CCP must not go unpunished. The world needs to stand up to their lone wolf style. If we do not stand up against CCP now it will only embolden the evil. Vote with your wallets. Avoid buying China made products. Pressure/ Make laws for retailers to enforce Country of Origin information for each and every product especially Amazon. Amazon is flooded with cheap Chinese products almost certainly made in inhumane conditions. CCP and Xi Jinping must not be emboldened any further.
A few individuals buying less stuff isn't going to have much effect. We need something more like the west putting 50% tariffs on Chinese products so all the manufacturing starts moving to other countries. That would probably get their attention.
The real issue is that we don't care to hurt ourselves enough in punishing the Chinese.
If they were some minor country that supplied all the world's bananas someone could potentially put together something like that, and we'd all live without bananas for a while.
But China makes just about everything, and not just cheap and simple stuff anymore.
In game theory (and experiments with real people) sometimes it makes sense to punish a misbehaving player even though it harms you yourself. It really does not seem like any country in the West is anywhere close to being willing to do that.
Australia is - its stood up to china - in a fairly minor way - demanding an investigation into the origins of covid 19. It's now involved in a tit for tat thats probably going to cost a lot.
Australia and Japan and a number of Asia-Pacific nations have joined the CPTPP - the reality is that the main driving force has been a mission to build a trading coalition in which the participating states can extricate themselves (and the supply chains of their businesses) from what has become a dependency on cheap Chinese goods/manufacture. Hot take - embracing the trans-pacific partnership is the best thing we can do to contain the rising influence and ambitions of Xi Jinping's China.
Indeed you can't trade with a partner who uses trade as a weapon - it does occur to me that china thinks the same of the US. We're just the smaller monkey getting hit down the line.
You're absolutely right. The thing America most needs to do is open her borders to truly free trade with the world, with the exception of Red China and a few other nations we want to topple. More than that, we need to build free trade areas (of which we are a part) in those areas, strengthening them further against her influence. We need everyone else on our side and that's a great way to make progress towards that goal.
Even on HN all anyone could talk about was how Trump's Trade War was hurting the economy. I thought the trade war was poorly executed but at the same time at least he was doing _something_.
Opposing Trump Trade War (TTW?) wasn't going to resurrect TPP wasn't going to resurrect TPP. I doubt Biden has the stomach for that either. Most people hate boondoggles, and we've noticed ISDS.
I'm sort of coming around to this perspective, but I think it's a bit rash.
I'd like to see something along the lines of "tariffs go up 5% each year, and will be dropped to zero when China drops the GFC". I don't want huge economic disruption for China or the US, but a slow disentanglement. And a clear carrot that lets them know it's not personal, the CCP just has to let its citizens talk with the peoples it wants to trade with. "Your move" to the CCP, while remaining positive about the Chinese people.
The only motivation for policy makers to do this, is if it would appease swing voters. Voters need to be at least as interested in the human rights angle as the domestic employment angle, if we are to see tarrifs being used specifically as leverage to improve those global human rights.
Otherwise, in spite of gains in redundant manufacturing capacity (great for local employment, and for national security), it's likely there would be a degradation in workers' rights domestically in order to keep costs low. In order to avoid these outcomes, workers' rights and human rights need to be something that most voters believe are important.
The number may be higher than 5% but it's because exponentially more and more non-Chinese competitors can outcompete more and more based on price the higher the tariffs on Chinese goods are.
Your comment made me think of the anti-apartheid boycotts against South Africa; I am not sure exactly how those worked, but it would seem that we should at least consider how that worked.
I agree, the western democracies tried opening up trade and hoped that would open up the Chinese government to a new way of looking at the world with more tolerance. That has gotten us no where. They will have to hit them in the wallet or it's all just huff and puff complaints and strongly worded letters from the UN. Of course this will hurt Western economies as well so it may just never happen.
There’s a lot to not like about Trump, but he’s literally the only one in 50 years who’s been willing to play for keeps on Chinese tariffs. And he’s been raked over the coals for it.
Here’s an incomplete list of things Trump has done to stand up to China. I challenge everyone to name a single person (or country, or continent) who’s done more than him.
- He refers to the Wuhan Virus as the China/Chinese Virus (CCP is trying very hard from distancing themselves from responsibility; they won’t even let us into Wuhan to investigate).
- He started a trade war with China, which has forced companies to move their manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, Taiwan, etc. (Biden admittedly said he would end Trump’s China tariffs, but the many companies that already left are unlikely to return), and even high end tech such as the iPhone is starting to get assembled outside China as well.
- He was the first US President to speak directly with Taiwan's President since 1979.
- He made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past few decades.
- The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Hong Kong Autonomy Act were signed under his administration.
- The TAIPEI Act was signed under his administration.
- The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was singed under his administration.
- Meng Wanzhou was arrested under his administration (which dragged Canada into it because China decided to arbitrarily arrest Canadian citizens).
- China Mobile was blocked from offering services in the US, citing national security risks.
- Huawei was blocked from using Android and chips with US tech (which will effectively kill their mobiles once their stock runs out).
- Huawei was blocked from building 5G networks (USA paid other nations to block them as well).
- Hong Kong’s special status was revoked.
- Universal Postal Union agreed to let countries raise postal rates after Trump threatened to leave - this means you’ll no longer be able to buy cheap junk from Aliexpress (and resellers like Wish) at no shipping cost (the receiving country was previously forced to deliver the products for free, even if you brought some toy for 10 cents).
- Trump is pushing for WTO to drop China’s developing country status.
- TikTok and WeChat (likely with more to come) would’ve been blocked by now if it wasn’t for judges temporarily blocking the bans.
There's a reason China's GDP growth in 2019 was the lowest it's been since 1990, and there's a reason China's worldwide reputation is at an all-time low. That reason is Trump. It's also no surprise that all the nations that suffer the most from CCP's actions, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. tend to be pro-Trump.
Serious question - which of these advance American national interests or prevent human rights abuses?
The first item in your list is President Trump calling the virus the Chinese virus. Aside from maybe bringing his supporters as a rallying cry, what does that actually achieve? It feels more like hollow political rhetoric and not something that delivers any kind of results.
What do the arms sales achieve? Is it merely profit for the American industrial complex, or are you saying Hong Kong now has some chance against China in the event of a military conflict?
> Serious question - which of these advance American national interests or prevent human rights abuses?
You're moving the goal posts. OP simply said the president "accomplished jack-all". I can't stand the guy either but these are at least accomplishments, even if the effects of some of them are symbolic. What do you want him to do? A land invasion?
No, I don’t think I’m moving any goal posts. Op provided a list of items, and my question is very simple - what is the net impact? What has Trump actually achieved? What is the result?
From your last comment, are you implying no action can be taken that isn’t simply symbolic except for a land invasion?
