Almost immediately after coming to power in 2014, the Ukrainian government started banning opposition parties

There were still big pro-Russia parties so Ukrainians who liked the idea of stronger ties with Russia had parties they could vote for.

The whole situation is a tragedy and a mess.

That’s very true.

they were shut out of the political process by having their parties banned

The banning of pro-Russia parties apparently happened after Russia launched its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, so the banning can’t be a justification for the invasion.

we’re talking about grabbing people off the streets, giving them a rifle, and forcing them to the front

I hope that doesn’t happen and I hope Ukrainian people can choose whether they want to fight or not. I also think though that Russia shouldn’t be taking land and lives by force, and they also shouldn’t be trying to install their own puppet regime in Kyiv.

Okay I said maybe we shouldn’t talk about where we disagree but I think I disagree with those points about Ukraine. I think it was the elected parliament of Ukraine who voted to remove Yanukovych, rather than a “bunch of armed men” who voted. As for the Russian-backed referendums in the Donbas, I don’t trust them myself, given Russia’s history of ballot stuffing and the state deliberately harming political opponents.

I think the best outcome would be if the war immediately ends and then every oblast (in Ukraine and in Russia) could have a free and fair election regarding their future. If some Ukrainian oblasts vote in a free and fair election to join Russia then fair enough. In any case, unfortunately the war will very likely grind on.

Sure, I think Ukraine is a flawed democracy. More democratic than Russia in my estimation, but that isn’t a high bar to clear. I hope Ukrainians can vote in the near future on whether to continue the war. Or alternatively the Ukrainian government should hopefully respect the results of reliable polling.

If you think your domestic priorities are more important than foreign issues, that’s fair enough. When you claim Yanukovych’s removal from power counts as an “overthrow”, I’m not sure I agree with that, because Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from power. But anyway, maybe there is not much point in talking about where you and I disagree, because that could go on forever. I think we agree on some points, like the fact that Ukrainians are unfortunately suffering, and the fact that corporations (including defence companies) are too greedy, at the expense of hospitals and such like.

I agree with you that Ukrainians are suffering. Russians are too, under Putin’s regime. But some other points you mentioned, I’m not sure how true they are:

my government supported the overthrow of the previous government

It’s my understanding that Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych in 2014. Does this count as an “overthrow”? If the US Congress were to vote to remove Trump from power, which I believe is legally possible in the US, would that be an “overthrow”?

helped bring in a new government that was unwilling to have free and fair elections

TLDR of the following paragraph is that Ukraine has had two presidential elections since Yanukovych was removed from power, and both of those elections seem to have been more democratic than Russian “elections”. Here goes: A new presidential election was held in 2014, which Poroshenko won, and then another was held in 2019, which Zelenskyy won. The OSCE, an organisation of the US, Canada, and European countries (including Russia) stated that the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election “was competitive, voters had a broad choice and turned out in high numbers. In the pre-electoral period the law was often not implemented in good faith by many stakeholders, which negatively impacted the trust in the election administration, enforcement of campaign finance rules, and the effectiveness of election dispute resolution. Fundamental freedoms were generally respected”, etc. Maybe not a perfect election, but probably better than in Russia. In a Russian “election” in recent years, “Mr Putin’s biggest critics were barred from running, and there were reports of ballot stuffing and forced voting”. Here is an article from Reuters talking about ballot stuffing in Russia.

If they had stayed out of the war, then the people of eastern Ukraine would, at the very least, be shut out of any democratic process

I think pro-Russia people could participate in Ukraine’s democracy though. Before 2014 there was the popular pro-Russia party the Party of Regions, and after 2014 there was the pro-Russia Opposition Bloc.

TLDR: I hope the war in Ukraine ends so that no more people die. I think Ukraine should be left alone to make their own democratic decisions though, without Russia invading them. The evidence that I’ve seen (news I’ve read) suggests that Ukraine, while not a perfect democracy, was relatively democratic up until Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Right now they’re not having elections because of the war. Perhaps Ukrainians should be able to decide in the near future whether they want to continue the war or not.

You can be angry about your own government and that’s completely fine. I am not a Trump fan myself. Regarding Saudi Arabia, yes there are reasons to be wary of their leadership, especially after Jamal Khashoggi’s death.

Anyway, in my original question in this thread, I just asked if a person would condemn imperialism if it was done by Russia or China, in addition to condemning similar behaviour from the US or other western countries. If the US invades a country and kills civilians there then I definitely think that’s wrong - civilians should be able to live in peace. Likewise I think it’s wrong if Russia invades Ukraine and kills civilians there. With China, they may take over Taiwan by force in the near future. Likewise if the US were to take over a territory by force (perhaps the Philippines again), I would think that’s wrong.

the US literally dominates the world by force, assassinating if not full-scale invading anybody they don’t like

China seems to aspire to this same modus operandi. They seem to want to invade Taiwan in the near future.

