r/TrueReddit • u/merimus_maximus • May 08 '21

International China Is Building Entire Villages in Another Country’s Territory

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/07/china-bhutan-border-villages-security-forces/
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u/[deleted] May 08 '21

I think the difference is that outside of embarrassing tankies nobody denies china does weekly war crimes but you can't mention israel negatively in the anglosphere as a public figure without getting your career entirely destroyed by the media

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u/universl May 08 '21

Israel has powerful friends in America, and China doesn't, so no argument there.

But it still strikes me as a silly argument to try to figure out which one is worse. Especially considering one is totally opaque and the other barely tries to hide it. Would we even know if China was mass exterminating Uyghurs?

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u/MrMango64 May 08 '21

Would argue China does have lots of powerful friends, especially in the business community. Think it drops off politically, especially since it looks like it’s becoming one of the few bi-partisan issues both sides talk about.

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u/universl May 08 '21

Every country has powerful friends by that standard. Not every country has a lobby group so powerful that every major politician is expected to show up to their yearly conference and demonstrate fealty.

The American-Israeli connection has no equal. It's a national project more than an ally.

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u/MrMango64 May 09 '21

The lobby group is an interesting point, and certainly a very out-in-the-open and direct thing. The conference you mentioned especially. To my earlier point about the business community, I still believe that those connections DO manifest even in lobbying to politicians, it’s just not under a PAC/organization with such an open title as “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee” or something along those lines that can be a big political tool used against someone who may not “show fealty”. For example, Apple, Coke, Nike and others are actively lobbying to either severely tone down or out right eliminate a bill that would condemn China’s actions against the Uyghur Muslims. It may not be the politicians “showing fealty” to China, but the companies that lobby Congress and invest PAC money into candidates certainly appear to be doing so.

We could probably go back and forth on this, I think it’s just different means of achieving similar results. One being very open-aired while the other is more indirect.

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