Interesting that you turn this into a personal attack. If you agree with the OP, that’s okay. The goal has always been delivering results, not empty, feel good rhetoric that makes you “feel” good. If it’s about your feelings, then okay, I’m sure his strong man rhetoric is good enough over any actual policy shift.
The results are foreign companies moving out of China. Bringing much more world attention to the aggression of China in the South China sea, and uniting foreign powers (India, Japan, Philipines, Vietnam, Australia, etc) to contain the CCP's aggressive expansion. It's been made more clear how the Belt and Road initiative can create debt trap for less developed countries and as a sort of CCP imperialism.
Under all these external pressures, the economy of China has suffered. And this is more crucial than most realize, as CCP would remain in power, and the majority of its citizens tolerate the oppression and ignore minority's human rights abuse, as long as the economy is growing. Also as a result, CCP is experiencing more internal factional struggles. This is apparent in Xi's deployment of cultural revolution style tactics such as purges (under the name of anti-corruption, as vast majority of CCP officials are corrupt), requiring study of Xi thoughts (think Mao's little red book), and demand for absolute loyalty from the military to himself (generals have spoken out against him).
What does calling the virus the Chinese virus achieve? Does it solve the current crisis we are in? I’d like to go back to my original question - what is the substance or end result?
And in your mind, what does it mean that Trump is willing to “stand up” to China? What is the net effect or outcome?
Last I checked, there are over 200,000 Americans dead from the virus. The American President initially denied it was a real issue, going as far as to say it was a Democratic hoax. Then he started having daily conferences, somewhat acknowledging their seriousness of the situation, but insisting it would all just disappear.
You can vote however you like, and no one here is asking you to tell us who you voted for. And I’m not asking you to justify your vote, although you indicated your candidate and your reasons why.
I’d prefer to go back to a policy discussion.
Arming Taiwan will help an American defense company increase its revenue for sure. But if we want to discuss impact on China, in a serious military conflict, Hong Kong has essentially zero chance of holding off a Chinese invasion.
The larger point I’m trying to make is that it’s not clear to me what actual impact the current Presidents policies have had. He certainly has great sound bytes to portray himself as being tough on China, but from the list of items you provided, I would love to know what fundamentally has changed.
The American President is fairly well known for exaggeration and hyperbole - he describes himself as the “best” or most informed on any particular topic. In his own words, his opponent is weak because his opponent will listen to scientists. I hope you’re able to disambiguate that tough words, whether it’s calling Mexicans rapists and criminals or saying the virus is the Chinese virus, don’t actually accomplish anything substantial other than maybe make you “feel good” or provide you confirmation on your beliefs on a particular topic.
Separate note: I do find it ironic that as an American voter, you believe the same President, who has financial interests and even personal bank accounts in China, is “tough” on China in terms of any meaningful policy.
who do you think is more likely to take a bribe from Chy-na?? Trump or Biden? Trump already has more money than many of the establishment politicians. Biden didn't come from a wealthy family but is dirty rich now.
Your perception of reality is heavily distorted by the leftist media that an an interest in keeping themselves in Chy-na. Bloomberg admitted the self-censorship not long ago. Any media outlet with interest in staying in Chy-na is morally compromised
I wasn't defending China's internment of Uighurs, and so much of what you wrote is a strawman.
Why does Trump need a second term for the two items you mentioned? Why didn't Trump already do those things? Given his administration's disastrous response to COVID and continuing denial, how do you take him at his word?
If we set aside COVID, the first two years of his terms had a fully Republican Congress. If nothing changed then, realistically what do you expect to happen next?
By the way, when you start a conversation by insulting people, you're not really convincing anyone of your viewpoint. If anything, it demonstrates your sense superiority over others and a lack of emotional intelligence.
Obviously (from my point of view; I could be wrong...) you're a deluded Trump supporter and there's no point in trying to convince you what a terrible president he is and to show you how he hadn't even considered how his policies (domestic as well as foreign) could (and did) backfire and disadvantage American businesses and consumers, but maybe I can convince you to consider this, written about Primary Candidate Trump in December 2015: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-...
> Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. [...]. Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren’t.
> Now think about someone who has been supporting Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say, “Wow, he’s not a serious person! What was I thinking?”
> And very few people ever do that sort of thing. Someone who has spent months supporting Trump despite establishment denunciations — which means something like a third of Republicans — will go to great lengths to avoid conceding that he has been foolish. At this point such people will insist that any negative reports about Trump are the product of hostile mainstream media; Trump’s very durability so far is likely to make him highly resilient looking forward.
> [W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
>President Donald Trump says he did not sanction Chinese officials further over the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang as he was in the "middle of a trade deal".
>Mr Trump told the Axios news site that achieving a "great" deal meant he could not impose "additional sanctions".
>The issue arose after allegations in a book by ex-Trump aide John Bolton.
>Mr Bolton had alleged that at a summit last year Mr Trump gave Chinese President Xi Jinping the green light on building the camps in its western region, with the US leader saying it was "exactly the right thing to do". Mr Trump denies the allegation.
>Axios says that when Mr Trump was asked why he had held off imposing further sanctions on Communist Party officials over the issue of the camps, he said: "Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal.
>"And when you're in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on - we've done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53138833
Maybe next year Trump will break up my gay marriage and make it illegal for me to get the medicine I'm on. Nothing like a little down-home American human rights abuses. He can't even condemn a terrorist group when asked directly to.
Are you posting from 30 years ago? Because of the greed and stupidity of Western governments and companies it is literally impossible to avoid buying China made products.
The monster we created. You can say all you want about the mistakes and dirty actions of the USA-led world since the end of the second world war, but you're delusional if you think a CCP led world order would be an improvement.
> " ... if you think a CCP led world world order would be an improvement."
I don't think the parent comment suggested anything like what you just said. And I agree with that parent comment, in that I find it amusing mental-floss to imagine how a very-low income family in the US can completely avoid Chinese made products.
The CCP already went unpunished with the Tibetans. Very few people in the west cared and it was before China became member of the WTO. The current administration tried to impose tariffs on China which were deemed illegal by the WTO. Maybe the west should have cared BEFORE welcoming China in the WTO.
Tibet really is the perfect case study for US agitprop. The typical audience for this material literally know nothing about the region outside of state dept/cia pr. For example, the Lamas ran a feudal theocracy but get played up like disney characters. I guess those are only supposed to be bad to the atheists here if it's scary Muslims. Or how it's portrayed as some invasion about as much as the union "invaded" the confederacy.
It's also a perfect illustration of how otherwise supposedly intelligent people in tech are just as easily manipulate outside their area of expertise as the fox news audience.
Yes, but arguing we didn’t already do something so we shouldn’t start now isn’t right.
I know that isn’t your point, and agreed on the WTO. As a mass we will never sacrifice a 10% cheaper product to stop inhumanities. We need to elect officials who will handle that via economics. I’ve always been a fan of taxing Chinese imports to offset this factor.
