The last time the human race stopped an industrial scale genocide, half the world had to unite under their own selfish reasons. That's no longer possible thanks to nuclear weapons, so our battle will have to be fought first with introspection and reflection.
We can't do anything decisive to help the Uighurs without ripping apart Chinese sovereignty and causing even more collateral damage, so the best we can do is once again find our principles. We will need them to unite us and guide us through the economic pain and chaos that a proper solution like embargoing China would require.
> We can't do anything decisive to help the Uighurs without ripping apart Chinese sovereignty and causing even more collateral damage, so the best we can do is once again find our principles
Yes we can. Boycott CCP controlled businesses, their manufactured goods and services. Ensure strict sanctions are levied on CCP members. Ban travel of CCP members to and from countries that respect the rule of Law.
But nope. We would rather, like cowards, keep our mouth shut and do nothing while this genocide continuous unabated.
And for all the folks who are saying "well that doesn't work" do look at for instance international pressure on South Africa near the end of apartheid. Internal and external pressure in concert can have effect.
> Boycott CCP controlled businesses, their manufactured goods and services. Ensure strict sanctions are levied on CCP members. Ban travel of CCP members to and from countries that respect the rule of Law.
That's typically not worked in other countries. For example, see Russia, which has been under exactly those kinds of targeted sanctions and yet which continues to openly murder opponents of the Putin regime across the globe.
> That's typically not worked in other countries. For example, see Russia, which has been under exactly those kinds of targeted sanctions and yet which continues to openly murder opponents of the Putin regime across the globe.
Russia is almost a semi-hermit State unlike China. Russia was never an "export powerhouse". China is. Russia doesn't have the kind of population China has. Russian population is less than half of USA. Sanctions don't have a major impact on Russia as US was never its major trading partner. But sanctions on China will be a huge blow as US was China's main trading partner. You can't compare Russia and China. They are not the same.
But can that be effective, really? Many times economic sanctions are a joke (see the ones dished out by the UN). If they become too hard, a nuclear state can threaten nuclear action just the same. What then?
Think you have a point. But if they can get away with it this time, they be comfortable to cast their influence wider. Then wider still. So I guess to say it's not a problem now means it'll be a bigger one later, and more dangerous.
What do you imply? WWII was fought by sticks, and stones in comparison to even cold war era weapons, and the combined death toll far, far surpassed the biggest estimate for a possible loss of life in a nuclear war in between Western, and Eastern bloc, even if each side would intentionally target each other's biggest cities.
We are going to see more of this, once the millions being detained get out or were killed entirely. More leaks will come. Be patient, CCP's crimes are coming out.
Uh, there are many accounts from people who were at various camps if you just search, because the typical stay is much shorter than let on in propaganda. In fact, pretty much all accounts are from people who were released. These are much closer in nature to the US border detention camps, with "prisoners" entering and leaving regularly.
Ultimately, this is specific of any form of government with too much power over its people. That’s a requirement of communism which is why this is often attributed to communism as an expected outcome.
It’s entirely possible in any form of government that disarms and controls its people, rather than empowers them.
That is not true. Communism in its core is incompatible with any other system of beliefs. It must replace religions and customs in order to succeed, it must rewrite history in order to seem valuable.
Strong disagree. Religion is opium for the masses. What would replace the time wasted in religious activities? Facebook? We all know where that got us.
What does a portrait of the dear leader and a couple of his ideological predecessors look like to you? That is right - the holy trinity. Communism does not get rid of religion, it mimics plagiarizes and tries to replace it. Ever wondered why Russians celebrate New Years under Christmas trees? It is exactly the same thing as renaming pagan holiday to make it seem Christian. Whatever your grievances against religions are, they will rename applicable under communism
I agree that if you simply replace it with faith in the party or something similar it's not an improvement. However a post-communist country where religion is increasingly irrelevant and which has a living memory of life under communism is better positioned to try for something better than either of those the next time around.
However bad communism is, please don't take HN threads in generic ideological directions. Those are off topic here. Hundreds of explanations of why that is may be found at these links:
Out of curiosity, is there a HN equivalent to removeddit? There have been situations where I would have liked to be able to see if something had been edited, or look and confirm what the past version of a comment had been.
Not that I know of, but there are lots of third-party HN projects out there.
We've sometimes thought about tracking and showing the edit history of HN comments, but I think this is one place where (let's call it) over-surveillance could lead to more harm than good. Certainly some users abuse editing, but there are also many cases where it's important to let people save face, give them an out, and so on. HN is supposed to be a community and it's important for communities to be forgiving. A certain degree of forgetfulness creates greater ease and freedom. No one wants to be around a superintelligent flaw-pointer-outer. So I think an edit history tracker would have unintended consequences and on balance is probably a bad idea.
In the article he mentions “Their goal is just to exterminate all Uighurs in one way or another”, if that is the case, why not just shoot them all? Why did they let him out?
In this context it seems to mean that it's politically easier to "re-educate" the Uighar away than straight out kill the Uighars. If some die during the process China doesn't care but it can't be accused of genocide which would raise more concern globally.
It would have been far easier for Nazis to shoot all "lesser" races too, yet they used to send people to concentration camps first. And yes, people used to be released from those from time to time too. The answer with Nazis was that after arrival at a concentration camp the weak were sent to immediate excution, the rest were kept for labour, and everyone was stripped off their possessions first - which was very convenient because people were told they would be relocated, so they brought valuables with them. That centralized the wealth gathering, execution and labour into a single package, which made a lot more sense than trying to do it on the spot everywhere they went.
But specifically in the case of Uighurs - you can eliminate a culture by erasing its identity, without killing the people. That seems to be what China is doing - they are not straight up killing them, just putting them in camps for "reeducation" so they behave and think like model Chinese citizens, with harsh punishments for following their original culture. That way, "Uighurs" as a group will be wiped out without necessarily killing them all.
No it isn't, and it doesn't take much research to find out why. Any time the Nazis did it(like in Lvov) it took a huge amount of work to help with burrying/burning the bodies, Nazis didn't want to do it so they would conscript the local population, which was then likely to strike back as they knew exactly what would happen to them. If you told people you were "relocating" them they were far more likely to come peacefully, and concentration camps provided a very valuable source of labour to nearby areas. As for feeding them....it doesn't take much to find out that they were barely fed anything. Pretty much only the prisoners who received outside parcels with food survived more than a month or two, simply because the prisoners weren't fed, given proper clothing or any care whatsoever. The same with "massive housing complexes" - Auschwitz initially used existing military barracks and then built very simple huts for Birkenau. It's hard to call it housing.
Are you like....just saying what feels right without any historical research or background whatsoever?
The cost of a mass grave is that now the entire city knows you're killing people and you're coming for them. It leads to formation of resistance forces, kills your soldiers, stops the occupation from progressing.
Transportation is free because you took over the railways. Building concentration camps is free because it's done by literal slaves who have no choice anyway, and is done with local materials taken from existing housing. It's not like Nazis were paying market prices for any of this.
Like, I have no idea why were even arguing about this. Go and visit Auschwitz, it's all explained in the museum there. Read some books about occupations of Lvov or Warsaw - Nazis very quickly stopped executing people en-masse because it was more trouble than it was worth. You can say you disagree, but that's just arguing with facts.
It's even more bizzare if you look at the original claim.
"China isn't committing a genocide like the Nazis, because they could just shoot everyone. But, the Nazis didn't do it either, so the Nazis weren't committing genocide like those damn Nazis either"
That's why they built the extermination camp in Auschwitz. There were direct train tracks to Auschwitz via rail from pretty much anywhere back in the day.
The logistical cost varied depending on how deliberate the action was. Some killings, like the famous one in Romania, took a lot of planning. Others were more ad hoc, mostly using squads that would have been operating anyway, or using groups of nationals that could not have been turned to a more “useful” purpose (forgive the cold language!) It’s a large topic.
On the other hand, why even torture someone and then let them free so they can speak out against you? Torturing seems like such a hassle.
If I were an evil dictator with the means in the modern day and I wanted to really intimidate a population, I would abduct some of that population and just secretly kill them and burn their bodies. Nobody can then prove whether you actually killed them. You could say you re-educated them and then let them go, and their present whereabouts are no longer your business.
The article explains why they let him out: he apparently also has Kazakh citizenship, and his wife started making noise via diplomatic channels.
As to the larger question, most genocides stop short of literally just shooting everyone. That doesn't mean the goal still isn't eradication of a culture.
China does care about legitimacy internationally, and simply shooting millions of people into roadside ditches would be a step too far. But this process of concentration camps under the banner of combating terrorism is enough of a fig leaf, and enough of a slow progression, it doesn't generate the same sort of immediate opposition abroad. As we see here sadly.
The international community could do a lot more to stop this horror. International leaders could condemn this for a start. They could put sanctions on the chinese ruling class, or Chinese businesses, as well as exclude Chinese participation in international events (such as the Olympics).
Your local representative could raise awareness to such measures to the ruling class in your country, and vote in favor for them in your national assembly. At the very least your local representative could call to shame any other member of the ruling class that is not publicly and vocally condemning this horror.
The countries you picked as an example is a little curious. Sanctions against Russia were really weak and limited, I don’t think anybody had any intentions for them to work at all. The sanctions of Cuba and Venezuela (or embargo in the case of Cuba) were targeted against their autonomy, i.e. countries were not OK with their economic policies so they imposed the sanctions (which were more devastating then any action by the government in Cuba). In the case of Venezuela the sanctions are targeted against a democratically elected government in favor of an opposition that was never elected. The goal here is to abolish democracy, what do you expect the Venezuelan government to do?
This leaves North Korea, which is a genuine example of sanctions not working (and in fact casing harm in them self, since the victims are often starving citizens). However threats of further sanctions have worked in the past to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear weapons program (which they later developed anyway). So I’ll give you that one.
But now let’s turn to South Africa. The Apartheid government was supported by many rich nations throughout the late 20th century. Their crimes got worse and worse over the years. Until the international community finally came together in the last decade of the century and imposed heavy sanctions, even excluded them from participating in cultural and sporting events. The apartheid government finally collapsed and South Africa got their first democratically elected precedent that represented a majority of the nation in 1994.
But I don’t think it is fair to talk only about the failure of sanctions to actively work in this context, the alternative here (as per ancestor comment) is military intervention. I could just as easily come up with a list of countries where military intervention did not resolve anything (or left the country seriously damage):
• Cuba
• Libya
• Syria
• Afghanistan
• Yemen
• Somalia
You could make the case for Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia, or even Nazi Germany. But those cases are more nuanced than that, and claiming that military intervention was a “response that worked” would be an inexcusable simplification of how the events unfolded.