You might say that NYC is, functionally, a one-party city. Of course, meaningful ideological differences can exist within that party, with competitive races between them. But I suppose the fact that the Republican party technically also exists there is the thing that determines whether NYC has democratic elections or not.

It’s not that long ago that Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani were Republican mayors of NYC, but I think the last non-communist leader of China was decades ago. Before the PRC was established I would guess.

It’s very clear that you haven’t actually investigated or thought about how the Chinese system works and are just repeating lines you’ve heard.

To be honest I do trust sources like BBC News and other western sources. I know some people might say they’re pro-western biased sources. From my experience though, the BBC has been truthful and accurate. If they report on a multi-party election in China then I’ll read about it. Instead though I found this on their website:

The Chinese Constitution states that “The system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China will continue and develop long into the future”.

So the leadership of a single party is in their constitution. I don’t think that’s true in the US, or other western democracies.

Anyway, I’m not trying to say any particular country is bad. Countries just have differences I suppose.

spin a globe, put your finger on a random country you’ve never heard of, and look into that country’s history. You’ll almost always find the US doing something nefarious. You simply can’t say that about China.

I googled “chinese hacking” because I’ve seen articles about this before, and I came across some examples. So I think China is doing nefarious things.

Do you pay attention to mayoral races in China? Or do you just assume that they must be undemocratic and that all the candidates are bad without a second thought?

Sources like CNN and Wikipedia refer to China as a one-party state. I guess I’ll accept that this description is probably accurate, until I see news of China having national elections involving at least two competitive parties.

I think the US is a democracy, just a flawed one. The electoral college is a big flaw because it gives rural states a disproportionate amount of power. But there is still a democratic process in the US. Look at how Zohran Mamdani has become the Democrat candidate to become NYC’s mayor, despite the fact that many leading Democrats didn’t want him to be the candidate. The primary voters made their voices heard.

A lot of the training received in the reeducation centers was vocational training that modernized the labor force of Uyghurs in Xinjiang enabling them to get better jobs than they used to have

If the USA forcibly put Muslims into camps and tried to justify it by saying “we’re giving them vocational training to modernise the labour force and enable these Muslims to get better jobs”, would that be okay? Anyway we’re obviously not going to agree on this topic so maybe there is no point in pursuing it further.

We can argue about the merits and flaws of China and Russia, but neither of them represent an existential threat to me as an American. Pretty much the only thing that does present an existential threat, imo, is the rise of fascism domestically.

Fair point. Here in Europe though, Russia is probably a bit more worrying. E.g. I’m not surprised that Poland wants to take a firm stance of supporting Ukraine, because Poles are probably worrying that their land might be invaded if Ukraine is taken over by Russia.

As for China, maybe we would disagree, but I think they really want to expand their power, even if that means stamping on people’s rights… for one thing it might be good if China had political freedom and democracy. China will obviously do what it wants for the time being, but I think I will remain a bit wary of what seems to be expansionist ambitions.

I think it’s credible that China has been detaining Uyghurs en masse and I think it’s credible that many rapes have taken place. Maybe we will just have different views.

Interesting, I googled for reports of Arab emissaries going to Xinjiang and I found this from Time magazine, published in 2022:

Arab states are not only lending rhetorical support to China, they are also actively assisting Beijing in its global campaign of abuse and reprisals against Uighurs. At least six governments in the Arab world—Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE—have detained or extradited Uighurs at China’s behest. According to our dataset at the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, around 292 Uighurs have been detained or deported from Arab states at China’s behest since 2002.

Also you mention “multiple western* countries” as if western countries are automatically wrong. I don’t think that’s true. I think there are certainly biased media outlets in the West, but I think there are genuine and reliable media outlets too. I think the BBC is reliable. If someone proves their reporting to be plain wrong then I will re-evaluate them, but I haven’t yet seen that happen.

I think the testimonies of rape are credible and major news organisations from multiple countries clearly think that leaked police files from Xinjiang are credible. I’m not aware of similar accusations regarding American prisons concerning black inmates.

Anyway, I expect you just won’t believe anything the BBC says (which I just linked to). I think the BBC are credible and reliable, but if you don’t think that, okay. I can’t change your mind of course. We will just have different views.

are there any ONGOING acts of mass mistreatment of Uyghur in Xinjiang?

