7 ms·

China publishes a human rights record of the USA

120 points by bad_alloc 14y ago

GlennS 14y ago
I always find it interesting when the Chinese government does this sort of thing, because it reveals something of their mindset. In particular, they include two quite different things in their list: 1. Human rights abuse by the government 2. Violence by criminals that the government fails to prevent So the Chinese government is accusing the US of being neglectful towards law and order, and claiming that its of equivalent severity to inflicting human rights abuses upon them. I wonder how much they believe that, and how much is just maintaining face?
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  and Amnesty International and the UN in general does not include ordinary criminals as human rights voilations.
tokenadult 14y ago
I'll take China's criticism of human rights in the United States as something other than the "tu quoque" fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque the day that China has a free and fair national election for the national leadership, covered by an uncensored independent press. In 1989, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/tiananmen-square-anniversary-political-dissidents_n_870954.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/tiananmen-square-an... it looked like China was close to achieving that kind of political reform, and if it had, the world today would be a much better place. Until the reformers in China finish their difficult task of overcoming a repressive regime, the press in the United States will continue to report criticisms of the United States from all comers, and the net flow of immigration with respect to almost all other countries in the world will continue to be into rather than out of the United States.
m3rv 14y ago
No difference. USA, China - the same tyranny.
- chubbyheckler 14y ago
  stupid.
chubbyheckler 14y ago
Dear Chinese Govt, The one fundamental point you miss is that we get to talk about these human right issues. Your citizens don't. End of story. Thanks for playing. - USA
rickyconnolly 14y ago
Say what you want about America, but anti-government activists are not kept under house arrest. China does not have the moral high-ground to use this kind of ploy.
- jonathanyc 14y ago
  Good god, are you living under a rock? Read up on your recent US history - people are being imprisoned overseas, American citizens are being assassinated by order of the President...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- corin_ 14y ago
  My (possibly wrong) assumption is that the primary purpose of this release is to target Chinese people, not to get the rest of the world thinking "holy shit, America sucks". And so they don't really need the high ground for this to work, they just need to be able to control local propaganda and press.. That said, just because they don't have the moral high ground, it doesn't mean the points they raise aren't perfectly valid (n.b. I haven't actually read their release yet, so I'm not going the opposite direction and saying believe everything they said).
- amurmann 14y ago
  With the same logic the US human rights report should not contain anything about other countries that respect human rights better than th US. That would lead to the exclusion of most other western countries from the report. Everyone should be allowed to point out everyone else's human rights violations. Sadly most western countries are not gonna confront the US on this because they don't want to harm relations.
- antris 14y ago
  Bradley Manning.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    I don't think Manning could be called the typical activist. His case is a rather extreme example of the kind of discipline military organizations apply to themselves. Having said that, I'm too uncomfortable with his situation, but I would be that for every Manning there are a hundred Chinese who already got shot.
philwelch 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
jefe78 14y ago
While I - as a Canadian - am not a HUGE fan of America(nothing personal, just spoiled in the great North), I find it more than a little hypocritical for China to be pointing the finger at anyone for these types of things. Which isn't to say that fingers shouldn't be pointed. But maybe countries should start pointing them at themselves first? Look inwards and fix your own problems.
- mukaiji 14y ago
  But that's the exact point they want to make regarding the U.S. pointing the finger at everyone else without first trying to fix itself.
  - jefe78 14y ago
    Agreed. I'm not disputing that. I don't think America is actively trying to not 'fix itself'. I often wonder if some of its efforts are misguided, but I do believe there is a genuine effort. This is just China's way of saying, "You've got problems too, fix your house before pointing fingers."
    - DasIch 14y ago
      The NDAA has just passed a couple of months ago, Guantanamo still exists... The US is actively and obviously violating human rights. I don't see how one could possibly get the idea that there even is the wish to seriously mitigate those violations let alone a genuine effort to do anything about it, quite the opposite actually. Bush managed to give the US a reputation in Europe that is almost on par with Russia and China. Why do you think that is?
- gcb 14y ago
  And thieves should just turn themselves in. ...Canadians (but yes, conceptually you're right)
  - jefe78 14y ago
    Realistically, they won't. But ideally, they should. Wouldn't that be a lovely world? Damn Canadians and their happy thoughts... :)
rbanffy 14y ago
44 points?! I get the US is not perfect, but this propaganda piece would make a lot of my friends in advertising and marketing pale.
- zxcvb 14y ago
  I would downvote this if I could. I have no idea what your reference to 44 points means. Is that good? Is that bad? Why do I need to know?
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    It was the total upvotes the article had when I wrote my comment. I found that rather surprising.
    - zxcvb 14y ago
      I know what the number is ffs.. I just have no context. You were surprised at the votes... Why? You just showed surprise without any explanation.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    The number of upvotes on the submission. Anyway, I thought it was amusing. Sort of like the old Soviet Propaganda about how the US is a capitalistic wasteland of suffering. [0] [0]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OkqSvw7Mw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OkqSvw7Mw
modeless 14y ago
There is a serious lack of comparison to any other countries in this report. Just spouting statistics like "The violent victimization rate was 15 victimizations per 1,000 residents" is worse than useless. That said, they raise many good points and we should be ashamed of our incarceration rate and out-of-control "national security" apparatus in particular. Of course they are in no position to scold us on most of these points, but that doesn't make their criticisms necessarily wrong.
