One could make the case, that the people working there should be a) arrested or b) expelled from the country. Same goes for every other nation in which China maintains those stations, they are all over Europe it seems.
But hey, at least China is doing it themselves instead ofisusing Interpol red notices like other authoritarian regimes do.
Absolutely. That's not gonna happen so, is it? And from a very cynical poijt of view I get it, this is basically an intelligence (as in spy craft during the cold war) war. And our Western intel services propably have a high interest in learbing as much as they can about the methods, tools and operations of their Chinese counterparts. And as long as China only kidnaps and harasses their own people, who cares? Heck, even if it would be "own" people, it would still be a trade-off.
> as long as China only kidnaps and harasses their own people, who cares
They’re also Americans and Britons. Most people do care. In America, I find it highly unlikely we won’t see a push for severe prosecution of this. There is no downside; you can still get counterintel by sealing records and moling them.
There have been a lot of criticism about that at the time in Italy, investigations and even a trial IIRC.
So, these things happened, but weren't blindly accepted, at least not in Italy.
I'm just trying to understand the context of the 'arrests' as the article is paywalled. I'm not making any justifications in either of the cases, not sure why you feel the need to downvote a simple question for clarification.
> First, you asked about the US when this article is about China, a very well known tactic, thank you very much.
I'm American. I'm much more well versed in American issues and this is the first story that popped into my mind which I can bring up as a parallel.
> Second, you really want us to believe China's attempts at getting at its critics is the same as the US trying to get at a terror suspect?
As I clarified, as I couldn't read the full article, I am admitting I don't know - it would be great if the article had clarified down the way on what exactly their position is and someone had quoted it.
> If you want to criticize the US go ahead in the appropriate thread, there's plenty to criticize.
You can't attack another user like this, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Re-reading my comments, I apologize if I came across as 'whataboutism', that is not what is intended. I just read your first link (CNN) and again, I am still left with the same question.
It first states, "...using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally..." which seems to suggest the hosts countries are fully (or at minimum somewhat) aware.
Then, they go on to say "Safeguard Defenders stumbled on the police networks while trying to assess the scale of China’s efforts to persuade some of its people to return to China..."
Fair enough, but what exactly are those people accused of? If they're being accused of fraud or other illegal activities, are those really people we want in our countries.
> being accused of fraud or other illegal activities, are those really people we want in our countries
This is why countries negotiate extradition treaties. China refuses to extradite to the U.S., a matter significant when it comes to the manufacture and trafficking of fentanyl.
We also have evidence China accuses political dissidents and the like of crimes they didn’t commit. There is no independent court in China. But there are in America and Italy and London. China is free to furnish evidence of guilt and gain coöperation. They don’t. That’s telling.
>We also have evidence China accuses political dissidents and the like of crimes they didn’t commit. There is no independent court in China.
Doesnt sound as extreme as what Assange (Australian) is experiencing, adhoc legalized assassination attempts and up to 175 years from a secretive "rubber stamp" court [0]. Main difference being, the Chinese only apply this approach to Chinese people, while the US justifies its application to everyone on the planet.
The precedent has been set elsewhere but I hope China acts like a useful mirror to the many that ignore or even support this practice when their local goverment engages in it.
This is a bad comparison. Assange is being extradited. Guantanamo Bay would be a closer analog to what China is doing. The difference is the breadth and scale.
They don't have authority and jurisdiction to just "arrest" (aka kidnap in this case) people from other countries.
If they actually want to arrest someone, the local authorities need to do it, and they would agree only if the request is valid based on their international agreements, their asylum laws, etc.
Doubtful. I don't know if it's true, but, from the article:
> “We’re seeing the Chinese government resort to blackmail, threats of violence, stalking and kidnappings. They’ve actually engaged criminal organisations in the US, offering them bounties in hopes of successfully taking targets back to China,” said Mr Wray last year.
You don't blackmail or threaten terror suspects, you'd kidnap them immediately. And from the numbers, if "thousands" is accurate, there isn't that much terrorism going on.
Looks more like an intimidation campaign against oppositional Chinese people living abroad.
Thanks for the info; couldn't read the full article so I was just curious, I had read earlier issues like the following [1] which I'll admit is only tangentially related, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is much more extremism than I am aware of it's not a subject I'm well versed in.
> Last December, Ms Wu spotted a fundraising appeal to benefit the Proud Boys - a far-right group designated by the Canadian government as a terrorist "neo-fascist organisation"
Similar in the sense that countries don't like other countries coming into their country and doing whatever they want. If there are criminal issues, then they should be dealt with through normal channels.
