Good to see that at least the USA has the balls to act against the "reeducation" camps. My country (Germany) should be the loudest voice against it, but as usual we say nothing and hope nobody notices.
Everyone should be speaking out against them. The way China treats the Uighur is appalling.
> The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.
> The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.
I agree that the Falcons should be in prison, but there is a difference between putting a few hundred political extremists in jail, compared to a few million normal people based on their race.
1. Oppressing millions of their own Chinese citizens is different than the imprisonment of several hundred.
2. The world must not be distracted by such facile whataboutism. What the CPC does to its people, from Xiangjiang to Hong Kong is terrible. Would I like to see the US clean up its own act? Sure. But in the meantime, I am happy to see the US take a string stance against CPC totalitarianism.
Well, yes, in the sense that technically it's 'their' government. It's 'worse' when those who supposedly should protect you, instead abuse you, similar to how the BLM protests grew out of outrage about police brutality, even though it is a vanishingly small amount of the violence minority communities suffer.
Is it worse for the government to bomb a foreign country, or to bomb its own people? Of course they're both bad, but there's a reason the international community reacted one way to Syria and one way to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
From the point of view of international law, bombing a foreign country is far worse.
The "crime of aggression" is one of the most serious violations of international law that exists. One of the foundational principles of the post-WWII order is that countries cannot go to war against other countries, except in self-defense (very narrowly construed) or with permission from the UN Security Council.
What countries do within their own borders is much more their own business.
> there's a reason the international community reacted one way to Syria and one way to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
The reason is simple. Syria is not a powerful country, but the US is. Everyone recognized that the invasion of Iraq was aggression, and therefore illegal under international law. Nobody was willing to do anything about it, because the US was then the world's sole superpower.
> but there's a reason the international community reacted one way to Syria and one way to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
Yes, Syria has no nukes and no military power. That's the extent of the why. Russia, for examples, has nukes and military power, and look at what happened in Grosny and the international community.
But all of that is besides the point, of course. It's allegedly about human rights, not about only killing & torturing people as long as they're not citizens of your country, the secret law of civilized society.
No doubt you'll find something about everyone but that doesn't mean anything.
Guantanamo was supposed to be for the worst of the worst terrorists. No doubt a few were mistakenly selected but by mistake (USA has no interest in spending so much money and limited resources on a, say, innocent Pakistani cab driver.)
China has essentially put in camps /jail millions and millions of its citizens, simply because they are Muslim. And they're trying to wipe out their identity.
Both did not have a fair trail. Saying it is only for group X but then not putting them on trail first is what both states do. Both say it is for "enemies of the state". Scale is probably different, you are right on that. But point fingers to other states while being dirty yourself is hypocrisy by definition.
I'm not sure this is true. Could you please post the numbers at guantanamo and the numbers imprisoned at Xinjiang? That would help clarify this point, thanks.
as I said it was done by mistake and dug a bigger hole by not wanting to admit wrong etc etc. They are /were only a few hundred placed in Guantanamo so why would they want to fill them with innocent people? Its not like they didn't have enough Al Qaeda and Taliban over there to catch
> China has essentially put in camps /jail millions and millions of its citizens, simply because they are Muslim.
No. Because they are Uyghurs. The Hui are a totally different phenomenon; Islam is one of the traditional religions of China. (Granted, with much less uptake than Buddhism got.)
Non-Muslim Uyghurs who make themselves useful for the government don't seem to be doing so bad for themselves, from Shohrat Zakir, the chairman of Xinjiang, down to Uyghur prison guards who have been called out by some Kazakh victims as especially brutal. (Why do people forget about Kazakh and Kyrgyz Muslims in Xinjiang so often?)
And the "anti-extremism" push certainly applies to Hui Muslims as well, who had their mosques "renovated" to look less like mosques: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=763356996
> Non-Muslim Uyghurs who make themselves useful for the government don't seem to be doing so bad for themselves
The fact that certain individual Uyghurs are not targeted is not evidence that the reason oppressed Uyghurs are being oppressed is not "because they're Uyghurs". It's evidence that being a Uyghur can be mitigated.
But if you prefer, "because they are members of a group with very questionable allegiance". This phrasing picks up the other Turkic groups in the area while still clearly excluding the Hui.
> Hypocrites (after the high up officials in charge of Guatanamo Bay are still walking unsanctioned).
Guantanamo Bay and the Xinjiang camps are not comparable. For all its faults, Guantanamo is essentially a POW camp that contains enemy combatants. No American citizens are detained there, and none were ever meant to be.
The Xinjiang camps were specifically built to forcibly indoctrinate civilian ethnic-minority Chinese citizens and suppress their community and culture. They operate on a much larger scale, and also provide a captive labor pool that's being exploited.
Guantanamo Bay held hundreds of people - a large proportion of them not even particularly important people, some of them completely randomly swept up - with no legal rights, under a Kafkaesque interpretation of the law.
> essentially a POW camp
The US government refused to treat people in Guantanamo Bay as POWs. That's why they called them "enemy combatants." POWs have rights.
Guantanamo Bay itself was only a tiny part of the larger War on Terror. The US ran prison camps scattered throughout the world, in which it tortured prisoners. The US kidnapped civilians and flew them to secret prisons, or to be tortured by allied countries like Egypt. One person was even kidnapped by American intelligence off the streets of Milan.
In Iraq, the US worked with Shiite militias that tortured and killed large numbers of people suspected of being sympathetic to the insurgency. The US itself ran prisons like Abu Ghraib, in which prisoners were tortured. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in Iraq, as a result of the illegal invasion.
No senior figure involved in these crimes was prosecuted.
So when the US government suddenly develops a conscience, consider me skeptical.
Viva human rights BUT only as long as it doesn't interfere with our interest.
Let's supply and equip KSA with bombs to kill minorities and majorities in Yemen, and also blame Chinese for abuses against ethnic minorities. We are terrified to death of seeing tear gas on streets but we supply bombs to the Middle East.
And don't get me wrong. I think anything to stop abuses in China is great. But, when I'm reminded about those double standards, I just realize it's all bullshit.
I stopped reading politics. I only listen to people that talk about peace. Everyone else is after some hidden agenda.
And there will be some some US citizens in China arrested on various charges and the world will move on. It is not as if we are unfamiliar with this kabuki play
> some US citizens in China arrested on various charges
China regularly arrests dozens of foreign citizens on bogus charges every month. This is what people saying that China's incarceration rate is so low forget to say. A foreigners in China has a much higher risk to be extra-judicially jailed.
And yes, US government largely shows that it doesn't give a .... when its citizens are being jailed overseas, unless a huge media expose forces it to do so.
This is why I am never going to China. They were behind the Equifax hack and many other similar breaches. They are actively waging a cyber war against the the US and it’s citizens. They have all of our info so they can piece together who is sympathetic to their “cause” and who is a critic.
Imagine if 50 years from now the thing Trump is most remembered for is ending the US' blind eye towards China.
Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing. Hollywood was tailoring their products to appease the Chinese government and be allowed in the market, anyone who wanted to do business there like NBA owners and players were biting their tongues and hiding their political opinions. But not Trump, he turned the tide and made America care about human freedom again.
Ok, fine, crazy thought. But it raises the question, why aren't any of our other leaders even pretending to try and be that person?
