I work with a lot of folks from China and they are bending over backwards trying to defend the CCP. Their argument almost always boils down to "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." Equivalent to someone using their one black friend as proof that they can't possibly be racist.
> I work with a lot of folks from China and they (...)
What you say represents about 50% of Chinese researchers in my lab. Those that immediately return to their country after the PhD and you never hear from them again. The other 50% are the complete opposite: they cannot wait to get their family out of the country and never look back, explaining that the country is ruled by a bunch of crazy psycopaths. Curiously enough, there's almost no interaction between both groups, they politely ignore each other (and they are really polite and professional towards everybody also).
Once upon a time I used to spend way to much time on Omegle (worldwide random 1:1 chat).
Once a chinese girl was online, we chat about our countries, I explain how much I like china as a kid for martial arts, food, aesthetics, it was friendly and casual (chinese people on omegle often expressed worries about the value of their country, I wanted to make her feel at ease).
Quickly though she started to say it's not all rosey, rules are strict, internet firewall.. suddenly she stopped talking. She typed a bunch of omg omg omg i shouldn't have said that omg sorry disconnect.
It was nothing yet I felt fear in her behavior. All that for expressing very mild discontent about her country. First time I ever felt the impact of politicians on people's mind.. also a 'freedom of speech' felt different after that.
It's ultimiately a matter of dependency i.e. econmically well-off Chinese people who have dependencies with CCP (e.g. official party member (6.6% of the population), or owning a family business that interfaces with CCP, even if unofficially, etc), V.S. well-off Chinese with little or no dependencies.
To be where they are now (outside of China receiving education, etc), the former group (or their parents/relatives) fought hard to get benefits from their relationship with CCP, while the later group (or their parents/relatives) fought hard to find a path out of this CCP madness.
And thus the contrast.
My grandfather was a minister and a proud CCP member. But he was the type who believes in doing the moral things and never took bribe. He worked crazy hours and get paid penauts. Most of my relatives saw him as foolish because he basically didn't fight to "get benefits from his relationship with CCP" and stayed poor for all his life. And most of his colleagues and superordinates don't like him because you can't help one another to climb the rank (or generate wealth) like this.
> And most of his colleagues and superordinates don't like him
they don't like him not because of the ladder climb, but because him being a goody-two-shoe means that their corrupt activities are more likely to be shown as "wrong", and therefore, more risky for them.
it's like being a good cop in a department where the other cops are bought and paid for.
Maybe, maybe not, but our psychopaths are restrained by a government designed to be inefficient and to frustrate tyrants.
We just had an attempted fascist coup in the USA and it failed hilariously. The swamp is a good thing. It’s there to bog down tyrants in mud. Efficient government is dangerous.
My intention was to point out the irony of Chinese nationals wanting to immigrate to the US, ostensibly because China is ruled by a bunch of "crazy psychopaths". When the reality is that the US is also run, at least in part, by a bunch of crazy psychopaths.
Even though I agree with what you said in terms of internal politics, I think when it comes to geopolitics, things start to get much uglier and multiple times more cruel. And since this topic is about foreign politics, I don’t think the US is any better than China. An American might think different, but I’m not one.
There were a whole series of posts on HN, and other sites by folks who talked about people traveling in the area and not seeing anything.
I don't know what that is supposed to mean / why we would assume you'd notice it ...
On HN and elsewhere people mentioned how they were happy people could travel through the area and not have to worry about "thieves" and they'd make some comparisons to travel in the west, a sort of chilling random concern considering the topic.
Often the same link was posted to a western blogger apparently paid to travel to the region. With the link the posts noted that the blogger didn't mention genocide.
>I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad
Because they have a different definition of "bad". If you follow closely, the mainland Chinese or CCP have different definition of the same word for literally everything.
Why is it bad to force them learn Mandarin and forget about their old language? Where the job markets are and to help them better integrate into the society.
Why is it bad to give them birth control pills? Or reeducating them? etc. They are doing / supporting these regime with a smile on their face as they think they are doing good.
The simple fact is that we don't know what is going on in Xinjiang and most of the reports in the West about what is allegedly going on there are by people who have a vested interest in making it sound as bad as possible or who likely have links with Western governments. On top of that very few people in the West know anything at all about China, its culture, and its history.
So, as a matter of intellectual honesty, I don't think it is possible to have strong opinion and to use extremely strong terms to describe the situation there as if that was fact.
That's really a common problem when information is withheld. On the one hand it obviously arouses suspicion but on the other hand it also allows over-the-top narratives and rumours to spread, and it is very difficult to separate facts from propaganda, from the other side's propaganda, from fantasy...
Im pretty sure that people said the same thing about the jews under hitler. Human beings are very good at denying and rationalizing away unpleasent truths.
The US and UK have a long history of funding terrorists in hopes of regime change too. We spent years treating ISIS and their supporters like they were the victims in Syria...