Lots of countries get into trouble from their intelligence work overstepping bounds. But of course the country complaining does it themselves, so it's a bit of "don't get caught doing it" approach.
Yes. As the article states, the vast majority of them are suspected corrupt officials or scammers, but of course, you're being downvoted for suggesting that China is anything else but a Orwellian nightmare.
Ironically, there is a lot support on HN that executives should be imprisoned for white collared crime, like being responsible for the chemical spill in Ohio. It turns out the same due process that protects corrupt CEOs also protects political dissidents.
Normalizing and redirection is a lame response. Extrajudicial kidnappings by states are bad no matter who is doing them, but I think you can probably find a better reference than a nearly 20 year old example that became a major scandal within the US, and when you do you can make it the subject of its own submission rather than a distraction from this one.
These forces are used to spy on, harass, and oppress Chinese dissidents and human rights advocates. You can find many other news sources focused on that:
Why did the Economist omit that entirely (unless I overlooked something)? Also, why repeat Chinese government claims that these are criminals, using the word 'alleged' only in the first paragraph. Xi's crackdowns on fraud, etc. are at least in part crackdowns on political enemies - it's a basic tactic in the dictator's playbook.
I haven't read The Economist in a long time. Do they look the other way on China?
One way you can push propaganda as an agent is not to promote something obviously bad, especially if you would never get away with it, but to criticise it less than it deserves.
Not saying it's happening in this case, but suppose you're the Economist and want to win favour with the Chinese. You might consider an article criticising this activity as infringing on the sovereignty of the west and others in the pursuit of justice, rather than in the pursuit of destroying political opposition.
> You might consider an article criticising this activity as infringing on the sovereignty of the west and others in the pursuit of justice
Yes, it reads to me like an implicit justification, an argument that the issues are merely legal, about sovereignty, and not moral and political, an attack on innocent people and on freedom.
Come to think about it. Russia took a page from the NATO supported war or terrorism euth invasion of Ukraine (badly executed as it was). And so did China, Guantanamo Bay is still not closed, prpably all the other black sites neither. And back then e.g. Germany did nothing when people were illegally flown their from German territory. In fact, the foreign minister of Germany at the time (who did exactly nothing about those kidnappings) is now German President and was re-elected for a second term last February.
I don't know about China, but Russia took a page from their own playbook since war with Ukraine is not much different with what happened with Georgia (South Ossetia, Abkhazia), Moldova (Transnistria), Chechnya, many years before the start of the "War on Terror".
> One way you can push propaganda as an agent is not to promote something obviously bad, especially if you would never get away with it, but to criticise it less than it deserves.
Technically yes, but this argument is on its own very dangerous - it's one small step from turning into "by not denouncing this thing strongly and visibly enough, you're actually supporting the enemy, and therefore on their side". This has been a common argument used by all kinds of groups throughout history to stir up conflicts, justify violence and abuse.
Or maybe a newspaper that was known to peddle Iraq War propaganda shouldn't be treated as the source of truth when it comes to known about America's enemies. I'm not saying that it's wrong in this instance, but it's definitely sensational.
The Economist trusts that its readers can come to their own conclusion when it comes to extrajudicial extraditions. Just because they said something positive about China's motivations, doesn't mean they're kowtowing to China.
I mean the assertion that this was a Russian-op instead of a US-op and that the journalist is spreading misinformation. (They said the same thing about Hersh earlier too btw and were proved wrong - twice). The denials will be ameliorated after several years when no one cares about it.
What? Even with a conspiratorial mindset there's no reason to believe NATO blew up their own pipeline. There's "Iraq was justified" errors and then there's "9/11 was an inside job" errors and you're getting them confused.
This isn't quite what the article says. It mentions Howell Raines, but he seemed to have been ousted due to staff discontent as well as a plagiarism scandal [1].
The article also mentions Judith Miller, and her case was interesting to say the least. The NYT assigned her to work closely with American intelligence, so of course she's going to report what they have to say, so she was somewhat of a scapegoat. Then, in 2005, she gets arrested at the behest of the CIA for refusing to disclose the leaker in the Plame scandal. Only then, over a year after the NYT apologized about being wrong in Iraq, did they pressure her to resign.
There's a large number of Trump associates (but not Trump himself) who've been successfully prosecuted for various sorts of overseas "collusion". This is much more than the zero one would expect.
I think you're overestimating the importance of politics and underestimating the prevalence of people wanting to make a quick buck.
