I think a more likely explanation is that the article is very short, and the assertion in the title is neither novel nor controversial (at least from my read of general sentiment in this forum).
I’m often afraid to express my skepticism that most of what we know about Xinjiang comes from Adrian Zenz, because doing so makes people think I actually support those policies.
Almost all of the extreme allegations are levelled by Zenz, Uighur seperatist organizations, and ASPI, an australian think-tank. Other sources do include people visiting there[1], including news-teams[2] and third-nation observers[3], but there claims usually get casually dismissed as a bad source for one reason or the other. Chinese media obviously isn't a good source either.
Now Zenz is an evangelical fundamentalist who once wrote he's on a crusade against the CPC. His studies often times don't really follow scientific standards.
For example, for his claim that 2 million Uighurs are held in concentration camps, he interviewed 8 Uighur refugees, and extrapolated from the numbers they believe to be detained from their villages to the whole region.
Both ASPI and Zenz when accusing the chinese government of genocide via forced sterilization completely glared over the fact that it is the enforcement of the two-child-policy. And they do so knowingly, because if you read between the lines of their reports, it is quite obvious that all the women interviewed already had 2 or more children.
It is extremely difficult to get an accurate picture of what is going on there. - Security is definetely extremely tight in the whole region, and "brainwashing camps" are admitted to exist by the government. Many international Xinjiang without an obvious agenda think something very fishy is going on, but the exact scale, method and goal are completely obfuscated by lies and propaganda from both sides.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted — I didn't know about this lack of sources and took all of the information about the region for granted. Thanks for reminding me that even things that sound plausible (or especially those things) need to be reviewed, toO!
Do not take a post on HN for granted that only cites a Medium post, a YouTube video, and Chinese state media as evidence AGAINST wrongdoing by the Chinese govt.
Actual journalistic sources, based on interviews with former detainees, etc, validate the claim that China is undertaking a campaign of demographic genocide against predominantly Muslim minorities: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c
Your article literally is an example of what the OP cited:
- Multiple citations from Zenz (+Pompeo for bonus points)
- Entire article revolves around testimony of those with 2+ children being subjected to family planning policies (IUD / sterilizations etc).
- Mentions "now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy" without providing context of that new "Two-Child" policy is in affect for everyone, with no minority exemptions.
- Claims 30 interviews reveals how wide spread the practice is. Hint: you can interview 1.3 billion Han Chinese to see how wide spread family planning program was for the last 40 years.
We already know from leaked internal papers the purpose of these camps, the reality is, the camps themselves are boring techno authoritarian reeducation camps (like in France), but the threshold for manufacturing consent requires something meatier like literal genocide. There's sufficient state-level intelligence capability to actually verify the scope of the camps, but western media insists on quoting the same few unsubstantiated sources + Pompeo musings while conveniently omitting facts that goes against the narrative. I.e. recently ASPI "slave labour" study, casually glosses over that the minimum hourly wage from contracts was equivalent to basic salary at Foxconn and 2x annual GDP of prefecture the workers are from. Because the mental image for a prisoner stamping license plates for 50c an hour is different than $20 an hour.
Could you point me towards what you are referring to when you say "boring techno authoritarian reeducation camps (like in France)"? As a French, I don't know about any program in France that would fit this description.
Search French deradicalization boot camps + radicalization monitoring list. Quick research suggest the 2016 program was only partially implemented before being shut down and rebooted under new program in 2018 [0]. Of course the scale in China is going to be greater and execution more comprehensive due to nature of Chinese capabilities. To clarify, I'm only suggesting conceptually the approaches are similar and do not equivocate the two in execution.
The greater context is, Islamic attacks in multicultural European societies in the past 10 years (particularly in England + France) informed internal decision making in China regarding XJ. I remember French banlieue / ethnic enclaves where radicalization was happening were part of conversation on policy debates to revise minority policy in China a few years ago. The position being multicultural "salad bowl", classic soviet oblast model where minorities had relative cultural autonomy had failed to reign in extremism (and separatism in China's case), so now everyone gets sinicized and the Han treatment, aka blending into the US melting pot model.
Well Microsoft did supply the facial recognition tech to keep order in these camps. [1]
They seem totalitarian enough to suck up all that telemetry, what makes us think they wouldn't be totalitarian enough to sanction its use against us?
