> democratic state with respect for human rights

Iran tried that in the 50s. Latin America tried that in the 70s.

Got overthrown by CIA every time.

Clearly that's not what it means.

This is absolutely fair whataboutism because it shows the US's first priority has consistently been commerce over human rights. You couldd still say the US values "free people" a little bit, but values "free markets" more, and thus we get Deng Xiaoping > Mohammad Mosaddegh.

The irony of these trite whataboutist responses is that China would be in such a better position as global leader if it were open or democratic. Unfortunately for the Chinese people, the Party is more interested in maintaining personal power than charting a good path for humanity.

> China would be in such a better position as global leader if it were open or democratic.

Certainly. And the CCP hinders that. But the point of my above comment is to illustrate that it's an open question whether China would be 'allowed' to be open and democratic.

I don't believe the West is actually concerned about CCP's human rights violations. They're simply concerned about China's rise as an economic and military power, we would not support the Saudi regime if human rights was a concern.

One of the major reasons the CCP got a foothold in China was because there was a sense that for over a century China was subservient to Western powers.

The CCP was fine as far as the west was concerned as long as it was primarily a dumb factory for us. But now they have ambitions to go beyond that.

I think that's the crux of the animosity towards China today, not human rights violations, as gross as they are.

I could imagine China being somewhat of an EU and democratic and as long as they buy enough western products, be left alone. But if they actually wanted a truly independent foreign policy for example, that would not fly. See the Iran Deal for how dependent EU foreign policy is on the U.S. one.

P.S. That does not mean the CCP is good. It's not. But pretending that western leaders actually care about its human rights abuses is silly.

I think this viewpoint is pretty one-dimensional and oversimplifies the complexity of geopolitics. The US is like any other country in that faces a constant struggle between its idealistic values and the realities of the world. To say that “the West doesn’t care about the human rights violations” is absurd, as if you could paint nearly a billion people (Europe plus US) with a single brush. The idea that by supporting one repressive state you forfeit your ability to critique other repressive states is also absurd. The world isn’t that simple.

To give you an example: in retrospect, keeping Saddam in power and not invading Iraq is considered a fairly reasonable opinion; i.e. even though we got rid of a dictator, the consequences were arguably worse.

The reality is that the West tends to not get involved politically if the state in question is insular enough to not affect other countries. This isn’t because they condone abuses in these countries, but because a long history of failed colonialism and wars has rendered the West extremely hesitant to get involved in any sort of ‘just’ war that isn’t provoked by the state in question (see Iraq and Kuwait for example.)

The contemporary populist rise of American hostility to China is also linked directly to offshoring jobs from the Rust Belt, so again, there are clearly groups of people who have issues with China that aren’t merely “crush the rising competitor.”

In any case I don’t disagree that the West has sunk democratic movements which were against its interests, but that to say all such attempts will be shut down is overly-simplistic.

> To say that “the West doesn’t care about the human rights violations” is absurd, as if you could paint nearly a billion people (Europe plus US) with a single brush.

It should be pretty clear from the context that I am talking about western governments, not people.

Also, as an European, it doesn't look to me like we have much in terms of independent foreign policy.

> The idea that by supporting one repressive state you forfeit your ability to critique other repressive states is also absurd.

One? Please. We support plenty of other dictators all across the world. Or is Egypt's Sisi not a dictator? What about the UAE, Qatar etc.?

What about human rights violations by democratic countries? We don't seem to care much about illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

> in retrospect, keeping Saddam in power and not invading Iraq is considered a fairly reasonable opinion; i.e. even though we got rid of a dictator, the consequences were arguably worse

The assumption that the goal at the start was to get rid of a dictator because he was one is fairly well established to not be true. Basically a bunch of neocons who were bitter we didn't dispose Saddam in the FGW wanted to settle scores.

> The reality is that the West tends to not get involved politically if the state in question is insular enough to not affect other countries.

Really, what about the likes of Venezuela/Nicaragua?

> I don’t disagree that the West has sunk democratic movements which were against its interests, but that to say all such attempts will be shut down is overly-simplistic.

I hope you're right.

Let's talk about human rights There is an actual genocide going on in Yemen , and it's perpetuated by a Saudi dictator . The same dictator who dismembered an American journalist in foreign embassy.

Now Americans are selling weapons to the dictator to continue the genocide because human rights are selctive

> The irony of these trite whataboutist responses

His comment is in no way whataboutist or trite. It is providing counterexamples to the claim that the goal of US policy is to get countries to "open up", by citing countries that did start opening up until the US stepped in to prevent that from happening.

Any pundit who thinks the ultimate goal of exchanging goods and services with another country is regime change is a lunatic.

Forget about pundits, Bill Clinton made this argument: "The American people support this agreement because they know it's good for jobs in America and good for human rights and the development of democracy in China." https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/textonly/library/hot...

Now, did he really believe that? Was he just selling the American people a bad deal? The end result anyway is that this is precisely the argument that was made, and thousands believed it.

And profiting from it.

This was the predominant geopolitical theory with regards to China for most of the past ~40 years.

I think they always knew this was not going to happen. But how do sell trading with a communist nation after 50 years of Red scare.

There's nothing communist about the CCP any more

Kishore Mahbubani very aptly describes the CCP as the Chinese Civilization Party. That is a much more accurate name.

Your average American voter doesn't know what communism is or whether China is or isn't it.

The might have some notion of "big bad central state", and China was and remains that.

In any event, some rhetoric to grease the wheels politically absolutely was in order.