So would I, but having lived in both countries, one of the two governments is decidedly more evil than the other.
China does not respect the sovereignty of other nations, nor the rule of law. They are not above intimidating, blackmailing, or otherwise exerting their influence on foreign nationals on foreign soil when their views become too politically inconvenient.
Those residing and holding citizenship abroad but that have family back in China (which are many) have proven especially vulnenable.
Stories of China arresting foreign citizens for activities abroad and never allowing consular access, funding and manipulating groups in foreign countries (especially on university campuses) and then directing them to silence others, and more are a dime a dozen.
While the US's hands are quite dirty here as well, China has shown repeatedly that given the opportunity they are more than willing to try and implement the kind of oppression and thought policing they have at home in places abroad. It is more dangerous for the entire world to have China spying on them than it is the US.
How is China worse than the USA? Your claim seems to rest entirely on greater reporting of China’s aggressions by the US and their allies.
Do you think the US is harvesting organs?
However I am truly afraid of the way Xi has enacted its horror policies in China.
The US routinely massacres innocents in foreign countries then retroactively declares all the victims “terrorists”. China — to my knowledge — doesn’t engage in anywhere near the level of military aggression that the USA does.
When you compare the number of organ harvest victims to the number of “terrorists” slaughtered by incorrectly targeted missiles, who comes out ahead in the ethics game?
Do you think killing people for the sake of imaginary goals is better or worse than killing people to harvest organs?
Acknowledged this already.
The policies the US is trying to enforce with these measures are less bad for most of the Western world than those that China is. That's it.
While the US has taken quite a slide on freedoms over the past couple decades, they're still nowhere near China's level and I find it pretty laughable to even try and put them on the same playing field in that regard.
The ideal would be to use open-source hardware and e2e encryption, but if this is not possible I would suggest these scared of the US to use Chinese phones and these scares of China to use US phones.
Can you support this assertion?
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/nine-fifa-officials-and...
To quote a Chinese citizen: “Give us a baby and we’ll let you go.”
https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/03/21/give-us-baby-and-well-...
unless you are under 25 or deeply religious, I'd suggest to think twice before using 'evil' on subjects of international politics.
Was George Bush Jnr performing the actions of an evil man? Discuss.
The Chinese can and do simply disappear people without the semblance of due process. Their history also is one of ethnic cleansing as the Han people have pushed out or marginalized most other ethnic groups.
The history of: The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, and Tianammen Square is pretty awful.
This still seems like a strange, "pre-crime" sort of standard to which to hold China. You're almost counting USA misdeeds against China: "since USA did all these horrible things, you can be sure China will do even worse, someday!"
Knowing that they treat their third-world neighbours in contempt and tend to regularly infringe on territorial sovereignty, I suspect that answer will be yes. Your media does not tend to cover such affairs.
China is one of the most exploitative world powers in its relations with resource-rich developing countries. And it's no stretch to say that without the Soviet push for communism to take root in Latin America, the USA would have had little need to support authoritarian right-wing governments there.
It's odd watching US Americans (I presume) attack China while defending their own country's horrendous record (witness your cavalier setting aside of the CIA's evil doings in South and Central America). You simply don't appear to understand that a large number of people don't like super-states and that includes both the USA and China (and also the USSR up until its dissolution).
I, as a European citizen have no practical way to benefit of that semblance of rule of law.
We are having US nukes in our backyard. This adds as much worry as it adds protection.
Our problem is often of federation. We can't just tell every state to do a thing and expect it to happen - the whole powers enumerated thing in the Constitution made sure of that. We'd have to get every district involved, replace the DAs, vote out governor's, appoint all new officials to get people who won't just uphold the status quo. Change happens from the bottom up.
We also have our own domestic and state sponsored massacres. We have mass shootings and healthcare crises and blacksites and a troubled history with eugenics and ethnic cleansing and medical and military experiments on the unassuming public.
We have labor camps for prisoners in the form of contracted call centers and menial work that pays inmates cents per hour (and "sentenced to hard labor" wasn't that long ago), and a private prison system that colludes with courts and police to keep cells full by any means, no matter the harm to it's occupants. Cash for Kids was an American Enterprise.
