Comments by "John Roberts" (@view1st) on "Amanpour and Company" channel.

  1. It's not just about trade but about sovereignty. The Chinese are of the opinion that if Russia falls they will be next. The military‐industrial complex of the USA is rapacious and the corporations behind it want nothing less than total control of the Earth, its people and resources. China as an independent country with control over its own people and resources is anathema to them, even more so as it serves as an example to others.
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  2.  @bipolarbear9917  Just do some proper research on the internet (or even here on YouTube) and you'll hopefully get a fuller picture of what the situation is in places like Hong Kong and Xinjiang. One question I would like to ask you is why you would take such an interest in the lives and political system of a country so far away? Shouldn't you care more about your own country and its obsolescent infrastructure, rising inflation, unemployment and homelessness, as well as its constant wars with more and more taxes from the lower classes going to fund those wars while the upper classes pay less and less?
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  3.  @bipolarbear9917  You may live in China and even be married to a Chinese wife but you still have a preconceived notion of what Chinese society should be like. China is not a western country and the idea that it's a hell hole just because it doesn't conform to a westerners notion of what constitutes a good society borders on cultural chauvinism. The Chinese have the government they want, a government that is a product of their unique history and world view and if it was unpopular the Chinese I'm sure would make their voices heard.
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  4.  @bipolarbear9917  Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters Mostly rioters led and organised by groups linked to western intelligence agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy – a known CIA front. Whatever genuine, spontaneous movement there was to begin with was quickly hijacked by these nefarious groups with the agenda of politically destabilising Hong Kong. ▪︎ Surveillance and censorship Not really very different from what we have in the West. Maybe more obvious and less hedged with formal legal restraints but no less ubiquitous. The USA and its allies in NATO (5 eyes, 8 eyes) mop up all information, economic, political and military. Just look at what Edward Snowden (now living in exile) has to say about the subject. ▪︎ Imprisonment and disappearing of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and political dissidents Again, compared to the allies of the USA in places like Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, China is a pretty good place to be a different. Stay within the limits of acceptable dissent and you can pretty much say what you like. However, all countries have their limits (just look at Chelsea/Bradley Manning and Julian Assange) and no government in its right mind will tolerate groups sponsored by foreign countries and that engage in destabilisation operations within the country under the guise of human rights. ▪︎ Uyghurs in Xinjiang The problems in the Chinese province of Xinjiang - in no small way exacerbated by the United States sponsoring terrorists in the region to destabilise it - is complicated and certainly doesn't amount either to genocide or mass incarceration of its people. Rather, the people almost always portrayed as political prisoners held in concentration camps are actually for the most part radicalised Muslims who pose a threat to the country. The same kind of Muslim we find in Syria and elsewhere and who go by the name of al-Qaeda and are called terrorists, though, for some reason, here they are called freedom fighters. — And as for "authoritarian repression" have you not seen the neo‐McCarthyism and rabid fear and hate‐mongering in the USA and western Europe?
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  5.  @Steril707  The Chinese have the equivalent of YouTube and other forums where they can talk about a whole range of topics, you just have to be able to read Chinese to be able to understand what they are saying. There may be more censorship and intervention but I still am given to understand that that can talk quite freely on any subject they chose _within the limits of acceptableness laid down by the Chinese state at any one time.
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  6. Depleting water sources elsewhere can only ever be a stop-gap measure rather than a long term practical solution. What you suggest will only postpone the inevitable. Maybe it would work if you got your water from the ocean, but that would require desalination on a large scale and even the oceans have their limits.
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  7. Not quite. We're in the opening stages of a new cold war that could very easily turn hour hot of the USA loses where the USA is again trying to take on two major powers, only this time one is a manufacturing behemoth and the other is a resource behemoth. Cold war round 2. Let's sit back with the popcorn and see how it goes.
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  8.  @ClannCholmain  Tell that to Libya and Yugoslavia.
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  9.  @ClannCholmain  On trumped up charges, in a court of the victors where basic legal principles and protections were ignored and where he eventually died in prison after being denied drugs (may even have been poisoned).
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