[benterix]

Yeah it's confusing. I mean China has work camps for Uighurs and is very brutal on Tibetans etc. OTOH, their leader is not setting the world on fire every second week and compared to Trump seems like the paragon of reason on the surface. Of course we know it's a facade but man what crazy times to live in.

[WarmWash]

China can't project power globally because the US has them locked in place. There is a constellation of US allies and military bases surrounding China's coast.

It's extremely (read: extremely) naive to think that China keeps to itself because they don't have global power ambitions.

Look at the South China Sea, the one playground that the US stranghold allows them to play in...they don't give a fuck about anyone else's territory there.

[wallst07]

If Trump acted more like Xi with regards to public speaking, but the actions were still the same, thing would be a lot different.

My point is that Trump could sign/execute/order all the same exact things he's done, but if I just never spoke about it, or kept hidden like Chinese do, he would be compared MUCH differently.

[AntiUSAbah]

If someone like Trump could talk smarter, he would be smarter and would do things smarter.

That would also make him a lot more dangerous. After all in his first presidency he was still the man behind the biggest military on the planet but he knew shit on how to leverage this. In his second term he is even more loose but loose is tempertantrums and simple short sighted strategies. Easy to read, hard to accept.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

You do realize that the US has a greater percentage of it's citizens in prison than any other country, including China?

In the US its not the Uighurs or Tibetans who are being oppressed - it's the blacks and immigrants. The US elected a president who characterizes immigrants as rapists and murderers (while he himself is a convicted rapist, suspected pedophile, and wants to commit war crimes in Iran).

The facade, believed by many Americans, is that USA is the land of the free, a democracy (despite no popular vote) one of the good guys, but actions say otherwise.

[rib3ye]

In the U.S. we don’t ethically cleanse in the name of political stability - we ethically cleanse in the name of economic growth.

[mg794613]

You got me in the second half!