An active warzone like Myanmar is not a good choice when you're a dissident looking for safety, but quite convenient when you're running a highly profitable criminal enterprise and can get an armed gang to give you protection for a cut.
Now, many of the 54,000 that quanfan is claimed to have returned from Myanmar likely weren't there entirely voluntarily (recruiters promise people high wages and generously charter a bus to get them to their new workplace; failing to mention that it's going to be a cross-border trip, they won't be allowed to leave until they've "paid back their debts", and room and board aren't free) and others are only providing ancillary services to the gangs (shops, restaurants, bars...) and didn't commit any crimes beyond crossing the border illegally, but from what I've read about people who were enslaved in Myanmar and managed to escape (e.g. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rA9JHSPQJWjnjgaqC-B76g ) the drain caused by quanfan led to personnel shortages for the gangs, making it easier to get away.
> Operation Fox Hunt is a worldwide effort to repatriate people it describes as corrupt officials (the FBI says many are also wanted for political reasons)
I'd be curious to know the numbers of people being extrajudicially extradited in this way for political reasons vs actual crime, but I can't imagine those numbers are readily available.
It's 100% correlated. Being unaligned with the CCP is "moral" corruption. It's a good old witch hunt. The CCP is obviously super-corrupt itself but it is not self observing.
What people don't realize is that extra-judicial "persuasion" is also commonly applied for strategic business interests. I recall a discussion with a someone at an electronics company a while ago where they described recent breaches and leaks of IP to Chinese state companies by unwitting employees pressured by these extra-judicial police.
(Notably, some of the most vocal opponents of Macron go as far as to accuse him of treason for personal gain in this case, though their case is IMHO kind of thin.)
Tom Enders, his compliance officer John Harrison, DARPA's & silicon valley's Paul Eremenko and others have been accused of (ab)using this probe with the result that Airbus' strategic information (including business one) became openly accessible to the USA, and through them, to their competitor : Boeing.
I'm not seeing the similarities to what the parent comment describes.
The people accused of participating of wrongdoing in these articles weren't pressured to participate by threats to their families from their "home" government. They did it for personal gain.
China is really terrifying. I watched a video today of them taking pets from people and beating those pets to death as an anti covid measure this year. A billion plus people, largely uneducated, run by a despotic dictator- scary shit.
China got through the most difficult part of the pandemic, when there were no vaccines, without letting the virus spread.
Over 90% of the Chinese population was fully vaccinated before the zero-CoVID policy was dropped. The biggest failure was that the vaccination rate was lower among the elderly. That's a problem that affects the Chinese cultural sphere, including Taiwan and Singapore.
I’ve seen a bunch of guys in Shanghai whomp on a guy trying to still a girl’s purse. The police just watched, it was Justice in their mind anyways. Things like that just happen I guess, it’s weird that I’ve seen this on TV in the states but never in real life.
I saw things in China that I would never see anywhere else, like a girl get killed when she was hit by a taxi (she was going against a red light, the taxi driver was going way too fast). The thump/crunch sound is one I’ll never forget. I guess it’s because there are so many people that the odds are good that you’ll see something crazy happen in real life and not just see it happen on TV.
I’m really glad I left China before COVID happened. From what I’ve heard from my friends still in Beijing, things have been really tough for the last couple of years. Yes, lives were saved by the suffering, but I’m still glad I personally didn’t have to go through it.
I agree with you that there is a certain kind of fanaticism about reporting on China but... why would the zero COVID policy involve killing people's pets?
In any case, in the end it's all political posturing and propaganda from all sides but I don't think it's great to be framing things in terms of "well, this bad thing is actually not as bad as this worse thing, so we can overlook the less bad thing."
How is beating pets to death political posturing..? Someone thought it'd make them look good?
Most likely it was some misinformed overzealous local official. Pets from pretty early on in the pandemic have been known to catch corona. I think the question of if you can catch the virus from a pet is inconclusive (last I heard) - but obviously very unlikely
If you are trying to get to zero COVID so your city isn't shutdown and thousands of people don't loose their way of life then you're prolly quarantining sick people. No one to take care of their potentially disease spreading pets, so local official decides better safe than sorry
It's messed up, but it's totally not unreasonable for someone on the local level to make this kind of call in a high pressure situation with minimal guidelines and the safety of a city on the line
I don't post anything positive about China on any account associated with my name. In the current zeitgeist it'd be career suicide and with all the frothing at the mouth in the public discourse with the US itching for a cold war - I honestly think in a few years it won't be safe to have that on your internet record
It's certainly much safer to be pro-China in the West than pro-West or pro-USA in China, if that makes you feel any better. So don't complain too much about how difficult life is for you as a supporter of the CCP.
