I think a major resentment people have when they see these "moral stands" by the US, is that in its literal present day actions, neither US nor China "stand up against oppression in general not just when you can benefit", but also, China does not rhetorically claim to do so -- the US does make that false claim.
The easy present day case to back up this claim that the US does not "stand up against oppression..." is Yemen: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113852. With various slight modifications, and given enough time to explain, you can add a host of other countries to that list: Afghanistan, Syria, Israel+Palestine, etc. Go back 20-30 years and you can add Iraq. Go back a little further and add Indonesia+East Timor, Iran, most of South and Central America. It's more complicated to make the case, and there are still too many uncertainties about what actually happened, but you could probably even add "nice, Western" countries like Italy to that list.
The point is, China often uses this false talk of "moral stands" as a (mostly sarcastic) retort to the US, because the US sincerely engages in the same false talk in 90% of its communications and more importantly, in material actions that affect actual lives on the ground.
But we do try to make things right for US citizens (and often foreigners) inside our own borders. What happens inside your borders is way more important than outside.
I don't think what we've done in the middle east is remotely good but it's substantially different.
I don't think that matters really. First, I don't see the point in doing moral rankings. If I live in the US and the US does a bad thing, that's what I should care most about (up to a point). Even if I thought, "well, my morality points ranking shows China's worse", that shouldn't affect my political decisions in the US, where I can influence US decisions but not Chinese ones.
But sure, if I have to pick which country to live in, on this metric I'd probably pick the US (we're smoothing over some extremely significant internal problems in the US here, but not directly comparable to Xinjiang, so OK, let's side-step them for the moment).
But that's a pretty selfish view. Good conditions at home don't justify imposing awful conditions abroad. To think so is literally imperial logic. I realize using phrases like "imperial" induces eye-rolling in some, but it's appropriate for the concept we're discussing here. The US's cold calculating cruelty is perhaps less obvious, but it undoubtedly impacts far more lives and deaths. So while I won't weigh in on whether the US is an empire (don't care), if you buy into the logic that "we're only evil abroad, at home we try to be nice", then that is imperial logic.
> ICE stopped sending immigrant women to Amin after the allegations of nonconsensual and unnecessary procedures came to light. The FBI is currently investigating Amin for a series of unnecessary, rough, or abusive procedures, according to a report in Prism by Tina Vásquez earlier this month.
> The feds shut down the entire facility after the allegations came out. It wasn't a case of one doctor.
Well the hysterectomy thing was the one doctor (and the facility failing at its duty to properly oversee him). However, it wouldn't surprise me if there were other issues there as well.
Habitually performing major surgery without informed consent is a structural problem that can't be pinned on a single doctor. An incredible amount of checks have to break down to get to that point.
> Habitually performing major surgery without informed consent is a structural problem that can't be pinned on a single doctor. An incredible amount of checks have to break down to get to that point.
No, because I doubt very much that it was "a lack of oversight". He pretty much must have had support for what he was doing. There's a difference between not noticing something occasionally weird and mass sterilization.
> No, because I doubt very much that it was "a lack of oversight". He pretty much must have had support for what he was doing. There's a difference between not noticing something occasionally weird and mass sterilization.
> At least 43 women at Irwin county detention center (ICDC), in Georgia, have now alleged misconduct by Amin. He is accused of operating on migrant women without their consent or performing procedures that were medically unnecessary and potentially endangered their ability to have children.
> Ogburn, who has worked as a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist for nearly three decades and who has led organizations that develop patient care standards, said Amin did a variety of tests and surgeries for patients that “did them little or no good, and potentially caused harm.”
> “In summary the care provided by Dr. Amin did not meet acceptable standards based on the review of these records,” Ogburn wrote as part of his complaint. “My concern is that he was not competent and simply did the same evaluation and treatment on most patients because that is what he knew how to do, and/or he did tests and treatments that generated a significant amount of reimbursement without benefitting most patients.”
1. Less than 43 women is not "mass sterilization." It's well within the scope of damage could be expected from one incompetent doctor.
2. It's quite believable to me that the jail officials never questioned the medical activities of the doctor (let alone understood what he was doing was malpractice) and just ignored complaints they received from the detainees. For comparison, this outrageously incompetent guy (https://www.propublica.org/article/dr-death-christopher-dunt...) managed to avoid oversight for two years while he was maiming and killing people.
If you click through to the compliant it's not claimed that only 43 women had issues, but instead every woman that doctor came into contact with. They were only able to track down 43 women after ICE started covering their tracks.
> Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody.
Nurse Wooten, who filed the whistleblower complaint.
I mean, after the lawsuit was filed, ICE shutdown the facility and expedited the deportations of all who had filed the suits leaving no paper trail and nowhere for the lawsuits to go. That's not exactly what I'd expect from an org acting on the up and up.
The easy present day case to back up this claim that the US does not "stand up against oppression..." is Yemen: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113852. With various slight modifications, and given enough time to explain, you can add a host of other countries to that list: Afghanistan, Syria, Israel+Palestine, etc. Go back 20-30 years and you can add Iraq. Go back a little further and add Indonesia+East Timor, Iran, most of South and Central America. It's more complicated to make the case, and there are still too many uncertainties about what actually happened, but you could probably even add "nice, Western" countries like Italy to that list.
The point is, China often uses this false talk of "moral stands" as a (mostly sarcastic) retort to the US, because the US sincerely engages in the same false talk in 90% of its communications and more importantly, in material actions that affect actual lives on the ground.