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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

What a load of crap. Ignoring the fantastic abuses that the US commits everyday against its minority and poor folks, disenfranchising and imprisoning them and basically kicking them out of regular society... China is a sovereign nation and has every right to Govern itself the way it wants to. They may not have the same system and freedom that the West is used to, but authoritarianism has been the norm in China for centuries. The one time they tried to be a Republic: Civil War happened (with a LOT of Western intervention, no less).

I think ethically you shouldn't be making judgements about another country when you clearly know so little about it.

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> China is a sovereign nation and has every right to Govern itself the way it wants to

Who has granted the Chinese government this right? God? The "consent of the governed"?

> Ignoring the fantastic abuses that the US commits everyday against its minority and poor folks... I think ethically you shouldn't be making judgements about another country when you clearly know so little about it.

Is this... a hard cultural relativist stance?

Ignoring how ethically insane it is to justify human rights abuses under the guise of national sovereignty, this same sovereignty would allow the US to cease trade relations.

It also has the legal right to not pay down its debt to anyone.

The question was never if it can, but whether it should.

No the question was whether or not national sovereignty justifies criminal behavior. You made the ludicrous point that China's national sovereignty gives them the right to commit human rights abuses, and I merely pointed out that your same logic would justify whatever unethical trade arrangement we decide on.

> No the question was whether or not national sovereignty justifies criminal behavior.

No you are wrong again. The question was whether its OK to cease all trade with a country solely because of its questionable human rights record. I pointed out that its not. That Sovereign countries have the legal right to do certain things and must be dealt with in an appropriate way.

It is the same argument made, by the way, when the US wants to justify buying oil from the Middle East, none of whose countries have a stellar record regarding human rights.

Simply read what you wrote. No serious person defends a position like this:

'China is a sovereign nation and has every right to Govern itself the way it wants to.'

Rather than taking the human rights abuses seriously, you continually obfuscate obvious facts by pointing to the United States' history of human rights abuses (of which there are plenty), and simply double down on your own indefensible position.

You could also do the most elementary research into your own position, which would immediately reveal that currency manipulation, censorship, restrictions on freedom of movement and associated crimes violate UN human rights laws and countless international trade agreements. Any honest definition of 'legal' would account for this.

There's an honest conversation to be had about how sanctions impact the poorest segments of a country. That conversation cant proceed if you don't acknowledge reality.

I don’t think I ever refused to acknowledge that the Chinese Government commits human rights violations (among other offenses). My point all along has been that these offenses cannot be used as justification for a complete trade embargo, based solely on those violations.

Ok got it. Then I’ve misread what you’re trying to say. For what it’s worth I completely agree.

> The one time they tried to be a Republic:

They tried at least twice, and both kind of succeeded, or at least didn't totally fail. (Both the ROC and PRC are republics. The PRC especially obviously isn't a western-style liberal-democratic republic, but it is a republic.)

>China is a sovereign nation and has every right to Govern itself the way it wants to

Exactly like North Korea does, but that's not a valid reason to approve whatever they do.

If you see anything that the US is doing that is equivalent what China is doing in Xinjiang, I'm pretty sure that the problem is with your moral compass. The two situations are not equivalent.

> If you see anything that the US is doing that is equivalent what China is doing in Xinjiang, I'm pretty sure that the problem is with your moral compass. The two situations are not equivalent.

Pretty generous considering the US actually separated thousands of kids from their parents at the border, some of whose parents have still not been found. If you didn't factor that into your moral compass, you probably should.

I see your thousands, and raise you hundreds of thousands.

What is this? Comparing who has the bigger stick? Who harms more people?

Any system has injustices; we cannot prevent that. But willfully enacting forcible family separation was not an accident.

Hundreds of orphans is bad enough.

Absolutely, hundreds of orphans is bad enough. (Except they aren't exactly orphans - we didn't kill the parents. They're long-term separated from their parents, though, which is pretty close.)

Hundreds of thousands is a thousand times worse. So, yeah. Not equivalent.

