Today. Today, everyone knows about it. The unpleasant parts of history have a tendency of disappearing. In a hundred years time, we might only remember Xanadu.
Further, despite the Mongols comprising a good part of the population, China is forcing Chinese language onto them (the Inner Mongolia state) and has begun to gradually phase out their native language.
Or the China-relations zeitgeist only has room for one story at a time and the rest get ignored. It's very hard to know these things deeply when we don't speak the language or understand the history. This story might be the first time readers find out about China caring about Mongols at all
It stands to reason that had Nazi Germany not attacked its neighbors, the rest of the world would have happily stood by and watched them execute their own Jewish/undesirables population with nothing more than some strongly-worded letters and trade sanctions.
Yes, sure, that's the prevailing opinion probably since even before WW2 had ended. Though without attacking neighbours, the scale of Holocaust would be greatly limited, since just a small fraction of all the killed people lived within the borders of pre-war Germany.
If we look at all the (many!) genocides of 20th century, it's clear that the world is not going to respond with military intervention as long as you're executing your own 'undesirables' and not attacking your neighbours.
You mean like when tibet was invaded, and the whole world immediately joined forces to stop that. Hmm. I think it is more "what is close to the west is important to the west". People dont count, not even today. Money and economics count. People are born every day. It is a cruel world that claims humanity exists to cloud its own shortcomings. It is sad to watch.
The public knew of work camps but did not know the conditions. It's my understanding the Nazis later turned some of the camps into death camps and attempted to keep that a secret. I believe the war was already underway by then. The world was a very different place as well. Segregation and eugenics were accepted practice back then.
Most likely. People often forget that before the invasion of Poland in 1939 Germany had already annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. So even attacks on neighbouring nations had to escalate quite a bit before any action was taken by the UK and France.
I meant actual action. The Munich agreement was just a meeting that allowed Germany to keep things up without making any concessions in return.
From the wikipedia article that you linked:
> Today, the Munich Agreement is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement, and the term has become "a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states".
I mean, yeah. The world stood by and let the Rwandan genocide happen, and you could argue that we let North Korea continue on with its forced labor and re-education camps today, pushing back with nothing more than strongly worded letters and trade sanctions.
Seeing this stated so clearly and prominently in an influential publication brings me hope.
I am skeptical though that many people, especially those in the position to make influential choices, especially those who have profit tied up with China, will do anything other than see it and nod.
One possibility is that some economic pressure can be brought to bear by a Biden administration, perhaps in concert with other Western countries.
Edited to add: This statement is political, but the genocide against Uyghurs is political too, and if we want to hold our leaders accountable to doing something about it, we need to acknowledge facts. Trump had previously indicated he wasn't interested in letting such matters interfere with trade talks. https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslims-sanctions-d4dc86f...
What exactly did Biden do to stand up to China during the Obama/Biden administration (or throughout his political career)? Here’s an incomplete list of things Trump has done:
- He refers to the Wuhan Virus as the China/Chinese Virus (CCP is trying very hard from distancing themselves from responsibility; they won’t even let us into Wuhan to investigate).
- He started a trade war with China, which has forced companies to move their manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, Taiwan, etc. (Biden admittedly said he would end Trump’s China tariffs, but the many companies that already left are unlikely to return), and even high end tech such as the iPhone is starting to get assembled outside China as well.
- He was the first US President to speak directly with Taiwan's President since 1979.
- He made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past few decades.
- The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was signed under his administration.
- The TAIPEI Act was signed under his administration.
- Meng Wanzhou was arrested under his administration (which dragged Canada into it because China decided to arbitrarily arrest Canadian citizens).
- China Mobile was blocked from offering services in the US, citing national security risks.
- Huawei was blocked from using Android and chips with US tech (which will effectively kill their mobiles once their stock runs out).
- Huawei was blocked from building 5G networks (USA paid other nations to block them as well).
- Hong Kong’s special status was revoked.
- Universal Postal Union agreed to let countries raise postal rates after Trump threatened to leave - this means you’ll no longer be able to buy cheap junk from Aliexpress (and resellers like Wish) at no shipping cost (the receiving country was previously forced to deliver the products for free, even if you brought some toy for 10 cents).
- Trump is pushing for WTO to drop China’s developing country status.
- TikTok and WeChat (likely with more to come) would’ve been blocked by now if it wasn’t for judges temporarily blocking the bans.
China’s GDP growth in 2019 was also the lowest it’s been since 1990, and 2020 will be even lower. And China’s reputation around the world is at an all-time low (because all over the world then everyone is discussing everything Trump says, and he often attack China).
Also, China’s behavior is nothing new. The only thing that’s new is the fact that we finally have a president that for whatever reasons decided to turn them into his enemy. If EU and the rest of the world had any interest in standing up to China then they could implement their own tariffs, give 5G contracts to their own nation’s companies, etc. But they, just like the Obama/Biden administration, have no interest in doing so.
I'm referring specifically to the Uyghur situation. Trump may have done all sorts of things China doesn't like, and I'm not interested in getting into a general political debate about the merits of each of those things, but he hasn't done much about the Uyghur situation, aside from when his arm's been twisted by Congress. His personal concern in Chinese trade policy seems mainly to be mercantilist (minimizing trade deficits and whatnot).
What exactly can he do outside of economics sanction? It’s either that or saber rattling. We don’t want a war with China, that would be a global catastrophe. We just want to keep them in check long enough for communism to inevitably collapse once again.
Economic sanctions would be good, if they were conditioned on China's treatment of Uyghurs. But they're not.
Right now, to the extent that they're conditioned on anything at all (and I'm going to refrain from a broader critique of Trump's goals and methods of negotiation here), they're conditioned on trade balance, intellectual property, currency manipulation, 5G, and the like. Some of these are worthy objectives, some not. But at the end of the day, they do nothing for the Uyghur population if Trump says to Xi, "do whatever you want with the Uyghurs, I don't care; I just want you to buy more of our stuff".
For leverage to work on issue A, you actually have to say (and follow through on): "If you do A, I'll do X, and if you don't do A, I'll do Y." If you replace A with B, you can't expect any traction on issue A.
Except he actually encouraged China to continue its concentration camps.
I'm very anti-Trump (being a brown guy it's hard not to be) but his China policy is much better than any of the last several Presidents'. That said, I wish he had more of a human rights mindset and less of a money mindset. You can bet that if some aspect of the trade balance hinged on the Uighurs, he'd be advocating for it.
What exactly is political about genocide? Genocide is a byproduct of ideological derangement.
American corporations are beholden to China’s massive market and Biden is beholden to American corporations. It is far more likely that Biden capitulates to China than puts any economic pressure on them.
My dictionary defines political as "relating to the government or the public affairs of a country". Given that genocide is the policy of the Chinese government, it's a political matter.
Mutual hatred is a powerful unifying force, it is not beyond dictators to use this as a tool to enhance their power. You shouldn’t take autocrats at face value, their public interaction is much more staged for effect than people seem to believe. In that way, genocide is just another political trick.
I’m skeptical that there’ll be any action just as there has been no action after similar stories elsewhere in pretty high-profile media outlets.
The Washington Post ran the op-ed "China’s attacks on Uighur women are crimes against humanity” almost a year ago. [1] Foreign Policy magazine ran the argument "China Must Answer for Cultural Genocide in Court” in December last year. [2] The Atlantic ran a piece headlined "Saving Uighur Culture From Genocide” a week ago, too. [3]
And I think ’see it and nod’ is about right. We can’t say we didn’t know, we just decided there were other things that we prefered to be doing than stop it.
What needs to happen is prominent people the Chinese population pays attention to need to call out and embarrass the state. The NBA taking a stand would have been great.
China has extremely powerful group of lobbying. They have ability to control a nation. They have silenced a peaceful protest condemning Uyghurs treatment in germany - "...Think about your family" they said.[2] I doubt even Germany could do anything. Just yesterday, they raised concern of referring Genghis Khan as mongol, shamelessly trying to rewrite history.[1]
I heard a Yale history professor make a similar claim that the Huns were closely related to the nomadic people now in mongolia. I’m sure china is saying so for propaganda reasons but the best propaganda contains a lot of truth.
If anything can be considered the canary in the coal mine for a threat to world peace, this is it. Most people alive to day have experienced nothing but an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. It's easy to take it for granted that progress is inevitable, and that wide scale war is a thing of the past. But the CCP's actions against the Uyghurs has shown the world what kind of leader China would be on the world stage. The CCP under the current leadership is the biggest threat to world peace that we've faced in our lifetimes.
We should all be pressing our governments to take every peaceful means we can to curtail the rise of CCP power and influence.
Collectivism can find a justification for almost any atrocity. Collectivist ideologies (which includes Nazism) have a pretty well-worn track record of inciting mass murder and Chinese communism was a clear example long before the oppression of the Uighurs. Hearing about the reality of enforcing the one-child policy was enough for me to make up my mind on the CCP.
The problem isn't collectivism but tribalism. The Han majority in this case don't extend their sympathy to the Uighurs or the Tibetans or the Mongols. The self-described Aryans didn't extend their sympathy to the Jews or the slavs or the Romany. There are plenty of individualists in the US who are indifferent or hostile to other "tribes", blacks or hispanics or native Americans or simply city dwellers, while being very solicitous of the interests of their tribe. I'm sure the Confederacy was full of rugged individualists. They loved Davy Crocket, who died at the Alamo defending the right to enslave Africans and seize land from Mexicans.
Yes, tribalism is at the root of all group-on-group conflict. There are two governing ideologies to deal with this: collectivism and individualism. Collectivism attempts to unite the tribes, so to speak, while individualism seeks to shrink each tribe to a party of one. Obviously tribal warfare happens no matter what, but I think the historical record is pretty clear about which one has done a better job of minimizing it.
It's incredibly sad that the world is not doing anything about it. Even if half of the things they say are true - putting anyone in camps for sporting a beard or praying in public, forced prison labour, physical torture, separating new borns and kids from parents in camp, sending kids to brainwashing schools, sexual abuse, organ harvesting etc - it's enough to make anyone feel disgusted at this state of affairs.
But the west won't care because of the ethnicity and religions of the victims just doesn't cause as much outrage as it should because the victims aren't white or christians. I know some of you will outraged at this suggestion but even Hollywood knows this - that's why the in one of the Rambo movies, where he is in Myanmar / Burma, the victims are Christians (instead of highlighting the real victims there, the Rohingya muslims facing persecutions - another genocide that the west prefers to turn a blind eye to).
There are a number of problems with your comparison, but the most fundamental is that the Uyghurs are being persecuted as citizens by their own government.
What can the world realistically do? China right now has enormous power over the rest of the world (by means of economical dependency), and I don't see that decreasing.
To be clear, I certainly support human rights, but I personally see the situation as so bad, that I'm worried about how China's influence will extend to the West.
Trade embargos? Small ones at first, with an clear plan to plan and timeline to escalate if there's no change. Of course, it would mean putting the lives of those poor people our over our comfort, which means it won't happen.
While on one hand, a coordinated punishment may be effective, on the other hand, I think China has the power to buy other countries' consent step by step.
Additionally, I think China would never relent; doing so would be an admission of guilt, which is poisonous for their regime.
> Additionally, I think China would never relent; doing so would be an admission of guilt, which is poisonous for their regime.
They could spin it in the same manner as Putin - "those degenerate Western bastards are against us, we need to be strong and united to face them etc.".
If anything the last year has shown that the economy is more reconfigurable than what was previously thought. Meanwhile, new green-dealers are promoting moving manufacturing back to Europe to deal with the climate crisis.
One solution is to use the ECB to print money, which is fine so long as the new money is used to build public assets and the majority of the new money is absorbed by labor. The core competency of EU innovation programs is micromanaging hourly expenditures. I'm sure some of that machinery could be moved over to building public assets in a way that doesn't overly enrich the holders of capital.
Sanctions, punitive trade policy, rules about government contracts going to Chinese companies, participation in FoN and similar exercises, issuing arrest warrants, making this a factor in immigration / visa / asylum decisions (favourable to those affected, unfavourable to those responsible), etc.
But step one would be just to raise it in a diplomatic context. Most of the world seems unwilling to do even that.
> but I personally see the situation as so bad, that I'm worried about how China's influence will extend to the West.
Yes but I fear it’s even worse. Their influence has already extended into the west and has for at least a decade now. Not only are consumers dependent on cheap crap, but Western corporations are dependent on China’s massive market. And politicians are dependent on Western corporations...
I'm not outraged by the suggestion, but I'm not sure it's true either.
Maybe race and theology play a role for a few people, but I think the vast majority would be just as apathetic if they were a white, christian group, as long as they were as socially distant from us as the Uyghurs are from us (imagine some kind of Amish-style group that had been living there socially isolated from us for centuries)
Of course this is hard to verify empirically, but I think it's an important distinction.
The thing is, the west has chosen the "Christian, white identity" for its "us vs them" political discourse.
Yes, their democracy does strive to push multiculturalism today (it didn't in the past), but politically this identity is important as only that spans borders and allows them to forge strong political ties. They need to because older civilizations like in Asia and the middle-east out number them. Apart from this, it's basic politics that you have to seem superior than others to wield power. Thus, imperialism spread the idea that the white christian was put on earth to educate the rest and even rule over them. That is why white colonies - like the US, Canada, Australia etc. had more freedom and rights than the occupied colonies like India, China, middle east, Africa etc whose citizen where heavily discriminated against by the conquerors.
In today's modern world, this superiority is showcased through technical advancement, peace and prosperity - thus, US and UK made a concerted effort to ensure that conflicts among European countries ended or became minor irritants, and they appeared united. Thus the US, Canada, Europe, Australia all together project a united front through a strong economic and military alliance. And they also make sure that their close allies (that allow a military base) also flourish economically - that is one of the reason why Israel, Korea and Japan have a thriving economy (but a not so independent military).
To reinforce this perception they also cause conflict among the weaker nations. The old British policy of divide and rule continues to strive as historical grievances between countries are used to keep them fighting each other - thus today conflicts continue in South America, Africa, Asia and Eurasia. And they are fueled by the west taking sides as they please.
Another major reason for creating conflicts is to ensure that their military continues to have fighting experience - thus they are also regularly send to these conflict zones. (Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria being current examples. While it was Vietnam and Korea in the past).
