In Hong Kong, police have been using tear gas, en masse, for years, not a month, and using it in much higher levels. Man, why do you think they called it the umbrella movement?? In addition, they have beaten many protesters (and these are almost exclusively actual peaceful protesters…no riots at all, generally, though there has been some fairly violent protesters when the police became violent or they were cut out of government meetings completely), have fired on protesters, arrested protesters and tortured them, used what are essentially mafia thugs to attack protesters, have sexually abused protesters and fired on protesters. This is nothing like what is happening in even cities with even the largest protests in the US…protests that, as a whole have been pretty peaceful, and that even the police have joined at times.
So, yeah…more than a bit deceptive, IMHO. You obviously disagree, as I see from your links.
So, a resort to stats. True enough…the known number of Han Chinese arbitrarily imprisoned in China is less than the percentage of blacks incarcerated in the US, so case closed! Or, a way to disingenuously use stats to prop up a case. While I’m not going to sit here and say that all minorities imprisoned in the US are there rightfully, it’s more complicated here than in China, as the majority of those imprisoned in the US have committed a crime. Myself, I think a lot of those ‘crimes’ are bullshit, but they are counted as such, and the fact that a white person could and often does go to jail for them means that there is a somewhat even field there and rule of law (I realize that blacks and hispanics are often put under a larger microscope for looking for crime does tend to put a thumb on those scales). If you were comparing the US to Europe it would be hands down no contest. But you aren’t. So, let’s look at China to see how ‘similar’ it is.
In China, often your ‘crime’ is simply being an ethnic minority…or being religious. Or having an opinion, but I digress. Tossing out stats, there are something like 6 million ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Of those, somewhere between 1-2 million are in concentration camps. Not prisons…concentration camps. Where they are tortured and brain washed. Those who aren’t in those camps are often spied on, and as many Han Chinese have been sent to the province to colonize it, the ethnic minority often has to house spies in their own homes. In many cases they are forcibly married to those colonists, though sometimes they are forcibly sterilized. Their culture is brutally suppressed. We won’t even get into how most of the jobs go to those Han Chinese colonists, and that poverty is rampant. I think that just this (non-exhaustive) list is enough to demonstrate that there is little similarity between the situation there and the one here…unless you are really being ridiculous. And that’s one province. We could talk about Tibet if you like, but it’s a similar story.
Then you have the fact that even in the ethnically majority Han areas the law is often completely arbitrary. For instance, we could discuss Falun Gong if you want to get really grizzly. Or many of the other arbitrary ways that Chinese citizens can and are arrested and often put in prisons, tortured, and sometimes used for parts. Or how the ruling elite are often above many of these laws…unless they aren’t because their faction is out of power.
So, it’s not really all that ‘similar’. Unless you want to really torture the definition and stretch the facts. None of this is to say that the US is perfect. We are far from it. But there is no comparison between the US and China on human rights.
The US is still the number one country on the planet as far as total GDP, military, cultural and market, we are still the go to currency. Sorry, but those things are facts. Does that mean we are the best at everything? Nope. Far from it. As I said, if you were comparing us to Europe, we’d fail at most of the things you linked too. Even things that were the American dream like economic and social mobility we’ve fallen far from the top spot. But we aren’t talking about Europe, or Canada, or Australia…we are talking about the US verse China. Only someone who is either ignorant or deliberately being disingenuous would even try and make a claim that human rights or police violence is any where near comparable between the US and China. There is no comparison. The REAL issue in the OP is, which countries will find it expedient to side with China over the US due to political or economic reasons, or vice versa. Only hypocrites or hypocritical nations would even try and make the argument you seem to be making in comparing the US and China on the things we are discussing here. True enough, this happens. Germany, until just this week springs to mind, but they aren’t alone…just one of the countries that SHOULD not allow expedience to guide them, especially with their history. But even that seems to be turning around, at least from the point of they are finally starting to become critical of China. Of course, they have never refrained from criticizing the US. And they should. It’s telling though that on one hand they have refrained and actually have to do so with China, while they haven’t needed to with the US. I think just that tells the tale. Think about that as you furiously respond to this post and think about WHY that is the case (and how that’s the case with many countries, and how when countries break from that what happens. Perhaps look at Australia and Canada as recent examples).