I know people cry "whataboutism" when these counter arguments come up, but I'm genuinely curious how all this squares up.
Most of the countries we'd hope would "stand up to China" have a poor human rights record. I don't want to say one is better or worse than the other - I don't know how you measure one group of injustices against another - but in the scale of things, generously, both have room for improvement.
If the argument is that just because country A does B+C+D, doesn't mean they can't stand up to country W for doing X+Y+Z, doesn't it just become an issue of who can yield the bigger stick or carrot? If protecting human rights is selectively applied based on might AND that same might is also used to oppress human rights, isn't that setting an dangerous precedent?
Most of the countries we'd hope would "stand up to China" have a poor human rights record. I don't want to say one is better or worse than the other - I don't know how you measure one group of injustices against another - but in the scale of things, generously, both have room for improvement.
If the argument is that just because country A does B+C+D, doesn't mean they can't stand up to country W for doing X+Y+Z, doesn't it just become an issue of who can yield the bigger stick or carrot? If protecting human rights is selectively applied based on might AND that same might is also used to oppress human rights, isn't that setting an dangerous precedent?