When I say "the U.S.", I mean the current admin and associated groups.

It is fairly evident that the U.S. is worried about China putting it in a position where it's not as easy/effective to go around the world, exploit foreign natural resources under false pretenses and sanction "non-compliant" nations to the brink.

It has absolutely 0 to do with human rights and all to do with economic power.

As for Chinese domestic human rights, the thing is doing coups etc. as was done so many times in i.e. the Middle East and Latin America won't lead to a better outcome because a coup is a forceful, violent and sudden, unnatural event that requires forces usually as bad if not worse than the current regime to pull off and denies the chance for long-term institutions to develop that adopt naturally by increasing human rights, however slowly.

It's the same problem with introducing modern economic theory, manufacturing, technology to a nation that did not had that trickle in at least somewhat continually over a period of time. It's a shock to the system in a way that rarely leads to better long-term outcomes.

> As for Chinese domestic human rights, the thing is doing coups etc. as was done so many times in i.e. the Middle East and Latin America won't lead to a better outcome because a coup is a forceful, violent and sudden, unnatural event

There is a political theory that any transition from a repressive to an open society involves going through a risky zone of instability:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_J_Curve_(book)

Now if you consider that this involves a country of 1.5B people, and take into account past experience with radical political changes (e.g. the Cultural Revolution), it seems that even for the most enlightened political leadership, both domestic and foreign, there may not be any easy answers how to proceed.

But is it really? Were the people complaining about the war in Yemen or the atrocities of Saudi Arabia or the horrors of the Iraq War able to meaningfully change anything?

Or is it the case that the only time that human rights actually enact change is when there is an underlying material interest, making them little more than a veneer?

Well yeah, of course. Pretty much every US city is buried in homeless populations because human decency is off the table if there isn't a profit motive behind it.

You can look at the glass is half full view of this, though - thanks to selfish interests an evil regime is being cut off from market access to spy on people around the world. Its of mutual benefit to the capitalists that saw this happen and the people whom China would have invaded the privacy of.

Of course that begs the question what Oppo, Xiaomi, etc are still doing in US markets... just because they are using international SoCs doesn't mean their assembly in China is trustworthy. But if you start asking those questions you start wondering about all the phones assembled in China by external companies like Apple or all the chips added to Samsung phones sourced from China, etc.

The question for me is twofold.

First, will isolating China from the US and it's client states actually do anything to make the CCP act in a way that will respect human rights more? I think it is pretty clear that won't be the case.

Second of all, is the entity that stands to benefit actually going to be better for human rights? In this case it pretty much is a zero-sum game. This is a bit more debatable, but I don't think that if the US won this Cold War against China the situation for human rights in the world will become any better.

Because of that, I can't get behind it, at all.

The answers to both questions is no. Trying to isolate China will only make the lives of Chinese people worse and extinguish any hope of democracy in the medium term. But the US is terribly afraid of losing its grip on power, so it has to be.

Second, the country that is now invading the privacy everywhere in the world (anyone forgot Snowden?) and raging wars without end in sight is the country pretending to be for democracy. This only tells me that the only greatness we still have in the West is the ability to spread propaganda. Somehow, people can be easily convinced that all this is for the greater good.

> I don't think that if the US won this Cold War against China the situation for human rights in the world will become any better.

That's true, but you need to contrast it with the other outcome - if China wins, human rights everywhere are very likely to become much worse.

That itself is a really good reason to support the US / West.

We are already in pretty bad shape. I particularly don't think this new "Cold War" will have any winer, ever, other than the ones making money from it. Good luck supporting these crimes.

There’s a value in quantity. Show me mass genocide happening in any of those other human rights violation hotspots.

Great countries were built on the backs of subjugated minorities and horrible prison conditions. By great countries I mean the US.

> If China were rapidly liberalizing

By any measurements one can imagine, this was true since 1970s: China were rapidly liberalizing.

In 1970s Chinese cannot choose what they wear each day. That's how authoritarian it was.

Except US gov responses to cripple Huawei predates the liberalization narrative. China is the largest purchaser of western semi products, private industry in this sector absolutely wants to continue sales. Hence US was forced to implement entity list, twice, to starve Huawei of components. Prior, US has been unilaterally crippling Chinese semi efforts via CFIUS and other instruments before HK/XJ, since MadeInChina2025 was announced. Human rights is just a convenient smoke screen. These moves are particularly desperate since it demonstrates that US is willing to coerce private industries for it's foreign policy goals, an accusation levied at CCP, which CCP hasn't actually done.

Exactly. The human rights narrative is the clearest smokescreen ever used. The US was working just fine with China until 5 years ago, when they decided to enter the same markets (technology). China may not be the freest country in the world but it is way better than it was 20 years ago. Moreover, I don't remember the US trying to put ANY sanctions on Saudi Arabia for all its recent history of human rights violations.