Sometimes people ask me: why do you support China? My answer is this: Every economic development has been accompanied by huge misery and death. In Africa, South America, India, etc. When you stop shaking hands with the upper class business men and go live with the poor, you'll understand suffering.
I prefer that the people lose a bit of freedom, but they have to suffer less. Those who disagree - at least be sure you have once actually been in that situation. Don't live your life in comfort and then forget that this thing you demand called freedom of speech also has always meant people dying in the streets.
You are the people that would have said in Rwanda: don't block the radio stations calling for people to be murdered - speech should be free.
I've been in Africa, I've been in China, I've been in South America, in the U.S and in Europe. I've seen the dead people, I've hung around with freedom loving geeks, I've talked to favela children. And after all that, I have chosen that I prefer that the people get educated and rich at the expense of free speech.
I'd much rather see a blocked website than dead child.
"I'd much rather see a blocked website than dead child."
False Dichotomy.
The Chinese Communist party came to and maintained power over millions of people killed for ideological reasons. Dissidents are still killed for daring to think differently. Every dictatorship and autocracy warns of chaos and unpeakable bad things that will happen if its benevolent "guidance" and secret police and gulags are set aside and people could believe and speak as their consciences dictate . And some fools buy into this sophistry and support them to avoid a hypothetical violent future. It helps when you are profiting off such oppression somehow (say, by feeding off artificially depressed wages and currency and being chummy with the opressors)
The party in china does not kill people. You say it does, but there are no reports saying that. You've just bought into propaganda.
Talk about the present day (2000+) party, not about the past. Because if we're talking about the past, the EU killed millions of people in gas chambers, and the US divided people by the color of their skin and condemmed those with the wrong color to permanent slavery.
I have SEEN the chaos that the freedom you want has caused. The chinese mode of non-freedom has not caused that.
Let me give you just a little example: In India people are burnt to death for being witches or for theft. This does not happen in china.
There is real violence in most developing countries of the world. In china, there is very little violence. If the country were loosened up, there WILL be violence.
So, just observing the present, the chinese system is the system that has the least violence. And that's why I support it.
If you want that freedom, are YOU going to go live in the midst of the violence? Or do you just want to condemn people to it, while you sit at your computer?
"The party in china does not kill people. You say it does, but there are no reports saying that."
You are saying there are no reports of the Chinese Government killing people, so therefore, obviously, they do not kill people. If they did, they would surely report on it. But regardless... it's all justified, right, because otherwise it would be chaos. Big brother knows best.
What an absurd thought.
The end you seek (peace) does not justify the means you condone (oppression). I'm sure North Korea is a peaceful place. And Taiwan? Have you been there? Total friggin free-speech chaos! Also, I'm confident the Tibetans who live in Indian and Nepalese refugee camps are perfectly happy that their religion was outlawed and their home overrun by outsiders. But, I guess, if you're reading Chinese media, you wouldn't know... Ignorance is bliss, as the Chinese say.
> "The party in china does not kill people. You say it does, but there are no reports saying that. You've just bought into propaganda."
I really didn't want to get into politics today, but this single line contains so much ignorance it's impossible to ignore.
I have family, close friends, and other people close to my life who've lost family members to the CCP - dragged out into the street and shot, in extreme cases. I think they would take extreme issue with your fluffy portrayal of the CCP.
Even disregarding large scale policy fubars that resulted in the deaths of millions, the CCP has directly killed (e.g., shot, beaten, stabbed, etc etc) millions of its own people.
Mao (founder of the Party in China) is pretty generally accepted to have knocked off 10M's of his own people through his Great Revolution. (E.g., check wikipedia.)
"The party in china does not kill people. You say it does, but there are no reports saying that. You've just bought into propaganda."
And where there is no free press to report any killings where would such reports come from? By this logic there were no gulags in the Soviet union because the Soviet press didn't report it and there were only a few dissidents claiming that these hellholes exist.
If you think the Party is so benevolent why don't you try criticising them openly? You'd see the secret police turn up soon enough (as the Tibetans found out , but that is propaganda by enemies too and the Tibetans really love Chinese rule? ) and you would be "re educated")
"In china, there is very little violence. If the country were loosened up, there WILL be violence."
When the mafia are the rulers, there is little street level violence. That is one way to cut down the violence. Just make thugs your overlords.
You have an infallible crystal ball? The "WILL" sounded very emphatic. Germany seemed to break down the wall with little violence. As someone said above Taiwan is your counter example. Democracy, a free press, a flourishing economy, elections and all without the Communist Thought Police.
"If you want that freedom, are YOU going to go live in the midst of the violence? Or do you just want to condemn people to it, while you sit at your computer?"
India has a lot of violence (as does the United States).I do live in India. So either India is a very violent place and I am living in the midst of it or you are just blowing smoke and violence is rare and India is largely peaceful, with very nasty things occasionally happening (and reported by a free press and television network, even to people, even foreigners who would use this to condemn the government).
You can't have it both ways.
India is very imperfect. There is violence. But, India today is much better than 60 years ago under the British Raj. It will be better in the future. And all this with elections happening every 5 years, with governments having to listen to people and try to better their lot, no matter how politicians may dream of being dictators and doing what they feel like and liquidating their opponents.
