Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
China is a target of convenience for western media outlets looking for easy stories and western politicians looking for easy PR. Why aren't people as eager to attack Putin and the Russian Federation for how they have oppressively and militarily reigned in Chechnya? How they have oppressed and killed Chechens and their native ethnic groups, religious freedoms, desires for independance? Is that not a similar analogue to the China-Tibet issue?
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Well, if the subject of Chechnya comes up, you certainly won't hear me defending the Russian government. Nor do I have much use for Putin, who is a smoother thug than the norm, but still a thug.
However, this isn't more than tangentially relevant to the issue of China and Tibet - do I have to make a comprehensive list of all the injustices in the world which I oppose before I'm allowed to criticize? Seriously, we get it already: other nations are not squeaky-clean paragons of righteous conduct, either. However, with the Chinese gov't, not only their ACTIONS are repugnant, but their entire REGIME is evil - they have moved from hardcore totalitarianism since Mao died, but it is still a one-party state which is inefficient and highly corrupt, and which still routinely imprisons, tortures and "re-educates" political dissidents.
Democracies can adopt questionable policies and wage unjust wars, but because the politicians are accountable to the people, in the long run such excesses are corrected. Here, not only have the communists dispossessed the Tibetans and tried to destroy their culture, they not only do not admit culpability, they try to twist the facts so that first of all, their actions are justified, and secondly, the Tibetans are the instigators of the problems! How anyone can believe this is beyond me, it is nothing more than doublespeak and propaganda crafted for their own people, who have been conditioned to accept the most preposterous claims as true as long as they receive government sanction.
One last thing - look at the GDP of Taiwan, and then look at China's. Then tell me again how the regime in China is "helping" the common people to prosperity. The worst thing that ever happened to China was the Communists winning the civil war, the Kuomintang may have been corrupt and inept, but compared to Mao and his successors, they were and are geniuses.