structured is that some state level group funded by supporters of Israel (sometimes using money funned from Israel themselves) push to have these clearly unconstitutional laws passed and then they remain on the books until there is a court case where the law gets tested. In the case of Abby Martin vs the state of Georgia, Ms.Martin prevailed and got the law struck down...until the same people who advanced the law had it amended to make it so that the amount of money that is required to trigger the law is now in the 6 figures. Now this requires another challenge. 35 states have laws on the books and there have been attempt after attempt to get a law at the federal level(as you mentioned). This is where any credibility of proper governance goes out the window. All these challenges required volunteer donations and resources to be expended to defeat them and even then there are people at all level of governance that will gladly toss aside any credibility that the US has in order to advance their interests. You see this in the states amending the laws instead of realizing that they are clearly unconstitutional and correcting their mistake. You see this in multiple congress people attempting to try at the federal level every few years.
How is this a real Democracy? This is just an illusion of democracy and the reality is that whoever has unlimited funds (Israel and its supporters) will have their "free speech" heard while everyone else just needs to "try harder and better luck next time".
>Israel is hardly untouchable, it's controversial to the point of partisanship in the US.
While I wish I could share your optimism, this is not true at all. Take for example Ilhan Omar making a twitter comment about how Israel lobbies the US govt to pass pro-Israel agendas: A pretty obvious statement. It resulted in her almost being immediately stripped of her committee assignments(until AOC and her massive supporter base intervened). Contrast that with the Democratic party itself talking about how they want to treat Muslims as equals during election season but when push comes to shove, their election groups shut down the committee under their party wing that was made to advance Palestinian causes. Lets not forget about how Palestinian coverage is completely ignored or framed in a Pro-Israel spotlight in mainstream media. They only place to vent opposition that is left is the internet(ignoring the tactics Israel supporters use to get those people kicked off platforms).
Let me repeat from my previous comment: This liberal democracy is on a sliding scale depending on the people and the timeframe. It is because of that, the credibility has been severely damaged and that makes the West's criticism of China very much like the pot calling the kettle black. If there was an honest attempt at moving forward then you can make an argument that the values are being held but that is not what is happening.
>And you'll have to elaborate on "targeting" by intelligence agencies. That's a pretty broad term. I'll tell you what China means when they "target" nonviolent foreign resident dissidents in Operation Foxhunt. They contact them to tell them that they have three choices: they can commit suicide, or they can return to China to be apprehended, or they can live knowing that any family they have in China will suffer violent consequences.
I'm referring to programs that Isaeli Intelligence agencies have formed involving a network of policing online and offline to quickly identify and neutralize any opposition before they have a chance to go viral.
In the case of online policing, there are software applications that are developed by Israel's tech groups and associated organizations that allow people to be quickly alerted of any social media post or comment and to quickly go there and be a pro-israel defense. I don't keep track of the latest apps (I think act.IL is the newest?)
In the case of offline tracking, there are sites like the canary mission that publicly document any opposition to Israel in order to dox those people and get their careers ruined. In order to be removed from the website, you must make a public pledge that you will no longer defame Israel and that you are sorry that you caused trouble for Israel.
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act.IL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act.IL
[2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Mission
[3]: https://canarymission.org/ex-canary https://canarymission.org/ex-canary <-- This will probably alert them of this post.
>This is a perfect example of how authoritarian sympathizers twist and equivocate common criticisms so they can construct a false equivalence between imperfections by liberal democracies with the much more severe abuses by autocratic regimes like China and Russia.
You speak from an enormous position of privilege. Ask anyone who has suffered at the hands of the US's actions about how they feel about this "false equivalence". I bet you this is partially what is also driving many countries to adopt the Belt and ROad initiative. You think these countries are that stupid that they will be easily conned by China? They know that they are going to owe China, its just for many of these poor countries that have historically at best been ignored by the west or worst, been abused by the West, going towards China has some possibility of improving their lot. That is the West's fault for missing a golden opportunity: again I believe this is because the west has been slowly abandoning its core principles over the years.
>The US in particular receives criticisms from allies and non-allies alike, its disastrous second Iraq war has weighed heavily on American democratic politics and its citizens influence new behavior like withdrawing from Afghanistan.
It honestly does not sound like you live in the US. Because I can tell you as someone who lives here: this is nonsense. The decision to withdraw was an easy political win to increase Biden's poll numbers after negotiations of his build back better bill were faltering and he failed to implement multiple other promises such as significantly reducing student loan debt, providing an expansion of health care and failing to do easy wins such as legalizing marijuana at the federal level. The people did ultimately support him but it was not something that was top of mind given that they were still suffering from the fallout of year two of COVID.