It's western values vs. brainless sheeple asian values. I'm sorry but the atrocities of China are condoned by its people.
Instead, I think we often look at this as 'if p and q then X; certainly not X; probably q; therefore not p; QED'
For a nation that is overwhelmingly okay with (often vocally supportive of) our own actual concentration camps, we're weirdly obsessed with the faraway 're-education' camps of our main economic and socio-political rival.
(I do want to say that I think China is, really, objectively worse when it comes to human rights violations than the US itself is. I just find the unanimity of our criticism vs that of ourselves or, say, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Brazil, or other US-aligned states to leave a sour taste in my mouth.)
Edit: I forgot to tie this back in to the originally linked article. Basically, when we engage in criticism, we should in turn be critical of the interests of those whom that criticism serves. Zuckerberg wants us to believe in a Fifth Estate, of, for, and by the masses. We all probably know that this is double-speak aimed at protecting his own personal power and bottom line, but that narrative enables and supports external criticism, focused on his rivals the scary Chinese, rather than the already vast power that Facebook wields over us.
An interesting hypothesis, specific to a group of states under the China umbrella. It'd be worth exploring more, maybe.
Of course what you actually said was "brainless sheeple asian values", which is very different in ways that I'm not particularly keen to get into.
So it seems this behavior is condoned by the people somehow. If this is completely voluntary, then those people are as bad as the government, and if it isn't then I can only conclude they turn a blind eye to avoid punishment. It's just hard not to also blame the people here, and somehow just blame the government... after all they are the ones to make this equivalence of how the government of China IS the people. If they blur this line, then why would we re-draw it?
It's even harder when we don't have the benefit of hindsight when we have to analyze the present.
>For a nation that is overwhelmingly okay with (often vocally supportive of) our own actual concentration camps, we're weirdly obsessed with the faraway 're-education' camps of our main economic and socio-political rival.
This is the only point I think I disagree with. I haven't met any Americans in favor of the detention camps at the border. The big difference is that, in the Xinjiang province, the Uighur population is being detained and "re-educated" due to their ethnic and religious identity, which to Americans, sounds barbaric and Nazi-like.
What is the alternative? It's not like I'm in favor of keeping people locked up, but what is the actual alternative? People are voluntarily and illegally coming to this country when there is a giant line of people waiting to enter legally.
I've also lived in several parts of latin america, and can say with confidence the majority of illegal immigrants aren't in any kind of danger where they're from. They really just want a better life, but in my opinion the legal immigrants are in line for this and it makes no sense to allow them to cut in line. So then what alternative is there but to detain them and then send them back?
As to the detention centers, they almost exclusively target the Hispanic (okay, and sometimes middle eastern) populations in areas; or do we think that the percentage of white Europeans in those centers is reflective of the number of invalid- or expired-visa, or otherwise illegitimately in-country European people?
Many people would say that e.g. citizens of Taiwan are at least as critical thinking as citizens of the USA. Some would say even more so. Even within mainland China, you're understating the amount of free thought going on.
As far as Western values go, you only have to go back as far as 2003 to see a nation whipped up into a hysterical rage against some imagined enemy, to the point where that nation bombed the shit out of that country and caused the deaths of half a million people.
Consider how easy it was to get you to believe cartoonish generalities about a billion people you've never met.
Who's the sheep?
I'm not Chinese and either way I wouldn't speak for 1.6B people. I'll just note that there have been way more revolutions in China than in America over any timeframe, and they were all terrible. Things are going great for average Chinese people right now, and they have living memory of revolution, bloodshed, starvation, etc. Why fuck with it? Lock in the economic gains, and slow-march towards democracy.
Xi is trying to move things in the wrong direction on the freedom front, and that's bad. The solution here is alliance with Chinese intellectuals, not opposition to 'China' that forces them onto their people's side.