That said, I would never live in a dictatorship where some thugs with a defunct ideology tried to dictate how I would think and speak. When the government does the wrong thing I condemn it. I have newspapers report it. Courts rule against the government. People vote out governments and parties. I have the freedom to do so. Do the Chinese?
I would never ever trade security for a dictatorship. It seems you would. Fine. Just don't get so righteous about it and insist we go along with you.
"the EU killed millions of people in gas chambers, "
Wrong analogy. The right analogy would be if the Nazis won WW2, carried out the cleansing of dissidents and Jews (and gypsies and intellectuals and homosexuals ) 50 years ago, established a "pure" germany and their successors cleaned up their act and wore business suits and focussed on economic growth while still killing/sentencing to life imprisonment/"re educating" anyone who resists them and the Germans lived under a constant barrage of propaganda about how the evil outsiders were trying to derail the glorious Nazi Reich.
In that alternate world there would still be people who profit off the Nazi system and argue that all the violence happened in "those days, long agi " and the present day Nazis were very benevolent and unspeakable chaos would result if democracy came to Germany (just look at the violence in the democratic United States compared with the Peace and Stability in the Third Reich, Oh Horror!).
Unlike the fascists who lost WW2 and the Russian dictators who fell 50 years later, the Chinese Communists are the nasties who won. I admire their resilience while not blinding myself with any delusions about the purity of their intentions or their supposed benevolence. Thugs with guns are the same everywhere.
That could be quite true (an enlightened dictatorship might be good for the economy). The question is if sacrificing civic freedom for more economic "freedom" is worth it.
"Don't live your life in comfort and then forget that this thing you demand called freedom of speech also has always meant people dying in the streets."
[citation needed]
Free speech doesn't kill people. Government propped up by unfree speech kill people.
Your attempt to casually link free speech to being poor boggles my mind. The country with the strongest free speech protections in the world (historically, anyhow) is also the richest. In an increasingly information-driven economy, free speech is going to be an inextricable part of being a wealthy country.
Blocking free speech is the path to serfdom, not wealth.
Radio stations broadcasting exhortations to kill are a terrible example. I'd bet $10 that was government speech. I'd bet another $10 that the government would not permit anybody from the class they want to kill to rebut, either. Free speech is not a government-mandated message; free speech is a robust debate. Come reply to me and tell me that you heard a robust debate and I'll admit I was wrong, but if all you heard was one side, that's a classic example of unfree speech.
And you are being sold a line which others will happily use to hang you, if you are so willing to sacrifice liberty for security.
In Singapore you get caned for smoking weed and gum chewing is illegal. Sounds like a friggin blast!
Besides, it's not a counter-example. In order for it to be a counter example, you would have to prove that Singapore would be "chaos" if it wasn't for it's big-brother government.
Only 2 of the top 10 countries on this list are autocratic. In both Singapore and Hong Kong, most of the economic freedoms are for colonialists and not for the local Chinese. Hong Kong has some of the greatest economic disparity of any city in the world. Finally, both cities are open markets with cultural ties, special relationships, and proximity to the largest closed market on the planet, China. They are both port cities, essentially gateways to the hinterland. My point is I think autocracy has less to do it than this article would have you believe.
In both Singapore and Hong Kong, most of the economic freedoms are for colonialists and not for the local Chinese.
As a Singaporean Chinese, I must say, wtf? There are practically no colonialists here, and I've never experienced a lack of economic freedom. I probably agree more with you than maxklein in terms of ideology, but please, get your facts right.
I know where Singapore is, I dun need to look it up... Singapore is in a great spot for a port--lots of easy-to-travel water to the east and to the west and big trading partners in all directions. But, besides Hong Kong and maybe Keelong (in Taiwan) I'm not aware of any closer "Chinese" ports.
Anyway, this is a digression. Your remark does nothing for your original point.
Geographical locality matters somewhat less than the fact that any ship sailing from China to India, the Middle East, Africa, or Europe passes trough Singapore.
While I cannot forgive the Chinese regime for their methods, there is a point here that shouldn't be so quickly downvoted. China has raised 400 Million people out of poverty in the last several decades.
I'm still yet to see a convincing reason why those people could not have been brought out of poverty while there was freedom of speech at the same time.
I am able to support billions of cells inside me. Everyone who lives can be proud of that.
Doing what one must do is not something that's worth bragging about. Especially when they didn't quite do that: free speech is more a must have than optional.
> Every economic development has been accompanied by huge misery and death.
From Peru here. The country used to be extremely poor, we're now doing ok, not great but ok with 9.2% of GDP growth (2008 est.) and freedom of speech is pretty great (totally uncensored internet and press) and we're still alive!
I prefer that the people lose a bit of freedom, but they have to suffer less. Those who disagree - at least be sure you have once actually been in that situation. Don't live your life in comfort and then forget that this thing you demand called freedom of speech also has always meant people dying in the streets.
You are the people that would have said in Rwanda: don't block the radio stations calling for people to be murdered - speech should be free.
I've been in Africa, I've been in China, I've been in South America, in the U.S and in Europe. I've seen the dead people, I've hung around with freedom loving geeks, I've talked to favela children. And after all that, I have chosen that I prefer that the people get educated and rich at the expense of free speech.
I'd much rather see a blocked website than dead child.