If only we can just keep partisan politics out of the discussions as the taxes on Chinese products were immediately bashed based on the person who implemented it. We need to look at the decision itself to evaluate it, not the party that made the decision. We can disagree with most of a party’s decisions but if you find you hate 100% of them you are likely applying a bias to something that may be good.
Check out Crouching Tiger. It’s a great modern book that includes how we are buying/trading our way into losing the next war.
There will never be a hot war between China and the US. Or if there is, it'll be the end of the world so it doesn't matter. Two nuclear triad powers simply can't fight directly.
The CCP gains legitimacy from brining prosperity to the Chinese people. This prosperity is off the back of human rights violations, bullying other countries and corporate espionage. It is time we boycotted China. The whole world must turn its back on China to show this behaviour is not acceptable. It may hurt in the short term, but will benefit all of humanity in the long term.
Unfortunately, I don't see that the West, and the United States in particular, is in a position to do anything in the near future. China seems to know that. They have by-and-large solved their Coronavirus problem months ago (with some pretty draconian methods), but the West is still reeling.
The US is heading into a pretty contentious election, nobody is sure whether or not we're on the brink of a recession, international diplomatic relationships are in tatters. If the CCP took Taiwan right now, I don't see the US lifting a finger.
You're 100% right. Depression! I should have said depression!
Maybe. They could still infiltrate Special Forces teams (I'm sure they have boat teams trained for this very thing), hit Taipei with DF-17s, mine the outside boundaries of the strait, parachute guys in and take the harbors.
My point is more that the US isn't in a position to do anything right now, than that China is going to take Taiwan.
I guess that's relatively subjective, and depends on what you or I feel is draconian.
I might feel something is a little over-the-top, but you might feel it's just fine. You might feel something is a little over-the-top, but I might feel it's just fine.
So, I guess my only answer would be that you would have to read the articles and decide for yourself.
You may have a different tolerance for the techniques described than I do.
"In the eastern province of Jiangsu, quarantine turned to imprisonment after authorities used metal poles to barricade shut the door of a family recently returned from Wuhan."
"Authorities have used computerized systems that track ID cards — which must be used to take most long-distance transport and stay in hotels — to round up people from Wuhan."
For example, I find this to be a bit much. I do, however concede that it works. You may be perfectly fine with it.
I find the prison camps in Xinjiang to be a little draconian. Plenty of other people feel that it's a wonderful idea.
The US must not go unpunished. The world needs to stand up to their lone wolf style. If we do not stand up against the US now it will only embolden the evil. Vote with your wallets. Avoid using US made products and services. Pressure/ Make laws for retailers to enforce Country of Origin information for each and every product. The web is flooded with services made in the US that spread their propaganda (antivax and QAnon started in the anglosphere) made to keep their population feeble and powerless (some of them even die because they cannot afford insuline). The US, Trump and their 2 party system must not be emboldened any further.
There was a unified Korea, led by Lyuh Woon-hyung.
Americans arrived afterwards, Lieutenant General John Hodge said: "one of our missions was to break down this Communist government".
If the Americans wouldn't have come, there wouldn't have been any north/south division (in fact, Kim Il-sung wouldn't probably end up leading a country). And you somehow think that it's China who destabilized it?
Similarly, it's the US that invaded Vietnam from the other side of the world. The only difference is that the country was already divided, after the Anti-French Resistance War. You think of it as "communist aggression", but the truth is that these were liberation wars from western colonization.
Similarly, the US propaganda personally blames Mao for "killing" people due to a famine. The reality is more complex, and unfortunately personal responsibility of state leaders is never recognized during these events. Similarly, Trump is "killing" hundred of thousands of people due to his mishandling of the pandemic, but we both know that he won't be held personally responsible.
I can get into more details, but you should reconsider what you choose to spread. If you're just repeating propaganda talking points, you're not going to accomplish anything good for the people in Korea, Vietnam, China or US people themselves. The only people that you're doing a favor to are the fat cats in Washington.
Yeah what's a few million deaths in the middle east in what? The past 2 decades? War in Yemen. Oh wait it's alright because we'll make a documentary about how it was wrong and how killing all those Iraqis made marines feel bad.
What a strange decree. States don't punish or get punished for moralistic reasons. It's like saying we should punish Alexander the Great. It's all a part of history, he was a terrible person for ravaging the land but we celebrate him today. There are no morals in empire building.
Xi Jinping has a constituency and to a degree opaque to the West, that constituency provides his mandate. Discomfit the constituency, the princes and princelings, in their pockets, and that mandate might be withdrawn.
Besides, the rules around country of origin are complicated, and some countries have product description law about this. And what's to stop Amazon sellers sticking fake country of origin on, as they can already do for CE marking?
Or the reverse: Amazon stick a China flag on iPhones. Apple are going to get extremely upset about this and sue/offer money to change that to a US flag.
How do they get the information, though? Oblige resellers to put it on? Who then proceed to lie about it? It's just the "fake commingling" problem all over again.
Not an Amazon engineer (I work at AWS). But how would that be workable at Amazon's scale?
Who declares the country of origin? Who ensures compliance for item? How is compliance done? Do you review every single item?
How do you ensure that manufacturers update their country of origin declaration if/wehen they change downstream procurement? If you the raw materials are sourced in China and assembled in Vietnam, does that count as a Vietnamese product?
Amazon still has trouble with fake reviews, brushing scams, and straight-up counterfeits. Adding another system that needs to be policed doesn't seem like a very good idea. Especially when that system (country of origin flag on every product) has questionable upside.
Don't forget that for trade purposes (customs!) every item that is crossing borders already need to declare COO and that documentation and rules exist how to assign it based on value-added manufacturing steps.
At least with Alibaba you're going right to the source and not paying some reseller's markup or for the 'free' Prime shipping that just gets baked into prices on Amazon.
Wouldn’t it push people to higher cost and higher margin products (locally made or from more ethical sources) and thereby increase their profits? Seems to me like you could make a strong case for it
He's paid taxes on... something. If he was just persuing licencing deals, but didn't land any, you'd think there would be no income tax that needs to be paid in China.
The account apparently had some millions deposited into in and then withdrawn quickly after. It's not entirely clear who or where that money came from in the first place.
Because Trump lied about nearly everything related to his finances for decades and has openly admitted that his followers are just gullible and will forgive him for it, so he doesn't care.
A cursory google search reveals this to be true and to his credit Trump is very open about his lying. "My net worth is just a function of how I feel at the time" and "I could shoot someone on fifth avenue and people would still support me." Are statements he's stood by and never apologized for in anyway.
As long as 95% of the people in the US keep on buying items with their wallets open, and we're distracted with our own internal strife, what hope is there to counter this? Our leadership certainly isn't up to standing against this sort of thing these days.
