I have a tankie friend and his MO is whataboutism. Usually he can quote historical examples but if he can’t then something like “you’re naive if you think the West doesn’t do this”.
He would sound exactly like the spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who said that transnational repression “is an allegation that best matches the U.S.’s own practices.”
> Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accused the Justice Department on Friday of “slanders and smears,” adding that transnational repression “is an allegation that best matches the U.S.’s own practices.”
Looks like the official response from the Chinese government is whataboutism.
Yeah those people. The extreme left wing counterpart to the authoritarian right. Stereotypically college-educated and chronically unemployed/underemployed, with seething resentment towards the cultural trend “just get your degree and it’ll all work out.” Also tend to be highly resentful/dismissive towards blue collar workers, which I think shows that their position is based on resentment, not principle.
This seems unlikely, as we all know that the more education a person receives, the more informed they are, the more capable of rational assessment of the world around them.
I have not found this to be true. In an idealized case, I'd agree, but our institutions don't seem to be emphasizing "rational assessment" as an important skill.
In fact there may be a slightly negative correlation because some experts spend so much time on their pet-topic that they end up rationalizing why their preferred evidence is better than the contradicting evidence (basically boosted confirmation bias)
This seems unlikely, as we all know that the more education a person receives, the more informed they are, the more capable of rational assessment of the world around them.
I don't know how to say this without sounding glib, but I honestly cannot tell if your comment is sarcasm. Poe's law [1] applies.
There are tons of college-educated people who are utterly incapable of critical thinking. They parrot what their radical professors told them. They don't know anything about statistics or philosophy or how to rationally criticize an argument. They just repeat talking anti-Western talking points. For them, the grass is greener on the other side of the world. They've never actually tried to live there, let alone talk to people from the authoritarian countries they idolize.
I use a very simple heuristic when talking to that sort of person:
"Why are people fleeing from your alleged paradise to an alleged criminal state? Why not the other way around? Get back to me when large numbers of Americans are fleeing to China to escape tyranny at home, search for new and better opportunities, etc."
At the moment, we're seeing large numbers of older Americans settling in Europe, to flee political conditions in the US. So no, it's not unique to China.
Depending on how the next few elections swing these families might not be safe anywhere in the continental US. They wouldn't be any safer in China, but this kind of tyranny can and does happen here at home.
The area of gender-affirming care is and has been well studied in both adults and teenagers by accredited doctors and pediatricians, and the preponderance of the evidence is firmly in the "pro" category. What trans-women truly want, aside from leading a happy and fulfilling life, is to continue to have access to the health care they need for survival, and for people with the ears of politicians to stop threatening them with either death or forced detransition.
> and the preponderance of the evidence is firmly in the "pro" category.
That's sort of the problem though. You didn't say "according to our highly empirical and well-scrutinized methodology, the only objective conclusion possible is X".
Instead, you use the word that, as best I understand the English language, signals political support. They could have saved themselves the effort of these "studies", if you ask me. These people already knew which conclusions they wanted to reach, and it does little to convince someone like myself. Not a big fan of the social pseudosciences.
> is to continue to have access to the health care
I've yet to see how anything you refer to is "health care" in any useful meaning of the word. On a good day, I might concede that it's close enough to cosmetic surgery to not nitpick that description. But on less generous days it's closer to tattoos/piercings. "I want my body to look like this" isn't health care.
> they need for survival
How is it necessary to their survival? "I'll hold myself hostage with threatened suicide" seems like a peculiar definition of "survival".
> Instead, you use the word that, as best I understand the English language, signals political support
"Preponderance of the evidence" has a very concrete legal definition, one that is very easy to Google. The qualifier "very firmly" implies that the evidence for is overwhelming.
> I've yet to see how anything you refer to is "health care" in any useful meaning of the word.
Transgender health care ranges from options as dicey as surgery (any surgery is dicey by definition, though some such as Orchiectomy are ambulatory and can be done under local anesthesia) to medication such as puberty blockers and hormones. And access to this sort of health care is being threatened for children, adults that are older than the common standard of 18 but lower than some arbitrary number pulled out of some lawmakers posterior, and even all adults, period.
> they need for survival
It is necessary for survival in the same way that anti-depressents are a non-negotiable necessary for some folks to function - except gender-affirming care has _much_ more consistently positive outcomes.
There is of course one more obvious difference between the two. The existence of anti-depressants don't cause insecure men to be terrified that the next woman they catcall might have been born with male genitalia.
There is this funny thing on wikipedia where highly educated people contribute a lot to articles in their field then accidentally end up on the wrong page and turn into the worse possible childish troll.
Bit like the cliche joke about HN: Computer science makes people think they are an expert in all fields. Only without the civility.
What redeeming value do these regimes have if US foreign policy constitutes a seemingly strict _upper bound_ on how ethically these countries must behave?
"If the US' worst is your best, what's your point!?"
Crying about 'whataboutism' is usually a sign of a mentally-stunted person.
