[TokenDiversity]

I'm surprised China gets away with so much! They recently banned kids from being named Mohammad. And had Imams dance. I wish our war-mongering republicans would switch their attention to countries that really violate human rights.

EDIT: Of course they do much worse, I was pointing to the fact that not a peep was heard on Fox or CNN.

[sctb]

Taking threads like this even deeper into nationalistic-political-religious flamewar territory does no good. Please don't post like this on Hacker News, it's not the kind of discussion we're here for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[theseadroid]

Here's one suggestion from a Chinese perspective: Can you guys fix your democracy first? If you can't set a good example on how good democracy can be, then there's no incentives for any other countries to follow.

You realize that US influence can never achieve anything without the citizens of China agree with it right? Like now majority of Chinese think your political system is a joke. And you know what? The majority of Chinese like those policies that's violating certain human rights. If US can only be ever weaker as time goes by then the values you hold dear can only be more insignificant in other part of the world.

[mattmanser]

Fix what? Your government is the one telling you it's broken. Your idea of US democracy has been spoon fed to you by your government. You're throwing stones from a greenhouse.

While US democracy isnt a particularly good form as it puts too much power in the executive branch, it's overly partisan and two-party, there's nothing fundamentally broken about it. There's disadvantages to proportional representation, which would break the two party rule, and as we see with Trump, an autocratic president seems, in reality, pretty ineffectual when the other arms.of government start balking at their demands.

[foldr]

I think you'll find that it's not only Chinese people who find it a little difficult to take the US democratic process all that seriously these days. It doesn't take reams of government propaganda to make Donald Trump look like a buffoon, or the people who voted for him look deeply misguided.

[seanmcdirmid]

It does take reams of propaganda to deflect on how America doesn't overwhelmingly love their dear leader, or how the press can be allowed to openly criticize him. Imagine if Xi had such a low approval rating, or if such an approval rating was even allowed to be measured.

I would claim that someone like Trump shows us just how robust western democracy really is (if we survive him, of course!).

[foldr]

>It does take reams of propaganda to deflect on how America doesn't overwhelmingly love their dear leader

Does Chinese propaganda deflect on this? I can only check their English language media, but they don't exactly seem to be trying to keep it a secret:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2017-01/20/content_2801...

>I would claim that someone like Trump shows us just how robust western democracy really is (if we survive him, of course!).

You would claim that because you already believe in democracy in principle. The point is that the current US administration does little to make democracy attractive to people who aren't already in favor of democracy.

Also, the "if we survive him" part clearly contradicts the claim of robustness.

[seanmcdirmid]

The Chinese press has gone super soft on Trump in the last few months, and they rarely talk about his discontentment at home. But that isn't much evidence, of course.

My comment on robustness is a bit tongue and cheek. Democracy provides pressure valves via elections (vs. brittle revolutions), so is a bit more stable than an autocracy, while American government provides further stability via separation of powers and checks and balances. I honestly think we will be ok with Trump, he can't do too much damage on his own, well, except for that whole nuclear football thing.

[gcb0]

the two party is a problem, despite you not seeing it. and the cult of personality instead of ideological elections is mostly what the Chinese media mocks the west for.

[js8]

> the two party is a problem

Although as a European I disagree with some specifics of U.S. culture (and also American foreign policy), I have to say U.S. democracy is actually surprisingly strong at the more local level. Lots of states have semi-direct democracy instruments, for example town halls and referenda. People have it in their blood.

[jdietrich]

By the same token, elected judges and sheriffs have largely been a disaster, especially in states with partisan elections for those offices. Direct democracy is a very dangerous tool.

[js8]

Not sure about that, however I do not consider direct election of officials to be a form of direct democracy, it's representative democracy. I know for many people the difference is confusing, but direct democracy means direct voting about issues, not voting for parties or people.

[PhasmaFelis]

The two-party system absolutely is a problem, but it's still better than a one-party system.

[foldr]

It's obviously better if you already believe in democracy for ideological reasons. The question is, if you're a Chinese person who doesn't, how well is the USA advertising democracy right now?

[tanilama]

With the current political scene, I cannot say this advertisement has any convincing effect, except the negative ones.

[pavlov]

And you know what? The majority of Chinese like those policies that's violating certain human rights.

How do you know this? It's impossible to measure the support for those policies when discussion and criticism of them is not permitted.

There is a way to measure whether policies are actually supported by the people. It's called multi-party elections.

[amygdyl]

I wish I could recall the source, one of the dozens of histories that I read published almost contemporaneously with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the paraphrase was "If for one day our people were once to cease stealing from one another, we would have attained the goal of our utopia for all time."

First spoken by Kruschev in his infamous "thawing" address to the party, and repeated apparently verbatim by Gorbachev in his speech announcing Perestroika.

I may have been muddled in the detail, but I only meant to convey the sentiment.

I am prompted to recall this, because of the recent inferno of a high rise in London which claimed a appalling loss of life.

The culprit in the death toll is suspect cladding which massively multiplied the blaze. .

I too lived in such a high rise, formerly a project and since 1994 privately owned.

Anyhow few years ago in our building, two floors above, a similar fire erupted.

Well we're spared inevitable casualties only because the defrauding of the building funds had ensured that the minimum work was completed.

That flat is owned by a kingmaker of British politics and the 2 bedroom apartment had just been moved into by a young Italian woman, who I slack jawed observed receiving 8 beds counting the space in doubles and a sofa bed for good measure for the tiny kitchen. Criminal overcrowding absolutely known by all owners of the properties. Shortly after my life and everything around me was systematically destroyed and I was continually imprisoned upon a forged court order and suffered multiple attacks I was lucky to survive, one clearly engineered with massive coordination of the prison staff, and one time a senior judge point blank telling me to forget about bail or trial.

I'm in total agreement with the necessity of sorting out our so called democracy. We simply don't police the rules that are supposed to protect us, and I am just barely recovering testament to corruption overriding every protection society is supposed to afford to protect the politically privileged while they steal

[chj]

The majority of Chinese ruling class who send their children to US surely think different.

[yurofish]

Not sure banning kids from being named a certain name really compares to the actual human rights violations at place in China...

[emanreus]

Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Iceland, and others all practice banning certain baby names. It's just that when China does it it's in the news.

In Iceland, if the name is not on the National Registry's list of approved names parents first have to get approval of the name with Icelandic Naming Committee. About 50% of submitted names get rejected. For example Zoe, Harriet, Duncan, Ludwig... all violate naming requirements and are not allowed.

Some countries ban only names that would be degrading to children like naming them after product names or outright insults like Anus or gibberish names like random string. Others have ban rules based on politics, religion, terrorism, celebreties and so on. You can't name child Binyamin and Linda in Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler in Germany, Elvis in Sweden, Rambo in Mexico, Jimmy in Portugal, Lucifer in New Zealand and so on.

[sk0g]

There was a Kiwi couple who weren't allowed to name their kid Lucifer a few years ago. That name is about as religiously charged too. As a bonus, not being named Mo helps you not get picked for random check-ups.

[yurofish]

My point is that these are pretty petty problems compared to actual travesties committed by the Chinese government. There are bigger fish to fry than what you can name your child.

[TokenDiversity]

Its not random- its based on pure statistics. I wished at least "hackers" here would understand.

More than that actually, there are politicians who are notorious for being hand-in-gloves in their home countries. They always get picked for these "random" checks in the US.

[sk0g]

Of course they are not random. I meant that in a tongue in cheek way. How else would a name affect randomness?

[sidcool]

If one has money and power, one can get away with almost everything.