(+) unless you limit your knowledge of sexual preferences to just gay/straight — human sexuality is much more complicated than that.
The hypocrisy of a country that props constant wars all around the globe, has bombed/invaded 3-4 countries in the last 20 years alone, and constant meddling and manipulations of other governments for its "interests", that had segregation up to the 70s, the worlds largest prison populations by a huge margin, with routine police shootings in the 10x of any other country, pointing the finger to another country for "religious persecution" and "discrimination against sexual preferences" (which itself until 2000 or so had laws declaring "illegal" in many states, and even now has a good 40% or more of the population considering them immoral and believing in all kinds of Bible crap), never ceases to amaze...
The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom. At all. Censorship, no free press, no freedoms of opinion, expression, religion, etc. And they see nothing wrong with that. Whenever the US hurts these freedoms, they get criticised, even by their own people, and they eventually back down.
The fact that the US promises freedom but constantly breaks that promise makes them hypocrites, but it also always has the option that they will get back to their promise. China does not see the point of freedom at all, and considers it dangerous. And that's terrifying.
If we're going to have a superpower, I would love a China that respects freedom in that role. They would be better at it than the US. But current China is not that China.
As flawed as the US is, they at least have that going for them (pre-Trump US, at least). Though ideally, the EU would step up. They don't seem to want to, though.
Where I disagree is that as a superpower China has been benign. They might have their territorial issues with their neighbors (like every other country, much more an ancient one in a much changed region), but they don't impose their (internal) non-freedom or whatever on the rest of the world with any kind of crusades.
>The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom. At all. Censorship, no free press, no freedoms of opinion, expression, religion, etc. And they see nothing wrong with that.
That's for themselves to fix/decide, as it is a matter of internal politics. Heck, their majority of their people might very well be fine with it, as they have a totally different political tradition than democracy, going back to taoism and on. Are there dissenters? Sure, but the kind of Chinese people westerners tend to fraternize with are exactly those that would adopt various western values or want some regime change, but that doesn't mean they represent anywhere near a majority -- it's a selection bias.
The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom
The US has lofty goals and noble promises, but has always fallen far short.
I am criticising American states for criminalising a sexuality that my own country never legalised.
I am also appalled by my own country’s behaviour in the colonial era.
In the past, the West has had a massive advantage because: (1) their econpomic system was better than everyone else's, and (2) in order to modernise, other cultures have had to adopt some of the West's characteristics, including a greater level of freedom of speech/thought than in other societies. The combination meant that the West had few serious ideological competitors.
But if China becomes the world's biggest economy, if it continues to increase its economy so its per capita GDP is the same as in the USA and western Europe, and it does this while still being an autocracy, things will get very very serious.
The future may well be a jackboot stamping on a human face forever.
(Of course, all of the above were decades ago, so we need to keep an open mind about the condition today in the respective countries.)
I'd say after those it was business and usual, and those involved didn't get even a slap on the wrist. If anything, venting through the press merely let people get steam out and forget more easily....
But we didn't get a repeat of either episode. That raises the possibility that people learned lessons, albeit imperfectly, from those experiences of others, which is something for which humankind (not uniquely among the species) has at least some talent.
That's a benefit of a free press. It can be aggravating to see some of the shadier so-called journalists go shamelessly whoring after eyeballs. Still, journalists' collective, competitive desire for attention helps to bring "training cases" (in NN terms) to a broader societal audience. That seems to influence at least some people's behavior. Over the long term — and not without exceptions, some catastrophic — that influence, on balance, is usually for the good.
And still, "twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds" -- killing 4 and injuring many more.
Which begs the question, if there was major potentially elite affecting / government toppling issue instead of a small scale anti-war protest at a local university, what would be the response?
These what-ifs of history are certainly interesting though!
Which is why I said “religious” and “sexual preference”.
Jews were widely discriminated against even a few years after WW2; Muslims are a current whipping-boy; I’m not sure if Catholic-vs-Protestant is as big a divide in Northern Ireland as it looks from the outside, but it does look big; In the USA, Atheists are almost as disliked as Muslims.
Then there’s sexual preference. You’re fine if you’re gay (finally!), but not so much if you’re into BDSM or have any fetishes more complicated than underwear. Also, I have a friend whose sexuality was previously legal, but which was outlawed in half of Europe and half of the USA this century. I invite you to guess what that might be.