Sounds like there might be demand for some certification that looks into the whole supply chain of a company, and can offer levels of “Made in the US” certification, bronze, silver, gold, platinum for 100% end to end. Similarly, it would be great for an estimate and certification of carbon emissions of the supply chain for each product.
Made in the USA is a bit...of a pipe dream. U.S. cost of living is higher, so prices for all products would skyrocket.
However, there's MANY countries that are NOT China. We could instead certify products against supporting bad regimes, and using slave / prison labor in the supply chain.
For products where labor is a big input, yeah the delta is probably too high for most unless we get carbon taxes, tariffs, or some other factor that evens the field, but the US also supposedly has quite a bit of highly automated manufacturing. And the purpose is to allow people who place a premium on that to consider it.
But yeah, it could also serve to give visibility into the breakdown of countries of origin, for those who just want to avoid sending money to countries they view as abusive.
I doubt you can fully eliminate China-sourced products but looking at "TAA compliant" products is a start. TAA compliance is a US federal standard that guarantees a minimum level of manufacturing involvement in TAA countries [1], which is a list that does not include China.
I'm not going to pretend I'm able to avoid China in all my purchasing decisions but I now do some research to avoid China-made or at least China-designed products.
You can start by reading at least the wiki articles about the subjects in question instead of just US agitprop, for example what led to the crackdown. The Uighurs are seriously lucky this wasn't Murica they ran afoul of.
It really is hilarious how easy the ostensibly "educated" tech class is manipulate same as the fox news audience.
These existed long before the concept of communism, we can debate communisms merits (of which it has some but not many) or we can actually discuss the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by a dual capitalist/communist society regardless of their political theory of choice.
We aren't talking about magnitude and frequency. If we were I could point out that communist governments tend to be younger and dealing with more domestic strife as a young government may lead to a higher likelihood of crimes being committed by the government regardless of political economic theory.
These phenomenons are not new and arguably were perfected before communism existed. Please don't muddy the waters to make this an attack on a political philosophy when these behaviors are an affront to human life regardless of who perpetrates them.
I agree with your point. I don't imagine the parent would dispute a link between the Nazis' genocides and a fascist ideology (or at least I hope he wouldn't), but for some reason trying to understand this atrocity through the lens of political ideology is "muddying the waters".
I think it's fair to note that there is a lot of correlation between these kinds of atrocities and communist regimes. It's also fair for you to note that correlation isn't causation, and the cause (or causes) could be other things, such as the age of the regime. To which others could rebut further (e.g., this isn't the 18th or 19th century any more / genocide and ethnic violence are now exceptional / there are lots of countries to model oneself after; a young government could be "forgiven" for violations by rogue officers or soldiers but atrocities perpetrated under communist governments are routinely top-down policy; etc). This is reasonable debate and it's how we understand and solve issues collectively. Analysis like this is exactly the opposite of "muddying the waters".
The problem is that communism centralizes control (obviously of the economy, but in effect many other things) and when control gets centralized, bad things like this are more likely to happen.
The same is true of centralization in democracy, but to a lessor effect due to the distributed nature of power in democracies.
Decentralization on its own isn't the answer either.
Look at what happened in USA after the Civil War. Progress was gradually erased on the state and town level. "States' rights" became a fig leaf for oppression of former slaves. The Constitution guaranteed them equal human rights, but reality was something different because the federal government gave up. It's hard to believe that this lasted until the 1960s.
My guess would be politics. Congress in the US is democratically controlled while the Senate and Presidency are republican controlled. The current administration is fairly anti-Muslim and has ignored the Uighar issues entirely, the current administration likely told the State Department not to issue the visa.
Emissaries and consulates are typically ran by career government employees in the US but their operation is overseen by the Secretary of State (a presidential cabinet member) and the State Department. So the presidential appointee has a lot of power over what does and does not happen at consulates/emissaries.
The current administration appointed a Uighar-American as National Security Council Director of China to advise the president on China issues. However, this appointment was ignored by US media, for reasons we can only speculate. While much of the administration's response to China issues has been characterized as "heavy handed" by the same media, that leadership is responsible for influencing the EU to take a similar approach. There's much of Trump I don't like, but I wholly approve of that administration's actions regarding the whole of China.
However he also supported China's anti-Uigher policy in secret remarks[1] to President Xi. There seems to be a hidden agenda at odds with the public agenda.
This is why it's important that the White House challenges China for the right reasons with the right strategy. Trump is certainly the most anti-China president in years, but he often contradicts himself and frames it with racist, partisan, and protectionist rhetoric, actually damaging human rights-based anti-China opposition. Not to mention he's intent on weakening the levers of soft power that the US has traditionally used as he damages alliances and withdraws from global organizations like the WHO.
It's not enough to be publicly anti-China. Effective leadership demands a focused message, effective coalition building, and unifying rhetoric where Trump has turned it into a partisan wedge like everything he wades into.
> I'm curious why this man was denied a US visa in 2018 despite an invitation from Congress to speak about his experience. [1]
After assuming goodwill, and a genuine screwup on the part of US "visa lottery," the most simple, and making sense reason is the communist infiltration of US government.
This is nothing to be laughing about. Internal saboteurs are an extreme threat. It is literally the History has been all about: fates of entire nations being decided by well timed political back stabs.
IIRC, There was a deleted twitter thread where tankies was going through social media exposing affiliation of popular Uyghur atrocity propagandist and yours truly had links to ETIM on facebook. Omir provided some of the earlier testimonials against the camps, he's a propaganda circuit regular but his testimony has been pretty consistent, and his treatment is about what I'd expect China would reserve for ETIM and ETIM associates aka Chinese Gitmo.
Given that his entire family in China has effectively been erased as far as he knows, I think the CCP has a pretty strong level of control in the vast majority of cases.
He currently lives in Netherlands while his wife and child are in Turkey.
Of course there are primary sources, it's just that they're usually in Mandarin or Uyghur or some other non-English language of the region, and they're not nicely reduced down to a few key statements like a news article.
What foreign powers are posting bad things about China? And even if they are, does it matter if it's true? I agree hn is a odd place for this story, though.
This is horrible. No doubt this is an allergic immune response to terrorism. The actions here on a different level than what's going on in Hong Kong, possibly because of this:
"In July 2009, riots broke out in Xinjiang in response to a violent dispute between Uyghur and Han Chinese workers in a factory and result in over 100 deaths. Following the riots, Uyghur radicals killed dozens of Chinese citizens in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the August 2009 syringe attacks, the 2011 bomb-and-knife attack in Hotan, the March 2014 knife attack in the Kunming railway station, the April 2014 bomb-and-knife attack in the Ürümqi railway station, and the May 2014 car-and-bomb attack in an Ürümqi street market. Several of the attacks were orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement) which has been designated a terrorist organization by several countries including Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in addition to the United Nations."
No doubt the efficiency that makes China so effective at arresting the spread of covid also makes atrocities like the concentration camps occur which will no doubt affect many many innocent bystanders. It is questionable whether or not this over-reaction will be effective, but despite this we know that China conducts these atrocities with the goal to end the violence once and for all under any means necessary.
The question is, is a successful quelling of all terrorism worth crossing the line?
Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.
> The question is, is a successful quelling of all terrorism worth crossing the line?
> Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.
Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.
At least the USA pretended to be discerning about who they went after.
>Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.
I think it's a fair comparison. The amount of innocent bystanders killed by the the US military will be much more than what happens in concentration camps.
The difference is the wording. War sounds not as bad as re-education and concentration camps. This is because you're use to it. Change the word from war to slaughter, because that is what war is.. slaughter. It's not even an exaggeration... if you've ever seen a bomb or a bullet massacre a human being into a bloody mess, slaughter is a very appropriate word.
When you change the word you'll realize that war and re-education live on relatively the same level of extremism. Perhaps war is even worse than re-education or concentration camps.
The US slaughtered many soldiers and innocent bystanders in Iraq and afghanistan to end terrorism. The Chinese tortured and re-educated many people to end terrorism.
The war on terror deliberately avoided slaughtering white people and american citizens. The slaughtering was kept exclusively to people with middle eastern backgrounds.
These were very very rare. The US would justify sending a cruise missile into the middle east to kill one target that MAY accidentally harm bystanders but they would never conduct such action on American soil to destroy a terrorist cell that MAY harm american citizens.
Extreme precautions were taken to make sure that all killings involved middle easterners. Were the precautions perfect? No. But obviously the killings were kept exclusive to a race.
Terrorism is the practice of terrorizing mass populations through use of force in the hopes of promoting an ideological agenda. What the Chinese state is doing right now, that sounds a lot like terrorism on an epically larger scale, doesn’t it?
Terrorism is more than that. Terrorism is the use of violence, harm and killings to promote an ideological agenda.
You're 100% percent correct. What China is doing fits the definition of "terrorism." My question is:
Is is using terrorism itself as a means to an end to end terrorism worth it?
Keep in mind that the US reaction to 9/11 can in itself be defined as terrorism for what it did to the other countries. War is a form of terrorism. Perhaps it is much worse than terrorism as terrorism uses small acts of violence to produce a big effect while in war the big effect is the violence itself.
My own personal reaction to what happened with the US is that the war definitely went on for too long and the extension to Iraq was unnecessary. But whether a war was needed in the first place is something I'm unsure about.
Imagine you were there on the day of 9/11. How could you not go to war? The American sentiment was the same at the time... it had to be done. What other course of action is there to take?
What was going on through the minds of the Chinese everytime they saw slaughter after slaughter occur by terrorism on their soil? How could you not? What other course of action is there to take? This is a serious question. What in your mind should have been done instead?
> How could you not go to war? The American sentiment was the same at the time
Respectfully, I disagree with the premise and the assertion. Everyone I know was confused about "going to war with Iraq" (again) which will always be at odds with responding to 9/11.
There is no disagreement here. Most people didn't agree with the Iraq war. He never said that his statement referred to the Iraq war.
Given the context, he's likely more talking about the immediate response following 9/11. Military action was highly supported following the events of 9/11. There was so much support, in fact, that the president now has the power to send troops to any part of the world without declaring war
>Are you justifying China for eradicating a whole culture and its people due to some extremist attacks?
The US tried to justify over a decade of slaughter of terrorists and innocent bystanders abroad as a reaction to one terror attack on US soil.
Don't try to play word games here. None of this is actually justified. All countries are guilty of crimes.
The question I am posing people to consider is this: If several 9/11's happened on american soil. Buildings toppled, hundreds slaughtered by terrorism in multiple events with no end in sight and we find that the origin of these attacks rather than being instigated by one man from abroad is instigated by parts of a cultural community within US soil.
