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Comment by ausjke | Hacker News Reader

China is actively using USA as an example to show that Democracy does not work well these days too, for instance it appears gun violence, immigration and race issues can never be fixed here, and the national debt keeps increasing for years and there is no sign to stop. So, whatever their leader does must be better than others nowadays.

Admit or not, the overall impression these days is that China is an uprising power while US is in the decline. At the time they're building the best transportation system and investing heavily into robots and AI, we are here debating gender-less restroom, legalizing marijuana, keeping proving president is tied with Russia,etc.

The tipping point has passed, the gap will keep getting wider, based on history, there is no fix, countries rise and fall cyclically.

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I would be careful to not confuse the news with the underlying reality of the situation. There are plenty of great things happening in America you don't hear about, and plenty of horrible things in China you don't hear about. Long-run, I'll take democracy personally.

He has a point that democracy really needs to step up its game. We’re not exactly having a good run at the moment.

President acts like a corrupt asshat, almost immediately comes under investigation, there have been 23 indictments so far.

The alternative to democracy is not letting people have a say in government, and allowing rulers to rule for long periods until they pass down power to favoured successors or are violently overthrown. Both of those things are absolutely terrible for the health and safety of a society.

You don’t have to convince me. But I think it’s a bad sign if defenders of democracy can only get defensive when they have to face mistakes.

Is it really that hard to say we dropped the ball here, badly, and we need to do better, rather than immediately going to whataboutism about China? Yes, they have problems. That in no way contradicts the fact that we need to do better.

I feel like you have it backwards. The intent of my comment was to say democracy hasn't dropped the ball. Trump is massively and obviously corrupt, so he was massively and obviously investigated. Where's the whataboutism? If anything I was responding to reverse-whataboutism (self-deprecation from people in democracies when reading about 'N' being censored in China).

We're actually having an extraordinary run. Bill Gates keeps trying to point this out everywhere he goes, nobody appears willing to listen to facts.

The median standard of living across the democratic world is at an all-time high. Things have never been better in the liberal world.

I dislike comments like this because they play on the ignorance of people in regards to China. You say America has issues with race, but at the same time ignore that China holds 120,000 Uighur in "Political Reeducation Camps". A city of ~500,000 has tens of thousands in these camps. [1] . What was the offence of these minorities? expressing their culture or religion.

You talk about issues of immigration, but China has a system that maintains internal passports, where citizens need permission of the government to move, and should they do so unofficially they face serious discrimination, and a denial of basic services. [2]

None of this of course, discusses the labor camp system, the imprisionment of political activists, or the murder and organ harvesting of religious minorities.

Just because you may not have heard of an issue doesn't mean that they don't exist, particularly when dealing with a country whose Human Rights records is one of the worst in the world.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/25/at-least-12000...

[2] https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21600798-china...

1. Gun violence has been net decreasing (actually, all violence has been)

2. Immigration has slowed down, and immigrants have generally seen better outcomes not withstanding the current abuses by ICE

3. Race issues are worse this year than they have been, but exceptions occur. We as a country are at least in the beginning stages of a conversation about it, which has not and may not occur in other countries.

4. The National Debt is increasing, but budget deficits fell drastically under Obama. National debt does not necessarily grow at the same rate as GDP.

You've bought into a lot of propaganda unfortunately. I really recommend you pull a Descartes and re-evaluate from ground zero. Not to say China isn't a rising power, but Democracy is not dead.

> and the [US] national debt keeps increasing for years and there is no sign to stop

China is about to become the world's most indebted nation on a GDP to debt ratio. If they're not already. If you count a reasonable estimate for shadow debt, they already are.

Total debt vs GDP for China is up over 300% at this point.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/28/chinas-debt-surpasses-300-pe...

To grow their economy by ~$600 billion annually, they need to take on roughly $4 to $5 trillion in debt every year. Their return on debt is extremely bad at this point. No nation in world history has taken on as much debt, faster, than China has since 2007. The S&P projection is that China will expand its huge debt levels by another 77% by just 2021.

Even China's households are now hyper leveraging:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-15/chinese-c...

as if we are not investing heavily into robots, A. I., and infrastructure ourselves...

just because we have the freedom to make social changes doesn’t mean it’s all the country can do

as long as china’s best and brightest keep coming to live in america and send their kids to american colleges i won’t beleive “the tipping point has passed”

The examples you use to demonstrate that America is in decline are suspicious.

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