CHINA: The West has Double Standards! West: China has Double Standards! Who is to be trusted?
Hi there. Welcome back. And if you're new to this channel, do subscribe. We're going to talk about many things about China and the West. And today, probably one of the most loaded topics that I want to express. And this is about the fact that Chinese are saying that the West is using double standards. And what does this mean? Well, in my book, Can We Trust China, which came out in June 20, 22.
I spend about 20 pages to explain how polarized the world has become. I call that the dual perspective. I call that the dual perspective because both of us in the West and in China were starting to see the other party as having double standards. And so I want to go through this now. In my book, I took nine statements that we in the West often blame China for double standards.
We're basically saying that the Chinese are one of the countries and nations that is stealing more than anyone else in the world. They're lying. They're spying. One of the most unfair competitions that they're doing by helping by having the government support many of their industries.
We're talking about a very dangerous superpower building up its military might. We're talking about, of course, China being the factory of the world of fake goods and then being very secretive and non-transparent, having more control with half a billion cameras in that country than anywhere else in the world. Of course, a dictatorship with Xi Jinping probably having a third term with a lot of power, the communist one party system that is controlling everyone and ultimately the most important topic of all, the violations of human rights in China. And so these are nine topics that I've included in my book, in my introduction to show how we in the West view China. But what I also did was actually do the opposite and look at how the Chinese look at these same nine things. Now, the problem, what we have with these nine allegations or blaming that we have on China is that we have started to put China in the camp of the bad countries and people and governments while we seem to be good and the more we talk about China having double standards in China not being good, actually, the more it feels that we are doing the right thing and are on the track.
It's not just that we feel China is not bad. Actually, we feel China's evil. Often it's cheap, it's selfish, it's corrupt, it's malicious and even dangerous in its kind. So these are the things that we will claim about this country.
And we do that pretty much to say that China is not as good as the West is. Now, from a Chinese perspective, they call out double standards and they say when we look at our mirror, we see a perfect, good image. But when we look at the Chinese, I mean, it's very distorted. And for us, the Chinese are actually on the other side not doing the things as they should. Now, this is what the Chinese
call double standards from the West. And more specifically, you will hear a lot of people talking about American exceptionalism. When America does something bad, it's okay. But when China does something bad, well, the whole world should be watching and stop them. But then the Chinese will have long list of things that that the West America specifically is not a best example or not the best student in the class to start dictating and lecturing China about how they should behave.
I mean, the income inequality, income inequality, inequality, the poverty rate, if you look at incarcerations, if you look at the homeless, if you look at things like health care and education problems with the loans, you look at how many countries they've bombed. I mean, there's so much on that list that Chinese will say, well, they should be looking in the mirror first and should first look at their own problems before starting to judge China. And so this is what Chinese very often called double standards. Now, what I've done in my book is actually put those nine standards or nine blames that I've mentioned before into a double lens, and I've taken a Chinese and a Western lens next to the other, because we as Westerners and I'm a Westerner, we often know the Western lens. We know these nine things.
We know about the dictatorship. We know about the unfair, about the superpower. We know about all these things like fake products and so on and cheap products and lying and stealing. But do we know how the Chinese look at this themselves? And so I thought before going into. To my book. In the introduction, I've actually explained how the Chinese lens looks at these same allegations and how they view the West on itself. And so I'm going to go through all nine of them, but I'm going to spend a little bit more time on the first one just to explain how complicated and how different things can be from a different lens.
And then in my book, you can read about the other eight in more details, but I'm going to touch on all nine of them. The first one is typically that we in the West will say, Well, we are a democracy and we have to fight for our democracy. Definitely in Hong Kong.
That's what they're doing against Beijing and the autocracy of the Chinese Communist Party. And basically, this is an autocracy where just a few people and Xi Jinping in particular have control over a lot of people. And they are not legitimate because they haven't been voted into the politics or government on the highest levels. And we can't vote them out. There's no checks and balances.
I mean, we know these stories, but the reality is that we're putting democracy versus autocracy and it makes us in the West feel like we're on the good path. And China, being an autocracy is on the bad path. And we know all about that since the war in Ukraine. So how do Chinese look at this themselves? Well, for them, I mean, their society, their governance is also democracy and it's a meritocracy at the same time. So despite the fact that they don't deny that they are kind of a autocracy in a way, I mean, they focus more on the fact that their leaders have been voted into office at the lower levels, but basically have to go through exams and prove that they're doing things well for the people in order to get to the top level. And so people like Xi Jinping and many governors are really much involved into society.