People want the information, and if they had it many would adjust their buying behavior. I see the "where is this made" question on Amazon products all the time. Even if it didn't make a difference, having the manufacturing origin, and shipping origin clearly labeled would be a good start.
Information doesn't matter when you have no other choice. There's practically zero affordable consumer products still made in the US or Europe. Just try finding any form of electronic made outside of Asia. It's nonexistent.
Chy-na imports a large portion of it's food supply, and the recent floods have destroy a large portion of it's own supply. people don't eat consumer electronics.
Not just the US, China exports stuff everywhere. I think this can be mitigated by making planned obsolescence illegal and somehow forcing companies to maximize quality.
We don't need crappy pens, toys, electronics, etc...
I don't know about you, but I'm personally happy to own one ballpoint pen that'll last me for 20 years (and only have to refill it from time to time). If anything, just to not see some poor guy work as a slave (long work-days, minimum pay, suicide nets). Right now you can just go purchase 10x crappy pens that easily break and dry out for around €2, whyyyy?
Say what you want about Trump, who is a completely disgusting individual, but I have seen more progress this presidential term in this regard than ever before.
You're getting down-voted because trump derangement syndrome. But it's true. No President has taken a harder line on China and the CCP. If you're in the US and you want to do something about the CCP, probably the most effective thing you could do is vote Trump. And I'm saying this as liberal who can't stand Trump.
If that's effective for the long-term future and prosperity of the US, which is also important to counter the CCP - I don't know.
Maybe Trump has started changes for the better. Let's hope. My personal worry is that he (and the US in general) is mainly about business and will ignore the human rights abuses as long as the money is right. The friendly position towards Saudi Arabia seems to indicate that.
Yes, to be fair I don't think he's being tough on China for humanitarian reasons. Nevertheless, I would say the outcome here matters more than his motivation.
As a leftist, who hates biden AND trump (almost equally) and voted green but almost voted Biden (i'm not in a swing state), I see Trump as a catalyst for change, I wanted him to win to unite people on the left to move more left, and upturn neoliberalism (looks like it's working), however - I'm changing my tune a tiny bit, namely because of covid and how that's going down. I don't think Trump can handle fixing this, and I honestly think we're in over our heads as it is.
We really need UBI, stimulus, healthcare reform, and as much as I hate to say it Biden is the closest we get to that. But, vote who you feel is good and safe, I voted green. I'm not gonna vote shame anyone.
Just when you vote think about all that's coming : Global Warming, Water Wars (already started in Mexico), Droughts, More Fires, Covid, Covid part 2, Income inequality raised a factor or two, joblessness, homelessness for millions, protests, uprisings, etc... Next two decades will make or break us.
TLDR: Trump probably would be best against china, and if that were the only issue facing us, it might be good enough reason to go against the grain, but there's so much shit hitting the fan now, maybe we do need change.
I am making a stand to not support either of the corrupt big parties in the US. I can't vote for one guy only because the other guy is bad. The democrats should have put up a candidate people actually want to vote for. They didn't do that either in 2016 or 2020. Not being Trump is not a good program.
Do the Democratic party have their collective heads in the sand? What were they thinking putting forward Biden.
If they lose this election it's because they threw it. All they had to do was field anyone in good health (Biden isn't) who wasn't widely detested and they would have had it in the bag.
The party system in the US leaves so much to be desired.
Biden is fine, he'll return decision-making to normalcy and be a one term President. Then we can try 2 new candidates in 4 years. Imagine the next 4 years with Biden and then with Trump. Which one seems less erratic and dangerous?
Your point is being wasted, and another 4 regressive years of Trump all because you wanted to make a point that won't be heeded or come through at all.
How about the 3rd parties field a candidate people actually want to vote for? Not some fringe ideology.
For a 3rd party to be able to get a sustainable foothold the election system probably has to change. The hurdle is just too high. Personally I think a certain number of seats in the house should not get assigned by winning districts but by countrywide votes. For example, if you get 5% of the votes, you get some seats. Having more parties would force the big parties to compromise.
As far as the democrats go, my prediction is that they will find another uninteresting candidate in 2024 and keep standing for nothing. Maybe its's Pelosi's turn?
> President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir
> Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account. The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.
> Bolton also wrote in the book that Matthew Pottinger, a retired US Marine and the current deputy national security adviser, "told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."
Somehow a war-lusting psychopath like Bolton is trustworthy, as he pushes a book out of a vendetta for having been fired?
This is the same Bolton who publicly declared that the single biggest mistake of the Trump presidency was not launching a war against Iran (a war that would kill a million people most likely). The same Bolton who has never shown a problem with aggressively supporting lies, like the foundational lies used for the Iraq war, of which he was a big proponent. There is very little from someone like Bolton that can be trusted directly - which also doesn't mean everything he said about Trump is false, it means there is inherently a severe credibility problem with anything he says.
Biden has been pro-China throughout the entirety of his political career.
As Senator he voted yes to give China permanent normal trade status, stating:
> [Our course is clear. China's growing participation in the international community over the past quarter century has been marked by growing adherence to international norms in the areas of trade, security, and human rights.](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2000-pt13/html/CRE... of our colleagues disagree on this point. They would have preferred that the China trade bill be turned into an omnibus China Policy Act. I understand their objectives and their frustration with the slow pace of reform in China. But amendments offered by Senator Smith of New Hampshire--covering such diverse issues as POW/MIA cooperation, forced labor, organ harvesting, etc.--and Senator Wellstone of Minnesota--conditioning PNTR on substantial progress toward the release of all political prisoners in China--pile too much onto this legislation. Moreover, those amendments would effectively hold the trade legislation hostage to changes in China which passing the trade bill would promote. This seems backwards to me.](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2000-pt13/html/CRE...)
Biden later lobbied to grant most-favored-nation trade status and World Trade Organization membership to China:
> [In the critical fight over whether to grant most-favored-nation trade status and World Trade Organization membership to China in the 1990s — a fight in which, again, many of his party’s leaders in Congress were on the right side — Biden carefully shepherded China through the process from his powerful perch as the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Wherever a brake might have been applied — by placing human-rights or labor conditions on most-favored-nation status, for example — Biden voted the measures down and lobbied other senators for Beijing. Unfortunately, China and Biden got their way, and American workers are still suffering from it.](https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/joe-biden-is-chinas-c...)
As Vice President:
> ["In order to cement this robust partnership, we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing, which we’re working on every day, go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms."](https://newspunch.com/unearthed-biden-speech-in-china-urged-...)
> ["Already, we have made thousands of new items available for export to China for exclusive civilian use that were not available before, and tens of thousands of more items will become available very soon. That’s a significant change in our export policy and a rejection of those voices in America that say we should not export that kind of technology to – for civilian use in – China. We disagree, and we’re changing."](https://newspunch.com/unearthed-biden-speech-in-china-urged-...)
