Because as much as people love to hate on the West and its faults, it is also the most tolerant system and allows for the most freedom in every category.
The Chinese do not value things like freedom or tolerance very much, especially if they conflict with order. The value of the individual is also extremely low, whereas the West held the individual as the most valuable thing until just recently when group identities became incredibly important for the sake of skin-deep diversity. It will be interesting to see how that continues to creep into Western culture.
Let me know when they start black-bagging dissidents for speaking up a bit too much.
There are festering problems regarding surveillance in the West, and the prison system is a bit much here in the US, but "freedom on paper" is a load of BS.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
You can only truly believe this if you have never been an open and active supporter of non-conforming (and threatening to status quo) beliefs or are not black/brown. McCarthyism and antiblackness are still very much built into the functioning system of western nation states.
> You can only truly believe this if you have never been an open and active supporter of non-conforming (and threatening to status quo) beliefs or are not black/brown.
I've been rail-roaded by vindictive government officials who abused their power. Been arrested for it, even. I know what it means to have my first amendment rights violated at a fundamental level.
> McCarthyism and antiblackness are still very much built into the functioning system of western nation states.
That's, like, your opinion man.
Highlighting select abuses of power doesn't negate the fact that I can openly criticize our government, advocate for change, run for office, and store enough small arms to organize an insurrection without fear of reprisal. We may not have absolute freedom, but no one does and no one ever will. In the context of the conversation, we have a helluva lot of freedom. Much more than the comment I responded to appeared to suggest - that we're no better than China.
1. Like many countries, China has long been relevant. Like many countries, China has long been gaining relevance.
2. Because they shouldn't
If instead of treating global economy as a zero-sum game, and if we backed off from the fear mongering and admitted that China's economic growth has largely (and unsurprisingly) been to most people's benefits, then we'd welcome the competition and innovation and productivity that China has and will continue to provide.
Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above.
(+) unless you limit your knowledge of sexual preferences to just gay/straight — human sexuality is much more complicated than that.
>Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above.
The hypocrisy of a country that props constant wars all around the globe, has bombed/invaded 3-4 countries in the last 20 years alone, and constant meddling and manipulations of other governments for its "interests", that had segregation up to the 70s, the worlds largest prison populations by a huge margin, with routine police shootings in the 10x of any other country, pointing the finger to another country for "religious persecution" and "discrimination against sexual preferences" (which itself until 2000 or so had laws declaring "illegal" in many states, and even now has a good 40% or more of the population considering them immoral and believing in all kinds of Bible crap), never ceases to amaze...
I agree that the United States' run as the world's biggest superpower has been far from perfect. I criticise the US a lot. And I actually consider China to be one of the few countries that is not governed by amateurs. China gets a lot of things right.
The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom. At all. Censorship, no free press, no freedoms of opinion, expression, religion, etc. And they see nothing wrong with that. Whenever the US hurts these freedoms, they get criticised, even by their own people, and they eventually back down.
The fact that the US promises freedom but constantly breaks that promise makes them hypocrites, but it also always has the option that they will get back to their promise. China does not see the point of freedom at all, and considers it dangerous. And that's terrifying.
If we're going to have a superpower, I would love a China that respects freedom in that role. They would be better at it than the US. But current China is not that China.
As flawed as the US is, they at least have that going for them (pre-Trump US, at least). Though ideally, the EU would step up. They don't seem to want to, though.
>If we're going to have a superpower, I would love a China that respects freedom in that role. They would be better at it than the US. But current China is not that China.
Where I disagree is that as a superpower China has been benign. They might have their territorial issues with their neighbors (like every other country, much more an ancient one in a much changed region), but they don't impose their (internal) non-freedom or whatever on the rest of the world with any kind of crusades.
>The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom. At all. Censorship, no free press, no freedoms of opinion, expression, religion, etc. And they see nothing wrong with that.
That's for themselves to fix/decide, as it is a matter of internal politics. Heck, their majority of their people might very well be fine with it, as they have a totally different political tradition than democracy, going back to taoism and on. Are there dissenters? Sure, but the kind of Chinese people westerners tend to fraternize with are exactly those that would adopt various western values or want some regime change, but that doesn't mean they represent anywhere near a majority -- it's a selection bias.
The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom
I feel it is not that china doesn’t believe in freedom...it is just that they don’t practice freedom for the time being...but their government always promises future freedom to their people — although that promise may never become true...but the good thing about promising without a specific time is that the promise can always appear to be credible even when one is pushing the day of its realization to the infinity...
No government is capable of friendship with a private person, any more than a human can be friends with a single white blood cell. What they are, governments in general and the EU in particular, is a useful ally.
Actually it does - history is full of examples of just that. As the middle class grows in economic terms, it grows in political influence and the overall values of the society changes to accommodate that class. Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.
China may be different. Their planned social credit reputation system, coupled with ubiquitous surveillance, may make it impossible for public opinion in China to force the Chinese government to liberalise.
In the past, the West has had a massive advantage because: (1) their econpomic system was better than everyone else's, and (2) in order to modernise, other cultures have had to adopt some of the West's characteristics, including a greater level of freedom of speech/thought than in other societies. The combination meant that the West had few serious ideological competitors.
But if China becomes the world's biggest economy, if it continues to increase its economy so its per capita GDP is the same as in the USA and western Europe, and it does this while still being an autocracy, things will get very very serious.
The future may well be a jackboot stamping on a human face forever.
Maybe. But china’s overall path is towards more democracy and civil liberty. Compare tianamen square 30 years ago with the handling of the Hong Kong protests.
Many of the rights we consider intrinsic to modern society, due process, etc., didn’t arise in Europe in respond to the rise of a middle class. In the Anglo tradition, they date back 800 years to the Magna Carta.
> Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.
Which is why I said “religious” and “sexual preference”.
Jews were widely discriminated against even a few years after WW2; Muslims are a current whipping-boy; I’m not sure if Catholic-vs-Protestant is as big a divide in Northern Ireland as it looks from the outside, but it does look big; In the USA, Atheists are almost as disliked as Muslims.
Then there’s sexual preference. You’re fine if you’re gay (finally!), but not so much if you’re into BDSM or have any fetishes more complicated than underwear. Also, I have a friend whose sexuality was previously legal, but which was outlawed in half of Europe and half of the USA this century. I invite you to guess what that might be.
> Let China thusly slumber, for when China wakes up the world will shiver
— Napoleon 1er