An older family member grew up in WW2 Europe under German occupation. I asked them about general everyday life during the war and the holocaust. Besides getting bombed on en route to school, it "wasn't that bad". I don't know if it's justification or stockholm syndrome. Part of me speculates people in these situations suspend their reality as a survival mechanism.
This is the key observation of Imre Kertész's book Sorstalanság about his surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a deported Hungarian Jew. He is frustrated by people asking him postwar about how terrible the camps were. His thinking sort of goes like this: the human spirit is strong and can survive anything an oppressor throws at it, but to ask about the horrors of the death camps is to suggest that they were capable of breaking one’s spirit.
In the end (I don’t know if this counts as a spoiler or not) Kertész even admits to feeling nostalgia for some of the moments in the camps.
I'm Chinese. Many languages and expressions in this thread not only detests me but also represent the very opposite of western critical thinking.
I appreciate the western style of logical thinking. You are being taught in schools how to tell the truth and bust lies, to criticize, to doubt, to ask questions no one dares to ask. You are taught definitions of fallacies, the art of debate, the wisdom of introspection.
I envy you, having been taught so many ways to learn, to listen, to ask.
You know, in China, they don't teach you those. They fill you with hard knowledge, 1+1=2 kind of knowledge. There's always only one correct answer: the answer from the textbook, from the instructor, from the authority. No question is asked unless you forgot what you should have memorized.
I envy you, having the freedom to argue 1+1=0 and discover binary.
As Chinese, we've been taught to believe, to repeat, to bow down to seniors, teachers, authorities.
It's the way of life here.
It's also the reason I came to the US.
And yet, here we are.
"You cannot trust anything reported out of China."
"No use in trying to discuss this anyone from China. They are totally brainwashed."
Do you hear the racists in these words? Do you feel the rejection of listening, the denial of communication, the blockage of thinking in those expressions?
Chinese are liars. -- is what they want to say.
Because the west has free speech and free press, so everything the western media report must be the truth. -- is what they believe.
Folks, where is your doubt? Where is your wisdom of knowledge?
Just because Chinese people were taught to remember the only answer, doesn't mean they can't think critically. Have you ever listened to them? Are you dismissing them just because of where they were born or how they were taught?
Just because you have a free press, doesn't mean your media is unbiased. Who are their sponsors? What political spectrum do they stand for? Is it economically or politically beneficial to talk trash about China?
Now you have to ask: What's your defense for the CCP? How brainwashed are you? Do you condemn the CCP for what they alleged doing?
My answer is simple: I will stay doubtful until I have first-hand contact or undeniable evidence showing one way or the other. Until then, I can't say if those allegations are real or not. If they were real, I (and I believe most Chinese people) would condemn the practice, and would like to demand a change.
"I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad."
-- It's a very common argument lot of Chinese people would use. Because it's relatively easy to find people living in Xinjiang or who come from Xinjiang online. Me too, had several conversations with folks from the area, some on Telegram where they were using VPN to connect, and some are friends of friends. Of course, we would talk about the headlines all over the western media. And every time, the answer I got is they are still working, living, studying as normal. There were conflicts in some areas in the southern part, but I haven't got any more detail than that.
These conversations are not proof of China not doing what it's been alleged to do. But you have to understand it's much more difficult to prove something you didn't do instead of something you did, and yet these kinds of personal encounters are the closest things we have to give us a perspective of the situation in the area.
To think back, what is the closest encounter you had to the situation in Xinjiang? Did you talk to any victim from the area? Of course, you would immediately argue that CCP wiped clean all witness and evidence, so finding a victim is almost impossible, which is another allegation that's almost impossible to prove otherwise --- how convenient of you.
But anyway, the closest encounter of yours is almost always the media stories you read, from western media, all over the places. But have you ever doubt that why all stories about China are negative? Why people are saying things to discredit every word comes out Chinese people's mouth? Doesn't it feel strange to you?
And it's not easy for someone to speak up for China either. I -- writing these words, am seriously worried about losing my job in the US just because of this. So I'm using an alias account. YouTubers that speaking up for China are constantly being depromoted, demonetized, restricted for sharing, or banned for their words. Is it free speech should look like? Is the west deliberately running some kind of campaign to discredit and disconnect China from the rest of the world?
Of course, that's an allegation without concrete proof. But you can find it is logically sound. There are many political movements and campaigns by the US and other five eye countries trying to contain the political and economical development of China - so their countries can continue to sit on top of the world's hegemony. It's not strange that these political and economical campaigns had affected public opinion and implanted negative views of China in its citizens' minds.
We can have a lot of allegations back and forth. Maybe they are all wrong - or all true. But the bottom line is, what kind of thinking you want to promote.
If you are spreading denial and racism, I would condemn you regardless if your arguments are true or not.