Well, for one thing a separate organisation is likely to get more funding. It’s the nature of politics and bureaucracy. And increased military investment in space could produce flow-on benefits to the civilian side of the space industry
If the dreams of people like Elon Musk come true, USSF may end up being a far more important organisation than AFSC ever was.
> Ok, fine, crazy thought. But it raises the question, why aren't any of our other leaders even pretending to try and be that person?
Don't you think that's a very easy question to answer?
A ton of money, an amount of money serious enough even for America to be made concerned.
Pretty much everybody with stock market exposure, including pretty much anybody in USA who counts as an elite, will loose big time if one day Beijing presses the Delete button, and half of Fortune 500 vanishes.
Remember, it was Apple out of everybody who was granted an exemption from punitive tariffs on China.
It's not just money, there were decisions made over the course of 30 years that got us to this point.
And, yes, those decisions were influenced by money but they were also influenced heavily by American Exceptionalist arrogance. Of course our culture will dominate theirs and they'll take their rightful, subservient place to us in the global order.
Never mind that they literally converted their own conquerers to Chinese culture TWICE (mongols/yuan, manchu/qing) in the last millenium.
What do you mean “press delete”? China is not in a position to blackmail the US via financial means, not even in the slightest. If they sold their treasuries, they would be bought in a heartbeat by others with a penchant for stable valuation.
I mean they would prohibit all vital operations of these companies in China. What would Apple do if China will give them a Huawei treatment?
They wouldn't even be able to move away from China, if their Chinese suppliers would be told to cease doing business with Apple globally.
Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.
Second to that: check what you saw in the previous half of the year. A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China. Would US elites be ready to deal with angry unwashed masses who, with some help, and incitement, would go torch their houses because they can't get not only their new Iphone, but basic medicines, clothing, car parts, basic household goods, widgets for their businesses, and such?
Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.
Banning Apple means taking a hit to the economy, likewise for all the other industries you mention. The Chinese economy is just as dependent on Western economy as the reverse. Nobody wins when the world economy grinds to a halt. Especially not the exporter, the importers will just import from somebody else if conditions favor that.
> What would Apple do if China will give them a Huawei treatment?
Well, all those people would instantly be out of a job for one. What Huawei factories in the US are being shut down? It's one thing to lose market access, it's another to lose jobs.
> Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.
Cheap is a better word here. There is not a single item in China that can't be replicated elsewhere in the world for consumer products.
> A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China.
Because of cheapness, not because they can't be created elsewhere. Many countries can create these goods, including the U.S.
> Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.
Americans might not be "ready" but they can definitely decouple with China if push comes to shove.
What would Chinese companies do if half or more of their business suddenly dries up? Supplying the US is a major sector of China's economy, and the economic fallout of cutting that link will fall just as hard on China as it does on the US.
It's worth noting that most of the wiki article is basically a list of counter-examples that proved that statement false. There have been a half-dozen wars between McDonald's-havers.
And as noted in the Wikipedia article, this was disproved within months by NATO involvement in the Yugoslav Wars.
It should also be noted that there were plenty of experts who would tell you that the world is now too economically intertwined to be able to support any major war between major powers... in 1914. Economic integration preventing global conflict has been disproven time and again in history.
> Second to that, as you saw in the previous half of the year. A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China. Would US elites be ready to deal with angry unwashed masses who, with some help, and incitement, would go torch their houses because they can't get not only their new Iphone, but basic medicines, clothing, car parts, basic household goods, widgets for their businesses, and such?
I don't think it'd play out like that. It's been a few generations, but Americans have experience with wartime rationing that was far more extreme. They didn't riot and demand a peace treaty with Hilter and Tojo, so they could could get the consumer goods they had been used to having.
But, I don't see any US president standing for it before the election, or at least attempting to sell it to his electorate/funders, unless pretty much a hot war is happening.
USA was the biggest industrial power by late thirties, and I think no country would've stood for Germany in the open on the global arena by then. The situation is more than a bit different now.
Be hopeful that the politicians will be as logical as you are.
> But, I don't see any US president standing for it before the election, or at least attempting to sell it to his electorate/funders, unless pretty much a hot war is happening.
I don't think it would be a hard to sell the American public on some kind of rationing if Beijing suddenly embargoes the US in a way that necessitated it. Given the economic dependencies that you cite, I think a US-initiated decoupling would likely proceed slowly enough to not cause critical disruption, just higher prices.
Nobody wants to stand up to China and it’s going to lead us to a very dark place. I fear we either go to war or we just acquiesce and become similar to China. I really hope we can avoid the whole bloody cultural revolution part.
I don't see how this is an unrealistic scenario. The rehabilitation of George Bush's image happened faster than I ever thought it would. In a decade he (Bush) went from a despised president who got us involved in 2 major wars, eroded our civil liberties, and oversaw an almost unprecendented economic bust to some loveable goof who paints pictures, has trouble putting on a poncho, pals around with Ellen, and, most recently, has been praised for being skeptical of a second Trump term.
Can you expand upon what audience you are referring to in context of the "rehabilitation of George Bush"? Political scientists have remained pretty consistent on his image over the last 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_preside...
People tend to be nostalgic for the years soon after their birth because to them it seems like a time when everything seemed simple because they were too young to be aware of the world.
Guess which age group has an outsize influence on Reddit?
The average person looks back quite fondly on him in retrospect thanks to the Trump Crime Administration. Even though there are many things Bush has done that were far worse like the Iraq war.
> I don't see how this is an unrealistic scenario. The rehabilitation of George Bush's image happened faster than I ever thought it would.
Trump isn't going to be rehabilitated like Bush. Politics aside, George Bush seems like a genuinely decent guy at a personal level. Trump, on the other hand, is a nasty, selfish bully; he always has been one, and he always will be one. As long as he remains alive, he will constantly remind America if his nature.
No one thinks he was good. He and his cronies did immeasurable damage to US prestige and treasury.
But he wasn't openly in league with hostile powers, wasn't blatantly corrupt, and didn't utterly meltdown when faced with a crisis. Arguably, this is because Chaney and other Neo-Cons were calling the shots, but things seemed mostly stable.
Trump is all of those negatives but without the veneer of good faith and competency.
> Imagine if 50 years from now the thing Trump is most remembered for is ending the US' blind eye towards China.
> Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing.
Actions like these would be much more effective if we addressed our own human rights abuses like concentration camps of refugees and others at the border, rampant over-incarceration, and police brutality.
Sure, but it’s just way too easy for China to employ Whataboutism when we have concentration camps on our border. Without having the moral high ground, actions against much deeper abuses (even like genocide) ring hollow and appear like mere geopolitical maneuvering. Particularly when our POTUS actually supported the Uighur concentration camps according to folks who worked with him: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-china-detention-camp-x...
Honestly, when we're incarcerating almost 1% of our nation, it's not at all clear that that's "far short of genocide". Especially when that 1% disproportionately falls on some racial groups, and that impact radiates out to further decimate those communities. And while it's not outright genocide, it contributes to a very high murder rate in those communities -- some of it committed directly by the government.
If forced to draw some sort of moral hierarchy I'd say yes, it's still not quite up to the organized atrocities committed against the Uighurs. But our disorganized, systemic atrocities are vast, and every other first-world nation is horrified.
