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by bitmasher9 476 days ago
I think it’s Eurocentric to imply that China is morally inferior to the US. Yes the United States have more personal liberties, but China has less wealth inequality. While the US is more democratic, we have had many questionable elections in our history. Most notably in favor of the victor, Nixon committed treason by sabotaging peace talks in order to influence the ‘68 election [0]. Giving more recent examples of questionable elections would be too controversial and political for HN.

When discussing nuclear proliferation, North Korea is pretty much the worst example and should be mentioned.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-t...

4 comments

"More personal liberties" is a very charitable way of framing the fact that is China highly authoritarian, repressive, and non-democratic.

I don't really want to defend the US here, God knows we have no shortage of extremely serious flaws, but the PRC is much, much worse.

As much progress as china as made, they definitely do not have less wealth inequality than the US. Rural China is still incredibly poor
Nitpick: I assume you really meant US centric and not "Eurocentric", as as you point out european countries are more in the middle of it and look at each camps from a distance while being involved with all of them.

In practical terms, we can see how Huawei is not banned in the EU, the EU isn't in a tariff war with China either, while it's also not a clear Chinese ally, also having a independant stance from the US in most geopolitical fights.

I actually meant Eurocentric because it emphasizes the values of the renaissance and enlightenment writers of Europe.
> I think it’s Eurocentric to imply that China is morally inferior to the US.

Apart from the genocide of the Uighur, the brutal oppression of Tibet, the complete lack of even the pretense of democratic rights, the total lack of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and on and on. Last I checked not wanting your ethnicity eliminated or brutally repressed isn’t just a European thing.