They tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar, no joke, like Looney tunes.
Compared to the CCP, it's fairly benign. The example you gave, Merkel's phone, is a textbook example. Spy all you want, but we're not stealing IP or sabotaging power grids (to my knowledge). We're not interfering with other countries' covid response or possibly corrupting medical records.
> why would the Chinese be interested in sabotage here?
Presumably, because it gives China a geopolitical edge in the international sphere. Think about how damaging it would be to not only be the country where the virus started, but also not having a valid vaccine. By slowing down Western vaccine efforts and boosting their own, they can regain the upper hand and make China look strong. "Strong China" keeps those leaders in power, and they'll do whatever they can to project the feeling that they're in control and "better" than the West. Also, China is posturing itself to be a counterpoint to the West, but they need to show themselves as somehow a viable candidate for that.
So a wide variety of reasons, but it's easy to see why they would do this.
It would take a book-length treatment to evaluate that sentence, but I don't think it's justified. We've been VERY active, around the whole world, since WWII. China's only started to look past their immediate neighbors recently.
I guess 'benign' can do a lot of work for you if you think we're the protagonists of history.
But from what it seems of what little we know of that world, the US seems to have some kind of value system, and the CCP has almost none. Freedom of speech is a good example. If the US were to spy on a citizen, they wouldn't end up in a concentration camp. The US also encourages its allies, as much as it can, to promote "Western democratic values". For example, we were instrumental in turning South Korea into a democracy, from a dictatorship.
So it's not as simple as "US bad china good" or "China bad, US good" but I think it's pretty clear China is a totalitarian system which has few scruples, if any. So that's what we mean by "benign". Some rough understanding of "the right thing". It's not that the US does everything great, forever, because clearly...
We spent 4 years fighting, with 3 million casualties, in order to leave the border between north/south in the same place we found it, and install an allied dictatorship for the following 30 years. I guess it worked out eventually, but that's to the credit of the Koreans, not us. We were fine with a capitalist dictatorship as long as the Cold War was on.
Did you ever hear about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
Thousands of protestors killed, by US weapons, while our defense dept was kept in the loop. And I had never even heard of it until I went to fact-check myself about the length of the dictatorship there. Funny. I wonder why.
What about this bit he said "If the US were to spy on a citizen, they wouldn't end up in a concentration camp". Seems a valid point in general.
If I were to take that on as some sort of debate challenge, I'd point out the mass incarceration and the fact that we still have a bigger chunk of people in jail despite being so much freer. Of course, that's a bit of a rhetorical gambit.
As far as the characterization of china, it depends. Han Chinese don't go to prison just for criticizing the government, they just lose opportunities. Party membership is a big part of getting ahead there. They go to prison if they start getting organized, holding meetings, being an alternative political party.
Xinjiang is a whole other can of worms.
> that we still have a bigger chunk of people in jail
Provide a citation. I believe this figure is true for the US (you are saying you are in the US I take it?), so cite it. It's a strong and damning figure so bring it to the front.
> Han Chinese don't go to prison just for criticizing the government
Do other ethnicities? Why does ethnicity matter here? Does ethnicity make a difference in chinese law?
> They go to prison if they start getting organized, holding meetings, being an alternative political party
In this respect the US and the UK are better because you don't. Mind, I've no great trust in the government not to 'keep an eye on troublemakers' as they'd put it, in fact there's a long history of infiltrating groups in an immoral and downright illegal way sometimes, but they strongly tend not to end up in prison.
> Xinjiang...
I've not heard of this. Could you provide some pointers please? (genuinely curious)
Go do some reading, consider relaxing your opinions while you do it.
1. I encouraged you to provide a citation to support your own point which I AGREED WITH. You have not.
2. I asked a question about whether different ethnicities are treated differently in chinese law. You avoided answering.
3. I gave an example of greater freedom under UK & US law. You have not acknowledged this presumably because it is inconveniently true.
4. I asked in good faith for some reading material on whatever was about Xinjiang. You have not provided this.
If I am "completely invested in strong opinions" then change my mind with facts. It was a worthless and pretty patronising reply. Provide relevant facts.
I presume the Xinjiang thing was this mass imprisonment thingy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
This is verifiably false. Han vine Chinese book store owners in Hong Kong were kidnapped to mainland China, incarcerated and forced to sign confessions. Their ‘crime’ was selling books critical of the CCP.
HK was more of a hot situation, you had protestors waving UK flags and talking about independence. I'm not justifying anything, but that's exactly the 'credible threat' vs 'talking shit' distinction I was talking anout.
In the cases you're referencing, are they still locked up? I'll check out a link if you've got one.
>> This is verifiably false.
> I was speaking more generally
That response is meaningless (the classic 'nebulous response' to an inconvenient question) and thus sidesteps addressing his point. Also please elaborate on what 'losing opportunities' means - I hope it doesn't extend to eg. the right to eat food does it?
> In the cases you're referencing, are they still locked up?
It's irrelevant if they are still locked up or released, they got locked up for political reasons. Right?
So what have we learn so far? Nothing, apparently.
I'd like to help you realize that despite all your values of freedom of speech, free thinking and so on, this very set of strong emotional values makes you live in a fantasy world where countries/cultures are impersonated by good or bad characters, the actions of which are either justified or not despite they are all equally questionable.
Of course the USA have had concentration camps (China and France also), of course people were interned based on religion or skin color also in the USA (China and France too), of course the USA invaded countries while lying in the face of everybody about the reasons (like France and China also did). I don't know, whatch Powell's speech to the UN about the weapons of mass destruction in a loop until it clicks?
All countries (I included France just because I happen to write this from there) would likely do the same on the same circumstances regardless of their official values, because no country act because of values. Countries are not real characters, they do not act, and have no values. Individuals do and have, and it is important that individuals of the most powerful country in the world would adopt another set of guiding values than "when that's my gouvernement doing it it's Ok but when that's others it's evil". Because they have been subjugated by their ruling class[1] for a long time now, and the consequences have been dramatic.
[1] For lack of a better term
Maybe they deserve it for being criminals, just like the Muslims in Xinjiang deserve it...
I remember reading a cynical blog post about how what occupies governments are how to have the most influence in the world. USA used to be good at that, but well, we know where that's gone. As for "Western democtratic values", one could cynically view that as trying to install a free market so American companies can exploit resources and the population. Just look up where the term "banana republic" came from.
Provably untrue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#Industria...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/30/airbus-coul...
https://www.bbc.com/news/25907502
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150629/16134031494/nsa-d...
See for instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss
> A report in the Moscow Times quoted KGB veteran Vasily Pchelintsev as saying that there was a natural gas pipeline explosion in 1982, but it was near Tobolsk on a pipeline connecting the Urengoy gas field to the city of Chelyabinsk, and it was caused by poor construction rather than sabotage; according to Pchelintsev's account, no one was killed in the explosion and the damage was repaired within one day.[2] Reed's account has also not been corroborated by intelligence agencies in the United States.[3]
From that page.
"Communist propaganda of the time claimed that the insect was being dropped from parachutes and balloons"
Iranians will die because of this policy.
Second off.. aside from the total lack of evidence, why would the Chinese be interested in sabotage here? American discovery of a vaccine means they can rip it off, they're definitely not gonna be paying anyone for it. If we're selling it at exorbitant prices while they give it away practically for free to African countries, that's a huge win for them. Plus, there's the whole taking care of their people thing.
Sabotage just gets in the way, nobody cares who invented it 'first'.