Please, don't let a Chinese person point out your fallacies. We were supposed to not learned that.
"You cannot trust anything reported out of China" does not need to mean what you are taking it as. It is true you cannot trust anything reported out of China. But that's not the same as saying not to believe anything reported out of China. The former is a fact, you should be skeptical instead of blindly trust a country known for propaganda. The latter is racist, saying nothing China says is true. There are a few people saying forms of the latter. But most here seem to be saying more the former, that strong skepticism is needed. This isn't inherently racist, and it even aligns with your whole point here, thus is the opposite of a fallacy.
I understand the feeling of my follows, they are hot-blood emotional beings.... What I could summarise more abstractly is this: they are not discrediting the news sources abroad, but instead, because chinese society / us people are well connected (in real person). It's almost impossible to hide any major events in China, even with large scale blockage. Everyone talks to everyone. Hence the reaction from a lot of people from China is due to the fact that they understand the situation 'better' than just seeing what's reported.
I had a similar reaction back in 2010 when talking to a scientist from Libya (during the internal conflict). He was in real shock of what's been known for ages of his country in the west. Of course it doesn't mean everything in the western media is wrong. But he knew some facts that had simply not surfaced at all in people's view. I have a similar feeling now.
> because chinese society / us people are well connected (in real person)
Most Uyghurs don't even speak your language. That generalization of well-connectivity doesn't apply at all. Unless you speak Äynu, you are likely talking mostly with Han Chinese in Xinjiang (or Uyghurs who had undergone severe Sinicization).
> It's almost impossible to hide any major events in China, even with large scale blockage
It is impossible to hide "major events" only when jounralists are free to roam around in China.
I have a jounralist friend whose grandfather was a Chinese war hero (i.e. he is a 红三代). He is now a US citizen, and works for a respectable news media. He had internal CCP connections but were denied Chinese visa when he was working on the Uighur story in 2017. This had never happened before, even when he was investigating the controversial story with Bo Xilai.
I appreciate your comment but I didn't imply that the connection was seamless between ethnic groups. Your thinking assumes that there is a huge segregation between the two populations and anyone who cross-over would be 'Sinicization' / radicalisation. But reality is more complex than that. If you been or watched any videos from Xinjiang (unfortunately most not in English) you would see alot of locals (ethnic minorities) supporting the current way of life or even the law enforcement themselves (which I don't want to argue about its right or wrong here).
I don't see how the journalist story relates to this. I know exactly the kind of profile he has. Most people in/out of China know the limit of political freedom and the sensitivity changes according to political tides. It'll be quite strange that he pretends he didn't know the severity. But that's exactly my point: these events muddle the water and hide the real serious issues.
> But have you ever doubt that why all stories about China are negative
This struck a chord with me. I think most people who read news regularly can agree that nearly 100% of the news about China these days are negative, and never anything positive. We can all wonder why that is.
> I think most people who read news regularly can agree that nearly 100% of the news about China these days are negative, and never anything positive.
That's only relevant if you compare it to other topics and there's a discrepancy. There's very little positive content in the political news I read, even when it's about Western countries. If something works or is going well it's almost not news by definition, at least it's less likely to appear on the front page.
Because most of the "positive advances" they make are a direct consequence of their inhumane government that can afford to do whatever it wants or just plain PR. Just look at their COVID response, for example.
Of course it's political as well, but there's no way around that.
Yes, but then you could make entirely the same point about the US. But generally this isn't done, especially not here. That's what makes it xenophobic.
These are real people. They aren't Western "plants", and it would be a pretty big conspiracy for them to all coordinate and "lie" about the things they detail. Sure, western media is biased, but I would still trust it a lot more when reporting on such matters than Chinese media because the latter have a lot more to lose and are also single-mindedly focused on controlling the narrative when it comes to any sort of press or public release of information because ultimately they are an extension of the Chinese government in a very direct way.
The problem is that there are always examples where such witnesses or whistleblowers were planted by actors in the US, like Li-Meng Yan, a supposed whistleblower supported by Steve Bannon. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/business/media/steve-bann...
Or the Nayirah case: "In her emotional testimony, Nayirah claimed that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die." Which was all a lie, but a convenient argument for the Iraq war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
I certainly think it is possible that these atrocities actually happen in China, OTOH it fits all too well into the anti-China warmongering in the US.
She isn't an actor. She's a bit of a conspiracy theorist type from Hong Kong on the Wuhan lab leak stuff. I'm not sure how that's relevant to anything much here beyond that it pays to check your sources.
Like a normal person, I'm against any inhumane treatment in any form against innocent people.
These personal stories from these victims are most likely true. I feel sad and angry about what happened to them and would like to see changes.