> ["I believed in 1979 and said so and I believe now that a rising China is a positive development, not only for the people of China but for the United States and the world as a whole." He continues: “it is in our self-interest that China continues to prosper” and retained hope “a rising China will fuel economic growth and prosperity and it will bring to the fore a new partner with whom we can meet global challenges together.”](https://newspunch.com/unearthed-biden-speech-in-china-urged-...)
> [Vice President Biden convinced China's vice president to agree to a deal that would unlock new fortunes for Hollywood. Biden asked Xi Jinping to relax China's quota of allowing only 20 foreign films to be shown at a time and to increase distribution fees for Hollywood firms.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/05/02...)
> [In 2013, the Obama administration allowed Chinese companies to invest in U.S. capital markets without having their books inspected by U.S. regulators, after meetings between Chinese officials and Biden.](https://epochtimes.today/where-biden-trump-stand-on-the-chin...)
As Presidential Candidate:
> [In 2019, Biden boasts about having spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other world leader, and that China wasn't a competitior to the United States. "China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man," Biden said at the time. "They're not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They're not competition for us."](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-trump-mischara...)
"Twenty-four hours a day, prisoners are shackled. Iron chains are tied around their necks, fixed to loose iron blocks that Ӧmir says weigh around eight to ten kilograms, forcing prisoners to always be hunched down. He believes this is just one of the ways in which the camps are designed to instill a submissive posture in prisoners vis-a-vis their captors."
I'm at a loss for words at the barbaric and utterly inhumane treatment towards their citizens. This is insane.
Well the CCCP also had no problem performing forced abortions on their Han Chinese citizens. Sometimes in the 8th month of a pregnancy... All for the one child policy.
Pay your taxes so that your military can keep an eye on the assholes who do this, and so that UN may offer some form of asylum to their victims. Vote for politicians that oppose this shit publicly. Explain to your kids why this is wrong.
> Pay your taxes so that your military can keep an eye on the jackwads who do this
My taxes have frequently paid for US Gov led torture. If we ever hold China accountable in a meaningful way, it won't be due to authentic moral outrage.
> My taxes have frequently paid for US Gov led torture. If we ever hold China accountable in a meaningful way, it won't be due to authentic moral outrage.
Interestingly your premise is a form of forever torture that forever punishes and condemns entire nations of people even if they weren't directly (or even indirectly) responsible for the actions of a small group of people.
Every American is denied the ability to have authentic moral outrage because of what a very small number of people did eg at Abu Ghraib? I disagree. That's an absurd premise and it means a nation can never change its behavior or move beyond past mistakes. In fact, your premise encourages a nation to never change, because you're forever condemned no matter what you do.
It's a collectivist punishment system. The kind of thing that has been used to apply inherited or associative morality based on nation, group or race for thousands of years. It's straight out of the old testament.
Let's examine that however. So because of things that happened in the past, or things outside of your direct control, a person or government decades or centuries later can never hold a position of "authentic moral outrage." How about people that were disgusted by acts of US torture and voted their conscience accordingly (electing Obama instead of the war hawk McCain, for example), do they get to have authentic moral outrage? Can you clarify how your all-powerful god-like moral ruling works in practice?
The French can never have authentic moral outrage because Napoleon murdered millions of people and the French did horrible things in Vietnam? Is there an expiration timer on any of this?
The Russians can never have authentic moral outrage because of what happened under the USSR and because of what Putin is doing currently?
The people of Belgium are forever condemned to never possess authentic moral outrage because of King Leopold II?
The people of Cambodia can possess no authentic moral outrage, regardless of their involvement in the genocide and that condemnation shall last an eternity.
The Germans....
Shall I continue? These are all intentionally extreme examples to make a very obvious point.
The world found out about Abu Ghraib, and the US was shamed, humiliated, and Obama issued an executive order specifically banning the CIA's torture techniques in 2009 in response. The NDAA of 2016 also further restricted abusive interrogations. The people of the US were widely disgusted. It was very public as a matter, it was broadcast to the American people 24/7 for months. Culturally we had a large, very public debate over it as a nation. That was for a few dozen cases of torture. The world's superpower - which needed to have zero concern for the world's opinion - was very clearly humiliated by it and took action to prevent torture in the future (and yes, one can be reasonably skeptical of that being successful; as time goes on the US should be judged by its actions and not words on the matter).
Why should a nation of people or its large government/s be comprehensively denied "authentic moral outrage" because of the actions of an exceptionally small part of the population? A plainly absurd position to take on how morality should work.
We've never done anything out of a moral outrage, or have been directly attacked (WW 2). In order to get the US Gov to care, you have to start costing capital money.
The only reason we got mad about Vietnam, Cuba, South America is not because of "Communism" as an abstract concept. It's because the government seized or threatened to seize assets. See also Pinochet. We had no problem with him.
The reason why this is relevant to China is that China has made a lot of people a lot of money. So they commit a genocide every so often. As long as it doesn't cost American capital money, we'll ignore it.
Why were people so up in arms about Cuba, but not Ethiopia? Well, Cuba is much closer, true. But the real issue was that people owned stuff in Cuba. There was no significant interest in Ethiopia.
Certainly nothing like this, and our practices in war have always stood out as more humane than the other side. People sometimes point to Afghanistan, but I don’t remember out guys beheading anyone.
our practices in war have always stood out as more humane than the other side
Ok, then convince your side to submit to the UN-appointed war crimes tribunal in The Hague. As long as the The Hague Invasion Act is still in force, that claim is hollow.
This simply isn’t true. And even if it were, that is still no excuse. Terrible things happen in war. Innocent people die or get seriously scarred in war, often for decades to come after the war ends. Being “better then the opposing party” is no excuse and provides no comfort to the victims of war.
This is the same narrative of the civilized Europeans that colonized the rest of the world and led to the genocide of the Native American (Indians) and the Australian aboriginals. Our side is human and anyone that falls short of your values is less than human. I'm not a moral relativist, we need only look at the physical and mental health of animals raised in different zoos to see that there is an objective morality and a basic minimum decency for how to treat our fellow humans. But if you are going to violate this ethical minimum, then you're narrative is the _only_ one that's ever been used. We're the good guys, they're the bad guys.
This goes back to the debate between Augustine, a former good vs evil Manichean, and Pelagius. One believed that "everyone is bad" and warned against excessive hubris, while the other believed that those who choose to do evil do so out of their own free will.
In the pre-9/11 world, there was the idea that torture was a relic of the past, and we had made moral progress beyond such barbarities. But it was the leading liberal democracy in the world, rather than some third world dictatorship, that reintroduced the practice.