The biggest fear of the west is an Asia without conflict - If India and China and Japan resolve their differences, and work together, the age of the west as we know it will be over. Hence their desperate attempt to manipulate and push China into more and more conflict with India, Japan and Korea. And try to get these countries to agree to a military alliance with the west (the quad alliance - US, India, Japan and Australia ... India is the only holdout here).
I don't understand what's the point of UN when these things are happening in a permanent UNSC member country. This C has been causing nuisance to their neighbors all the time. They Debt-Trap poor nations and exploit them. From Mongols to India, every neighbor has a problem, they are probably most worst neighbor you could get. Recently it was in news with yet another conflict with India[1]. This needs to stop. Entire World is Struggling to contain COVID while 600 million Chinese are on Vacation [2]
Then on 16 October 2017, in New York, the United Nations General Assembly elected Australia to serve on the Human Rights Council (HRC) for the 2018-20 term.
Witness K and the 'outrageous' spy scandal that failed to shame Australia
> So bugging a political opponent's room is comparable to exterminating an entire ethnic group?
That's your association, not mine.
I posted to illustrate that membership of a UN council doesn't require ethics or morality.
The consequences of spying on East Timor to gain an advantage in negotiations over oil reserves were that new nation's only source of foreign revenue was severely compromised. East Timorese lived in poverty and the new government was weakened. Is that so different from what bothers you about the plight of the Uyghurs?
> To be frank, that spy scandal is not in the same genre of the other abuses that are being discussed by OP/GP and others.
I don't mind if you are frank, sushicalculus, in fact I welcome it, so long as you are informed.
In the case of East Timor, you should know that Australia was happy to stand by while Indonesia treated the East Timorese similarly to how China treats the Uyghyrs. Australia only acted after the United States lead, and then did its best to weaken the fledgling East Timor government by cheating it out of oil rights.
On the subject of Australian complicity "in the same genre of the other abuses that are being discussed by OP/GP and others", do you know what is happening in West Papua?
The UN isn't and isn't supposed to be a political body. It isn't idealistic and it isn't designed to prevent human rights abuses. It is designed to prevent nuclear war between SC members. The HRC is not going to prevent or even deter human rights abuses, it never has.
The UN isn't a world government, isn't supposed to be.
Basically, the UN is a moot point. The UN is not going to do anything about Uygyur persecution in China. Neither is anti-UN shite.
Cuba has a much better human rights record than Russia, China and the USA, at least as far as their impact on other countries goes. The presence of Saudi Arabia in the Human Rights council is a much worse travesty anyway, by any measure.
If we're going by who has the best records, then you open up a whole can of worms. I agree when you say that Cuba has a better record in recent decades than Russia, the US, and China. If you go back far enough though, even Cuba had violations. And if you go back even further (Batista), you're talking about out and out horrors.
Now of course, where does that stop? Because if we go back in US, Russian, and Chinese history the violations are out and out horrible as well. Some bordering on genocide. (I'm sure if you're a native American, you would say they were genocide.)
Point is, you can't always just throw the human rights violations of great powers into their faces all the time. The countries that are doing so well today in terms of respect for human rights, all had their problems in the past. They don't have problems today probably because they are not powers, let alone great powers. If we demand a spotless past, we'd end up with nothing but, like, eswatini or something. Politically speaking, you have to have the great powers on board.
Would it be better if these powers were not as openly hypocritical as they are? Yes, but that's just how the world works. A necessary evil in my opinion. The council would mean less than it does now if there was just eswatini or botswana or something sitting there saying, "You guys have violations."
The Security Council nations all agreed that rules didn't apply to Security Council nations. The issue here is the UN has zero power to stop this and that's by design.
USA, EU members, Canada, Japan, Australia to start have a lot of power to make China think twice. SANCTIONS!
Start with small sanctions first and then a sliding scale if they keep going. But good luck getting them all in the same page, they'll try to cheat and cut backroom deals with China.
Nobody sanctioned USA when George W started two wars on a whim against global community. So, no, nobody is going to sanction China, for exactly the same reasons.
The point of UN and UNSC is as a venue to talk about these things and negotiate solutions - it's not like it ever was an option to have an UN that can make binding decisions on the major powers, no major sovereign power would ever agree to that.
The default position is that a sovereign nation can do as it pleases; if other nations does not like it, they are welcome to try and force it to change with military power - but having nuclear deterrent significantly limits such options.
Since you need essentially voluntary compliance, it makes all sense that any "misbehaving" major nations have a seat on the councils (such as the Human Rights Council), since any decision made without involving them would be just completely worthless empty words.
> The point of UN and UNSC is as a venue to talk about these things and negotiate solutions - it's not like it ever was an option to have an UN that can make binding decisions on the major powers, no major sovereign power would ever agree to that.
You know, the original intent of UN was of an organisation to do exactly this. After the second world war, the determination was made that the no pill is too bitter to prevent the next third reich from coming to existence. And that the free nations will spare no price in blood, nations sovereignty, and economic damage to achieve that.
The UN was then sabotaged in its infancy by the very same major powers who vouched to back it. I will let readers to research by themselves who was the biggest proponent of admitting USSR to UN.
The early history of UN was of it being a Western nations club, and a quite potent body. The later didn't fared well with the same major powers in the West. Look who was the biggest opponent of resolution 377 historically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
And which country was the first one to start dropping bombs on other sovereign countries without a UN mandate? If I remember correctly, it was not China. They never dropped a single bomb on any other country.
It's not whataboutism when GP is not-so-subtly accusing China of being the root cause of the problems with the UN. The point it that the problems run much deeper than that.
While it might have been the intent, that was never a realistic option.
The treaties and decisions of UN can only be binding on the members iff they voluntarily join these treaties. If USSR wasn't admitted to UN, then UN would be even more useless than historically. If UN was designed to be more strict - to require effective, significant delegation/surrender of sovereignty - then even other major powers would not join, and it would also be even more useless than historically.
Theoretically there could be a model of "UN" that would consist of the West trying to impose their decisions on the whole world. But that would require both the will and the ability to actually enforce these decisions despite the cost in blood, and there is neither.
Regarding will, it would have to be sort of like a military aggressive super-NATO - which "the west" was not willing to do; there's a reason why the NATO treaties are strictly as a defensive alliance, and even then limiting the territories which will be defended (so i.e. a military attack on British and French overseas colonies would not trigger any obligations from NATO); and regarding the ability - throughout the Cold War the West was obviously not capable to unilaterally force USSR to do anything, so a super-UN was impossible, and the current UN was the most that was achievable.
It's not some global authority that will deal with all issues with fairness and justice.
It's pretty much a way to keep countries connected and acts as a common medium for countries to interoperate. It's pretty toothless and obviously so - sovereign countries aren't just going to hand over power like that.
What’s the point of you second anecdote[2]??? Chinese people suffered the first remember and get it in control. they are well deserved for whatever vacation they want to have. The second half of your comment looks like provocation.
As for the “worst” neighbor part, you can’t just focus on one side of the story. Check the economic statistics and ask the business owners in those neighbor countries if they think China is the worst neighbor. Ask if they want to be given a “better” neighbor while cut their revenue in half. People do benefit from China economically a lot .
Also Everyone wants more in terms of borders and ocean resources, don’t be too biased.
What I was thinking as well. "How dare they holiday in their own country where COVID is under control!". We have everything pretty under control in NZ and people are traveling domestically, but I would like to think we are pretty good neighbours...
The UN(SC) isn't and has never been a "just solution" or even idealistic in any way. It was and is a way to stop (ultimately nuclear) confrontation between members to prevent WWIII.It has been instrumental to this goal, and this is the actual purpose of the UN. The General Assembly is a nicety.
At different points in time, any member could have had such charges like you make leveled at them. This doesn't mean crimes against the Uyghurs (and indigenous people more broadly) should not be challenged, but "abolish the UN" isn't going to help.
> It was and is a way to stop (ultimately nuclear) confrontation between members to prevent WWIII.It has been instrumental to this goal, and this is the actual purpose of the UN. The General Assembly is a nicety.
No, it is not. The exact purpose of UN's founding was for it to be an instrument with which the West would smack down the next third reich wannabe country before it gets too powerful.
I don't think border changes are a good measure of conflict. Iraq's border hasn't changed since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and it's had plenty of well known conflict since then.
> I guess lessons have expiration dates. We're going to have to relearn this one.
Which lesson are you talking about? The lessons we should have learned after the League of Nations collapsed?
Border changes aren't a measure of conflict, and preventing conflict is not the ultimate goal. Preventing total/nuclear war between major power is the goal. Border changes are (were) the way conflicts escalated into the great wars.
This why "aggression," the one international "law" that is taken seriously basically means border violations. The few non voluntary border changes since the late 40s (eg crimea, the west bank) are (despite generations) not recognized by the UN.
All the low power UN institutions cloud people's understanding of the core. The core is the UNSC, non aggression and a few other principle/institutions designed to prevent (basically) the US and Russia/USSR from destroying the world and the cold war cold.
It's not even designed to do last minute conflict resolution. It is designed to take the motive/gain out of war. The lesson is how major war has been avoided for 75 years largely because we can't go from pretence (China's terrible crimes in Xianjing) to war. Pretence will always exist. Major wars are preventable.
This is completely rewriting history. The purpose of the UN is quite literally:
> To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace
That is directly copy pasted from the UN founding charter, it goes on to talk about friendly relations, cooperation and harmony. You can read the rest here if you like:
The only lesson that the UN has learned from the LON, is that if you kick countries out for breaking the rules, then the whole thing falls apart. So in those situations, the UN takes the approach of doing nothing.
> It's not even designed to do last minute conflict resolution. It is designed to take the motive/gain out of war.
This is also rewriting history. The reason we haven't had a major conflict since WWII is because every country capable of creating one has nukes now, and nobody wants to get into a major conflict with a country that has nukes. The reason the US and USSR never got into a direct conflict during the cold war was because they both had nukes, not because the USSR was a member of the UN. Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis together (without the help of the UN incidentally) because neither of them wanted to be nuked, not because they were worried about the other one complaining to the UN.
> I don't understand what's the point of UN when these things are happening in a permanent UNSC member country.
It’s a venue for political theatre. Otherwise it’s a pretty good system for funnelling money to corrupt regimes and other NGOs.
The argument that it’s an essential tool for diplomatic relations is pretty much bunk. No country relies on the UN to have diplomatic relations with any other country.
It’s predecessor, the League of Nations, had the decency to dissolve itself after realising how useless it was. The only difference between the LON and the UN, is that the UN has never got around to doing that, despite failing to achieve anything.
Your second link seems largely irrelevant to the topic at hand and segues from discussion of the persecution of Uyghers into a generic anti-China rant, of which there are many on other internet forums nowadays.
> They [China] Debt-Trap poor nations and exploit them.
Please don't be racist and mention China's use of these debt mechanisms without also mentioning the West's use of them. Debt-trapping is something that North America and European countries perfected first, in the modern age [1] [2].
Any research by Jason Hickel, Ha-Joon Chang, Paulo Freire, Walter Rodney and others on this topic reveals a very different story from the 'Captain America' version of American statesmanship that is propagandized by Marvel, and Hollywood in general.
May I ask what's wrong with the vacation? There was very, very few cases in China recently, and the 600M Chinese vacation are almost entirely domestic travel.
This is the major humanitarian issue of our time. It's time to put aside profits and apply economic pressure to end this (and other crimes against tibetans, mongols etc). Does the enlightenment project in the West have any energy left?
> This is the major humanitarian issue of our time.
Not even close. There's reportedly 120,000 - 1m Uyghurs imprisoned, but even this is less than the deaths due to Coronavirus. Climate change will displace and kill more. We will also have to see what happens with the conflict in the Caucuses, but the civil war in Syria has displaced 6m people.
“Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.” ― Ronald Reagan
I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that this strategy has to be adopted with China as well. They are out to win, to dominate the world, and they won't back down, and they will use any method to do it. And ask yourself if the world you see inside China is what you want spreading.
It should be acknowledged that this strategy ultimately ended up with the Taliban and our 20+ year occupation of Afghanistan and various massacres throughout central america.
> The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over 138 administration officials
And the freeing of half of Europe from tyranny. The reduction in threat of nuclear annihilation of the world. The opening up of huge amounts of the world to free trade and prosperity.
I think it's fair to say that the role of US policies, and Reagan's policies in particular, on the fall of the Soviet Union is a matter of some debate.
It's easy to say in hindsight, but Reagan's attitude could easily have escalated the cold war and caused a nuclear attack.
The entire debacle during the cold war was less strong and smart political leaders and more pure luck. We now know that there were people that, if they had followed protocol, would have taken that extra step to nuclear deployment. The only reason they didn't is sheer, dumb luck.
If the lessons we learn from history are to deify the actions of men like Reagan, then I truly hope that we have more of that luck in our future.
Your points on nuclear brinkmanship are good. It's an absolutely horrible prospect.
But what do you suggest as an alternative? Standing by and doing nothing is certainly not my preferred option. If the premise is that the export of tyranny must be stopped, what should be done?
Reducing the problem to its absurd conclusion: ceding liberties because the risk of war is too great, is not an acceptable choice. Hopefully today's reality will not be that extreme, but that's ultimately where we'll end up.
> The reduction in threat of nuclear annihilation of the world
He also walked away from what would have been the most monumental nuclear reductions agreement, including the elimination of all ICBMs and possibly all strategic nuclear weapons in both countries, because he refused to give up the pipe dream of the Star Wars program. [1]
> the freeing of half of Europe from tyranny.
While Reagan’s foreign policy did play a part, the fall of the USSR was more a culmination of decades of economic stagnation, decades of costly arms race military spending, and an incredibly costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan (that sounds familiar). Also Mikhail Gorbachev and his radical policy shifts with Glasnost and Perestroika played a massive part in setting the stage for the collapse. It could also be argued that Bush Sr’s policy shift to a lighter touch in Europe to allow for the revolutions to proceed organically, as opposed to Reagan pushing them with American support, allowed Gorbachev to avoid coups and stay in power to oversee a peaceful collapse, rather than a violent last spasm that many hardliners wanted. Reagan absolutely had a part to play, but he was by no means the architect of the end of the USSR.