So you know the BBC has spent the last two months race baiting. They were once a most treasured institution of my nation now they've lost respect and their future is in jeopardy - you only have to view the hash #DefundTheBBC to see how they're actions have sullied them.
Because dang will ban anyone espousing anti-Chinese sentiments, under the guise of 'provoking nationalistic flame wars'. I truly believe there is a conflict of interest somewhere between YC and the CCP because the knee jerk sensorship is quite disturbing.
Someone had to say it. For decades Taiwan has played coy, not wanting to anger its larger neighbor who’s got missiles pointed its way and often war-games invasions. It feels like CNs actions in HK and XJ are laying bare any pretensions, so Taiwan is hoping the West will come to its aid if the day comes. Previous admins have been hesitant to upset commerce, one hopes we don’t have to find out if the current admin has the appetite to engage. But who knows how bent they are on annexing the “renegade province”.
still, to be handing over money to a chinese govt owned and subsidized company at the cost of our own perfectly capable industry who can't compete with their subsidies is just foolish.
So I am at once digital minister, that's my day job. But I'm also moonlighting as a civic hacker," Tang said. "I see myself as a channel, as a bridge, as a Lagrangian point between civic movements on one side and government on the other."
I wish we had people like her running things in the US.
For those who don’t know, Audrey Tang wrote the first implementation of the Raku language in Haskell back in the day. She’s really smart, and I’d put her in charge of just about anything.
So if Antifa was the militant wing of the German Communist Party in the 1930s [1] and it is they who weaponised race to use black people as shieldmoms in insurrection against the west, why does tech tolerate obscenities such as Django project banner [2]?
As far as I can see, only the FSF and Ubuntu hasn't pushed this. They haven't coralled folk under the pretense of "hey fellow white people" when they're not white. They don't run organisations such as Revolution Systems. They don't shame good folk and cast them out for dissent.
Our leaders seem to consent or even encourage our software being politicised subjecting it to a group-think leadership comprimised by those who would cancel others with dishonesty and buzzwords rather than rebuttal.
Regardless of happy spaces ingroup dogmas that don't mix are a massive issue so I do not blame China for attempting to resolve a situation. It makes me suspicious the media which at this stage is on its knees push this story, self-preservation?
Only 1 in 5 muslims in the UK are in full time work [3], we have large parallel societies now and this fact alone terrorises the national conscience and damages trust. Our government is scared to tackle the issue and sits on reports of a subtle genocides of our peoples [4]. ~30,000 bairns sexually assaulted or raped but there are claims this number is north of 500,000.
It cannot be racial prejudice. London is majority non-native and Birmingham (that gave Siemens his break) joins it next year. It seems more akin to a Jizra.
I'm convinced I am in a simulation now. As one who values critical thinking and Stoicism I cannot believe that everyone is OK playing along with this.
I have lost respect for so many that I looked up to. What on earth is Bill Gates upto? [5]
It's common for people to conclude that we're moderating the comments we personally disagree with, and to draw personal conclusions about us based on that. I've been called Hitler, Stalin, and everything in between.
I've read the guidelines. I do not see how what I wrote breaches them.
The first half enquires on reckless group-think in tech that would bring about a situation such as Xinjlang, I wrote this in the hope those behind it could engage to allay my fears, provide context or offer links to discussions on the recent politicisation of our software. I made a submission when purges were enacted 50 days ago - it was instantly flagged. [1]
I've designed systems in place in both defence and telecommunications. I don't trust any aspect now that updates without thorough audit, you might not like it, but that is undeniably relevant to this place. I did not post it to wage some political battle, it is in response to one waged upon us all. [2]
The second half responds directly to the submitted article, offering a rational position on why China might persue active measures while speculating on why media bylines might push disgust. I've not minced words, I am from the UK so the burden is upon you to tell us what the ideal replacement population is in a country which rejects theocracy, believes in equality before the law and loves its pets to bits? Theil and so Palantir predict it as a potential destiny of ours, our loved ones and our descendants. [3]
Now, if we were to search 'racist' here on HN, over the last month there's over 100 pages of unchallenged comment. When this term is used carelessly without justification or applied to groups it is most insidious, we can accurately label it psychological manipulation and if I myself was inclined to resort to buzzwords, a form of social fascism that would make Trotsky proud. Yet this perversion and weaponisation of language you accept.