You can't even compare the two, the US is still dealing with systemic racism, but we are dealing with it, China is institutionalizing it. For example, Chinese citizens can be _tortured_ for political views, protesting or religious beliefs, real torture, they apparently use electrocution.

China is not allowed to do what it wants to its citizens, that is the load of crap.

Read the wikipedia article and then tell me how ignorant I am: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

Or this one if you need more: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34592336

> real torture

As opposed to "enhanced interrogation techniques"?

One thing the West certainly does better than the East is marketing.

The US tortures its enemies, China its enemies and citizens.

That makes zero difference to me. I find them both immoral, not to mention that enemies of the US might include some Chinese people, making the two sets identical. You're saying that only the US can torture person X, but China can't.

This is an interesting position, regardless of the fact that the two sets (who the US torture vs who the Chinese torture) are clearly not identical.

Why might a government torturing its own citizens be morally equivalent to a government torturing the citizens of other countries?

Because torturing anyone is immoral? Do you seriously need justification? Does this moral position of "we can torture foreigners, it's fine" seem fucked up to anyone else, or is it just me?

Keep in mind that questioning whether the two are "morally equivalent" is not the same as saying "one is right and the other is wrong".

It intuitively feels, to me, "more bad" for a country to torture its own citizens than for a country to torture citizens of its enemies (although both are still bad). Thus, I'd want to hear a justification that "actually, no, both are the same degree of bad."

I think the onus falls on you to justify why torturing an enemy is "more good" than torturing a citizen. To me, torturing someone is axiomatically immoral, and the fact that they're a citizen of a specific country doesn't make any difference to that. I don't find it "less bad" to torture someone one day before they get their green card than one day after.

Hold up, "less bad" is not necessarily the same as "more good". Breaking my arm and breaking my neck are both bad, but one is worse than the other. It seems difficult to justify that "breaking my arm is more good than breaking my neck".

I don't necessarily agree that the onus is on me (you were the one to initially bring it up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717319 and I also gave my justification, which is that it feels intuitively different), but I can throw out some ideas as to why. I said it was interesting for a reason...

1) Perhaps it's a moral foundations (Haidt) difference: a state torturing its own citizens violates a moral "loyalty" principle as well as a moral "care" (harm avoidance) principle. Thus, it feels worse IF you ascribe to loyalty as a valid moral foundation. Haidt suggests modern liberals heavily elevate the "care" and "fairness" principles over the others, suggesting we might have a deep value difference causing our different opinions.

2) A more political perspective: the US constitution contains certain rights which all citizens are granted (note that US citizenship is defined as a "right to have rights"). See the passage (emphasis mine): "we hold these truths to be self-evident... that [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

One could argue that for the US government to torture its citizens would be additionally unjust, on the grounds that it violates these constitutional rights, specifically (I'd argue) that of Liberty. It's a violation of a social contract as well as a violation of an ethical principle, making it a worse injustice. Note that the authority here is granted to "[the] Creator", intensifying the ethical severity of violating this social contract.

3) Could also make some lower-Kohlberg-level arguments about this, but they're less fun and interesting.

> It seems difficult to justify that "breaking my arm is more good than breaking my neck".

I disagree, I think it is very easy to justify that breaking my arm is "more good", in that it is preferable. If one is -100 and the other is -50, then it is "more good" (i.e. the difference is positive). By "more good" I don't mean that it is good, mind you, just that it is better/preferable.

> Haidt suggests modern liberals heavily elevate the "care" and "fairness" principles over the others

I think this is our difference. I wouldn't want my country torturing anyone, enemy or not. Your second argument conflates legality with morality, so I don't really consider it especially valid. Unless you mean that the government has made a promise to the citizens to not torture them, and it would be additionally breaking that promise. Still, though, I consider the "torturing people" part much, much worse than the "you broke the promise" part, so much so that the latter seems like a rounding error to me, to use a somewhat utilitarian phrase.

> breaking my arm is "more good", in that it is preferable

Neither are preferable over "don't break any of my limbs", but I understand your point. I only nitpick because "having no bad things" is not equivalent to "having good things," in my mind. This is something I dealt with on a personal level relatively recently.