I mean, it also led to the fall of a tyrannical regime that murdered tens of millions and was every bit as sadistic and evil as Nazi Germany. So there's that.
Well whether or not Reagan's strategy of "we win, they lose" was the cause, what's beyond dispute is that America won and the Soviets lost. To which I say, thank fucking God.
Is the US really much better than China? We do similar to black, Native American, and immigrant people. I'm not sure I want either winning in their current state.
The US has concentration camps for blacks, native americans and immigrants, where they reeducate you to follow a tyrannical political system? Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad? Where journalists repeteadly disappear? Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
Camps yes, but if you're going to be technical, it's actually spread through out the United States and not just at the border and it is bad when you compare it to other developed countries.
Forced surgeries and sterilizations? For a claim like that, you're going to have to cite a credible source. As imperfect as we are, we're not as bad as China.
Yes and that’s a problem. The way to fix it is not part of the system and that’s a major issue. You need freedom of speech at a very minimum. China does not have that which is why “no one sees it”
Those "concentration camps" (a ridiculous misuse of the term) only exist because people of all colors from all across the world are clamoring to move to the US for a better life. Someone had better get them the memo that the US is a tyrannical racist hellhole.
When the people did not break the law and were seeking legal asylum and when the President openly admits that imprisoning them and forcibly separating the children was to punish and discourage the completely legal asylum seekers. That’s the difference.
> the children at a facility in Clint, Texas, were sleeping on concrete floors and being denied soap and toothpaste. They described “children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears … caring for infants they’ve just met.” A visiting doctor called the detention centers “torture facilities.” At least seven children have died in U.S. custody in the past year, compared with none in the 10 years prior. More than 11,000* children are now being held by the U.S. government on any given day.
> Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the ACLU. “But this all-encompassing skepticism of asylum seekers fleeing violence—justifying cruel treatment, justifying changes in the law, and justifying overcrowding to the point of unsafe and deadly conditions—[is] of a scale and a type that we haven’t seen before.”
> The Trump administration has previously deliberately inflicted suffering on children to deter illegal immigration, with its use of family separation. It has altered immigration policy and the asylum process so as to force the authorities to hold migrants, whether they have properly sought asylum at a port of entry or crossed illegally [1]
I believe the general definition of a "concentration camp" is:
"A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."
sad part in this question is "there is not much difference" because everything depends on what laws were broken to be put inside of that institution.
you may have law which makes being muslim illegal and put in jail. and that jail will become "concentration camp", but only if you view it from outside of that country.
As a minority in America I gotta say this is probably the most racist comment I have seen on HN. There is no need to call anybody out on their genetics. Its almost like people forget that absolutely nobody chooses to be born as a specified skin color or culture. Not every single "white" American is racist. That is more than absurd. Racism exists in other countries as well, we are so quick to forget Rwanda and other genocides.
The US has 2 million people locked in cages. If you seek the freedom to be locked in a cage, America is clearly the better country. Of course, America has a much higher crime rate. Those who enjoy the freedom of getting murdered are better off in the USA.
The crackdown in Xinjiang is a response to terrorist attacks. Both America and China are pretty reliable for grossly disproportionate responses to terrorist attacks that ruin the lives of millions.
Thanks for the link. That 2 million people seem to be arbitrarily thrown into cages – from what I can gather from the parents statement – threw me off.
> concentration camps for blacks, native americans and immigrants
Maybe not to the scale of China, but basically. They are prison, reservations, and immigration detention centers.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Again, not as bad in the US, probably, but we do have a credit system that can make it much more difficult for certain people to have a place to live, buy a car, or get a job. Add on the felony system, and we also take away their right to vote, and again make it harder for them to get good jobs. Finally, we even have a no-fly list.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear?
Does that happen in China? A quick Google search didn't bring up much. I do agree that the US has more freedom of speech.
> Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
We have and still regularly do this with treaties we made with Native American tribes.
Not to defend China, but the restitution of HK was agreed since long ago. And it would be naive to believe China wouldn’t have started to annex the city back, the last symbol of British colonial domination and the defeat of the Opium War.
> The US has concentration camps for blacks, native americans and immigrants, where they reeducate you to follow a tyrannical political system?
What do you think the school-to-prison pipeline and legal prison labour amount to? Black, brown and native people being forced into slavery and imprisonment. Not to mention ICE detention camps.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Ever had to get a background check for a job? To rent a house?
The only reason this is so visible in China is because it's foreign to us. We grew up with redlining and ghettos and mandatory minimums, so we don't even realize it's a different implementation of the same system
>The US has concentration camps for blacks, native americans and immigrants, where they reeducate you to follow a tyrannical political system
While not concentration camps, the US still does have residential schools where they put Native American children into Christian foster homes and educate them to follow our political system in public schools. Plus the church makes millions doing it. Certainly better, but still pretty terrible.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear? Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
The "Collateral Murder" is video evidence of the US killing journalists during their illegal invasion of a nation. You can disagree with my evaluation of those events, but it's hard to see how we have the moral high ground here.
As an immigrant who's experienced and seen both countries, yes, and that's with the US's glaring imperfections. We at least are brave enough to openly admit our faults, and it's in our history books and not whitewashed. imo that's a key step. Nothing else is possible if you can't admit that there's a problem, and getting to this step is nearly impossible without free speech
In addition to freedom of speech, we also have freedom of assembly. Combined both freedoms allow our citizens to both bring awareness to the problem(s) and to try to stop it. Is this perfect? No, but it's still better than China (at least on that front)
No Iraqi is comparing US to Iraq. I don't understand why there is always a contest between US and China. US is a developed country, and China is a developing country. It is not a beauty contest. Also there does have to be only one winner. Maybe, just maybe, there is no need to mess up another country.
China is the second richest country in the world. It has the most billionaires, and has experienced steady economic growth for decades. It baffles me that people still classify them as a developing nation.
As an econ major, it seems to me that you're only getting downvoted because HN is a typical place full of engineers with little econ understanding but lots of opinion.
Whether a country is developed or not is defined based on their standard of living per capita, not their absolute size. A country with a billion poor people has completely different social, demographic, industrial and political drivers than a country of 300m high I come people.
There is no proper framework to define a 'developed' or 'developing' country. At the WTO, individual countries are allowed to self-allocate themselves. Those in the 'developing' group then get preferential trade benefits. These trade benefits are the only reasons China holds tightly to the 'developing' country label.
These labels aren't useful for extremely large / diverse countries.
Coastal China has per capita GDP comparable to Taiwan. Interior provinces is much poorer, with 600M living on 1000RMB/month or 2000USD/year, on the level of Haiti. In aggregate China is a middle income country with per capita GDP of Iraq.
The Chinese system harnesses this income disparity + 1.4 Billion people to concentrate talent, wealth and development systematically rival developed nations. That's just a factor of scale. Quantity has a quality of its own if properly coordinated, which is basically broad TLDR of Chinese history up to industrialization. I suppose people didn't think China could catch up this fast.
Even if China has the same GDP as US, the per capital GDP will be 1/6. That's the reality. There are cities in China is comparable to western cities, especially infrastructure, because the country has invested a lot in infrastructures. Americans have to know their position. They are not developed world, they are superpower. Below US there are developed world, then developing world, then there are not-developing world (we keep forgetting them).
Personally I believe once a nation reach developed status, the main task for the government will not be generating new source of income and improve people's life financially, it will be about how to distribute wealth fairly.
I think the US is better. Our last ethnicity-based concentration camps occurred 75 years ago, and have now been repudiated by all branches of government.
This is an incredibly low-information perspective that's got to go. China is an authoritarian single-party state where citizens have no liberty, no justice, no recourse. It couldn't be more different to the US.
The ongoing demoralization of the US like this is outright sister.
> where citizens have no liberty, no justice, no recourse
Disagree if you mean in general sense. You need to define it in far more details. I guess you mean “when their interest conflicts with the government”. Ask common Chinese citizens who live a non-activist life if they agreed that they are slaves and don’t have any of those rights
The two-party (with not a huge amount of difference between them) system of the US, with a sitting president that is toying with the idea of staying president for life doesn't really paint a picture of "couldn't be more different" for an outsider.
This is absurd. As a brown immigrant Muslim looking person, not only do I feel safer in the US than I would in China, I feel safer here than in France. Americans aren’t frothing at the mouth to ban Islamic religious clothing while schoolgirls in France have to remove their headscarves.
>This is absurd. As a brown immigrant Muslim looking person, not only do I feel safer in the US than I would in China, I feel safer here than in France.
Do muslim looking persons in muslim countries feel equally well protected from America?
>Americans aren’t frothing at the mouth to ban Islamic religious clothing while schoolgirls in France have to remove their headscarves.
That sounds like more progressive. Do women's rights in the West stop when it comes to muslim women -- where we "allow" them to wear headscarves lest they get beaten up by their fathers/spouses?
Every Muslim woman I know (hundreds) who wear hijab wear it without the threat of violence from their family. It's extremely common amongst the people I know for some women in the family to wear hijab and some to not. It's not as big of a deal as non Muslims seem to think, and it's frankly offensive that you assume that people would only make that choice due to threats of violence.
>Every Muslim woman I know (hundreds) who wear hijab wear it without the threat of violence from their family
You'd be surprised. Plus, it's not like something they'll admit openly.
Second, there's also internalized violence/indoctrination, from a young age.
There is of course voluntary choice too -- even western women who have converted and adopted wearing it (in which case there's no youthful indoctrination). But for tons of muslim women in Europe, which see their non-muslim friends not having to wear any, it's imposed by their families and communities.
In moderate Muslim countries, and in the west, wearing hijab is intermediate in voluntariness. Like wearing ankle-length skirts in the 1950s in the US. In Bangladesh, where I’m from, it went from pretty much non-existent to being very common, as the export of middle eastern culture happens throughout the Islamic world. Nobody will send you to jail for not wearing it, but there is a lot of cultural pressure. I don’t like it, because I’d rather see Bangladesh lean into its Anglo heritage than its Islamic one, but that doesn’t justify making it illegal in a developed country. Even among conservatives in the US, the vast majority oppose banning hijab.
The idea that Muslim women in general are wearing headscarves because their "fathers/spouses" would beat them otherwise is a slur, and has no place here.
Or a reality for millions of women, that we conveniently hide under the carpet (after all it doesn't affect us, and we get to play "tolerant" and "open minded" to foreign customs)...
That’s the key. Western people VALUE this freedom of speech A LOT, but it’s not a prevailing concern for even most Chinese citizens.Years of enlightenment and education are needed to raise that awareness. Sadly CCP knows how to prevent you do it.
Imagine 0.01% of Chinese population have the awareness and willing to fight for it, that’ll be a huge deal already.
The fact that you are able to make this claim online (even anonymously) without any fear for your personal safety instantly proves that your claim is false.
I actually do feel a little fear whenever I make a comment like this online. That someday it will come back to get me. The United States government could easily bring back Mcarthyism anytime and start rounding up people with the wrong political views.
It's clearly worse in China, but I do feel fear, even in the US.
Somehow, someway people have been so caught up in some media firestorm that they actually think that the United States of America “does the same” as China.
When did China last have a Uighur dictator? (Since it’s a dictatorship I mean I guess they don’t really care about having representation of minority groups in positions of power). Does China have schemes to help minorities in China attend college? Are there advocate groups representing Uighu interests in Beijing? Do they have any history or education in Chinese textbooks about the Uighur or other minorities? In the US we did a lot of bad stuff (we all benefit from it now, so every single American born today is as guilty as any other) but at least we actually acknowledge it!
How many immigrants of any sort does China allow to fully immigrate into China on a yearly basis? Can a Syrian apply for a visa or move to China as a refugee?
Why are some Chinese racist against Africans and why is that overlooked? [1], [2], [3]
Does the US have problems? Yep. Even if the US “was the same”, last I checked we have protests and people campaigning to fix our issues. So even if you wanted to make the outlandish claim that “the U.S. is the same”, you can easily look around and see that at a minimum we highlight problems in our society. Who is running against Xi to stop the genocide of Uighur Muslims?
The only thing that makes sense to me here is social media. You (not you specifically) see that first outrage article and then down the scrolling and clicking hole you go until you’re just addicted to being outraged.
I put what I call America-denialism on a similar level as I do anti-vaxers, flat earth era, 9/11 truthers, or Trump deep-state conspiracy theorists. It’s just another wacky idea that you get from extended periods of time going down social media rabbit holes.
Worth noting that when Reagan was saying that the Soviets were actually absolutely terrified of US aggression - to the point where the almost started a pre-emptive nuclear war to stop it.
However, to Reagan's credit he did tone things down a bit when it was explained to him that the Soviets really did think the US would attack them.
I'm gonna get a lot of flak for this, but I think there's a massive anti-China narrative on HN. I see so much talk that's based off of people's view from an entirely Western media-centred POV. There's so much more to what's going on. There's a lot of pot calling the kettle black too. There's a lot of good stuff in the TLS from a few weeks back.
Han is the cultural race/ethnicity in mainland China. [0] It's about 92% of the population. So that's a lot of people. Is China trying to sure up its borders? Yes. Is China out for world domination, I really don't think so. Every single one of my Chinese friends is about as sweet as they come. China is the new mystery to the West, and I don't think people in the West really understand them. The amount of growth in China is outrageous. We've outsourced so much there, and then have a go at them for stuff we don't really understand.
I think GP is right in ways. I think there are some nefarious actors in China running the same plays from the playbook written by the Anglosphere war powers, but to lump it all in a say 'China bad' is, in my very under-read / under-experienced, opinion, a terrible thing.
This isn't satire. I knew I was gonna get a lot of flak. I'm sorry to have so many dissagree with me :(. I have no idea what the CPCs plans are. Much like I have no idea what my own goverments (UK) plans are. But what I do see is this kinda news creates a hatered, and that hatered finds it's ways into the culture at large, and I don't think that's a good thing.
e: and yes, I honestly belive that in China things work so diffrently to the West, that a sample of the people can actually give you a good read on what the powers are thinking / doing. Maybe cos they are all brain-washed ;) who really knows. All I'm saying is, let's try and be civil!
