41–50 of 230 posts
The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.
So China infringes on human rights, in other news "water is wet". Not really newsworthy. I would be shocked if it was Iceland or Norway doing that. As much as we hate hearing about it, only the Chinese people have the power to make changes to this regime. Having met many Chinese students abroad, I'd say they are OK with this happening. Either they are apathic, or supportive of their totalitarian regime.
It is nearly impossible to get an honest current thought from a Chinese citizen about that, many are comfortable, many are afraid that they will be reported for expressing any opinion. There is a worldwide network of snitches of mostly other Chinese citizens that will harm their interests and family in China. Just because you aren't part of it by not being Chinese (citizen) doesn't mean that a non-party line message…
Polling people for their thoughts is usually unreliable anyways because people can say anything: it costs nothing. It’s the same line of reasoning on why asking users directly how they would change a product yields crappy results.
So China infringes on human rights, in other news "water is wet". Not really newsworthy. I would be shocked if it was Iceland or Norway doing that. As much as we hate hearing about it, only the Chinese people have the power to make changes to this regime. Having met many Chinese students abroad, I'd say they are OK with this happening. Either they are apathic, or supportive of their totalitarian regime.
Not the Americans exploiting cheaper labor in China and making China rich ?
> I would be shocked if it was Iceland or Norway doing that.
I would be shocked if you weren’t wearing made in China / Vietnam shoes or clothing.
The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.
Would the west be as rich and Democratic without?
The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.
Countries like France and Britain didn't suddenly decide on "parliamentary democracy" as a model out of nowhere; they developed a parliament first, when they were still monarchies, and then the parliament suppressed the monarch. The second estate (nobility) of these countries, which previously favored cooperation with a monarch, changed allegiances once the newly-empowered third estate (borgeoisie) gained enough economic power. Top-down power was effectively strangled by the combination of nobles + business owners collectively bargaining, refusing to e.g. build the monarch's war machine for wars they had no say in.
Western democracies looking at this historical model of democratization, expect that the best thing to do for a country's democratic freedoms is to economically enrich the country's borgeoisie, to the point that the existing dictator-empowered oligarchs see more value in supporting the borgeoisie than they do in supporting the dictator.
So China infringes on human rights, in other news "water is wet". Not really newsworthy. I would be shocked if it was Iceland or Norway doing that. As much as we hate hearing about it, only the Chinese people have the power to make changes to this regime. Having met many Chinese students abroad, I'd say they are OK with this happening. Either they are apathic, or supportive of their totalitarian regime.
The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.
Would the west be as rich and Democratic without?