Comment by glenstein
Of all the arguments in all directions, by far the least compelling have been the ones that attempt to both-sides equivalences between the U.S. and China on question of free speech and democratic norms. It's not that there's no offenses on the U.S. side, it's just the game of whatabouting reeks of JV debate team sophistry that is very discouraging to engage with.
The single party domination, the great firewall, the authoritarian surveillance are without comparison in scale and I think that has to be among the explicitly agreed upon facts that sanity check any conversation on this topic.
Edit since I can't reply to the comment below: all the examples mentioned below appear to involve the very equivocation between differences in scale that I spent this whole comment talking about, or attempt to equate past vs present, or are too vague to even understand the nature of the comparison, and collectively are so disorganized and low effort that they are degrading the focus and quality of the conversation as a whole.
Ughyhur Camps vs Reservations/Slavery/Jim Crow/Internment Camps/Operation Paperclip
lingchi vs waterboarding/black sites
NSA vs Great Firewall
provincial one party system vs micro nation based two party system both favoring the rich
TikTok vs Instagram/YouTube
when both sides consider you sub human kind of easy to compare them without emotion :)
but truly curious where have the facts been misrepresented? I would expect this on Reddit but not on a site like HN tbh