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Comment by cyrksoft | Hacker News Reader

So, in your view, every government in the world is totalitarian and genocidal? How can you compare the Chinese government, a dictatorship, with most democratic governments from western countries? Of course some governments do bad things, but tell me something genocidal the US government or Canadian government or any EU country is currently doing.

There is no logical way to compare the Chinese government with any other government from the west. People in China aren’t free and can’t do anything unless the CCP dictators let them.

Imagine insulting the CCP leaders the way everybody does in television in the US to their own government. You’d had the military involved and everybody would disappear and get ‘re-educated’ or murdered.

And, btw, I don’t think the Chinese steal, I think they mostly copy.

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` People in China aren’t free and can’t do anything unless the CCP dictators let them.`

I'm Chinese, I feel assaulted when westerners say anything closer to it, how brainwashed they are and how corrupted your media is. The truth is, human are the same, China is huge, nothing is perfect, but of course people are free living in China, if the government corrupted, there are various way to report, and the local leaders got banished if found evidence valid, the reality is, the government is doing good for its people, if you shouting out lies and creating chaos in public, you will be stopped and condemned first by Chinese people, and any government in the world would be standing out, as it's their duty to do so.

While people here only want to hear what they want to hear, no matter how I explained, it seems pointless, just one last comments, I'm here because I have free life in China, and I have opportunities to study, work freely, less politics, more about myself development, and studying abroad, learning to be open, cooperate with people, respect different culture, and don't make any comments on something that I don't know/understand, put peace ahead, if you are rich and strong, its your responsibility to help the weak and poor, otherwise, take good care of yourself etc. You see, those values are taught and advocated widely and are the basics in any education level in China, and this won't happen without a government guide its people. Anyway, please next time when you read news(mainly media from USA, and its allies, UK, Canada, AUS) about China, just pause a second, and think with your own mind, don't take everything they say, that's it.

As Iranian I cannot agree with you more. Same goes with Iran. Western mainstream media has become as corrupt as it gets!

Iran a free country? What about women rights? Something very basic you are still missing...

Keep drinking the Kool-Aid!

As a chinese, I'm also amused when Americans are so adamant about something they know so little about. Somehow chinese that have been exposed to both western and chinese media is gonna be more brainwashed than those that only read western sources

I appreciate you taking the moment to reply. Once the western media decides on repeating their propaganda long enough, sadly people end up buying it and selling it themselves. I wish that western interests/values can turn back to family and society(if that was ever the case). It's disgusting watching those you love turn into xenophobic hypocrits (and how many times in the past two decades Ive lost count) because the man on the telly said so.(soc. media for the modern folk) It will get only worse with these constant screen times.

I've been encountering too many armchair strategic commanders lately. I hope it's just an artifact from the post elections unification. Must be easy planning doom and gloom when it's not gonna be on your doorstep I suppose..

I am not sure why you assume that I am American or consume media from those particular countries. I am from Latin America, and I know from first hand the power and the influence of the CCP.

It's funny you mention how free you are while having to use a VPN for most internet applications (I collaborate with people in China and it's very hard to communicate sometimes, the only way to use Whatsapp is through a VPN and they don't have on 100% of the time). Can you use Google, for example? Are you free to choose which app you use? Apple censors apps because the CCP ask them to. Can you criticize your own government (not really "own" government given that you can't even choose it!) without retaliation from the government?

Funny how you think you are free when you are only allowed to do what an authoritarian and dictatorial government allows you to do. Even Winnie the Pooh is banned in China...

I am also Chinese though I live in Europe now. There are different forms of freedom. One is not necessarily better than the other. You are focusing on one kind of freedom only, to the exclusion of other kinds. You are also not comparing the Chinese's freedom of today, with their freedom of the past.

In China, people have freedom from being infected by COVID. They have freedom from assault; streets are very safe even at night, even for women. They have freedom to consume alcohol publicly. They have freedom from being shot. They have freedom from homelessness. They have freedom from being attacked by the police; contrary to what many people expect, Chinese police is very nice and don't carry guns, and people don't fear them. Not all western countries have these kinds of freedoms, or have them to the same level as China.