- jefe78 14y ago
  I don't think that was their intention. I believe their goal was something along the lines of, "You can point out our flaws all you want, but you've got problems too." type of thing. Although, I think it was primarily just a propaganda piece for local citizens. None of this is to say that fingers shouldn't be pointed. Everyone has flaws, it's a question of whether those flaws are being addressed and worked on. I think I know which country of the two is making a genuine effort...
  - pyre 14y ago
    Neither?
    - jefe78 14y ago
      Perhaps you're right. I feel like China has regressed quite a bit in that capacity though. I try and stay up to date on American politics and from what I can tell, there are some 'good intention' efforts towards fixing some of these issues. Unfortunately, a lot of them seem misguided; in my opinion.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    My impression, from living here all my life, is that very little is being actively done by our government to improve human rights in the US, and very much time, effort and money is being spent on reducing human rights. Three example areas are the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, and the War on Intellectual Property Consumers.
mebassett 14y ago
Not to defend China on human rights here, but to those accusing China of hypocrisy: China does this to point out the hypocrisy of the US - who is too happy to accuse others of human rights abuses while running turning a blind eye to its own problems (for some modern examples, see the latest NDAA or the patriot act). The economist actually had blog about this just recently: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/05/americas-example http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/05/americas-exa... I don't think anyone in Chinese government expects the world to take them seriously on human rights. They're just trying to deflect criticism.
- rflrob 14y ago
  >Not to defend China on human rights here, but to those accusing China of hypocrisy: China does this to point out the hypocrisy of the US - who is too happy to accuse others of human rights abuses while running turning a blind eye to its own problems. There are, I think, relatively few people who would claim the US has a perfect record on human rights, but I don't think it's fair to say that we turn a blind eye to them. These things do get debated, even if we ultimately decide to go with the less liberal option. Saying that we ought to get our house completely in order before pointing out human rights violation in other countries is wronger than wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong
- AJ007 14y ago
  Hypocrisy is an outcome of propaganda. Western views on morality demand justification for actions which others would be punished severely for. Yet, behind history, the "good guys" are just as ruthless and brutal as the "bad guys."
- guscost 14y ago
  I've heard the meme, but it surely doesn't justify any more of this crap...
  - amurmann 14y ago
    Can you explain why you think this is crap? Don't you think it's important that attnion is brought to every human rights violation everywhere?
dublinclontarf 14y ago
didn't they do this last year, after the US released a report...on itself? So is this an annual thing now?
olalonde 14y ago
On a related note, there has been a growing anti-foreigner sentiment in China in the past few weeks following a widely mediatised sexual assault on a Chinese girl by a British man. Just last week, me and a friend were drinking calmly at a bar when suddenly, two Chinese men smashed bottles of beer on our head. We were the only foreigners in the place and we have no idea what could have motivated this act apart from our presence there. I strongly hope this was an isolated incident and had little to do with the recent anti-foreigner propaganda. Some references: http://www.dailydot.com/society/anti-foreign-sentiment-china-sina-weibo/ http://www.dailydot.com/society/anti-foreign-sentiment-china... http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/05/15/beijing-pledges-to-clean-out-illegal-foreigners/ http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/05/15/beijing-pledge...
cfv 14y ago
Pot, meet kettle?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
mindstab 14y ago
Maybe we should think of this more as a supplement to the existing US published on on hundreds of other countries while omitting themselves. Of course it's a bit hypocritical but a) that's sort of the point, where does the US get off writing these reports either all considered and b) so what? Why are we saying it is hypocritical? It mostly reads as a collection of facts and statistics. We are annoyed because in this collection they read a bit like a condemnation from someone we also view guilty of most of these... transgressions? However the underlying data shouldn't be dismissed just because we don't like the publisher, that's terribly unscientific. And if we insist upon this, where is the uproar when the US publishes its reports? Ignore the hypocrisy, it's a BS smoke screen to try and dismiss the facts and stats. And yes, they don't paint the greatest picture. But maybe that should be looked into instead of just being ignored because we don't like it. Hypocrisy of the publisher has nothing to do with the validity and accuracy of the message. The hypocrisy argument can go round and round without accomplishing anything more than saying no one can talk about anything. It is unproductive so let's abandon it and actually talk about what some of this article is shedding some light on. Are we happy about that? If not, what can we take away from it and what can we do?
Karunamon 14y ago
Something something heal thyself.
wissler 14y ago
To everyone shouting "hypocrisy": the primary focus should be on on real problems in the US that need to be fixed, not on China's hypocrisy. Criticism should be taken seriously on account of its merit, not on whether the one giving it is perfect. Think about what the policy of not taking criticism seriously when the criticizer is hypocritical would lead to. How many people do you know who are absolutely perfect and completely unhypocritical? Most would say no one, but nearly everyone is going to agree that a perfectly unhypocritical person is at least very rare. So if you won't accept criticism except from perfect people, then that's tantamount to not accepting criticism at all. And is that a good policy? No.
Cieplak 14y ago
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u8l5f/chinas_yearly_report_on_us_human_rights_record/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u8l5f/chinas_year...
makhanko 14y ago
China Daily has lighyears of learning to do to produce better PR (propaganda) pieces, at least in English. They will never catch up with US. But they should consider doing what Russians did - hiring bunch of Englishmen to do the spin, like on Russian Television (rt.com) for example. Everyone knows that English accent make anything sound more convincing.