> Your second argument conflates legality with morality, so I don't really consider it especially valid.

The constitution speaks in terms of "god-given rights" and not "laws". The founding fathers were speaking the language of moral imperatives and not of legal imperatives. This is intentional.

The conflation occurs when people consider the laws themselves as opposed to their motivating intentions to be moral imperatives. But my claim is that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are (some of) the motivating moral intentions that justify the laws, thus there is no conflation in my argument.

> I consider the "torturing people" part much, much worse than the "you broke the promise" part, so much so that the latter seems like a rounding error to me, to use a somewhat utilitarian phrase.

Ironically, I argue a utilitarian would disagree: it is likely that a government breaking their promises is harmful and perhaps terrifying to a much larger group of individuals than those who are directly harmed via torture. I figure there's a strong utilitarian argument that (a small harm * 150 million people) > (a large harm * 200 people), but then again, this is part of the horror embodied by stories like "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".

I am no utilitarian myself, but I am also no orthodox Humanist either...

> It intuitively feels, to me, "more bad" for a country to torture its own citizens than for a country to torture citizens of its enemies (although both are still bad).

I agree with you. The citizen scenario includes extra immoral elements like in-group betrayal and abuse of friends in addition to whatever immoral elements come from the torture itself. The enemy scenario feels like the immoral elements may even be a bit muted by that fact that you're probably already willing to kill the enemy, which feels like a more extreme action.

> already willing to kill the enemy, which feels like a more extreme action.

Tell me, would you rather be tortured in Gitmo for a decade and live with the scars for the rest of your life or just take a bullet to your head and be done with it?

Torture is immoral, full stop. No human being should ever be tortured.

> You can't even compare the two, the US is still dealing with systemic racism, but we are dealing with it, China is institutionalizing it.

At the moment, so is the US. There is some measure of hope in some corners that this is an aberration that will be brief at least at the federal level, and that the reversal of it at the federal level will eventually negate any adverse trends at other levels, but that's hope, not established fact.

China may have up to 1 million muslims in concentration camps, what has the US done in the last 50 years that is even comparable? I'm reading so many people defending China, I have to think it's because they haven't done any research, and assume China's not that bad.

> China may have up to 1 million muslims in concentration camps, what has the US done in the last 50 years that is even comparable?

I didn't say that the US did anything comparable to that, I said that the argument that the big-picture difference between the two was that China was institutionalizing systemic racism while the US was addressing it was, whatever the past or hoped-for future of the US might be, currently inaccurate on the US side.

> I'm reading so many people defending China, I have to think it's because they haven't done any research, and assume China's not that bad.

Maybe somewhere, but the post you are responding to said not one word about China (other than a quote for context from the post it was responding to), either in defense or otherwise.

How does the US institutionalize racism? If anything we implement tons of policies with the opposite goal.

The article is about tariffs on China, this is thread is all about China, you responded to a post about human rights violations in China.

I'm not saying the US is perfect, but compared to China right now the US is .

> How does the US institutionalize racism? If anything we implement tons of policies with the opposite goal.

Redlining, racial-profiling, school-prison pipeline, pay discrimination, voter id laws that discriminate against minorities... I can go on and on.

> I'm not saying the US is perfect, but compared to China right now the US is

No its not. They are not comparable and shouldn't be. You think the US is great because I'm assuming you belong to socio-economic classes that have granted you a great quality of life and freedoms which are theoretically promised to all US citizens. But in practise, they are not and the situation is much more nuanced.

No, I want specific laws or policies from government. I'm not denying that there is racism in the US, but the government does not encourage or implement racism to my knowledge. Most of what you describe is illegal in the US.

> No its not. They are not comparable and shouldn't be.

Why can you not compare two countries' human rights?

> But in practise, they are not and the situation is much more nuanced.

It is more nuanced as you suggest, the difference is that the government of China is busy locking up muslims, and the US is busy passing anti discrimination laws.

> No, I want specific laws or policies from government. I'm not denying that there is racism in the US, but the government does not encourage or implement racism to my knowledge. Most of what you describe is illegal in the US.