OK if by "positive about China" you mean statements like "I like Chinese food" or "Chinese history is very interesting" then obviously this not an issue. I assumed support for the CCP and the broader Chinese political system was implicit in your concern about expressing something "positive about China". Otherwise I've no idea what the point you're making is.
Lord... That's such a simplistic black and white view of the world. You're either for us or you're against us. This is the toxic juvenile attitude that's so scary honestly.
One can express support for a particular action of their government, or try to share some common misconceptions about life in China without being a supporter of the whole system.
Youve really proved my point. You post anything positive and everyone assumes you're in a click farm jerking off to a picture of Mao Zedong. There is so much misinformation about China in the West - it's truely mind boggling. I used to not care - but lately there is so much warmongering in the West that it's gotten to be honestly scary and I dunno - it's harder to sit back and ignore it all.
Of course if I'm honest with myself - at the end of the day I know that my voice is just a drop in the ocean and doesn't matter
I think you're rather clearly attacking a strawman here. For you to speak of toxic juvenility for my apparent forbidding of praise for individual actions of governments, whereas I specifically used the term "broader ... political system"... it is rich because it feels like I'm talking to a teenager who thinks they're much cleverer than they really are just because they have an opinion. What you said simply doesn't make any sense in response to what I said, so I can't even begin to engage with it.
Accusing people of being shills goes against HN rules.
I don't like the simple-minded demonization of China by people who don't know anything about it. Unfortunately, that's 99% of English-language discussion of China nowadays. That doesn't make me pro-Chinese-government.
China's zero-CoVID policy involved a lot more finesse than "bone-headed lockdowns."
After the initial Wuhan outbreak was brought under control in early 2020, the vast majority of people in China didn't experience another lockdown until well into 2022. Life was actually much more normal in China for most of the pandemic than people in the West tend to think. It was much more normal than in the West for much of the first two years of the pandemic.
From spring 2020 until spring 2022, the main measures were 2-3 weeks of quarantine for people arriving in China, contact-tracing (supported by smartphone apps), and large-scale PCR testing (imagine testing everyone in a city of 10 million people in 3 days, and then doing it again). Lockdowns were rare until mid-2022, and were reserved for situations in which the other measures weren't enough.
That strategy worked extremely well for a long time - long enough to develop vaccines and administer them to 90% of the population.
I don't know when the decision was made to transition out of zero-CoVID, but the transition began in November 2022. It appears that the government initially wanted to do a slow transition, but then decided to completely open the floodgates in early December 2022. The fact that the virus spread so rapidly after that decision is a pretty dramatic demonstration of just how effective the measures were beforehand. After they lifted control measures, everyone was infected within two months.
A common talking point for evil. Everything happens; the statement means nothing. People die of cancer with and without treatment. Bugs are in software made by great coders in organizations with great process, and by bad coders with bad process.
So is everything pointless - freedom, democracy, cancer treatment, coding skill and process, etc. etc.?
If you're going to condemn an entire country based on local police killing a dog, surely the fact that police in your country frequently beat human beings to death is relevant.
> I saw a video a few weeks ago of five American police beating a man to death
And it was such a big fucking deal that the President got involved, it was the major news story for a few days, and most likely the police will go to jail, after a fair trial.
The strength of a country isn't whether or not bad things happen, it's what happens _after_ bad things happen, and if there's accountability.
I dare not look since I'd probably follow suit. What can be done, if anything, about this evidently deep-seated capacity in some of us, to 'have fun' while knowingly inflicting pain and suffering on other living creatures who share our planet?
Those covid measures were they locked doors in buildings, and then people burned alive, screaming for help into the night. And that dystopian nightmare is allowed to harass all that has as ethnicity han.
You’re comparing different sources, which measure different things: the stats for China are simply stated as “read and write” but the stats for America absolutely bungled in the second article. It’s terribly structured and written, so it’s hard to tell for certain, but appears to sometimes be talking about some sort of reading proficiency in English (which is possibly why California comes out so low).
It's true, I would also like to get the source for US from statista, but unfortunately didn't find it there in hurry. It's not a solid argument to prove Chineses are educated or not, even when we have source with US having higher literacy rate. But anyway, just don't see how can someone simply say Chineses are "largely uneducated".
> the stats for China are simply stated as “read and write”
One could argue that being able to read and write in Chinese is quite an accomplishment. For alphabet-based writing systems, kids as young as 6 y.o. can read pretty much any word they know, and write many of them. Not for Chinese.