What is the action that should be taken here to completely shut down this problem once and for all?
Not a rhetorical question. I want some serious answers, but at the same time I also know that there is likely no solid answer and every action taken has a compromise.
Also keep in mind this is not a justification of ANY chinese action. None of it is justified.
Killing millions of people is not a proper response to and isolated terrorist act. Moreover you are trying to justify the suffering of people by using some hypothetical scenario that hasn’t occurred.
> Moreover you are trying to justify the suffering of people by using some hypothetical scenario that hasn’t occurred.
I don't think he's justifying anything. He's questioning the nature of this world where a clear black and white decision is not always possible. He is saying in this case could there be No justifiable action possible?
The hypothetical scenario is likely to help you empathize with the events from the chinese perspective. You cannot relate to the people reacting to terrorism in China. However, by envisioning a similar/equivalent scenario in your own country can possibly help you identify with the situation from their perspective. That is the purpose of the hypothetical.
The question still stands if the posed equivalent situation was happening in America, what is the appropriate response? I don't know how to answer his question, do you?
>Killing millions of people is not a proper response to and isolated terrorist act
Don't play with words here. Millions are missing in concentration camps getting reeducated, this isn't actual genocide. This is not equivalent to sending the military to another country and conducting actual killings. What China is doing is still atrocious but quite different then literal slaughter.
Also it's not a response to one isolated incident. Several terrorism acts with hundreds slaughtered and no end in sight is what is actually going on. I don't think you would call several 9/11's happening on american soil isolated terrorist attacks. Perhaps terrorism attacks in China seem isolated to you but this is not the case to a Chinese person.
You keep comparing apples to oranges in order to fabricate an argument. There is no systemic genocide perpetrated by the USA. Maybe if you believed in your argument you’d reply with your real account, not a green one.
>Maybe if you believed in your argument you’d reply with your real account, not a green one.
Looking at his karma which is barely anything in all accounts likely he has no real account. Also the usage of other accounts is likely a symptom of a post limit. Either he can respond to you with another account, or he can ignore you because he can't respond with the same account. Either way these actions are not sanctioned by the site.
>You keep comparing apples to oranges in order to fabricate an argument. There is no systemic genocide perpetrated by the USA
You can call it whatever you want. There was a sponsoring of troops by the US to slaughter people abroad for over a decade. Mass slaughter in the name of war rather than genocide.
The chinese are not slaughtering people. They are putting them in concentration camps and educating them. Torture, Indoctrination and brainwashing are the more appropriate terms with the accurate sentiment.
So yeah you're not wrong it is in way apples and oranges. Do you end terrorism by slaughtering terrorists? Or do you end terrorism by torturing, brainwashing and indoctrinating them? Pick the apple or the orange.
Oh and in both cases there will be innocent bystanders affected.
I am not defending the wars the USA has had. I also feel that the number of collateral damage in the past two decades has been absurd and unjustified. I did not vote for the man who allowed drone strikes on children. Thankfully, the United States has made an effort in the past four years to leave the Middle East.
Nevertheless, this does not justify the actions of the CCP eradicating a whole culture and it’s people. The argument is still unsubstantiated. No global leaders besides the current POTUS are condemning this behavior either, which is a shame. I can only vote with my wallet.
I never justified it. Nothing was justified here at all. There was also no argument made by me. Nor did I say you were defending the US. All I asked was a question:
What action should you take if there are repeated terrorist acts happening in your country where people are slaughtered by the hundreds? You only know the origin of these terror attacks originate from a specific cultural ethnic group, and you know you need to stop the attacks now or the next attack could harm your family.
It's a hard question, but posing a hard question isn't a justification of of the atrocities committed by China. It's more of an illustration of the complexity of the situation and an illustration of the darker capabilities that can erupt from within every individual when the situation is extreme... Anyway the question still stands... what would you do?
The other part of the of the question is to help people rise to a higher level and analyze the full complexity of the situation rather than have a simple minded gut reaction to everything. The world is complex and no single action can really be placed in a "justified" box or an "unjustified" box, yet this is how people think.
You go after the terrorist organization. Not people who aren’t terrorists. Don’t paint the Uighurs as terrorists. There are millions missing. You tell me they all were a threat to China’s national security? This is the pretext for genocide?
How is this a question? “They attacked China with knifes, isn’t China in the right for erasing them out of existence?”
This is the worst argument I have seen on Hacker News.
>You go after the terrorist organization. Not people who aren’t terrorists. Don’t paint the Uighurs as terrorists.
Nobody is painting a race as terrorists. You're exaggerating. It's quite obvious I'm not doing that. But what is real is that these terrorists are part of the Uighur race, so the Chinese will exclusively target the race. Their actions segregate by race but at the same time is a logical course of action. The US has done the same. Do you search for muslim terrorists among people of the japanese race or of the middle eastern race? Think logically. To be people led astray by bias such actions are racist but logically the probabilities are real: A middle eastern man is far more likely to be a terrorist then a Japanese man. If you are incapable of thinking about this concept logically then I suggest you go to another forum that fits your tastes.
>How is this a question? “They attacked China with knifes, isn’t China in the right for erasing them out of existence?”
This isn't a question about rights. It's a question about safety. It's more like among the Uighurs there are people with knives that can attack any moment. These people can attack and kill members of my family at any time. I don't know who they are but I do know that they exists and that they are of the Uighur race even though not all Uighurs are terrorists. What do I do to protect my life and the life of Chinese society right now? I have little time to act before the next attack slaughters hundreds. Likely to prevent another massacre I have to act quickly and prevent
That is the true scope and complexity of this question.
>This is the worst argument I have seen on Hacker News.
I feel hacker news is too intelligent for one track minds who can't comprehend the magnitude of the situation from multiple angles. To you the world is black and white: China is only a evil country out to stamp out the Uighur race and that is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
How about China is a multifaceted complex country that has complex rationale behind every action it takes. Just like how a typical human being isn't purely a good guy or a bad guy China is the same shade of grey. Every action it takes has a cost and a benefit, and every action has a better one that could've been taken in retrospect.
If you can't see deeper into the situation and you only have this one track attitude then yeah I can see how this is the worst argument you've ever seen in your life.
Nobody said you were defending the US. Nobody tried to justify anything. No argument was made in favor of anything.
All he asked you was a question:
If there were terrorist attacks happening today that are responsible for killing hundreds of americans with no end in sight how would you stop it? What actions would you take to shut down these terrorist cells as fast as possible? What compromises would you make? The only thing you know is that the terrorist acts come from a small cultural ethnic group and that your family could be part of the next attack.
If you knew the perfect answer to this question that could be answered without compromising a single ethical principle, than likely China would've known the answer as well.
> The Terrorism he talks about involves actual human harm and the mass slaughter of hundreds of people in China.
The OP's imagined, unspecified design to "quell all terrorism" necessarily rationalizes the actual harm that a primary source specified and had photographed in this article. Digressing from actual harm of a religious minority being sent to "re-education camps" to instead discuss a utopian thought experiment is morally unserious at best.
It is, however, insensitive to bring block chain zealouts into this. I apologize for that.
Wow the balls on this reply. And the lies. When did the op post about a utopian thought experiment? Never. That paragraph is an outright lie.
Op poses a question to help the reader view the action from a more empathic perspective. The goal is to quell all terrorism in the same sense as to prevent all future mass killings. This is the action any country will take.
The utopian thing comes from your misguided thought process. Rather what is being expressed here is an attempt to convey understanding that china's actions are a survival response to end slaughter and terrorism not an attempt to create a utopia.
It is a reflection of your own insensitivity that you those words didn't trigger empathy but rather all you saw was a "utopian thought experiment". To top it off you made a joke about block chain then tried to hide your true nature with a feigned apology. It's clear you don't give a shit either way.
No need to apologize for being insensitive and lacking empathy. You are what you are.
What makes you think such actions are likely to quell terrorism. If anything I would think that this would radicalise the targeted population. The US response to 9/11 was stupid for exactly the same reasons.
I think such actions are done for the purpose of quelling terrorism. I think whether or not those actions will succeed is highly highly questionable. I also agree with you that radicalization is very possible.
That is not to say that as atrocious as these actions are, that they can't be successful. There are cases in history where the US has successfully assimilated a different culture. Basically the entire native american population has more or less been assimilated into US culture with some small vestiges of the old ways remaining.
I also agree with you that the US response is stupid for exactly the same reasons. However it is only stupid in retrospect. Bush sent troops into the middle east with the majority support of the American people. He lost that support later or aka the people regretted their emotional response in retrospect.
It is highly likely that if such terrorism attacks occurred on US soil again our reaction would be no different. Immediate armed response and only wisdom in retrospect.
Like the immediate negative response to my post, people react emotionally to situations. They never try to analyze the situation which is always much more complex than it actually appears.
> This is horrible. No doubt this is an allergic immune response to terrorism.
That was the start of Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs, but the current leadership in China has adopted a broad policy of persecuting racial minorities. I'm not sure what their ultimate motivations are but they are targeting many, if not most, of China's non-Han ethnic groups without regard to whether they pose a terrorism risk or not.
Curious, yeah this is interesting. The powers gained to quell the terrorism seem to be getting used to fulfill ulterior motives, not to different from the presidential powers gained after 9/11. Seems to be a common phenomenon.
Do you have a source where I can start reading more about this stuff?
Not really. Barely a handful out of 54 minority groups that accounts for ~2% of the population. Most are left alone because most of minorities are already sinicized and "compatible" with broader Chinese society.
> ultimate motivations
This is really simple confluence of two major policy changes.
1. New minority policy, no more minority privileges like family planning exemptions from 2 child policy. Particular focus on mandarin fluency to integrate into broader society. Uyghur, Tibet, Mongolia etc, this is important because 99% of China operates on Mandarin, those who aren't fluent gets left behind. Above minority populations also have large rural populations whose lifestyles (agrarian, herding etc) are being phased out due to new land use policies regarding agriculture (food security). Which means urbanization, so there's also a lot of rural-urban labour transfer programs to up train people, i.e. the entire vocational training west portray as slave labour has been regular program in many provinces for at least 10 years for millions of rural Han.
2. New religion policy, rather _A_ religion policy. There simply was never a proper framework for regulating religion post CCP, leading to all sorts of drama. Not just in terms of prosecution, but illegal temples and other unregulated schemes. Lot's of tomfoolery in explosive growth of Chinese buddhism. Essentially, regulate religion, religion must have Chinese characteristics and conform to socialism.
Not new policy, always relevant.
