The justice system in the US is inexcusable, but China’s is also not great.

The vast majority of arrests lead to informal “administrative” detentions wherein you are held for (usually) a short time—a few weeks, maybe more if they don’t believe you’re reformed.

You get picked up one day and they tell you to confess. It’s in your best interests to confess to something, even if you think they have the wrong person, because they tell you it will go to trial if you don’t, and that would just be so hard on your family, right? They’ll highlight their impressive over 90% conviction rate too, so you know if you don’t confess you likely go to jail for years and your life is over.

You confess, you go to a detention center, any number of things can happen because it’s all informal and left to local officials, and then one day they just shove you back into the street like nothing happened. You’re likely out of a job now since you haven’t shown up in days, and you get some fun new restrictions on your ability to travel. But at least it wasn’t prison.

It’s also worth noting all this time that your family probably doesn’t know what happened to you.

Another factor that contributes to China’s lower incarceration rates is that they often choose not to prosecute “personal” crimes. This would be things like robbery, sexual assault, etc. where the victim is another individual citizen. Usually those are handled via financial compensation, essentially the victim can sue for damages, and there’s no need for trial or imprisonment if the offender just chooses to pay.

Their execution or imprisonment stats must be much higher than the US!

That’s the neat part! There aren’t any. China doesn’t publish their stats on executions and they don’t permit any external auditing of their justice system. What I do know is that, unlike the US, China does not bother with long prison sentences for those sentenced to death. Usually it just happens right after the trial, so those sentenced wouldn’t contribute to the imprisonment rate. But I don’t buy into the vague estimate of “thousands” that the UN and Amnesty International claim, so that’s probably a negligible statistic anyways. But I would certainly believe China is close to the top globally in terms of executions, even if they didn’t advertise it to those of us living there.

On the other hand, we should also start counting “shot by police” as an act of execution in the US. Might level the playing field after that.

TL;DR: Who needs high imprisonment rates when you could just go hard on the Panopticon Effect and make your entire society carceral in nature?

Well, it depends on what the government considers threatening.

The mere suggestion that the state is illegitimate in China would have gotten me disappeared. But I could join protests in the US denouncing the government in front of government-owned buildings without much worry.

But then we look at how China continues to develop and grow their sphere of global hegemony, while the US is collapsing before our very eyes. So it makes you wonder if ruling with an iron fist and crushing dissidents has some merit after all.

They’re in the article:

The court issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’ armed wing, over the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza…Khan withdrew requests for warrants for two other senior Hamas figures, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, who have both since been killed. Israel says it also killed Deif in an airstrike, but Hamas has never confirmed his death.

Hamas in a statement welcomed the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant but made no mention of the one against Deif.

I think it’s more the idea that nonviolence isn’t saving them. You can swear off violence, Israel will kill you and your family anyways.

Governments can and have just branded people and organizations as terrorists to justify conflict. That is typically why third-world countries like Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. have been so heavily devastated by the west. Stopping “Nazi terrorists” is why Russia is invading Ukraine right now as well.

Be careful of when a country’s media starts throwing out the label “terrorist regime” to describe countries that would be convenient to invade. “Terrorism” is just as much made by fear, instilled by a country’s media, as it is the practice of creating fear directly.

I think I understand what you’re getting at but just keep in mind that there are two sort of separate discussions in regards to that.

The WHO and the health organization of various countries are usually pretty specific in their definitions. The “public health emergency” of COVID is over because:

• There is no longer a need for a coordinated international effort.

• The population is no longer largely at risk due to vaccinations/immunities.

• The mortality rate has dropped significantly.

But I don’t think anyone would deny that COVID is here to stay on a global scale. It’s just that the health systems of most countries are now equipped to manage it without all of the lockdown precautions.