LogFAQs > #942221564

The discussion has been about China's treatment of its own citizens. Since Tienanmen Square in 1988, Americans generally were not worried about how China treated its own citizens -- until, strange coincidence, the last few years since China has become more prosperous and powerful. Suddenly, Americans have discovered that (gasp!) freedoms and human rights are limited in China!

If you're worried about the external reach of Chinese influence, then that's a different issue. But let's not pretend that how the Chinese government represses civil liberties for 1.4 billion of its own people is anywhere on the list of concerns. Because if you were genuinely concerned about human rights and democracy, then you'd be concerned about such matters even in smaller countries -- instead of shrugging off even the most appalling government abuses so long as "they only do it in their own country" and making artificial distinctions between home-grown and exported repression.

What really threatens freedom and democracy is a readiness to tolerate their denial anywhere behind the cloak of national sovereignty. What moral difference does it really make if it's one country spreading its influence to 18 million people in five other countries, or it's those five other countries repressing 18 million of their own people?

There are valid concerns about the danger of other countries' democracy being compromised, of buckling under Chinese external pressure: censorship, handing over exiled dissidents or denying them asylum, etc. Those concerns should be recognized and that pressure should be resisted. But please, just stop connecting dots in a short straight line between China and Nazi Germany, as if governments treating their own citizens like an occupied enemy population is something new or unique to China. And start caring about this sort of shit in other countries too.

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Watching the shadows burn