The United States trained the guerillas that eventually became the Vietcong in Vietnam, and the country went to war under the Gulf of Tonkin false flag. Similarly, the United States invaded Iraq under the WMD charade. In Afghanistan, it promoted the Islamist fundamentalism of the mujahideen, in order to fight the USSR friendly government that the Afghans themselves elected. The mujahideen became the Taliban, and a similar story of is true of ISIS and al-qaeda (US trained them to do their dirty work then lost control of them)
I don't think the United States is the root of all evil. But it's important to realise that the Chinese don't think of their country as an evil dictatorship, the same way that you don't view your country as "the bad guys". Rather, as St Augustine put it in his doctrine of original sin, we are all "the bad guys" and we need to reflect on the worse demons of our nature.
We have forgotten the Augustinian lessons, indulging in excessive pride and hubris, and failing to reflect on the same pattern that has been occurring cyclically for millennia.
Yeah, but some countries actually torture prisoners routinely. See the parent article. This idea that the US hasn’t routinely taken the high road is ridiculous. Just wait until China is the superpower. You’ll long for the bad ol’USA.
Yes, and the United States regressed back towards those countries. I don't think the United States is the "bad guy" or the root of all evil, I don't think the West is either. I just don't think that they're the "good guy" that routinely exercises restraint, unless you compare it to an imaginary hypothetical.
I don't support China either - I don't believe in the "good vs evil" narrative that was alien to the Ancient Romans and Greek pagans. The idea that there's historical moral progress culminating in the values of the United States is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. In Hegel's philosophy of right, which was fashionable in Germany, he believed that history culminated in the values of the Prussian constitutional monarchy.
It's unlikely that China will become a superpower. The United States, in the next few years, will no longer hold world wide hegemony, as it seems to be distancing itself from Europe among other countries. It's also unlikely that we'll return to a bipolar world, similarly to the period of the Cold War. It's more likely that we're moving towards a multi-polar world.
The US certainly doesn't have a stellar Human Rights record in wars or other; but it's mostly because of incompetence and not as an agenda to keep one race only.
As a veto member of the UN security council, China will simply prevent any response. In addition, they pay massive amounts of money to African countries to vote their way. Look into Ethiopian-Chinese relations and the Ethiopian cholera outbreaks and you'll see why the WHO leader (not a doctor I'd add) did nothing but shill for China.
Btw, things still aren't all clear in Rwanda and from what I hear things are starting to go south again, including Paul Rusesabagina (the main character from the movie) accusing the Rwandan government of kidnapping him and forcing him into a rigged trial[0]. Speaking to a Rwandan friend all he could say is that things were certainty shady and things aren't going well in the country right now. Remembering one of the most powerful lines of the movie
> You're black. You're not even a nier. You're an African.
What people criticize about the Rwandan genocide isn’t the lack of military intervention. It is the lack of any response from the international community (think the first decade of HIV/AIDS). No condemnation, no UN response, no relief of asylums for victims, and hardly any news.
> What people criticize about the Rwandan genocide isn’t the lack of military intervention.
On 11 January 1994, General Roméo Dallaire, commander of UNAMIR, sent his "Genocide Fax" to UN Headquarters.[108] The fax stated that Dallaire was in contact with "a top level trainer in the cadre of Interhamwe-armed [sic] militia of MRND." The informant—now known to be Mathieu Ngirumpatse's chauffeur, Kassim Turatsinze,[109] a.k.a. "Jean-Pierre"—claimed to have been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. According to the memo, Turatsinze suspected that a genocide against the Tutsis was being planned, and he said that "in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis".[110] Dallaire's request to protect the informant and his family and to raid the weapons caches he revealed was denied.[110]
Good thing that twitter pretends to be the arbiter of truth and fact check every world that comes out of a republican's mouth. meanwhile accusations from the ccp's minister of propaganda run rampant
How would the UN giving people asylum work? AFAIK the only territories administered by the UN are in Syria, Kosovo and Cyprus. I don't think they'd send asylum seekers there..
The UN is not unified on the uighur camps, so it would have to be individual countries at the national level. The UN has voted on several resolutions regarding Chinese policy in Xinjiang. Many countries abstain from voting and of those that vote, more vote in support than vote to denounce.
Was the UN ever unified against CIA torture policies? I don't recall. It may be that the UN is strongly reluctant to call out abominations by superpowers.
I have no goals. I am on HN just to exchange opinions when I need a 5 min rest from a programming.
>"Also China has gone to war with and enslaved as many people as they had the capacity for. Pretending otherwise is weird."
Oh. I am sure thy did. But the end result is what counts. They sure treated their own citizens like crap. But in business of f..g up other countries I think they're bit behind comparatively. Might change in a future so we will see / or not.
Intervening in another's country internal affairs leads to a war. UN is a nice idea, though it doesn't work in reality. To apply for an asylum, you need to leave the country. Low likelyhood of happening.
The CCP has no intention of repenting of their ways and will always be seeking to increase it's influence abroad; encouraging this kind of behavior everywhere. Of course fighting is not ideal, as uncomfortable as it is; sometimes fighting is necessary.
This isn't a problem that will just go away by wishful thinking or by being ignored.
Nobody is saying that. However currently the Chinese ruling class is getting away with this horror without any repercussions. International condemnation from world leaders might be enough to stop this horror, but so far we are not even seeing that from the international community. More realistically it would take a lot more then only condemnation. We would probably need to see sanctions against the Chinese ruling class and Chinese state owned businesses, and probably we would need to see the Chinese excluded from international cultural and sports events (such as the Olympics).
Passing these values to kids is valuable. Right now the US is at a turning point for its democracy and now is an important time to teach the values of human rights and democracy.
Agree. Sure the UN could do more to both help the victims and condemn the actions. But military intervention seems like a very very very bad idea which might result in far worse travesties. Worse then even these concentration camps. Remember that 2.5% of every human on earth lost their lives because of World War 2.
Maybe I am an optimist, but that seems really bleak thinking.
1/ « Keep an eye on » is different than « Intervene ». We have to have satellites out there mapping this stuff in excruciating detail, and spies tracking who is responsible for what, and special forces hit them if they step out in a zone where they can be hit. The people who perpetrate this must live in fear.
2/ The UN is full of problems, but if a resolution grants universal asylum to Uighurs anywhere in the world, then at least those people will know there is somewhere they can escape to. That’s something.
3/ Your kids might one day be in a position to do something about it. Telling them why this is wrong, and why they should care, might just be the most important thing you do in your life.
I don’t want to start a big argument. I just want to say that we can all do little things that do matter collectively.
"Higgins' analyses of Syrian weapons, which began as a hobby out of his home in his spare time, are frequently cited by the press and human rights groups and have led to parliamentary discussion."
"Bellingcat (stylized as bell¿ngcat) is an investigative journalism website that specializes in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies."
Check out some of the work being done peering into North Korea as well for ideas e.g.:
"North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Center: Flood Damage Repairs Underway"
https://www.38north.org/2020/10/yongbyon201022/
There is probably a lot to be learned from constructing various elements of an open-source intelligence pipeline that uses software to aggregate information from dissidents, analyze satellite imagery to identify concentration camps, provide encryption, translation, etc.
