If I made an equivalent comment similar to coldtea's, one detailing a list of China's sins, on Chinese social media... place your bets on whether or not this post would be removed by the government censors. I bet it would, personally. Probably rather quickly.
Some of the "counterpoints" also were strange considering we are talking about China. For instance, China executes more people than anyone else in the world, and even when adjusted at a per capita level China's rate is quite a bit higher than the United States. (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/12/china-st...) And China's internet surveillance is far worse than the United States, probably one of the worst in the world as far as this goes (eg "Great Firewall", large divisions of government devoted to censoring social media, etc.) -- it is more internal focused at this time, granted, but still.
China certainly is meddling in other nations' foreign politics too (just look at the recent politics in Asian countries with the Belt and Road Initiative, with some commentators such as this -- https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/08/28/commentary/w... -- worried about such being a "debt trap" for political purposes). And the worrying militarization of the American police force still compares nothing to what China is doing in Xinjiang (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...).
There certainly are Americans that gloss over our sins and over-promote "American exceptionalism". I don't see that in most of the Hacker News crowd -- I think most Americans on here are plenty aware of our faults and transgressions, and are often rather vocally against our own nation's suppression of dissent and free speech. But China's on another level, a much tighter authoritarian state with much more active spying and suppression. I think it's hard to argue against this.
If I made an equivalent comment similar to coldtea's, one detailing a list of China's sins, on Chinese social media... place your bets on whether or not this post would be removed by the government censors. I bet it would, personally. Probably rather quickly.
Some of the "counterpoints" also were strange considering we are talking about China. For instance, China executes more people than anyone else in the world, and even when adjusted at a per capita level China's rate is quite a bit higher than the United States. (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/12/china-st...) And China's internet surveillance is far worse than the United States, probably one of the worst in the world as far as this goes (eg "Great Firewall", large divisions of government devoted to censoring social media, etc.) -- it is more internal focused at this time, granted, but still.
China certainly is meddling in other nations' foreign politics too (just look at the recent politics in Asian countries with the Belt and Road Initiative, with some commentators such as this -- https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/08/28/commentary/w... -- worried about such being a "debt trap" for political purposes). And the worrying militarization of the American police force still compares nothing to what China is doing in Xinjiang (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...).
There certainly are Americans that gloss over our sins and over-promote "American exceptionalism". I don't see that in most of the Hacker News crowd -- I think most Americans on here are plenty aware of our faults and transgressions, and are often rather vocally against our own nation's suppression of dissent and free speech. But China's on another level, a much tighter authoritarian state with much more active spying and suppression. I think it's hard to argue against this.