If we search covid or corona there's many many pages on what we can see from Belarus and Sweden has been an overblown flu. The masks and disguises pushed have normalised many cases of leering towards others, psychological violence and have terrified us unduly. I have personally witnessed conflict on the street because of them.
Amongst the first cases in America included a victim of a motorcycle accident and many folk in my country are being diagnosed as Covid despite unrelated conditions. My family work in large hospitals so I do not write this without care or insight but because conversation here, of which there is much, flows in only one direction. This unwavering compliance in my view makes our societies vulnerable to behavior that Sanger would term Evil [4].
It is why I hardly spend my time here now. Previously most my downtime was spent in this place learning about wonderous new advances and gaining invaluable insight. Now when I come here, I leave demoralised.
Hailing from working class roots you gave me a greater education than what my state school could bestow. I've the benefit or the curse of not being in your bubble, in real life if I revert to my natural dialect you would look down on me, so I had to adopt the Queens to be able to walk amongst you.
You've created a cradle of intelligent discourse with a community to be cherished so I understand the quandry in preserving that but I would never dream of issuing these names upon you but if you really want me to I suppose the one that springs to mind would be Agent Smith. ;)
I would ask you to think twice before you kill the canaries in the coal mine - they stick their necks out to prevent destabilisation reaching a crisis or a civil war. If it all goes south and they come for me, don't make my last word be your handle dang!
If you go from Antifa to Germany in the 1920s to Ubuntu to China to Muslims in the UK and "London is majority non-native" to Bill Gates, you're posting generic ideological rants to HN. Not interesting, not what this site is for, and definitely against the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I disagree profusely. I'm aware it goes against the narrative but I took the time to write it, apologies you find my experience and concerns uninteresting.
We had someone in here exclaim you'd censor those who held the opposing view so I guess we found balance in that sense.
This article notes that Tang is a digital minister and has experience with information technology. My impression is that Taiwan has a very healthy and balanced demographic of politicians. I have seen Taiwanese mathematicians, doctors, engineers, and chemists fill important government roles involving the spotlight and advocacy. It seems that people of technical expertise in Taiwan have an equally viable chance at entering politics and policy-making.
This is not to say that scientists, engineers, or doctors make for better policymakers. Perhaps there is a case to be made that career politicians have skillsets that validate the need to specialize in politics. However, the stereotype of career politicians is that of ignorance with no understanding of subject matter for the things that they make policies for. This impression was cemented further after the hearing between Zuckerberg and Congress about Facebook. This video even plays it for laughs: "Zuckerberg explains the internet to Congress", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncbb5B85sd0. For the government to help its people, it needs to incentivize diversity within its ranks so that it can understand the variety of issues that it faces. It also needs to be able to adapt to changing realities.
Regarding what Tang talks about: I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments (I hear the TV show Black Mirror is similar) that the Western world would never be able to pull off. Regardless of where one stands on this issue, I do not think it can be denied that a lot can be learned about how these systems operate at scale or how the machine runs. From the reports and stories that we get to hear about, it seems like the Chinese government is implementing technology at scales that most countries could ever dream of doing.
Or rather, most countries could only dream of creating technological systems of control with the degree of acceptance by the populace, with degree of penetration and overall dissemination. Western governments have implemented comparable systems, like the ones that Edward Snowden pointed out. However, if governments did not worry about hiding questionable activity, maybe it could double down on the level of sophistication and expand on its capabilities.
China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time.
> I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments that the Western world would never be able to pull off.
Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment?
I seriously cannot think of an example so Im open to the fact you know more about my known unknowns.
> China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time.
I agree with you. This is why populations, no matter which population it is, are more likely to accept the government who has substantially increased the quality of life of the average citizen. This is a very hard position to disagree with, I think. Many citizens in the Western world also have had stable political systems despite the massive wrongdoings of their governments because for the most part, governments have not overstepped their bounds in comparison to the stability provided.
It's like having a goodness-to-shittiness ratio that each citizen subconsciously evaluates with an accompanying flowchart. The average citizen thinks to himself or herself: Is my government doing bad things? Yes. Is my government doing good things? Yes. Is the government doing enough bad things to make me care? No. If the answer is yes, then the next question is: Do I care enough to do something about it? Most of the time, the answer is no because society pushes me to remain being a busybody (job, life responsibilities, etc.) or I just don't care.
> Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment?
I could have phrased that better: All governments are capable and have a history of some kind of unethical experiment. I think that it is rarer that it is at this level of scale and with this level of technical sophistication. My thought was that generally, a Western government would not successfully pull off this prototype with neither the degree of success or extent.
I personally do not know what is happening at the granular level and I do not pretend to know. I wish I did, and for that matter, at any point in time there will be shady things going on that we do not know. Maybe we will learn in a few decades.
For the first time, we get to see what control through the digital lens of information technology looks like when combined with the capacity to enact state-sanctioned violence. It's like the cyberpunk genre, except privately-owned corporations do not yet have a significant capacity to use violence. Maybe we'll have the honor of seeing that by the end of this century.
On that note, the closest thing the USA has done in subjugating populations of citizens in a systematic way is the internment camps of Japanese Americans for no reason. They apologized 4 decades later. What good is an apology if you've been waiting for most of the victims to die anyway? Nonetheless, it still gained notoriety (eventually), and people still fought for recognition afterward.
It seems like the interesting question is what happens after total authoritarianism. I know many here find the news out of China nightmarish but most of China is on the mainland and the mainland Chinese, while by no means flourishing in utopia, are pretty content on average compared to where they were in the past. This isn't meant to endorse China by any means but if the west is going to keep espousing the uplifting effects of democracy they're going to need some actual benefits to point to eventually since right now the main perk is friendlier trade relations. Latin American democracy is a joke because they love populists (no one actually studying them blames the intervention memes), the EU is rife with corruption and the U.S. is strong but you can be strong without being a democracy. So why should an aspiring African government, for example, strive for Democracy rather than persuing the Chinese model?
Democracy developed in a world of totalitarian regimes, and mostly thrived because having officials vulnerable to election cuts down on corruption and incompetence while building government legitimacy and stability.
Totalitarian states tend to have a good run, where they have a good leader and energetic administration, then they become lethargic and dysfunctional, and because there's no mechanism to correct this, they start falling apart. (However, this can take centuries).
As an aside, I don't think the West has ever been particularly keen on democracy. I think Israel is the only democracy that has ever received substantial military and economic support. For dictatorships, this kind of support is basically routine (see Egypt, for a typical example).
Those democracies didn't just emerge in spite of totalitarians though, they emerged because of them and the stability they established. Stable conditions historically lead to democracy but democracy in uncertain circumstances segues into stability much more rarely. Yes corruption is a problem for totalitarians but cracking down on corruption has been a growing aspect of the Chinese model for exactly that reason (whether or not they'll succeed is another matter but it's incorrect to automatically assume that a totalitarian state will be blind to the problem by default). Further, those democracies emerged in a wildly different power climate. A modernized military operating without any rules of engagement is not going to get overthrown by its people when over half the population is content.
I think the precondition for stability is a strong civil society, and clear traditions about what constitutes legitimacy. Democracy fosters both of these. Dictatorship can foster both in the case of an 'enlightened despot', but it's often the case that the despot is incompetent, or worse.
If you look at transitions like the english civil war, or the french revolution, the clear precondition of revolution is not 'stability', as you think, but rather systemic dysfunction compounded by incompetent leadership. This kind of situation is one which democracies, in theory, should be much less vulnerable to.
Your ideas about the relative balance of power between state and people make some sense, I think, but they only matter when the threat is internal dissent. Most of the states in modern europe had a form of republicanism enforced on them by the French, who were able to invade all their neighbors because their republican government was (while very dysfunctional) more efficient and able to field talented officers and large armies.
A modernised military, moreover, consists of normal people - and they will also feel the disillusionment and apathy that grips really dysfunctional regimes. Saudi Arabia, for example, fields armies of terrible soldiers, using the most advanced weapons available.
China is an interesting and very weird state, because it's a very old civilization with deep roots, with very different basic ideas to the west, and they have turned marxism into a kind of managerial culture for an extremely capitalist society. I don't know if they will follow any of the typical patterns that totalitarian states follow. You can't really use the USSR as a point of comparison, because the USSR was a very European project, coming directly out of the enlightenment, and the western political tradition. Nor would Korea make sense, since they were colonized, and both North and South represent different reactions to colonial subjugation.