You know, even average schools in China looks more like a prison than actual prisons in the west. (Which remind me of this: https://www.schoolprison.com/ )
You will often find 8-12 students packed in a small 10-20m^2 room with thousands of students in each building. Many schools would also have fences or walls all around to prevent students from escaping. Some photos:
These re-education camps/concentration camps (whatever you call them) are surely a downgrade from average schools because they are completely out of the government's pocket and constructed in a short period.
Only that, can seem inhumane to many people in developed country, even exaggerated by some BBC documentary, but it's just a reflection of average living condition in China.
It's not difficult to realize part of the CCP's narrative must hold some truth -- the Xinjiang situation was mostly a response to the non-stopping terror attacks in the region for the last couple of decades. And depending on the "radicalization level" of the people being contained, the security level of these camps must be ranging from a lot more usual to heavily guarded.
So yes, there will be prison-level camps and many near-prison-level camps.
I believe most of these incidents reported by western media are conducted independently by the officials in the camps under stricter lock-down, which provided an out-lawed environment for them to conduct the crimes. However, I don't believe any of these are systematically orchestrated and oversaw by the CCP from the top down. If you argue otherwise, you better provide some strong proof, i.e. recording of high-rank CCP officials admitting such an evil plan. Because it's a very, very serious allegation.
Those individuals who conducted these crimes are directly responsible for what they did and must be held responsible. There also must be regulations on these camps to make sure incidents like these never happen again.
Then where's the justice held? You must then ask. I don't have a solid answer to it. I hope those responsible already got what they deserve. But those verdicts probably won't be made public. You surely can understand why given the heat on all of this.
But I'm more confident that the CCP has placed better regulation on all the camps to prevent such incidents from happening again. The reason is CCP has invited western reporters to visit and investigate on the ground. Of course, they probably won't find any evidence that those incidents ever happened, but they will be shown with all the regulations of these places to a degree that no problem can be found. Surely western reporters also understand that very well -- most haven't responded to the invitation because they know they won't be able to dig more dirt on this.
Another level of discussion is whether it's humane to force/mandate people to attend re-education camps. If you want we can get into that as well.
I think if you really want to help people in those camps, you should start talking about donations, improving their living conditions, providing educational resources, even collaboration on education projects, help them graduate/get out of there, and get a job sooner.
I want to show some folks on HN, even with Chinese people, you can have a civil and reasonable conversation on controversial topics. We are not liars, nor monsters without compassion. We are also normal people, just like you. It's completely up to you to listen or deny.
> But I'm more confident that the CCP has placed better regulation on all the camps to prevent such incidents from happening again.
Regulations are not worth much without enforcement. Enforcement requires inspections to verify regulations are being followed and punishment if they're not. But if the regulations are not being followed, then cheating the inspections is another way to avoid punishment. It's much cheaper to put on a show for the inspectors than to make permanent improvements. So a lot of cheating is to be expected.
> the Xinjiang situation was mostly a response to the non-stopping terror attacks in the region for the last couple of decades
The Chinese crackdown on Xinjiang goes back well beyond the terror attacks. There used to be a secular, non-violent Uighur movement for their rights, including Uighur communists who simply wanted the right to use their own language at all times and not Chinese, like the laws ostensibly allow. However, in the 1980s and 1990s the Beijing regime imprisoned many of those activists or sent them into exile. At the same time, Han settlers were entering the area even though it was clear that this would change the region’s demographics.
Once the secular and non-violent activism was shut down, there arose out of desperation new trends that were violent and/or Islamist. But that doesn’t mean the CCP’s policy of Uighur assimilation and Han settlement didn’t come first.
I appreciate your point. But it is only one-sided story. Both sides have been victims of historical conflict, there is a long history of han ethnic people being driven away too. Arguing who did wrong first is a bit like a religious debate. Look at the globe one shouldn't fail to see it's a common pattern (Palestine etc). To argue who has the ultimate rights to the land is a tricky and dangerous task.
Another observation I have is that there's little mention of the history of Xinjiang itself. The long-standing threat from Russian influence starting from before Republic of China (ROC) period. And the autonomous Muslim defense against russian puppet gov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_rebellion_in_Xinjiang_... and even the later alliance with the communist party. Sure you could argue from one-side that all that is happening is wrong but unfortunately a lot of the evidence today are from anti-china alliance such as epoch times, which in my opinion really hides the real issues of the chinese society.
You talk about Russian influence as a "threat", and Han influence as something natural that needs to be protected. I appreciate your respectful message, but please notice that another equally defensible position would be the opposite one: considering Han influence a "threat" to be protected against.
I apologise for my choice of words, I'm not a native speaker, nor could I do it in a more diplomatic way.
However I do agree with you, for the opposite it might well see han population as a threat, probably right from the early dynasties. I have by no means implied Russian influence is 'evil', it is simply the historical narrative. It is only natural that from 1900s the powers around that area want to take control in the geopolitics. Same situation today.
My point is that if you understand the situation better (which is hard because of language / culture barriers, similar to middle east crisis), you might be able to know more nuances of the issue.