Laughable that they are even comparable. CCP is doing a legit population mindwiping.
I agree on over-incarceration the most. Police brutality needs to be backed up by numbers, not just a video or two every year that gets shown 1 million times on all media.
Most of those "refugees" are simply economic migrants. I don't blame them at all, but there's a point at which we need to have laws to see who/how people can get into this country to become a part of our society. Doing nothing and basically letting anybody who can walk here get in is NOT the answer.
What the tu quoque arguments show is that the US' actions have nothing to do with human rights. The US cannot simultaneously support Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, itself kill hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Muslim world in several different wars, and then turn around and pretend to care about the human rights of Muslims in China.
This is about the US' geopolitical struggle with China over the question of whether or not China will become an equal power with the US.
The similarities with the actions taken against Japan in the late '30s and early '40s are uncanny. Those actions were taken with full understanding that they are most likely to provoke Japan into attacking US territories in the Pacific due to the need to relieve the economic chokehold and as a response to what the Japanese saw as an unprecedented insult (economic sanctions increasing in severity but in particular freezing Japanese assets in the US and assisting Japans biggest enemy, China). Wonder if eventually they will get the same result again.
Yup. And although I understand the Obama plan to build a consensus to take on their subversion... it's tough to let this continue on for much longer.
Basically if China wants to be a world leader equal to or above the US, we need some guarantees that they aren't going to plunder the world for their own nationalism. If not, then they need to feel pain until they do.
> if China wants to be a world leader equal to or above the US, we need some guarantees that they aren't going to plunder the world for their own nationalism.
While I'm personally incompatible with many (most?) of the Chinese values as seen from the west, I'm sure most Chinese appreciate them as they came attached to personal prosperity like their parents never dreamed. You believe US values are or should be generally accepted by the world as "the gold standard" for everyone. Did you have to handwave anything and say "yeah, except that, and that, and..."? Or "but what about what they do?" This is a very self-centric view of the world.
Chinese nationalism doesn't agree with me, but neither does yours. The difference between the 2 is that I'm on your nationalism's good (less bad?) side, so it suits me today. Most of the world is on their bad side and do not share your enthusiasm about your values. Many other Western countries are already distancing themselves from the US with regards to many actions (take as an example the Iran sanctions) because it turns out in the end it shares the same "plunder the world" principles. Perhaps a bit more carrot, less stick than the Chinese one. Even citizens are showing less and less appreciation for it in the streets. I applaud the fact that they are free to do it, not that they're fearing just less retaliation than the average Chinese would in the same position. I can't unsee that so many condemnation-worthy violations piggy-back on these real values, in the end making the whole thing a "chocolate-poop-cake". It has chocolate, everyone likes chocolate.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy of assuming your personal world views and nationalism happen to be universally above the rest and the fix is for everyone else to "feel the pain" of our nationalism until they accept it. If that didn't sound a bit off then you would have used you regular account.
You're basically saying that we should be non-interventionalist. So if a country gets taken over by a dictator, no big. If they kick out our companies and take our tech, no big. If they develop nukes so that they can hold us at ransom, no big.
Naive view of the world to think what happens outside your neighborhood is of no concern for you.
The irony is blinding here. The kind of entitled opinion that can only be supported by strong ignorance and is only remedied by education. Every one of your arguments can be refuted in half a line just like in all of your other comments. And you'd reject every one of your arguments if they were used against you.
Are Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc. better off now than they were before being bombed to shit to "fix their dictator or terrorist problem"? Is Iran better off after making a deal with the US and sticking to it? Central America after all the "fight the communists" regime changes? When a country gets taken over by a leader undemocratically elected with a minority of votes should there be a military intervention to fix it? How about when you spy (with every advantage that entails, economic, political, or military) on every other country and citizen on the planet? When you blackmail entire countries to get your economic interests? When your citizens are illegally shot on the streets and abused by corporations but their voice means next to nothing?
In the meantime China has seen the biggest economic boom any developed country has ever managed to maintain ever so the US feels threatened and ups the "dictator-like" measures against the world.
There's a reason you use a throwaway account. Your opinions aren't controversial, they're embarrassingly immature, uneducated, ignorant of the realities of the world we live in and you don't want that to rub of on you actual account. I guess you're not at risk of being shot in the back by police (or ever reading a book instead of an Alex Jones podcast) so you are still free to maintain this happy view of your "we're definitely not acting like the dictator of the world" system.
> Are Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc. better off now
Totally agree with you. The US needs to grow up.
> In the meantime China has seen the biggest economic boom any developed country has ever managed to maintain ever so the US feels threatened and ups the "dictator-like" measures against the world
No, it's because china does not feel it needs to follow any laws ie. clamping down in hong kong against the very treaty it signed. For one example. Territorial grab in the south china seas. etc.
> The kind of entitled opinion that can only be supported by strong ignorance and is only remedied by education
> Your [are] embarrassingly immature, uneducated, ignorant of the realities of the world
I’m voicing the reality of the situation, in that the world is not a nice place when you let things fester all over the world.
China has done great at mobilizing their population, definitely. But don’t you worry that having unlimited power in a secretive cabal (CCP) is a bit dangerous?
I disagreed vehemently with Iraq. If the US just lets any place fester into an autocracy, then that autocracy has the base to expand their sphere.
So instead of the US capitalist sphere with its obvious but controllable problems... we’ll have your world where strongmen can expand their spheres. In those spheres, our businesses can be pushed out or taken control of without rule of law. So our country diminishes and eventually collapses.
So you sit on your high horse and play armchair quarterback, when in reality you benefit from the imperfect hegemony the US established for much of the world. Countries in our sphere have benefitted greatly: SK, Japan, Europe, Taiwan, India, Mexico, etc.
It's a much deeper discussion that this topic or medium affords. But that very same system took away through various means millions of citizens' right to vote, and routinely generates situations where the will of the majority is overridden by a minority. And there's a lot more where that came from. You are given just enough power to feel in control but not enough to be in control. You have a voice but nobody really has to listen.
I grant you that, there are clearly far more freedoms in the western world in general than in China. But there's nothing better about US's system of values than say the Icelandic one (quite visibly the opposite actually). But...
It all boils down to one simple fact: the US imposes it's own views on the rest of the world via military and economic measures against anyone who doesn't comply, doesn't have anything truly of value to trade, or threatens that military and economic superiority. See Saudi Arabia, one of US's closest ally vs. China, one of US's biggest enemy. Both have the same values yet get very different ends of the stick. There's nothing making this system better other than the military and economic force behind it.
And I'll leave you with a bit of foods for thought: large scale organized crime groups also elected their leaders through "some sort of democracy", and have economic and "military" power to impose their will even over entire countries. What does this say about their system of values? Must be tip top.
Some sort of democracy means the various types of democracy deployed in the world. Switzerland to US, whatever.
When did it take away citizens right to vote? You're talking about felons not being able to vote? Yeah I agree with getting rid of that, getting rid of gerrymandering etc. You can be a critic of implementations the system and yet still support the underlying mechanism.
You're supposed to feel like you have a say and not BE in control. Yes minority groups will have less power, that is fine.
"There's nothing making this system better..."
"I grant you there are clearly far more freedoms in the western..."
