Please excuse me for my semi-rant. I don't mean to be too critical, but I think framing every news about China in this "the West vs China" angle is really counterproductive.
First of all, "the West" is a very vague concept, quite unlike talking about China. Does it include all of Europe? Does it include Moscow then? Does it include parts of Latinamerica? Maybe you mean NATO (but then you should include Turkey too). Or maybe you only mean Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, United States). This isn't just nitpicking: your point might make sense if you mean Five Eyes, but it might not make sense at all if you include, say, Greece , Turkey and Israel.
Second, talking only about "the West" vs China marginalizes the rest of the world. Most of the people in this world live in neither the West nor in China and yet they never seem to matter according to most discussions I see here in Hacker News (I, for one, identify with neither).
This is specially bad when people implicitly say things like "the West values freedom and democracy, whereas China...". If democracy and human rights were something unique for "the West", then you shouldn't be surprised that China doesn't like those concepts (in fact, they oppose liberal value precisely because of this: "this only works in 西方, not here in China").
First of all, "the West" is a very vague concept, quite unlike talking about China. Does it include all of Europe? Does it include Moscow then? Does it include parts of Latinamerica? Maybe you mean NATO (but then you should include Turkey too). Or maybe you only mean Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, United States). This isn't just nitpicking: your point might make sense if you mean Five Eyes, but it might not make sense at all if you include, say, Greece , Turkey and Israel.
Second, talking only about "the West" vs China marginalizes the rest of the world. Most of the people in this world live in neither the West nor in China and yet they never seem to matter according to most discussions I see here in Hacker News (I, for one, identify with neither).
This is specially bad when people implicitly say things like "the West values freedom and democracy, whereas China...". If democracy and human rights were something unique for "the West", then you shouldn't be surprised that China doesn't like those concepts (in fact, they oppose liberal value precisely because of this: "this only works in 西方, not here in China").
西方 = the West