The difference is human rights abuses inside their own countries versus outside. The Tiananmen Square event has been pretty much debunked. China is not bombing 7 countries as we are. They do not sanction over 20 countries as we do. Sanctions are acts of war. Sanctions kill. They deny food, medications and medical equipment to citizens of the sanctioned countries. China is not portrayed as some bastion of democracy and hail itself as the savior of the world.

Yet China has universal healthcare. Do we? No, we allow our own citizens to die from lack of medical care and medications.

China does not have a fraction of the number of people incarcerated that we do. If you combined the number of prison inmates in China, Russia and North Korea, it would still not equal how many we have imprisoned here.

Look at the countries whom we list as “friends”. Israel, murdering Palestinians in cold blood. Saudi Arabia, causing the worst human rights crisis in decades in Yemen, no equality at any level for women and publicly decapitating dissident journalists by the dozens.

Criticize? Fine. Call it in any way equal? Not in the least.

“As if freedom was a question of might/as if loyalty was black and white/you hear people say it all the time/my country wrong or right/I want to know what that’s got to do/with what it takes to find out what’s true/with everyone from the president on down/trying to keep it from you”- Jackson Browne, For America