I am 100% British. You misunderstand me. I am saying that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism, its power and influence comes from exploitation of more than half the world.
To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties.
We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.
We can split hairs about Boris Johnson throwing private parties or Joe Biden not wearing a mask or something equally trivial, but at the end of the day, I know of only one major world power which is systematically rounding up its citizens and sending them to reeducation and sterilization camps. It frustrates me when people try to defend China in such roundabout ways when the proof is in the pudding. If anything, humanity would be better off if we were _more_ harsh on China, and willing to call out its grave, grave sins, rather than absurdly shifting the discussion to Western colonialism.
The CCP are quite literally ethnically cleansing their own citizens! And lying about it! Why is it even worth discussing the context of Western colonialism when there's a true and honest legal genocide being performed at the hands of the government? This argument is no different than saying that if we just understood the context of Germany's situation in the 1930s better, perhaps we wouldn't criticize the Nazi regime as strongly. There are some acts which transcend cultural context because of how barbaric they are, and in my opinion, what's happening with the Uighur peoples is beyond forgiveness.
This is a misunderstanding of my viewpoint that I often get. I'm not defending China, and I'm not engaging in Whataboutism. Although I certainly understand how it seems like that. My point is that words are more effective when the speaker of those words lives by those words. Of course the metaphors of Boris Johnson's parties and Joe Biden's lack of mask wearing are trivial, it's just an example.
Yes, the CCP are quite literally ethnically cleansing their own citizens! But also yes, the entirety of the Americas and Australia are already ethnically cleansed. The West has set the precedent. We simply have no power to, as much as it's the ethically correct thing to do, admonish China.
To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties.
We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.