And this is something we don't see much. But this is not typical of a dictatorship or an autocracy that we know from other dictatorships. And so, yes, this is a meritocracy that wants to elevate the poorer, that wants to have equal rights for women and help them to be elevated as well, to respect the elderly and the weak. And so this doesn't fit our image of an autocracy, but this is how Chinese see themselves and when it's about being a democracy.
I made another video. I'll put the link in there for a few months ago where the question I asked us is China democracy? And actually, if you go to the Constitution of China from 9454, you see very clearly that China is claiming to be a people's democratic dictatorship. Now, how can democracy, democracy and dictatorship be in the same sentence for Chinese? It makes sense because it's all about doing good for the people. And if the people are better off over time, thanks to the dictatorship or the autocracy, well, that is actually a good thing for society. I mean, we can debate whether it's right or wrong, but this is why the Chinese call themselves a democracy. And so when they then look at our democracy, specifically the American democracy, how do we explain to Chinese that the American democracy or Western democracy, where Capitol Hill is stormed, where basically Trump is saying the democracy doesn't work and the votes have been stolen from me. I mean, how can we claim that this is a
better democracy model or democratic model than the one that China claims to be? And so this is where really we see the difference. And I would say we have to look at trends more than at polarizing things. But I do this polarization on purpose now to show how polarized the world has become. And what I've seen, if you look at trends, is that the Chinese autocracy or dictatorship has become more and more inclusive. More people get included to get opportunity in life while in the West, in Europe and America and many Western countries, most of them are democracy, which we're so proud of, is actually becoming more and more polarized. And so the question is what works best? Is it an inclusive autocracy or a polarized democracy? And sometimes one can actually perform much better than the other.
And so this is where the first of these nine statements have really put China and the West next to each other. And when you look at the blame that we're giving to China saying we're a democracy and China claims to be for the people, but reality is they're actually in autocracy and this ideology is not compatible with ours. Then we are putting our democracy as good and the autocracy of China as bad.
This is what we do in the West and then the Chinese themselves. As I've just explained, look at our democracy as very undemocratic because it's based on a system and not based on results or success very often. And so China claims that the West doesn't have a patent on democracy.
And so this is one example of why the Chinese say the West has double standards. They talk about democracy, but actually it's not. And then they claim theirs is better than ours. Now, the second thing I want to talk about, I'm going to talk about all nine very quickly, but now I'm going to go a little bit faster because I don't want to go into too much context, which I've explained in my book as well. If you take, for example, the second statement or blaming that we have against China is that China claims to be open for business.
But the reality, they're actually protective. They're copying, they're stealing, they're lying. I mean, Huawei has been judged for all three of them. And so this is a double standard from a western lens, western perspective, while we in the West, we want to do fair business. And that's why we have all these laws to make sure that everybody is protected, protected.
Now, the question is, how do the Chinese look at our fair business in the West? Do they really feel that they are not following the fair business and the IP laws and the laws of the West? Well, specifically, when you go into the past, I mean, many Chinese will say, yes, the Western laws, IP laws were actually IP clause for China. There were real laws that were trying to to actually contain us. And they wanted to contain us by having the rich corporations and rich companies actually protected for their creations against those countries, developing countries that needed some of these technologies, innovations and and creations in order to develop society. Actually, the IP laws were used against China. And so from a lot of perspective, specifically 30, 20 years ago, China saw themselves as being in a straitjacket from the West by the West, a straightjacket that was designed by the West and that we even make look cool on itself.
And then, of course, if that doesn't work anymore, like with Huawei, what we do, well, we simply feel the laws don't work. We will add new laws like national security laws. And now suddenly Huawei is out of many Western markets, not because they're not abiding to certain laws, but because they've become so powerful that actually Huawei is using the laws against our competitors in the rest of the world, and they're better at it very often. And so this is what in the past the Chinese felt they had to do this stealing, lying and spying sometimes because this was kind of like a Robin Hood environment.
Now, this is just one example of how they see that the West is using double standards to actually contain China or have used it in the past. And now they're changing the laws because the previous laws don't work anymore. Now, the other thing is the third thing is really about this unfair competition.
