Wait, I'm British. You were talking about Britain. Why did we suddenly switch to the USA?
Also, half of your rebuttals are inaccurate and half are not comparable in the slightest.
No, there is no western version of the horrors of "Tank Man". A lot of the Chinese i've spoken to do not even know this happened, and the other half refuse to see it as a problem. You're a textbook example.
The USA isn't the greatest country for a lot of this stuff, I'll admit, but at least it doesn't go as far as to commit the terribly inhumane atrocities of China. There is no suppression of readily available information (blocked search queries, etc).
The enviromental stuff doesn't really hold up either. Yes, the US is a terrible polluter of the world, but in Los Angeles, arguably one of the most polluted cities in NA, you can look outside your window and see further than 100 meters. This is not the case in many Chinese cities.
The wars that have spanned the last five decades (Middle East, Asia, South America) have been brutal, bloody, and in many case unwarranted, but again, this is nothing to the blatant and open genocides caused by the Chinese. Half of the country is in extreme poverty. Examples: Three-Year Famine, Mao's "1000 Flowers Bloom".
Yes, you make some good points. Its not that long ago that you couldn't see further than 100 metres in London though, which last time I checked was part of Britain (different and all as it is from the rest of the island).
I suppose the issue is that most major powers do a lot of shady stuff, and it can be difficult for any of us to think objectively on these matters. With regard to famine and poverty, it wasn't all that long ago that people starved in the islands of Great Britain and Ireland while the smaller island was still a net food exporter.
I don't think that Britain is particularly repressive right now (except for all the CCTV's) while I do think China is, but it takes a complete ignorance of history not to realise that once upon a time, these roles were reversed.
Google Earth alterations of military installations != great firewall.
Show me a military that's cool with open aerials of their bases. The U.S. just got lucky that they had a bit of jurisdiction over the first company to do it. Don't act as if it's asymmetric due to other nations having a larger conscious, it's not. It's just a simple lack of power.
>Wait, I'm British. You were talking about Britain. Why did we suddenly switch to the USA? Also, half of your rebuttals are inaccurate and half are not comparable in the slightest.
Really? I'd like to see how. China is mostly a country that hasn't attacked or bothered anyone. Tibet and Taiwan are disputed areas next to mainland China -- not some remote countries they decided to invade and exploit as colonies. Unlike Britain (and the US, France, Belgium etc) that has soaked large parts of the world in blood, theft, and slavery for centuries.
Heck, a British guy speaking about China re: Tibet and Taiwan? Oh, the irony. Britain stole Honk Kong from China (some 15,000 miles away from "his own business") and attacked China to enforce their trade (of opium among other things).
>No, there is no western version of the horrors of "Tank Man". A lot of the Chinese i've spoken to do not even know this happened, and the other half refuse to see it as a problem.
The horrors of the "tank man", have an estimated 250 to 2500 dead.
No "western equivalent"?
For one, the Britain, in the Opium Wars, killed around 40.000 Chinese. That's from 200 to 20 times more.
And here's another: "the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died".
Mind you, this is just one example of tons of British atrocities the world over.
As for not acknowledging the Tien An Men incident (or it's importance), well the Guardian article from where I took this speaks volumes: "Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them".
>The wars that have spanned the last five decades (Middle East, Asia, South America) have been brutal, bloody, and in many case unwarranted, but again, this is nothing to the blatant and open genocides caused by the Chinese. Half of the country is in extreme poverty. Examples: Three-Year Famine, Mao's "1000 Flowers Bloom".
Those are internal issues, and they get to do what they please with their own citizens. Political changes (like from a humiliated colony for britain and Japan to a sovereign nation) always have a blood toll -- in China, that has 1 billion population, that toll will be bigger. Sure, a lot of those killings were misguided, but that's their issues to solve.
It's not like Britain didn't have its own internal civil wars in its past (or they didn't repress the Irish and the Scots). Or like it doesn't have people in poverty (heck, tons of people in England are uneducated, piss poor, living on the dole and with petty crimes). Compared to most of the affluent Western Europe, it can be argued that England does the worst in terms of poverty -- in places like Yorkshire, Bradford, et al.
I think you two are comparing two evils. It doesn't matter which empire is the lesser of the two evils - ALL empires should be scorned. Why don't we all agree on this fact? The next thing we should be persuaded on is the democratization and decentralization of these two empires.
Also, half of your rebuttals are inaccurate and half are not comparable in the slightest.
No, there is no western version of the horrors of "Tank Man". A lot of the Chinese i've spoken to do not even know this happened, and the other half refuse to see it as a problem. You're a textbook example.
The USA isn't the greatest country for a lot of this stuff, I'll admit, but at least it doesn't go as far as to commit the terribly inhumane atrocities of China. There is no suppression of readily available information (blocked search queries, etc).
The enviromental stuff doesn't really hold up either. Yes, the US is a terrible polluter of the world, but in Los Angeles, arguably one of the most polluted cities in NA, you can look outside your window and see further than 100 meters. This is not the case in many Chinese cities.
The wars that have spanned the last five decades (Middle East, Asia, South America) have been brutal, bloody, and in many case unwarranted, but again, this is nothing to the blatant and open genocides caused by the Chinese. Half of the country is in extreme poverty. Examples: Three-Year Famine, Mao's "1000 Flowers Bloom".