3. Groups that participate in 3 evils, separatism, terrorism, religious extremism get stomped: Uyghurs, Tibetans, HK, Taiwan when that comes around.
Basically, stop 3 evils, spread mandarin, control religion, vocational training for ultimate development goal: urbanization and better rural land use. This is inevitable byproduct of Chinese population size + land constraints. Mix and match interventions, if you're a very religious, rural Uyghur who speaks no mandarin and have no employable skills, you get everything. If you're a Tibetan herder, you get some mandarin lessons and vocation training. If you're a Mongolia urbnite, make sure your kids know mandarin.
This reminded me of what we used to make fun of North Korea for, except its much much more extreme and it’s not funny at all. Its just monstrous, isn’t it? There should be sanctions
Is there actually any proof of this account? This reads like propaganda designed to sucker both the left (torture, islamophobia) and right (communism and lack of religious freedom).
Next article will talk about WMDs and blown up buddhist statues (stories which convinced both sides of the media to push for war in iraq and afghanistan).
>“The Chinese government calls [them] re-education camps. Actually there are no re-education camps - all are concentration camps,” he says.
There ARE re-education camps (obviously). It is easy to find footage of these online (though not without ominous non-diagetic music in the background).
The detention centers at the borders in the US where migrant children are put in cages without beds, toothbrushes, and discouraged from even speaking with each other sound much more like concentration camps.
Why 39 minutes old submission with 148 up-votes is ranked 13th on the HN front page? The first entry at this moment is a 41 minutes old submission with 43 points, the 2nd entry is 59 minutes old with 35 points. Is this because this post is heavily flagged?
There are three competing philosophies in this thread:
1) This is because of communism
2) China is being reasonable
3) This is a crime, what can we do?
1 & 2 are diametrically opposed and downvoting each other whereas 3 gets attacked for being moderate.
Calling it censorship is fine but do recognize that it's because your opinion is take poorly more often than not within this thread.
There are several low karma posters (3-4 first time posters) in this thread though, so at minimum it’s encouraging people who rarely participate to join in, which probably seems odd
There is censorship on HN... not only downvotes and flagging... sometimes admins move entire threads wherever they want too... There is also the opposite of censorship (they boost some content)
Purely going by measures, this post has way more comments than the referenced one, which usually puts a post a bit lower on the top list (afaik).
On the other hand, political topics are generally not that welcome here, especially because it will mostly spark flamewars and does not really help anyone. As evidence for the "dislike" of purely political topics, there was at least one political detox period where political topics were discouraged altogether. (Edit: that's why there are more people flagging/downvoting the post, it's not just censorship)
I'm not arguing for or against political topics here, both have their merits. If the above sounds otherwise then it's because english is not my native tongue and choosing words is not my specialty.
Yep, and I am very sceptical of claims how topics like these tend to plunge from front page right during West Coast work hours, and the tolerance to "controversial" topics magically go up closer to end of the day, and the weekend.
You can't imaging a downvoting, or flagging ring being online with such regularity, and reaction time as if it was a full time job for their members.
The ranking algorithms are just leaking. I’ve noticed an innocuous post today only a minute old already downvoted. “RMS” and “nutcase” were in the post, but not in a derogatory context. Sub-120 second action is an improbable level of attention from human moderation, and the action would seem quite capricious. However, if there were some sentiment-analysis algorithm (which can’t contextualize words well) processing comments and “moderating” as they are posted, then that sort of thing makes perfect sense.
It’s social media. Nothing is on the up and up. Everyone has an angle, puts a thumb on the scale and talks their book. Just don’t take it too seriously.
So like Guantanamo, the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and close to a century of Kissinger and his ilk, is added to one's karma if they buy US products?
I find "whataboutism is not an argument" is a knee-jerk conditioned reaction against putting things in perspective.
It's almost a Pavlovian thought-stopping response by now - "sure, we have faults but we know them already, can we now concentrate on treating the enemy as some unique evil again?".
That wasn't whataboutism. There isn't any arguments there also. It was simply pointing out that if this man's torture is being added to your karma if you buy anything chines then that would mean that buying anything US made would add all those mentioned things to your karma.
Exactly. The problem is, the West gets a moral high ground and even if they get criticism for their actions, the highest repercussions they encounter is "a slap to the wrist".
West gets moral high ground not because it's blameless - it isn't - but because it's faults are smaller. It could be counterproductive to judge something on a boolean scale - "perfect" vs. "not perfect so perfectly bad".
West is much more transparent than non-West, so we have better chance to differentiate good parts from bad parts. If we don't have such opportunity, and we consistently get burned with bad parts, we're forced to assume the whole non-Westness is bad. Here "West" and "non-West" is somewhat similar to "USA" and "China".
If China would be more transparent, if West would see differences, and interactions between those differences, and could judge the parts by those interactions, the scope of blame can be refined. Similarly with more transparent West we can see evolution of society or its parts towards more or less cruelty towards each other and judge and act accordingly.
You can only say this because you've been brainwashed into thinking all the atrocities committed before, say, 1950 don't count anymore. That was a different time! Racism is solved too.
*edit, that should probably be 1975 because we pretend the Vietnam war never happened
Perhaps you should think about why, when faced with evidence of an atrocity, your reaction is not "this is horrible and should be stopped" but "look at all these hypocrites denouncing the horrible thing". It seems to me a serious moral miscalibration.
Your reaction is "this is horrible and should be stopped" and that's what makes you susceptible to anti-China hysteria. This is just "we don't negotiate with terrorists" in another context. Apparently anyone uncooperative with American business interests in the Middle East turned out to be a terrorist who needs to be bombed/assassinated/coup-ed.
America has sanctioned North Korea for going on 50 years now, has that produced a measurable improvement in human rights? Or has it just caused endless suffering?
I'm curious what entitles you to claim I am "susceptible to anti-China hysteria"? How could you possibly know that? And what do Uigurs have to do with the Middle East or Korea? And what does American foreign policy have to do with me? I am not an American.
There's no logic or reason in your response. You write like an AI bot trained on nothing but Chomsky interviews.
You can resort to name calling if you want but the fact remains that none of the countries we've sanctioned for human rights abuses have stopped them. Which becomes continued justification for maintaining sanctions. At what point do we admit that sanctions are pointless?
And it' not a single call, it's a prolonged process. There is progressive movement in USA which claims to focus on those societal deficiencies. There is a lot of work to change things, but also a lot of promise to improve them.
I hate this type of comment. Just so black and white and uninformed. Bluntly there are not many things you can purchase that do not come from or have parts made in China. Food maybe?
There is undoubtedly a strong connection between the Chinese government and business there, But you’re going to run into ethical quandaries in any country in the world if you’re attributing responsibility of government actions to the whole of the people.
As an American, I am appalled at some of the things my government does. I don’t avoid things made in the US because of that.
Genocide is clearly not an acceptable or proportionate response to a few terrorist acts by Muslim separatists.
I, for one, do not welcome our new Chinese overlords. The West needs to stop staring at it's collective navels and get it's shit together, so we can push back at abhorrent abuses like this.
China should be immediately stripped off its veto rights in United Nations. Such genocide should not be accepted by the world just because someone has money.
Criticizing the Chinese government's actions for their treatment of the Uighurs will invite state-sponsored "cancel culture" - not just from China but also from the western democratic nations that acquiesce to Chinese whims. This is incredible - look at the life of the professional football player Ozil who was effectively forced to leave Arsenal for his comments on this very subject.
Criticizing China should NOT be censored. (There's another country that also invites this type of cancel culture trolls whenever someone objects the policies of that country. You can guess.)
A.) Ozil hasn't left Arsenal, he's just not played. His contract runs till next year.
B.) Ozil is just a shit team player. Never attends practice, instead vacationing on Arsenal's dime. Even Arsene Wenger, one of the greatest coaches, had issues with him.
C.) Ozil is also a huge fan of Erdogan, somebody who's currently sending troops to massacre Armenia, while also genociding Turkish Kurds. There is a 5 year old conflict that began ever since he came to power
D.) What's the last country? Iran? Russia? India? Because all of those countries and some more engage in trolling activities in online forums (including HN)
The NBA is a totally different bunch from the EPL, and has been doing its best to bend over backwards for China. Sure, the EPL bends over for China too, but not as much as the NBA. I think it's because the EPL prefers the Indian fan base a lot more, idk, shooting in the dark here.
Hence I said "and some more" . But I honestly don't know which one? Turkey?
I've seen Iranian trolls, Russian trolls, Sino trolls and Indian trolls only. Of course there are American trolls, that's not worth mentioning since it's a given.
Yo dang, how is it that political commentary which questions capitalism or america is verboten, but anything criticizing Communism or China is allowed?
Such perceptions are in the eye of the beholder. People with the opposite views to yours see HN in exactly the opposite light. See for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384662. What's astonishing is how precisely complaints like yours and theirs mirror each other. The mechanism and the emotions are identical—they're just applying different filters. But the underlying data stream of posts flowing through HN remains the same.
What they do care for is a separatism movement. Not because they can't afford to give some land to those to make their own country, but because they fear that that country (or the population within China's borders if no country is created) will be used against them from foreign powers as a pressure point against China. Which is probably justified, as such a thing has happened time and again.
The West on the other hand, could not care less about the "plight og Uighurs" either. I mean the politicians and policy makers who use the Uighur plighy against China, not because they give a duck, but because it's convenient. They themselves have no qualms with fucking over other countries, or supporting other repressive regimes. As for the people in the West, we have the memory span of a goldfish, and just eat up sob stories presented concerning the "enemy of the day". Cut the prominent stories from the media, and they'd forget Uighurs in a second, like they don't give a duck for other peoples plights.
This leaves Uighurs in a hard spot, which is a crying shame, because short of genocide, what China wants to achieve is impossible. The best thing they should do, and the more humane, to don't hurt Uighurs and to get them on their side (to stop any seperatism ideas), is a friendliness war -- shove them with money, support, etc.
But there's bad blood and BS decisions already, so can this still happen? The Han Chinese need to overcome their distrust of non-Han for this to be a possibility.
I say "the Han Chinese" at large, because the party is hardly the issue here. China would do quite the same thing even if they had a democracy. Those things have happened time and again without communist parties in charge - see the re-education camps for Native Americans, Aboriginals, European camps for regufees like Moria and so on.
Wonder what your perspective is around countries which are closer culturally to Uighurs? Like i keep hearing they are from Turkish decent - would Turkey have any interest or stake in this?
Turkey's interest in Uighurs is far smaller than Turkey's interest in its own economy, and China is spending a lot of money to prop Turkey up - they're buying influence. Needless to say that making an enemy of a security council veto power while you're allied with the remnants of ISIS, annexing parts of neighboring countries etc isn't a wise choice.
