Comment by reissbaker
18 hours ago
You've been all over this this thread responding with the same whataboutist comments claiming America does the same thing. And yet, I'm pretty sure America hasn't held American citizens hostage in order to force them to unwind a sale of a foreign company they founded to a different foreign company.
US absolutely has exit bans on people who break/is being investigated for national security and export control laws, which is what Manus did. Except Americans don't call it hostage taking when they do it.
I think the big difference is rule of law.
When the US does it, you can appeal with an independent court.
When China does it those options don’t exist.
Please cite an example.
Not sure if serious, you think US doesn't make people surrender passports for NSL investigations, i.e. Supermicro trio surrendered their passports.
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Dan Duggan
Philip Agee
[flagged]
Just last year the USA de-banked (from EU banks) EU citizens who are International Criminal Court officials for "opening preliminary investigations against Israeli personnel". The USA wields incredible power over financial interactions.
THANK YOU, I knew I was overlooking a recent example in favor of historical ones!
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Of the course the USA does it. Obama was totally ruthless with such economic warfare, including on the US usual lackeys. See for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Pierucci
While I don’t agree with your tone, and I’m sure an unbiased reading of history also wouldn’t agree with your tone…
Who would you rather be world police? One or more of Cuba, Iran, China, Russia?
Anyone of those would be better than the US
> You're right.
You should have just left it at that.
I don't think anyone is holding the US as blameless or perfect, but it gets exhausting to see Chinese propaganda every single time anything like this happens.
When the US does something reprehensible, people rarely come up in droves going on and about China's enablement of the North Korean regime or the many abuses enacted on its population, but every single time the US does anything we had to read a whole lot on how "at least China doesn't invade countries" as if the prime reason as to why China doesn't tend to involve itself militarily isn't precisely American hegemony. The rate at which the country is portrayed as some paragon of human rights, equality and peacefulness is either insane, deluded, or paid for.
You have to be joking.
The media is almost daily full of China scares. Also, the comments here are not talking about who started this war, with the GPU sanctions and the arrest of the daughter of Huawei's founder.
Does it mean the Chinese are the good guys? No, because there are not good guys, but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese.
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> have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice
I wonder how that came about?
What’s that fence analogy called?
Chester-what?
I think people are frustrated with the firehose of whataboutism rather than disagreeing with you with the idea that things are not perfect.
I mean, the whataboutism is a critical tool in negating propaganda. Rather than focus on the reprehensibility of anyone using threats of violence like this to force specific outcomes favorable to domestic policy, everyone is instead hung up on the fact China did this.
Whataboutism, used effectively, is meant to draw parallels rather than excuse behavior. Fuck China for what it's doing here, but also fuck the countries and entities who have used similar tactics in the past to great effect. Don't just conveniently put on blinders for what's happening/happened at home all because the government-labelled "baddie" did it too.
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> The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell,
There is a massive difference in degree and kind here. Mixing them up at this level is spherical cow territory.