Well that's certainly one take. Charles had a bit of a complex sure but you have to understand the context of the time in that Cromwells foreign co-conspirators were demanding nothing less than his head.
The precondition of the English civil war in my opinion was more the funds that facilitated it promised by financiers from Amsterdam who ultimately went on to be granted charter to found the BoE.
As you know the result of this civil war was to wreck the fine castles, history and heritage of the English. Destroy many a dynasty and teach the Irish to hate the Brits for all eternity.
Issac D'Israeli produced a worthwhile read on Charles [1] if you'd like to know more on his character and quarry.
The democracy of Britain was foisted upon us by D'Israeli following his deposition of Robert Peel.
The teeth was taken from all monarchies, or BDFLs, after Bolsheviks were sent from Germany to murder Tsar Nicholas and his family in an act that ultimately condemned 66m Russians.
In my opinion if you want a stable democracy you enfranchise those who would look to a future beyond their own. e.g. one vote per family. If you franchise those who live for today with not a stake in the future democracy becomes not a viable form of governance.
The logic is right. The Chinese citizens should think about if they are doing enough. If outsiders start to think if they have done enough for it, the Iraq situation happens. The problem is outsiders do not have enough information to make any decisions. Rather than making the decisions for the Chinese, why not let them sort themselves out. It is much suitable to deal with problem with your own government because you have more information and more saying as well.
The productive economy did that, the people. This is not the glowing leadership of the CCP, but a concession they made so as not to end up like North Korea.
As for unethical experiments, Mao's certainly top the charts.
"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ROC transitioned from a one-party military dictatorship to a multi-party democracy with a semi-presidential system."
Didn't read article yet, but when I was in Xinjiang it was an area with very high security (more cameras, more police with guns, giant vehicle barricades around elementary schools).
If you ask the locals, they'll tell you it's to protect them from the Uighurs. It seems the conflict there is (was?) a real problem, with Han Chinese being murdered regularly with some communities having to put the men on watch at night.
Not true. The Han were not being murdered by Uighurs regularly. And every housing development has a gate and guardhouse, almost always has been like that since the danwei days.
What is true is that the Han have been scared into fearing the Uighur by twisted news reporting. And once they are scared, any action by a minority looks scary. It’s also true that Uighur have lashed out after horrible treatment at the hands of the incoming Han. It’s understandable but regrettable, especially when the news reports only the one side.
And yet, there are plenty of good relationships between the two peoples, but we never hear about that either. There are people on the ground trying to overcome hatred.
The schools for example had officers with submachine guns when it was time to let out, and giant vehicle barricades. I suppose this could be to scare people. But that's what's there.
You had not talked to the locals, as they are in the concentration camps. You talked to those that the CCP transplanted there to slowly (meaning rapidly) dilute and replace the population with good comrades.
63 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadNow Zenz is an evangelical fundamentalist who once wrote he's on a crusade against the CPC. His studies often times don't really follow scientific standards.
For example, for his claim that 2 million Uighurs are held in concentration camps, he interviewed 8 Uighur refugees, and extrapolated from the numbers they believe to be detained from their villages to the whole region.
Both ASPI and Zenz when accusing the chinese government of genocide via forced sterilization completely glared over the fact that it is the enforcement of the two-child-policy. And they do so knowingly, because if you read between the lines of their reports, it is quite obvious that all the women interviewed already had 2 or more children.
It is extremely difficult to get an accurate picture of what is going on there. - Security is definetely extremely tight in the whole region, and "brainwashing camps" are admitted to exist by the government. Many international Xinjiang without an obvious agenda think something very fishy is going on, but the exact scale, method and goal are completely obfuscated by lies and propaganda from both sides.
[1] https://medium.com/@jerry_grey2002/abc-four-corners-tell-the...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmId2ZP3h0c
[3] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1168522.shtml
Actual journalistic sources, based on interviews with former detainees, etc, validate the claim that China is undertaking a campaign of demographic genocide against predominantly Muslim minorities: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c
And BTW, your sources include a Medium post, a YouTube video, and Chinese govt controlled media. These are hardly reputable journalistic sources.
- Multiple citations from Zenz (+Pompeo for bonus points)
- Entire article revolves around testimony of those with 2+ children being subjected to family planning policies (IUD / sterilizations etc).