I don’t know. But even if the detention camps have closed (whether they have, I don’t know), the treatment of Uyghurs for a while still seems to have been bad. I’m not trying to say “China is worse than the West” or anything like that. I just think that massive internment camps for ethnic minorities, where rape allegedly happens, don’t seem like a great thing - whether they appear in China, the USA, or anywhere else.

there was a series of terrorist attacks in China in 2013-2014 onwards, coming from Islamist radicals linked to Al-Qaida and ISIS. The government responded later with a big reeducation program in the province of Xinjiang

If the US had done the same thing in their country after 9/11, I bet you would have criticised it.

The only example you produced of China’s “imperialism” was settling some uninhabited islands in the Pacific

Settling islands, wanting to take over Taiwan, trying to expand their global power, making friends with other world leaders who want to expand their power, etc.

the most important conflict is class conflict, and my most immediate enemy is the ruling class of my own country

In some situations that might be true but I think it depends. In some cases, the ruling class of your own country might be investing in a military which protects you, while a foreign government might want to invade your country and oppress you. For example, if you were an American Jew in WW2 then surely the US ruling class was a better friend to you than the foreign country of Germany, who wanted to exterminate all Jews.

I’m not expecting you to say anything to China. My original point which I said in my first post in this thread was this:

would you condemn seemingly imperialist behaviour from countries like Russia and China as much as you would condemn imperialist behaviour from western countries

That’s all I’m trying to say. Surely we should hold every country to consistent standards.

Tara Reade

I just looked up that person. I do think allegations of rape should be taken seriously, although apparently this particular person may not be entirely honest, because apparently she may not have been truthful about her education: “Antioch University… disputed her claim of receiving a bachelor’s degree from its Seattle campus”. Maybe she’s still right about Biden, I don’t know.

Anyway, I’m not some MAGA supporter who mentioned Xinjiang to smear my geopolitical adversary. I was just replying to someone who mentioned “imperialism”, and I asked them if they would condemn Chinese/Russian imperialism as well as western imperialism. The reason I asked this is because I’ve seen posts from Lemmy.ml or Hexbear users where they seem to celebrate China and Russia. Arguably the current US, China, and Russia are all imperialist.

It seems it wasn’t just the NYT and the BBC who have reported on the story of China’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang - Der Spiegel from Germany published leaked files, as did Le Monde from France. Then other outlets like The Guardian published articles about this too.

I’ll just say what I believe: I think the leaked documents from China, showing photos of internment camps for Uyghurs, and documents saying that people escaping the camps should be shot and killed, are probably real. Multiple media outlets have reported on this. There are also the allegations of rape regarding these internment camps. I think any rape allegation should be taken seriously.

I’m really not trying to say “China bad, West good”. Not at all. But I also don’t think it’s useful to adopt an attitude of “West bad, China good”. Maybe instead we should think “every country is capable of doing bad things, and if we see a bad thing happening, then we can call it bad, no matter which country is doing it”.

According to the BBC, Xi Jinping himself may have been pushing for the system of camps used for the internment of Uyghurs:

In a speech, stamped as “classified” and delivered by Zhao Kezhi, China’s Minister for Public Security, on a visit to Xinjiang in June 2018, he suggests that at least two million people are infected with “extremist thought” in southern Xinjiang alone.

Peppered with references to President Xi Jinping, the speech heaps praise on the Chinese leader for his “important instructions” for the construction of new facilities and an increase in funding for prisons to cope with the influx in detainees necessary to reach that two million target.

You mention “massive amounts of footage” - the article I have just linked to has photos taken inside these internment camps, but it seems the wider world was only able to see these photos once Chinese police computers had been hacked (the source of the info in that article).

Anyway, maybe the truth is that every country is capable of bad things, whether it’s the US, or Israel, or China, or any other country.

Okay I read what you wrote. You say it’s just random instances of police violence in Xinjiang but it looks like an orchestrated programme of forcing Uyghurs to become communist loyalists. The BBC looked at documents leaked from Chinese authorities (these documents were leaked to other media outlets too such as Der Spiegel in Germany):

The cache contains another secret speech, delivered in 2017 by Chen Quanguo - until recently Xinjiang’s hardline Communist Party secretary.

“For some, even five years re-education may not be enough,” he tells his audience of senior military and police cadres, a seeming admission that for as long as any Uyghur continues to feel a loyalty to identity or faith at least as strong as to the Party, there’s no end in sight.

You mention fabricated western propaganda, and sure that can happen. Surely that would come from governments though rather than media companies.

As for the New York Times and the BBC. Maybe you think they spin things in a certain way, or that they don’t cover what they should cover. But that’s a different question to the question of whether their claims are factual. You could have a media outlet that selectively covers only particular topics, but nonetheless their facts may still be accurate.

You might dislike the US and Israel, and sure they have done some terrible things over the years, but maybe there are lots of countries that have done terrible things. Maybe China is one of those countries.