Erdogan may seem unhinged at times, but he's not, his steps are quite rational from an empire-policy perspective.
I'm not sure about Turkey's interest regarding Uighurs at the moment.
I think Turkey has too many open fronts (with US, Syria, Armenia, Greece, Libya, Israel, Iran, etc) to have a concrete idea about how to get into the Uighur thing.
But they will raise the issue from time to time, if not for anything else, to have a pressure point on China themselves, they can use to get some shush money or favorable deals.
China's "Three Evils", terrorism, separatism, religious extremism.
Uyghurs tick all three, tibet only two. There's a reason Uyghurs are being interned en masse, where Tibet only gets heavy grid surveillance and policing. There were hundreds of terrorist attacks over the years causing thousands of death by Uyghur extremist in China, including one TianAnMen. Terrorism is by far the largest factor because the baseline guarantee by the state should be safety, so Beijing grossly overreacts, with full support of the masses. Not just the Han mind you, no one likes their planes hijacked or train stations knived.
>Money
The issue is you can't pay people to secularize. You have to brainwash. XJ is just repeat classic CCP political work + indoctorination + work camps. The dirty secret being that on balance, they work. Last I read China sunk 2.1 Trillion RMB / 300 Billion USD for the entire "security apparatus" in the region over the last few years. I mean I guess they could just cut every Uyghur a 200,000RMB / 30,000USD check and tell them to renounce Islam. Maybe you'll get some takers, but not the extremist, the primary group of concern, at the cost of pissing off 99.2% of the country. So we have education and vocational training and a little gitmo for recalcitrants.
Do you also genuinely believe think Hitler Adolph was gassing Jewish people out of a real concern for sneaky backstabbing, and Stalin Joseph did the same to many more nations he purged? Punch yourself in the face, get real.
> But there's bad blood and BS decisions already, so can this still happen? The Han Chinese need to overcome their distrust of non-Han for this to be a possibility.
Do you think that Xi, and Co. give any real f..k for feeling of Han Chinese? Get real. One phone call, and he can have any "rightist element" dead and burred the same day.
Now, if the sense have not come to you yet, and the motivations for Xi's actions are not yet crystal clear to you. Please, please read a very well researched topic historically "Why did Hitler commit genocide?" And there is a much more recent refresher, much more approachable, and illustrative for a Western reader "Why Rwandan genocide happened?"
Hitler's "hate" for Jews was far from some compulsive paranoia. Besides sharing some generic Austrian antisemitic tropes, in his head he was far from his self-depiction in "My struggle." He had few Jewish acquaintances, and even shielded some from his own prosecution campaign.
What he did was not something new, he simply did the same what hundreds of European politicians did over the course of two previous centuries of early (in-)civil politics: get a convenient scapegoat, get a convenient political punchbag, and punch, punch punch.
Even a kindergarten bully, when he comes to a new class will not punch somebody second, or third to him, he will pick out the easiest punchbag in the class, and use violence against him to terrorise, and get the class in line.
>Do you also genuinely believe think Hitler Adolph was gassing Jewish people out of a real concern for sneaky backstabbing, and Stalin Joseph did the same to many more nations he purged? Punch yourself in the face, get real.
Yes, Hitler did have a concern for "sneaky backstabbing" - as did most Germans after losing WWI. It even has a name, Dolchstoßlegenden. It wasn't a correct idea, and it was doubly incorrect to pin it to the Jews, but there's no great dispute that both officials and people believed it.
Does it come a surprise to you that Hitler was actually an antisemite? Did you think he mearly killed 6+ million people as an excuse to come to power while not believing it (not to mention he was already in power when he put that in process).
So, no, it wasn't just a "convenient scapegoat". People did (and do) believe those things, including leaders. Including racist, imprisoned, and disillusioned by a war defeat leaders.
In fact not just Hitler, but tons of people all across Europe, the US, Russia, etc, believed in such "jewish" plots, and still do, which is what fed the pogroms for example.
As for Stalin, he was indeed concerned of separatism from USSR, and he did want to have a good hold on Ukraine as it was an important food producing area.
>Do you think that Xi, and Co. give any real f..k for feeling of Han Chinese? Get real.
Yes. But then again, I don't believe in cartoonish evil characters.
> Does it come a surprise to you that Hitler was actually an antisemite? Did you think he mearly killed 6+ million people as an excuse to come to power while not believing it (not to mention he was already in power when he put that in process).
Before the "final solution (gassing)" was implemented, it was 8 years of progressive discrimination, and repressions, which were used to erode the whatever remaining civic fabric of the state.
And when they saw no real need left for the punchbag nation, and saw no further use for millions of inmates (who still needed some minimal food, and shelter to prevent them going up in arms immediately,) and people who will eventually return Hitler a favour, they decided for a "relatively clean solution."
The few surviving accounts of HSDAP top leaders own stances on the matter all confirm this.
While I think it's a gross over-reaction from the Chinese government, I think I understand the fears which fuel such behavior. CPC has learned a lot from the fall of the Soviet Union and they will do anything in their power to prevent a similar outcome for China.
One of the lessons was that cultural differences between citizens can be a very effective tool to destabilize a country. So instead of promoting cultural autonomy as was done in USSR (sometimes to the detriment of Russians, e.g. see Lenin's remarks about "Great Russian Chauvinism"), they aim to completely assimilate Uighurs and other ethnicities living inside Chinese borders. They feel that it can be an existential threat, so "the end justifies the means". This is why such policy got significantly accelerated after clash with "the West" became inevitable.
If you want to change someone's behavior, you have to understand it first.
All empires did it to varying extents and a lot of people got assimilated in the result. The outcome got cemented by creation of "nation states". Cherishing of cultural minorities is a relatively recent development.
Sadly, it’s not realistic to expect people to spend 3x their normal shopping time. We need to make it easier to identify, either through government action, or some commercial solution.
I was trying to buy headphones from a market chain the other day and all the models in 100 eur range were made in china. With some having designed in xxx and made in china.
As long as the majority of the US population doesn't know or doesn't care about the issue, it won't make a whiff of difference. Everyone just keeps buying with their wallets open because it's cheap and available. All the while we distract ourselves with our ridiculous internal politics.
They are populating those regions with Han Chinese and are enforcing mass surveillance. I think the endgame is part ethnic cleansing part assimilation and no part Uighur with their historic culture.
> They creating their own Al Qaeda, come back in ten years and check how they are cooking.
People often repeat that idiocy, not understanding that the Chinese government is willing to put in prison every single Muslim in China if they started doing terrorist attacks on Chinese soil. The CCP doesn't have to care about the rule of law or human rights in their fights against "separatism" or "terrorism".
This is how the CCP crushed the Tibetan rebellion, a people already long forgotten by westerners who now act offended about the treatment of Uighur, like the republic of China was never a bloody dictatorship to begin with.
They don’t have control over bordering territories and small terror cells. In this argument You are attempting to build China into something they simply aren’t because they lack the capability and jurisdiction. https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/993601/china-uyghur-terr...
>Ӧmir was born to Uighur and Kazakh parents in Xinjiang, or formerly East Turkestan before the Chinese invasion of 1949
This is the first time I've seen the claim that "East Turkestan" (as in the "country") actually existed before 1949. I realize that it could totally be that the history I learnt growing up deliberately omitted that part, and/or the definition of "countries" were more in wonton before the end of WW2. But could someone provide some creditable source to support that claim?
For the First, even Wikipedia warned that it lacks citations and verification, so I don't think it should be considered as a "creditable source". Also it's only a tiny portion of Xinjiang.
For the Second, even if we consider it 100% true, it doesn't really support the original claim from that interview article, in several ways:
1. It's a small portion of Xinjiang, and the claim _implies_ that the whole Xinjiang was "formerly East Turkestan before the Chinese invasion of 1949"
2. The Second ETR was pro-communism, pro-Soviet, pro-CPC, and against the rest of Xinjiang that's under RoC control. In 1949 CPC won the civil war against RoC (KMT), took control of all of Xinjiang. So I don't see in anyway it could be claimed that China invaded ETR in 1949.
One thing I don't understand is why do those condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs have to add the (likely dubious) claim of China invaded Xinjiang in 1949. It's not like doing a domestic (cultural) genocide is something "better" than invasion and genocide, so why add some dubious claim to your legitimate claim?
> One thing I don't understand is why do those condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs have to add the (likely dubious) claim of China invaded Xinjiang in 1949.
The best-organized Uyghur groups outside China are various separatist organizations, so they have a natural advantage at getting journalists together with eyewitnesses while putting their own spin on things.
So it's not like they're adding a dubious claim to their legitimate claim, rather they've been making the same dubious claims all along and it's just now that a legitimate claim has been added that people are finally listening to them.
626 comments
[ 181 ms ] story [ 1065 ms ] threadWe can't do anything decisive to help the Uighurs without ripping apart Chinese sovereignty and causing even more collateral damage, so the best we can do is once again find our principles. We will need them to unite us and guide us through the economic pain and chaos that a proper solution like embargoing China would require.
Yes we can. Boycott CCP controlled businesses, their manufactured goods and services. Ensure strict sanctions are levied on CCP members. Ban travel of CCP members to and from countries that respect the rule of Law.
But nope. We would rather, like cowards, keep our mouth shut and do nothing while this genocide continuous unabated.
If your personal boycotts help make you feel better about the ongoing genocide, that's great! I, for one, would prefer a solution that works.
Tariffs can cause a lot of damage.
That's typically not worked in other countries. For example, see Russia, which has been under exactly those kinds of targeted sanctions and yet which continues to openly murder opponents of the Putin regime across the globe.
Russia is almost a semi-hermit State unlike China. Russia was never an "export powerhouse". China is. Russia doesn't have the kind of population China has. Russian population is less than half of USA. Sanctions don't have a major impact on Russia as US was never its major trading partner. But sanctions on China will be a huge blow as US was China's main trading partner. You can't compare Russia and China. They are not the same.
Breaking up a regime capable of doing monstrous things has been done before q.v. europe 1945 .
its in the post you replied to, c'mon man
Doing that against a nuclear state is impossible, as such military action is out of the picture. That leaves only economic action.
Breaking up the Chinese government is not on the table.
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-democratic-national...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
It’s entirely possible in any form of government that disarms and controls its people, rather than empowers them.
As confusion between historical figures goes, Bonaparte - Marx isn't one you see that frequently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
/s
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You've posted 4 of these. That's abusive so please stop.
