[chroma]

Doesn't that prove too much? For example, North Korea treats their citizens horribly, but since it's not a threat to westerners, would that mean that trade deals with them are acceptable?

It's hard for me to come up with a standard that encourages trade with China but discourages trade with North Korea. I'm not saying that trade with the US is therefore a good idea. There are many reasonable moral standards that would forbid trade with both the US & China.

[mitthrowaway2]

Honestly, the reason that North Korea is embargoed probably has less to do with the way they treat their own citizens, and more to do with them constantly threatening to turn South Korea into a "sea of fire" while lobbing ever-longer-range ballistic missiles over Japan.

[lossolo]

Around 100 million Chinese people travel abroad every year, and they all return to their country of their own free will. You can't even leave North Korea without special permission, which only certain workers get.

I've been to China, and I'm going again this year, I'm from the EU. The funniest thing is that China's Tier 1 cities are more developed than EU cities and offer a better quality of life.

[gattis]

nobody equated china to north korea. the post you are replying to applied equivalent logic to an extreme example (north korea) to show more easily that the logic cannot be correct.

[lossolo]

An extreme example changes the logic here, which basically means it's a bad example. And if we're talking about the logic of this argument, there's no such thing as morality in foreign relations. I don't see any morality when everyone buys oil from Saudi Arabia or Qatar, knowing how they treat their own citizens and who they sponsor.

States use the "morality" argument when they need to build a narrative and portray someone as bad/evil to justify actions against them, while the real reason is almost always geopolitical interests or money/resources.

[Insanity]

NK and China are not at the same level lol - NK is almost an inescapable dictatorship, with routine mistreatment and indoctrination. If that were true, you can claim the current US is 1930s Nazi Germany, with a right wing government using media manipulation and “othering”, in a pseudo dictatorship.

Not to mention the US and China use similar “low level” indoctrination strategies (like swearing allegiance to the flag in schools)

[chroma]

I never said that North Korea was similar to China. I was simply applying your argument to another country to show how it isn't a good argument for whether or not to trade.