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>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.

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

I feel it is not that china doesn’t believe in freedom...it is just that they don’t practice freedom for the time being...but their government always promises future freedom to their people — although that promise may never become true...but the good thing about promising without a specific time is that the promise can always appear to be credible even when one is pushing the day of its realization to the infinity...

US has only ever been about securing freedom for a small and privileged minority of people, usually at great cost to people outside that group

The EU is not your friend.

No government is capable of friendship with a private person, any more than a human can be friends with a single white blood cell. What they are, governments in general and the EU in particular, is a useful ally.

There is indeed a lot wrong with the EU, as there is with the US and China. But of the three, the EU seems to care the most about protecting regular people from abuse and oppression. They're not perfect about it, and there's a lot of different forces at play in the EU, but on the whole, I tend to like their approach more than those of the US and China.

Likewise, although it has only been recently that my opinion of human rights in the USA has declined — America takes its constitutional rights very seriously, or it seemed to until Snowden.

They went wrong way before Snowden. Guantanamo at least. Patriot Act, arguably. And then there's a rather disgusting way the Vietnam War was waged. Or the systemic racism that goes way back, regularly with deadly consequences.

The US has lofty goals and noble promises, but has always fallen far short.