There are so many awful things going on in the world that you must provide a convincing reason for telling me, "Look over here... China is doing X!" If I can say, "USA also does X," or "USA does similar thing Y," then I think it's fairly clear you need a convincing argument to try and make me care about this instance of China doing it.
Same thing applies when Democrats do X or Republicans do X. It applies across the board, but this is with the caveat that I mostly do not care about things that happen in the news, and I require sound reasoning for why I am supposed to care. If I point out [I don't care because] X happens all the time, and your only response is "whataboutism," then all you're doing is attempting to make me look stupid on the internet, another thing I don't care about. I walk away feeling like I still don't care. You walk away feeling like you somehow proved me wrong because (China | USA | Democrats | Republicans) are still bad because whataboutism somehow makes me wrong.
Basically, anyone who sincerely argues "whataboutism" on the internet should probably have their keyboard taken away.
If a party is arguing a position of moral superiority, and respond to any seeming demonstrations of moral failings with 'you do it too', it's not obvious to me why their rhetorical counter-party has any reason not to view their argument as specious at best. Unless one can provide compelling evidence that the regimes held up are unambiguously morally superior, I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider those arguing as degrading the communications channel and thus actively hostile to quality discourse.
Are tankies Marxist? I would assert that they'd have to be - and Marxists aren't making the case for their ideas out of some sense of moral superiority. The good ones aren't anyway. China (and other communist states) aren't morally superior they are simply superior: they have harnessed the power of capital accumulation that capitalism provides while retaining the ability to move to more advanced relations of production once appropriate.
China is "winning" and will continue to win, not because they are more virtuous, but because they can move on to the next thing while we're stuck with end-stage capitalism and all the rentierism that comes with it, apparently forever.
I kind of feel the same as your friend. Whataboutism is thrown about like a pejorative, but if I’m playing cards with a table of cheaters, I’m going to start cheating, or I’m going to get cleaned out. If someone tries to call me out, it’s fair to ask him to roll up his own sleeve. And this is a game that you can’t just walk away from.
Because this is where the analogy ends. To quote one of the greatest nation-builders in recent memory, “This is not a game of cards, this is your life and mine.”
The game doesn’t end. There’s no table to leave. Everything you have is always up for grabs. Not playing is just forfeiting.
I’m not sure we’re even discussing the same thing. Are you talking about individuals opting out of society at large? Because that’s something else entirely. I’d still disagree, though.
I'm a "tankie" and my MO is to point out the millions lifted out of poverty in communist China and the fact that the Chinese are apparently a lot happier with their government than Americans are with theirs. China is the workshop of the world and meanwhile much of the American heartland is a fentanyl-addicted hellscape with totally neglected physical and institutional infrastructure. That's pretty much all you have to do: material circumstances trump all and any communist understands this.
Of course China does spook shit. What are they supposed to do: refuse to do intelligence out of some misguided sense of morality so the CIA has free rein to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want? You might as well just assert that China's bad because they refuse to get owned by US intelligence - it's an equivalent sentiment.
During the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Comrade deciplex was telling the cadres “lads, just wait till Mao kicks the bucket and Deng takes over. I’m telling you, the kid is special!”
Ahh yes the “Great Leap Forward”, the social experiment with a death toll of nearly 50 million. What a fantastic poverty relief program. The efficiency in murdering intellectuals and burning historical artifacts would make any ISIS commander blush.
I think you should read up on what Dengism actually is. You seem ignorant of it and the theory and intentions behind it.
I'm surprised it worked, in the sense that they were able to harness market economics and capital accumulation without turning into a capitalist dictatorship like happened in the West. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure how they managed to avoid that (there is still time for it to happen though!) but I'm happy for their success.
> What do you have to say for their campaign of ethnic cleansing?
Pretty much what most of the rest of the world has to say about it, I suppose.
I've actually read quite a bit about it. My point is that China was starving under collectivization. You'd probably agree that "civil run enterprises" was a fig leaf, and it was basically just introducing markets. This is inarguable what lifted people out of poverty, not all of that psychotic shit Mao did.
It's in the article: "america does this too". I actually don't think America does this as a general rule but it does on occasion do worse (black sites) oh and also china has black sites too. For example, does the us actively attempt to do anything to Snowden or Assange - besides arrest them in the open? I doubt it.
It seems like most of the government-run dystopian elements of China have a private parallel in the US. Like take the "social" part off of social credit score. This article sounds like the kind of work aggressive private investigators might be able to do for you (as far as I know, the Pinkertons are still in business).
Your credit score just measures your reliability in repaying loans no? It only affects your ability to get loans no?
It’s no different from a driving test which measures you ability to drive and only affects your eligibility to drive.
We use such specialised tests with clear “passing” conditions that only affect a specific part of our lives all the time.
Social credit systems seem far more far reaching from what I have heard - affects your ability to get loans, buy property, travel, … etc. Your score also depends on pleasing certain people in society rather meeting some objective criteria - reminds me of the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”.