Your assertion Western journalists haven't visited is false; see a summary here [1].
The whole site is very good - and the independent journalist speaks Chinese and is fairly unbiased (excerpt from site "the US makes a big deal out of the treatment of Muslims in China while underwriting genocide in Yemen"). Especially the analysis on the leaked documents [2].
I apologise then; I got the impression that you thought they had not visited because of the following in your post.
> Surely western reporters also understand that very well -- most haven't responded to the invitation because they know they won't be able to dig more dirt on this.
Is this true for Chinese academics though? Are Chinese mathematicians uncreative and uninspired? Are Chinese scientists disadvantaged vs western scientists due to conformist thought?
We were being taught that way, but not all people will become uncreative. In fact it's the opposite, your creativity has nothing to do with how you were taught. It's all about how you think. Even with conformist education there can be evolutionary talents coming out of it. It's my whole point writing this thread.
Beautifully written. But you mislead. You start by criticizing the Chinese education system and then you say there is no way to verify the story of CCP, so CCP may not be the bad people. That the impression you provide in this post and in reply post to this one.
Here's another view point. CCP is anti democracy. Any Chinese citizen who oppose the authority of CCP must be encouraged in the interest to promote democracy.
This is the classic US reason for invading another country, plundering it and then fucking off. It has to be done to spread "democracy". Guess what: It's not very democratic to waltz into some country and tell them how to act and how to appoint their leaders.
I don't think most people consider the CCP the same as Chinese people. I surely don't.
That doesn't mean there isn't a strong correlation with the country and it's political leaders. In my opinion, a country may be judged by it's leaders.
It's always ironic to see people claim their very smart Chinese colleagues being brainwashed, when these colleagues have experience in both east and west - they're not the ones with singular perspective and the information deficit. Chinese who have lived through daily propaganda inherently understands nature of propaganda. Very few take official news sources at face value. Not to mention more multilingual Chinese with English fluency able to share news from across the wall. You can't say the same about anglosphere and Chinese information literacy. The amount of absolutely ignorant western commentary on China is staggering, where as Chinese net actually has western perspectives that somewhat comport with reality. Access to free information ≠ being informed. China's Great Fire Wall is crudely designed to produce ignorance via hardware, the elegant strategy in manufactured consent is ignorance subsumed at the biologic level. Free Fifth Estate generates dogmatism in absence of media literacy and produce a polity seemingly indistinguishable from state media but accompanied by staggering obliviousness. Incidentally, in terms of foreign reporting, BBC is functionally satisfying it's position as state funded propaganda. Those from global south diaspora in the west will attest how egregious BBC foreign reporting is.
This becomes part of the problem. China has tried to merge the concept of the country, the people and the government into one homogeneous thing. Now any criticism of the regime is considered "racist"?
That would only feed the western media what they want, so no, I don't expect more details from the government. It's almost the de-facto solution that China use to address foreign publicity -- no comment.
But that doesn't mean they will ignore the problem, but on the contrary, they always take care the situation swiftly and always show off their results one way or the other. If you know China enough you should be familiar with how they operate.
What matters is they are giving all the resources to the people in the camp, and implementing strict regulation and accountability for all the activities in the camp, to make sure everything is running humanely and lawfully.
> I don't expect more details from the government.
And yet you trust them to do the right thing. I think that's where most of the disagreement comes from. A politician in the Western world who would try to avoid transparency would be suspect, we would think they did something wrong. I think westerners tend to judge the CCP on the same basis, but apparently you trust them.
What have they done to earn your trust?
How do you make sure that they don't abuse this trust (especially without transparency)?
Surely it would be possible for them to lose your trust, if they abused it. What kind of situation would that be?
These days people don't believe medias fully even in the western world.
I think it's more a question of having bad medias (that can and did lie) is probably easier to trust than having no medias. Big communist countries (and other non communist, like Tunisia or some middle east ones) had a history of removing journalists.
You cannot trust anything reported out of China, absolutely nothing. I do not doubt that there are people being slaughtered and massacred as I write, but anything reported out of China must be taken deeply suspicious, especially if it comes from the government. The Chinese government is the single greatest threat to freedom, and human rights this world has ever seen.
You don't need to trust anybody's reporting, you can go browse Weibo or Toutiao or Douyin and go see for yourself what regular Chinese people are saying all across China right now. Sure, anything overly political is (self-)censored and there's some actual paid wumao shills in there, but day-to-day stuff like grumbling about local government incompetence is widespread. Here's the Xinjiang hashtag, go nuts:
The Xinjiang hashtag isn't really a good target, because it's high-profile enough that there's probably a dedicated team of censors monitoring it.
And of course Weibo search doesn't work for Uyghur content. Try finding this post using any of the words in it: https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4606432605644442 I found it by searching for Uyghur words in Latin script to find someone posting in Uyghur, then looking through their posting history.