The ironic and actually instructive part of this is that his work was used to rationalize the Syrian war for the west, which has left an absolutely devastating trail of misery for countless millions of Syrian people.
Even more instructive is that the people responsibly for that misery all still pretend to be the good guys.
I appreciate the contrary view that you're representing but at the same time your account is badly violating the HN guidelines against using this site primarily for political battle, and you're also posting in the flamewar style which is not ok here. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against, or how good or bad it is.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd appreciate it. The intended use is this: primarily for intellectual curiosity, only secondarily for politics, and then only in the form of curious and thoughtful conversation—not smiting enemies.
> I'm in complete and utter disbelief reading this. How can stuff like this be happening in 2020?
> I mean this seriously but as a lowly computer programmer is there any way we can help these poor people other than offer our sympathy?
You are not a lowly computer programmer, but a person near the top of income vertical for as long as salaried people go.
The two most potent political instruments ever are the money, and firearms. You may not have the second, but certainly have first.
Saying this, people have to ask a question not who are the bigger enemies to the civilised mankind, but who are the biggest threat. Are they are the people who perpetrate genocides in parts of the world where the light doesn't shine, or the people who cover for them in the West, while living a comfy life, and enjoying all benefits of life in a civil state.
Without any hesitation I will say that while Xis, Putins, and Sisis are the biggest enemies of the civilised mankind, but the biggest threat to civil state as we know it comes from people in the West who made their ascension to power possible.
I believe the majority opinion of WW2 historians is that the war was very well preventable, or it was possible to nip it at the bud if the West wasn't stalled in its tracks by internal political sabotage by people who were not much dissimilar to those Western politicians who now flirt with rouge regimes, and sometimes directly facilitating them.
A very good reason to think to all of HN readers who were fortunate to be born in the free world.
From my lifelong misfortune with politics, I can affirm the saying that it's much, much, much more hard to "create" new power, than it is to take, or receive existing power from somebody else.
My advise, join all major political parties, and fight, fight, fight, until you can do something real, and the money you have can help you in this a lot.
> I'm in complete and utter disbelief reading this. How can stuff like this be happening in 2020?
I'm surprised at your surprise.
Aren't there stories about improper arrest and torture quite often?
Heck, a friend of mine was improperly arrested recently (the cops lied about what he was doing) and I actually met a guy who had been tortured (soon before I met him) by a state secret police.
I also knew a Holocaust survivor. I can't be the only person who thinks states behaving badly is more the norm than the exception?
Why insult me instead of just making your case? I'm a bit more sympathetic to a comparison between Central Americans migrants -> US and Uighurs -> China, although there are striking differences even between the two: foremost, Uighurs are Chinese citizens, and Central Americans are not US citizens, which is a major, major difference. As such, Central Americans are not, by definition, a "US minority group". I had assumed you were comparing the present situation of black Americans and the Uighurs.
Lots of things made me angry when I was in my teens and 20s that I look back on now in my 50s and understand much better (eg, I was furious at the lack of US intervention in Bosnia. I now understand much better the reasons driving non-interventionism, and I'm able to see the compassion driving it, even if I don't always agree.).
Edit: And BTW, it wasn't I who flagged your response, despite the ad hominem. But those things rarely play well on HN, as I'm sure you know.
Not allow @dang and HN to shadowban “flame war” topics in the name of decorum.
This normalizes decorum over inconvenient truths.
@dang shadowbanned me for accurately discussing the propaganda warfare happening in US vs China relations, and the way current neo-Marxist riots tie into a long history of subversive movements.
> yet as Muslims they self-identify as separate from the Han culture.
By all accounts they appear to be justified in doing so.
> The Muslim community has a very us vs them mentality which is not healthy for national unity that china CCP desires.
Perhaps the CCP should find a model for national unity that Uighurs would overwhelmingly give their enthusiastic consent to.
> China has a 5000 year old culture and a majority of people experienced significant hardships and starvation in the last century.
>This Uigher generation is suffering so the future uigher can fit into the society better.
What relevance does the historical suffering of the Han? population have to do with the current, actively manufactured suffering of the Uighurs, beyond bitter vindictiveness?
> They emphasize national unity (vs individalism) in a way western people cannot even begin to understand, but belonging to such a group is not entirely bad. This Uigher generation is suffering so the future uigher can fit into the society better.
"Prepare to be assimilated; resistance is futile"
"Surrender or die."
There's a reason the Borg were considered villains.
Nobody wants to read this on HN. If you disagree post why you disagree, an insult like this serves no purpose other than alienating alternative opinions. If I had the karma I would flag you.
Nobody is advocating genocide here. This is completely obvious, it is not his intention... you are exaggerating the situation. Who in their right mind would do this? And if you read his post it's obvious he is not doing this.
The chinese actions are atrocious but an accusation of saying that holocaust level genocide is getting advocated here is a huge difference.
You can tell him he's wrong because you believe that the chinese are conducting genocide. You do not start a witch hunt by accusing him of advocating genocide which he obviously is not doing.
And it's also possible China is completely in the wrong. I'm not even advocating for an even sided situation, I'm advocating understanding the situation first before throwing an accusation.
What we do know is this... we have people on the inside of Hong Kong and we know that in Hong Kong China is not conducting mass genocide or opening up re-education camps in Hong Kong. This is different from what's happening with the Uighurs... we need to know what prompted China to react much more heavily against the Uighurs (as opposed to Hong Kong) and we also need to confirm whether the alleged "genocide" is real.
The post that was called disgusting is indeed a valid alternative viewpoint quite possibly from someone closer to the situation than your average white guy.
Also keep the outrage in check. Even a modern western country in 2020 is capable of this crap. The US has their own detention camps open today. It exists using a technique called extraordinary rendition to get around American laws. The camp is called gitmo and there are some real pictures about some really horrible shit that went down at gitmo.
> I'm advocating understanding the situation first before throwing an accusation.
"We don't know what's going on" is a lie. We know. Some people chose to ignore / justify. You are sadly in good company when it comes to the history of denying genocide.
> "We don't know what's going on" is a lie. We know.
I'm not lying, but I could be mistaken. I'm not mistaken about the rape of nanking or the holocaust. There are pictures of mass slaughter, graves and even severed heads on the pikes of japanese soldiers to confirm the depravity and existence of these events. My own grandfather witnessed the events and tells me first hand accounts of the rivers of blood in nanking. The japanese denial is sickening, and you accusing me, a descendent of victims of such slaughter, as someone who denies genocide displays incredible immaturity.
I am not denying genocide, I am simply saying extreme accusations need extreme evidence. So your next task is clear:
Show me pictures of the same slaughter that you claim the chinese are doing right now. I promise you I will do a full 180 if you show me some actual pictures of the massacre that you claim is happening right at this very moment. Show me some dead bodies, executions... etc.. etc.
