this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Compared to Chinese subsidies for coal, EU subsidies for fossil fuels are laughable.
The bigger problem in my opinion is that China literally uses slave labour by Uyghurs.
If we are going to have free trade with a country running massive work camps, then we will have an unwinnable race to the bottom.
Obviously, that's totally unacceptable.
And it doesn't matter if the Uyghurs are not working in export sectors. Even if they only make products for domestic consumption, that will still make Chinese labour more competitive due to lower living costs.
Free trade without equal worker protections is just not going to work out.
At least as soon as the others might gain an advantage. The West was quite happy to exploit people in poor countries and to poison their environment as long as westeners got rich off it.
The west isn't a person or entity.
A lot of people in the West are doing their best to combat exploitation in poor countries.
But at the end of the day, the West can't stop Xi from oppressing minorities in China, or Putin from attacking Ukraine or Modi from oppressing minorities in India.
The elites in non-western countries have way more influence on those things than western elites do.