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Comment by pishpash | Hacker News Reader

What about the hundred thousand Japanese American internees in American concentration camps? I don't think the scale is that different, normalized by population and stage of development.

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well, for one we don't deny it happened

That was almost 80 years ago, whereas China is doing this today. Past US actions don't somehow invalidate current complaints about massive human rights violations by the CCP. This is purely whataboutism.

I have no interest in pointing out current US atrocities around the world; there are many. Does any US action past or present invalidate anything? No. But it does make your words overall worthless and hypocritical. As they say, clean your own house first. It's energy better spent.

No.

We should be critical of human rights violations of every country, at every point in time. Past US violations are not some kind of excuse to allow China to put millions of people in concentration camps. This is a fallacious argument, the tu quoque logical fallacy.

The issue isn't that China is doing bad things, it's that as someone who is not in China sitting in probably an armchair, providing opinions and guidance across the world is a terrible way to provide well-thought out political advice. One should stick to where they have legitimacy, and that's usually in their local politics.

As a non-black person, it'd be like me criticizing black people for things they do. Since I cannot truly understand the black experience in America without being a black person, any criticism I levy against them would be wholly unfair.

Huh? This sounds a lot like CCP arguments. Don't meddle in our affairs and tell us what to do. Problem is that China is practicing economic colonialism in Africa as we speak and sabotaging and stealing tech from western corporations and govts at an unprecedented rate. Fortunately, the world is starting to wake up to the Chinese thuggery. China's days of breaking international law unpunitively are numbered.

Really no point arguing against this. My point is that Africa, China, can handle themselves for their own business dealings and don't need Americans (myself included) to protect them. Anything else is propaganda, meddling, whatever you want to call it.

It's not as simple as that. China has already debt-trapped Sri Lanka into giving up a port and is eyeing other African nations as it projects its navy across the Indian ocean trying to threaten India. Maybe the corrupt African leaders can give up African interests to China and it's their business, but Chinese interest obviously doesn't end there. Hence, it is, and should be of concern to all the other national interests in the area and globally. Sorry, China will not be allowed to do as they please considering their track record.

Oh, the "your not X, so your opinions or views about X are irrelevant" argument.

The fact that this comment was downvoted is ... interesting.

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