To give you some context, there is a massive government sponsored anti-China propaganda campaign going on in the US in order to give pretext to a Cold War style
ramping up of tensions, economic conflicts, military conflicts etc. because America sees China as an economic competitor now like it did the USSR. This article and the sentiments of so many in HN are simply the result of that campaign.
Edit: It’s not a conspiracy theory when almost every China bad news story can be sourced to organizations sponsored by the CIA.
I suppouse I want to see more UN involvement with the Organ Harvesting. It's insanely barbaric and shouldn't be happerning. But I think people like Alex Jones have given it more credit. I don't have enough data to make valid conclusion about it. But the Falun Gong practitioners I have met scared the crap out of me. It felt a lot like Scientology vibes. Does that mean we should harvest their organs? No, clearly. That's insane to like the nth-degree.
e: also, as the wiki states, Ethan Gutmann's investigations are pretty striking. Same as the China Tribunal in London. This has moved on a lot since I last read up on it. Christ.
The existence of Taiwan and the lack of any of the criticism you mention applying to it seem to be a good counterpoint to what you imply is anti-Han-Chinese sentiment. Rather, it's anti-CCP sentiment that is broad and deep in the West.
Yes - I bring up Taiwan a lot and I think Taiwan should be it's own thing. Same with HK. My cloest friend often has to deal with Han peeps hating on Hong Kongers - dinners can be quite hard sometimes. We're all trying to make peace and make bridges, not walls.
And yes, a very good point. It's imporant to split the govemerment from the people. I need to be more careful :)
Yes, I'd agree on all counts. As I said in another comment, we need to be so careful with what we are saying. I just get really upset when the anti-China-goverment narrative spills into an anti-China-people one.
> when the anti-China-goverment narrative spills into an anti-China-people one
other than sloppy posting I don't think I've ever seen that (that I can remember). Whereas I've seen a fair number of pro china posts that freely talk about 'westerners' instead of western governments. They tend to get killed pretty fast though.
That's the problem. You refuse to listen to my words. If nothing is expressed, why do you assume the opposite? In reality, most common people are happily to be there, silently, without expressing their happiness in words. People will express anger more often. The same reason that an average person living a normal life won't make into the news.
You got me there :) I guess You can always travel. It is a very different place, noisy, crowded, but you can learn about it first hand.
> China running the same plays from the playbook written by the Anglosphere war powers
Absolutely. All the comments like yours are downvoted. The West doesn't need autocracy to maintain its propaganda, its own citizens do it for them.
China is not innocent. But on what basis does the West have any moral authority to judge China's emulation of Western colonialism. I would argue very little. The West has made its bed and now it must sleep in it.
> on what basis does the West have any moral authority to judge China's emulation of Western colonialism
This is a counsel of despair and it is pure tribalism. No one in the West can condemn the actions of China the nation because the West has done analogous things in the past. So everyone in the West is guilty for everything anyone in the West has ever done. By this logic there is no basis for moral judgment ever and every group is free to dominate any other group. Might makes right. It's lovely in this scenario to claim membership in a powerful group that can take everyone else's marbles.
No one believes this about their own group. "I can't judge my neighbor for murder because we're both white. His crime is my crime." People frequently believe this about other groups. "My Chinese neighbor is a horrible person because they are Han and the Han-dominated government in China is doing horrible things to Uighurs." This is obvious nonsense. Wrong is wrong whoever the judge. It isn't the West judging China but individual Westerners. Also individual Han Chinese. Maybe even individual Han Chinese responsible for abusing the Uighurs.
> So everyone in the West is guilty for everything anyone in the West has ever done
Of course that's nonsensical and I agree with it. But I wonder what you think when it's positively framed?
So everyone in the west can _benefit_ from everything anyone in the West has ever done?
That statement seems much closer to being universally accepted. Our rights to benefit from the fruits of Western "progress"; medicine, civil rights, social security, peace, etc. Yet these things are fundamentally dependent on the historical and contemporary colonial and neo-colonial "heist" upon the rest of the world. How can we simultaneously distance ourselves from the crimes of the West and benefit from it? Actions have consequences. Yes, neither I nor my immediate ancestors (and I'm as British as can be) took part in any colonial crimes, but I sure as hell take advantage of my Western privileges. If I don't have any personal responsibility for my culture's crimes then how do I justify personally benefiting from those crimes?
Yes, I thought about that. "My neighbor of the same religion and complexion won a Nobel! I'm so smart!" Everyone is happy to put a finger on the scale for their own benefit. But this is different from everyone in the West benefitting from the telephone or whatever. They do! So does everyone in Japan. As for compound interest on historical plunder, that's another matter. I'm as American as can be (and as British in ancestry as you, I am sure). I do not believe I am responsible for the original crime. I am responsible for not acknowledging it or giving it back. But to a large extent that egg cannot be unscrambled.
We don't need to unscramble China's eggs. We need to get them to stop scrambling. The people are still alive, most of them, that are being wronged. We're not talking about 1492.
It was profoundly more than beating wives. The entire foundation of the West is based on genocides and mass theft that make the Uyghur crisis seem small. My argument is more along the lines of: our emotional reaction to Chinese colonial projects is a subconscious projection of our own unresolved acknowledgement of the price we paid for modernity.
Just to be clear, 'Han Chinese' is a group whose definition has gradually broadened over the long history of China to include more and more formerly distinct ethnic groups within it. A cynic would claim that this was a deliberate decision in order to create a much more robust, ethnically homogenous state that can more easily play up the 'us vs them' division.
You're also confusing "China" the CCP governmental apparatus, with "Chinese citizens" as individual people. When people criticise "China", it is the former they are criticising. Confusing the two only serves to further play into the 'us vs them' divide.
Both of these factors are commonly used by the Chinese state to frame anti-China sentiment as anti-Chinese sentiment - a very important difference.
You don't know them well enough. A random poll of any mainland Chinese population short of those on the periphery currently being persecuted, I guarantee you they either support what the Chinese gov is doing to the Uyghurs or pretend they don't know what's happening. China is the new Nazi Germany.
I'm not sure if we would all feel that safe sharing that sentiment in an internet run by China. West might be failing in a lot of things, but it is best we have.
I'm only posting this because I never intend to visit American soil. Otherwise I wouldn't dare. Because I know that these kinds of messages might be connected to my person and used against me if I ever come in conflict with American enforcement.
I'm sure there are wonderful people and things and places but those are everywhere. Those are not the things that are different in USA. USA is exceptional in other ways. A lot of them very bad.
Normal everyday life can be seen in statistics like child mortality, obesity, health care coverage, percentage of prison populations, number of gun deaths, prevalence of lead paint and piping, education stats and so on and so on.
I know United States is large and varied country and for some people in some places it's wonderful, but I'm sure same can be said about China or most other countries.
What kind of an argument is that? Rhetorical question. We're talking about China here. Have all the people commenting here lived in China? Also a rhetorical question.
Maybe, but what's your argument here? That there's a zero-sum game of one or the other, and that nothing can be done to contain any nastiness? That all alternatives are equally bad? You seem to imply a lot, it would be helpful to actually know what you mean.
My argument is that previous poster has no argument when he proposes that USA should confront China and win. He proposed it as a zero sum game which I don't agree with. I think there should be no hastened confrontation because both sides are strongly pathological so probably neither should win all right now. Also I don't believe USA can win anything anymore because it struggles even in minor conflicts and lost all support and trust of global community more than decade ago. I don't see USA becoming less dysfunctional because it had every opportunity and didn't improve. I'm more optimistic about China because we have seen that communism can fall. I know it's a stretch hoping that for China but since post world war ii period we never seen USA improve its behavior.
If you were poor muslim peasant - where would you rather live?
In China controlled Xinjiang or next door in US controlled Afghanistan?
China and the US are both empires. What happens on the periphery is not always pretty. But to pretend one is good and the other is evil is stupid at best and dangerous as worst.
The future looks scary if China is going to lead the world. Our best bet is to share wealth and innovation to all the other countries to try and reduce economic power of a single country.
Having India, Pakistan, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea and Japan grow enough to create a sort of "buffer zone" around China.
i think the Chinese model is more influential than you might want to admit; for example universal surveillance of private communication and some kind of profiling based on big data is now the practice in many places.
I am afraid that a movement towards more control by the central state will be an important current in the period after the Corona epidemic (the states had to take measures to stem the epidemic and once a state bureaucracy got new powers it will be very reluctant to let go of its power); We might see even more points of convergence in the future.
Aside: Most Americans who voted voted against Bush in 2000, and he would have lost the election altogether if the votes in Florida had been properly tallied. Most Americans who voted voted against Trump in 2016. Trump might win in November as well but nobody, not even in Trump's camp, thinks he will win the majority of the popular vote.
This isn't quite on point, but all the collective guilt being slung about in these comments is problematic. I notice you use British collective plural -- "The US have". I don't know whether this is because you imagine the states collectively leading the world or the population of the states, but it suggests you assign collective blame.
You can't have it both ways. Either you're a democracy and the citizens are responsible for the actions of their government, or you're not.
You can't hand-wave that away with "our democracy just works slowly" or "but the popular vote this and that". That's the society your democracy has formed over decades. It's your responsibility.
When Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd that was a failure on Floyd's part, right? He was a citizen of the democracy and citizens are responsible for what is done in their name. Boy Navalny sure did screw up when his Russian democracy poisoned him. And don't get me started on the Jews killed by the Nazis. Sure, the Nazis came to power by a putsch and other nefarious means, but you can't hand-wave away their responsibility for the democratic elections which put the Nazis into position to seize power.
Yes, I take responsibility for US actions, and that consists of voting and otherwise using my power to steer the government towards moral choices.
Fair suggestion, however in this list - Pakistan is China's client state since decades. China has provided Pakistan everything from missiles to nuclear bomb to military drones. And now China is building its Belt and Road's largest project through Pakistan.
Time to identify which countries are in Chinese camp (North Korea, Pakistan, a few African dictatorships).
Often in discussions like this, someone claims that the Uighur crackdown is necessary “because Islamist extremism”. I strongly encourage everyone to familiarize themselves with the history of the Uighurs under Chinese rule, because this isn’t really about Islam.
Namely, there used to be a very strong secular movement among the Uighurs, whose main complaint wasn’t the inability to practise Islam (some of these activists were atheists, even Communists themselves) but rather defending the use of the Uighur language in public and in official usage, and resisting the heavy Han Chinese settlement that would lead to the Uighurs becoming a minority in their own province. What happened is that Beijing cracked down on these secular activists, either imprisoning them in China or forcing them into exile in Turkey or the West.
Thus by the early millennium, with the secular activists out of the way, the only forces remaining within Xinjiang that could organize were religious ones, with some support from other Muslim states. Beijing was pleased with the US War on Terror around that time, which allowed it to frame its crackdown on the Uighurs as a reaction to Islamist radicalism, but as I said, the roots really go back to ethnic and linguistic pressures, not religious ones.
> resisting the heavy Han Chinese settlement that would lead to the Uighurs becoming a minority in their own province
It surprises me that nativist anti-immigration demands are considered righteous in some regions and evil and backwards in others.
I understand the general history like you do though, I don't disagree. Radical Uighur groups did help China make the case with their knife attacks on civilians to be painted as "just another brand of islamic terrorism".
> It surprises me that nativist anti-immigration demands are considered righteous in some regions and evil and backwards in others.
Nativist anti-immigration demands in Europe or North America are generally criticized as hyperbole because immigration will not actually lead to demographic replacement in the near future, in spite of those activists’ claims. Furthermore, in Europe the immigrants invariably assimilate linguistically to their host country – by the second or third generation, the language of the old country is forgotten. Xinjiang is a very different case entirely: China has the numbers to change Xinjiang’s demographics, and virtually none of those Han Chinese immigrants are learning Uighur and using it in public.
> Radical Uighur groups did help China make the case with their knife attacks on civilians to be painted as "just another brand of islamic terrorism".
The major wave of knife attacks (which can be seen as a late sign of desperation) postdate China’s attempt to tie the crackdown on the Uighurs to the West’s War on Terrorism. Again, the chronology here is important.
> Nativist anti-immigration demands in Europe or North America are generally criticized as hyperbole because immigration will not actually lead to demographic replacement in the near future, in spite of those activists’ claims.
The US is steering towards Majority Minority, is it not?
> Furthermore, in Europe the immigrants invariably assimilate linguistically to their host country – by the second or third generation, the language of the old country is forgotten.
That would be great, but isn't the case.
> China has the numbers to change Xinjiang’s demographics, and almost none of those Han Chinese immigrants are learning Uighur and using it in public.
Absolutely. My point isn't that it's great what China is doing, it's just weird that "you need to assimilate, it's their province" is a weird take when that same stance is violently opposed in other circumstances.
I don't think it's necessary either, human rights don't need a justification of regional ownership. Even if you don't think that Han shouldn't be allowed to settle there, you can still be appalled by the things the Chinese government is doing.
> The US is steering towards Majority Minority, is it not?
It is not, at least not in the context of the present discussion. While whites are set to lose their majority, one of the minorities overtaking them are African-Americans, who cannot reasonably be called immigrants, because they were brought to the US against their will long ago, and they came before the late 19th-century and early 20th-century influx of European immigrants to which many white Americans trace their ancestry.
> That would be great, but isn't the case.
That certainly is the case. The second and third generations of immigrants into Europe are overwhelmingly assimilating to the host countries’ language. They may develop a new register of that European language that mixes in words and idioms from the language of their parent or grandparent’s country of origin, but few maintain a strong identification with the old language.
That's a lot of goal post moving, and for Europe I think you're fundamentally mistaken. Needless to say that this doesn't convince me, why you'd treat the same policy completely different in a moral judgement. Principles that don't hold when transported to new circumstances aren't principles.
> why you'd treat the same policy completely different in a moral judgement.
Where did I take a stand anywhere here? My post above gave a reason why some would criticize nativist anti-immigration attitudes in Europe while being concerned with the Uighurs’ situation, but I have not presented my own opinions on the morality of either Europe nor Xinjiang in this thread.
> for Europe I think you're fundamentally mistaken.
The sociolinguistics of second- and third-generation language shift in Europe are well documented in innumerable studies. In cases where people think that immigrants in their country are failing to assimilate linguistically, their perception is skewed due to first-generation immigrants (whether the first to arrive, or those who come later on family-reunification grounds) or that portion of second-generation immigrants who maintains active use of the language. However, anecdotes from laypeople are not data.