It doesn't matter and I frankly don't care what you want. Slavery was technically illegal after the Civil War and yet you still had Jim Crow; similarly racism is technically illegal but there continues to be systemic racism in the US, whether or not promoted by Government policy. To the millions of African-Americans incarcerated for possession of Marijuana, it doesn't matter whether there are protections for minorities, because the laws are not enforced. The War on Drugs was a euphemism for a war on minority communities.

> It is more nuanced as you suggest, the difference is that the government of China is busy locking up muslims, and the US is busy passing anti discrimination laws.

No, its not that simple either. The US is busy locking up immigrants... what do you say to that? Or about locking up minorities for minor infractions, while whites go scot-free? What about that?

Its not simple, which is why it must not be compared. You are allowed to criticize China for its human rights record, but they are equally free to criticize you for yours. What is not OK is to spread the lie that the US is some sort of utopia of human rights when its clearly not, and has not been ever since its inception.

You are free to criticize the US, as is China. But this is a thread about China, it seems you're not making an argument that the US is equally as bad as China.

I suppose you could say there are more minorities in jail, but minorities tend to be more on the poverty line which is an easy explanation, I would be interested in a study on the treatment of only those in poverty.

Illegal immigrants should be deported, legal immigrants should not be.

The US is not a utopia, but my point was china is looking more and more like Big Brother in 1984.

Of course you can compare them, how else will you see the difference?

> China is a sovereign nation

Is this how you justify concentration camps?

No. I'm merely pointing out that the Chinese Government has certain leeway in which to run their country. Concentration camps must and should be condemned and there are ways to achieve that: targeted sanctions on entities associated with those activities. That's why we have sanctions against Russian oligarchs involved in criminal activities and not against the entire Russian Federation.

What I'm arguing against is penalizing the whole country with a trade embargo. That is just bullshit coming from someone who understands very little about how international relations work.

How should we impose a sanction on the regional government of Xinjiang specifically? Do you really think the gov't in Beijing has nothing to do with these camps, and should be exempt?

I'm glad that weapon sales to all of China are banned, not just to imperialistic individuals within the PLA.

There is only so much that you can do with wealth in China; many corrupt individuals often park their illicit wealth abroad in Western nations and that is where sanctions against these individuals (or companies) really hurts them.

Sanction enough individuals and you force them to fall in line and discourage that kind of corruption.

I don't think we should buy goods produced by actual slave labor, I'm sure there are a lot of financial incentives with slave labor though.

> China is a sovereign nation and has every right to Govern itself the way it wants to.

Yeah, or "the US government respected Germany’s right to govern its own citizens" as it says here: https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/ma...

> They may not have the same system and freedom that the West is used to, but authoritarianism has been the norm in China for centuries.

Antisemitism had been pretty "normal" for 2 millenia in Europe. Would you go to a holocaust museum and roll your eyes at them, too? Mayne tell them the death camps in annexed territories were bad, but that all the stuff from 1933 to 1939 should be removed, because it was just internal politics and making a judgement about that just shows how little one knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein

Can you even imagine how many of those were put up in response to mere internal politics? You should clear up how none of that was bad, would save a lot of money on maintaining exhibits, and archiving survivor testomies and all that.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/china-s-xinjiang-p...

> More than half the people we met along the way during our journey spoke of family members or acquaintances who were "sent to school." One driver in Hotan talked about his 72-year-old grandfather. A person in Urumqi told the story of his daughter's professor. An airplane passenger spoke of his best friend.

I guess they forgot to mention that authoritarianism has been the norm in China for centuries, so being tortured or a loved one being disappeared and killed doesn't really bother them. They have a "different system and freedom", after all. As does anyone who moves there, anyone the secret police gets their paws on, even internationally. When they get locked up and murdered, they don't really feel it the same way you or I do. When they have families and friendships, it's not like they're actually sad when that ends. They don't suppress showing pain they feel, they simply don't feel it in the first place.

It's all good, nothing to see here. Just the normal day to day business of being a monster.

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