No, it doesn't, because the ACLU has a degree of power and legitimacy in the US which the Chinese government would not allow to any equivalent organization. The ACLU has actually won cases in court which effected a change in law and/or behavior.

> I myself have been harassed (followed, gaslit, personally surveilled, and threatened) by state police in America, for sharing Snowden documents and their contents. My mail between my relatives and I were opened. All subtle hints and threats: stop being outspoken.

Without minimizing the wrongness, illegality, or harm those things have done to you, I have to imagine that in China, a) Snowden documents would never have seen the light of day, and, b) If you had attempted to share something like that you would have been imprisoned without trial.

As the parent poster said, the difference between some and none is significant.

I do agree with the ultimate statement of you post, about fighting for rights.

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

> I have to imagine that in China...

a) Had Washington had its way the documents never would have seen the light of day. They broke international law to ground planes in search of Snowden. They blocked as much of the documents as they could from being shared. They spread rumors about malware on Wikileaks. They worked with the media industry to not cover the contents and to work on the messaging to the American people: "This is bulk collection, not mass surveillance." Their official and public statements on the contents and scope of the programs were repeatedly shown to be false. They passed a law legalizing and expanding authorities and passed this off to the public as their stopping the programs, while the media ran 24/7 news about Caitlyn Jenning. The UK infiltrated the Guardian at gunpoint and destroyed the documents.

b) The laws are in place for exactly this. Snowden, had he been caught, would have been in military prison. His lawyers are arguing today the terms of a trial for him to come home, with senior members of our government calling for his execution. The US government under the Obama Justice Department has compromised on a secret jury-less trial in the Virginia legal subsystem (notable for prosecuting National Security cases, and siding with National Security over individual rights). Remember Chelsea Manning's court case? I don't.

It's absurd to compare this environment to the ACLU.

In 1986, Gorbachev released Andrei Sakharov from internal exile. I guess you would have been saying: "That's it, the West can stop harping about human rights in the Soviet Union, it's all equal now"...?

To my knowledge, there has not been a case of an ACLU lawyer being jailed or harassed simply for taking on a case.

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

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

You read the first Wikipedia article looking for reasons to dismiss it.

There's plenty of Civil Rights activity in China. It's a myopic American view that there is none and "no true Scotsman" all the civil rights law firms, attorneys and court cases should be dismissed out of hand for consideration.

In China, most disputes are resolved without institutional involvement whatsoever. Off the bat it's difficult to point to institutions and institutional processes and claim China doesn't have equivalence.

You are right. China is different. But it's not some wasteland dystopia from a fantasy novel. It has a wide and active civil society. That civil society is uniquely Chinese, and frankly, it's exciting to see it blossom as it has been since the 80s.

The most shocking thing is that the United States thinks China and Chinese society is a country to compare itself to. The ignorance of these comparisons is nearly as shocking.

Your argument could have been made about the Soviet Union in the late '80s. I grew up in Finland, and I remember people actually saying that: defending the Soviet human rights record, saying Russia is different, and pretending that a sprinkling of perestroika has fixed everything. It was complete bullshit then, and it's the same today in China.

Because Hong Kong is part of China, probably?

Are there open debates about Chinese civil rights on Chinese websites?

Indeed, it's hard to find a place on American social media where dissenting opinions can be argued. There's either an administrative agreement to shut the ideas down, or places (such as HN) don't like the idea of having opinions on their site for whatever reason (harmful to the community) so they shut it down.

I'm certainly not getting thrown in jail. But you won't hear any dissenting opinions.

By the FBI?

Do you think some government agency actually complained to the owner of Y-Combinator threatening them with reprisals unless they evict you?

I think that both countries are on equally slippery slopes. I want to appeal to an American sense that this is something in our fiber, and civil liberties are as important to being American as baseball and apple pie.

The US has far more legal protections and better rule of law than China has ever had. And, crucially, America is a democracy with constitutionally protected free speech. American citizens have much greater ability to challenge the actions of their government than Chinese citizens do.

I think it does a disservice to those defending civil liberties in the US to not recognize that the two countries' situations are vastly different.