China

The US isn't near collapse at all. The postwar era and the fact that the US is the primary consumer of global goods is a different way of saying that the US is one of the most prosperous countries on the planet.

The US could compete with foreign countries on manufacturing, but not through human labour unless you want Americans to work 9/9/6 in hazardous conditions and under environmental degradation. The dematerialisation of the US economy has made it cleaner, more energy-efficient, less physically demanding, and richer, because it extracts value from its global IP, and it has given Chinese workers a step up the ladder to prosperity. If manufacturing is coming back its in the form of robots, and that does very little for displaced workers.

There is no reason for fatalism because the premise is all wrong that deindustrialisation is bad. It's not. The problem the US has is a cultural one where the vision of the Ford company man working the same job at the conveyor belt with a dog and car and a house in the suburbs hasn't been updated. Adjust the political system to compensate the segments of the population that lose out, find different ways to provide meaningful work, and we'll be better off, instead of making everyone worse off.

"global concept" =/= "global endorsement", nevermind that there are constant reforms and improvements to Chinese legal system, the anticorruption drive for instance which the west dismiss as power consolidation but subsequent analysis has concluded to be a broadly genuine effort. Or to acknowledge that reforms take time, and is subject to regression depending on conditions. How long did it take African Americans to get the right to enfranchisement.

> no longer a developing nation

Of course it is by GDP PPP, comparable to IRAQ. By multiple other other measures as well. Just because it has a few extremely well developed coastal cities doesn't mean the population as a whole as been elevated.

> It's also not an excuse

I wasn't making an excuse, explanation =/= endorsement. I specifically said the situation in XinJiang was an immoral overreaction. Nor was I suggesting the OPs letter was not warranted, just poorly reasoned and articulated. China isn't a monolith, people shit talk the government all the time, publicly. Some third rail subjects are prone to hysteric consensus, XinJiang being one of them, because anti-terrorism makes people irrational everywhere, leading to disproportionate responses.

>whataboutism

Again, when did I justify? I was drawing a comparison on why US moral arguments are not credible with respects to containing China especially when one appeals to international audiences, particularly those who suffered under US hegemony.

> best things

Best things in principle but not practice - hence need to demonstrate actual commitment to values.

> very basic human rule that children learn

I mean the CPC also indoctrinates kids with 2/3 of those values. But what we teach children is simplified platitudes, reality is murkier. The 1/3 (open elections) elected a leader that is rapidly dismantling the global order or undermining allies everywhere. Not that that the last few prior administrations were faultless. That's what children growing up in such countries learn.

>Someone else's bad behavior doesn't excuse your own bad behavior.

Your bad behaviour undermines (but doesn't invalidate) your ability to criticize others, which this open letter and many myopic US arguments couched in moralism refuses to comprehend.

> anyone with even a passing knowledge of US history knows it's working.

And anyone with passing knowledge of contemporary US history knows vast components are degrading. Which makes these appeal to values arguments particularly unsuccessful. And whenever they're met with resistance, the canned dismissal is whataboutism or shills without acknowledging that the shiny city on the hill has been tarnished. Just like there are components of the Chinese system that is working and simultaneously degrading. You have a much rosier evaluation on the US system than the last 20 year warrants.

The comment is getting downvoted because it is a flamewar rant, which is not in the spirit of this site and breaks its rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

When disagreeing, try to respond neutrally and with specific, better information. I know how hard that is to do when representing a minority/contrarian viewpoint, but it's even more important to do it in that case. If instead you lash out and break the rules, you discredit your own truth and reinforce the other side's perception of it.

It is about the principles and the message it conveys.

Gandhi protested against the British by spinning his own fabric, making his own shoes, and being completely independent. It made no difference to the British companies, but it sent a powerful message to the nation that Indians can be independent.

Do not underestimate or discourage people from doing what they principally object, even if practically it makes no sense or has no objective benefit.

I received news from mainland China, Taiwan and US media. Most of the US news (even NYT) are indeed often biased toward China and of course same for Chinese media. The biases contribute greatly to the increasing animosity between the two worlds.