The government's helping Chinese companies to to actually sell solar panels or steel or anything that actually China is overproducing with capacity or even the fact that some companies will just steal the brand of other companies. I mean, this is all normal and it's all not about about China not keeping to its agreements. And this while China talks about being a real defender and promoter of globalization, I mean, it's really a double standard when we look at it from a Western lens point of view. Now, how do the Chinese look at it? They look at what we call international order, very different from how we look at it, because we often say China should be according to the international order and international laws and agreements, and they're not keeping to these agreements. But from a Chinese point of view, these laws are actually Western laws. They're not international laws.
They used to be Western laws that made it into an international environment. But more and more specifically in America, we're now talking about a rules based order. Now, what is a rules based order? It's not an international order. So this is an order that is based or defined by America. This is how Chinese look at it. And so because the international law doesn't work for America or in its benefit and it's in its advantage because there's so many countries, and that means that all these countries now have a say. They don't get their will through anymore or
what they expect. And so now they call that the rules based order, which is basically a Western order. And so from a Chinese point of view, the new international order is really about the West trying to change the laws to control China again, like they've done for many, many years. This is what Chinese call a double standard.
Now, how about the fourth thing? I mean, if you look about the. Soft power that China has. I mean, this has been on the agenda specifically when it comes to Africa, the Belt and Road Initiative. I mean, the superpower in the South
China Sea. I mean, we're starting to feel that yellow peril coming back again. Well, China claims to be promoter of world peace. Reality is, they're trying to get as much influence as they can and create maybe vassal states like Russia or in Africa or everywhere they could, because that's what they want. They want to control the rest of the world. So they will be the new colonizers of the future.
This is what people call double standards. They aim for soft power while they're talking about peace. But how do the Chinese look at the fact that we in the West, we claim that all the nations are one world order, an existing current world order, and that China is trying to change that world order to their benefits. This is how we view it in the West.
We believe the world order is working very well. Well, the Chinese often say, yeah, it's working well for you. Is it working well for Africa? Is it working well for Asia? Is it working well for Latin America? Maybe it's not because the world is changing and you don't want to change this world order.
You still want to have the American hegemony to be in control over the world or the Western world order. And so they're looking at it very different. And they see that we are still maintaining our what they call the colonialist mindset. And so even though they're we don't have colonies anymore after many years in the West, I mean, the reality is that the mindset has not changed. What that means is that we're still deciding and telling people in the developing countries how they should govern their environment, how their system should be.
And we're still dividing up the world, maybe not in territory, but in what is possible and how the rule should be, and so on. And so we're still lecturing China, we're still lecturing India, we're still lecturing Russia and many countries that we feel that are not part of this Western order. And so where China sees us more and more now today as Western imperialism, this is something that they see us like. They used to see us before when we actually had colonies or concessions in China and where the Brits and the French and many people were not so nice to China back then, 150 years ago or 100 years ago. And so this is really where you could
see that China feels we've not changed our mentality as all as all at all. We just are using different words. And this is what they call a double standard. We haven't changed the way that we want the world to look like us, like the West. Now, the other thing has to do with, of course, the factory of China, the cheap products, I mean, all of the ecological disaster and all the junk that is coming from China. I mean, they talk about an ecological civilization and Xi Jinping will talk about, I mean, green and blue skies and blue water and whatever.
But reality is they're the biggest polluter in the world. So they don't keep to their word, or at least they have a double standard because they are producing all these products. Now, we, on the other hand, in the West, and that's how many Westerners think we're trying to be responsible nations, trying to be responsible corporations. That's why we have these ESG standards. We really want everybody to abide to a better future for humanity while China claims it. But they're actually producing or polluting much.
But how does China look at the fact that we claim to be responsible? Well, Chinese don't see us as responsible at all. I mean, they don't look at us as cheap producers, but XI buyers and the Chinese say you get what you pay for. I mean, if you want good quality from China will be more than happy to provide you good quality. Think about electrical vehicles, for example. We more than willing to flood your
market with high quality electrical vehicles or solar panels or whatever you need. That is high quality. But no, you want to buy the cheap products from China and you used to be the ones that set these factories here to export because it was cheaper, because our hands were cheaper than your hands.