The US will basically spread democracy and capitalism. True capitalism is bad for the entrenched CCP, Russia oligarchs, etc because the US multinationals will inject their capital in the system and take control of everything. Of course they want to keep power. I think there should be some guarantees of the country keeping some ownership over their production.
CCP and Russia are trying to lock down their systems and increase their competitive output, so that when they clash with the West they can compete on value/innovation.
I'm not saying the system is perfect, it's obviously coopted by different groups. But it is as close to perfect as exists in the world today.
> You can be a critic of implementations the system and yet still support the underlying mechanism
So the theory is great if only we ignore the practice? A protection racket works on solid mechanisms and even principles in theory. The implementation just needs the small detail of breaking the law. It also looks great from inside if you benefit even the least bit from it, but criminal from the outside.
> The US will basically spread democracy and capitalism.
Lots of countries became democratic and capitalistic because the US explosively "spread" them? What was the cost for those countries to still not achieve that? Protection rackets might have more satisfied customers.
> True capitalism is bad for the entrenched CCP
I'm not sure you understand what "true capitalism" means. Short version, it's not great for the regular person. There's no room for protections and you're only as valuable as your contribution to someone else's bottom line. Sounds familiar? Now I honestly wonder what happens if you apply "pure capitalism" to a country of 1.5 billion knowing that either the theory or the practice encourage lobbying (buying) for laws to favor the few, and selectively adjust the democratic process to eliminate the most inconvenient votes.
> But it is as close to perfect
In theory. But you'd have to be naive to believe that the US goes anywhere just to spread the good word, especially considering the current track record doing that and that since as you agreed they themselves are far from nailing the practice. Other countries have nailed both, take Scandinavian countries where people are treated equal, the GDP per capita is similar to the US's (+/- $10k), and the democratic process works in practice. Why isn't the US importing that rather than being concerned with exporting theirs?
Look, I don't know where you get your facts, your opinions, your education from but it's not the right place. The system failed you and hasn't prepared you for this conversation.
> Look, I don't know where you get your facts, your opinions, your education from but it's not the right place. The system failed you and hasn't prepared you for this conversation.
Ah, the revenge flag from the throwaway account of a throwaway account. That must carry a lot of weight around here. But your other statement muddles your argument.
> You chose not to answer that. It is key.
You're implying I have the answer, the "key". This would make the very statement you flagged my previous comment for (that you are unprepared for this conversation) a matter of fact, rather than opinion. And I asked why you'd need to use a throwaway account if you trusted your opinions are decent and here we are with yet another throwaway who happened to stumble across an HN post that was already buried away very deep.
Asking for "the answer" is a typical method of bogging down any conversation. I'll answer nonetheless but know that needing answers from me is admitting your opinions lack this information.*
So what about the 3 million citizens who's vote was ignored in order for the current president to win? That "close to perfect" system is made in such a way that the many can vote but in the end it's the few that actually choose the winner. By this definition Russia is just as much a democracy, people got to vote. Even in China the leader was voted... just by a very, very small minority within the party. A democracy is more than the exercise of going to a voting booth, it's enacting the will of the majority. And it's enabling your citizens to exercise their right.
People lose their right to vote for the most minor of infractions (like being unable to pay a parking fine and the the avalanche of extra costs that pours on them)? Voter ID laws take away the possibility to vote from hundreds of thousands of people in almost each state. Obstacles are put in their path when trying to obtain voter ID cards (asking for more and more ridiculous documents with every visit, or having offices that are open 5 non-consecutive days per year!!). Black or latino will know this better. You can't say the US has to focus on bringing democratic values to China while its citizens still have to go in the street to shout BLM in 2020.
For a right so basic as voting you'd expect the country to do its best to enable the voters, not to deter them. But millions of people are taken that right away, millions more are deterred as much as possible from exercising it, and many, many more get to exercise it but it doesn't count.
What good is perfect theory if the practice is so deeply flawed? Theories are usually perfect, communism, planned economies, benevolent dictatorships, they're all perfect in theory. But we live in practice.
* You ask me for answers to questions that form the basis of this conversation. I think saying that you are unprepared for it is simply an objective confirmation of your admission that (in your words) I have the key and you do not.
> Ah, the revenge flag from the throwaway account of a throwaway account
Playing the victim eh? No, I'm a different guy.
I flagged you for insults. Your account is no more or less throwaway than mine.
> You're implying I have the answer, the "key".
If you have no answers, you have nothing to contribute but FUD. You were happy to answer other questions but not that one. But that is by-the-bye, I flagged you for insulting language.
> Asking for "the answer" is a typical method of bogging down any conversation
Odd. I find asking for an answer works quite well to resolve issues, if one is prepared to listen. But you blow insults instead.
> I think saying that you are unprepared for it is simply an objective confirmation of your admission that (in your words) I have the key and you do not.
So you claim to have an answer. But won't give it. And instead, insult.
> So you claim to have an answer. But won't give it. And instead, insult.
My friend, I didn't just "claim" I have the answer to that question, I gave it to you. More than half of my comment above is the answer. Hint: starts with "So how about". And in addition (not instead) I stated another fact (not insult): you are not prepared to have this conversation.
You have no answers to questions that form the crux of the matter, questions you should really be able to answer by yourself because they are a matter of fact and public knowledge. You have absolutely no argument and keep asking me for more answers, or commenting on my wording, or accusing me of spreading FUD. And even when I provided answers in a reasonably well structured comment (4th paragraph) you still weren't able to follow. If you tune out every time the other person answers you're not qualified to have any conversation. This is advice, not insult. The premise of a conversation is that at the very least you listen to what the other party is saying. Otherwise it's just 2 people shouting to the emptiness.
> Your account is no more or less throwaway than mine.
You stumbled on an obscure submission that was already buried very deep on HN and you went straight to the bottom of the page to reply. The only way you could get here was to search for very specific terms, or have a direct link. You have to admit it really looks like throwaway account behavior. Literally having "throwaway" in your username doesn't do much to change that impression, it's not the first choice for first time HN users.
Sure, China's position today is nothing like Japan's 80 years ago. But look at China's or Russia's actions and you see war and retaliatory actions today are also not the same as they were then. Pushing your enemy into taking expensive steps (plenty of options there, from proxy wars, to giving up nuclear facilities, to alienating foreign investment in an attempt to take retaliatory actions against US economic interests) is a result that has been achieved in the past following the exact same script.
I personally don't believe these sanctions have "the right reasons" behind them because the US selectively allies with countries with a similar legal and moral track record as China. If the action is not taken on justice, fairness, or moral grounds I think my implication above is pretty fair.
> I personally don't believe these sanctions have "the right reasons" behind them because the US selectively allies with countries with a similar legal and moral track record as China.
What countries does the US ally with that have a similar track record as China does in Xinjiang? The only thing recently comparable that comes to mind is Myanmar, with the Rohingya. But I'm not sure to what degree the US allies with Myanmar.
A very limited/ target sanction against a few members. They should actually freeze the foreign assets of all Politburo members and work on technologies to circumvent the Great Fire wall inside China
No genocide is the correct term, the Chinese government is actively trying to destroy a group which is what genocide means.
The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.[4][5][6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Chinese actions to reduce births for example are very well documented.
