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Comment by logicchains | Hacker News Reader

The way I see it, the Chinese government doesn't care what you do as long as you don't challenge it. The US on the other hand seems intent on enforcing its whims everywhere on the globe it can. War on terror, war on drugs, war on encryption, war on financial privacy, war on intellectual property infringement. To quote CS Lewis: "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

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You are wrong: I am familiar with the CS Lewis quote

1) In this case the nation working behind the scenes is China. American imperialism I concede is bad. However, the Chinese have quietly been breaking over 50 international regulations and laws from the WTO and universal declaration of human rights.

2) The Chinese do care what you do. Just last week the Swedish government was going to give an award to an activist in Sweden, and the CCP threatened the entire country - pathetic. The Australians said they do not agree with Chinese human rights violations, so they were denied entry (clearly they care). I also question how one can determine what is "challenging" the CCP when it is a mercantilist nation with hands in every basket.

3) Enforcing the war on drugs all over the world? Like asking China not to ship fentanyl? Sure.

4) America is pushing the war on financial privacy? Hello, have you seen Alipay and Wechat before? Do you realize cash is still a major way that some people get paid in America? Perhaps in swift you could argue undue transparency, but wire transfers are a different subject.

5) American intellectual property infringement? ...do you mean like the Chinese forced intellectual property transfer?

Lastly, on the CS Lewis quote. America is constantly at odds with its conscience. Half the country is constantly calling out the other half. In China if you don't tow the imperial / mercantilist line your social credit goes down and your freedoms are limited.

It's been like a week since the last US-backed Latin American coup.

Yeah, but US-backed != US-hatched. The proximal cause is that Bolivia had fallen into a state of utter chaos (therefore a power vacuum); the proximal cause of that is that the president tried to pull off a Xi Jingping but this didn't play even with much of the population that initially backed him.

It's the difference between setting a house on fire to acquire the land, and buying a land lot where a house used to be.

That's certainly the official US line on the matter.

How has the official US line held up, historically, when it comes to coups vs socialists in Latin America? Why should it be different this time?

I don't think the above commenter was defending China, so much as pointing out that the US does much worse.

Each one of your bullets is true, and more extremely applicable to the US.

Chinese organ harvesting is surely beyond what the US is doing.

I think drone stickes where civilian deaths are acceptable is comparable.

They were absolutely defending china and mischaracterizing the US at the same time, as are you

"...as long as you don't challenge it."

Challenge it on what? Currency manipulation? Unfair trade practices? Influencing elections? Going against every international body and established rule, and building island military bases to seize new ocean territory from its neighbors? Building concentration camps to imprison millions of minorities who have committed no crime? Propping up N. Korea to use its instability to further Chinese international negotiations?

So if China isn't challenged on any anything of importance, it doesn't care what you do? All countries do bad things and they should all be challenged on it. Why would China be different?

I think we can criticize both the Chinese Govt as well as our own government. For instance, China sees no holdback from imprisoning and killing anyone on the thinnest of pretenses, it's basically wielding ultimate authoritarian power to ruin or end lives. On the other hand, the US actually wields a similar authoritarian imprisonment power much more frequently than China, actually more than almost any nation in the world - 10x more than other enlightened western nations, and the same or more than many repressive nations going by percentages of population in prison. The US justifications for that many in prison are just as weak a pretense as the Chinese justifications we just accept them more readily.

Wether it's an oligarchy of party elite, or oligarchy of robber barons pulling the strings makes little difference to the lives ruined.

> I think we can criticize both the Chinese Govt as well as our own government.

In the west we can criticize our governments and are arguably more free. in china you can't and are arguably less free. I know where i would prefer to live.

I think you need to read my last line a little more carefully. I did not say the US is less free - I said that ruined lives are still ruined.

That one would personally prefer to have the freedoms of the privileged class of the US is not in question. But the US ruins lives at a 3x higher rate in prisons than China does. And it's not organ harvesting, but is cruelty that is personal, financial, and petty. Medical care is routinely denied, long term imprisonment in solitary conditions is considered torture in other nations, and is common in the US. And undeniably, prison is applied more frequently and for longer terms to a minority set of races in the US akin to how China persecutes minorities. (again I agree the degree is different but point out the rate is higher in the US, and ruined lives are still ruined). Those affected in that system really don't have the freedom to opt out of it.

Edit: The robber barons cruelly end lives too...

https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1184644551987777537

What!? A few thousand migrant families arrested at us border is bad. Agreed. But million minorities in re-education camps with organ harvesting is really bad. Not even close on the scale of shittyness.

I think OP is referring to the Middle East.

Well some of those migrants families have babies who are not learning to speak or read at critical times due to intentional neglect. That's pretty horrific.

But I was referring to our in-nation prisons to clairify.

So much for the success of Chinese propaganda abroad. No democratic western state comes close to the totalitarian regime that is China. They attacked students with tanks a few decades ago and still have the same people in power. People should be informed about Chinese politics more, and that it does not happen via mainstream media is a telling sign of their financial leverage nowadays.

Would you rather live under a robber baron than in the US? What does this look like to you? Who is the robber baron? How does he treat you?

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