You might say these are lesser or more distant wrongs in the face of fresher "foreign evils", but they are no less blemishes for where or when they are perpetuated. Not fighting against them here because there's worse happening there is pretty un-American to me. Setting the example you want upheld is a pretty simple way to live.
seriously, I'm not even going to blame America. it's the tragedy of great power politics. to maintain its hegemony, it will and has done whatever takes. any illusion of moral superiority, is just illusion.
And I don't understand how you don't understand. It was a very simple point that was being made - that the US has projected far more violence outside its borders over the last century than China. It's an irrefutable point and, from the perspective of people who live neither inside China or the US and so don't have to worry for themselves about how violent those governments are inside their borders, a very pertinent one.
So it depends how you count.
Hum you could use a chat with one or more guantanamo bay inmates
There are no terrorists at Guantanamo - at least not until such time as we hold a trial to determine whether they are. In this case that's not splitting hairs, the failure to observe the Bill of Rights is quite the point.
From a pragmatic perspective, I'd choose the former.
China has historically not engaged in violence far from its borders. America frequently does.
Pedantry FYI, that’s just a state. The term “nation” has more to do with distinct communities and culture. And so a “nation state” is when those overlap.
Furthermore, since a nation is a group of people bound together by shared culture, values, religion, language, etc., while a state is a piece of land with a defined border, then nations and states are not necessarily the same thing.
A "nation-state" is the intersection of the two, where cultural boundaries align with political and geographical boundaries, and not a redundant synonym of "state".
That seem like a good reasons for people within US borders to prefer to be spied on by the Chinese government rather than the US government and for people within Chinese borders to prefer to be spied on by the US government rather than the Chinese government.
If I have to be spied on, I will choose whoever is less likely to subject me to violence.
So if I had to choose I would prefer china over the NSA, Of course neither is the best option but .....
if I lived in China the inverse would be true
If they have access to an enormous volume of potential blackmail or datamining, you think they won't use that against us for political gains? They could blackmail a programmer to insert a subtle vulnerability into a piece of code by threatening to expose his extramarital affair, or threatening to tell his employer/family/friends what kind of porn he watches. Or they could easily datamine and target those with monetary issues to see who is vulnerable to a bribe. Or they could threaten to frame you for child porn using their backdoor access.
This is from a government that isn't afraid to 'disappear' political dissidents, send people to "re-education" camps, harvest organs from their own people. You think they're going to be friendlier to American citizens?
Not to lambast china while excusing the US Government that requires that type of spying by law.
Do you believe that the US Government is above " blackmail or data mining" or "won't use that against us for political gains", both of which has been proven to be true
Everyone is Soo fucking afraid of foreign influence on our politics they ignore the domestic influence of the same nature.
Personally I believe the NSA and CIA to be more dangerous to our liberties than China or Russia.
As Lincoln said many many moons ago, If we lose our freedoms it will because we destroyed ourselves
As far as the tech companies / Hollywood censoring because of china, for the product in china sure but they censor their products here because they want to, china is just a convenient excuse that naive people believe. It is a way to shit shift the blame "no no we did not want to, big bad china made us" bullshit
Yes, because American citizens are none of their business. Law enforcement and prosecution on the other hand is very interested.
Now let's imagine I am an American citizen/businessman competing with a Chinese businessman. I have a better product, better networks. Let's also imagine the scenario where the Chinese govt has more power and dominance than anybody else in the world. Do you still think an American citizen is none of their business?
How about if an American citizen happens to write an article criticizing Chinese govt? What would happen in the above scenario?
China, and the US for that matter, will generally do what they think they can get away with to further their interests. Regardless of a bunch of imaginary lines drawn on a map.
So long as those steps are designated as a "free speech zone".
People always seem to forget, all government actions and regulations no matter how small are acts of violence. They are not voluntary and are backed by the threat of legal violence to anyone that dare resist.
How is surprising? The defining characteristic of a nation state is that it has a monopoly on violence within its borders. Having a monopoly on intercepting telecom traffic is a logical consequence of that. For other countries though, yeah I'd prefer if neither China nor US have backdoor access.