I hear this all the time from friends here in the US who think we are a horrible country and that we are only a superpower because we did a lot of terrible things to get there (which is true), so we deserve anything bad coming our way, and we should just step aside for China's ascendency because they're just using our colonial-era, upstart (ex: theft of intellectual property) playbook and if that upsets us we're hypocrites - the ultimate sin, apparently.

To which I say: So. What.

We need to be political realists, because China certainly is. Other considerations are simply irrelevant.

Why? Because it's incorrect or correct?

> Worse would be to talk about reeducation camps, or organ harvesting

Ditto why - is it not happening?

> rural protests, corruption, razing houses by eminent domain, medical malpractice, even some obscure musician being blacklisted

I can believe this but it does not disprove the other stuff.

> and nobody really gives a shit about how Chinese people live, people just want to feel morally superior.

No. Listen carefully: we do care. I do, others do. Not all but most. I don't know why you suppose us so purely self-centred.

Me too, not sure what that has to do with anything.

> Many people of the rest of the world wish for the responsible US politicians to be put away. I hope the American perpetrators find similar ends.

ok? Not sure where that fits in though.

> Its an awful kind of mockery to see the US displaying themselves as the hand of justice in the Xinjiang situation. I wish countries like the Netherlands or Switzerland would do it instead, their hands are much, much cleaner.

If you consider doing nothing at all about bad things happening clean, then sure. Also, your diction leads me to believe you are Chinese yourself, so maybe a little bias?

> This is the same kind of mockery as having Saudi Arabia on the UN panel for womens rights.

The US doesn't have over a million people in a concentration camp right now, so I don't see the similarity.

The Chinese government is made up of people, and China is made up of people that generally support the government.

>Their reasons don't matter. Only their actions matter. Only the outcomes matter. What they are doing in Xinjiang is plainly wrong.

If only outcomes matter, then shouting "you're wrong!" at them isn't going to change any outcomes. You're not going to change the mind of any Chinese people who support the government by telling them "you're morally wrong!". It's long past the stage where America had enough of a military advantage to intervene militarily, so if you want to bring about change the only way to do so is engaging in dialogue with the people who support those policies. It's not possible to engage in dialogue with them if you don't understand their motivations and reasoning.

No offense but the USA is not in a position to give moral lessons ^^

It might be hard to imagine for an American but the rest of the world doesn't give a damn about your country.

You think the US is engaging in systematic genocide? I'm guessing not. If so, you should consider why you would say something so ridiculously out of step with reality.

But they are a sovereign nation, it's their country and their laws and their army. I mean if other countries did it to the US because their values differ from our values, like say, getting Trump elected, you wouldn't think it was such a good idea right?

Also, take that down the road and we start souring relations with China? Where does that lead? Two nuclear powers shouldn't be antagonizing each other, and I believe telling China how to run their own country is part of that.

I'm not excusing what China is doing, but honestly, why does the US presume they have to fix it?

I'm not supporting any governments, I'm for supporting peoples and exposing hypocrisy.

I have my issues with the Chinese government (for their internal behavior to their people), but Chinese foreign policy ain't it.

People from places who actively invaded tens of countries that did nothing to theirs (and meddled with mine and others nearby), cry crocodile tears about China's horrible behavior -- the drop of tourism in some Pacific islands they have a beef with...

None of those things pose a true threat to America, and who benefits from treating them as adversaries because of ideological differences?

>China has chosen a path of dictatorial horse-shit of its own accord - the US didn't push them into it.

Though there are strong arguments that US and other Western powers did push them into this situation, if you view this as a path they chose why would you oppose it? We tried controlling their path before, and countless millions of Chinese died as a result.

That doesn't seem to be true. Whatever you think about the truth of China's treatment of Uighurs or Tibet, clearly people have strong opinions about what china itself has specifically done. And the government's behavior to its own ostensibly unoppressed citizens seems to me to border on dystopia; that again concerns things that China has or has not done. It feels like a bit of facile stubbornness to claim that no criticism of China is legitimate.

The US went through a judicial process and didn't just imprison or delete this person's account ( I know this isn't a US national), but this is a false equivalency to say that this process is even close to China when China currently has over a million prisoners in concentration camps.

They are wrong. It boggles the mind how anyone refused to understand this. Talk about cutting the nose to spite the face.