- Mentions "now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy" without providing context of that new "Two-Child" policy is in affect for everyone, with no minority exemptions.
- Claims 30 interviews reveals how wide spread the practice is. Hint: you can interview 1.3 billion Han Chinese to see how wide spread family planning program was for the last 40 years.
We already know from leaked internal papers the purpose of these camps, the reality is, the camps themselves are boring techno authoritarian reeducation camps (like in France), but the threshold for manufacturing consent requires something meatier like literal genocide. There's sufficient state-level intelligence capability to actually verify the scope of the camps, but western media insists on quoting the same few unsubstantiated sources + Pompeo musings while conveniently omitting facts that goes against the narrative. I.e. recently ASPI "slave labour" study, casually glosses over that the minimum hourly wage from contracts was equivalent to basic salary at Foxconn and 2x annual GDP of prefecture the workers are from. Because the mental image for a prisoner stamping license plates for 50c an hour is different than $20 an hour.
The greater context is, Islamic attacks in multicultural European societies in the past 10 years (particularly in England + France) informed internal decision making in China regarding XJ. I remember French banlieue / ethnic enclaves where radicalization was happening were part of conversation on policy debates to revise minority policy in China a few years ago. The position being multicultural "salad bowl", classic soviet oblast model where minorities had relative cultural autonomy had failed to reign in extremism (and separatism in China's case), so now everyone gets sinicized and the Han treatment, aka blending into the US melting pot model.
[0] https://www.france24.com/en/20180223-france-deradicalisation...
Is that not totalitarian enough?
They seem totalitarian enough to suck up all that telemetry, what makes us think they wouldn't be totalitarian enough to sanction its use against us?
So you know the BBC has spent the last two months race baiting. They were once a most treasured institution of my nation now they've lost respect and their future is in jeopardy - you only have to view the hash #DefundTheBBC to see how they're actions have sullied them.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-china-muslim-crack...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Your account looks like it has been doing both of those things. Please don't do that on HN.
I wish we had people like her running things in the US.
As far as I can see, only the FSF and Ubuntu hasn't pushed this. They haven't coralled folk under the pretense of "hey fellow white people" when they're not white. They don't run organisations such as Revolution Systems. They don't shame good folk and cast them out for dissent.
Our leaders seem to consent or even encourage our software being politicised subjecting it to a group-think leadership comprimised by those who would cancel others with dishonesty and buzzwords rather than rebuttal.
Regardless of happy spaces ingroup dogmas that don't mix are a massive issue so I do not blame China for attempting to resolve a situation. It makes me suspicious the media which at this stage is on its knees push this story, self-preservation?
Only 1 in 5 muslims in the UK are in full time work [3], we have large parallel societies now and this fact alone terrorises the national conscience and damages trust. Our government is scared to tackle the issue and sits on reports of a subtle genocides of our peoples [4]. ~30,000 bairns sexually assaulted or raped but there are claims this number is north of 500,000.
It cannot be racial prejudice. London is majority non-native and Birmingham (that gave Siemens his break) joins it next year. It seems more akin to a Jizra.
I'm convinced I am in a simulation now. As one who values critical thinking and Stoicism I cannot believe that everyone is OK playing along with this.
I have lost respect for so many that I looked up to. What on earth is Bill Gates upto? [5]
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/trumps-antifa-accusations-spark-debate...
[2] https://www.djangoproject.com/
[3] https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/10/06/20-percent...
[4] https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300239
[5] https://twitter.com/jonkirbysthlm/status/1287735860688019458...
These conclusions are all bogus. We don't moderate HN based on any of that; we moderate it based on the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
The first half enquires on reckless group-think in tech that would bring about a situation such as Xinjlang, I wrote this in the hope those behind it could engage to allay my fears, provide context or offer links to discussions on the recent politicisation of our software. I made a submission when purges were enacted 50 days ago - it was instantly flagged. [1]
I've designed systems in place in both defence and telecommunications. I don't trust any aspect now that updates without thorough audit, you might not like it, but that is undeniably relevant to this place. I did not post it to wage some political battle, it is in response to one waged upon us all. [2]
The second half responds directly to the submitted article, offering a rational position on why China might persue active measures while speculating on why media bylines might push disgust. I've not minced words, I am from the UK so the burden is upon you to tell us what the ideal replacement population is in a country which rejects theocracy, believes in equality before the law and loves its pets to bits? Theil and so Palantir predict it as a potential destiny of ours, our loved ones and our descendants. [3]
Now, if we were to search 'racist' here on HN, over the last month there's over 100 pages of unchallenged comment. When this term is used carelessly without justification or applied to groups it is most insidious, we can accurately label it psychological manipulation and if I myself was inclined to resort to buzzwords, a form of social fascism that would make Trotsky proud. Yet this perversion and weaponisation of language you accept.