I don't know if it's mentioned in this paywalled article, but a few years ago Chinese police came to Fiji and arrested 77 people they claimed were Chinese criminals.
They put them on a chartered plane and flew them back to China.
Fiji's then government let this happen and even helped them. They were not given their day in (a Fijian) court... simply bundled into a plane and flown away on the say-so of the Chinese.
China will pull these stunts elsewhere if they can get away with it. Fiji has a new govt now that wouldn't allow this. Choose good leaders.
> In an article in 2021 two scholars from Jilin University warned that pressure on police to achieve success in the repatriation of fugitives could easily lead to the use of “inappropriate” methods, including “threatening and terrorising” suspects and putting pressure on their relatives.
If you owe money or are wanted in China, the government may go after your family to pressure you to return. This pressure can be as extreme as keeping your family members' kids from attending school.
If only this was limited to debtors and criminals. China uses these kind of pressures to suppress political dissent even among Chinese citizens living abroad - for example, Chinese students studying at foreign universities.
Here's one account:
> [W]hen I was a lecturer it was relatively common to go through an entire semester without a single criticism of the Chinese regime by Chinese students in front of their classmates. Occasionally, a courageous student would privately explain why. Students who voiced objections were monitored by their classmates and denounced to the home government. They in turn had representatives within the student bodies whose job it was to warn students about their activism and remind them of the consequences of dissent. By making sure the students knew they were being watched, the students would self-censor (as a minimum requirement) or defend China in whatever debate was taking place.
> In this way, the Chinese students provide something priceless to the cultivation of China’s national image—they make the regime appear to be popular at home. Ask a Chinese student (from the mainland) in public whether or not they approve of Chinese government policies, and you’re likely to get either a nervous and uncertain reply, and possibly a question about why a Westerner cares about Chinese affairs, or you’ll be provided with a vigorous defence of China’s reputation. This isn’t accidental. This is a product of deliberate, well considered policies, crafted by a dictatorship to subvert countervailing foreign policy initiatives.
It's not difficult at all to find Chinese people in China who criticize the government in private conversations about politics.
What's often shocking to Westerners, however, is that most people in and from China have a fairly positive view of their country. If you start telling them that China is a dystopian nightmare, yada yada, and they push back, it's because they actually don't agree with you, and may even be offended. If they're silent, it's most likely because they don't want to get into an argument with you. You don't have to invent stories about them fearing being reported to the authorities back home.
Will the evil win in the end? They learned to totally control their populations. AI technology helps a lot with this, unfortunately. So once a country falls into a dictatorship black hole, there seems to be no way back. Will the entire world fall into this, one country after the other?
Interestingly if you are keen to slip the grasp of law enforcement (note: this is no sanction of illegal activity of any sort), and you reside in, for example, Australia Turkiye or Mexico, you are within the extradition jurisdiction to either China or USA, a kind of extremal legal coverage/exposure. The caveat being, there is a concept called dual criminality which is essentially the intersection of crimes from the one country and the extraditing country.
116 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadhttps://archive.ph/zQuXW
But hey, at least China is doing it themselves instead ofisusing Interpol red notices like other authoritarian regimes do.
If they’ve threatened or kidnapped someone on behalf of the CCP, they should be tried as what they are: covert agents, possibly of an adversary.
They’re also Americans and Britons. Most people do care. In America, I find it highly unlikely we won’t see a push for severe prosecution of this. There is no downside; you can still get counterintel by sealing records and moling them.
I'm American. I'm much more well versed in American issues and this is the first story that popped into my mind which I can bring up as a parallel.
> Second, you really want us to believe China's attempts at getting at its critics is the same as the US trying to get at a terror suspect?
As I clarified, as I couldn't read the full article, I am admitting I don't know - it would be great if the article had clarified down the way on what exactly their position is and someone had quoted it.
> If you want to criticize the US go ahead in the appropriate thread, there's plenty to criticize.
I love American thank you very much.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this:
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
It first states, "...using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally..." which seems to suggest the hosts countries are fully (or at minimum somewhat) aware.
Then, they go on to say "Safeguard Defenders stumbled on the police networks while trying to assess the scale of China’s efforts to persuade some of its people to return to China..."
Fair enough, but what exactly are those people accused of? If they're being accused of fraud or other illegal activities, are those really people we want in our countries.
This is why countries negotiate extradition treaties. China refuses to extradite to the U.S., a matter significant when it comes to the manufacture and trafficking of fentanyl.
