Full List of China's Unofficial Police Stations Around the World
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
I also worry that without freedom of speech a lot of academic research and urban infrastructure will suffer without people being able to freely criticize bad science and bad construction.
I can bring other examples but i don't want to risk a flamewar.
If you're in a profession with a license you are expected to follow a code of ethics. If you violate it, the profession in its interest to protect itself, can and rightfully will remove you.
For example, licensed a professional social workers are not to have sexual relations with their clients. If found doing so their license is revoked and their name is publish in professional magazines and news letters.
The same is applied to Engineers. If a licensed professional Engineer is found to be faking data to make a car appear more safe they are out of a license and career.
If a Doctor is found to be reporting false information to the public during a public health crisis I would say that's a huge ethical violation and I expect their profession to remove them, promptly.
If we're comparing how Western free society handled Covid versus China I think we can agree that the Western society has been significantly more transparent and were not locking people inside apartment buildings.
Let's actually compare what we're comparing here.
Because you're still free to say 'let's dismantle the WHO' just as the rest of the rational and free world is also free to disagree with you.
Now, before you go off half cocked I am not saying the CDC or WHO made perfect calls every time. I think they used the best information they had available to them with decades of expertise and updating as more and better information came in. Additionally for years to come public health officials, scientists, doctors, and organizations will be researching this recent pandemic, evaluating what was effective and updating policies and strategies for future pandemics.
However the important part that we're discussing here is that we are free to criticize these organizations. Free to criticize the government. Free to expose a company skirting regulations in place to protect consumers and the environment. We are free to review the science and come to a consensus. There will always be outliers. The existence of them alone doesn't mean the consensus is wrong though.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/34-officers-peoples-rep...
Not only that, but the solution is trivial. See how the UK dealt with the problem of russian spies, which plagued the country during much of the Cold War. They expelled all the Russian diplomats running the spies and the problem vanished virtually overnight.