What China is doing to Uighurs qualifies as genocide
> [The atrocity in Xinjiang] very specifically meets one of the five criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, which specifically says the suppression of birth.
You can redefine words if you want, but you're devaluing then in the process.
In this case, people are doing this in order to whip up further hysteria. I recall in 2011, when Western media promoted false claims of genocide in Libya, in order to justify the bombing of the country and the overthrow of its government. Same thing in Iraq in 2003. There's a pattern here.
If you're going to compare China's enforcement of the 2-3 child rule in Xinjiang to the Holocaust, then there has to be a new word to describe the Holocaust, because those two things do not belong in the same category.
There are consequences to this sort of demonization. You're supporting a hysteria that has a good chance of leading to war.
Hitler started with mass sterilization, the killing was secondary. Which is why the term is about more than just mass killings.
In China forced abortions and mass sterilization are selective based on ethnicity. Combined with reeducation camps and differential taxation based on ethnicity and number of kids is not simply enforcing a policy. The Chinese government is even dealing with the excess male population from their previous one child policy and preferential marriage laws to eliminate an ethnic group.
This is systematic genocide, even without the obvious mass graves.
The comparison to Hitler makes my point for me. This sort of hysteria is dangerous, because if you're saying that China is the same as the Third Reich, you're essentially calling for war.
It would be interesting to hear how you compare the actual killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq by the United States to the Holocaust, given that you've now compared the 2-3 child policy to the Holocaust.
Iraq’s population went from 23.5 million in 2000 to almost ~40 million in 2020 that’s the opposite of genocide. China on the other hand is using mass detention, sterilization, forced abortion, and IUD’s to cut Uighur‘s drastically below the replacement birth rates.
“They gave Omirzakh, the penniless wife of a detained vegetable trader, three days to pay a $2,685 fine for having more than two children.
If she didn’t, they warned, she would join her husband and a million other ethnic minorities locked up in internment camps — often for having too many children.“
Of note a significant number of couples must have 3 children to maintain the population as some children die or never have children of their own. But, again that’s just one policy they are doing many other things which all add up.
You're now defending the killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, but denouncing the enforcement of the 2-3 child rule in Xinjiang.
The Uighur population of Xinjiang has grown rapidly over the past 5 years (something that you've said proves there was no genocide in Iraq), and what you're reading about in the news is the draconian enforcement of the same family planning policies on Uighurs as have up to recently only applied to Han people. Ethnic minorities used to be exempt from the one-child rule. Now, rules have been relaxed to 2-3 children, but they're being applied to minorities as well. You can denounce this policy without comparing it to the Holocaust, Rwanda, and other actual genocides.
First, deaths and genocide are different things. The CCP’s killing between 20 and 43 million people from 1959–1961 was incompetence not a genocide. Numbers of deaths are irrelevant the intent must be the systematic destruction of a people.
So sure the Iraq war combined combined with a sectarian civil war, and after effects from the breakdown of the economy and social order possibly reached a few hundred thousand deaths. But that’s by definition not a genocide. If you want an American genocide look back to what happened to Native Americans.
Those supporting china use downvotes as a way of trying to suppress other opinions. I'm getting sick of it. It goes against the HN guidelines and is just a dishonest tactic.
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[ 73.1 ms ] story [ 2561 ms ] threadTreasury Sanctions Chinese Entity and Officials Pursuant to Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act
> The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.
> The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-chin...
So, no, not "hypocrites".
And some of them are probably normal people.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1539457/still-at-guantanamo
But the intention is to catch extremists, the flaw is to not follow due process.
Whereas in China, the intention is to commit cultural genocide.
Like in Abu Ghraib, where they created a torture dungeon for thousands of Iraqis, from common criminals to suspect rebels, generally without trial?
This whole "no, it's just some really evil individuals that we tortured, we are the good guys here" narrative is disgusting.
this is the main point. both states like to do it without trial.
What's more important is intention. One side tries to catch murderers and sometimes does not follow due process.
The other side tries to kill off the culture of an entire people by violently "reeducation" millions of human beings.
Honestly, I find it disgusting that people here seem to be mostly fine with those crimes, and even try to defend them.
It's simply without a trial. All states have nice words for why they have to target whom they target. Let's not fall for propaganda.
The scale is different: true. But same-scale is not a prerequisite for hypocrisy.
the Uygurs are imprisoned based on their race. With or without trial makes no difference.
2. The world must not be distracted by such facile whataboutism. What the CPC does to its people, from Xiangjiang to Hong Kong is terrible. Would I like to see the US clean up its own act? Sure. But in the meantime, I am happy to see the US take a string stance against CPC totalitarianism.
"Injustice to one is injustice to all"
I believe it really doesn't matter at all if it is actually about human rights, they're human in either case.
Is it worse for the government to bomb a foreign country, or to bomb its own people? Of course they're both bad, but there's a reason the international community reacted one way to Syria and one way to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
The "crime of aggression" is one of the most serious violations of international law that exists. One of the foundational principles of the post-WWII order is that countries cannot go to war against other countries, except in self-defense (very narrowly construed) or with permission from the UN Security Council.
What countries do within their own borders is much more their own business.
> there's a reason the international community reacted one way to Syria and one way to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
The reason is simple. Syria is not a powerful country, but the US is. Everyone recognized that the invasion of Iraq was aggression, and therefore illegal under international law. Nobody was willing to do anything about it, because the US was then the world's sole superpower.
Yes, Syria has no nukes and no military power. That's the extent of the why. Russia, for examples, has nukes and military power, and look at what happened in Grosny and the international community.
But all of that is besides the point, of course. It's allegedly about human rights, not about only killing & torturing people as long as they're not citizens of your country, the secret law of civilized society.
Guantanamo was supposed to be for the worst of the worst terrorists. No doubt a few were mistakenly selected but by mistake (USA has no interest in spending so much money and limited resources on a, say, innocent Pakistani cab driver.)
China has essentially put in camps /jail millions and millions of its citizens, simply because they are Muslim. And they're trying to wipe out their identity.
Now tell me how they compare ?
I'm not sure this is true. Could you please post the numbers at guantanamo and the numbers imprisoned at Xinjiang? That would help clarify this point, thanks.
>numbers at guantanamo
Hundreds at any one time, under a hundred currently, well less than a thousand peak[1]
>numbers imprisoned at Xinjiang
On the order of millions[2]
If you want to be disingenuous more effectively I suggest you get better and choosing when to ask for citations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
That it was a deliberate disingenuity seemed to have flown far and high over your head. What do you think I was trying to do?
I would like to educate you. USA has done just that.
No. Because they are Uyghurs. The Hui are a totally different phenomenon; Islam is one of the traditional religions of China. (Granted, with much less uptake than Buddhism got.)
And the "anti-extremism" push certainly applies to Hui Muslims as well, who had their mosques "renovated" to look less like mosques: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=763356996
The fact that certain individual Uyghurs are not targeted is not evidence that the reason oppressed Uyghurs are being oppressed is not "because they're Uyghurs". It's evidence that being a Uyghur can be mitigated.
But if you prefer, "because they are members of a group with very questionable allegiance". This phrasing picks up the other Turkic groups in the area while still clearly excluding the Hui.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45474279 a UN committee heard that up to one million Uighur Muslims and other Muslim groups could be being detained
Totally the same though.