We've sometimes thought about tracking and showing the edit history of HN comments, but I think this is one place where (let's call it) over-surveillance could lead to more harm than good. Certainly some users abuse editing, but there are also many cases where it's important to let people save face, give them an out, and so on. HN is supposed to be a community and it's important for communities to be forgiving. A certain degree of forgetfulness creates greater ease and freedom. No one wants to be around a superintelligent flaw-pointer-outer. So I think an edit history tracker would have unintended consequences and on balance is probably a bad idea.
Many thanks, both for responding and for all the work you do for HN!
In this context it seems to mean that it's politically easier to "re-educate" the Uighar away than straight out kill the Uighars. If some die during the process China doesn't care but it can't be accused of genocide which would raise more concern globally.
But specifically in the case of Uighurs - you can eliminate a culture by erasing its identity, without killing the people. That seems to be what China is doing - they are not straight up killing them, just putting them in camps for "reeducation" so they behave and think like model Chinese citizens, with harsh punishments for following their original culture. That way, "Uighurs" as a group will be wiped out without necessarily killing them all.
Snyder’s Bloodlands is the definitive work on the subject. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands
The cost of a mass grave is that now the entire city knows you're killing people and you're coming for them. It leads to formation of resistance forces, kills your soldiers, stops the occupation from progressing.
Transportation is free because you took over the railways. Building concentration camps is free because it's done by literal slaves who have no choice anyway, and is done with local materials taken from existing housing. It's not like Nazis were paying market prices for any of this.
Like, I have no idea why were even arguing about this. Go and visit Auschwitz, it's all explained in the museum there. Read some books about occupations of Lvov or Warsaw - Nazis very quickly stopped executing people en-masse because it was more trouble than it was worth. You can say you disagree, but that's just arguing with facts.
"China isn't committing a genocide like the Nazis, because they could just shoot everyone. But, the Nazis didn't do it either, so the Nazis weren't committing genocide like those damn Nazis either"
Bizzare argument.
Also it's pretty clear that they don't care about eliminating the people - they want to eliminate the culture.
If I were an evil dictator with the means in the modern day and I wanted to really intimidate a population, I would abduct some of that population and just secretly kill them and burn their bodies. Nobody can then prove whether you actually killed them. You could say you re-educated them and then let them go, and their present whereabouts are no longer your business.
As to the larger question, most genocides stop short of literally just shooting everyone. That doesn't mean the goal still isn't eradication of a culture.
China does care about legitimacy internationally, and simply shooting millions of people into roadside ditches would be a step too far. But this process of concentration camps under the banner of combating terrorism is enough of a fig leaf, and enough of a slow progression, it doesn't generate the same sort of immediate opposition abroad. As we see here sadly.
There are no magic wands here.
Your local representative could raise awareness to such measures to the ruling class in your country, and vote in favor for them in your national assembly. At the very least your local representative could call to shame any other member of the ruling class that is not publicly and vocally condemning this horror.
They haven't worked on Cuba.
They haven't worked on Venezuela.
They haven't worked on Russia.
They haven't worked on North Korea.
They haven't worked anywhere I can think of.
This leaves North Korea, which is a genuine example of sanctions not working (and in fact casing harm in them self, since the victims are often starving citizens). However threats of further sanctions have worked in the past to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear weapons program (which they later developed anyway). So I’ll give you that one.
But now let’s turn to South Africa. The Apartheid government was supported by many rich nations throughout the late 20th century. Their crimes got worse and worse over the years. Until the international community finally came together in the last decade of the century and imposed heavy sanctions, even excluded them from participating in cultural and sporting events. The apartheid government finally collapsed and South Africa got their first democratically elected precedent that represented a majority of the nation in 1994.
But I don’t think it is fair to talk only about the failure of sanctions to actively work in this context, the alternative here (as per ancestor comment) is military intervention. I could just as easily come up with a list of countries where military intervention did not resolve anything (or left the country seriously damage):
• Cuba
• Libya
• Syria
• Afghanistan
• Yemen
• Somalia
You could make the case for Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia, or even Nazi Germany. But those cases are more nuanced than that, and claiming that military intervention was a “response that worked” would be an inexcusable simplification of how the events unfolded.
What is made in the US that doesn't buy raw materials or partially assembled materials from china?
However, there's MANY countries that are NOT China. We could instead certify products against supporting bad regimes, and using slave / prison labor in the supply chain.
But yeah, it could also serve to give visibility into the breakdown of countries of origin, for those who just want to avoid sending money to countries they view as abusive.
I'm not going to pretend I'm able to avoid China in all my purchasing decisions but I now do some research to avoid China-made or at least China-designed products.
[1] https://gsa.federalschedules.com/resources/taa-designated-co...
It really is hilarious how easy the ostensibly "educated" tech class is manipulate same as the fox news audience.
These existed long before the concept of communism, we can debate communisms merits (of which it has some but not many) or we can actually discuss the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by a dual capitalist/communist society regardless of their political theory of choice.
These phenomenons are not new and arguably were perfected before communism existed. Please don't muddy the waters to make this an attack on a political philosophy when these behaviors are an affront to human life regardless of who perpetrates them.
The same is true of centralization in democracy, but to a lessor effect due to the distributed nature of power in democracies.
Look at what happened in USA after the Civil War. Progress was gradually erased on the state and town level. "States' rights" became a fig leaf for oppression of former slaves. The Constitution guaranteed them equal human rights, but reality was something different because the federal government gave up. It's hard to believe that this lasted until the 1960s.
[1]https://apnews.com/article/dc4062529014451e914ab361b3987afd
It's not optimal but it's what we have.
E.g. who appoints Supreme Court judges and has them own them favors or agree to their ideology? Politicians...
So what?
Elon Musk and by extension SpaceX (aka future of large portion U.S. space travel) has extensive business connections with China.
So what?
It's a problem, all the way around.
Not inherently, should at least raise questions.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-told-chinas-pr...
It's not enough to be publicly anti-China. Effective leadership demands a focused message, effective coalition building, and unifying rhetoric where Trump has turned it into a partisan wedge like everything he wades into.
After assuming goodwill, and a genuine screwup on the part of US "visa lottery," the most simple, and making sense reason is the communist infiltration of US government.
He currently lives in Netherlands while his wife and child are in Turkey.
"In July 2009, riots broke out in Xinjiang in response to a violent dispute between Uyghur and Han Chinese workers in a factory and result in over 100 deaths. Following the riots, Uyghur radicals killed dozens of Chinese citizens in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the August 2009 syringe attacks, the 2011 bomb-and-knife attack in Hotan, the March 2014 knife attack in the Kunming railway station, the April 2014 bomb-and-knife attack in the Ürümqi railway station, and the May 2014 car-and-bomb attack in an Ürümqi street market. Several of the attacks were orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement) which has been designated a terrorist organization by several countries including Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in addition to the United Nations."
No doubt the efficiency that makes China so effective at arresting the spread of covid also makes atrocities like the concentration camps occur which will no doubt affect many many innocent bystanders. It is questionable whether or not this over-reaction will be effective, but despite this we know that China conducts these atrocities with the goal to end the violence once and for all under any means necessary.
The question is, is a successful quelling of all terrorism worth crossing the line?
Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.
> Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.
Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.
At least the USA pretended to be discerning about who they went after.
I think it's a fair comparison. The amount of innocent bystanders killed by the the US military will be much more than what happens in concentration camps.
The difference is the wording. War sounds not as bad as re-education and concentration camps. This is because you're use to it. Change the word from war to slaughter, because that is what war is.. slaughter. It's not even an exaggeration... if you've ever seen a bomb or a bullet massacre a human being into a bloody mess, slaughter is a very appropriate word.
When you change the word you'll realize that war and re-education live on relatively the same level of extremism. Perhaps war is even worse than re-education or concentration camps.
The US slaughtered many soldiers and innocent bystanders in Iraq and afghanistan to end terrorism. The Chinese tortured and re-educated many people to end terrorism.
Which is worse?
It's the same.
Extreme precautions were taken to make sure that all killings involved middle easterners. Were the precautions perfect? No. But obviously the killings were kept exclusive to a race.
You're 100% percent correct. What China is doing fits the definition of "terrorism." My question is:
Is is using terrorism itself as a means to an end to end terrorism worth it?
Keep in mind that the US reaction to 9/11 can in itself be defined as terrorism for what it did to the other countries. War is a form of terrorism. Perhaps it is much worse than terrorism as terrorism uses small acts of violence to produce a big effect while in war the big effect is the violence itself.
My own personal reaction to what happened with the US is that the war definitely went on for too long and the extension to Iraq was unnecessary. But whether a war was needed in the first place is something I'm unsure about.
Imagine you were there on the day of 9/11. How could you not go to war? The American sentiment was the same at the time... it had to be done. What other course of action is there to take?
What was going on through the minds of the Chinese everytime they saw slaughter after slaughter occur by terrorism on their soil? How could you not? What other course of action is there to take? This is a serious question. What in your mind should have been done instead?
Respectfully, I disagree with the premise and the assertion. Everyone I know was confused about "going to war with Iraq" (again) which will always be at odds with responding to 9/11.
Given the context, he's likely more talking about the immediate response following 9/11. Military action was highly supported following the events of 9/11. There was so much support, in fact, that the president now has the power to send troops to any part of the world without declaring war
The number of “missing” Uighurs is over a million.
The US tried to justify over a decade of slaughter of terrorists and innocent bystanders abroad as a reaction to one terror attack on US soil.
Don't try to play word games here. None of this is actually justified. All countries are guilty of crimes.
The question I am posing people to consider is this: If several 9/11's happened on american soil. Buildings toppled, hundreds slaughtered by terrorism in multiple events with no end in sight and we find that the origin of these attacks rather than being instigated by one man from abroad is instigated by parts of a cultural community within US soil.
What is the action that should be taken here to completely shut down this problem once and for all?
Not a rhetorical question. I want some serious answers, but at the same time I also know that there is likely no solid answer and every action taken has a compromise.
Also keep in mind this is not a justification of ANY chinese action. None of it is justified.
Also by war he likely doesn't mean "official" declaration of war by the vocal cords of the US president.
He likely means a more physical form of war by means using soldiers, bullets and bombs to conduct mass slaughter. That kind of war.
I don't think he's justifying anything. He's questioning the nature of this world where a clear black and white decision is not always possible. He is saying in this case could there be No justifiable action possible?
The hypothetical scenario is likely to help you empathize with the events from the chinese perspective. You cannot relate to the people reacting to terrorism in China. However, by envisioning a similar/equivalent scenario in your own country can possibly help you identify with the situation from their perspective. That is the purpose of the hypothetical.
The question still stands if the posed equivalent situation was happening in America, what is the appropriate response? I don't know how to answer his question, do you?
