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Comment by triplesec | Hacker News Reader

You are taking a very short sighted view here, because if Chinese social media became practical monopolies you would be much more worried than if an American company did, because the Chinese government is so much more repressive

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Please clarify what you mean by "repressive". The USA still imprisons more people and have much more people on parole or under some kind of judicial oversight than a lot of much more populated countries.

Comparing Chinese repression to American repression and saying they are similar is like comparing North Korea repression to Chinese. Yes there is an element of truth, but the scales and natures are completely different.

The stripping of freedom, interaction with the rest of society, the effects on the imprisoned individual's family and their finances are the same.

Would you dare say that if the USA droned an innocent person based on signature data in Afghanistan his death would be of a higher quality than the Talib killing him?

If you do not want to make such comparisons then answer one question: Which country's actions in recent history ( <30 years ) were more beneficial to improving trade, alleviation of poverty and development of poor countries across the world - the USA or China?

China's PLA has a great track record of winning battles....in China. Ya, the USA military is focused outward, but they aren't killing a bunch of people in their own country.

When you are looking for a country to live in, that is important. You can tell what people think by the immigration rates between the USA and china.

What do you think are the opinions of the families of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and countless others about the benevolence of the US government? say, compared to the millions of Chinese that have been lifted from poverty since Deng Xiaoping was in power?

How does the US middle class feel about the supposed superiority in "democracy", "freedom" and "quality of life" that the USA provides?

How many kilometers in railway and road has the USA built in poor countries recently, still compared to China? How many hospitals and stadiums? How many schools?

Catching up on economic growth is nothing to do with political repression. Racism is a social problem, and not a government repression. China has a lot of racism too, but it's more hidden, because the pres is not free.

Let's not talk about the USA middle class, they are staying put. It is the chinese middle class moving to the USA, if the CCP is so wise, why can't they convince their own people to stay?

Last time everybody checked, China's population was still around a billion or so. Migration is a natural process. Chinese migration is bigger because their population and the amount of wealth that population has been able to achieve is just bigger. Therefore their mobility is just bigger. they are not moving exclusively to the USA.

Last time everybody checked, the US middle class was sliding into poverty.

But you're uncomfortable talking about subjects that paint the USA in an unfavorable light.

Americans aren't fleeing America, also wealth inequality is shooting up in one country much more than the other. I'll let you figure out which one.

In the USA some people are rich while all the others are getting poor, in China some people are rich while the rest are being lifted from poverty every day. Figured it out already. Have you? Obviously not. Did the US government allocate several billions of dollars for getting poor villagers out of poverty just last week or are they all still plotting to cut more and more from social security and food stamps as always?

and the only reason US citizens don't leave is because they can't. The US makes it stupidly hard for US citizens to renounce citizenship. http://fortune.com/2016/08/11/us-citizens-renounce/

You are extremely ill-informed about the suffering of your own people.

China's gini coefficient has been rising rapidly at the same time it has been getting rich, which is why migrant workers living squalor lived right next to (or even in the basement of) our upscale apartment building in Beijing. China has been getting rich, but the money is distributed in an increasing uneven fashion, and didn't get better during my 9 years there.

And as long as you want to fling around ad hominens...

Are you trying to argue that you housed ALL of China's migrant workers near your apartment building or in its basement? Or have you seen a few poor people and thus deducted that ALL of China's poor are not getting better opportunities?

Have you ever seen pictures of Shenzhen when it was being built? Do you know who built it? Migrant workers who got better opportunities.

How many US cities have risen in the last 50 years? Or maybe you'd like to change the subject yet again...

Political freedom. The right to be an idiot in public, perhaps. A free press. Seems strange, but it seems that this is important. The USA 's terrible foreign policy is not the point here. Instead, contrast China with other democracies: Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Iceland etc instead in comparison perhaps

China's government has to be authoritarian because of its history of being invaded by Western powers and because the Communist party knows very well that their country is very vulnerable to Western ambitions of conquest. That is why Tibet will and should remain part of China. And they still manage to jail less people than the USA and that IS the point here.

And would you say that the US press is really free? They drum up war against one country or another when the US government orders it. They avoid covering third party candidates when the Republicans and Democrats order them to. They write cheap hit pieces (21 articles against Bernie Sanders in a single day in Washington Post) when people in power order it.

Not really much freedom here either... And why don't you start comparing the USA with other democracies like Michael Moore did? The USA would still suck in comparison.

OK, so the problems with your argument are at least 6-fold:

1. You're still committing a Red Herring fallacy by not addressing the obvious details of Chinese political repression, rather instead just claiming they are necessary

2. You are also diverting by Red Herring by claiming that America is worse or just as bad. Yes, the USA does many things badly, and worse thaan many other Western Democracies. This does not make China any better. Or indeed better than the US. There are many ways in which important principles of open society and government are much better in the US than in China. It is astonishing that this needs to be spelled out, unless you are Chinese and have an emotional bond to its system.

3. China is not in danger of invasion by Western powers. I really think you must be a member of the Chinese Communist party to believe such things. This paranoia is shared by Putin's elite in Moscow. The US might like oil and strategic power, but it's not about to invade huge countries on any whim. This is Cold War illogic and hugely irrational

4. The US press is much freer than most in the world. CErtainly more than China's. IT's not perfectly free, but the 1st Amendment makes it so much more powerful in principle than in the UK, Germany, France, and many other relatively free western democracies, and certainly than almowt all otehrs in the world. In practice, money rules, and it's hard to get balanced voices against the neocons, but NPR would really not happen in China

5. the Great Firewall of China.

6. Repression of Tibetan ethnic identity, and no there is no strategic reason for including Tibet in the Chinese empire. That's all about expansionism Tibet is a barren, mountainous poor country, and being culturally homogenised into Chinese Han culture by deliberate immigration policies such as the ones Stalin used to Russify the Soviet states.

7. China jails people for speaking freely. Political prisoners. It's even abducting booksellers and publishers from Hong Kong. The Hong Kongese are very upset about this and do't want to lose their freedom (and better quality of life) by being subsumed entirely into the Chinese patronage system.

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