Quote:
Originally Posted by Phanuthier
Is China right for occupying Tibet? No. But I gotta laugh at some the cries to bring down the red dragon when there are other travesties in the world that the western world is guilty of and we have more control over changing, but do nothing. But hey, boycott China shoes and t-shifts if it empowers you.
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The difference is that in the West, you can speak out against atrocities like Cambodia, whereas in China they throw you in a work camp, psychiatric prison, or just shoot you.
This is a classic straw man argument - you are implying that because we haven't denounced Western crimes, therefore we are silently condoning them. Nobody here is defending the Khmer Rouge, the fascistic Israeli settlers, Batista, the contras or any other of the Western-sponsored agents of destruction in the near (and not so near) past; thing is, it is irrelevant to the argument at hand. If I were, say, Richard Nixon, it might be appropriate to castigate me for hypocrisy, but last I checked I haven't ordered out any death squads, planned any military coups or sent my secret police to arrest troublemakers.
"The West" is not some distinct entity that can be held to account, but the Chinese government is. So is, for that matter, the American government, and certainly it is appropriate to criticize them when they indulge in so-called "realpolitik" at the expense of freedom and human rights elsewhere, but at least with the Americans, and other governments of the West, there is some accountability and hope for change.
Comparing the Americans - or worse still, we relatively (though not completely) blameless Canadians - to the Chinese directly, however, is laughable. There is a huge difference between suspect foreign policy, and the systematic slaughter and totalitarian oppression of your own people. This is a government who are the inheritors and idolators of Mao, who killed from 20 to 40 MILLION of his own people in his "Great Leap Forward" and who would happily do the same again today if they thought it would escape world attention and keep them in power indefinitely.
Let me put it to you this way - would you rather be an average citizen of the USA, or the PRC? A black American or a Tibetan? An outspoken socialist in New York, or a democratic student agitator in Beijing? The answer to that should tell you all you need to know about where your priorities should be in denouncing injustices.