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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Before we throw about the term "Imperialism", let's remember what kinds of things the European powers did that are rightly considered part of it:

- Violently forcing "trade" to happen, often under an "East India Company". You can have cannon balls or opium.

- Forcing the local administration to learn the language and legal system of the imperial power. Why do they speak English in Kenya?

- Suppressing local rule. How many people had to die in independence wars?

- Moving people around who didn't want to be moved. Plantation Rum anybody?

To compare current China with something like the British Empire is not very reasonable.

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>To compare current China with something like the British Empire is not very reasonable.

This is a strawman from PRC apologists. The article doesn't do that at all.

Also, the British doing bad things in the past is no excuse for governments doing things like this today.

>no excuse for governments doing things like this today.

Giving loans out for public infrastructure?

Fair points, but we are in the 21st century, and we should expect a nicer world out there, with the UN, global free press, etc.

This just feels like whataboutism, no one denies that the European imperialism was bad.

It is definitely not whataboutism. Here's a definition for you.

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

I'm not creating a false moral equivalence between European Imperialism and China, I'm refuting it.

> Before we throw about the term "Imperialism", let's remember what kinds of things the European powers did

You imply a relationship between the two throughout the rest of your comment, starting from the first sentence. Just because you make the refutation in the last sentence does not suddenly wave away the whataboutism you employ through the rest of your comment; directly comparing the two.

Whataboutism is basically this:

A: X is bad, B does that. B is bad.

B: Y is bad too, and A does that. You're just as bad as me.

What I said was:

Imperialism is A, B, C, D.

China doesn't do any of those, so let's not call them imperialist.

Now you can argue about what imperialism is, but you can't argue that I'm making a different kind of argument to whataboutism.

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