We also have evidence China accuses political dissidents and the like of crimes they didn’t commit. There is no independent court in China. But there are in America and Italy and London. China is free to furnish evidence of guilt and gain coöperation. They don’t. That’s telling.
Doesnt sound as extreme as what Assange (Australian) is experiencing, adhoc legalized assassination attempts and up to 175 years from a secretive "rubber stamp" court [0]. Main difference being, the Chinese only apply this approach to Chinese people, while the US justifies its application to everyone on the planet.
The precedent has been set elsewhere but I hope China acts like a useful mirror to the many that ignore or even support this practice when their local goverment engages in it.
The Belmarsh Tribunal [0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QqpYATupw
This is a bad comparison. Assange is being extradited. Guantanamo Bay would be a closer analog to what China is doing. The difference is the breadth and scale.
Whatever happened to presumption of innocence? Being accused does not mean much on its own.
If they actually want to arrest someone, the local authorities need to do it, and they would agree only if the request is valid based on their international agreements, their asylum laws, etc.
> “We’re seeing the Chinese government resort to blackmail, threats of violence, stalking and kidnappings. They’ve actually engaged criminal organisations in the US, offering them bounties in hopes of successfully taking targets back to China,” said Mr Wray last year.
You don't blackmail or threaten terror suspects, you'd kidnap them immediately. And from the numbers, if "thousands" is accurate, there isn't that much terrorism going on.
Looks more like an intimidation campaign against oppositional Chinese people living abroad.
> Last December, Ms Wu spotted a fundraising appeal to benefit the Proud Boys - a far-right group designated by the Canadian government as a terrorist "neo-fascist organisation"
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57587364
Lots of countries get into trouble from their intelligence work overstepping bounds. But of course the country complaining does it themselves, so it's a bit of "don't get caught doing it" approach.
Ironically, there is a lot support on HN that executives should be imprisoned for white collared crime, like being responsible for the chemical spill in Ohio. It turns out the same due process that protects corrupt CEOs also protects political dissidents.
https://www.businessinsider.com/notorious-russian-hacker-kid...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+police+new+york&iar=news&i...
Including the NY Times:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+police+new+york+site%3Anyt...
Why did the Economist omit that entirely (unless I overlooked something)? Also, why repeat Chinese government claims that these are criminals, using the word 'alleged' only in the first paragraph. Xi's crackdowns on fraud, etc. are at least in part crackdowns on political enemies - it's a basic tactic in the dictator's playbook.
I haven't read The Economist in a long time. Do they look the other way on China?
Not saying it's happening in this case, but suppose you're the Economist and want to win favour with the Chinese. You might consider an article criticising this activity as infringing on the sovereignty of the west and others in the pursuit of justice, rather than in the pursuit of destroying political opposition.
Yes, it reads to me like an implicit justification, an argument that the issues are merely legal, about sovereignty, and not moral and political, an attack on innocent people and on freedom.
Technically yes, but this argument is on its own very dangerous - it's one small step from turning into "by not denouncing this thing strongly and visibly enough, you're actually supporting the enemy, and therefore on their side". This has been a common argument used by all kinds of groups throughout history to stir up conflicts, justify violence and abuse.
The Economist trusts that its readers can come to their own conclusion when it comes to extrajudicial extraditions. Just because they said something positive about China's motivations, doesn't mean they're kowtowing to China.
> New York Times: we were wrong on Iraq
2004
https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...
And the President Joe Biden also exactly said this: “If Russia invades, there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it.”
This isn't quite what the article says. It mentions Howell Raines, but he seemed to have been ousted due to staff discontent as well as a plagiarism scandal [1].
The article also mentions Judith Miller, and her case was interesting to say the least. The NYT assigned her to work closely with American intelligence, so of course she's going to report what they have to say, so she was somewhat of a scapegoat. Then, in 2005, she gets arrested at the behest of the CIA for refusing to disclose the leaker in the Plame scandal. Only then, over a year after the NYT apologized about being wrong in Iraq, did they pressure her to resign.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jun-06-na-nyt6-...
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trials_of_Paul_Manafort ; linked to Viktor Yanukovych, of the pro-Russian faction in Ukraine.
What's your view of Hunter Biden being paid by Burisma?
An active warzone like Myanmar is not a good choice when you're a dissident looking for safety, but quite convenient when you're running a highly profitable criminal enterprise and can get an armed gang to give you protection for a cut.