Guantanamo Bay and the Xinjiang camps are not comparable. For all its faults, Guantanamo is essentially a POW camp that contains enemy combatants. No American citizens are detained there, and none were ever meant to be.
The Xinjiang camps were specifically built to forcibly indoctrinate civilian ethnic-minority Chinese citizens and suppress their community and culture. They operate on a much larger scale, and also provide a captive labor pool that's being exploited.
> essentially a POW camp
The US government refused to treat people in Guantanamo Bay as POWs. That's why they called them "enemy combatants." POWs have rights.
Guantanamo Bay itself was only a tiny part of the larger War on Terror. The US ran prison camps scattered throughout the world, in which it tortured prisoners. The US kidnapped civilians and flew them to secret prisons, or to be tortured by allied countries like Egypt. One person was even kidnapped by American intelligence off the streets of Milan.
In Iraq, the US worked with Shiite militias that tortured and killed large numbers of people suspected of being sympathetic to the insurgency. The US itself ran prisons like Abu Ghraib, in which prisoners were tortured. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in Iraq, as a result of the illegal invasion.
No senior figure involved in these crimes was prosecuted.
So when the US government suddenly develops a conscience, consider me skeptical.
Let's supply and equip KSA with bombs to kill minorities and majorities in Yemen, and also blame Chinese for abuses against ethnic minorities. We are terrified to death of seeing tear gas on streets but we supply bombs to the Middle East.
And don't get me wrong. I think anything to stop abuses in China is great. But, when I'm reminded about those double standards, I just realize it's all bullshit.
I stopped reading politics. I only listen to people that talk about peace. Everyone else is after some hidden agenda.
China regularly arrests dozens of foreign citizens on bogus charges every month. This is what people saying that China's incarceration rate is so low forget to say. A foreigners in China has a much higher risk to be extra-judicially jailed.
And yes, US government largely shows that it doesn't give a .... when its citizens are being jailed overseas, unless a huge media expose forces it to do so.
Care to list the 25+ people arrested in June?
Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing. Hollywood was tailoring their products to appease the Chinese government and be allowed in the market, anyone who wanted to do business there like NBA owners and players were biting their tongues and hiding their political opinions. But not Trump, he turned the tide and made America care about human freedom again.
Ok, fine, crazy thought. But it raises the question, why aren't any of our other leaders even pretending to try and be that person?
If the dreams of people like Elon Musk come true, USSF may end up being a far more important organisation than AFSC ever was.
Don't you think that's a very easy question to answer?
A ton of money, an amount of money serious enough even for America to be made concerned.
Pretty much everybody with stock market exposure, including pretty much anybody in USA who counts as an elite, will loose big time if one day Beijing presses the Delete button, and half of Fortune 500 vanishes.
Remember, it was Apple out of everybody who was granted an exemption from punitive tariffs on China.
And, yes, those decisions were influenced by money but they were also influenced heavily by American Exceptionalist arrogance. Of course our culture will dominate theirs and they'll take their rightful, subservient place to us in the global order.
Never mind that they literally converted their own conquerers to Chinese culture TWICE (mongols/yuan, manchu/qing) in the last millenium.
I mean they would prohibit all vital operations of these companies in China. What would Apple do if China will give them a Huawei treatment?
They wouldn't even be able to move away from China, if their Chinese suppliers would be told to cease doing business with Apple globally.
Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.
Second to that: check what you saw in the previous half of the year. A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China. Would US elites be ready to deal with angry unwashed masses who, with some help, and incitement, would go torch their houses because they can't get not only their new Iphone, but basic medicines, clothing, car parts, basic household goods, widgets for their businesses, and such?
Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.
> We estimate China only makes $8.46 from an iPhone
Well, all those people would instantly be out of a job for one. What Huawei factories in the US are being shut down? It's one thing to lose market access, it's another to lose jobs.
> Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.
Cheap is a better word here. There is not a single item in China that can't be replicated elsewhere in the world for consumer products.
> A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China.
Because of cheapness, not because they can't be created elsewhere. Many countries can create these goods, including the U.S.
> Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.
Americans might not be "ready" but they can definitely decouple with China if push comes to shove.
Sell to another country at lower prices, and less profit than the can get from the US?
> No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree
> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree
It's worth noting that most of the wiki article is basically a list of counter-examples that proved that statement false. There have been a half-dozen wars between McDonald's-havers.
It should also be noted that there were plenty of experts who would tell you that the world is now too economically intertwined to be able to support any major war between major powers... in 1914. Economic integration preventing global conflict has been disproven time and again in history.
I don't think it'd play out like that. It's been a few generations, but Americans have experience with wartime rationing that was far more extreme. They didn't riot and demand a peace treaty with Hilter and Tojo, so they could could get the consumer goods they had been used to having.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States
https://www.history.com/news/food-rationing-in-wartime-ameri...
But, I don't see any US president standing for it before the election, or at least attempting to sell it to his electorate/funders, unless pretty much a hot war is happening.
USA was the biggest industrial power by late thirties, and I think no country would've stood for Germany in the open on the global arena by then. The situation is more than a bit different now.
Be hopeful that the politicians will be as logical as you are.
I don't think it would be a hard to sell the American public on some kind of rationing if Beijing suddenly embargoes the US in a way that necessitated it. Given the economic dependencies that you cite, I think a US-initiated decoupling would likely proceed slowly enough to not cause critical disruption, just higher prices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre
Guess which age group has an outsize influence on Reddit?
Trump isn't going to be rehabilitated like Bush. Politics aside, George Bush seems like a genuinely decent guy at a personal level. Trump, on the other hand, is a nasty, selfish bully; he always has been one, and he always will be one. As long as he remains alive, he will constantly remind America if his nature.
But he wasn't openly in league with hostile powers, wasn't blatantly corrupt, and didn't utterly meltdown when faced with a crisis. Arguably, this is because Chaney and other Neo-Cons were calling the shots, but things seemed mostly stable.
Trump is all of those negatives but without the veneer of good faith and competency.
> Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing.
Trump won't be celebrated, since there's no strategy behind what he does: it's all short term self-interest. Bolton says he begged Xi in person to buy US farm products to help with his re-election (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53086042) and approved of the concentration camps that are being sanctioned here (https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslim-bolton-73ebf1e2-9d...).
If anything, Trump's bumbling, impulsive actions caused aspects of an already solidifying consensus on China to firm up a little quicker.
“ undoubtedly have the bulk of their wealth in domestic assets “. Really? I am not sure and not fit the impression leaked by Switzerland
If forced to draw some sort of moral hierarchy I'd say yes, it's still not quite up to the organized atrocities committed against the Uighurs. But our disorganized, systemic atrocities are vast, and every other first-world nation is horrified.
I agree on over-incarceration the most. Police brutality needs to be backed up by numbers, not just a video or two every year that gets shown 1 million times on all media.
Most of those "refugees" are simply economic migrants. I don't blame them at all, but there's a point at which we need to have laws to see who/how people can get into this country to become a part of our society. Doing nothing and basically letting anybody who can walk here get in is NOT the answer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Please before you call hypocrisy on the US government at least engage in the quality of the action they are currently taking.
