>Is there anything different about China’s behaviour as a superpower?
Yes! When Britain was colonizing the world it was not nearly universally agreed upon that colonialism was bad. Ditto for the USSR and US. China is trying to export a system of values that pretty much the entire developed world knows (and has plenty of examples to cite, some of them recent and close to home) lead to mass oppression and suffering.
> How is British care about humans when they started forcing Opium trade to China?
The fact of the matter is that the Chinese Government don't care about anyone except themselves and if you think for a second that they give a crap about the environment you are severely mistaken.
If you are going to engage in whataboutery especially things that happened well over a century ago and trying to compare the British Empire to the Chinese Regime that has killed over 50 million while it has been in place is either wholly ignorant or disingenuous. I am not going to bother talking to you.
> It's true a lot of the negative stuff here isn't technically incorrect
Then it's correct, yes?
> China serves some kind of convenient narrative
I have to agree. If china were an economically unimportant tiddler or have lotsa oil, the west wouldn't care nearly as much.
> the so-called West has exploited for the last few centuries
And china had a pretty repressive feudal government for a very long time. That is, the pyramid's peak freely and often brutally exploited the pyramid's broad base. For a very long time. And Uighurs - like to comment on them? Perhaps you'd like to list some chinese atrocities here?
Seriously, list some.
I'm aware and not proud of the opium wars. That shit should be taught in school, as well as the way brits treated the irish, the welsh, the scottish... Not as a guilt thing but as a way of saying, let this not happen again.
> remembering that other people feel as much love and loyalty for their side as we each do for ours.
Oh, for sure. I try to maintain respect for all nations and their people. Are you certain you weren't targeting another comment?
I guess I could've done without the "Lol" in my comment above, and just cited Tencent without implying the commenter was "ignoring" them.
But there wasn't any internecine or xenophobia there that I could detect, because it was a discussion about Shenzhen vs. Beijing, which are within the same nation! =)
I understand if you can't give examples. Thanks again, I will try to be more respectful down the road.
> The variation is too great to paint everyone with the same brush. It's like saying 'everyone makes mistakes'; yes, but some make far more than others;
I think you are referring to China making more mistakes then UK in the past. If anything, I think it's the opposite. For example, the whole world made a huge deal(rightfully so) about the tiananmen square protest in China. Have you heard of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre ? Hundreds of unarmed peaceful men, women and children were murdered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
> Do you have any evidence? A history book? A study of history books?
You can see the bullet marks preserved in Jallianwala Bagh. There is a well inside the premises where people jumped to hide from bullets. 120 bodies were recovered later from that well alone.
http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/8-pictures-of-jallianwa...
EDIT: Here is one more, it isn't hard to find with few online searches
".. Mike Davis tells the story of the famines which killed between 12 and 29 million Indians(1). These people were, he demonstrates, murdered by British state policy.."
"..In the Express we can read the historian Andrew Roberts arguing that for “the vast majority of its half millennium-long history, the British Empire was an exemplary force for good. … the British gave up their Empire largely without bloodshed, after having tried to educate their successor governments in the ways of democracy and representative institutions”(9)(presumably by locking up their future leaders). In the Sunday Telegraph, he insists that “the British empire delivered astonishing growth rates, at least in those places fortunate enough to be coloured pink on the globe.”(10) (Compare this to Mike Davis’s central finding, that “there was no increase in India’s per capita income from 1757 to 1947”, or to Prasannan Parthasarathi’s demonstration that “South Indian labourers had higher earnings than their British counterparts in the 18th century and lived lives of greater financial security.”(11)) In the Daily Telegraph, John Keegan asserts that “the empire became in its last years highly benevolent and moralistic.” The Victorians “set out to bring civilisation and good government to their colonies and to leave when they were no longer welcome. In almost every country, once coloured red on the map, they stuck to their resolve.”(12).."
> I never said that Britain was justified in any way in the Opium Wars, far from it.
I never said you did. My comment specifically debunked your assertions about "britain's superior economy", etc.
> But that's irrelevant to my point anyways.
Agreed.
> Throwing out 2.6 million pounds of opium (weight) and refusing to talk about it as you denied an embassy ...
Oh I see, now you are going to justify britain's behavior. Typical.
> 6 British steamships sunk hundreds of Chinese ships
Simply not true. There is a reason why almost all of britain's navy were powered by sail even decades after the opium war. It was britain sail powered ships that destroyed chinese ships.
> My claim of GDP being a good proxy for military capability was prefaced by specifying it applied to industrialized warfare only.
Industrialized warfare didn't really start until ww1, nearly 100 years after the first opium war.
> China being a huge exporter of low-value added goods and materials, it was simply impossible for Britain to balance the trade equation.
You are mistaking today's china with china from 200 years ago. There is a reason why "fine china" is called "fine china". Chinese goods ( tea, silk, porcelain, etc ) were considered luxury items.
> Using industrial weaponry European powers
Oh god. The muskets the british and the europeans were using were inferior to the bow and arrow. "European" weaponry didn't really separate itself from the rest until the American civil war when we started using gatling guns, ironclad ships, etc and then down the line oil for trucks, ships, etc.
Anyways, this is getting boring as I know you'll continue with your lies about the most basic of history. My goal isn't to convince you, it's to make sure people who read your lies are aware of it.
Saying that industrialization is why britain won the opium wars is like saying nuclear weapons is why the US beat britain. Strange how the amazing "industrialized" british couldn't beat the US in the american revolution nor the war of 1812.
Here's a hint. British/American industrialization took off AFTER the opium wars because the opium wars provided the capital necessary for british and american industrialization.
And if you really want to know how the british "won" the opium wars, it's simply a weak "foreign" central government and perfidious mandarins in southern china. Similar to how france took over vietnam. And how britain took over india. But you won't read about that in the history books. You have to look "behind" the history books. Hope you enjoyed the lesson.
Have you heard of the Opium Wars? Including perhaps the one China is waging against the US right now? Tens of thousands of deaths every year - nobody is even aware.
> Go fix your own country first before pointing at others.
I'm sure the Uyghurs would appreciate that.
Should the US have followed your advice during WWII? After all, slavery was quite a sin that hasn't yet been fully atoned for, and even less so in the 40s.
>But You are projecting the colonial powers’ treatment of the world onto a nation that has never done anything close to what you describe.
Please read some Chinese history. You'll see the exact same level of brutality, imperialism and aggression shown by the European empires, from Rome to Britain.
Much of central and Western China was only conquered during the last 500 years (basically the same period as European colonialism). They too, experienced forced cultural assimilation and ill treatment. They didn't conquer the globe in the way the Europeans did, but equally they didn't have the naval technology to do so.
> they are a peaceful country (read: are in and have not been in wars, are leaders of the UN peacekeeping forces, and do not militarily interfere in other countries' affairs). Plus they have done nothing to me and I love all the Chinese people I have met.
This is alarmingly disturbing nonsense; it doesn't even make any sense. What does "are in and have not been in wars" mean? The Chinese engage in lots of wars, they're just not that loud about it in recent history.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but you might have forgotten about the Opium Wars where no sides treated each other well, the Brits included.
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