> we applied that logic to the US (...)

Putting the blatant whataboutism aside, if you were trying to be honest then you'd be complaining that no one had the right to meddle in anyone else's affairs.

But no, to you having a totalitarian and extensively oppressive regime like the Chinese one, which I remind you is right now executing a blatant ethnic cleansing campaign that would impress Nazi germany, is somehow awesome because it's sabotaging the US?

This is very true, our media lies to us, and it lies to you, but isn't there something to be said about not having the freedom to think what you want in your own country, nor being able to read what information you want?

No matter who commits a condemn-able act it should be condemned, most of all if it's your own group. The most scary thing to me about China or a Chinese hegemony is not the shift of power, but that Chinese citizens are unable to be informed nor are they able to condemn their own government. There is no public veto for CPC behavior. China has assumed the role of the victim (century of humiliation), but acts as the abuser (destruction of Tibetan/Uigher/Hong Kong culture and a desire to destroy Taiwan), and then justifies the abuse it doles out by the abuses it has received.

The second most scary thing to me about Chinese hegemony is that dialogue is primarily based around power. Who has the power to do what, not what is morally right, not the rules that should apply to all countries and people, but most of all itself. So what is China's moral basis and ethics system founded upon? Might makes right. That is terrifying to me.

> The problem is whether you western folks will be played by your institutions into doing things that destroy your own credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Does China's own credibility not matter?

You shouldn't try to help people in other countries, period. Who appointed you world cop? Besides, it always ends up in tears (besides it being hypocritical help with strategic ambitions attached from the establishment side, even if ordinary people mean it sincerely).

>Or are you making the argument that the US government is in fact more oppressive than the Chinese government?

Internally, not. Globally, surely yes.

These are not even remotely comparable. China is an outright police state. Not saying the United States doesn't have a lot of work to do with regards to personal liberty, but the Government here has nothing close to the iron grip control that the CCP has; they may want it, and what Government doesn't, but they don't have it and a ton of our internal legal mechanisms are designed specifically to prevent it.

Nobody wants to live in a world where China defines the world order. They don't care about their own citizens and will care even less about the other countries they plan to control in one way or another.

Also, the US is war-like but it's still a functioning democracy despite all its flaws and the power can change every x years. With China you end up with a dictator-for-life and good luck with that.

I agree 100% with what you say. But if you are from the USA, you may better not say it.

It is just impossible for a person from the USA not to sound ridiculously hypocritical when criticizing China. You are the greatest war-mongering country in the last few generations! If you are from the U.S.A., it is more realistic and effective to work on stopping your country killing people abroad.

Not that anything that you say or suggest about China is wrong. But this century will not be remembered only by the Chinese genocide of the Uighurs, but also by the north-american aggressive and murderous imperialism.

This is the main issue here. First and foremost morality is relative and our morals are not necessarily the right morals. Believing your way is the only right way and forcing others to conform is how dictatorships spread and start wars.

Second, imposing one’s own morals on others is immoral, and is what started the crusades, proselytizing, Christian missions, imperialism, and slavery.

Third, you may believe they have a brutalizing dictator, and this may be true or a simple misguided opinion based on ignorance at a distance, but if the population you are trying to help doesn’t agree with you then who’s interests are you really serving?

The reality is that regardless of whether China’s ways are in absolute terms (there are no absolute terms) wrong or not, American foreign policy towards China, or even other countries, has always been self-serving, and less about promoting “morals”. Much of the Cold War and anti-communism campaigns on the US were extremely immoral, and only in hindsight do we see that they were carried out of ignorance, prejudice, and a desire mostly to secure more Western allies.

And if you really believe whatever it is they are doing in China won’t work, it will collapse on its own like the Soviet Union. If you are a true free market democratic capitalist, then you should have no problem letting their system survive on its own merits. Anything else is just self-serving ulterior motive propoganda.

There is a lot bad going on in the US, but China is ten or a hundred times worse. For instance, the web is massively censored, and political dissidents get sent to jail by the hundreds or thousands.

Furthermore, in the US we still have enough freedom of speech that we can criticize surveillance at places like HN, and even organize efforts to resist it, even political campaigns, but in China that is completely impossible.

It seems to me that if people were to come to believe that things are as hopeless in the US as in China, then they would give up all efforts at resistance. I think that would be a terrible mistake.