(Replying to PARENT post)
That is, by any resonable definition of the word "better", much better.
And this statement is just categorically false:
"It shocks me that there’s no real discussion of this issue in the US."
I can name five news segments or documentaries about the US prison systems role in structural racism on National television off the top of my head. Try pitching a segment about the CCP's human rights violations to Chinese television where you have full editorial control and you'll get laughed out of the room, at best.
(Replying to PARENT post)
There cannot be any comparison of people who are in jail for crimes, and people who are in jail simply for being a part of an ethnic group.
That the US system is not a perfect form of justice is a fair criticism, but it misses the most important point, and more importantly, the evidence for racial unfairness and not just disparity, isn't always as good as people think it is.
FYI the Chinese 'regular' judicial system is effectively completely corrupt and entirely politicized.
(Replying to PARENT post)
It doesn’t justify China’s actions, but note that the US is not much better, at least in terms of raw numbers. We have over two million people in prison:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/incarceration-rates-by-r...
and many (most, I think) of them are forced to work:
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.html
We are much smaller than China, so as a percentage, a much larger percentage of our population is forced labor.
You could argue that the people in these prisons are all convicted criminals, but enforcement and sentencing in the US varies widely by race, especially for non-violent drug offenses.
It is likely that approximately a million of the blacks and hispanics currently in the prison population would be free if they were white (either due to lax sentencing, or lack of police enforcement).
It shocks me that there’s no real discussion of this issue in the US. Ignoring the ethical issues, forced prison laborers are paid a tiny fraction of the minimum wage, stealing paid jobs from unskilled workers outside of the system.
Given the recent populist turn in national politics, I’d think that there would be bipartisan support for reforming the system, but for some reason there is not.