Or just another case of made-up US exceptionalism ("oh, how braver we are than those others for saying no to China now"), after the US corporations/market had profited from cheap Chinese manufacturing and sweat shop labor for years, and takes the high moral ground only now that "coincidentally" has an economic problem and wants to stop all the outsourcing.
Meanwhile, all this talk of "global moral cowardice" was hardly there for hundreds of instances of the US doing all kinds of shit to third countries throughout the 20th and 21st century with bi-partisan agreement and the public hardly caring...
China is shitted upon for those detention camps (and rightly so). Meanwhile, over a million muslim deaths have been directly and indirectly (e.g. pharmaceutical and food shortages) caused by the Iraq embargo/invasion alone [1] (one of several), and people talk about China as if their shit doesn't smell...
For example, Australia won't even withdraw special trade relations with Hong Kong now that the PRC is compromising the whole point of that status, the U.S. went ahead and did so.
Isn't that just because the U.S. has strategic and economic interests to put pressure on China (and otherwise could not give less ducks about democracy, morals, or Hong Kongers for that matter.
Especially since they don't have and historically didn't also have any problem with all kinds of dictators, right wing governments, etc. (from Suharto and Pinochet to UAE), as long as they were allies.
The thing about the Hong Kong annexation is that the same thing that threatens Americans' moral preferences is also bad for business; it doesn't actually matter why you value Hong Kong's legal sovereignty, because the stakes are the same.
> A 2017 study in the British Medical Journal described "the rigging of the 1999 Unicef survey" as "an especially masterful fraud".[12] The three comprehensive surveys conducted since 2003 all found that the child mortality rate in the period 1995-2000 was approximately 40 per 1000, which means that there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after sanctions were implemented.
You seem to forget that the Iraqis liked Saddam which is the only reason he stayed in power. Did they care about the genocide of the Kurds? I think not.
If you really want someone to blame, blame France, England, and Russia for arbitrarily drawing up countries after WW1 without considering that people in the middle east wouldn't overcome their nationalism and racism which would lead to continuous conflict.
No, I actually didn't fully read the paragraph I linked to, thought it would mention the same numbers I've read before from several sources. I now see that the entry in Wikipedia actually includes some later dispute on those numbers though!
Still, there's a big toll from 4+ invasions, bombings, destabilizing countries stable for decades, etc., even if the 500K number mentioned for Iraq at that period doesn't stand up. For example it's not disputable that we have had millions of regugees from these regions as a result of the invasions...
>If you really want someone to blame, blame France, England, and Russia for arbitrarily drawing up countries after WW1"
Oh, I absolute blame those. But also anyone later who meddled, grabbed resources and exerted influence (strategic, trade, etc.) while paying lip service to "democracy" (the modern "white man's burden").
>without considering that people in the middle east wouldn't overcome their nationalism and racism which would lead to continuous conflict.*
I'd not say it happened "without econsidering". Rather "capitalizing exactly on that this will happen, and making sure with subsequent meddling and stiring that it will". The classic old British Empire "divide and conquer" modus operandi...
Maybe from the U.S. perspective, but at this point there are heaps of countries around the world who at least claim to be dependent on China.
This is a matter of global moral cowardice; at least today, the U.S. is more ready to say no to it.