The fact that the USA and others are also trending authoritarian isn't really relevant. The point I was trying to make is that people have legit fears of the PRC government, enough so that legitimate business like settling a deceased parent's affairs isn't sufficient to convince people to enter the country.
replyYou haven't addressed at all the parts about blacklisting whole families for political reasons, or horrible return-to-normal policies for covid-19 three years ago, or the general pendulum-swing-back-to-evil trend.
I don't doubt you, but what if someone's else's wife felt differently. Would that counteract your wife? Or is your wife special in an objective sense and her intuitions about hypotheticals are more valid than anyone else's?
replyYour wife feels a certain way and wanted to avoid a certain hypothetical. But since it didn't happen, we have no way of knowing how relevant these feelings are.
How can we address blacklisting and covid response if you are insisting that any comparison isn't relevant and that we should evaluate it with no baseline?
Sheesh, an actual Whataboutism. The fact that "the US does it too!" won't help Grandparent poster/his wife if they get detained in China. GP says "there are currently a couple of hundred Americans who are being illegally detained in China right now", most likely they are dual citizens, or were born in China, and from China's point of view, one can't lose the Chinese citizenship, and they're detaining their own citizens.
replyI would also like to know if these are dual citizens or not. I think it would be newsworthy if hundreds of US passport holders who do not have chinese passports also were being held in China and not charged with any crime and unable to access consular services.
replySensationalizing claims then qualifying them later is inherently dishonest.