120 points by bad_alloc 14y ago

I always find it interesting when the Chinese government does this sort of thing, because it reveals something of their mindset. In particular, they include two quite different things in their list: 1. Human rights abuse by the government 2. Violence by criminals that the government fails to prevent So the Chinese government is accusing the US of being neglectful towards law and order, and claiming that its of equivalent severity to inflicting human rights abuses upon them. I wonder how much they believe that, and how much is just maintaining face?

mjwalshe 14y ago
and Amnesty International and the UN in general does not include ordinary criminals as human rights voilations.

tokenadult 14y ago

I'll take China's criticism of human rights in the United States as something other than the "tu quoque" fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque the day that China has a free and fair national election for the national leadership, covered by an uncensored independent press. In 1989, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/tiananmen-square-anniversary-political-dissidents_n_870954.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/tiananmen-square-an... it looked like China was close to achieving that kind of political reform, and if it had, the world today would be a much better place. Until the reformers in China finish their difficult task of overcoming a repressive regime, the press in the United States will continue to report criticisms of the United States from all comers, and the net flow of immigration with respect to almost all other countries in the world will continue to be into rather than out of the United States.

m3rv 14y ago

No difference. USA, China - the same tyranny.

chubbyheckler 14y ago
stupid.

chubbyheckler 14y ago

Dear Chinese Govt, The one fundamental point you miss is that we get to talk about these human right issues. Your citizens don't. End of story. Thanks for playing. - USA

rickyconnolly 14y ago

Say what you want about America, but anti-government activists are not kept under house arrest. China does not have the moral high-ground to use this kind of ploy.

