China, Russia, and the USA: It's Complicated

Although I was a history major in college, I make no claim to be an expert in that area...or in the highly complicated field of international relations.  But it should be clear to anyone that for the United States, China and Russia represent serious challenges.  Both are vast autocratic nations with great military power and highly developed intelligence services, designed both to steal business and government secrets as well as unduly manipulating American public opinion through false plants in social media.  Both nations have demonstrated aggression in their foreign policy...one might claim that we in America have as well...and to an extent the argument can be made that as great nations they are asserting themselves within their respective spheres of influence.  But as I see it, both Russia and China are much, much more sensitive to American and Western criticism of their treatment of their own people than of their foreign policy.  I think the reason is clear: neither nation sees much of a military threat from others, but their respective regimes depend on suppressing any dissent within their borders from catching on and growing into a movement that challenges their hold on power. Trump never called Russia on its internal human rights abuses, but after Biden became president relations between the two countries have cooled considerably...our President, as Head of State, should have been more reserved with his comment about Russian president Putin.  China brokers no criticism whatsoever of their reported policies toward Hong Kong, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and their role in the COVID-19 outbreak, often invoking charges of racism in regard to their critics.  Since last year the United States have seen a sharp increase in assaults and intimidation of Americans of Asian descent, the main reason seeming to be that they are somehow to blame for the coronavirus pandemic as scapegoats.  Equating the actions of a foreign country or organization with its primary ethnic composition and acting in a hostile, racist way isn't new: following 9/11 nearly twenty years ago, Americans appearing to be Middle Eastern...even Sikhs...were exposed to attack and harassment, as if any of them had anything remotely to do with the events in the news.  President Trump kept calling COVID-19 the "China Virus", but his sloppy criticism was always directed at the communist Chinese state and what he saw as its mishandling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan along with suppressed and misleading reporting henceforth.  And here's an interesting problem: if people criticize the Russian government and policies, nobody says they are racist or are inciting people to attack Americans of Russian ancestry...after all, most of them are white and blend into the background population.  But critics of China's policies often find themselves wrongly accused of prejudice against Chinese people, an idea which that government itself promotes.  Russia and China clearly have adversarial relationships with America, but we also have productive, positive relationships in different areas.  In space exploration, Russia and the USA have cooperated throughout the bumpy roads the two countries have gone through over the years, and with China we do an incredible amount of business (like both Trump and Biden, I think some of the ground rules need reform, though).  And that's the way it should be, if great, rival nations like these three are to live together in peace with each other.  Should I ever find myself privileged to visit Russia or China, it will not be my role while there to criticize their political systems or leaders but rather to comply within the parameters of what it means to be a guest in a different culture while under its authority during the course of my stay.  Do I wish they had more democratic political systems and greater individual liberties? Sure, but I also know that this is my country and they have theirs.  As an American I reserve my right to give my opinion about any government and its leaders...especially my own.  But that commentary does not necessarily imply condemnation...on the contrary, I like both Russia and China and their people, to the extent where I have extensively studied both the Russian and Chinese languages: they are great societies with absorbing histories and much to offer the rest of the world...