An increasing desire and capability to export their illiberal practices abroad. For example, using their weight to prevent the Dalai Lama from speaking at foreign universities. It’s naive to think that an even more powerful China wouldn’t continue to suppress free speech abroad as much as it does at home.
How is what China does to the Dalai Lama any worse than what the US does to Julian Assange? Isn't it equally naive to assume that an even more powerful USA wouldn't continue to summarily execute people abroad as much as it already does?
> How is what China does to the Dalai Lama any worse than what the US does to Julian Assange?
Among other things, we're allowed to discuss what the US has done with Julian Assange on this here US-based website without much fear of a dawn raid by the FBI over it.
Nothing justifies it when the US does evil. The important difference is that as a society, in the US we have remarkable capacity for self-criticism and the power to loudly rebuke our government. We're far from perfect, but we can at least acknowledge the atrocities committed in our names, and hopefully account for them and try not to commit them again. The same is not true in Chinese society. Currently, it is only external pressure that keeps them in check. There won't be internal resistance to the Chinese governments expansionist behavior, because it simply would not be tolerated. The PRC will even use its power to silence criticism from abroad, much less tolerate it at home.
Again, we're not perfect, but we hear about almost every drone strike that harms civilians, or the abuses our prisoners of war face in Guantanamo bay. Does anyone in China rebuke the government for stealing land from neighboring countries[1] and building on it?
I think you have a decent comparison, but debate about what the CIA did in the US is widely reported in the US while. There is no free press in China. Pressure to stop China will only come externally, whereas pressure to stop US can come from within and external.
Also China is continuing to carry out a genocide that is unparalleled in this century.
Lets be real, America has allowed the use of capitalism to enslave entire generations of people and they are clueless to the fact about it. In fact many praise it and go deeper into debt so they can rock the newest iPhone 13, only 36 months of payments spread out. I can handle that!
In the US a Genocide has been underway for decades. The cost of healthcare will break people. A trip to the doctor can easily wipe out life savings, what little there is for most people. Considering more than half the US population lives paycheck to paycheck to nearly paycheck to paycheck lifestyles, its easy to see how Most Americans are nothing more than slaves that go to work and back home in a endless cycle. That is not freedom. And sure they can quit, and live out in the streets if they wanted. Its a shit life.
Americans are so caught up in thinking the government is the bad guy here. No the real bad guy is the companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Exxon, Verizon, ATT, Capital one, Chase, any CC company, plus the many Pharma companies. The list can go on and on.
With no protection for allowing people to get into 10-20k+ worth of CC debt at 22-28% APR, People will always be slaves.
Honestly its easy to see the USA as a Cancer. I dont blame China for wanting to break away from the ideals of the western world. Now they have made a lot of bad choices. But at the same time the USA is largely responsible for keeping the middle east a 3rd world society.
Americans enjoy living in a bubble, They love to think they are free. They are not free!
I'm an American, and I'm just as much of a slave to the system as the rest of you. The system is so rigged that any true free speech is easily spun around. Just look at all the crazy trump supporters, Slaves not only to unchecked capitalism but to also propaganda labeled as factful free speech.
I wonder why the bad things the US does internationally never get blamed on capitalism, yet when people write or vent about China it's always about these darn Communists.
Are these after-effects of the red scare?
China is an authoritarian dictatorship with their own flavour of communism I guess. Blaming everything they do on commmunism as a whole is very uninformed.
I believe this has to do with any system where the government has too much control. Communism appears to me like a system that promotes the government’s freedoms over an individual.
Have there ever been peaceful capitalists who ran a country?
Don't get me wrong, I can't really stand uber-authoritarian Communism. But I don't see how communist/marxist theory is bad as a whole. Would certainly help erase a lot of issues we have on our earth.
Unfortunately, people at the top always start to misuse their power to stay there. But that's also the case in capitalist America, so then again, why is communism such a problem for many americans?
But in international relations, they’ve traded been trading with liberal democracies for decades. So what’s the incompatibility?