Quite surprised that the Al Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS, et al Global-Islamic-Caliphate forces haven't tried anything at this aggression against Muslims in China.
Which is why maybe you should actually understand Islam, what triggers radicalism, what doesn't, and how "The West" also gets that wrong, and how China navigates an exemption from Jihad.
Al Queda was specifically formed to create a predictable response from the West that the West would never get out of. Bin Laden's purpose of Al Queda was to make a war with them so expensive that the US tears itself apart over budget considerations alone. So, funny story...
It’s almost as if his direct experience fighting the USSR in Afghanistan in the 80s and seeing how costly the war was for them, in both blood and treasure, and how it was a massive drag on the Russian economy, gave him a good idea. But since the US understood this, and directly funded Afghan groups through the Pakistani ISI to prolong the war, we were well positioned to not fall into that same trap. And yet…
It's in Bin Laden's videos, he sent them all to US news sources.
I was really disappointed when I watched them and realized that the news at the time (early 2000s) had completely cut them and never gave Americans the message at all.
The Western response is "retaliation", the Jihad response is "excision of aggressor from Muslim lands", Bin Laden exploited that with a completely decentralized, self propogating, adhoc guerrilla military force, and told us exactly what he was doing, and we walked right into it because we have an insatiable lust for blood so you get instant support from the people, and its egged on by salivating defense companies. Such a meticulous manipulation... facepalm.
and all the solutions I can think of just leave a power vacuum.
Anyway, to anyone passing by, China's financial dealings are collaborative enough, and the Uyghars are not in another country so China's safe. China was dealing with internal attacks from Uyghars on occasion, and now wants to erase the concepts that those "freedom fighters" were fighting for. Its also working.
They don't care about China too much nor about the Uygurs. Their jihadic vision is focused on U.S - Israel alliance which are seen as demonic forces that are respoinsible for everything bad in the muslim world. China isn't seen as someone occupying holy muslim lands or as a great Satan so they are exempt. Iran for instance also has very solid relations with China.
There has been plenty of aggression from islamist groups, its one of the main reason they are treated like they are. Countless of mass killings on public places, but it only gets mentioned in western media when some american tourist is unlucky enough to perish in an attack. Do you honestly think that china just decided one day to treat these groups like animals, or did they do something to merit that?
Edit: What is up with the down votes? Is this reddit or is this a place where we can actually exchange opinions and world views... What an echo chamber!
A utilitarian perspective judges morality based on total improvements in human wellbeing. From that perspective, is it appropriate to say that the Chinese government is the best government of all time? The sheer numbers of people who are improving is somewhat mind boggling.
Yet, they make moral tradeoffs. We all make moral tradeoffs. I think it is important to keep their moral tradeoffs in context, lest we risk hypocracy or worse, oppositionalism (creating needlessly damaging power struggles).
What is the shared vision of the future where our moral priorities align? Can we realize that future, together?
How dare you use the word "utilitarian" in such an atrocious context.
I've been a "real" utilitarian for almost a decade (as much as is possible to be), and I consider China the single greatest threat to freedom and peace on the face of the planet.
Can you seriously believe that China would not be far, far better off with a democratic regime?
Yes, China has raised up their economy, but they've only done it for the sake of power, and hundreds of millions of Chinese still live in severe poverty.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. Here is a picture that shows china's growth and wellbeing (life satisfaction). Managing the affairs of nearly 1.5 billion people is quite an accomplishment. I like democracy, don't get me wrong -- but I think the Chinese government has demonstrated themselves to be rather benevolent, on the whole.
What does the ethnic cleansing of Uighurs have to do with economic growth? You think imprisoning people in concentration camps accelerates poverty reduction?
I'm no fan of the US, but too many people here are basically saying "the US does bad stuff too". You're not wrong, your point just irrelevant. 2 things can be bad without either excusing the other...
The US also have far more influence on the rest of the world than China (at least for now). As a French, many things happening in the US can have big consequences on my day-to-day life: US military operations directly increases risk of terrorist attacks in Paris (because of NATO or more indirectly), big price moves on the NYSE influence market sentiment in all Western countries, Hollywood movies and Netflix releases change our culture continuously, Google and Facebook privacy changes hits us too, Uber price policy, BLM events actually change perception of police violence in my city within a week, US patent on new cancer drugs, etc. I can't find a single occurrence of a China-centric event that had repercussion on me, my friends or family.
Who determines they are not equally severe? How can we reliably estimate and compare the damage done in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan to what's happening in China?
There were plenty of disastrous wars, but clearly the US did not intend to commit genocide, and I very much doubt it did, in any war. The same cannot be said for China. Of course, there's the historic case of the native Americans, but again, that's not actively occurring.
Well, everbody thinks they're doing the right thing. U.S was saving Vietnam from communism and later was saving the world from Saddam's WMD or Afghanistans taliban. China is saving their country from civil disintegration and helps create a uniform culture for the greater good. See what I did there?
Right, the US just stumbles into war and genocide like an innocent child while China intends to commit genocide because they are evil etc. etc. It’s a great narrative.
The point is to illustrate that this article is serving an anti-China narrative, which has been motivated over several years and decades by right-wing politicians looking for a palatable enemy to unite behind (replacing Russia in this role)
China can and does do bad things, but why do we read about that more often and with more emphasis than Western countries doing bad things?
The issue with this is it requires us to look into people's souls and know their motivations. We can't do that. Maybe this is being reported because it serves someone's narrative. Maybe it's honestly because it's bad. Either way it is bad, so who cares why, action should be taken.
They did physically invade Vietnam in 1979, whereas the US got involved on one side of a civil war, and never invaded North or South Vietnam. Great Leap Forward induced famines also killed tens of millions of people.
Yea the cultural revolution where the Red Guard roved the country murdering millions of innocent people was 52 years ago so you are technically right. Get this: they even engaged in cannibalism as an ideological purity test!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre
I'm not gonna deny that happened. What's interesting is how the US downplayed Chinese violations of human rights, which were way worse than Soviet violations at the time (70's) for political reasons. The Soviets were the chief enemy back then.
Yea, but it gets boring. Nobody is going to call for sanctions on America for anything and you'll never see a constant stream of articles for anything the US does.
When the US drops a record amount of bombs on a country[1] in a war people barely think about anymore and people barely blink an eye, is it really humans (lets not even talk about human rights yet), but rather just our fellow human beings, that people care about.
The Afghanistan war is a UN security council sanctioned action (Resolution 1386, creating ISAF, later succeeded by Resolute Support). Since the resolution was unanimously adopted by the security council it would be quite a leap to try to sanction a country for participating in it.
The resolution does not permit the invasion of Afghanistan, and was passed two months after the war had started. Invading a country with out UN approved casus belli is a valid reason for sanctions.
I think that's bs. If it's not, then before anyone can do anything you need a complete list of every bad thing happening and you need to order it in importance and badness and then you need to get everyone to agree on it. That's a recipe to do nothing but argue. That's what we've been doing for 30 years.
Let’s stop the false equivalency. Should more be done for the black community: absolutely. But black people aren’t locked up by the millions in internment camps.
false equivalency? if there is one I'd say the oppression to black people is way worse, specially with so many people invested in suppressing this discussion. It was the Uyghurs that built China's prosperity? Were they enslaved, lynched, segregated for centuries? I don't think there is really an equivalence. What the US did to the black people is a lot worse.
I'm so tired of this drivel. I don't understand how anyone can take themselves seriously saying this shit, comparing the two issues. Only thing I can think of is being paid off by the CCP.
That's the history of your country, it is better to deal with that than blame everyone else. The US have enough money to solve the issue, but not acknowledging it makes it impossible to solve.
Unfortunately, I don't think generating a load of anti-Chinese sentiment in Europe and North America is going to make the Chinese feel less threatened by the Uyghurs. Rather the reverse, I expect. So I'd recommend people express their support for the Uyghurs without, in effect, calling for a holy war against China.
I agree. On the other hand, how to put pressure (by, for example boycotting the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics) without providing propaganda-fuel for the CCP to drive one more wedge between Chinese people and the rest of the world?
When does something become a crime against humanity? Is terrorism, like handful of men and women just stabbing random people with kitchen knives on a train station, is that a crime against humanity? What do you do, when a group of people constantly advocate for such crimes?
What is a basic human right? If you have a community of a million humans that constantly cause trouble, stab random people, blow themselves up, drive through crowds of people to make a quasi political-religious statement, doesn't that merit some kind of bad treatment?
You reap what you sow. I am sorry, but the last decade of islamic terrorism, senseless killings of innocent people, of KIDS infront of their families, like the christmas market drivetroughs we have had here in europe, I just have no sympathy for humans that subscribe to islamism. Sorry! The glass is empty. You can't do vile inhuman stuff on a regular basis and then cry human rights - Its hypocrisy on such a level that only religious people can display such ingracious and dishonest behaviour!
I can really understand why some obscure sect of radical islamists get mistreated in China. What I cannot fathom is why globalist NGOs work so hard at bringing unending islamic migration to europe. Look! I can understand why Junckers of EU wants to bring in millions of Africans (and thereby commit genocide on the european population, as per UNs own definition) in order to subvert the african continent into some kind of unholy union where we will have "1.8billion consoomers" as he so graciously puts it. What I cannot understand is the love for islam, that shows absolutely no love for any other group or religion. There isn't a level of the average European society that isnt deeply affected by islamic immigration! Its rediculous. Where is my human rights to be left alone by religious nutjobs and questionable cousin on cousin breeding, clan traditions, honor killings, segregation, religious demonstrations, crime, grooming gang scandals, weapon and grenade attacks and I could go on. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg!
The only tears I have for the cries of human rights, is crying laughter. Why is it always the most inhumane groups of people who calls for human rights? If you want to be treated like a human, start acting like one.
The worst of all of this human rights nonsense, is that in south africa, they are literally chanting "kill the Boer" while almost everyday, another family gets slaughtered and raped, and no one as much as bats an eye, no media mention, probably because it doesn't resonate too well with all that BLM subversion.
Well, first of all I don't believe you're in Europe. It's pretty obvious you're a CCP shill.
But assuming you're not, you do realize you're argument is a double-edged sword? Why should the world care about a country who locks up millions of people in internment camps? Why should we care about a country who silences people who speak out against atrocities committed by their government. To use your language, "You reap what you sow, I'm sorry". If we all had your attitude, then we should all say "Screw China".
Obviously I don't use your logic because it's flawed and deeply hateful. Your racism and generalization are on full display. You paint with such a broad brush that no one can take anything you say seriously. You label the entirety of the Uyghur population as terrorist. There have been isolated incidents of violence. But that does not justify the persecution of millions.
Your racism is truly disgusting. If this is what the world looks forward to with China being a new leader on the world stage, then our future as humanity looks truly terrifying.
You've been breaking the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly. We ban such accounts. Personal attacks are not allowed here, and that includes accusing others of shilling, unless you have some specific evidence. Someone else holding a different view from you does not count as evidence. You've been accusing others like this routinely on this site—for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24787402 and many others.
This comment is so egregious that I banned you for it, but I decided to give you a warning instead, because your overall history contains good comments. If you keep posting like this, though, we'll have no choice but to ban you, because protecting the commons has to take priority. You can't do this on HN, regardless of the evils you're attacking or feel you are.
This is beyond the pale. If you post like this again we will ban you. This sort of flamewar is not allowed on this site. Regardless of what evil you're fighting (or feel you are) or what good you're defending (or feel you are), you're not allowed to set fire to HN in the process.
We've warned you before about posting flamewar comments to HN, including ideological warfare and race trolling. That includes religious flamewar also (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585085). Given that you not only kept doing it but have been doing it a lot, we should probably ban you, but I'm going to hold off doing that because you've also been posting good comments. We need you to fix this though, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting the kind of comments that this site is explicitly not for.
Take a good look at the pictures floating around on twitter depicting a french school teacher beheaded near Paris today, and tell me with a straight face that Islamism has nothing to do with such acts.
I am not sure who are worse, them or the apologists. I refuse to sit idling while my kin is killed by the sword. And people who can't see through this NGO bullshit deserve every bit of hell they bring upon themselves.
Majority SJW are hypocrites, they spend all their energy and time battling against shit that's minor. Like changing the name of repos, removing certain words from a massive project etc. Making sure certain peoples feelings are protected.
Yet when it comes to serious problems in our world, like Uyghur muslims being persecuted they remain silent. Or when western countries destroy Libya and give birth slavery in Africa, they remain silent.
I don't think your mental model of the behavior of "social justice warriors" is accurate. Do you really think the people you demonize for expressing sympathy for people outside their own tribe are silent in these cases and the people you implicitly praise for keeping silent about injustices they do not suffer themselves are the heroes complaining on the internet about the treatment of the Uighurs?
The world has enough Islamic countries. Most of them are not open, industrialized first world countries.
Where you have Islam and a non islamic population, you have trouble. Be it the Philippines, Armenia, Myanmar, nigeria, russia, ethiopia, you name it.
China is not a non-interacting gap country like most (all?) Islamic countries. And as a westerner living happily in China, I am actually glad that China does not accept violent, tribal behaviour in China. In fact, as someone who has worked with enforcement and militaries I find the Chinese police highly professional.
Uighurs and the other 50+ minorities are an integral part of China, which regardless of ruling body, has 5,000yr history of integrating minorities within its civilization state, hence its enormous population.
If Uighurs were in fact being persecuted as the west claims, there would be mass protests, terrorism, and refugees fleeing across the border--something that would be impossible to conceal and highly publicized by the west.
The reality is Uighurs live all over China and are well integrated into society. In Xinjiang, many are afforded the opportunity to get additional education and job training to be productive citizens, as those with a bright future are less likely to be disenfranchised and resort to violence.
The US/western led smear campaign against China is nothing more than a poorly conceived containment strategy to demonize a country that has succeeded against all odds, while in the process, has made western govts look incompetent by comparison--despite their 'democracy and freedoms.'
China is being alienated and used as a scapegoat, largely to distract public sentiment in the west from the failings of their own govts. In the case of the US, China poses a threat to post WWII hegemony which is nothing more than a euphemism for maintaining white supremacy via the 5 Eyes Anglo alliance with CAN/UK/AUS/NZ.