If we search covid or corona there's many many pages on what we can see from Belarus and Sweden has been an overblown flu. The masks and disguises pushed have normalised many cases of leering towards others, psychological violence and have terrified us unduly. I have personally witnessed conflict on the street because of them.
Amongst the first cases in America included a victim of a motorcycle accident and many folk in my country are being diagnosed as Covid despite unrelated conditions. My family work in large hospitals so I do not write this without care or insight but because conversation here, of which there is much, flows in only one direction. This unwavering compliance in my view makes our societies vulnerable to behavior that Sanger would term Evil [4].
It is why I hardly spend my time here now. Previously most my downtime was spent in this place learning about wonderous new advances and gaining invaluable insight. Now when I come here, I leave demoralised.
Hailing from working class roots you gave me a greater education than what my state school could bestow. I've the benefit or the curse of not being in your bubble, in real life if I revert to my natural dialect you would look down on me, so I had to adopt the Queens to be able to walk amongst you.
You've created a cradle of intelligent discourse with a community to be cherished so I understand the quandry in preserving that but I would never dream of issuing these names upon you but if you really want me to I suppose the one that springs to mind would be Agent Smith. ;)
I would ask you to think twice before you kill the canaries in the coal mine - they stick their necks out to prevent destabilisation reaching a crisis or a civil war. If it all goes south and they come for me, don't make my last word be your handle dang!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450889
[2] https://twitter.com/andrewgodwin/status/1268233565713522689?...
[3] https://youtu.be/iRleB034EC8?t=2357
[4]...
We had someone in here exclaim you'd censor those who held the opposing view so I guess we found balance in that sense.
This is not to say that scientists, engineers, or doctors make for better policymakers. Perhaps there is a case to be made that career politicians have skillsets that validate the need to specialize in politics. However, the stereotype of career politicians is that of ignorance with no understanding of subject matter for the things that they make policies for. This impression was cemented further after the hearing between Zuckerberg and Congress about Facebook. This video even plays it for laughs: "Zuckerberg explains the internet to Congress", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncbb5B85sd0. For the government to help its people, it needs to incentivize diversity within its ranks so that it can understand the variety of issues that it faces. It also needs to be able to adapt to changing realities.
Regarding what Tang talks about: I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments (I hear the TV show Black Mirror is similar) that the Western world would never be able to pull off. Regardless of where one stands on this issue, I do not think it can be denied that a lot can be learned about how these systems operate at scale or how the machine runs. From the reports and stories that we get to hear about, it seems like the Chinese government is implementing technology at scales that most countries could ever dream of doing.
Or rather, most countries could only dream of creating technological systems of control with the degree of acceptance by the populace, with degree of penetration and overall dissemination. Western governments have implemented comparable systems, like the ones that Edward Snowden pointed out. However, if governments did not worry about hiding questionable activity, maybe it could double down on the level of sophistication and expand on its capabilities.
> I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments that the Western world would never be able to pull off.
Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment?
I seriously cannot think of an example so Im open to the fact you know more about my known unknowns.
Are you justifying unethical experiments on Uighurs by the chinese government ?
I agree with you. This is why populations, no matter which population it is, are more likely to accept the government who has substantially increased the quality of life of the average citizen. This is a very hard position to disagree with, I think. Many citizens in the Western world also have had stable political systems despite the massive wrongdoings of their governments because for the most part, governments have not overstepped their bounds in comparison to the stability provided.
It's like having a goodness-to-shittiness ratio that each citizen subconsciously evaluates with an accompanying flowchart. The average citizen thinks to himself or herself: Is my government doing bad things? Yes. Is my government doing good things? Yes. Is the government doing enough bad things to make me care? No. If the answer is yes, then the next question is: Do I care enough to do something about it? Most of the time, the answer is no because society pushes me to remain being a busybody (job, life responsibilities, etc.) or I just don't care.
> Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment?
I could have phrased that better: All governments are capable and have a history of some kind of unethical experiment. I think that it is rarer that it is at this level of scale and with this level of technical sophistication. My thought was that generally, a Western government would not successfully pull off this prototype with neither the degree of success or extent.
I personally do not know what is happening at the granular level and I do not pretend to know. I wish I did, and for that matter, at any point in time there will be shady things going on that we do not know. Maybe we will learn in a few decades.
For the first time, we get to see what control through the digital lens of information technology looks like when combined with the capacity to enact state-sanctioned violence. It's like the cyberpunk genre, except privately-owned corporations do not yet have a significant capacity to use violence. Maybe we'll have the honor of seeing that by the end of this century.
On that note, the closest thing the USA has done in subjugating populations of citizens in a systematic way is the internment camps of Japanese Americans for no reason. They apologized 4 decades later. What good is an apology if you've been waiting for most of the victims to die anyway? Nonetheless, it still gained notoriety (eventually), and people still fought for recognition afterward.
Totalitarian states tend to have a good run, where they have a good leader and energetic administration, then they become lethargic and dysfunctional, and because there's no mechanism to correct this, they start falling apart. (However, this can take centuries).
As an aside, I don't think the West has ever been particularly keen on democracy. I think Israel is the only democracy that has ever received substantial military and economic support. For dictatorships, this kind of support is basically routine (see Egypt, for a typical example).
If you look at transitions like the english civil war, or the french revolution, the clear precondition of revolution is not 'stability', as you think, but rather systemic dysfunction compounded by incompetent leadership. This kind of situation is one which democracies, in theory, should be much less vulnerable to.
Your ideas about the relative balance of power between state and people make some sense, I think, but they only matter when the threat is internal dissent. Most of the states in modern europe had a form of republicanism enforced on them by the French, who were able to invade all their neighbors because their republican government was (while very dysfunctional) more efficient and able to field talented officers and large armies.
A modernised military, moreover, consists of normal people - and they will also feel the disillusionment and apathy that grips really dysfunctional regimes. Saudi Arabia, for example, fields armies of terrible soldiers, using the most advanced weapons available.
China is an interesting and very weird state, because it's a very old civilization with deep roots, with very different basic ideas to the west, and they have turned marxism into a kind of managerial culture for an extremely capitalist society. I don't know if they will follow any of the typical patterns that totalitarian states follow. You can't really use the USSR as a point of comparison, because the USSR was a very European project, coming directly out of the enlightenment, and the western political tradition. Nor would Korea make sense, since they were colonized, and both North and South represent different reactions to colonial subjugation.
The precondition of the English civil war in my opinion was more the funds that facilitated it promised by financiers from Amsterdam who ultimately went on to be granted charter to found the BoE.
As you know the result of this civil war was to wreck the fine castles, history and heritage of the English. Destroy many a dynasty and teach the Irish to hate the Brits for all eternity.
Issac D'Israeli produced a worthwhile read on Charles [1] if you'd like to know more on his character and quarry.
[1] https://archive.org/details/commentariesonli03disruoft/page/...
The teeth was taken from all monarchies, or BDFLs, after Bolsheviks were sent from Germany to murder Tsar Nicholas and his family in an act that ultimately condemned 66m Russians.
In my opinion if you want a stable democracy you enfranchise those who would look to a future beyond their own. e.g. one vote per family. If you franchise those who live for today with not a stake in the future democracy becomes not a viable form of governance.
As for unethical experiments, Mao's certainly top the charts.
"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ROC transitioned from a one-party military dictatorship to a multi-party democracy with a semi-presidential system."
If you ask the locals, they'll tell you it's to protect them from the Uighurs. It seems the conflict there is (was?) a real problem, with Han Chinese being murdered regularly with some communities having to put the men on watch at night.
The schools for example had officers with submachine guns when it was time to let out, and giant vehicle barricades. I suppose this could be to scare people. But that's what's there.
Russian original: https://les.media/articles/863622-zavodnoy-mandarin
Englisch translation: https://bylinetimes.com/2019/11/18/beyond-orwells-worst-nigh...
German translation: https://www.dekoder.org/de/article/uiguren-kasachen-china-xi...