[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...
Historically, the only thing that the West was ever able to successfully import into China was opium, and even that was a small window before native production became cheaper than shipping it all the way from India or Turkey. Over the long haul, China has had millenia-long trade surpluses, to the point that Roman writers were complaining about the trade through the Red Sea in spices and silks siphoning off their gold and silver, and later on so much of the silver of Mexico and Potosi ending up in China that it destabilized their bimetallic currency system.
The problem is that american citizens and businesses are heavily dependent on one specific source of imports -China- with little to no alternatives on certain goods [1]. It's a good long term aim to diversity the imports, but it needs to be done gradually, allowing sufficient time for american economy to adjust. Attempting to do that in one fell swoop would cause a lot of disruption and economic hardships to american citizenry.
Once the key imports are diversified, US will have much more room to put pressure on China, to curb their humanitarian abuses.
[1] China also holds a significant share of US bonds
As an American, I'd be willing to pay more for goods if it meant Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and other folks in China had basic human rights.
‘Cheap stuff now, environmental disaster later’
Little and low quality food so that sheriffs could take the money https://www.al.com/opinion/2018/03/49_alabama_sheriffs_flout...
Widespread prison rape https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/12/15/us-federal-statistics-sh...
Prisons under staffed and over crowded https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2017-07-26/...
Widespread use of solitary confinement https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2019/04/20/solitary-co...
Chemical Castration in at least 8 states https://www.foxnews.com/politics/alabama-passes-bill-requiri...
I think it is important to keep the sense of proportion, things can be bad and require urgent action without being the worst. And saying things like: Trump is Hitler or human right violations in US are comparable to China do not help anyone. It just downplays the seriousness of the worst case and make the bad case look good.
China isn't waging war all over the world, so America is the worst case scenario right now.
We aren't the worst for human rights violations. But, it's not acceptable that sexual assault is a legitimate threat to the extent that it's the butt of every prison joke.
We don't have to be the worst to realize we need to fix our problems; but there are clearly people in this thread that are unaware of the issues.
But the bad things a country did do not reduce its right of truthfully pointing out bad things other countries are doing.
And why are you going back 200 years? Internment camps happened in the 40s and forced sterilization + syphylis guided as experiments happened into the 1980s... To free people, citizens even.
No; which is why I phrased it the way I did. This doesn't change the perception though because the U.S. stands out in the developed world of numbers we can trust.
Legally, do they belong there, "many" of them have been sentenced by a jury or judge; though often not with a jury thanks to aggressive plea bargaining.
Do the prisons also have a legal obligation to protect prisoners from undue harm like rape?
But it also points to issues in our legal system. When the per capita number of warrants in Ferguson is > 1.5. When 3 strike laws and mandatory minimums lead to life in prison for non-violent offenders.
But also, if 4% of death row inmates are innocent; do we suppose that number is higher or lower for lesser sentences? for those that took plea deals? For those where the police have been corrupt.
https://www.newsweek.com/one-25-executed-us-innocent-study-c...
* The US imprisons 4 times as many people than China per capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...
* Xinjiang Accounts for 21% of prison arrests
* The US has 2 million people in prison http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...
What is happening in China is an abomination, and political pressure is necessary. However the US should expect to be held to the same standards when applying political pressure, and it needs to resolve its own problems too.
China condemning US won't change anything because the situation in US is the way it is because the people know and do not care enough about the issue. US condemning China would help because China tries to hide the truth from its own citizens who believe the camps are kind of schools where people learn history and get rid of religious superstitions.
By putting the false equivalence sign between these two situations you do disservice to both causes.
However if we look at percentage of population jailed for any reason, the US looks atrocious.
* The US has about 400,000 people jailed on remand, i.e. they have been accused of a crime but haven't made it to trial.
* About 1 in 6 of the black population is in jail (by my envelope calculation).
* 3 in 10 state prisoners developed symptoms of mental illness (with no recent history of mental illness).
Yes, US prisoners are not political prisoners.
Selecting "political prisoners" as the only category that deserves political pressure seems wrong to me.
Think less "all lives matter" and more walk and chew gum at the same time.