The US led west has been indiscriminately bombing innocent civilians suspected of terrorism for last 20yrs, while renditioning known terrorists to offshore black sites where they can mete out any form of torture/punishment with impunity and zero consequences. Is it rational to believe theyre sincerely concerned about the well being of Uighurs...
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadIf we look at all the (many!) genocides of 20th century, it's clear that the world is not going to respond with military intervention as long as you're executing your own 'undesirables' and not attacking your neighbours.
The idea was to let Germany fight Soviets in the east, while British and french were hiding behind that fortification line.
From the wikipedia article that you linked:
> Today, the Munich Agreement is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement, and the term has become "a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states".
I am skeptical though that many people, especially those in the position to make influential choices, especially those who have profit tied up with China, will do anything other than see it and nod.
Edited to add: This statement is political, but the genocide against Uyghurs is political too, and if we want to hold our leaders accountable to doing something about it, we need to acknowledge facts. Trump had previously indicated he wasn't interested in letting such matters interfere with trade talks. https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslims-sanctions-d4dc86f...
- He refers to the Wuhan Virus as the China/Chinese Virus (CCP is trying very hard from distancing themselves from responsibility; they won’t even let us into Wuhan to investigate).
- He started a trade war with China, which has forced companies to move their manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, Taiwan, etc. (Biden admittedly said he would end Trump’s China tariffs, but the many companies that already left are unlikely to return), and even high end tech such as the iPhone is starting to get assembled outside China as well.
- He was the first US President to speak directly with Taiwan's President since 1979.
- He made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past few decades.
- The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was signed under his administration.
- The TAIPEI Act was signed under his administration.
- Meng Wanzhou was arrested under his administration (which dragged Canada into it because China decided to arbitrarily arrest Canadian citizens).
- China Mobile was blocked from offering services in the US, citing national security risks.
- Huawei was blocked from using Android and chips with US tech (which will effectively kill their mobiles once their stock runs out).
- Huawei was blocked from building 5G networks (USA paid other nations to block them as well).
- Hong Kong’s special status was revoked.
- Universal Postal Union agreed to let countries raise postal rates after Trump threatened to leave - this means you’ll no longer be able to buy cheap junk from Aliexpress (and resellers like Wish) at no shipping cost (the receiving country was previously forced to deliver the products for free, even if you brought some toy for 10 cents).
- Trump is pushing for WTO to drop China’s developing country status.
- TikTok and WeChat (likely with more to come) would’ve been blocked by now if it wasn’t for judges temporarily blocking the bans.
China’s GDP growth in 2019 was also the lowest it’s been since 1990, and 2020 will be even lower. And China’s reputation around the world is at an all-time low (because all over the world then everyone is discussing everything Trump says, and he often attack China).
Also, China’s behavior is nothing new. The only thing that’s new is the fact that we finally have a president that for whatever reasons decided to turn them into his enemy. If EU and the rest of the world had any interest in standing up to China then they could implement their own tariffs, give 5G contracts to their own nation’s companies, etc. But they, just like the Obama/Biden administration, have no interest in doing so.
Right now, to the extent that they're conditioned on anything at all (and I'm going to refrain from a broader critique of Trump's goals and methods of negotiation here), they're conditioned on trade balance, intellectual property, currency manipulation, 5G, and the like. Some of these are worthy objectives, some not. But at the end of the day, they do nothing for the Uyghur population if Trump says to Xi, "do whatever you want with the Uyghurs, I don't care; I just want you to buy more of our stuff".
For leverage to work on issue A, you actually have to say (and follow through on): "If you do A, I'll do X, and if you don't do A, I'll do Y." If you replace A with B, you can't expect any traction on issue A.
I'm very anti-Trump (being a brown guy it's hard not to be) but his China policy is much better than any of the last several Presidents'. That said, I wish he had more of a human rights mindset and less of a money mindset. You can bet that if some aspect of the trade balance hinged on the Uighurs, he'd be advocating for it.
American corporations are beholden to China’s massive market and Biden is beholden to American corporations. It is far more likely that Biden capitulates to China than puts any economic pressure on them.
The Washington Post ran the op-ed "China’s attacks on Uighur women are crimes against humanity” almost a year ago. [1] Foreign Policy magazine ran the argument "China Must Answer for Cultural Genocide in Court” in December last year. [2] The Atlantic ran a piece headlined "Saving Uighur Culture From Genocide” a week ago, too. [3]
And I think ’see it and nod’ is about right. We can’t say we didn’t know, we just decided there were other things that we prefered to be doing than stop it.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/21/chinas-at... [2]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/03/uighurs-xinjiang-china-... [3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/10/ch...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/china-insists-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/think-of-your-...
We should all be pressing our governments to take every peaceful means we can to curtail the rise of CCP power and influence.
But the west won't care because of the ethnicity and religions of the victims just doesn't cause as much outrage as it should because the victims aren't white or christians. I know some of you will outraged at this suggestion but even Hollywood knows this - that's why the in one of the Rambo movies, where he is in Myanmar / Burma, the victims are Christians (instead of highlighting the real victims there, the Rohingya muslims facing persecutions - another genocide that the west prefers to turn a blind eye to).
So nothing like those concentration camps the US is running for refugees/"illegal migrants", then.
To be clear, I certainly support human rights, but I personally see the situation as so bad, that I'm worried about how China's influence will extend to the West.
A long analysis has actually been written on this topic: https://www.cmi.no/publications/5805-too-big-to-fault
While on one hand, a coordinated punishment may be effective, on the other hand, I think China has the power to buy other countries' consent step by step.
Additionally, I think China would never relent; doing so would be an admission of guilt, which is poisonous for their regime.
They could spin it in the same manner as Putin - "those degenerate Western bastards are against us, we need to be strong and united to face them etc.".
One solution is to use the ECB to print money, which is fine so long as the new money is used to build public assets and the majority of the new money is absorbed by labor. The core competency of EU innovation programs is micromanaging hourly expenditures. I'm sure some of that machinery could be moved over to building public assets in a way that doesn't overly enrich the holders of capital.
But step one would be just to raise it in a diplomatic context. Most of the world seems unwilling to do even that.
Yes but I fear it’s even worse. Their influence has already extended into the west and has for at least a decade now. Not only are consumers dependent on cheap crap, but Western corporations are dependent on China’s massive market. And politicians are dependent on Western corporations...
Maybe race and theology play a role for a few people, but I think the vast majority would be just as apathetic if they were a white, christian group, as long as they were as socially distant from us as the Uyghurs are from us (imagine some kind of Amish-style group that had been living there socially isolated from us for centuries)
Of course this is hard to verify empirically, but I think it's an important distinction.
Yes, their democracy does strive to push multiculturalism today (it didn't in the past), but politically this identity is important as only that spans borders and allows them to forge strong political ties. They need to because older civilizations like in Asia and the middle-east out number them. Apart from this, it's basic politics that you have to seem superior than others to wield power. Thus, imperialism spread the idea that the white christian was put on earth to educate the rest and even rule over them. That is why white colonies - like the US, Canada, Australia etc. had more freedom and rights than the occupied colonies like India, China, middle east, Africa etc whose citizen where heavily discriminated against by the conquerors.
In today's modern world, this superiority is showcased through technical advancement, peace and prosperity - thus, US and UK made a concerted effort to ensure that conflicts among European countries ended or became minor irritants, and they appeared united. Thus the US, Canada, Europe, Australia all together project a united front through a strong economic and military alliance. And they also make sure that their close allies (that allow a military base) also flourish economically - that is one of the reason why Israel, Korea and Japan have a thriving economy (but a not so independent military).
To reinforce this perception they also cause conflict among the weaker nations. The old British policy of divide and rule continues to strive as historical grievances between countries are used to keep them fighting each other - thus today conflicts continue in South America, Africa, Asia and Eurasia. And they are fueled by the west taking sides as they please.
Another major reason for creating conflicts is to ensure that their military continues to have fighting experience - thus they are also regularly send to these conflict zones. (Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria being current examples. While it was Vietnam and Korea in the past).
The biggest fear of the west is an Asia without conflict - If India and China and Japan resolve their differences, and work together, the age of the west as we know it will be over. Hence their desperate attempt to manipulate and push China into more and more conflict with India, Japan and Korea. And try to get these countries to agree to a military alliance with the west (the quad alliance - US, India, Japan and Australia ... India is the only holdout here).
https://bitterwinter.org/
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/india-says-officer-two-soldi... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/china-attractions-630-millio...
Edit: yes, the human rights council, joined by Russia and Cuba. What a time to be alive.
Australia–East Timor spying scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-East_Timor_spying_sc...
Then on 16 October 2017, in New York, the United Nations General Assembly elected Australia to serve on the Human Rights Council (HRC) for the 2018-20 term.
Witness K and the 'outrageous' spy scandal that failed to shame Australia
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/10/witne...
That's your association, not mine.
I posted to illustrate that membership of a UN council doesn't require ethics or morality.
The consequences of spying on East Timor to gain an advantage in negotiations over oil reserves were that new nation's only source of foreign revenue was severely compromised. East Timorese lived in poverty and the new government was weakened. Is that so different from what bothers you about the plight of the Uyghurs?
And it looks like the treaty was renegotiated (Australia was shamed) so I’m not sure why you dug this example up
> In 2018, the parties signed a new agreement which gave 80% of the profits to East Timor and 20% to Australia.
I don't mind if you are frank, sushicalculus, in fact I welcome it, so long as you are informed.
In the case of East Timor, you should know that Australia was happy to stand by while Indonesia treated the East Timorese similarly to how China treats the Uyghyrs. Australia only acted after the United States lead, and then did its best to weaken the fledgling East Timor government by cheating it out of oil rights.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog...
On the subject of Australian complicity "in the same genre of the other abuses that are being discussed by OP/GP and others", do you know what is happening in West Papua?
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/west-papua-end-australi...
The UN isn't and isn't supposed to be a political body. It isn't idealistic and it isn't designed to prevent human rights abuses. It is designed to prevent nuclear war between SC members. The HRC is not going to prevent or even deter human rights abuses, it never has.
The UN isn't a world government, isn't supposed to be.
Basically, the UN is a moot point. The UN is not going to do anything about Uygyur persecution in China. Neither is anti-UN shite.
Now of course, where does that stop? Because if we go back in US, Russian, and Chinese history the violations are out and out horrible as well. Some bordering on genocide. (I'm sure if you're a native American, you would say they were genocide.)
Point is, you can't always just throw the human rights violations of great powers into their faces all the time. The countries that are doing so well today in terms of respect for human rights, all had their problems in the past. They don't have problems today probably because they are not powers, let alone great powers. If we demand a spotless past, we'd end up with nothing but, like, eswatini or something. Politically speaking, you have to have the great powers on board.
Would it be better if these powers were not as openly hypocritical as they are? Yes, but that's just how the world works. A necessary evil in my opinion. The council would mean less than it does now if there was just eswatini or botswana or something sitting there saying, "You guys have violations."
When small states misbehave its a clubhouse for correcting them with military force, but what works for small states doesn’t for world powers.
The default position is that a sovereign nation can do as it pleases; if other nations does not like it, they are welcome to try and force it to change with military power - but having nuclear deterrent significantly limits such options.
Since you need essentially voluntary compliance, it makes all sense that any "misbehaving" major nations have a seat on the councils (such as the Human Rights Council), since any decision made without involving them would be just completely worthless empty words.
You know, the original intent of UN was of an organisation to do exactly this. After the second world war, the determination was made that the no pill is too bitter to prevent the next third reich from coming to existence. And that the free nations will spare no price in blood, nations sovereignty, and economic damage to achieve that.
The UN was then sabotaged in its infancy by the very same major powers who vouched to back it. I will let readers to research by themselves who was the biggest proponent of admitting USSR to UN.
The early history of UN was of it being a Western nations club, and a quite potent body. The later didn't fared well with the same major powers in the West. Look who was the biggest opponent of resolution 377 historically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
Also their participation in the Korean War obviously and a bunch of minor skirmishes.
Its a crude deflection.
One countries atrocities are not an excuse for other to follow their suit
The treaties and decisions of UN can only be binding on the members iff they voluntarily join these treaties. If USSR wasn't admitted to UN, then UN would be even more useless than historically. If UN was designed to be more strict - to require effective, significant delegation/surrender of sovereignty - then even other major powers would not join, and it would also be even more useless than historically.
Theoretically there could be a model of "UN" that would consist of the West trying to impose their decisions on the whole world. But that would require both the will and the ability to actually enforce these decisions despite the cost in blood, and there is neither.
Regarding will, it would have to be sort of like a military aggressive super-NATO - which "the west" was not willing to do; there's a reason why the NATO treaties are strictly as a defensive alliance, and even then limiting the territories which will be defended (so i.e. a military attack on British and French overseas colonies would not trigger any obligations from NATO); and regarding the ability - throughout the Cold War the West was obviously not capable to unilaterally force USSR to do anything, so a super-UN was impossible, and the current UN was the most that was achievable.
It's not some global authority that will deal with all issues with fairness and justice.
It's pretty much a way to keep countries connected and acts as a common medium for countries to interoperate. It's pretty toothless and obviously so - sovereign countries aren't just going to hand over power like that.
As for the “worst” neighbor part, you can’t just focus on one side of the story. Check the economic statistics and ask the business owners in those neighbor countries if they think China is the worst neighbor. Ask if they want to be given a “better” neighbor while cut their revenue in half. People do benefit from China economically a lot .
Also Everyone wants more in terms of borders and ocean resources, don’t be too biased.
At different points in time, any member could have had such charges like you make leveled at them. This doesn't mean crimes against the Uyghurs (and indigenous people more broadly) should not be challenged, but "abolish the UN" isn't going to help.
No, it is not. The exact purpose of UN's founding was for it to be an instrument with which the West would smack down the next third reich wannabe country before it gets too powerful.
Reading this thread has made me depressed. I guess lessons have expiration dates. We're going to have to relearn this one.
> I guess lessons have expiration dates. We're going to have to relearn this one.
Which lesson are you talking about? The lessons we should have learned after the League of Nations collapsed?