> More than half of employers conduct background checks during the hiring process only, and the No. 1 reason (at 86%) is to protect their employees and customers, says the 2018 HR.com report.[0]
> Landlords generally look for a credit score of 650 or above to approve a rental application.[1]
> Social credit systems seem far more far reaching from what I have heard - affects your ability to get loans, buy property, travel, … etc. Your score also depends on pleasing certain people in society rather meeting some objective criteria - reminds me of the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”.
This is the way the media covered it, but PolyMatter recently did a video that goes a long way toward clarifying what Social Credit means [0]. The short version is that it's a collection of barely-related initiatives and companies responsible for a lot of different things, that in Western eyes all got lumped together into a monolothic version that encompasses every aspect of life.
PolyMatter has a lot of good content on China. They're highly critical of China's policies, but they have a very realistic perspective on China's quite limited capabilities as an enormous, diverse, authoritarian state. My main takeaway from their China content is that China's ability to micromanage is dramatically overestimated in Western pop culture. Not that their regime is less oppressive than we think, just vastly less competent.
I feel like you're really downplaying how impactful credit score is and how dystopian it is. They rebranded fraud against the lender as "identity theft" against you so that they could sell your fraudulent debt to private harassment firms. In turn since identity theft isn't real (fraud is) you need to get the lender to file a police report and unseal their private financial records (they won't do this). All this while you experience real damages like being rejected by mainstream lenders, swaths of employment and housing opportunities and pushed towards fringe and predatory lenders.
That being said, I also think you're not accurately describing social credit or relying entirely on hearsay. For the most part its focused around credit worthiness and financial fraud. I'm not a huge fan of either system, but as somebody who's worked with people harmed by the US private credit system, I can tell you that it's possible to "Nosedive" here and that's not just what I've heard.
> It seems like most of the government-run dystopian elements of China have a private parallel in the US
Welding doors of apartments where a few people test positive for COVID? Housing a male of the ethnic majority in a minority family and forcing the minority women to sleep with the men while their husbands are in Concentrtion camps? Organ harvesting of political prisoners?
I don't think the US does "privatized" versions of these things.
The US is much better about repression of ethnic minorities than it used to be (one of the founding fathers literally fathered slave children as an example of that particular hypocrisy), but it certainly still exists.
I did not say that every feature of society is perfectly replicated, nor have I studied both of them well enough to know if they are perfectly analogous. I'm sure some societies showcase their own idiosyncratic injustices. For instance, I'm not aware of for-profit prisons in China.
If China could get the US to agree to extradition of its residents for violations of Chinese law they probably would've just done what the US is doing to Julian Assange right now.
The Chinese aren't doing it for "reasons", they have a justification that fits into their narrative, just like the US. The similarities are that the state is using its power to punish people that have made it look bad or have otherwise displeased it. The main difference is that isn't supposed to happen in America, but it does no matter who you vote for.
> ...does the us actively attempt to do anything to Snowden or Assange - besides arrest them in the open? I doubt it.
"According to former intelligence officials, in the wake of the Vault 7 leaks, the CIA talked about kidnapping Assange from Ecuador's London embassy, and some senior officials discussed his potential assassination."
The CIA has engaged extensively in assassination and torture for the better part of the last century.
Over 600 assassination attempts against Fidel Castro alone for the crime of not kowtowing to all US demands (Fidel originally tried to ally with US not the Soviet Union, but was rebuffed by the US because redistributing foreign owned/stolen land was central to Fidel's central policy of lifting ordinary Cuban's out of poverty); also, since the Spanish-American war, the US viewed Cuba as something of a colony, and was unwilling to treat it as a peer.
More apropos, the US also kept "accidentally" bombing Al Jazeera newsrooms during the US unprovoked war of aggression in Iraq. Coincidentally, Al Jazeera were some of the only reporters who went independently into the field to report on US war crimes. The US was given the coordinates of the Al Jazeera Offices, so the US knew what they were bombing (each of multiple times).
I was subjected to the same bullshit K-12 hero worship "history" lessons and other US propaganda as I suspect you were/are. As a child we moved to a country where the US overthrew the democratically elected government and installed a far-right brutal murderous dictatorship (in support of a US corporation's rape of the country). This led to civil war (which I experienced first-hand; the US providing support to the oppressive government regime during the decades long war). We moved back to the US before the genocide began (the US providing support; Ronald Regan even personally meeting with the General primarily responsible for executing the genocide). This experience forced me to confront the lies we are told in the US.
Do what you want, but I'd suggest reading university level historical accounts (even those published in the US), they are much more accurate with far less/no hero worship. Also, listening/reading to foreign news sources is useful to help break through the propaganda our corporate news sources feed us here. The process is similar to being de-programmed from a cult, and the ultra patriots chanting, "USA, USA, USA..." have drank the Kool-Aid.
Cool story bro. Thanks for assuming I'm an idiot. Fidel did declare war on the US, so I'd say that ethically speaking that made him a legitimate target. Yes, the US had a pragmatic policy of "we don't assassinate" (nominally because we don't want our president to be the target of assassination), so I will concede that it's a tad hypocritical.
