China is big, complicated, and very important. Its rise is a fact, whether you like it or not. For these reasons, we must think carefully, and speak honestly, about the country and its diverse characteristics. Reducing the entire nation to a strict good / bad binary is infantile

Imagine if someone said "US companies created the smartphone" and you replied "what about the Iraq War!?" Or if you said "the US has by far the world's largest prison population" and you said "the universities are very good!" Yet we routinely speak this stupidly about China.

Really I don't mind summaries, nor moral judgments. Fine if someone weighs everything up, and says "I think on balance their rise is good / bad." What really gets my goat is the tendency to interpret any given phenomenon in light of something very far away and totally unrelated

For example. The United States Postal Service is not guilty for the death of George Floyd. Some US citizens have decent politics, others are racist maniacs. It would be be quite good if we could treat nations outside the US and Western Europe as if they actually, fully exist