>Killing millions of people is not a proper response to and isolated terrorist act
Don't play with words here. Millions are missing in concentration camps getting reeducated, this isn't actual genocide. This is not equivalent to sending the military to another country and conducting actual killings. What China is doing is still atrocious but quite different then literal slaughter.
Also it's not a response to one isolated incident. Several terrorism acts with hundreds slaughtered and no end in sight is what is actually going on. I don't think you would call several 9/11's happening on american soil isolated terrorist attacks. Perhaps terrorism attacks in China seem isolated to you but this is not the case to a Chinese person.
Looking at his karma which is barely anything in all accounts likely he has no real account. Also the usage of other accounts is likely a symptom of a post limit. Either he can respond to you with another account, or he can ignore you because he can't respond with the same account. Either way these actions are not sanctioned by the site.
>You keep comparing apples to oranges in order to fabricate an argument. There is no systemic genocide perpetrated by the USA
You can call it whatever you want. There was a sponsoring of troops by the US to slaughter people abroad for over a decade. Mass slaughter in the name of war rather than genocide.
The chinese are not slaughtering people. They are putting them in concentration camps and educating them. Torture, Indoctrination and brainwashing are the more appropriate terms with the accurate sentiment.
So yeah you're not wrong it is in way apples and oranges. Do you end terrorism by slaughtering terrorists? Or do you end terrorism by torturing, brainwashing and indoctrinating them? Pick the apple or the orange.
Oh and in both cases there will be innocent bystanders affected.
Nevertheless, this does not justify the actions of the CCP eradicating a whole culture and it’s people. The argument is still unsubstantiated. No global leaders besides the current POTUS are condemning this behavior either, which is a shame. I can only vote with my wallet.
What action should you take if there are repeated terrorist acts happening in your country where people are slaughtered by the hundreds? You only know the origin of these terror attacks originate from a specific cultural ethnic group, and you know you need to stop the attacks now or the next attack could harm your family.
It's a hard question, but posing a hard question isn't a justification of of the atrocities committed by China. It's more of an illustration of the complexity of the situation and an illustration of the darker capabilities that can erupt from within every individual when the situation is extreme... Anyway the question still stands... what would you do?
The other part of the of the question is to help people rise to a higher level and analyze the full complexity of the situation rather than have a simple minded gut reaction to everything. The world is complex and no single action can really be placed in a "justified" box or an "unjustified" box, yet this is how people think.
How is this a question? “They attacked China with knifes, isn’t China in the right for erasing them out of existence?”
This is the worst argument I have seen on Hacker News.
Nobody is painting a race as terrorists. You're exaggerating. It's quite obvious I'm not doing that. But what is real is that these terrorists are part of the Uighur race, so the Chinese will exclusively target the race. Their actions segregate by race but at the same time is a logical course of action. The US has done the same. Do you search for muslim terrorists among people of the japanese race or of the middle eastern race? Think logically. To be people led astray by bias such actions are racist but logically the probabilities are real: A middle eastern man is far more likely to be a terrorist then a Japanese man. If you are incapable of thinking about this concept logically then I suggest you go to another forum that fits your tastes.
>How is this a question? “They attacked China with knifes, isn’t China in the right for erasing them out of existence?”
This isn't a question about rights. It's a question about safety. It's more like among the Uighurs there are people with knives that can attack any moment. These people can attack and kill members of my family at any time. I don't know who they are but I do know that they exists and that they are of the Uighur race even though not all Uighurs are terrorists. What do I do to protect my life and the life of Chinese society right now? I have little time to act before the next attack slaughters hundreds. Likely to prevent another massacre I have to act quickly and prevent
That is the true scope and complexity of this question.
>This is the worst argument I have seen on Hacker News.
I feel hacker news is too intelligent for one track minds who can't comprehend the magnitude of the situation from multiple angles. To you the world is black and white: China is only a evil country out to stamp out the Uighur race and that is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
How about China is a multifaceted complex country that has complex rationale behind every action it takes. Just like how a typical human being isn't purely a good guy or a bad guy China is the same shade of grey. Every action it takes has a cost and a benefit, and every action has a better one that could've been taken in retrospect.
If you can't see deeper into the situation and you only have this one track attitude then yeah I can see how this is the worst argument you've ever seen in your life.
All he asked you was a question:
If there were terrorist attacks happening today that are responsible for killing hundreds of americans with no end in sight how would you stop it? What actions would you take to shut down these terrorist cells as fast as possible? What compromises would you make? The only thing you know is that the terrorist acts come from a small cultural ethnic group and that your family could be part of the next attack.
If you knew the perfect answer to this question that could be answered without compromising a single ethical principle, than likely China would've known the answer as well.
US response towards Saudi can best be summarized as completely indifferent.
Wow, the balls on that question.
And please tell me your imagined design to "quell all terrorism" uses a blockchain. If so, do tell-- really, no detail is too small.
>And please tell me your imagined design to "quell all terrorism" uses a blockchain. If so, do tell-- really, no detail is too small.
You got big balls too. The Terrorism he talks about involves actual human harm and the mass slaughter of hundreds of people in China.
And here you are trivializing what he's talking about into an insensitive block chain insult. Might as well just call him a "nerd."
I'd say your balls are 100x bigger than his.
The OP's imagined, unspecified design to "quell all terrorism" necessarily rationalizes the actual harm that a primary source specified and had photographed in this article. Digressing from actual harm of a religious minority being sent to "re-education camps" to instead discuss a utopian thought experiment is morally unserious at best.
It is, however, insensitive to bring block chain zealouts into this. I apologize for that.
Op poses a question to help the reader view the action from a more empathic perspective. The goal is to quell all terrorism in the same sense as to prevent all future mass killings. This is the action any country will take.
The utopian thing comes from your misguided thought process. Rather what is being expressed here is an attempt to convey understanding that china's actions are a survival response to end slaughter and terrorism not an attempt to create a utopia.
It is a reflection of your own insensitivity that you those words didn't trigger empathy but rather all you saw was a "utopian thought experiment". To top it off you made a joke about block chain then tried to hide your true nature with a feigned apology. It's clear you don't give a shit either way.
No need to apologize for being insensitive and lacking empathy. You are what you are.
That is not to say that as atrocious as these actions are, that they can't be successful. There are cases in history where the US has successfully assimilated a different culture. Basically the entire native american population has more or less been assimilated into US culture with some small vestiges of the old ways remaining.
I also agree with you that the US response is stupid for exactly the same reasons. However it is only stupid in retrospect. Bush sent troops into the middle east with the majority support of the American people. He lost that support later or aka the people regretted their emotional response in retrospect.
It is highly likely that if such terrorism attacks occurred on US soil again our reaction would be no different. Immediate armed response and only wisdom in retrospect.
Like the immediate negative response to my post, people react emotionally to situations. They never try to analyze the situation which is always much more complex than it actually appears.
That was the start of Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs, but the current leadership in China has adopted a broad policy of persecuting racial minorities. I'm not sure what their ultimate motivations are but they are targeting many, if not most, of China's non-Han ethnic groups without regard to whether they pose a terrorism risk or not.
Do you have a source where I can start reading more about this stuff?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/world/asia/china-islam-cr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Inner_Mongolia_protests
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/30/chinese-communist-party...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/chairman-xi-se...
Not really. Barely a handful out of 54 minority groups that accounts for ~2% of the population. Most are left alone because most of minorities are already sinicized and "compatible" with broader Chinese society.
> ultimate motivations
This is really simple confluence of two major policy changes.
1. New minority policy, no more minority privileges like family planning exemptions from 2 child policy. Particular focus on mandarin fluency to integrate into broader society. Uyghur, Tibet, Mongolia etc, this is important because 99% of China operates on Mandarin, those who aren't fluent gets left behind. Above minority populations also have large rural populations whose lifestyles (agrarian, herding etc) are being phased out due to new land use policies regarding agriculture (food security). Which means urbanization, so there's also a lot of rural-urban labour transfer programs to up train people, i.e. the entire vocational training west portray as slave labour has been regular program in many provinces for at least 10 years for millions of rural Han.
2. New religion policy, rather _A_ religion policy. There simply was never a proper framework for regulating religion post CCP, leading to all sorts of drama. Not just in terms of prosecution, but illegal temples and other unregulated schemes. Lot's of tomfoolery in explosive growth of Chinese buddhism. Essentially, regulate religion, religion must have Chinese characteristics and conform to socialism.
Not new policy, always relevant.
3. Groups that participate in 3 evils, separatism, terrorism, religious extremism get stomped: Uyghurs, Tibetans, HK, Taiwan when that comes around.
Basically, stop 3 evils, spread mandarin, control religion, vocational training for ultimate development goal: urbanization and better rural land use. This is inevitable byproduct of Chinese population size + land constraints. Mix and match interventions, if you're a very religious, rural Uyghur who speaks no mandarin and have no employable skills, you get everything. If you're a Tibetan herder, you get some mandarin lessons and vocation training. If you're a Mongolia urbnite, make sure your kids know mandarin.
Next article will talk about WMDs and blown up buddhist statues (stories which convinced both sides of the media to push for war in iraq and afghanistan).
>“The Chinese government calls [them] re-education camps. Actually there are no re-education camps - all are concentration camps,” he says.
There ARE re-education camps (obviously). It is easy to find footage of these online (though not without ominous non-diagetic music in the background).
The detention centers at the borders in the US where migrant children are put in cages without beds, toothbrushes, and discouraged from even speaking with each other sound much more like concentration camps.
1 & 2 are diametrically opposed and downvoting each other whereas 3 gets attacked for being moderate.
Calling it censorship is fine but do recognize that it's because your opinion is take poorly more often than not within this thread.
On the other hand, political topics are generally not that welcome here, especially because it will mostly spark flamewars and does not really help anyone. As evidence for the "dislike" of purely political topics, there was at least one political detox period where political topics were discouraged altogether. (Edit: that's why there are more people flagging/downvoting the post, it's not just censorship)
I'm not arguing for or against political topics here, both have their merits. If the above sounds otherwise then it's because english is not my native tongue and choosing words is not my specialty.
You can't imaging a downvoting, or flagging ring being online with such regularity, and reaction time as if it was a full time job for their members.
It’s social media. Nothing is on the up and up. Everyone has an angle, puts a thumb on the scale and talks their book. Just don’t take it too seriously.
It's almost a Pavlovian thought-stopping response by now - "sure, we have faults but we know them already, can we now concentrate on treating the enemy as some unique evil again?".