I think Weibo is pretty much useless as a source of unfiltered information, unless you're already a heavy Weibo user and can just stumble across things instead of having to rely on search.
Self censorship is huge. I admire dissidents living under authoritarian regimes who are brave enough to share their stories, whether they remain there or escape.
I don't think it's hyperbole. The CCP seeks to control social media by threatening to imprison anyone who speaks against it, even while outside China. And this isn't the first Chinese government to be accused of establishing too much state control over businesses [1].
I think you whooshed on the point. Indeed, all those other guys were worse. And they're not here, and we are. China isn't the threat they're being presented as, they're just a convenient point of outrage for a demographic that craves outrage.
In fact, if the upthread point had labelled the PRC the greatest threat to global freedom of the past three decades, then I'd be inclined to agree! But that's not what it said. And we made it through the cold war just fine.
I could say the same about your own grasp of the point; it doesn't seem relevant at all to bring up historical examples of threats to global freedom when we're discussing current examples of threats to global freedom - the PRC pretty unambiguously being one of them (and the US being another, to be clear).
>The Thucydides Trap, also referred to as Thucydides's Trap, is a term popularized by American political scientist Graham T. Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as the international hegemon. It was coined and is primarily used to describe a potential conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China.
One shouldn't lump all antagonism towards a government together as a single thing.
You can live in China, think the US government has a history of war crimes, subjugation, imperialism, plunder, genocide, and geopolitical treachery, and yet not want to go to war with the US.
You can live in the US, think the Chinese government is engaging in genocide and creating an uniquely dystopian surveillance state where all thought and behavior can be monitored and shaped, and yet not want to go to war with China.
I'm sure this trap is a real phenomenon, but pretty much every large human empire has been powered by a helm regularly committing horrible atrocities, so one hegemon will probably always be able to legitimately condemn a up-and-comer, and vice versa.
I think it can be a bit dangerous to counter such discussion with accusations of war-seeking, because it lets rulers get away with more than they should. At least unless you have specific evidence suggesting the discussion isn't simply a case of people who are genuinely concerned about people for humanist reasons.
There seems to be a disconnect between what the US says and what it does. I certainly believe US people have a strong ethical compass in their world view, at least from the people I interact with and what I read every day. At the same time, with all the things the US does, especially in the middle East, it's hard to take that "moral compass" seriously.
There is no right way and ethical way to do things in the Middle East - there is just the weird unsolvable status quo and weird things the US or anyone else can do - which might not actually have an effect on anything.
I understand the criticism but I never read a book that showed a path forward.
Drone strikes that kill far more civilians than intended targets are pretty cut-and-dry unethical, IMO.
I'm not necessarily ethically opposed to assassination. But better to let 1000 terrorists and murderers live than to kill one innocent person. Assassinations should be done with pistols and poison, not explosives.
I'm european (English/German) I am quite happy that the US is in the Middle East...otherwise we all would have to be. I see no chance that the Middle East becomes a nice peaceful place between the Saudis, Iran, Israel and Turkey (all others are just puppets). I am not sure what an honest broker would do, I am not sure that anybody in the relevant parties wants an honest broker. No question there have been terrible mistakes that cost an enormous amount of human suffering. I am not quite sure that the situation would be much different in another world. If the US had not invaded Iraq...would Iraq now be a stable happy country? No, why would it be?
You have to compare it to what everyone else does in the Middle East. Israel kills Iranians, Iran sponsors militants in Lebanon and Yemen, Saudi butchers Saudis...pick a counterfactual (Saddam's Iraq? Taliban-controlled Afghanistan?) and compare that counterfactual to US activity.
The US as an aggregate of it's citizens' views must be viewed through the lens of it's leadership. From their actions, we can see it doesn't have an ethical compass at all. Unless of course you mean this in the most absolute sense, where there is an ethical judgement being made about drone strikes on children and it is thought to be acceptable.
The American people may care, and it is money to drive American people to think in the direction money planned. If you think the media is on your side, think again.
Yes, but I think the point was that the rhetoric above, about a nation that was "single greatest threat to freedom, and human rights this world has ever seen", absolutely sounds like it's written by someone who very much does want to go to war with China.
> sounds like it's written by someone who very much does want to go to war with China.
To me it sounds like they're saying we ought to be wary of the threat China poses to freedom. If they thought we should go to war they would say so. I only see people here calling for awareness and preparedness, not war.
Not going to fully defend the OP but the problem is things like the USSR were, in retrospect, unsustainable. The CCP, on the other hand, may have created just the right blend between totalitarianism, communism, and capitalism that is both sustainable and has global reach. We should not want to end up all-consumed by this form of government given how oppressive it is, and only time will tell just how all-consuming it can become.
