Hacker News Reader

Comment by adminscoffee | Hacker News Reader

until china starts moving for better rights for their citizens, i am afraid they should be held at arms length. cannot trust a government that lies that over 1 million people are just being "re-educationed" and "happy" and "want to be there", there is a reason for distrust and it's not "xenophobic" to point out the regimes bs, the people of china deserve a better government. don't even get me started on hong kong. the whole situation is not fun

View on HN

It's really not the business of the US government to be sanctioning China over "better rights for their citizens", when the US has already got massive prison labour camps, racist policing system, and has mishandled the Cvid-19 pandemic to the point where there's a million dead and more injured long-term from long Covid.

China is not a perfect system, and the response to terrrorism in Xinjiang should probably not be extensive prison camps and a surveillance state - but again, the US doesn't have a leg to stand on for criticising this when their response to terrorism is to lay waste to several different countries and cause millions of deaths.

It's all very well for us to sit here and wish for a better system in China, but we all have a much better chance of fighting for and winning a better system here in the USA that would actually change lives here.

I don't understand your mindset, possibly you could expand a bit for me. Shouldn't the US try to improve China? Worst case scenario the US is hypocritical, but that doesn't mean it still shouldn't wield its power for good. Doesn't your position "make the perfect the enemy of the good"? I'm interested in hearing your response.

But why China specifically? Why not wield this power to improve Saudi Arabia for example? (note that since the Saudis are allied and deeply rely on the US, it should be easier to sway them into doing good)

There are a variety of reasons proponents of changing China could make in response, for example since China is becoming (already?) powerful independently from the United States which could (already?) makes them a greater threat, having our opponents share as many values as possible would be ideal in a multipolar world order. However, I'm not arguing for that position, I just don't understand the idea that because the United States has failed on X, Y, or Z issues that that means we shouldn't try to solve those problems whenever they appear. Does that make sense? I can give clarification if needed.

Unless the US improves itself first, then I don't think China is going to believe that the US is making these criticisms and imposing these sanctions with any kind of coherent moral framework. They're going to look at this as a way to restrict and punish them.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it.

I don't quite think the idea that the country needs a "coherent moral framework" to justify taking action to improve particular moral issues. China itself has a coherent framework, but it's wrong and promotes grave injustice (coherence does not mean correct).

Maybe to better understand each other you could comment on my criticism of making "the perfect the enemy of the good" since I think that's the defining issue that's causing me to struggle understanding your point of view.

> Shouldn't the US try to improve China?

US has been doing that since 1978. US capital and domestic market improved China's economy tremendously. And in the process US capitalists get astronomical amount of profit.

Should US interfere China's political system?

Sure. But since China is so powerful in its military. I see no reason that US can force that upon China.

Thank you, I really liked your response. I think you answered an important, parallel, issue which is the practicality of influencing China. This is a different, though interconnected, issue which can sometimes have completely different implications. Foreign policy is fascinating, I must say.

> Shouldn't the US try to improve China?

The goal of US foreign policy has never been to improve the lives of people anywhere outside the US. A sibling comment points out that one of our closest allies in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that publicly beheads dissidents and has incredibly sexist laws, yet the US does nothing, and we see nothing like the neo Cold War coverage that Xinjiang produces. The US will remain an ally of Saudi Arabia because that is beneficial to the interests of the US, not the people subject to the Saudi regime.

If you think I’m a cynic or conspiracy theorist, take a look at what the US has done in other countries since WW2, in many cases overthrowing democratically elected governments in favor of US friendly regimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r.... This is what the US has always done to other countries, expecting them to care about morals or improving anyone’s lives is missing their goal completely (and taking their propaganda at face value).

Whatever the goal of confrontation with China is, improving human rights is the least likely possibility.

I don't disagree substantially, and I don't think you're a "conspiracy theorist", however I must say that you and many others seem to be reading into my question what I did not mean. I'm not asserting that the US has had positive impact, I'm asking whether or not they should have a positive impact despite internal issues still existing. Does that make sense?

Yeah I see your point. I think what I and others are saying is that given the US’s 70+ year track record at serving their own interests at the detriment of foreign people, there is no reason for them to completely change their goals with no reason. The US defense apparatus doesn’t exist to be a moral good or improve the lives of foreigners, it exists to serve the interests of wealthy Americans. The professed moral goals are propaganda and will always be false - they’ve had these justifications for every action they’ve taken from supporting death squads to installing dictators to topple democracies

The problem is that the american politicians justify those actions by pretenting it's a moral call.

So the BS meter is rising.

The situation is +-same in more than half of the world, yet people in US largely don't care since its not part of ongoing medialized trade war.

Compare it to Saudi Arabia which gets free pass on basically any atrocity because oil and US military bases. Or Pakistan supporting Taliban and de facto defeating US army in battle of mental attrition in Afghanistan from the shadows. Or Israel which is committing war atrocities on Palestinian population, and running biggest concentration camp in western world (Gaza Strip). And so on.

Sure, they do bad stuff that they view will help them in future to have more homogeneous population. Which will probably end up true.

You wanna 'held them at arms length'? Well slap tariffs on Chinese-manufactured goods, you can start with Apple products.

Yeah sure but we should do them also hold Israel at arms length for holding 2 million people in a literal concentration camp in Gaza and also heavily restricting the rights of Palestinians in West Bank. Why this is not called genocide when the Uighur situation is, is beyond me.

Both are genocides, without qualification.

Bizarre that you have not been downvoted to oblivion. Probably because you didn't use a keyword that summons bots.

You can only downvote on HN after you've acquired enough karma yourself. Bots can't do sh* here, thank you very much.

Do you think PR agencies don't maintain such accounts?

Amazing.

Significant amounts of HN accounts with enough karma to downvote exist which are owned by bot farms.

If you know they're significant, then you must know which they are? Did you report it to admin? Or you just speculate?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com