Now, many of the 54,000 that quanfan is claimed to have returned from Myanmar likely weren't there entirely voluntarily (recruiters promise people high wages and generously charter a bus to get them to their new workplace; failing to mention that it's going to be a cross-border trip, they won't be allowed to leave until they've "paid back their debts", and room and board aren't free) and others are only providing ancillary services to the gangs (shops, restaurants, bars...) and didn't commit any crimes beyond crossing the border illegally, but from what I've read about people who were enslaved in Myanmar and managed to escape (e.g. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rA9JHSPQJWjnjgaqC-B76g ) the drain caused by quanfan led to personnel shortages for the gangs, making it easier to get away.
> Operation Fox Hunt is a worldwide effort to repatriate people it describes as corrupt officials (the FBI says many are also wanted for political reasons)
I'd be curious to know the numbers of people being extrajudicially extradited in this way for political reasons vs actual crime, but I can't imagine those numbers are readily available.
I can highly recommend their podcast series on Xi Jinping, The Prince
https://www.economist.com/theprincepod
1.) https://www.economist.com/business/2019/01/17/how-the-americ...
(Notably, some of the most vocal opponents of Macron go as far as to accuse him of treason for personal gain in this case, though their case is IMHO kind of thin.)
2.) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51277946
Tom Enders, his compliance officer John Harrison, DARPA's & silicon valley's Paul Eremenko and others have been accused of (ab)using this probe with the result that Airbus' strategic information (including business one) became openly accessible to the USA, and through them, to their competitor : Boeing.
3.) Not to be forgotten : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32542140
The people accused of participating of wrongdoing in these articles weren't pressured to participate by threats to their families from their "home" government. They did it for personal gain.
China got through the most difficult part of the pandemic, when there were no vaccines, without letting the virus spread.
Over 90% of the Chinese population was fully vaccinated before the zero-CoVID policy was dropped. The biggest failure was that the vaccination rate was lower among the elderly. That's a problem that affects the Chinese cultural sphere, including Taiwan and Singapore.
I saw things in China that I would never see anywhere else, like a girl get killed when she was hit by a taxi (she was going against a red light, the taxi driver was going way too fast). The thump/crunch sound is one I’ll never forget. I guess it’s because there are so many people that the odds are good that you’ll see something crazy happen in real life and not just see it happen on TV.
I’m really glad I left China before COVID happened. From what I’ve heard from my friends still in Beijing, things have been really tough for the last couple of years. Yes, lives were saved by the suffering, but I’m still glad I personally didn’t have to go through it.
In any case, in the end it's all political posturing and propaganda from all sides but I don't think it's great to be framing things in terms of "well, this bad thing is actually not as bad as this worse thing, so we can overlook the less bad thing."
Maybe due to fear (at that time) that the pets would transmit COVID to human. One example is this hamster cull at a Hong Kong pet store [1].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60038551
Most likely it was some misinformed overzealous local official. Pets from pretty early on in the pandemic have been known to catch corona. I think the question of if you can catch the virus from a pet is inconclusive (last I heard) - but obviously very unlikely
If you are trying to get to zero COVID so your city isn't shutdown and thousands of people don't loose their way of life then you're prolly quarantining sick people. No one to take care of their potentially disease spreading pets, so local official decides better safe than sorry
It's messed up, but it's totally not unreasonable for someone on the local level to make this kind of call in a high pressure situation with minimal guidelines and the safety of a city on the line
If I was currently living in China I wouldn't be posting anything remotely political. Obviously they have it harder there
One can express support for a particular action of their government, or try to share some common misconceptions about life in China without being a supporter of the whole system.
Youve really proved my point. You post anything positive and everyone assumes you're in a click farm jerking off to a picture of Mao Zedong. There is so much misinformation about China in the West - it's truely mind boggling. I used to not care - but lately there is so much warmongering in the West that it's gotten to be honestly scary and I dunno - it's harder to sit back and ignore it all.
Of course if I'm honest with myself - at the end of the day I know that my voice is just a drop in the ocean and doesn't matter
I don't like the simple-minded demonization of China by people who don't know anything about it. Unfortunately, that's 99% of English-language discussion of China nowadays. That doesn't make me pro-Chinese-government.
Not to mention the whole problem of not allowing foreign vaccines.
After the initial Wuhan outbreak was brought under control in early 2020, the vast majority of people in China didn't experience another lockdown until well into 2022. Life was actually much more normal in China for most of the pandemic than people in the West tend to think. It was much more normal than in the West for much of the first two years of the pandemic.
From spring 2020 until spring 2022, the main measures were 2-3 weeks of quarantine for people arriving in China, contact-tracing (supported by smartphone apps), and large-scale PCR testing (imagine testing everyone in a city of 10 million people in 3 days, and then doing it again). Lockdowns were rare until mid-2022, and were reserved for situations in which the other measures weren't enough.