Meh. No one thought the USSR was "unsustainable" in the 80's when they were an evil empire. And within the decade they were gone. Nazi Germany didn't look "unsustainable" either, until they lost. All great powers look unbeatable during their ascendance and weak in retrospect.
Could things get worse? Sure. But all I'm saying is that things have already been much, much, much worse. And we came out OK.
I’m not disagreeing with your first point, but the fact is exactly what you said: it’s unknowable until after the collapse if it was the case. One day we will know if that’s true for the current regime. I do think the odds of it being both sustainable and not all-consuming are low, however.
No, they're able to share their opinions opinions. I have chinese coworkers who will, given the opportunity, bitch about their government the same way we do. No, they aren't going to put it in email. They aren't going to use WeChat to do it. But they can absolutely do it. I've seen them do it when they're in the US for meetings. I've seen them do it over dinner at public restaurants in China.
They simply are more "free", by any reasonable standard, than their grandparents in the PRC or their compatriots behind the iron curtain. Quite frankly they're more free to express inconvienent opinions than most minorities were in the US for most of the 20th century.
The PRC government does some awful things. But the kind of hyperbolic nonsense we're engaging in here isn't helping the situation.
>The Chinese government is the single greatest threat to freedom, and human rights this world has ever seen.
How so? Its ability to expand its control beyond its current reach is pretty limited. It is surrounded by the lands and military forces of Russia, India, and the US and its client states like Japan and South Korea.
Agree. I got lots of Chinese friends, relatives and in-laws and not one of them are willing to openly criticise CCP about it. On the contrary, they are more on the defensive. Tells you the level of brainwashing going on.
US/UK were bombing these Uighur extremists/separatists just a few years ago. Now they are seen as useful pawns in the trade/economic war with China, so the genocide narrative gets mainstreamed by the usual suspects (the same ones that tried to hide the fact that we (US/UK) were arming/training/funding ISIS and visiting Uighur/Turk terrorists in Syria).
There are comments on HN right now where people are questioning whether freedom of speech is good in the US by US citizens. Why would someone from China think it’s working after the shit show of 2020 and our own citizens not having confidence?
Yup. Currently live in Asia and many of the less-than-democratic countries are pointing to the US media coverage and saying "see! freedom of speech is dangerous, even the Americans agree. when we restrict your speech we're just trying to keep you safe."
Law goes back to the code of Hammurabi, the start of civilization itself. The sole purpose is to limit the violence and not add to it. If there's anything arbitrary, it's the violence. The Magna Carta showed everyone is restrained by laws, or else there are no laws. We're back to being beasts again living in terror, squandering humanity's elevated position gifted to us, won long ago.
You can misspeak. Therefore, it's impossible for you to tell others what is perfect speech. That's all the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech is. It's unavoidable.
The best lessen enemies in times of contention, not create them. The USA took the gift of the New World and said if we're going to tell other people what to do, what's the minimum we have to do? We don't need to crush riots or deprogram people. Hundreds of cities burnt down in the USA due really dirty political tricks, and we left it alone. If people want to lead in the USA, they have to find a way themselves to overcome it without relying on tyranny, oligarchy or anarchy.
If you’re referring to comments like mine challenging the idea that private websites banning anyone for any reason has anything to do with free speech, you’re wildly mischaracterizing your US audience.
Just because hardly anyone visits a website that aren't those private websites doesn't make them a public square. The analogy holds up IRL: most of our conversations happen on company property or in bars, and hardly anyone goes to the public square to mingle with strangers.
Interesting observation. I think that's very well put. If it's not public property it cannot be a public square where strangers can freely mingle and speak. It makes sense. If you mingle and speak out on someone else's property, they should be able to kick you out whenever they want. OTOH, private property does not necessarily mean the owner can do whatever he wants with whoever uses his property. The owner of a public space like a cafeteria cannot invite someone to leave on a whim. Yes, there's the "Rights of admission are reserved" but this is closely scrutinized and protected by law. I concede however that the consensus regarding this is not generalized [1]
Should Big Tech be accountable for all the content they publish, then? However, since they are not the authors of the content they publish, should their responsibility be something comparable to the responsibility of a traditional newspaper on its classifieds section?
> force those websites to publish against their will?
I would argue that the will of the websites is to actually allow publishing for the most amount of people. And they censor the opposing political views only because the government-aligned forces make them to. Basically if every corporation needs the government to survive they are going to do everything the government wants, even if they don’t admit to it. They would rather lose half the users than become completely defunct.
> private websites banning anyone for any reason has anything to do with free speech, you’re wildly mischaracterizing your US audience.
If US citizens already have a hard time discerning this imagine someone from China.
It’s amateur capital driven censorship. It’s inefficient, confusing, and divides a nation. Yes it would be viewed as suboptimal from someone familiar with nationalism and censorship in China.
Nonsense. In the US you have to just click another link to find viewpoints not represented on the website you’re currently at. In China you have to use a VPN to view blocked content. As an American I’m ashamed of my fellow Americans who don’t understand this.
