I genuinely appreciate your response. This is the sort of thing I come here for. Thank you.
I'll have to read about the treatment of the Uyghurs. I do know that their food is delicious, so that's a nice starting point for my learning. I'll check out the Last Week Tonight clip, but I'm generally cautious of info-tainment sources for stuff like this, so I'm also going to read more afterwards.
If you prefer long-form, researched, and academic, Understanding China by Starr is an excellent book. The author teaches at Yale.
It's from 2010, but I don't think the big picture has changed much. China has big-O, a 5000 year history, and the current government, big-O, one century. Details have changed in the past 15 years, but the big picture is pretty similar.
But the edu-tainment here is pretty accurate. I could do a similar hit pieces on China on Taiwan, Honk Kong, Tibet, environmental issues, surveillance,..., and you'd have plenty of reasons to be angry at / hate China.
The point is I could also do similar hit pieces on similar issues from many other countries as well (including the US). Individuals too for that matter -- if I could pick out all the worst, most embarrassing things moments of your life, and only presented those, you'd probably look like a pretty horrible person.
Positives we can learn from in China include that the government aims for:
- meritocracy, actually dating back over a millennium. This contrasts with Western ideals
I'll have to read about the treatment of the Uyghurs. I do know that their food is delicious, so that's a nice starting point for my learning. I'll check out the Last Week Tonight clip, but I'm generally cautious of info-tainment sources for stuff like this, so I'm also going to read more afterwards.
Thank you again, I really appreciate it.