That strategy worked extremely well for a long time - long enough to develop vaccines and administer them to 90% of the population.
I don't know when the decision was made to transition out of zero-CoVID, but the transition began in November 2022. It appears that the government initially wanted to do a slow transition, but then decided to completely open the floodgates in early December 2022. The fact that the virus spread so rapidly after that decision is a pretty dramatic demonstration of just how effective the measures were beforehand. After they lifted control measures, everyone was infected within two months.
Has it though? It seems to have mostly delayed things, things got horrible when they reopened a couple of months ago...
A common talking point for evil. Everything happens; the statement means nothing. People die of cancer with and without treatment. Bugs are in software made by great coders in organizations with great process, and by bad coders with bad process.
So is everything pointless - freedom, democracy, cancer treatment, coding skill and process, etc. etc.?
What's your evidence for this?
If you're going to condemn an entire country based on local police killing a dog, surely the fact that police in your country frequently beat human beings to death is relevant.
- police beating people up because of their skin - not normal or encouraged by the gov
- police killing pets? who knows
but you cannot link the two with whataboutism
And it was such a big fucking deal that the President got involved, it was the major news story for a few days, and most likely the police will go to jail, after a fair trial.
The strength of a country isn't whether or not bad things happen, it's what happens _after_ bad things happen, and if there's accountability.
Some of it's pretty sickening, but during covid Twitter has made little to no effort to remove alot of the animal abuse videos from its platform.
It’s for things like this that I laugh in private when some people say that China is the future.
For sure the future of a shittier world.
You do realize that this is the exact excuse used by the CCP for not allowing general elections?
Openly support CCP's policies won't get you too far on HackerNew.
One could argue that being able to read and write in Chinese is quite an accomplishment. For alphabet-based writing systems, kids as young as 6 y.o. can read pretty much any word they know, and write many of them. Not for Chinese.
They put them on a chartered plane and flew them back to China.
Fiji's then government let this happen and even helped them. They were not given their day in (a Fijian) court... simply bundled into a plane and flown away on the say-so of the Chinese.
China will pull these stunts elsewhere if they can get away with it. Fiji has a new govt now that wouldn't allow this. Choose good leaders.
If you owe money or are wanted in China, the government may go after your family to pressure you to return. This pressure can be as extreme as keeping your family members' kids from attending school.
Here's one account:
> [W]hen I was a lecturer it was relatively common to go through an entire semester without a single criticism of the Chinese regime by Chinese students in front of their classmates. Occasionally, a courageous student would privately explain why. Students who voiced objections were monitored by their classmates and denounced to the home government. They in turn had representatives within the student bodies whose job it was to warn students about their activism and remind them of the consequences of dissent. By making sure the students knew they were being watched, the students would self-censor (as a minimum requirement) or defend China in whatever debate was taking place.
> In this way, the Chinese students provide something priceless to the cultivation of China’s national image—they make the regime appear to be popular at home. Ask a Chinese student (from the mainland) in public whether or not they approve of Chinese government policies, and you’re likely to get either a nervous and uncertain reply, and possibly a question about why a Westerner cares about Chinese affairs, or you’ll be provided with a vigorous defence of China’s reputation. This isn’t accidental. This is a product of deliberate, well considered policies, crafted by a dictatorship to subvert countervailing foreign policy initiatives.
https://archive.is/XucW7
What's often shocking to Westerners, however, is that most people in and from China have a fairly positive view of their country. If you start telling them that China is a dystopian nightmare, yada yada, and they push back, it's because they actually don't agree with you, and may even be offended. If they're silent, it's most likely because they don't want to get into an argument with you. You don't have to invent stories about them fearing being reported to the authorities back home.
Why UP-vote inaccessible content, and then go apeshit when someone points it out?
Hacker News is degraded by this infantile, hypocritical behavior. Why perpetuate, let alone PROMOTE it?
Downvote the inaccessible CONTENT, not the remark about it. DUH.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradit...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_China#/medi...
Interestingly if you are keen to slip the grasp of law enforcement (note: this is no sanction of illegal activity of any sort), and you reside in, for example, Australia Turkiye or Mexico, you are within the extradition jurisdiction to either China or USA, a kind of extremal legal coverage/exposure. The caveat being, there is a concept called dual criminality which is essentially the intersection of crimes from the one country and the extraditing country.
Extra credit: 1997 congressional report on the unprecendented (at the time) US-Hong Kong extradition treaty. [3] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/105th-congress...