[smoldesu]

Civilian casualty is the lowest-common-denominator. Right now, China is under scrutiny for current human rights abuses and a potential domestic ethnic-cleansing a-la third Reich. That's a slightly different situation than indiscriminate civilian casualty.

[nebula8804]

Honestly the whole Xinjang issue seems to be a red herring used by the West for their own purposes. They never cared about the plight of Muslims before (eg. military adventures/regime change in the middle east, support of apartheid Israel and suppressing the human rights of Palestinians), why would you expect them to actually care about Uyghur Muslims other than what this group can do to advance western fake moral outrage?

[realjhol]

You don't need to defend the government. In the sham-democracy, you have as little control over their actions as the government of china

[smoldesu]

Trust me, I don't. I have close to 6,000 comments on this site, many attesting to my hatred of the United States and the dysfunction of it's government.

That being said, nobody is fooled by the ad-reductio distraction of "both governments do bad things". China is now (since Aug. '22) accused of serious human rights violations by the United Nations for their treatment of the Uighur population. Someone approved of it, and it's very likely the the current regime is aware of it. None of this stuff is up for debate, or diluted when you mention the US' own failings. It's just extremely embarrassing for China, who wants to be treated like a respected Western superpower, but can't own up to it's mistakes when they do slip up. They won't acknowledge Tiananmen Square, they won't let people debate Hong Kong, they won't deny the Uighur extermination, and now they're refusing to let the global stage investigate the origin site of the worst pandemic in a century. You can see why people would draw their own conclusions here.

Even if all of this was propaganda vs propaganda (which it isn't, but I'll entertain in good faith), China is still losing. Despite their authoritarian grasp on information, they can't control the global perception of them. It's the ultimate insecurity, and incompatible with the global ideals of information freedom. Again, even if you are right, and western affairs are controlled by a mysterious free-speech cabal/shadow-government, I don't see how it changes China's disadvantage on the global stage. It took a fraction of the world's military forces to repel Russia from Ukraine, preventing a sea-based invasion of Taiwan is probably easier than the average NATO wargaming exercise. And then China would be similarly disgraced, and forced to rectify their impulsive actions with a world that doesn't want to be a part of them. If they want to carry out their reunification plan, it would destroy them.