A better example would have been like dole wars, or maybe tacit support of pinochet but that's kinda dated and the US is definitely trending towards less of that shit.
If china's like "well the US did it so it should be ok for us", the correct response is: yeah, so? Be better.
The difference is that the US picks a couple of high profile scapegoats and makes their life hell, but everyone else is untouched.
The US will harass you, but publicly and legally. If you're a media person, you won't get access to the money-making Americans corps. They'll cancel your visa, and harass anyone with your namesake at a border crossing.
The harassment from the CCP is continuous and affects a large number of people. Just because 1 side does bad things, doesn't mean they can't moralize the bigger culprit.
( I do find comments on the morals of war to be a bit rich coming from Americans)
While true, that doesn't make China any less of a threat. When someone invades your territory, and they accuse "But you invaded others in the past!", you should not dismantle your defense and let their tanks roll through your streets.
But that is the purpose of that accusation - to inhibit self-defense through demoralization. Arguing that no, you're virtuous enough to deserve safety, is already falling into that trap. They're not coming to exact a just punishment.
It's a (light) perjorative for a Marxist-Leninist, although now it's been expanded to anything left-of-center. This includes self-identification by both Maoists (who aren't exactly Marxist-Leninists in terms of doctrine), and identification of others by reactionaries (for whom it's the lazy label for anybody on the left).
> I've never seen it used this way. What I've seen is the term being used to describe leftist authoritarianism, usually by other leftists.
These are not exclusive! My point was that it's used broadly, and is thus not inherently pejorative -- I've leftists use it both pejoratively and non-pejoratively.
> Tankie is a pejorative label for communists, particularly Stalinists, who support the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism–Leninism or, more generally, authoritarian states associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical. [...]
> The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions
Originally, a marxist-leninist leaning person who supported the USSR's rolling tanks into Eastern Block countries for things like the Prague Spring. More commonly these days, people who 'stan' for countries like China and Russia largely out of anti-westernism.
That would actually be in the same vein as the origin of the term, which has to do with the soviet union rolling tanks into rebelling countries to bring them into submission.
I'd say rolling tanks OVER your own people to put them into submission is similar enough.
It's still basically just used to describe self-described socialists and communists who deny atrocities committed by communist governments or engage in deranged levels of whataboutism. I rarely see it used against garden variety lefties.
Why are you asking tankies? How many actual tankies do you think exist in the US? I hope you exclude liberals, social kapitalists, social democratist from the definition of tankies?
This comment is entirely unsourced, except for an unrelated FBI link at the bottom. Insinuating that a foreign power is poisoning our water sources isn't something you should do baselessly.
I would direct you to a 60 Minute Australia piece called "China’s illegal police stations in 53 countries around the world" to see how this could affect you, as it has affected australians.
That stops working if they believe you're a convenient link to a person of interest. There's no evidence Xu Jin's sister-in-law had significant ties to the PRC outside of a family member's marriage.
Until you find a girlfriend from China, or a close friend, or a co-worker or even just an acquaintance that they just happen to tie to you. Now they have their reason.
They've been known to go after a Swedish citizen in Thailand. The Chinese government revoked his Swedish citizenship after the fact to justify the kidnapping.
But was he/she from a Chinese roots/family? Got any article about it? It’s because I don’t think I ever came across a case the Chinese gov were hostile against a non-Chinese person, obviously I could be wrong but nothing from my poor memory I could pull.
Yes, he renounced his Chinese citizenship and became a Swedish citizen, but China revoked the change when they grabbed him from Thailand (they also got him to agree to it, but coercion was likely involved in that).
Regardless of ancestry, an American permanent resident is an American. Same with any country.
It makes no difference whether China is only targeting people whose ancestry traces to Sweden or Xiamen. If they aren’t a resident of China it’s not their business, even if they still have relatives back there.
Why does it matter? Why is that point relevant or being made?
American permanent residents (greencard holders) aren't American. They need citizenship first, otherwise they just have the right to live in America but not protection being a citizen would provide.
Eh, depends on what protections you’re referring to. Merely being on US soil (regardless of citizenship) guarantees pretty much all legal protections enjoyed by American citizens.
It certainly protects you from harassment by the CCP.
Ya, but a US greencard holder will still have their Chinese citizenship (if Chinese), so abroad they would get support from a Chinese consular rather than a US one, meaning it is much easier for them to get kidnapped from Thailand.
>Why does it matter? Why is that point relevant or being made?
It does matter, because as far as I tell, there’s been zero case the gov was after a person from non-Chinese roots. I’ve also seen similar cases in other countries like some south asians/arab countries, they are only after their own/previous citizens no matter what’s their nationality. Now you may ask why?! It’s simple, those are the most influential to the local public against the current regime than say a white guy lecturing Chinese people about freedom, he/she will never have the same impact than a local one who’s outside and away from any coercive or persuasive or any consequences.
So in essence you’re saying it’s actually worse that they’re targeting those with ancestral ties than not?
My objection is that the way it’s been phrased in this thread it’s almost giving the impression that “it’s not an American issue” that it’s China going after its own so “normal” Americans don’t need to care.
