svanstrom

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

avon b7 said:

The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.

We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet. 

The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals. 

China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember. 

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/united-states

The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government. 

http://www.revista-redi.es/en/articulos/the-couso-affair-in-the-national-courts-and-international-relations/

This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states. 

You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/china-and-tibet

I don't necessarily agree with CATO, but as a start to "freedom" score,

The U.S. ranks 15,

Spain 29

China 126

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2020/leaderless-struggle-democracy

Spain 92

U.S.. 86

China 10

What they state about China;

"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions

One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.

Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison. 

These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.

The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.

The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.

US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.

 

One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations. 

Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.

The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."

Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."

Your fealty to China is noted.

For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one. 

China has never had that choice of governance.

How did you manage to miss the whole point? 

Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying. 

You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself. 

Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation! 

Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce! 

gatorguy said:

GeorgeBMac said:

john_t said:

GeorgeBMac said:

svanstrom said:

tzeshan said:

SpamSandwich said:

Very risky for him to plainly state this in the press. China could simply seize their operations still in China.

He has many years dealing with Chinese government. He knows Chinese government much better than you being brain washed by western propaganda  war against Chinese government. 

To be fair, you don't have to "know the Chinese government" to see what it does in the world; and then extrapolate from that. Like how the CCP right now is attacking anything that inconveniences them in Hong Kong (especially media); and how they've kidnapped foreign citizens from other countries (Gui Minhai; Swedish citizen, kidnapped from Thailand). 光復香港，時代革命.

Like how we gas peaceful protestors, send Gestapo troops into Democratic cities, ripping kids from their parents & sticking them in cages?  That kind of "attacking"?   Or, our CIA's secret renditions or Meng kidnapped on her way into another country?  That kind of kidnapping?   Oh wait!  Never mind.  I forgot you're a China hater.   Your leader needs to distract you from what is going on in your own country.

Nah, more like China‘s sticking over a million Uigurs into concentration camps and systematically murdering them. Or invading Tibet, killing half the population and then start settling millions of mainland Chinese there. Or ignoring treaties they signed, integrating Hong Kong into their communist dictatorship, killing anyone who opposes them. 

I get where you‘re coming from - things are really crappy in the US right now but compared to China, the US is a peaceful, provincial place. 

You‘ll change your mind once China has occupied Taiwan, uses its military stationed in South American countries to cause trouble in that region, has occupied the islands surrounding Japan, has started an all-out war with India etc. Right now, they‘re quietly and efficiently putting themselves into the strategic position to attack anywhere on the planet.

Yeh, IF you believe the right wing propaganda....

And, China doesn't have to "occupy" Taiwan.   It's already theirs.  All they have to do is take it back.  It's a matter of when, not if.    It's only the Trumpers who have forgotten that.
As for the rest of your last paragraph.   See my first paragraph.

George, you don't give any appearance of understanding what propaganda is. If you looked into the Uigurs, or read about China seizing Tibet, in any news source of your choosing you'd discover there's facts involved. It's not a right wing, left wing, or even wingless thing. It's real, and for some reason you prefer to claim anything that might make China sound less like a champion must be propaganda. Why is that?

It's not so much that you're currently sounding so anti-American (seemingly giddy over the possibility of China sinking US boats, or the US having no friends and isolated in the world) but that you are so firmly pro-China that it makes it very likely you have some undisclosed agenda altogether. Do you have some connection to China that you've not mentioned?

longfang said:

igorsky said:

avon b7 said:

svanstrom said:

avon b7 said:

I can't see this as anything other than an abuse of government powers.

It used to be that sovereign nations were aware of limitations on the sale of US products to third parties before purchase.

I think that's a reasonable approach to applying restrictions but changing the rules at short notice for doubtful reasons and in the concealed name of protectionism but claiming national security concerns AFTER the sale, well that can only end badly because countries and companies will only see the US as an unreliable entity willing to do anything to get its way. In that scenario, the US will find itself in isolation as the world shuns its products. 

We've seen this with Huawei and now with Tik Tok. If WeChat is affected too, it won't be long before Tim Cook is dining at the White House to try and drive a message into Trump's head. 

Get off that pedestal on that horse of yours; even the worst of what that racist orange might do is still less than what Winnie Xi has been doing all the time with that great firewall of his.

People can't react before they react, so any argument of yours along the lines of "but it was ok yesterday" is pretty much null and moot.

However, the US has now moved to an extraterritorial mode and is attempting to apply 'sanctions' on its opponents by restricting what companies in sovereign nations can do with their products, simply because even a small part of them use US technology.

Take a look at China's new HK security law.  Specifically if you make anti-China comments related to Hong Kong anywhere in the world, you can be arrested for them in Hong Kong. Then we can get into Tibet, Taiwan and the South China Sea as well, if you like.  Let's not go comparing each nation's "extraterritorial mode".

Yes when you step into Hong Kong. Otoh the US wanted to extradite Gary McKinnon for things he did in the UK. Also extraordinary rendition of “targets” that they can’t get extradite. So sorry, not sorry, but I don’t give a toss about US security concerns.