And so the reality is that they look at us polluting still much more in terms of population than China is, specifically the fact that China is producing for the world and not only for themselves. And so if you look at the US, I mean, they're the bigger USA's biggest user of, of resources in the world with only four or 5% of the population of the world. And so this is the different mindset. So we are using double standards according to the Chinese that we claim that China is the.
But actually we've been creating all that pollution and we're not changing our consumer behavior. We can't expect the developing countries have to change their consumerist behavior because some of people don't even have money to pay for food. How can we say you should be more spending, spending less on consumerism? So this is the whole idea. Now, the other thing which is very strong is about transparency.
And this has to do with secrecy. And we often say that China, you can't trust the data. You can't trust what they say because they're not transparent, they're very secret.
You don't know what's happening behind those closed doors while they're talking about harmonious governance and living together and agreeing together. And so these are all just words, but the reality is that they won't share the things that they're doing behind the scenes. And how do the Chinese themselves look at that, then? Well, it's quite simple. If we look at our environment, we claim to be in the West a really transparent government. We want to share many things and we want to do checks and have certain people look up if everybody is actually doing things accordingly. And and so this is really where we believe in the West that we are way more transparent than China is. And as a Westerner, it makes total sense when
you hear these things. But then what is the Chinese view? Well, the Chinese view is that very often I mean, we are just laying out and displaying all the emotional things that we think about in order to get more popularity. This is a popularity contest with governance.
And so this is really about us claiming that we are open. But reality by being open, we just want to get more votes. We want to become more popular. We want people to like us because that
is how we get voted into office. Trump is a very good example, but if you dare to say things about the government that they've been doing that wasn't right, that they didn't disclose, which wasn't transparent like Assange did, then they'll just try and put you in prison because that is not what you should be doing. And so this is what the Chinese call double standards. We talk about transparency, but it's a
lot about popularity. And it's because our democratic system is based on popularity, is based on votes where people like you and to like you, people need to actually be popular and try to be as transparent as possible about their personal lives. While the Chinese are very formal and they don't want people to know about their personal life, and often they feel that if things are behind closed doors, the the success rate is much higher because you agree much easier than if the whole media is aware of everything. So this is what the double standard is. China's may be less transparent, but maybe more effective. And then the other thing has to do with freedom. I mean, we've talked about this
constantly and this is about China being a control state and having no freedom at all. And the Chinese claim, well, China is just like it is because this is the most safe and secure place on the planet almost. And this is for all people a good thing. And we're trying to actually protect the privacy and the freedom as much as possible.
But we need some control because we're at 1.4 billion people. It would otherwise get out of control. But we see this as a society without freedom. And people are afraid of not of being of speaking out. Now, how do the Chinese look at that double standard from us? Because from our perspective, we believe that freedom is one of the most important human rights and something everybody should stand by.
And so the Chinese look at freedom a little bit different. And I'm not going to go into much detail there, but this is really about what is freedom about? And do the Chinese feel less free than the Westerners? And the answer often is no. I mean, if they would really feel unfree and I'm talking about the general population, of course, there's always people who don't like certain governance or certain ways of living. And that is, of course, unfortunate when you live in China. But the reality is if you look at freedom, I mean, every year until the pandemic was there Chinese, 100 million and more were traveling overseas. They were all coming back.
Why were they coming back to that unfree totalitarian authority, authoritarian regime where nobody has freedom and everybody is scared to speak out? That makes no sense. Maybe they came back because they are accustomed to that framework of freedom, which makes them feel free within that framework and specifically more secure and safe, which is maybe a higher priority than political freedoms. So this is just an opinion, but when the Chinese then look at the West and we claim to be the freest country. Of all the countries like
America? Well, there's the biggest incarcerations and most people in prisons of anywhere in the world. So are these people really free and is it really as fair as it is? And so do you think Google is actually not spying on you and so on? I mean, there are many, many of these double standards where we claim to be free. But the reality is many of the people are locked up somehow because they're not into the general society or into the rich that can afford the freedom that the society is offering.
So freedom is selective in the West, while in China maybe it's also selective, but then for different people. And so this is where it's a double standard. We shouldn't be claiming that we are free in every aspect. Now, when it comes to dictatorship and Xi Jinping as the dictator, because of all the power he has in everything from the government to party to police, I mean, he has lots of power. And now he's going to be probably a third term in October, in November, which makes him probably one of the most powerful people on the planet. And then he talks about this Chinese dream, but actually he has so much power that this could become a nightmare.