That outlook is dangerous and false. They are us, they are Americans. I’m sure China would love to propagate otherwise.
Apples and oranges to an extent but not that different to the west's treatment of Assange. The core difference being, Assange published information that highly embarassed the DOD and documented its war crimes causing a significant disturbance in the status quo for allies and the US whereas Gui apparently only published information that embarassed Xi Jinping's family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
Alternatively, imagine if the boat you are on at the edge of an ocean on the other side of the world is suddenly blown up by a highly trained team of special ops people for a western government, as France did to Greenpeace's vessel in Auckland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
Or even, in the same country, having a multi helicopter airborne assault team and 76 ground based personnel raid your house because you are accused by the US government of breaking copyright rules on the internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom
Truly, it may be said that governments - whatever their continent or nominal ideological configuration - can be quite nasty to individuals and dismissive of due process. Further, they are effectively powerless to call one another to justice on such matters, and a certain amount of this sort of thing is perhaps tacitly accepted as normal covert and intelligence agency activity. Usually it becomes some sort of diplomatic or political straight-lipped talking point with apologies or statements issued many years past the fact, failing whatsoever to make amends. However, every time this occurs it fundamentally weakens territorial integrity and thus the legitimacy of governments globally, causing populations to cast them in the same light as predatory profit focused multinational corporations or - let's be honest - organized crime.
Note that New Zealand has yet to extradite Kim Dotcom to the USA. Somehow the legal system keeps grinding on, which is the opposite you would expect from a kangaroo court.
Yes, reading between the lines on the US relationship to AU and NZ it appears that the US can pull military and intelligence strings with great efficiency but public political strings outside of these contexts are relatively more onerous.
Both AU and NZ are very strong democracies, so this makes sense, for the same reason that Canada never extradited the founder of Huawei's daughter to the USA.
How? Do you blame an intelligence agency working for its country’s interests? How’s this different from the FBI/CIA working together to extradite/persecute person outside of their jurisdictions?! Do you blame them too or do you blame the country that person in that allowed such overseas extradition? Why is it ok to have Julian Assange for example facing extradition by the US and charged overseas?
Exactly, suddenly these are ok, and it’s legal, and it’s due to “security/intelligence alliance”, you can come up with all excuses but at the end it’s the same, just the old mentality:”it’s ok of we do it, not ok if they do it”, and replace “they” with whatever nation/country the narrative is against at that time.
when you spend years insinuating that every academic researcher, high tech employee/executive, investor, or random chinese national on vacation is potentially a spy, i don't really expect the general public to object to the fact that they're being coerced by china into returning to china.
Chinese intelligence services absolutely do use those people to gather information through a "thousand grains of sand" approach. It has been very effective. That doesn't justify paranoid xenophobia but we need to recognize the national security threat that we're up against.
Frankly I'm surprised only the Chinese are doing it. You would think large corporations would do the same against internal troublemakers, competitors, etc.
>The case centered on Xu Jin, a former Chinese government official who moved to the United States over a decade ago
"Over a decade ago" - 2010-12 - was when PRC dmismantled CIA intelligence network, and found out CIA infiltrated into CCP to the point of buying high level promotions. Queue anticorruption + operation foxhunt to purge and repatriate these individuals. Wonder if Xu is among them, timing lines up. Either way, in lieu of extradition treaties which US/west will not establish with PRC, not even for obvious financial criminals let alone dissidents, these extraterritorial operations will continue if only to keep setting examples that there's no golden passport for Chinese nationals and their offsprings who undermine PRC interests.
Yup, that whole fiasco seriously puts into question the utility of the CIA and its ilk. The whole situation really spooked Xi Jinping and gave him good reason to clear house, ending up with our current situation. I wonder how many agents are in the high levels of the party today, if at all.
You can't attack another user like that on HN, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. It leads to a lot of ugly things and the site guidelines specifically ask you not to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.
(Since this is usually the point at which someone accuses us of being biased in favor of the other side: no, that's not how HN moderation works, and yes we make every effort to apply the rules evenhandedly.)
142 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 321 ms ] threadI don't really buy Mr. McMahon's defensive. I suspect he deliberately didn't ask any details about what he was doing for whom.
It's not a good defense, but it's the best one he has.
He would sound exactly like the spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who said that transnational repression “is an allegation that best matches the U.S.’s own practices.”
> Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accused the Justice Department on Friday of “slanders and smears,” adding that transnational repression “is an allegation that best matches the U.S.’s own practices.”
Looks like the official response from the Chinese government is whataboutism.
This seems unlikely, as we all know that the more education a person receives, the more informed they are, the more capable of rational assessment of the world around them.
In fact there may be a slightly negative correlation because some experts spend so much time on their pet-topic that they end up rationalizing why their preferred evidence is better than the contradicting evidence (basically boosted confirmation bias)
I don't know how to say this without sounding glib, but I honestly cannot tell if your comment is sarcasm. Poe's law [1] applies.
