I find it hilariously ironic that most commenters on this thread express their concern over China for their supposed attempt at "gaining control over foreign lands". As if Western nations haven't been involved in military campaigns in most of the middle east and now even Africa for decades now.
Would you please not break the site guidelines by posting obvious flamebait about divisive topics? Nationalistic flamewar, which is what you started here, is completely unwelcome on HN.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. They include: Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Nice false choice, you can be against western imperialism (which doesn't exist anymore) and Chinese economic exploitation and loan enslavement (which is just getting started)
I find it hilariously ironic that a community that prides itself on intellectual argument and novelty considers equivocating the US or the West with China to be an effective way to discredit or dismiss criticisms of Chinese policy, by implying that any such criticisms by Americans or Westerners must be hypocritical.
Quote: I may be overly cynical but it seems to me that China is the most honest country involved in governmental mass surveillance. They never tried to hide the intent behind their decisions whereas western nations always bring up false pretenses to eat away at their people's rights and freedoms. The most pathetic of all being "terrorism". We're all headed in the same direction, it's just going to be achieved through different means.
dang, I want to respectfully disagree with you and ask that you reconsider your stance on this thread and others like it. If discussing holding up a mirror to our own actions isn't a good place to hold up a mirror to other's own actions, where do you draw the line, then?
Assuming good faith only works so long as you have a community acting in good faith. If you don't hold people to that standard, assuming good faith will only lead you astray.
> That's the thing about being put in front of the mirror: it hurts.
It doesn't, unless you're a gorgon or a vampire. No one is affected by this tactic. No one is hurt by it, shocked, or shamed, no one has the scales fall from their eyes at the revelation of the true nature of Western imperialism in the light of this simple reversal.
I find it hilariously unmasking that in every single China discussion there is at least one person with the usual "evil west did it too once" whataboutism.
Pointing out hypocrisy is perfectly legitimate in a debate. I don't know how the word "whataboutism" causes people to miss that obvious point, but it has long become a reflexive cliché.
So how is this in any way relevant to the article? How does it make anything of that any better or worse? What reaction do you expect from this? What are we supposed to take away from such comments? I honestly don't get it. It's neither news, nor does it add anything to the context. The only thing it does for me is to point away from the topic at hand starting a completely new one. What's the point of that?
PS. it's not "once" like in "one time" but "once" like in "once upon a time". But somehow I'm sure you knew that already.
They still do it, even more so than once upon a time.
Iraq, Pakistan, overthrowing regimes vis CIA while partnering with Drug cartels, forcing out Iran’s regime, forcing other countries to cut off Iran after forcing out Iran’s regime, using Israel to project military power in the Middle East, cutting off aid if countries legalize certain drugs.
These are all soft power projections that have similar effects to the “modern colonizing” of China. There’s no hard evidence that the lending and infrastructure projects are bad. But somehow it seems that unless China donates a free pair of shoes for every pair of shoe sold to destroy the local shoe economy, it must be bad? Donations are bad, but true business deals are what’s required, and they may not appear purely altruistic because they aren’t.
I'd argue that the fact that there is a trend to whataboutise in China threads has more value than the actual whataboutism. It may not be a lot but it doesn't need much to be more then a whataboutism.
To urge people not to engage into this pointless debate, you won't change their opinion by calling it whataboutism and will only enforce it since neither you nor him provided any valuable points in the discussion.
