Asklemmy

a large part of the population lives in poverty, has terrible work conditions,

Just don't count anyone outside the empire as human and your argument makes sense.

and suffers from persecutions for various reasons to a level that is way above the worst you can get in the EU (and probably the US too).

Previously:

We’re doing this again?

The PRC needs to stop comitting atrocities against the Uyghur and other Turkic muslims

Good thing China wasn’t and isn’t doing that, unless you consider jailing of US-backed radical Salafi terrorists to be an atrocity.

• https://lemmy.ml/comment/18748811
• https://lemmy.ml/comment/14839342
• https://lemmy.ml/comment/18270034

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and Tibettans

I’m pretty sure virtually all of the Tibetan people are happy to no longer be suffering under theocratic feudalism. Happy to no longer be illiterate serfs and slaves living in depredation under a god-king. I doubt many of them are sad that CIA asset Dalai “suck my tongue” Lama is in exile.[1]

and stop brutalising and denying political self determination to the people of Hong Kong

The UK’s 99 year lease to subjugate the people of Hong Kong ended, a lease which had been forced upon Imperial China at gunpoint during the century of humiliation. Hong Kong reintegration after the lease expired was a foregone conclusion. The last minute, US-backed attempt at color revolution failed. It was the so-called “revolutionaries” who brought the brutality, by the way.

Previously:

irrelevant tangents

How people in the imperial core are propagandized is not an irrelevant tangent.

straight up lying.

You accept Five Eyes corporate media uncritically because you don’t understand media, which I tried to explain, but you decided that it was an irrelevant tangent.

you don't honestly engage at all

I don’t have all day; I’ll address two.

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Xinjiang/The Uyghurs

The US tried to foment division in China by funding and organizing terrorist cells in Xinjiang, and once those efforts failed, it concocted and promoted a genocide narrative. Antony Blinken is still pushing this slop, just a few weeks ago.

• The Xinjiang Genocide Allegations Are Unjustified
• The Uyghur Human Rights Project is a product of the National Endowment for Democracy, which is the American government’s main regime change NGO.
• Uyghur genocide allegations
• American Debunks All Major Western Propaganda on Uyghurs and Xinjiang
• US-Funded Uyghur Activists Train as Soldiers of Empire
• A Reddit AMA Claiming To Be A Uyghur Quickly Exposes A CIA Asset Slandering China

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The blueprint of regime change operations

We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.

Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.

The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.

Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.

Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).

Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.

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Tiananmen riots

• The Tian’anmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.
• 1989 Tian'anmen Square riots
• A Note on the Tiananmen Protests
• Images from Tiananmen 1989 the West never shows (NSFW / CW: violence and death)
• Tank Man video footage. Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1989
• How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning

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It’s not a football match. You don’t have to pick a side and defend it no matter what.

It’s not; I’m not; and neither do you.

Edit to add: I’m certainly not picking “our” side. I mean, have you seen our side? The side that’s providing political and material support for an actual genocide as we speak?

• List of Atrocities committed by US authorities
• A Detailed Chronological List of US Interventions, Invasions, Destabilzations, and Assistance to Oppressive Regimes (ending in 2002)
• The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
• Shock therapy (economics)
• World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country
• Infographic: US military presence around the world The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.
• Are We The Baddies?
• Michael Parenti: Africa is Rich

While the support to Israel is undeniable and the EU members supported the US in unnecessary wars multiple times, it’s hard to read “the EU is sometimes worse than China” without questioning what you are talking about.

"While it's true that EU has and continues to do things far worse than anything China has done, how can you possibly say that the EU is sometimes worse than China!"

Its impossible to read this without coming to conclusion that you fundamentally don't consider non-westerners human, except when they can be used as a cudgel against their enemies. Imagine trying to claim that we should consider China's treatment of Muslims worse than the countries currently engaging in a modern Holocaust against Muslims.

And Tiananmen Square was forty years ago. If you actually listened all of the things that the EU has done since then that were as bad or worse, you would be writing a novel. You would need to have a Tiananmen square massacre every day for a decade just to equal the amount of people the West killed in Iraq alone.