jonathanyc 14y ago
Good god, are you living under a rock? Read up on your recent US history - people are being imprisoned overseas, American citizens are being assassinated by order of the President...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
corin_ 14y ago
My (possibly wrong) assumption is that the primary purpose of this release is to target Chinese people, not to get the rest of the world thinking "holy shit, America sucks". And so they don't really need the high ground for this to work, they just need to be able to control local propaganda and press.. That said, just because they don't have the moral high ground, it doesn't mean the points they raise aren't perfectly valid (n.b. I haven't actually read their release yet, so I'm not going the opposite direction and saying believe everything they said).
amurmann 14y ago
With the same logic the US human rights report should not contain anything about other countries that respect human rights better than th US. That would lead to the exclusion of most other western countries from the report. Everyone should be allowed to point out everyone else's human rights violations. Sadly most western countries are not gonna confront the US on this because they don't want to harm relations.
antris 14y ago
Bradley Manning.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  I don't think Manning could be called the typical activist. His case is a rather extreme example of the kind of discipline military organizations apply to themselves. Having said that, I'm too uncomfortable with his situation, but I would be that for every Manning there are a hundred Chinese who already got shot.

philwelch 14y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

jefe78 14y ago

While I - as a Canadian - am not a HUGE fan of America(nothing personal, just spoiled in the great North), I find it more than a little hypocritical for China to be pointing the finger at anyone for these types of things. Which isn't to say that fingers shouldn't be pointed. But maybe countries should start pointing them at themselves first? Look inwards and fix your own problems.

mukaiji 14y ago
But that's the exact point they want to make regarding the U.S. pointing the finger at everyone else without first trying to fix itself.
- jefe78 14y ago
  Agreed. I'm not disputing that. I don't think America is actively trying to not 'fix itself'. I often wonder if some of its efforts are misguided, but I do believe there is a genuine effort. This is just China's way of saying, "You've got problems too, fix your house before pointing fingers."
  - DasIch 14y ago
    The NDAA has just passed a couple of months ago, Guantanamo still exists... The US is actively and obviously violating human rights. I don't see how one could possibly get the idea that there even is the wish to seriously mitigate those violations let alone a genuine effort to do anything about it, quite the opposite actually. Bush managed to give the US a reputation in Europe that is almost on par with Russia and China. Why do you think that is?
gcb 14y ago
And thieves should just turn themselves in. ...Canadians (but yes, conceptually you're right)
- jefe78 14y ago
  Realistically, they won't. But ideally, they should. Wouldn't that be a lovely world? Damn Canadians and their happy thoughts... :)

rbanffy 14y ago

44 points?! I get the US is not perfect, but this propaganda piece would make a lot of my friends in advertising and marketing pale.

zxcvb 14y ago
I would downvote this if I could. I have no idea what your reference to 44 points means. Is that good? Is that bad? Why do I need to know?
- rbanffy 14y ago
  It was the total upvotes the article had when I wrote my comment. I found that rather surprising.
  - zxcvb 14y ago
    I know what the number is ffs.. I just have no context. You were surprised at the votes... Why? You just showed surprise without any explanation.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  The number of upvotes on the submission. Anyway, I thought it was amusing. Sort of like the old Soviet Propaganda about how the US is a capitalistic wasteland of suffering. [0] [0]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OkqSvw7Mw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OkqSvw7Mw

modeless 14y ago

There is a serious lack of comparison to any other countries in this report. Just spouting statistics like "The violent victimization rate was 15 victimizations per 1,000 residents" is worse than useless. That said, they raise many good points and we should be ashamed of our incarceration rate and out-of-control "national security" apparatus in particular. Of course they are in no position to scold us on most of these points, but that doesn't make their criticisms necessarily wrong.

jefe78 14y ago
I don't think that was their intention. I believe their goal was something along the lines of, "You can point out our flaws all you want, but you've got problems too." type of thing. Although, I think it was primarily just a propaganda piece for local citizens. None of this is to say that fingers shouldn't be pointed. Everyone has flaws, it's a question of whether those flaws are being addressed and worked on. I think I know which country of the two is making a genuine effort...
- pyre 14y ago
  Neither?
  - jefe78 14y ago
    Perhaps you're right. I feel like China has regressed quite a bit in that capacity though. I try and stay up to date on American politics and from what I can tell, there are some 'good intention' efforts towards fixing some of these issues. Unfortunately, a lot of them seem misguided; in my opinion.
- antidoh 14y ago
  My impression, from living here all my life, is that very little is being actively done by our government to improve human rights in the US, and very much time, effort and money is being spent on reducing human rights. Three example areas are the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, and the War on Intellectual Property Consumers.

