Americans beginning to complain that the Chinese government is influencing American's free speech at home due to the financial entanglements made freely by American companies. In essence, US companies economic interests are impacting US citizen free speech.

Great point! Now I we don't have to worry about it. Move along everyone, nothing to see here!

I don’t see the parent comment suggesting that you don’t have to worry about it.

Then what exactly is the purpose of the comment? It's plainly being used as justification and deflection, like all whataboutery.

To express the feelings of non-Americans that find it funny how Americans didn’t care about other countries when the US did the same thing to them as China is doing to the US now.

Yup, US power is being attacked on all fronts. Just look at how fearful congress was of the Libra cryptocurrency. They were literally talking about libra being a risk to the entire US financial system because libra could blackmail the USA by pulling USD as a reserve backing libra, causing high inflation in the USA. It is no surprise that people/countries/companies are trying to get out of the web we have created around the world (through the financial system). The problem is the USA is imposing all sorts of rules and regulations on foreign countries, threatening their sovereignty. Also the USA is usually extremely militant in how we enforce our rules. Don't comply with the rules - we shut down your accounts, seize your assets etc. Then we require ever financial institution to monitor their customer's activity and report it to authorities. Completely Orwellian system. No wonder people are trying to get out of it.

I agree with your premise. Still, at some point one has to pick sides and I know I by far prefer a world ruled by the US than a world ruled by China. That there are situations that could improve I won't argue but it does not change what is preferable for most people in the planet I would say.

The false equivalence is strong with this one. In no way shape or form is it even remotely similar.

"Your boy cracked my son's head!"

"Your boy started it first. He broke mine's leg!"

"Yeah, a cracked head is not even remotely similar to a broken leg!"

Moral of the story: Broken legs are normal.

In the world of international relations, there really are no good guys.

But in a world where everyone is a bad guy, hypocrisy can be forgiven, since it keeps other bad guys in check despite its self-serving intent. Hypocrisy, whether European, Russian, American or Chinese, keeps the peace.

> In the world of international relations, there really are no good guys.

Bhutan. Bhutan are the good guys.

Bhutan engaged in ethnic cleansing and expelled over 100,000 Lhotshampa into Nepal.

Googled it. Thanks for that. I was unaware.

For anyone else: https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/bhutans-dark-secret-the-lhot...

I challenge you to find a person in Eastern Europe or Middle East who wouldn’t crack up reading your comment. The realpolitik the US, China and Russia use are very similar.

As a person who spent majority of his life in Russia, your comment is the one that makes me crack up, not the parent one. And I can safely say that the same would hold true for most of the people from those countries who were lucky enough to be exposed to all sides of coverage on the issue.

If you think the way western media covers things is biased and dishonest (which it sometimes is, I admit), you have no idea how bad it is over there. It is a completely different degree of delusion that cannot even be called "bending the truth", it is straight up aggressive lying and fear-mongering that can barely even be rivaled by Alex Jones and his InfoWars.

Nobody is claiming that China and Russia have anything close to fair and balanced journalism. The above comment points out the irony that Americans are treating censorship on a Chinese social media app for teenagers as if it's the greatest threat to democracy, while their government bombs a country because they don't like the guy in charge.

Uhm, I lived in Russia for 20 years so I know how biased it is.

Victor Jara would've loved to speak with you.

Stop parroting this argument.

Fundamentally, those in the US can talk about what happened. We can talk about the shit we did and what we did wrong. The Chinese people can't.

Yes, in a very coarse way they're in the same place we were a while back but that doesn't mean it's ok in exactly the same way it wasn't ok for us. Moral relativism and whataboutism aren't morally sound arguments in this case.