An American in Chengdu

To care or not to care

So yesterday, I’m showing my Chinese friend some NYT headlines I get daily in my inbox, specifically “Rice Criticizes Russia’s Limits on News Media” which I would guess is about Putin’s increasing clamp-down on freedom of the press. So my friend asks, “Why is the US always so interested in what is going on inside other countries?” She argued that the US doesn’t really have any right to tell China what to think about human rights, for instance.

So yesterday, I’m showing my Chinese friend some NYT headlines I get daily in my inbox, specifically “” which I would guess is about Putin’s increasing clamp-down on freedom of the press. So my friend asks, “Why is the US always so interested in what is going on inside other countries?” She argued that the US doesn’t really have any right to tell China what to think about human rights, for instance.Then today, a classmate from Dominica (a small island in the Caribbean) started talking about a recent US gambling law which outlaws Americans from betting on off-shore sites — apparently one of Dominica’s large sources of revenues. “Jobs in Dominica were lost because of that law,” he criticized. “Why doesn’t America care what happens inside our country?” Continue reading