China today is freer than it has ever been in the past 3000 years. In the past, everything was at the whim of the emperor. 100 years ago, everything was at the whims of foreign imperialists, who drugged people, looted treasures and stole land as they pleased. 40 years ago, Chinese people could not choose what to wear, where to work, what to study, where to travel.

40 years ago, everybody was poor. With the massive, industrial-scale poverty alleviation efforts that western media somehow doesn't like reporting on, Chinese now have freedom from poverty, which very few countries have. When you are poor, you are not free, no matter how much you can criticize the president.

All of this has changed. The past 30 years are literally the best in the past 3000 years. Chinese are freer than they have ever been.

Furthermore, China isn't even a dictatorship or totalitarian. China is a political meritocracy. See this interview with professor Daniel A Bell: https://youtu.be/D_ZzlPoapB4

Particularly at 13:30 he explains why it makes no sense to lump China together with the likes of Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

Usually, when people criticize China for being 'a totalitarian dictatorship', it is because they want to confirm their preconceived notions about China as a bad place, rather than because their statements are 100% based on facts.

Since you're Latin American, maybe you should listen to what this fellow Latin American has to say about freedom in China. He lives in China. https://youtu.be/RFRIRaj1QvE

Have you wondered why despite being one of the most resource rich places on the planet, with some of the brightest populace, Latin America remains relatively insignificant on the world stage? Why isn't Latin America exerting it's influence and power abroad? Sure you have free access to google and Facebook, but you have no IT industry of your own. What can a software engineer except for hoping to get hired by an American company. Maybe instead of complaining about CCP power and influence, you should learn from them and have the balls to develop your industries, and maybe you'll finally escape the middle income trap

Are you not allowed to use WeChat to communicate with people in China? Why is that?

They will just call you brainwashed. I am already giving up on telling others. In the future, we will be living in matrix, and everyone will be happy with their reality.

> You’d had the military involved and everybody would disappear and get ‘re-educated’ or murdered.

This is incredibly overblown. What's much more likely is that you'll be low-key harassed until you stop, unless you are literally trying to start a revolution. That really isn't all that different to what will happen when you harass your own government. It's not pleasant or right, but it's not a thing that happens in only one place.

> something genocidal

There are conflicts in the balkanised countries that are relatively recent (think the last 10-30 years) that when everything was over ended up with tribunals over what is essentially genocide. What you'd term "democratic governments from western countries" were the main driving factor in what went down.

I will I guess just politely not mention what the US does every single day for absolutely no good reason, because other people have already done so.

You can find old and relatively new evidence of wrongdoing on every powerful country, because that's fundamentally what they do no matter how the leaders came to power.

Slavery /native american genocide, Philippine colonisation, no reason whatsoever to attack Iraq...

Except for recent and pointless wars (mostly US here) you mention things that are more than 100 years old...

China does all those things today. Your point makes no sense whatsoever.

US is still in Irak now... It's really not hard to find where the US is military active.

The US jail population is 2 M, China, 1.5 M. It's little stuff like this that make the US look worse than China.

Be sure that once China is finished killing Uyghur they will say that's an old story like ... hum ... the US. So yeah continue justify crimes, just remember one day, it could be your turn.

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

This was just 40-50 years ago, and the effects remain today

The point is that the factors that led to these crimes are all still there. Were the circumstances to arise again there is scarce doubt history would rhyme or repeat.

Obviously only now matters now. Not 150 or 15 years ago. Don't ask me why.

So if only now matter you mean that nobody should pay their debt? Cause i know a country who goes to extreme length to get back his money... So which was in it? Both ways i guess.

By the way if you interested the US is STILL in Irak, Donald Trump PARDON the CEO of Blackwater, US is supporting the war in Yemen, look it up it goes on and on....

It was sarcasm.

The systems that committed those injustices and crimes against humanity are alive and kicking. The processes and motivations that led to those matters are still present. The only thing that changed is that there is no more motivation to commit such atrocities again, surely those will come back.

Beyond that, I don't see why we should excuse past crimes. All that motivates is for future crimes to be done faster so that the moral high ground can be restored then.

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