“But today I changed my mind, completely,” Ai said. “The West (is) not even (in a) position to accuse China. (They must) just check on their record (of) what they did on international human rights, (their) freedom of speech record.”
“But today I changed my mind, completely,” Ai said. “The West (is) not even (in a) position to accuse China. (They must) just check on their record (of) what they did on international human rights, (their) freedom of speech record.”
I don’t think you read the article.
Whataboutism.
No:
Whataboutism is when you defend bad behavior by trying to justify it based on other bad behavior. The whole point of the article is that Weiwei is pointing out failures in Europe in al the context of criticizing the behavior of the Chinese government. It’s literally the opposite of whataboutism.
The article explains pretty clearly that Weiwei is a critic of China’s human rights abuses, and has expanded their criticism to recognize the growing human rights abuses among China’s western critics, which has undermined global human rights and the ability of these nations to credibly pressure China to improve.
Again, I will say: respectfully, I suspect you did not click the link to the article before opining on it.
“Whataboutism” or “whataboutery” (as in, “but what about X?”) refers to the propaganda strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of offering an explanation or defense against the original accusation. It is an informal fallacy that the accused party uses to avoid accountability—whether attempting to distract by shifting the conversation’s focus away from their behaviour or attempting to justify themselves by pointing to the similar behaviour (which may be true or false, but irrelevant) of their opponent or another party who is not the current subject of discussion.[1]
You’re not even responding to anything I said. To repeat: you, me, and Weiwei are all on the same side. We’re all critics of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record. No one is engaging in whataboutery in this article.
You know what would be an absolute Chad move, here? I don’t think this is likely, but if anyone is reading this, take note:
You can just say, ‘That’s a good point: I didn’t read far enough to get important context and misunderstood. Thanks for the correction.’
That’s an option. I’ve absolutely misunderstood an article I didn’t fully read and had someone politely correct me. It’s okay and healthy to just own it.
He’s not wrong, China probably has better freedom of speech now than the UK
How did you arrive on that conclusion? I read several UK-based news sites and they criticize the government on a daily basis.
Someone told another person to “speak clearly” because they’re deaf and got arrested for hate speech
Someone was discussing the problems of immigration in public and was arrested for the same
Thousands have been arrested for opposing genocide in Gaza under terrorism laws
Do you have a source for this claim?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-07/uk-police-arrest-about-900-at-protest-palestinian-action/105745058
900 on one day alone
Thank you. That’s something I did not know about. I read the timeline of events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Action
It seems like an abuse of power by the government, parliament and cops, suggesting that several branches of power structures are capable of using violence against speech they don’t like.
However, this does not sum up to “China has better freedom of speech”. In the UK, the ban was publicly debated and opposed, and it being reviewed by a court, with outcomes still unknown. In China, treatment would be more severe.
There’s probably a little hyperbole on my part but it’s not looking good for basic speech in the UK
Uhhh……….Chinese people cannot communicate beyond the wall, lol
UK people can’t communicate with each other