If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.
There are significant human rights abuses in China. In some areas, the situation is worse today than in the past. In other areas, there have been improvements. We will recognize the latter, and be critical of the former.