This is about the US' geopolitical struggle with China over the question of whether or not China will become an equal power with the US.
Basically if China wants to be a world leader equal to or above the US, we need some guarantees that they aren't going to plunder the world for their own nationalism. If not, then they need to feel pain until they do.
While I'm personally incompatible with many (most?) of the Chinese values as seen from the west, I'm sure most Chinese appreciate them as they came attached to personal prosperity like their parents never dreamed. You believe US values are or should be generally accepted by the world as "the gold standard" for everyone. Did you have to handwave anything and say "yeah, except that, and that, and..."? Or "but what about what they do?" This is a very self-centric view of the world.
Chinese nationalism doesn't agree with me, but neither does yours. The difference between the 2 is that I'm on your nationalism's good (less bad?) side, so it suits me today. Most of the world is on their bad side and do not share your enthusiasm about your values. Many other Western countries are already distancing themselves from the US with regards to many actions (take as an example the Iran sanctions) because it turns out in the end it shares the same "plunder the world" principles. Perhaps a bit more carrot, less stick than the Chinese one. Even citizens are showing less and less appreciation for it in the streets. I applaud the fact that they are free to do it, not that they're fearing just less retaliation than the average Chinese would in the same position. I can't unsee that so many condemnation-worthy violations piggy-back on these real values, in the end making the whole thing a "chocolate-poop-cake". It has chocolate, everyone likes chocolate.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy of assuming your personal world views and nationalism happen to be universally above the rest and the fix is for everyone else to "feel the pain" of our nationalism until they accept it. If that didn't sound a bit off then you would have used you regular account.
China's system is, we have a cabal of secretive elites that run the show and they can't be elected or unelected by the people.
Which one should be the world standard?
you are leaving aside the fact that your system also involves an armed invasion by the USA if a certain country does something the USA doesn't like.
Naive view of the world to think what happens outside your neighborhood is of no concern for you.
The irony is blinding here. The kind of entitled opinion that can only be supported by strong ignorance and is only remedied by education. Every one of your arguments can be refuted in half a line just like in all of your other comments. And you'd reject every one of your arguments if they were used against you.
Are Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc. better off now than they were before being bombed to shit to "fix their dictator or terrorist problem"? Is Iran better off after making a deal with the US and sticking to it? Central America after all the "fight the communists" regime changes? When a country gets taken over by a leader undemocratically elected with a minority of votes should there be a military intervention to fix it? How about when you spy (with every advantage that entails, economic, political, or military) on every other country and citizen on the planet? When you blackmail entire countries to get your economic interests? When your citizens are illegally shot on the streets and abused by corporations but their voice means next to nothing?
In the meantime China has seen the biggest economic boom any developed country has ever managed to maintain ever so the US feels threatened and ups the "dictator-like" measures against the world.
There's a reason you use a throwaway account. Your opinions aren't controversial, they're embarrassingly immature, uneducated, ignorant of the realities of the world we live in and you don't want that to rub of on you actual account. I guess you're not at risk of being shot in the back by police (or ever reading a book instead of an Alex Jones podcast) so you are still free to maintain this happy view of your "we're definitely not acting like the dictator of the world" system.
Totally agree with you. The US needs to grow up.
> In the meantime China has seen the biggest economic boom any developed country has ever managed to maintain ever so the US feels threatened and ups the "dictator-like" measures against the world
No, it's because china does not feel it needs to follow any laws ie. clamping down in hong kong against the very treaty it signed. For one example. Territorial grab in the south china seas. etc.
> The kind of entitled opinion that can only be supported by strong ignorance and is only remedied by education
> Your [are] embarrassingly immature, uneducated, ignorant of the realities of the world
This is unacceptable. I've flagged your post.
I’m voicing the reality of the situation, in that the world is not a nice place when you let things fester all over the world.
China has done great at mobilizing their population, definitely. But don’t you worry that having unlimited power in a secretive cabal (CCP) is a bit dangerous?
I disagreed vehemently with Iraq. If the US just lets any place fester into an autocracy, then that autocracy has the base to expand their sphere.
So instead of the US capitalist sphere with its obvious but controllable problems... we’ll have your world where strongmen can expand their spheres. In those spheres, our businesses can be pushed out or taken control of without rule of law. So our country diminishes and eventually collapses.
So you sit on your high horse and play armchair quarterback, when in reality you benefit from the imperfect hegemony the US established for much of the world. Countries in our sphere have benefitted greatly: SK, Japan, Europe, Taiwan, India, Mexico, etc.
Yeah... "some sort" says it all doesn't it?
It's a much deeper discussion that this topic or medium affords. But that very same system took away through various means millions of citizens' right to vote, and routinely generates situations where the will of the majority is overridden by a minority. And there's a lot more where that came from. You are given just enough power to feel in control but not enough to be in control. You have a voice but nobody really has to listen.
I grant you that, there are clearly far more freedoms in the western world in general than in China. But there's nothing better about US's system of values than say the Icelandic one (quite visibly the opposite actually). But...
It all boils down to one simple fact: the US imposes it's own views on the rest of the world via military and economic measures against anyone who doesn't comply, doesn't have anything truly of value to trade, or threatens that military and economic superiority. See Saudi Arabia, one of US's closest ally vs. China, one of US's biggest enemy. Both have the same values yet get very different ends of the stick. There's nothing making this system better other than the military and economic force behind it.
And I'll leave you with a bit of foods for thought: large scale organized crime groups also elected their leaders through "some sort of democracy", and have economic and "military" power to impose their will even over entire countries. What does this say about their system of values? Must be tip top.
When did it take away citizens right to vote? You're talking about felons not being able to vote? Yeah I agree with getting rid of that, getting rid of gerrymandering etc. You can be a critic of implementations the system and yet still support the underlying mechanism.
You're supposed to feel like you have a say and not BE in control. Yes minority groups will have less power, that is fine.
"There's nothing making this system better..." "I grant you there are clearly far more freedoms in the western..."
The US will basically spread democracy and capitalism. True capitalism is bad for the entrenched CCP, Russia oligarchs, etc because the US multinationals will inject their capital in the system and take control of everything. Of course they want to keep power. I think there should be some guarantees of the country keeping some ownership over their production.
CCP and Russia are trying to lock down their systems and increase their competitive output, so that when they clash with the West they can compete on value/innovation.
I'm not saying the system is perfect, it's obviously coopted by different groups. But it is as close to perfect as exists in the world today.
So the theory is great if only we ignore the practice? A protection racket works on solid mechanisms and even principles in theory. The implementation just needs the small detail of breaking the law. It also looks great from inside if you benefit even the least bit from it, but criminal from the outside.
> The US will basically spread democracy and capitalism.
Lots of countries became democratic and capitalistic because the US explosively "spread" them? What was the cost for those countries to still not achieve that? Protection rackets might have more satisfied customers.
> True capitalism is bad for the entrenched CCP
I'm not sure you understand what "true capitalism" means. Short version, it's not great for the regular person. There's no room for protections and you're only as valuable as your contribution to someone else's bottom line. Sounds familiar? Now I honestly wonder what happens if you apply "pure capitalism" to a country of 1.5 billion knowing that either the theory or the practice encourage lobbying (buying) for laws to favor the few, and selectively adjust the democratic process to eliminate the most inconvenient votes.