mebassett 14y ago

Not to defend China on human rights here, but to those accusing China of hypocrisy: China does this to point out the hypocrisy of the US - who is too happy to accuse others of human rights abuses while running turning a blind eye to its own problems (for some modern examples, see the latest NDAA or the patriot act). The economist actually had blog about this just recently: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/05/americas-example http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/05/americas-exa... I don't think anyone in Chinese government expects the world to take them seriously on human rights. They're just trying to deflect criticism.

rflrob 14y ago
>Not to defend China on human rights here, but to those accusing China of hypocrisy: China does this to point out the hypocrisy of the US - who is too happy to accuse others of human rights abuses while running turning a blind eye to its own problems. There are, I think, relatively few people who would claim the US has a perfect record on human rights, but I don't think it's fair to say that we turn a blind eye to them. These things do get debated, even if we ultimately decide to go with the less liberal option. Saying that we ought to get our house completely in order before pointing out human rights violation in other countries is wronger than wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong
AJ007 14y ago
Hypocrisy is an outcome of propaganda. Western views on morality demand justification for actions which others would be punished severely for. Yet, behind history, the "good guys" are just as ruthless and brutal as the "bad guys."
guscost 14y ago
I've heard the meme, but it surely doesn't justify any more of this crap...
- amurmann 14y ago
  Can you explain why you think this is crap? Don't you think it's important that attnion is brought to every human rights violation everywhere?

dublinclontarf 14y ago

didn't they do this last year, after the US released a report...on itself? So is this an annual thing now?

olalonde 14y ago

On a related note, there has been a growing anti-foreigner sentiment in China in the past few weeks following a widely mediatised sexual assault on a Chinese girl by a British man. Just last week, me and a friend were drinking calmly at a bar when suddenly, two Chinese men smashed bottles of beer on our head. We were the only foreigners in the place and we have no idea what could have motivated this act apart from our presence there. I strongly hope this was an isolated incident and had little to do with the recent anti-foreigner propaganda. Some references: http://www.dailydot.com/society/anti-foreign-sentiment-china-sina-weibo/ http://www.dailydot.com/society/anti-foreign-sentiment-china... http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/05/15/beijing-pledges-to-clean-out-illegal-foreigners/ http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/05/15/beijing-pledge...

cfv 14y ago

Pot, meet kettle?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

mindstab 14y ago

Maybe we should think of this more as a supplement to the existing US published on on hundreds of other countries while omitting themselves. Of course it's a bit hypocritical but a) that's sort of the point, where does the US get off writing these reports either all considered and b) so what? Why are we saying it is hypocritical? It mostly reads as a collection of facts and statistics. We are annoyed because in this collection they read a bit like a condemnation from someone we also view guilty of most of these... transgressions? However the underlying data shouldn't be dismissed just because we don't like the publisher, that's terribly unscientific. And if we insist upon this, where is the uproar when the US publishes its reports? Ignore the hypocrisy, it's a BS smoke screen to try and dismiss the facts and stats. And yes, they don't paint the greatest picture. But maybe that should be looked into instead of just being ignored because we don't like it. Hypocrisy of the publisher has nothing to do with the validity and accuracy of the message. The hypocrisy argument can go round and round without accomplishing anything more than saying no one can talk about anything. It is unproductive so let's abandon it and actually talk about what some of this article is shedding some light on. Are we happy about that? If not, what can we take away from it and what can we do?

Karunamon 14y ago

Something something heal thyself.

wissler 14y ago

To everyone shouting "hypocrisy": the primary focus should be on on real problems in the US that need to be fixed, not on China's hypocrisy. Criticism should be taken seriously on account of its merit, not on whether the one giving it is perfect. Think about what the policy of not taking criticism seriously when the criticizer is hypocritical would lead to. How many people do you know who are absolutely perfect and completely unhypocritical? Most would say no one, but nearly everyone is going to agree that a perfectly unhypocritical person is at least very rare. So if you won't accept criticism except from perfect people, then that's tantamount to not accepting criticism at all. And is that a good policy? No.

Cieplak 14y ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u8l5f/chinas_yearly_report_on_us_human_rights_record/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u8l5f/chinas_year...

makhanko 14y ago

China Daily has lighyears of learning to do to produce better PR (propaganda) pieces, at least in English. They will never catch up with US. But they should consider doing what Russians did - hiring bunch of Englishmen to do the spin, like on Russian Television (rt.com) for example. Everyone knows that English accent make anything sound more convincing.