There are tons of college-educated people who are utterly incapable of critical thinking. They parrot what their radical professors told them. They don't know anything about statistics or philosophy or how to rationally criticize an argument. They just repeat talking anti-Western talking points. For them, the grass is greener on the other side of the world. They've never actually tried to live there, let alone talk to people from the authoritarian countries they idolize.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
"Why are people fleeing from your alleged paradise to an alleged criminal state? Why not the other way around? Get back to me when large numbers of Americans are fleeing to China to escape tyranny at home, search for new and better opportunities, etc."
This is actually happening here in the states:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/19/transg...
Depending on how the next few elections swing these families might not be safe anywhere in the continental US. They wouldn't be any safer in China, but this kind of tyranny can and does happen here at home.
The area of gender-affirming care is and has been well studied in both adults and teenagers by accredited doctors and pediatricians, and the preponderance of the evidence is firmly in the "pro" category. What trans-women truly want, aside from leading a happy and fulfilling life, is to continue to have access to the health care they need for survival, and for people with the ears of politicians to stop threatening them with either death or forced detransition.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cpac-spe...
That's sort of the problem though. You didn't say "according to our highly empirical and well-scrutinized methodology, the only objective conclusion possible is X".
Instead, you use the word that, as best I understand the English language, signals political support. They could have saved themselves the effort of these "studies", if you ask me. These people already knew which conclusions they wanted to reach, and it does little to convince someone like myself. Not a big fan of the social pseudosciences.
> is to continue to have access to the health care
I've yet to see how anything you refer to is "health care" in any useful meaning of the word. On a good day, I might concede that it's close enough to cosmetic surgery to not nitpick that description. But on less generous days it's closer to tattoos/piercings. "I want my body to look like this" isn't health care.
> they need for survival
How is it necessary to their survival? "I'll hold myself hostage with threatened suicide" seems like a peculiar definition of "survival".
"Preponderance of the evidence" has a very concrete legal definition, one that is very easy to Google. The qualifier "very firmly" implies that the evidence for is overwhelming.
> I've yet to see how anything you refer to is "health care" in any useful meaning of the word.
Transgender health care ranges from options as dicey as surgery (any surgery is dicey by definition, though some such as Orchiectomy are ambulatory and can be done under local anesthesia) to medication such as puberty blockers and hormones. And access to this sort of health care is being threatened for children, adults that are older than the common standard of 18 but lower than some arbitrary number pulled out of some lawmakers posterior, and even all adults, period.
> they need for survival
It is necessary for survival in the same way that anti-depressents are a non-negotiable necessary for some folks to function - except gender-affirming care has _much_ more consistently positive outcomes.
There is of course one more obvious difference between the two. The existence of anti-depressants don't cause insecure men to be terrified that the next woman they catcall might have been born with male genitalia.
Bit like the cliche joke about HN: Computer science makes people think they are an expert in all fields. Only without the civility.
This is used constantly here as well. When I ask for evidence I'm naive, stupid, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36232186
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36231274
"If the US' worst is your best, what's your point!?"
There are so many awful things going on in the world that you must provide a convincing reason for telling me, "Look over here... China is doing X!" If I can say, "USA also does X," or "USA does similar thing Y," then I think it's fairly clear you need a convincing argument to try and make me care about this instance of China doing it.
Same thing applies when Democrats do X or Republicans do X. It applies across the board, but this is with the caveat that I mostly do not care about things that happen in the news, and I require sound reasoning for why I am supposed to care. If I point out [I don't care because] X happens all the time, and your only response is "whataboutism," then all you're doing is attempting to make me look stupid on the internet, another thing I don't care about. I walk away feeling like I still don't care. You walk away feeling like you somehow proved me wrong because (China | USA | Democrats | Republicans) are still bad because whataboutism somehow makes me wrong.
Basically, anyone who sincerely argues "whataboutism" on the internet should probably have their keyboard taken away.
China is "winning" and will continue to win, not because they are more virtuous, but because they can move on to the next thing while we're stuck with end-stage capitalism and all the rentierism that comes with it, apparently forever.
Your comment would have been much better without the first and last sentences.
Why not?
The game doesn’t end. There’s no table to leave. Everything you have is always up for grabs. Not playing is just forfeiting.
Of course China does spook shit. What are they supposed to do: refuse to do intelligence out of some misguided sense of morality so the CIA has free rein to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want? You might as well just assert that China's bad because they refuse to get owned by US intelligence - it's an equivalent sentiment.
Only after Deng's market based reforms in the 1980s.
What do you have to say for their campaign of ethnic cleansing?
I'm surprised it worked, in the sense that they were able to harness market economics and capital accumulation without turning into a capitalist dictatorship like happened in the West. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure how they managed to avoid that (there is still time for it to happen though!) but I'm happy for their success.
> What do you have to say for their campaign of ethnic cleansing?
Pretty much what most of the rest of the world has to say about it, I suppose.
It’s no different from a driving test which measures you ability to drive and only affects your eligibility to drive.
We use such specialised tests with clear “passing” conditions that only affect a specific part of our lives all the time.