This why "aggression," the one international "law" that is taken seriously basically means border violations. The few non voluntary border changes since the late 40s (eg crimea, the west bank) are (despite generations) not recognized by the UN.
All the low power UN institutions cloud people's understanding of the core. The core is the UNSC, non aggression and a few other principle/institutions designed to prevent (basically) the US and Russia/USSR from destroying the world and the cold war cold.
It's not even designed to do last minute conflict resolution. It is designed to take the motive/gain out of war. The lesson is how major war has been avoided for 75 years largely because we can't go from pretence (China's terrible crimes in Xianjing) to war. Pretence will always exist. Major wars are preventable.
> To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace
That is directly copy pasted from the UN founding charter, it goes on to talk about friendly relations, cooperation and harmony. You can read the rest here if you like:
https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/index.ht...
The only lesson that the UN has learned from the LON, is that if you kick countries out for breaking the rules, then the whole thing falls apart. So in those situations, the UN takes the approach of doing nothing.
> It's not even designed to do last minute conflict resolution. It is designed to take the motive/gain out of war.
This is also rewriting history. The reason we haven't had a major conflict since WWII is because every country capable of creating one has nukes now, and nobody wants to get into a major conflict with a country that has nukes. The reason the US and USSR never got into a direct conflict during the cold war was because they both had nukes, not because the USSR was a member of the UN. Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis together (without the help of the UN incidentally) because neither of them wanted to be nuked, not because they were worried about the other one complaining to the UN.
It’s a venue for political theatre. Otherwise it’s a pretty good system for funnelling money to corrupt regimes and other NGOs.
The argument that it’s an essential tool for diplomatic relations is pretty much bunk. No country relies on the UN to have diplomatic relations with any other country.
It’s predecessor, the League of Nations, had the decency to dissolve itself after realising how useless it was. The only difference between the LON and the UN, is that the UN has never got around to doing that, despite failing to achieve anything.
Please don't be racist and mention China's use of these debt mechanisms without also mentioning the West's use of them. Debt-trapping is something that North America and European countries perfected first, in the modern age [1] [2].
[1] https://aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/9/27/the-world-bank-and-...
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-t...
Any research by Jason Hickel, Ha-Joon Chang, Paulo Freire, Walter Rodney and others on this topic reveals a very different story from the 'Captain America' version of American statesmanship that is propagandized by Marvel, and Hollywood in general.
Not even close. There's reportedly 120,000 - 1m Uyghurs imprisoned, but even this is less than the deaths due to Coronavirus. Climate change will displace and kill more. We will also have to see what happens with the conflict in the Caucuses, but the civil war in Syria has displaced 6m people.
I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that this strategy has to be adopted with China as well. They are out to win, to dominate the world, and they won't back down, and they will use any method to do it. And ask yourself if the world you see inside China is what you want spreading.
> The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over 138 administration officials
Which was (still is?) The most for any president.
The entire debacle during the cold war was less strong and smart political leaders and more pure luck. We now know that there were people that, if they had followed protocol, would have taken that extra step to nuclear deployment. The only reason they didn't is sheer, dumb luck.
If the lessons we learn from history are to deify the actions of men like Reagan, then I truly hope that we have more of that luck in our future.
But what do you suggest as an alternative? Standing by and doing nothing is certainly not my preferred option. If the premise is that the export of tyranny must be stopped, what should be done?
Reducing the problem to its absurd conclusion: ceding liberties because the risk of war is too great, is not an acceptable choice. Hopefully today's reality will not be that extreme, but that's ultimately where we'll end up.
He also walked away from what would have been the most monumental nuclear reductions agreement, including the elimination of all ICBMs and possibly all strategic nuclear weapons in both countries, because he refused to give up the pipe dream of the Star Wars program. [1]
> the freeing of half of Europe from tyranny.
While Reagan’s foreign policy did play a part, the fall of the USSR was more a culmination of decades of economic stagnation, decades of costly arms race military spending, and an incredibly costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan (that sounds familiar). Also Mikhail Gorbachev and his radical policy shifts with Glasnost and Perestroika played a massive part in setting the stage for the collapse. It could also be argued that Bush Sr’s policy shift to a lighter touch in Europe to allow for the revolutions to proceed organically, as opposed to Reagan pushing them with American support, allowed Gorbachev to avoid coups and stay in power to oversee a peaceful collapse, rather than a violent last spasm that many hardliners wanted. Reagan absolutely had a part to play, but he was by no means the architect of the end of the USSR.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/ronald-...
Yeah. Accurate.
Forced surgeries and sterilizations? For a claim like that, you're going to have to cite a credible source. As imperfect as we are, we're not as bad as China.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/21/unwanted-hys...
Still, unlike in China there are lawmakers publicly trying to stop it, and we are free to speak & write about it and say that it’s wrong
> the children at a facility in Clint, Texas, were sleeping on concrete floors and being denied soap and toothpaste. They described “children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears … caring for infants they’ve just met.” A visiting doctor called the detention centers “torture facilities.” At least seven children have died in U.S. custody in the past year, compared with none in the 10 years prior. More than 11,000* children are now being held by the U.S. government on any given day.
> Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the ACLU. “But this all-encompassing skepticism of asylum seekers fleeing violence—justifying cruel treatment, justifying changes in the law, and justifying overcrowding to the point of unsafe and deadly conditions—[is] of a scale and a type that we haven’t seen before.”
> The Trump administration has previously deliberately inflicted suffering on children to deter illegal immigration, with its use of family separation. It has altered immigration policy and the asylum process so as to force the authorities to hold migrants, whether they have properly sought asylum at a port of entry or crossed illegally [1]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...
"A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment
you may have law which makes being muslim illegal and put in jail. and that jail will become "concentration camp", but only if you view it from outside of that country.
Yes, they are called ghettos.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Yes, it's called the prison system.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear?
not only journalists, but political leaders, rappers, pastors, etc.
> Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
Well, that's the easiest one. The US is waging war against 3 or 4 African countries right now.
The crackdown in Xinjiang is a response to terrorist attacks. Both America and China are pretty reliable for grossly disproportionate responses to terrorist attacks that ruin the lives of millions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_....
Maybe not to the scale of China, but basically. They are prison, reservations, and immigration detention centers.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Again, not as bad in the US, probably, but we do have a credit system that can make it much more difficult for certain people to have a place to live, buy a car, or get a job. Add on the felony system, and we also take away their right to vote, and again make it harder for them to get good jobs. Finally, we even have a no-fly list.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear?
Does that happen in China? A quick Google search didn't bring up much. I do agree that the US has more freedom of speech.
> Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
We have and still regularly do this with treaties we made with Native American tribes.
Of course there’s no winner here, only losers...
Does that make it okay then?
What do you think the school-to-prison pipeline and legal prison labour amount to? Black, brown and native people being forced into slavery and imprisonment. Not to mention ICE detention camps.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Ever had to get a background check for a job? To rent a house?
The only reason this is so visible in China is because it's foreign to us. We grew up with redlining and ghettos and mandatory minimums, so we don't even realize it's a different implementation of the same system
While not concentration camps, the US still does have residential schools where they put Native American children into Christian foster homes and educate them to follow our political system in public schools. Plus the church makes millions doing it. Certainly better, but still pretty terrible.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear? Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
The "Collateral Murder" is video evidence of the US killing journalists during their illegal invasion of a nation. You can disagree with my evaluation of those events, but it's hard to see how we have the moral high ground here.
In addition to freedom of speech, we also have freedom of assembly. Combined both freedoms allow our citizens to both bring awareness to the problem(s) and to try to stop it. Is this perfect? No, but it's still better than China (at least on that front)
Shanghai is modern. Huge parts of the country are developing.
Whether a country is developed or not is defined based on their standard of living per capita, not their absolute size. A country with a billion poor people has completely different social, demographic, industrial and political drivers than a country of 300m high I come people.
The last thing on my mind when I think of China is "its a developing nation." China seems to own quite an empire.
Coastal China has per capita GDP comparable to Taiwan. Interior provinces is much poorer, with 600M living on 1000RMB/month or 2000USD/year, on the level of Haiti. In aggregate China is a middle income country with per capita GDP of Iraq.
The Chinese system harnesses this income disparity + 1.4 Billion people to concentrate talent, wealth and development systematically rival developed nations. That's just a factor of scale. Quantity has a quality of its own if properly coordinated, which is basically broad TLDR of Chinese history up to industrialization. I suppose people didn't think China could catch up this fast.
And we never used the prisoners as organ banks.
The ongoing demoralization of the US like this is outright sister.
Disagree if you mean in general sense. You need to define it in far more details. I guess you mean “when their interest conflicts with the government”. Ask common Chinese citizens who live a non-activist life if they agreed that they are slaves and don’t have any of those rights
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+highway+built+around+house&t...
and many more cases like
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate)#Nail_hou...
How is that possible at all with no liberty, no justice, no recourse ?
Do muslim looking persons in muslim countries feel equally well protected from America?
>Americans aren’t frothing at the mouth to ban Islamic religious clothing while schoolgirls in France have to remove their headscarves.
That sounds like more progressive. Do women's rights in the West stop when it comes to muslim women -- where we "allow" them to wear headscarves lest they get beaten up by their fathers/spouses?
You'd be surprised. Plus, it's not like something they'll admit openly.
Second, there's also internalized violence/indoctrination, from a young age.
There is of course voluntary choice too -- even western women who have converted and adopted wearing it (in which case there's no youthful indoctrination). But for tons of muslim women in Europe, which see their non-muslim friends not having to wear any, it's imposed by their families and communities.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Imagine 0.01% of Chinese population have the awareness and willing to fight for it, that’ll be a huge deal already.
I look at Taiwan with great hopes.
It's clearly worse in China, but I do feel fear, even in the US.
When did China last have a Uighur dictator? (Since it’s a dictatorship I mean I guess they don’t really care about having representation of minority groups in positions of power). Does China have schemes to help minorities in China attend college? Are there advocate groups representing Uighu interests in Beijing? Do they have any history or education in Chinese textbooks about the Uighur or other minorities? In the US we did a lot of bad stuff (we all benefit from it now, so every single American born today is as guilty as any other) but at least we actually acknowledge it!
How many immigrants of any sort does China allow to fully immigrate into China on a yearly basis? Can a Syrian apply for a visa or move to China as a refugee?
Why are some Chinese racist against Africans and why is that overlooked? [1], [2], [3]
Does the US have problems? Yep. Even if the US “was the same”, last I checked we have protests and people campaigning to fix our issues. So even if you wanted to make the outlandish claim that “the U.S. is the same”, you can easily look around and see that at a minimum we highlight problems in our society. Who is running against Xi to stop the genocide of Uighur Muslims?
The only thing that makes sense to me here is social media. You (not you specifically) see that first outrage article and then down the scrolling and clicking hole you go until you’re just addicted to being outraged.
I put what I call America-denialism on a similar level as I do anti-vaxers, flat earth era, 9/11 truthers, or Trump deep-state conspiracy theorists. It’s just another wacky idea that you get from extended periods of time going down social media rabbit holes.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-racism-africans-chi...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/china-fails-to...
[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/15/chinas-racism-is-wrecki...
However, to Reagan's credit he did tone things down a bit when it was explained to him that the Soviets really did think the US would attack them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...
(learned when I was wondering why the US had had war propaganda offices devoted to Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok)
Han is the cultural race/ethnicity in mainland China. [0] It's about 92% of the population. So that's a lot of people. Is China trying to sure up its borders? Yes. Is China out for world domination, I really don't think so. Every single one of my Chinese friends is about as sweet as they come. China is the new mystery to the West, and I don't think people in the West really understand them. The amount of growth in China is outrageous. We've outsourced so much there, and then have a go at them for stuff we don't really understand.
I think GP is right in ways. I think there are some nefarious actors in China running the same plays from the playbook written by the Anglosphere war powers, but to lump it all in a say 'China bad' is, in my very under-read / under-experienced, opinion, a terrible thing.
他们很好 - Hope I've got my characters right! Tāmen hěn hǎo
Even the language isn't like ours. It's more direct and blunt.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese
... is this satire?
Edit: or do you believe there’s some kind of correlation between some individual Chinese you know and the CPCs plans?
e: and yes, I honestly belive that in China things work so diffrently to the West, that a sample of the people can actually give you a good read on what the powers are thinking / doing. Maybe cos they are all brain-washed ;) who really knows. All I'm saying is, let's try and be civil!
Edit: It’s not a conspiracy theory when almost every China bad news story can be sourced to organizations sponsored by the CIA.
"approximately 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed for their organs between 2000 and 2008" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
I suppouse I want to see more UN involvement with the Organ Harvesting. It's insanely barbaric and shouldn't be happerning. But I think people like Alex Jones have given it more credit. I don't have enough data to make valid conclusion about it. But the Falun Gong practitioners I have met scared the crap out of me. It felt a lot like Scientology vibes. Does that mean we should harvest their organs? No, clearly. That's insane to like the nth-degree.
e: also, as the wiki states, Ethan Gutmann's investigations are pretty striking. Same as the China Tribunal in London. This has moved on a lot since I last read up on it. Christ.
And yes, a very good point. It's imporant to split the govemerment from the people. I need to be more careful :)
I'm South African. I grew up in Apartheid and I'm white. It ended when I was 10.
Am I a bad person? No. Are my parent's bad people? No. Were my Grandparent's bad people? No.
The Apartheid Government of South Africa was terrible. Especially to black people, but also to white people who didn't toe the line.
Sanctions were very effective.
Yes, I'd agree on all counts. As I said in another comment, we need to be so careful with what we are saying. I just get really upset when the anti-China-goverment narrative spills into an anti-China-people one.
other than sloppy posting I don't think I've ever seen that (that I can remember). Whereas I've seen a fair number of pro china posts that freely talk about 'westerners' instead of western governments. They tend to get killed pretty fast though.
You got me there :) I guess You can always travel. It is a very different place, noisy, crowded, but you can learn about it first hand.
Absolutely. All the comments like yours are downvoted. The West doesn't need autocracy to maintain its propaganda, its own citizens do it for them.
China is not innocent. But on what basis does the West have any moral authority to judge China's emulation of Western colonialism. I would argue very little. The West has made its bed and now it must sleep in it.