Nightmare, according to many Westerners. We should really be worried about all the power that Xi Jinping has while we in the West, what we have is checks and balances. It means that we, at least when we feel something is derailing, we can change that course. That's how democracy works.
China can't do that is much more different. So if Xi Jinping or if the government suddenly goes into a very different direction, which is dangerous for the world, well, we're in trouble. That is how we look at it. Now, how do Chinese look at this whole thing from a Chinese point of view? We actually have lots of leaders, but many of them are weak leaders.
And so China is the right leader for China. Let's not forget that in the past, the Chinese empire and emperors actually had a lot of power, and this was the most custom way in China to keep the country together. Well, in the West, you feel that they're constantly fighting with each other, and they've been fighting wars for centuries as well. But they're often debating and there's not much result. And very often these weak leaders are just now reacting to what China does as a threat, but not coming up with a vision themselves.
Think about what the G7 did with just spending billions and billions now to actually do the same thing as the Belt and Road Initiative instead of joining that initiative. So they're kind of weak leaders, specifically what's happening in the Ukraine. If you look at the fact that they're now stopping or giving sanctions on Russia not to import oil and gas and to try and import less oil and gas, but not cutting it off because that would hurt us too much. That is what Chinese say.
Well, if you really want to do something, just cut off all the supply and then you will make a point. Now you're just trying to be having double standards. You want one thing, but you're keeping the other thing. This is how Chinese look at it. That China that Xi Jinping is maybe the right leader for China and our leaders are probably the right leaders for us.
But we shouldn't be claiming that our leaders would be better to run China. Now, the last thing that I want to talk about, which is the most sensitive of all, is about human rights. And I could talk a long time about that. But this is not the purpose of this video and where we really talk about the fact that China is violating human rights on a massive scale, and specifically in Xinjiang. And but we're also talking about, of course, Tibet and Hong Kong.
And at the same time, China and the top government is talking about common prosperity. And so how can they talk about common prosperity if they're so repressive while we in the West were clear protector of human rights? And so for us, this is really about showing that every human has the rights for freedom and the right that they should be safeguarded. And so we should protect that while China is not there doing things they shouldn't be doing. And then how do the Chinese look at our human rights? Because we're blaming China for that. But are we doing such a good job? According to the Chinese, if you think about Black Lives Matter or you think about the immigrants in in Europe that are dying because we don't care for those people. Well, for Chinese, this is called double standards. And so we're violating, in Chinese
point of view, a lot of human rights as well. Also with the policy around COVID that so many people had died because we didn't want to do strict laws. Now we can debate it, both sides. The question is only from a Chinese perspective. We should not be lecturing China.
How they should be improving on human rights because they are very much aware that this is something that they want to do, but we are not doing a good job ourselves. And so this is a very long story and a very sensitive one. And I believe we are all having problems in every of these nine categories. And so the problem in my in my from my view is not so much the fact that China doesn't have double standards or that the West doesn't have double standards. We all have double standards. But the problem is that in the West, we are claiming that we are critical and have to be critical about China by showing their double standards and by showing that all these words are not worth anything because the actions are different. While the Chinese then when they look
at our standards, what they say is that instead of looking at China, we should look in the mirror, in our back, our rearview mirror, look at ourself, because we are not the critical West, we're the hypocritical West with the hypocritical West that claims to have higher moral standards and values than China. But the reality is we're not abiding to our own moral highs. And so from a Chinese perspective, and this is really the problem, the more that we actually claim that China is doing bad things and we show that, but not reflecting on the things that we're not doing very well, the less the Chinese actually trust that we are an example for China and the world. And so what I did in my book is actually explain these nine things next to each other. Not so much to polarise or although I really am polarising in these 20 pages. But the idea is not to say we should polarize.
The idea is to share say that we have a very polarized world existing today. And so it's very important to depolarize to at the beginning to do that, we need to understand that we all have double standards. Unless we understand that we're never going to solve the problem and the tensions are going to keep rising.
The tensions are going to keep rising in that aspect, that it could become very, very dangerous, because now the Chinese are getting worried about our double standards, becoming the global standards where they and the rest of the world, the developing countries are not going to be part of in the future. And so the more we don't realize or the less we realize that the West is seen as having double standards from a Chinese perspective, the more dangerous the world will become.
2022-07-24 11:15
