[living_room_pc]

Why are all of these comments about China vs the West (whatever that means) Who brought up the "west" in this context? and why is it so important?

There are some interesting points about academic motivation here, I dont see why we have to make this a red vs blue issue. Are people offended we are talking about a particular nation? Are shills or bots steering the conversation?

[woooooo]

The article itself already brought that comparison, it's a pro-western outfit dumping on what they consider our adversary.

We could ask why articles like this have multiplied in recent years and that's interesting, but people here are just running with the implied comparison.

[coldtea]

>Who brought up the "west" in this context? and why is it so important?

Anybody interested to see if this is anything special about this case, or just the standard amount that goes on everywhere.

Singling out some country for something that happens everywhere, wouldn't be that different than someone saying "immigrants from X did Y amount of violent crimes" to paint them as particularly violent, when the number might be totally proportional to their share of the population and/or some controls for income level.

[luplex]

Good observation! I think we generally imagine China as an adversary too often. Instead, we should sometimes think of it as a neighbor country, where people that are similar to us are faced with an interesting system.

But I think even then, the best way to understand would be to make comparisons to your own culture.

[bartekpacia]

Indeed, totalitarian dictatorship is a very interesting system.

[kelipso]

What's the point of saying country X has for example vehicle accident rate of y if you don't compare it to other countries? Comparisons are important, otherwise what are you even discussing in a void.

[ametrau]

Any number of vehicles accidents are bad in any country.

[kelipso]

Right...an amazing truism that will lead to no discussion whatsoever.

[pvaldes]

> Who brought up the "west" in this context? and why is it so important?

Because the "west", with all its flaws, created the scientific method, also shortened as "science".

Trying to explain science while excluding the Greeks, or Roma, or France, or UK, or Germany, Sweden, Spain, USA, etc... is a total nonsense. Western societies are the standard measure to compare anything related with science, because they were shaped by science.