This is a counsel of despair and it is pure tribalism. No one in the West can condemn the actions of China the nation because the West has done analogous things in the past. So everyone in the West is guilty for everything anyone in the West has ever done. By this logic there is no basis for moral judgment ever and every group is free to dominate any other group. Might makes right. It's lovely in this scenario to claim membership in a powerful group that can take everyone else's marbles.
No one believes this about their own group. "I can't judge my neighbor for murder because we're both white. His crime is my crime." People frequently believe this about other groups. "My Chinese neighbor is a horrible person because they are Han and the Han-dominated government in China is doing horrible things to Uighurs." This is obvious nonsense. Wrong is wrong whoever the judge. It isn't the West judging China but individual Westerners. Also individual Han Chinese. Maybe even individual Han Chinese responsible for abusing the Uighurs.
Of course that's nonsensical and I agree with it. But I wonder what you think when it's positively framed?
So everyone in the west can _benefit_ from everything anyone in the West has ever done?
That statement seems much closer to being universally accepted. Our rights to benefit from the fruits of Western "progress"; medicine, civil rights, social security, peace, etc. Yet these things are fundamentally dependent on the historical and contemporary colonial and neo-colonial "heist" upon the rest of the world. How can we simultaneously distance ourselves from the crimes of the West and benefit from it? Actions have consequences. Yes, neither I nor my immediate ancestors (and I'm as British as can be) took part in any colonial crimes, but I sure as hell take advantage of my Western privileges. If I don't have any personal responsibility for my culture's crimes then how do I justify personally benefiting from those crimes?
Well yes, that's exactly it! If we can't unscramble our eggs how can we can unscramble China's eggs?
Our great-great grandfathers beat their wives, thus no one should be able to judge me for doing the same today. Is this your argument?
You're also confusing "China" the CCP governmental apparatus, with "Chinese citizens" as individual people. When people criticise "China", it is the former they are criticising. Confusing the two only serves to further play into the 'us vs them' divide.
Both of these factors are commonly used by the Chinese state to frame anti-China sentiment as anti-Chinese sentiment - a very important difference.
Remember that normal everyday life is never reported. Only unusual and non-typical things are reported.
So what you're saying is your knowledge of the United States is exactly opposite of what normal life is actually like there.
I know United States is large and varied country and for some people in some places it's wonderful, but I'm sure same can be said about China or most other countries.
In China controlled Xinjiang or next door in US controlled Afghanistan?
China and the US are both empires. What happens on the periphery is not always pretty. But to pretend one is good and the other is evil is stupid at best and dangerous as worst.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBIa8z_Mts
Genesis - Land of Confusion (Official Music Video), 1986, 5min28sec
Having India, Pakistan, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea and Japan grow enough to create a sort of "buffer zone" around China.
I am afraid that a movement towards more control by the central state will be an important current in the period after the Corona epidemic (the states had to take measures to stem the epidemic and once a state bureaucracy got new powers it will be very reluctant to let go of its power); We might see even more points of convergence in the future.
This isn't quite on point, but all the collective guilt being slung about in these comments is problematic. I notice you use British collective plural -- "The US have". I don't know whether this is because you imagine the states collectively leading the world or the population of the states, but it suggests you assign collective blame.
You can't hand-wave that away with "our democracy just works slowly" or "but the popular vote this and that". That's the society your democracy has formed over decades. It's your responsibility.
Yes, I take responsibility for US actions, and that consists of voting and otherwise using my power to steer the government towards moral choices.
Namely, there used to be a very strong secular movement among the Uighurs, whose main complaint wasn’t the inability to practise Islam (some of these activists were atheists, even Communists themselves) but rather defending the use of the Uighur language in public and in official usage, and resisting the heavy Han Chinese settlement that would lead to the Uighurs becoming a minority in their own province. What happened is that Beijing cracked down on these secular activists, either imprisoning them in China or forcing them into exile in Turkey or the West.
Thus by the early millennium, with the secular activists out of the way, the only forces remaining within Xinjiang that could organize were religious ones, with some support from other Muslim states. Beijing was pleased with the US War on Terror around that time, which allowed it to frame its crackdown on the Uighurs as a reaction to Islamist radicalism, but as I said, the roots really go back to ethnic and linguistic pressures, not religious ones.
It surprises me that nativist anti-immigration demands are considered righteous in some regions and evil and backwards in others.
I understand the general history like you do though, I don't disagree. Radical Uighur groups did help China make the case with their knife attacks on civilians to be painted as "just another brand of islamic terrorism".
Nativist anti-immigration demands in Europe or North America are generally criticized as hyperbole because immigration will not actually lead to demographic replacement in the near future, in spite of those activists’ claims. Furthermore, in Europe the immigrants invariably assimilate linguistically to their host country – by the second or third generation, the language of the old country is forgotten. Xinjiang is a very different case entirely: China has the numbers to change Xinjiang’s demographics, and virtually none of those Han Chinese immigrants are learning Uighur and using it in public.
> Radical Uighur groups did help China make the case with their knife attacks on civilians to be painted as "just another brand of islamic terrorism".
The major wave of knife attacks (which can be seen as a late sign of desperation) postdate China’s attempt to tie the crackdown on the Uighurs to the West’s War on Terrorism. Again, the chronology here is important.
The US is steering towards Majority Minority, is it not?
> Furthermore, in Europe the immigrants invariably assimilate linguistically to their host country – by the second or third generation, the language of the old country is forgotten.
That would be great, but isn't the case.
> China has the numbers to change Xinjiang’s demographics, and almost none of those Han Chinese immigrants are learning Uighur and using it in public.
Absolutely. My point isn't that it's great what China is doing, it's just weird that "you need to assimilate, it's their province" is a weird take when that same stance is violently opposed in other circumstances.
I don't think it's necessary either, human rights don't need a justification of regional ownership. Even if you don't think that Han shouldn't be allowed to settle there, you can still be appalled by the things the Chinese government is doing.
It is not, at least not in the context of the present discussion. While whites are set to lose their majority, one of the minorities overtaking them are African-Americans, who cannot reasonably be called immigrants, because they were brought to the US against their will long ago, and they came before the late 19th-century and early 20th-century influx of European immigrants to which many white Americans trace their ancestry.
> That would be great, but isn't the case.
That certainly is the case. The second and third generations of immigrants into Europe are overwhelmingly assimilating to the host countries’ language. They may develop a new register of that European language that mixes in words and idioms from the language of their parent or grandparent’s country of origin, but few maintain a strong identification with the old language.
Where did I take a stand anywhere here? My post above gave a reason why some would criticize nativist anti-immigration attitudes in Europe while being concerned with the Uighurs’ situation, but I have not presented my own opinions on the morality of either Europe nor Xinjiang in this thread.
> for Europe I think you're fundamentally mistaken.
The sociolinguistics of second- and third-generation language shift in Europe are well documented in innumerable studies. In cases where people think that immigrants in their country are failing to assimilate linguistically, their perception is skewed due to first-generation immigrants (whether the first to arrive, or those who come later on family-reunification grounds) or that portion of second-generation immigrants who maintains active use of the language. However, anecdotes from laypeople are not data.
Al Queda was specifically formed to create a predictable response from the West that the West would never get out of. Bin Laden's purpose of Al Queda was to make a war with them so expensive that the US tears itself apart over budget considerations alone. So, funny story...
I was really disappointed when I watched them and realized that the news at the time (early 2000s) had completely cut them and never gave Americans the message at all.
The Western response is "retaliation", the Jihad response is "excision of aggressor from Muslim lands", Bin Laden exploited that with a completely decentralized, self propogating, adhoc guerrilla military force, and told us exactly what he was doing, and we walked right into it because we have an insatiable lust for blood so you get instant support from the people, and its egged on by salivating defense companies. Such a meticulous manipulation... facepalm.
and all the solutions I can think of just leave a power vacuum.
Anyway, to anyone passing by, China's financial dealings are collaborative enough, and the Uyghars are not in another country so China's safe. China was dealing with internal attacks from Uyghars on occasion, and now wants to erase the concepts that those "freedom fighters" were fighting for. Its also working.
Edit: What is up with the down votes? Is this reddit or is this a place where we can actually exchange opinions and world views... What an echo chamber!
Oh yeah, they are busy finishing their own genocide...
West Papuan human rights tragedy mocked by new Australian PM
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/10/6/west-papuan-hum...
Yet, they make moral tradeoffs. We all make moral tradeoffs. I think it is important to keep their moral tradeoffs in context, lest we risk hypocracy or worse, oppositionalism (creating needlessly damaging power struggles).
What is the shared vision of the future where our moral priorities align? Can we realize that future, together?
Is the implication that China is better or worse in this regard than the USA or Europe?
I've been a "real" utilitarian for almost a decade (as much as is possible to be), and I consider China the single greatest threat to freedom and peace on the face of the planet.
Can you seriously believe that China would not be far, far better off with a democratic regime?
Yes, China has raised up their economy, but they've only done it for the sake of power, and hundreds of millions of Chinese still live in severe poverty.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/04/Inc-vs-Happiness-...
There's a difference between systemic racism and state-sanctioned cultural genocide signed off on by the dictator himself.
China can and does do bad things, but why do we read about that more often and with more emphasis than Western countries doing bad things?
When the US drops a record amount of bombs on a country[1] in a war people barely think about anymore and people barely blink an eye, is it really humans (lets not even talk about human rights yet), but rather just our fellow human beings, that people care about.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/28/us-afghanist...
But nobody works like that. People act on moral confidence, not certainty. If we had certainty, then would we need to worry about credibility?
> That's a recipe to do nothing but argue. That's what we've been doing for 30 years.
I'm making a description and not a prescription, so if you say we've been doing something 30 years, then you already agree to the description.
That this even needs to be written in 2020 makes me very disappointed at the current state of human rights.
You reap what you sow. I am sorry, but the last decade of islamic terrorism, senseless killings of innocent people, of KIDS infront of their families, like the christmas market drivetroughs we have had here in europe, I just have no sympathy for humans that subscribe to islamism. Sorry! The glass is empty. You can't do vile inhuman stuff on a regular basis and then cry human rights - Its hypocrisy on such a level that only religious people can display such ingracious and dishonest behaviour!
I can really understand why some obscure sect of radical islamists get mistreated in China. What I cannot fathom is why globalist NGOs work so hard at bringing unending islamic migration to europe. Look! I can understand why Junckers of EU wants to bring in millions of Africans (and thereby commit genocide on the european population, as per UNs own definition) in order to subvert the african continent into some kind of unholy union where we will have "1.8billion consoomers" as he so graciously puts it. What I cannot understand is the love for islam, that shows absolutely no love for any other group or religion. There isn't a level of the average European society that isnt deeply affected by islamic immigration! Its rediculous. Where is my human rights to be left alone by religious nutjobs and questionable cousin on cousin breeding, clan traditions, honor killings, segregation, religious demonstrations, crime, grooming gang scandals, weapon and grenade attacks and I could go on. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg!
The only tears I have for the cries of human rights, is crying laughter. Why is it always the most inhumane groups of people who calls for human rights? If you want to be treated like a human, start acting like one.
The worst of all of this human rights nonsense, is that in south africa, they are literally chanting "kill the Boer" while almost everyday, another family gets slaughtered and raped, and no one as much as bats an eye, no media mention, probably because it doesn't resonate too well with all that BLM subversion.
But assuming you're not, you do realize you're argument is a double-edged sword? Why should the world care about a country who locks up millions of people in internment camps? Why should we care about a country who silences people who speak out against atrocities committed by their government. To use your language, "You reap what you sow, I'm sorry". If we all had your attitude, then we should all say "Screw China".
Obviously I don't use your logic because it's flawed and deeply hateful. Your racism and generalization are on full display. You paint with such a broad brush that no one can take anything you say seriously. You label the entirety of the Uyghur population as terrorist. There have been isolated incidents of violence. But that does not justify the persecution of millions.
Your racism is truly disgusting. If this is what the world looks forward to with China being a new leader on the world stage, then our future as humanity looks truly terrifying.
This comment is so egregious that I banned you for it, but I decided to give you a warning instead, because your overall history contains good comments. If you keep posting like this, though, we'll have no choice but to ban you, because protecting the commons has to take priority. You can't do this on HN, regardless of the evils you're attacking or feel you are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We've warned you before about posting flamewar comments to HN, including ideological warfare and race trolling. That includes religious flamewar also (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585085). Given that you not only kept doing it but have been doing it a lot, we should probably ban you, but I'm going to hold off doing that because you've also been posting good comments. We need you to fix this though, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting the kind of comments that this site is explicitly not for.
Yet when it comes to serious problems in our world, like Uyghur muslims being persecuted they remain silent. Or when western countries destroy Libya and give birth slavery in Africa, they remain silent.
Where you have Islam and a non islamic population, you have trouble. Be it the Philippines, Armenia, Myanmar, nigeria, russia, ethiopia, you name it.
China is not a non-interacting gap country like most (all?) Islamic countries. And as a westerner living happily in China, I am actually glad that China does not accept violent, tribal behaviour in China. In fact, as someone who has worked with enforcement and militaries I find the Chinese police highly professional.
If Uighurs were in fact being persecuted as the west claims, there would be mass protests, terrorism, and refugees fleeing across the border--something that would be impossible to conceal and highly publicized by the west.
The reality is Uighurs live all over China and are well integrated into society. In Xinjiang, many are afforded the opportunity to get additional education and job training to be productive citizens, as those with a bright future are less likely to be disenfranchised and resort to violence.
The US/western led smear campaign against China is nothing more than a poorly conceived containment strategy to demonize a country that has succeeded against all odds, while in the process, has made western govts look incompetent by comparison--despite their 'democracy and freedoms.'
China is being alienated and used as a scapegoat, largely to distract public sentiment in the west from the failings of their own govts. In the case of the US, China poses a threat to post WWII hegemony which is nothing more than a euphemism for maintaining white supremacy via the 5 Eyes Anglo alliance with CAN/UK/AUS/NZ.
The US led west has been indiscriminately bombing innocent civilians suspected of terrorism for last 20yrs, while renditioning known terrorists to offshore black sites where they can mete out any form of torture/punishment with impunity and zero consequences. Is it rational to believe theyre sincerely concerned about the well being of Uighurs...