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Comment by dzonga | Hacker News Reader

everyone does PR - whether the A.I labs or your regular startups - but coz it's the chinese doing it is wrong lol

Yep, presumed guilt for anything Chinese is a prevailing wisdom in the west. Though justified in some cases, we give western companies a pass in many areas, where we don't to Chinese counterparts.

It’s wild, the USA and China are basically the same country. Like they both do the same exact stuff lol. The biggest difference is restriction of certain information in China, but I would argue that’s mainly because they’ve been playing defense because the USA invented and owns the global mass media brainwash machine.

But human rights abuses, suppression of segments of the populace, relying on slave labor, weaponized economics, intense love of malls and shopping plazas… we are the same

The US and China are not the same country and do not do the exact same stuff. To take some easy examples, the US government never imposed forced abortions on large numbers of women, nor has it invaded its neighbours (in the past century at least), nor has it starved many of its own citizens due to misguided economic policies, nor does it regularly and systematically violate habeas corpus (though perhaps some ICE policies might come close), nor does it censor its citizens.

If you don't live in either, you might find them similar from the news we get. It does sound like a shit show in the US while probably most people living there notice nothing. As a tourist, US currently looks worse: I land in SFO and see streets with literal zombies while in Shanghai I do not. How can a country claim to be prosperous and yet allow that to happen. Some kind of starvation that is and because of misguided economic policies. Oh yeah, and both have dictators although you could argue that China is better at that too.

Are you sure about the claim that the USA hasn't invaded it's neighbors in the past century?

Bay of pigs comes to mind

There are literally equivalent things the US has done for each of those, but sure.

> equivalent

The two countries have ALOT more in common than most residence of either understand.

One thing the US has that China doesn’t is the ability to self govern. Yes there are forces trying manipulate or these control the way people vote. at times it may not feel like it, but US citizens have the absolute power to elect and remove politicians.

This is a foundational difference that keeps most Americans from realizing just how similar countries are.

> One thing the US has that China doesn’t is the ability to self govern.

It's just that the US chooses not to?

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