Biden and China's Cultural Norms

I have mixed feelings about whether Biden should have taken China to task for its treatment of the Uighurs (and Hong Kong) in his first talk with president Xi Jinping.  I do not have mixed feelings about how he explained his failure to do so in a town hall:  his responses are reprehensible.  “Culturally there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow,” Biden said.  Yes, we are aware that China has no respect for human life and this is normal for their government, but that is emphatically not a justification for their actions.

Biden made it sound like China's human rights abuses are just a natural extension of their history of trying to stay strong and unified.  There is some truth in that, but historical continuity is never considered exculpatory, or even a mitigating circumstance, among Americans ready to denounce human rights abuses in other countries.  I don't always agree with the human rights gadflies, but in this case, I do:  China's treatment of the Uighurs is an outrage, and its ongoing threats against Taiwan are not only morally wrong but also a serious potential cause of a major war.

Biden could have explained his failure to berate China simply enough:  "This was my first conversation with Xi, and I did not want to begin our relationship too aggressively.  We did not discuss any matters in detail, so a reference to specific policy points like this would have been out of place.  We will certainly be bringing up China's human rights record in future meetings, and especially calling attention to it in international fora such as the United Nations."  Instead, he excused his own failure to bring it up by justifying China's policies, which is weak and not appropriate for a leader.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science and Philosophy, Part I: Hume and Popper

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions. One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human l...
Read more

Country Music

I noticed a long time ago that there isn't much difference between the sound of country music and rock music nowadays. If I'm surfing my radio and I come to a station playing jazz, classical, or rap, I recognize it right away; but if I come to a country or rock station, I often can't tell which it is until the song is half over. Country songs often have screaming guitars that would fit equally well in a hard rock song, and only a minority have a recognizably country instrument such as a fiddle or a banjo. All the same, no one could listen to a country music station for more than a few minutes without realizing that it is definitely not a rock station. What are the differences? There are some stylistic differences. Country songs are more likely to have a boogey beat or certain western-sounding bass lines. They also tend to be more formulaic: if you can't predict how a country song ends, you probably don't listen to much country music. But those things aren...
Read more

My privileged life

I have just read the article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Level , and the comments, and the follow-up and its comments.  The author claims that straight white males (SWM, for short) don't like being told they are "privileged," so he is going to try to explain their advantages in terms they understand.  He then very condescendingly compares their lives to playing a game on the easiest difficulty level, whereas people in other categories have it harder, and black lesbians are playing on the hardest level of all. I understand that this is a metaphor, or an analogy.  I understand that it is not supposed to be a perfect model of reality.  There are, however, several reasons why I think it is a very poor and misleading metaphor. First of all, using the gaming-difficulty metaphor implies that SWMs have an easy life.  No one plays at the easiest level unless he is a total noob, and only college students with lots of time on their hands play at the hard...
Read more