I'm a Canadian. I love my country and I think it's a great place to live. Having said that, I must also say that Canada certainly isn't perfect. We have two founding cultures, English and French, who don't always see eye to eye. We have a multicultural society in which some groups feel they are the mainstream and others feel they are marginalized. Also, we have several political parties, each of which has its own take on how the country should be run and what is wrong with the way the other guys are running it. For all of that, however, I'm proud to be a Canadian. Other countries may have some recommendations on how we could improve, but on balance, I think I'll stay here.

In the United States, people talk about America as the land of the free and the home of the brave ― and most Americans believe this to be true. Most Americans I know are proud of their country, but some of them seem to think it's virtually a perfect place. It isn't.

Most Americans, while dimly aware that their country is regarded in some corners of the world as the Great Satan, don't really understand why this should be and, worse, they don't regard the people who feel that way as their social or cultural equals. Their attitude seems to be that those people don't know what they're talking about, so it is unjustified that we pay attention to them. I think if someone was regarding me as a Satan, I'd want to know what was bothering him so much.

Recently, the US State Department released a report on human rights around the world. It's hard to do that without implying that you're superior to all those other poor folks living under repressive regimes. But, if you accept the premise that no country is perfect and if you acknowledge your own faults, looking at difficult situations in other countries can be instructive. There is no getting around the fact, however, that the tone of a document like this has an element of "we're great and you aren't" about it.

The US report was critical of human rights violations in, among other places, China; it wasn't long before China released its own report on the state of things in the US. The critical Chinese report was extensively reported on in America and it contained some scathing figures which, as far as I am aware, are fairly accurate. It said, among other things, that in America, average salaries for women are only about 77 percent of that for men doing the same jobs. It noted that school budgets across the country are continuing to be cut, meaning fewer resources for students, larger class sizes and so on. It also cited a growing gap between the rich and the poor with most people finding their incomes stagnating while the richest Americans are enjoying a significant increase in wealth. Whether any of these things is a human rights violation is open for debate but none of them speaks well of a country that considers itself free and brave.

The most damning criticism in the Chinese report had to do with two elements of life in the US that are undoubtedly linked. First, the US has the largest prison population per capita in the world. I suppose you can read that either to mean there are more felons in the US or that the police are better at catching them but, either way, it's a very unsettling statistic. If life in the US is so great, why is it necessary for so many people to do things that land them in prison? Perhaps it has something to do with another set of numbers from the Chinese report which shows that with just five percent of the world's population, Americans own between 35 and 50 percent of the world's privately-held firearms. A coincidence? I think not.

The fact that the US and China are slinging gratuitous mud at each other is not new. Each can easily find things to decry about the other ― they've done it before and they'll certainly do it again. It is interesting, although probably not helpful in terms of international relations, that this round of sniping coincides with a presidential election in the US in which the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, is using strained relations with China as a club with which to beat his opponent, president Obama, over the head. If Romney wins the election, that could come back to bite him.

It's troubling to me that many Chinese I talk with seem to think America is such a wonderful place. True, it's probably a better place to live than many others, but it's a long way from perfect. I wouldn't want to live there. The aforementioned Chinese report is getting a lot of attention in the US ― hopefully, the US report can get equal play in China. The Chinese people would probably find the comparison between the two instructive.

Brad Franklin is a former political reporter, newscaster and federal government employee in Canada. He is a regular columnist for China's English Salon magazine and lives on Vancouver Island. For more information about Brad and his work, please visit: www.bradfordfranklin.com

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn

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