Who cares if it allowed the US to prosper? Freedom of speech is not about economic output but a value system. This utilitarian moral relativism might make sense in China but it is not part of modern Western culture. It was a civilisational conquest and a difficult one to obtain.
There's a credible case it's just a happy coincidence. The large single economy with, until recently, open immigration policy were possibly bigger factors.
I'll be blunt, I was raised in a european democracy and live in China, I don't think democracy works anymore lol Trump is a big component, but the Brexit or what they do in Hungary, pff it's just disheartening.
I don't think China will forever sustain that large a monitoring, it's just inefficient the closer they get from an intellectual super power, but I have 0 respect for the US, or their "freedom of being an idiot" that they pretend is the same as freedom of speech.
One thing is sure, with that circus over there, they made us lose 10 years here. Nobody wants to experiment anymore with liberalization.
What is it that you don't understand about democracy? A referendum was held in the UK in 2016. It was brought about by a Prime Minister who, along with a huge majority of the establishment including the BBC, thought that the result was a foregone conclusion. For sure, they said - most folk will vote to stay in the EU. But the voters decided otherwise. We voted `leave`. Abiding by that decision shows that democracy doesn't work anymore - and Brexit is an example?
But that I understand, the problem in democracy is that you can take bad decision that you glorify because it's made by the people.
It's fine, people can make collective mistakes, but I think we ignore several facts during a referendum like that:
- People misunderstand the question
- People understand the question but vote to answer another one
- People are divided in groups with very different agenda that sometimes are shorterm good for a majority and long term bad for a minority (the elders might vote against the interest of the youth, then die leaving them with the mess)
I vote, and enjoy it, but I also recognize I'm as big an idiot as anyone else, and I don't think this worked in the Brexit instance. The PM proposed the vote for the wrong reason, people voted at a time they were not thinking of the Union long term, people voted massively divided (cities vs country side, England vs the others, old vs young), so what answer did they provide exactly ? That "the people want rid of the EU" or that "British society is so divided it barely even exists" ?
I guess at least in a democracy, mistakes can be reversed, but we seem to do so many I wonder if it's not better here where at least we stick to one single side and pursue it to the end rather than girouette around (in the EU, but with not everything, then out, then surely in again because out was stupid, etc).
You're doing yourself a disservice if you think Chinese people are all brainwashed simpletons. The reality is that people will rationalize anything that benefits them, and Xinjiang is an integral part of One Belt One Road.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all we have are unreliable narrators. The only thing more upsetting for some Americans than a genocide in Xinjiang is no genocide in Xinjiang.
Americans aren't very interested in defending human rights, but they're deeply invested in defending the lie that they are interested in defending human rights.
I live in Hong Kong and that's exactly how I talk with people abroad totally panicking over the situation here. It's... not THAT bad. Certainly not as bad as portrayed, sometimes, west of the world.
Not saying I have any clue about Xinjiang or that the CCP is positive for the country, but I feel uneasy everyone switched from prisoner camps to genocide - it seems to distract away from the actual issue to move into borderline hysteria.
A bit like the HK situation moved from an extradition issue over a taiwan murder to a large "save Hong Kong" hysteria... But whatever, you used the racist card, what can we say ...
Not really, it escalated towards the police being violent then died with a poof when teenagers realized they fucked us all.
The Chinese gov doesn't care and doesn't want to care, they are being bamboozled by the true winners of the situation: the DAB party using the communist paranoia to consolidate their local power acting as good little patriots (when every law they passed is anti-communist, really, and pro-status quo).
So the DAB suspended the legislative election after they lost the district one, for one year. They can act like that with the blame being directed at China by constantly looking the other way when asked to give an opinion about China and acting as if they were under order. But it serves 0 chinese interest, it makes the entire population hate China and China hate the population, with the DAB cementing itself into the only barrier still there before the army intervenes.
It's so obvious yet so missed by everyone that it's painful to watch. I hope there's a masterplan in Beijing, but I doubt they even understand what people think in Beijing, let alone in Hong Kong, so ...
And the DAB represents a large class of the population, too: the elders, the rent-owners, the large corporations, the traditional post-colonial Hong Kong. That's the people you see on the sideline shaking their head and taking picture in mass when the kids burn a metro station. The journalists don't film it, but I'm there with everyone just commenting at the monkeys while the western media stream them with a close angle as if they were fighting China or for freedom... While nobody is communist in Hong Kong, not even the metro station they hate so much !
I saw my entire family switch to the DAB during the protests so maybe I'm under bias thinking this produced exactly the opposite effect all sides looked for: Hong Kong is not more independent, Hong Kong is not more Chinese, but the DAB sure is more powerful - we'll see what happens if they restore the election, but at this point they can get away with not doing it and say "oh but without us it's the PLA so calm down"