> But it is as close to perfect
In theory. But you'd have to be naive to believe that the US goes anywhere just to spread the good word, especially considering the current track record doing that and that since as you agreed they themselves are far from nailing the practice. Other countries have nailed both, take Scandinavian countries where people are treated equal, the GDP per capita is similar to the US's (+/- $10k), and the democratic process works in practice. Why isn't the US importing that rather than being concerned with exporting theirs?
Look, I don't know where you get your facts, your opinions, your education from but it's not the right place. The system failed you and hasn't prepared you for this conversation.
> When did it take away citizens right to vote?
You chose not to answer that. It is key.
> Look, I don't know where you get your facts, your opinions, your education from but it's not the right place. The system failed you and hasn't prepared you for this conversation.
Again, I've flagged your post.
Ah, the revenge flag from the throwaway account of a throwaway account. That must carry a lot of weight around here. But your other statement muddles your argument.
> You chose not to answer that. It is key.
You're implying I have the answer, the "key". This would make the very statement you flagged my previous comment for (that you are unprepared for this conversation) a matter of fact, rather than opinion. And I asked why you'd need to use a throwaway account if you trusted your opinions are decent and here we are with yet another throwaway who happened to stumble across an HN post that was already buried away very deep.
Asking for "the answer" is a typical method of bogging down any conversation. I'll answer nonetheless but know that needing answers from me is admitting your opinions lack this information.*
So what about the 3 million citizens who's vote was ignored in order for the current president to win? That "close to perfect" system is made in such a way that the many can vote but in the end it's the few that actually choose the winner. By this definition Russia is just as much a democracy, people got to vote. Even in China the leader was voted... just by a very, very small minority within the party. A democracy is more than the exercise of going to a voting booth, it's enacting the will of the majority. And it's enabling your citizens to exercise their right.
People lose their right to vote for the most minor of infractions (like being unable to pay a parking fine and the the avalanche of extra costs that pours on them)? Voter ID laws take away the possibility to vote from hundreds of thousands of people in almost each state. Obstacles are put in their path when trying to obtain voter ID cards (asking for more and more ridiculous documents with every visit, or having offices that are open 5 non-consecutive days per year!!). Black or latino will know this better. You can't say the US has to focus on bringing democratic values to China while its citizens still have to go in the street to shout BLM in 2020.
For a right so basic as voting you'd expect the country to do its best to enable the voters, not to deter them. But millions of people are taken that right away, millions more are deterred as much as possible from exercising it, and many, many more get to exercise it but it doesn't count.
What good is perfect theory if the practice is so deeply flawed? Theories are usually perfect, communism, planned economies, benevolent dictatorships, they're all perfect in theory. But we live in practice.
* You ask me for answers to questions that form the basis of this conversation. I think saying that you are unprepared for it is simply an objective confirmation of your admission that (in your words) I have the key and you do not.
Playing the victim eh? No, I'm a different guy.
I flagged you for insults. Your account is no more or less throwaway than mine.
> You're implying I have the answer, the "key".
If you have no answers, you have nothing to contribute but FUD. You were happy to answer other questions but not that one. But that is by-the-bye, I flagged you for insulting language.
> Asking for "the answer" is a typical method of bogging down any conversation
Odd. I find asking for an answer works quite well to resolve issues, if one is prepared to listen. But you blow insults instead.
> I think saying that you are unprepared for it is simply an objective confirmation of your admission that (in your words) I have the key and you do not.
So you claim to have an answer. But won't give it. And instead, insult.
My friend, I didn't just "claim" I have the answer to that question, I gave it to you. More than half of my comment above is the answer. Hint: starts with "So how about". And in addition (not instead) I stated another fact (not insult): you are not prepared to have this conversation.
You have no answers to questions that form the crux of the matter, questions you should really be able to answer by yourself because they are a matter of fact and public knowledge. You have absolutely no argument and keep asking me for more answers, or commenting on my wording, or accusing me of spreading FUD. And even when I provided answers in a reasonably well structured comment (4th paragraph) you still weren't able to follow. If you tune out every time the other person answers you're not qualified to have any conversation. This is advice, not insult. The premise of a conversation is that at the very least you listen to what the other party is saying. Otherwise it's just 2 people shouting to the emptiness.
> Your account is no more or less throwaway than mine.
You stumbled on an obscure submission that was already buried very deep on HN and you went straight to the bottom of the page to reply. The only way you could get here was to search for very specific terms, or have a direct link. You have to admit it really looks like throwaway account behavior. Literally having "throwaway" in your username doesn't do much to change that impression, it's not the first choice for first time HN users.
I personally don't believe these sanctions have "the right reasons" behind them because the US selectively allies with countries with a similar legal and moral track record as China. If the action is not taken on justice, fairness, or moral grounds I think my implication above is pretty fair.
What countries does the US ally with that have a similar track record as China does in Xinjiang? The only thing recently comparable that comes to mind is Myanmar, with the Rohingya. But I'm not sure to what degree the US allies with Myanmar.
The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.[4][5][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Chinese actions to reduce births for example are very well documented.
> [The atrocity in Xinjiang] very specifically meets one of the five criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, which specifically says the suppression of birth.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/04/887239225/china-suppression-o...
HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567
In this case, people are doing this in order to whip up further hysteria. I recall in 2011, when Western media promoted false claims of genocide in Libya, in order to justify the bombing of the country and the overthrow of its government. Same thing in Iraq in 2003. There's a pattern here.
There are consequences to this sort of demonization. You're supporting a hysteria that has a good chance of leading to war.
In China forced abortions and mass sterilization are selective based on ethnicity. Combined with reeducation camps and differential taxation based on ethnicity and number of kids is not simply enforcing a policy. The Chinese government is even dealing with the excess male population from their previous one child policy and preferential marriage laws to eliminate an ethnic group.
This is systematic genocide, even without the obvious mass graves.
It would be interesting to hear how you compare the actual killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq by the United States to the Holocaust, given that you've now compared the 2-3 child policy to the Holocaust.
Meanwhile “it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.” https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/china-cuts-uighur-...
“They gave Omirzakh, the penniless wife of a detained vegetable trader, three days to pay a $2,685 fine for having more than two children.
If she didn’t, they warned, she would join her husband and a million other ethnic minorities locked up in internment camps — often for having too many children.“
Of note a significant number of couples must have 3 children to maintain the population as some children die or never have children of their own. But, again that’s just one policy they are doing many other things which all add up.
The Uighur population of Xinjiang has grown rapidly over the past 5 years (something that you've said proves there was no genocide in Iraq), and what you're reading about in the news is the draconian enforcement of the same family planning policies on Uighurs as have up to recently only applied to Han people. Ethnic minorities used to be exempt from the one-child rule. Now, rules have been relaxed to 2-3 children, but they're being applied to minorities as well. You can denounce this policy without comparing it to the Holocaust, Rwanda, and other actual genocides.
So sure the Iraq war combined combined with a sectarian civil war, and after effects from the breakdown of the economy and social order possibly reached a few hundred thousand deaths. But that’s by definition not a genocide. If you want an American genocide look back to what happened to Native Americans.
And to be sure, America's government does plenty of terrible things as it is.