Not a fan or defensor of China here; but the US has way more history of intervention in other countries; so I would be much much worried about US-based companies that provide searching or social networking services
but the US has way more history of intervention in other countries
Not exactly sure how'd you quantify it, but I think the people of Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Cambodia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, Tibet, Myanmar, and India might take issue with that claim[1].
Let's count have many government have been overthrown by each, how many wars have they both been involved, how many political parties or rebellions financed?
But China has a worse record of human rights abuses. In regards to intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet, Taiwan no longer exist according to China.
They've all got bad history. If God existed and was to strike down on the unworthy nations of the world, very few would be spared.
And I dislike this as much as any rational person (hello? rational people...?) but if it came to choosing sides in what appears to be inevitable future conflict, I'd choose the US over China and Russia. I hate that it's the case, but the US, I think, is the least worst option. This may be based purely on cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.
> This may be based purely on cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.
Very much this.
> In regards to intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet, Taiwan no longer exist according to China.
Oh dear. Taiwan never existed in the first place according to China because they didn't accept them becoming independent. (Protip: google how many countries actually regard Taiwan an independent nation). And Tibet? It has pretty much belonged to China for over 600 years. Tibet has been very poor even compared to China, and over the past 50 years China has greatly supported the region, establishing basic infrastructure like hospitals, schools etc. You usually never hear about this in the west though, since it doesn't fit the whole "free Tibet" narrative.
Yes there is a lot wrong with China, as with any country on this planet. I certainly don't need to get into US atrocities here for some obligatory whataboutism. But at least get your facts straight when criticising. Like when that Falun gong organ harvesting comes up. If you try to unravel this story you find no halfway credible sources and always end up with this Canadian politician who conveniently always resurfaces with that story when some election is coming up. Or recently there was a report about one million captive Uighurs in China (with a population of only 8 million), where the only source was a UN Secretary saying this "not representing the UN"...
It's sad, because we so proudly compare our free press to the state controlled propaganda in China, but for most people just knowing we have a free press equals not ever having to doubt anything the news say, at least not if it's about another country across the world you already know is evil.
I get the Chinese government's default position is stonewalling information. But at some point, if people say a thing, and you say it isn't so: you invite them to see for themselves.
The fact that China (and the Soviet Union before it) don't...
Completely agree here. OTOH it's understandable that China is pretty paranoid about foreign press. As laid out, our reporting on China is pretty one sided and agenda-driven sometimes. which ironically enough, only fosters our paranoia and conspiracy theories about these issues. And on it goes...
Tiananmen square was a rare exception in that regard since a lot of foreign press was already in Beijing during that time, but we still have a very incomplete picture, not only regarding the wildly varying figures regarding the death toll.
Talk to some Chinese. Or, even worse, people from Hong Kong. The behavior of the Chinese state is disgusting. Even at a local level constant abuses are the norm, in big cities and small. People are "disappeared". Not 1, not a few per year, but hundreds of thousands per year.
Did you see the size of the Xinjang internment camps they built then tripled in size ? But these disappearances are happening all over China, not just Tibet, Xinjang and Hong Kong. All those regions, by the way, have populations in the tens to hundreds of millions of people.
And there's the steady trickle of stories by people that somehow make it back out of those camps, talking of torture, executions, slave labour, starvation.
Let's just stop mincing words here. China is executing a holocaust on it's own people. That's the truth.
Thanks for the explanation. I will need to look further into the details surrounding Taiwan and Tibet. Your explanations don't ring entirely true with what I've heard and read in the past, so I've got some digging to do.
I mean, you can also refuse to admit Taiwan is an independent country... while selling powerful military hardware to an organized government within "China" that claims sovereignty over an island they assert is not Chinese.
Not exactly sure how'd you quantify it, but I think the people of Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Cambodia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, Tibet, Myanmar, and India might take issue with that claim[1].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...