Social credit systems seem far more far reaching from what I have heard - affects your ability to get loans, buy property, travel, … etc. Your score also depends on pleasing certain people in society rather meeting some objective criteria - reminds me of the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”.
Don’t think they are really comparable.
Not in the US. It also affects your ability to get housing, to get jobs, and other things.
> Landlords generally look for a credit score of 650 or above to approve a rental application.[1]
[0]https://www.cnbc.com/select/can-employers-see-your-credit-sc...
[1]https://www.apartmentlist.com/renter-life/credit-score-neede...
This is the way the media covered it, but PolyMatter recently did a video that goes a long way toward clarifying what Social Credit means [0]. The short version is that it's a collection of barely-related initiatives and companies responsible for a lot of different things, that in Western eyes all got lumped together into a monolothic version that encompasses every aspect of life.
PolyMatter has a lot of good content on China. They're highly critical of China's policies, but they have a very realistic perspective on China's quite limited capabilities as an enormous, diverse, authoritarian state. My main takeaway from their China content is that China's ability to micromanage is dramatically overestimated in Western pop culture. Not that their regime is less oppressive than we think, just vastly less competent.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqov6F00KMc
That being said, I also think you're not accurately describing social credit or relying entirely on hearsay. For the most part its focused around credit worthiness and financial fraud. I'm not a huge fan of either system, but as somebody who's worked with people harmed by the US private credit system, I can tell you that it's possible to "Nosedive" here and that's not just what I've heard.
Welding doors of apartments where a few people test positive for COVID? Housing a male of the ethnic majority in a minority family and forcing the minority women to sleep with the men while their husbands are in Concentrtion camps? Organ harvesting of political prisoners?
I don't think the US does "privatized" versions of these things.
I did not say that every feature of society is perfectly replicated, nor have I studied both of them well enough to know if they are perfectly analogous. I'm sure some societies showcase their own idiosyncratic injustices. For instance, I'm not aware of for-profit prisons in China.
What charges on similar scales and severity would these harassed Chinese be accused of?
"According to former intelligence officials, in the wake of the Vault 7 leaks, the CIA talked about kidnapping Assange from Ecuador's London embassy, and some senior officials discussed his potential assassination."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
Over 600 assassination attempts against Fidel Castro alone for the crime of not kowtowing to all US demands (Fidel originally tried to ally with US not the Soviet Union, but was rebuffed by the US because redistributing foreign owned/stolen land was central to Fidel's central policy of lifting ordinary Cuban's out of poverty); also, since the Spanish-American war, the US viewed Cuba as something of a colony, and was unwilling to treat it as a peer.
More apropos, the US also kept "accidentally" bombing Al Jazeera newsrooms during the US unprovoked war of aggression in Iraq. Coincidentally, Al Jazeera were some of the only reporters who went independently into the field to report on US war crimes. The US was given the coordinates of the Al Jazeera Offices, so the US knew what they were bombing (each of multiple times).
I was subjected to the same bullshit K-12 hero worship "history" lessons and other US propaganda as I suspect you were/are. As a child we moved to a country where the US overthrew the democratically elected government and installed a far-right brutal murderous dictatorship (in support of a US corporation's rape of the country). This led to civil war (which I experienced first-hand; the US providing support to the oppressive government regime during the decades long war). We moved back to the US before the genocide began (the US providing support; Ronald Regan even personally meeting with the General primarily responsible for executing the genocide). This experience forced me to confront the lies we are told in the US.
Do what you want, but I'd suggest reading university level historical accounts (even those published in the US), they are much more accurate with far less/no hero worship. Also, listening/reading to foreign news sources is useful to help break through the propaganda our corporate news sources feed us here. The process is similar to being de-programmed from a cult, and the ultra patriots chanting, "USA, USA, USA..." have drank the Kool-Aid.
Good luck!
A better example would have been like dole wars, or maybe tacit support of pinochet but that's kinda dated and the US is definitely trending towards less of that shit.
If china's like "well the US did it so it should be ok for us", the correct response is: yeah, so? Be better.
The US will harass you, but publicly and legally. If you're a media person, you won't get access to the money-making Americans corps. They'll cancel your visa, and harass anyone with your namesake at a border crossing.
The harassment from the CCP is continuous and affects a large number of people. Just because 1 side does bad things, doesn't mean they can't moralize the bigger culprit.
( I do find comments on the morals of war to be a bit rich coming from Americans)
But that is the purpose of that accusation - to inhibit self-defense through demoralization. Arguing that no, you're virtuous enough to deserve safety, is already falling into that trap. They're not coming to exact a just punishment.
I’m only really familiar with it as a term used by democratic socialists for Stalinists, and occasionally Maoists.
(I wouldn’t have thought actual tankies would be too thrilled with the current Chinese regime, anyway.)
(I'm not a tankie and far be it from me to gatekeep who gets called it, but my understanding matches yours re: the Chinese regime.)
I've never seen it used this way. What I've seen is the term being used to describe leftist authoritarianism, usually by other leftists.
