Comment by guywithahat
15 hours ago
> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes
I don't think it's actually that uncommon in China, especially with high profile people. To China's credit, we often bar people from leaving the country if they're charged with a crime but not convicted of anything. While it's certainly scary and authoritarian, I think it's par for the course in China. Most companies have some amount of CCP representation in them, either on the board or some level of management.
Shouldn't every country be barring people from leaving the country if they've been charged with a crime? At least if there's a good chance they will flee justice.
This seems like a side issue from the question of whether the charges are legitimate.
Yes, everyone country does this. You can be barred from travel in a wide range of other circumstances in many other countries.
Every person has a nationalistic solipsism that renders them incapable of understanding events that occur outside of their own country. China and the US are two countries where this tends to be most severe, people outside these countries seem to believe they possess a profound and innate understanding of events there that renders them capable of offering a complete opinion (and, in reality, that opinion will almost always be entirely self-referential, 20% of the comments on this thread seem to be talking about the US).
At a high-level, the characterization of China as a lawless dictatorship is undermined somewhat by the higher levels of crime in almost every other country. You will see this interpretation of China from people in the US who live in places where there are constant, visible signs of crime.
Just because the US also does this doesn’t make it right for China to do it and vice versa.
Team coca-cola and team pepsi are both evil and illegitimate.
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The Manus founders had already left China. They were called back and went willingly, because if you don't go back, then China disappears your family.
This is an exaggeration. But there are things China can do that are legal in the name of national security. I would say it’s just as extreme as what the US would do to Snowden if he came back.
Thanks for explaining why they would willingly return.
It's extremely common even without a crime. US block or cancel people with extremely small child support debts (I think like $1000 which is a single missed payment for middle class person) and people with moderate tax debts (I think about $25,000) for instance from getting a passport.