Quote:
Originally Posted by Phanuthier
Have you actually ever been there?
USSR, Nazi Germany... c'mon... seriously, we're not in the cold war anymore. I guess you should boycott London 2012 until they apologize for Ireland, the drugs thing to China and pickpocketing me 8 years ago.
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Haven't I seen this argument before?
There is NO equivalency between the democratic government of the UK and the totalitarian government of China. One is a democracy based on the rule of law, and the other is a dictatorship based on the extralegal primacy of the Party. One actually HAS apologized for wrongs committed in the past (Blair apologized to the Irish for the potato famine back in the 1800's, for one example), and the other just keeps on committing MORE atrocities. One allows freedom of expression, and the other has a huge firewall keeping the "bad" internet out, and imprisons people that dare speak out against its policies. Trying to link the two as if they are - in any way - similar is wrong, wrong, wrong.
What is the point of having freedom in the West if we don't demand it for people in other countries? Do people in Shanghai not deserve the same rights I have here in Canada? Should we really be more concerned with how much money the Chinese can save Walmart than the political and religious prisoners who are routinely beaten and drugged in its jails? Doesn't it matter that Mao, one of last century's most vile killers along with Hitler and Stalin, is still revered as the "Great Helmsman" by his successors, and doesn't it tell you quite a lot about their true nature that this is so?
Damn right I haven't been there - I would undoubtedly get deported pretty quick. Do you really think it would make a difference if I did - did you get to go on the Falun Gong reeducation centre tour while *you* were there? Did you wear your "Free Tibet" t-shirt and pose with the local secret policeman for pictures? Did you take a trip through Xinjiang and get to share a railway car with some "dissidents" on their way to execution?
And to make it clear, I have no problem with China or the Chinese people, it is their government which is reprehensible and should be opposed at every turn. The Communist takeover in 1949 there was as big a tragedy as WWII and the original Russian revolution, and just because they put on a happy smiling face for the world doesn't change the fact they are an illegitimate gang of corrupt thugs.