These are not exclusive! My point was that it's used broadly, and is thus not inherently pejorative -- I've leftists use it both pejoratively and non-pejoratively.
It’s used to describe people who support authoritarian left
Honestly even this is wrong, it’s more authoritarian anti-US as they support Putin
> Tankie is a pejorative label for communists, particularly Stalinists, who support the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism–Leninism or, more generally, authoritarian states associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical. [...]
> The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions
I'd say rolling tanks OVER your own people to put them into submission is similar enough.
Every one of them wouldn't think twice if a US Green Card magically appeared in front of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: If you'd prefer to remove my original and subsequent comments, I won't object. I can see how it led to a lot of arguments and not a lot else.
Then again how does one test for that action?
I would direct you to a 60 Minute Australia piece called "China’s illegal police stations in 53 countries around the world" to see how this could affect you, as it has affected australians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L9ubuwBDkI
2: even if you were safe, "it doesn't affect me so, why should I care?" is common but still disgusting
none of us are saints but come on
For a lot of these things, it's not like you get to have the nobody snooping choice, so pick the least worst option.
2. E has non-zero private info (Z) (e.g., closeted LGBT folks)
3. Foreign govt X obtains Z and uses that to force E to get access to M.
It makes no difference whether China is only targeting people whose ancestry traces to Sweden or Xiamen. If they aren’t a resident of China it’s not their business, even if they still have relatives back there.
Why does it matter? Why is that point relevant or being made?
It certainly protects you from harassment by the CCP.
It does matter, because as far as I tell, there’s been zero case the gov was after a person from non-Chinese roots. I’ve also seen similar cases in other countries like some south asians/arab countries, they are only after their own/previous citizens no matter what’s their nationality. Now you may ask why?! It’s simple, those are the most influential to the local public against the current regime than say a white guy lecturing Chinese people about freedom, he/she will never have the same impact than a local one who’s outside and away from any coercive or persuasive or any consequences.
My objection is that the way it’s been phrased in this thread it’s almost giving the impression that “it’s not an American issue” that it’s China going after its own so “normal” Americans don’t need to care.
That outlook is dangerous and false. They are us, they are Americans. I’m sure China would love to propagate otherwise.
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/25/809163417/hong-kong-bookselle...
Apples and oranges to an extent but not that different to the west's treatment of Assange. The core difference being, Assange published information that highly embarassed the DOD and documented its war crimes causing a significant disturbance in the status quo for allies and the US whereas Gui apparently only published information that embarassed Xi Jinping's family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
Another example that comes to mind is that of Israel's kidnap of Vanunu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu
At least it wasn't simply death as per Saudi's assassination of Khashoggi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi
Alternatively, imagine if the boat you are on at the edge of an ocean on the other side of the world is suddenly blown up by a highly trained team of special ops people for a western government, as France did to Greenpeace's vessel in Auckland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
Or even, in the same country, having a multi helicopter airborne assault team and 76 ground based personnel raid your house because you are accused by the US government of breaking copyright rules on the internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom
Truly, it may be said that governments - whatever their continent or nominal ideological configuration - can be quite nasty to individuals and dismissive of due process. Further, they are effectively powerless to call one another to justice on such matters, and a certain amount of this sort of thing is perhaps tacitly accepted as normal covert and intelligence agency activity. Usually it becomes some sort of diplomatic or political straight-lipped talking point with apologies or statements issued many years past the fact, failing whatsoever to make amends. However, every time this occurs it fundamentally weakens territorial integrity and thus the legitimacy of governments globally, causing populations to cast them in the same light as predatory profit focused multinational corporations or - let's be honest - organized crime.
2. Do we want US govt. pardoning US citizens for their crimes in China?
Exactly, suddenly these are ok, and it’s legal, and it’s due to “security/intelligence alliance”, you can come up with all excuses but at the end it’s the same, just the old mentality:”it’s ok of we do it, not ok if they do it”, and replace “they” with whatever nation/country the narrative is against at that time.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/spy/spies/dif...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
They certainly do! Here's a recent example, although it ended in prison time for the executives:
https://text.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126078948/live-spiders-and-...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18263757/tesla-elon-musk-...
https://nationalwhistleblowercenter.medium.com/sunday-read-r...
"Over a decade ago" - 2010-12 - was when PRC dmismantled CIA intelligence network, and found out CIA infiltrated into CCP to the point of buying high level promotions. Queue anticorruption + operation foxhunt to purge and repatriate these individuals. Wonder if Xu is among them, timing lines up. Either way, in lieu of extradition treaties which US/west will not establish with PRC, not even for obvious financial criminals let alone dissidents, these extraterritorial operations will continue if only to keep setting examples that there's no golden passport for Chinese nationals and their offsprings who undermine PRC interests.
Money and houses in Vancouver didn't stop being effective levers, they just had to get more subtle.
(Since this is usually the point at which someone accuses us of being biased in favor of the other side: no, that's not how HN moderation works, and yes we make every effort to apply the rules evenhandedly.)
[0]. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2015-04/23/content_205144...