West is much more transparent than non-West, so we have better chance to differentiate good parts from bad parts. If we don't have such opportunity, and we consistently get burned with bad parts, we're forced to assume the whole non-Westness is bad. Here "West" and "non-West" is somewhat similar to "USA" and "China".
If China would be more transparent, if West would see differences, and interactions between those differences, and could judge the parts by those interactions, the scope of blame can be refined. Similarly with more transparent West we can see evolution of society or its parts towards more or less cruelty towards each other and judge and act accordingly.
*edit, that should probably be 1975 because we pretend the Vietnam war never happened
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/914465793/ice-a-whistleblower...
America has sanctioned North Korea for going on 50 years now, has that produced a measurable improvement in human rights? Or has it just caused endless suffering?
There's no logic or reason in your response. You write like an AI bot trained on nothing but Chomsky interviews.
You could instead not purchase goods from companies (not countries) that actively support China in exploiting these people. (like apple) https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-forced-uighur-labor-ip...
Lacking that kind of leverage, economic leverage is really the best next thing isn't it?
This is true more so when the people didn't even elect this government.
I, for one, do not welcome our new Chinese overlords. The West needs to stop staring at it's collective navels and get it's shit together, so we can push back at abhorrent abuses like this.
Criticizing China should NOT be censored. (There's another country that also invites this type of cancel culture trolls whenever someone objects the policies of that country. You can guess.)
B.) Ozil is just a shit team player. Never attends practice, instead vacationing on Arsenal's dime. Even Arsene Wenger, one of the greatest coaches, had issues with him.
C.) Ozil is also a huge fan of Erdogan, somebody who's currently sending troops to massacre Armenia, while also genociding Turkish Kurds. There is a 5 year old conflict that began ever since he came to power
D.) What's the last country? Iran? Russia? India? Because all of those countries and some more engage in trolling activities in online forums (including HN)
I've seen Iranian trolls, Russian trolls, Sino trolls and Indian trolls only. Of course there are American trolls, that's not worth mentioning since it's a given.
Such perceptions are in the eye of the beholder. People with the opposite views to yours see HN in exactly the opposite light. See for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384662. What's astonishing is how precisely complaints like yours and theirs mirror each other. The mechanism and the emotions are identical—they're just applying different filters. But the underlying data stream of posts flowing through HN remains the same.
Lots of previous explanations about this phenomenon may be found via https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
China doesn't really care about terrorism.
What they do care for is a separatism movement. Not because they can't afford to give some land to those to make their own country, but because they fear that that country (or the population within China's borders if no country is created) will be used against them from foreign powers as a pressure point against China. Which is probably justified, as such a thing has happened time and again.
The West on the other hand, could not care less about the "plight og Uighurs" either. I mean the politicians and policy makers who use the Uighur plighy against China, not because they give a duck, but because it's convenient. They themselves have no qualms with fucking over other countries, or supporting other repressive regimes. As for the people in the West, we have the memory span of a goldfish, and just eat up sob stories presented concerning the "enemy of the day". Cut the prominent stories from the media, and they'd forget Uighurs in a second, like they don't give a duck for other peoples plights.
This leaves Uighurs in a hard spot, which is a crying shame, because short of genocide, what China wants to achieve is impossible. The best thing they should do, and the more humane, to don't hurt Uighurs and to get them on their side (to stop any seperatism ideas), is a friendliness war -- shove them with money, support, etc.
But there's bad blood and BS decisions already, so can this still happen? The Han Chinese need to overcome their distrust of non-Han for this to be a possibility.
I say "the Han Chinese" at large, because the party is hardly the issue here. China would do quite the same thing even if they had a democracy. Those things have happened time and again without communist parties in charge - see the re-education camps for Native Americans, Aboriginals, European camps for regufees like Moria and so on.
Erdogan may seem unhinged at times, but he's not, his steps are quite rational from an empire-policy perspective.
I think Turkey has too many open fronts (with US, Syria, Armenia, Greece, Libya, Israel, Iran, etc) to have a concrete idea about how to get into the Uighur thing.
But they will raise the issue from time to time, if not for anything else, to have a pressure point on China themselves, they can use to get some shush money or favorable deals.
Uyghurs tick all three, tibet only two. There's a reason Uyghurs are being interned en masse, where Tibet only gets heavy grid surveillance and policing. There were hundreds of terrorist attacks over the years causing thousands of death by Uyghur extremist in China, including one TianAnMen. Terrorism is by far the largest factor because the baseline guarantee by the state should be safety, so Beijing grossly overreacts, with full support of the masses. Not just the Han mind you, no one likes their planes hijacked or train stations knived.
>Money
The issue is you can't pay people to secularize. You have to brainwash. XJ is just repeat classic CCP political work + indoctorination + work camps. The dirty secret being that on balance, they work. Last I read China sunk 2.1 Trillion RMB / 300 Billion USD for the entire "security apparatus" in the region over the last few years. I mean I guess they could just cut every Uyghur a 200,000RMB / 30,000USD check and tell them to renounce Islam. Maybe you'll get some takers, but not the extremist, the primary group of concern, at the cost of pissing off 99.2% of the country. So we have education and vocational training and a little gitmo for recalcitrants.
> What they do care for is a separatism movement.
Are you .....?
Do you also genuinely believe think Hitler Adolph was gassing Jewish people out of a real concern for sneaky backstabbing, and Stalin Joseph did the same to many more nations he purged? Punch yourself in the face, get real.
> But there's bad blood and BS decisions already, so can this still happen? The Han Chinese need to overcome their distrust of non-Han for this to be a possibility.
Do you think that Xi, and Co. give any real f..k for feeling of Han Chinese? Get real. One phone call, and he can have any "rightist element" dead and burred the same day.
Now, if the sense have not come to you yet, and the motivations for Xi's actions are not yet crystal clear to you. Please, please read a very well researched topic historically "Why did Hitler commit genocide?" And there is a much more recent refresher, much more approachable, and illustrative for a Western reader "Why Rwandan genocide happened?"
Read https://www.ushmm.org/teach/teaching-materials/roles-of-indi...
Then read https://www.jstor.org/stable/41479554
Hitler's "hate" for Jews was far from some compulsive paranoia. Besides sharing some generic Austrian antisemitic tropes, in his head he was far from his self-depiction in "My struggle." He had few Jewish acquaintances, and even shielded some from his own prosecution campaign.
What he did was not something new, he simply did the same what hundreds of European politicians did over the course of two previous centuries of early (in-)civil politics: get a convenient scapegoat, get a convenient political punchbag, and punch, punch punch.
Even a kindergarten bully, when he comes to a new class will not punch somebody second, or third to him, he will pick out the easiest punchbag in the class, and use violence against him to terrorise, and get the class in line.
Yes, Hitler did have a concern for "sneaky backstabbing" - as did most Germans after losing WWI. It even has a name, Dolchstoßlegenden. It wasn't a correct idea, and it was doubly incorrect to pin it to the Jews, but there's no great dispute that both officials and people believed it.
Does it come a surprise to you that Hitler was actually an antisemite? Did you think he mearly killed 6+ million people as an excuse to come to power while not believing it (not to mention he was already in power when he put that in process).
So, no, it wasn't just a "convenient scapegoat". People did (and do) believe those things, including leaders. Including racist, imprisoned, and disillusioned by a war defeat leaders.
In fact not just Hitler, but tons of people all across Europe, the US, Russia, etc, believed in such "jewish" plots, and still do, which is what fed the pogroms for example.
As for Stalin, he was indeed concerned of separatism from USSR, and he did want to have a good hold on Ukraine as it was an important food producing area.
>Do you think that Xi, and Co. give any real f..k for feeling of Han Chinese? Get real.
Yes. But then again, I don't believe in cartoonish evil characters.
Before the "final solution (gassing)" was implemented, it was 8 years of progressive discrimination, and repressions, which were used to erode the whatever remaining civic fabric of the state.
And when they saw no real need left for the punchbag nation, and saw no further use for millions of inmates (who still needed some minimal food, and shelter to prevent them going up in arms immediately,) and people who will eventually return Hitler a favour, they decided for a "relatively clean solution."
The few surviving accounts of HSDAP top leaders own stances on the matter all confirm this.
One of the lessons was that cultural differences between citizens can be a very effective tool to destabilize a country. So instead of promoting cultural autonomy as was done in USSR (sometimes to the detriment of Russians, e.g. see Lenin's remarks about "Great Russian Chauvinism"), they aim to completely assimilate Uighurs and other ethnicities living inside Chinese borders. They feel that it can be an existential threat, so "the end justifies the means". This is why such policy got significantly accelerated after clash with "the West" became inevitable.
If you want to change someone's behavior, you have to understand it first.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/220...
People often repeat that idiocy, not understanding that the Chinese government is willing to put in prison every single Muslim in China if they started doing terrorist attacks on Chinese soil. The CCP doesn't have to care about the rule of law or human rights in their fights against "separatism" or "terrorism".
This is how the CCP crushed the Tibetan rebellion, a people already long forgotten by westerners who now act offended about the treatment of Uighur, like the republic of China was never a bloody dictatorship to begin with.
This is the first time I've seen the claim that "East Turkestan" (as in the "country") actually existed before 1949. I realize that it could totally be that the history I learnt growing up deliberately omitted that part, and/or the definition of "countries" were more in wonton before the end of WW2. But could someone provide some creditable source to support that claim?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_East_Turkestan_Republic
Of course, it's Wikipedia, so you'll have to dig through its references.
Not really tracking with the tone of TFA's claims imo.
For the First, even Wikipedia warned that it lacks citations and verification, so I don't think it should be considered as a "creditable source". Also it's only a tiny portion of Xinjiang.
For the Second, even if we consider it 100% true, it doesn't really support the original claim from that interview article, in several ways:
1. It's a small portion of Xinjiang, and the claim _implies_ that the whole Xinjiang was "formerly East Turkestan before the Chinese invasion of 1949"
2. The Second ETR was pro-communism, pro-Soviet, pro-CPC, and against the rest of Xinjiang that's under RoC control. In 1949 CPC won the civil war against RoC (KMT), took control of all of Xinjiang. So I don't see in anyway it could be claimed that China invaded ETR in 1949.
One thing I don't understand is why do those condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs have to add the (likely dubious) claim of China invaded Xinjiang in 1949. It's not like doing a domestic (cultural) genocide is something "better" than invasion and genocide, so why add some dubious claim to your legitimate claim?
The best-organized Uyghur groups outside China are various separatist organizations, so they have a natural advantage at getting journalists together with eyewitnesses while putting their own spin on things.
So it's not like they're adding a dubious claim to their legitimate claim, rather they've been making the same dubious claims all along and it's just now that a legitimate claim has been added that people are finally listening to them.