> Show me pictures of the same slaughter that you claim the chinese are doing right now.
You are the one setting the bar at "mass slaughter". Sorry, that wasn't and isn't what is being discussed. Mass interment, violence, rape, retaliation against one's family for political crimes, forced sterilization, etc. The evidence for that is legion, you have access to the same information I do. Look it up yourself (if you care).
Mass Slaughter and genocide are the same thing. You claim I'm denying genocide, so the according to you I'm actually setting the bar LOWER then mass slaughter.
These are your words:
>You are sadly in good company when it comes to the history of denying genocide.
So now you're claiming we aren't even talking about genocide? That there is no mass slaughter? Seems to me ur changing the subject.
Oh. I see. It's an english language problem. Someone doesn't know an english word and is misusing it all over the place. Look up the definition of the word genocide:
Look, mass sterilization is bad. But genocide? Under that logic anyone who ever got an abortion is a killer. Or maybe anyone who wanted to have a baby but changed their mind...
Colloquially when people use the word genocide they use it in place of mass slaughter, that is the intuition behind the word and that's how people use it. If you use the word genocide in place of mass sterilization, you and the organization who decides to use/define the word in that way are manipulating the perspective of the situation because Everyone is well aware of the intuitive meaning of the word "genocide". When people hear "genocide" they hear "slaughter" and "killing"... mass sterilization is the last thing they think about.
Here's a thought. Rather than use the word "genocide" why don't you just say "mass sterilization." Don't throw down a word that can be mistaken for slaughter for your own manipulative gain. You could have easily, very easily clarified your intent earlier, but you didn't because you are manipulative, or you don't know common colloquial English.
I vote that you're just being manipulative. The rest of your English grammar seems fine, you just want to start something rather than be level headed.
You're massively out of line with "Someone doesn't know an english word and is misusing it all over the place." and "I vote that you're just being manipulative. The rest of your English grammar seems fine, you just want to start something rather than be level headed."
Guys don't be stupid. Colloquially we all associate genocide with killings, the oxford definition captures this fact. We all know it, you can look up the formal term but when someone utters the word genocide the last thing they think about is sterilization. They think killings. We all know this by common sense. You guys are using technicalities to further an argument for no reason.
In addition to this the technical terms are all different so it's not like I've been proven wrong. My oxford definition actually incorporates the word "killing" so we can argue about technicalities till forever or we can not be stupid and admit that when people hear or use the word "genocide" they think about "killings" "murder" and mass "slaughter"
Under the other definitions basically an abortion clinic becomes a genocide clinic. We don't associate abortion clinics with genocide... nothing is out of line here At all.
You guys can cite the UN definition of genocide but nobody uses that definition in the english language, it's really too big a of an essay for someone to hold in their head. Realistically when you see the word in an article or uttered by a person it's using the oxford definition which is the exact context we're in right now.
> Colloquially we all associate genocide with killings, the oxford definition captures this fact.
No, we don't, and the Merriam-Webster definition [0] captures this fact: “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”.
As does the Britannica [1] definition: “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.”
While killing the individual members of a group is a common mechanism of genocide, the killing the “-cide” in the term refers to is the killing or destruction of the group as a group, not the killing of the individuals who constitute the group.
> you believe that the chinese are conducting genocide.
Reducing this to a "two sides" issue is shameless deflection. What part of the dozens of reporting done on Xinjiang do you think is false, and what facts are you basing that on?
Genocide is a very serious accusation. The word is thrown around in this thread in a trivial way as if you can accuse anyone of advocating it. Let me spell it out for you: Pretty much no one advocates this. You're coming at him saying "I never said it was at holocaust levels" as if that makes a huge difference. This is mass human slaughter we're talking about.
He described it with the word "Holocaust" for two reasons. To detrivialize the usage of the word and because I've seen numbers being thrown around as if millions of people were exterminated.
>"concentration camps are bad but.." No but. There's no but there.
There is indeed a but. The US put the japanese in concentration camps in the past. This does not raise them to the same position as Hitler gassing the jews.
>I am going off first hand accounts and confirmed facts. What are you doing?
Confirmed facts of genocide? Show me some pictures. Show some proof. The seriousness of the accusation demands serious evidence.
>Reducing this to a "two sides" issue is shameless deflection. What part of the dozens of reporting done on Xinjiang do you think is false, and what facts are you basing that on?
He's reducing the issue to an "all sides" issue. Insulting an alternative view point is reducing it to a "one side" issue.
Let's keep things utterly clear here. It is completely wrong to build internment camps. Completely. But it is also completely and utterly wrong to silence another view point and accuse someone of genocide.
You don't solve an issue by attacking the people who created the internment camps without understanding the situation which caused them deploy such drastic procedures in the first place.
> Let me spell it out for you: Pretty much no one advocates this.
Oh I'm well aware (almost) no one will come out explicitly and endorse concentration camps. What they do is almost more insidious, they justify them. They rationalize them. They spin them as something they are not.
I'd rather someone be an open Nazi than to perform their mental gymnastics in public to avoid challenging their world view on something as simple as "mass interment camps are bad." "Well you see they aren't interment camps...they were criminals anyways...how dare you compare a work camp to a death camp?"
It's sickening, all of it. Your spin of "it's not the same as the holocaust" (no one said it is) and "yeah but whatabout the US!" is sadly par for the course.
The US put japanese people in in concentration camps and most US citizens supported it. Does this put most US citizens on par with Nazis who gassed and experimented on Jewish people? No. It does not. Americans did it out of fear, not out of evil.
There is a huge difference here. When you say genocide, it is equivalent to holocaust. When you say concentration camp it's equivalent to gitmo at worst or the japanese concentration camps. Both could be happening but one is drastically worse than the other and genocide needs confirmation.
> Your spin of "it's not the same as the holocaust" (no one said it is) and "yeah but whatabout the US!" is sadly par for the course.
> The US put japanese people in in concentration camps and most US citizens supported it.
Amazing, your lack of self-awareness. Your deflection and whataboutism can't even let up for a second. In case you need yet another reminder, this thread is about Chinese camps.
> There is a huge difference here. When you say genocide, it is equivalent to holocaust
You are saying this. You. You are pushing the argument to the extreme ("everything is a holocaust") to discredit what is actually being said ("these are mass interment camps with systemic violence and arbitrary punishment"). It's an argumentation technique that doesn't work when the other person knows what's happening.
What's going on here is you're misusing the word genocide. See the comment in the other thread.
Genocide is mass killings, not mass sterilizations. If you get very technical you can call a sterilization a killing but that's just a deliberate misuse of the term.
When someone hears the word genocide they hear slaughter. They don't hear oh that population was sterilized. Let's not be stupid about this.
I minded. Because his opinion is in line with what the Chinese perspective.
We as americans vehemently disagree, but a chinese citizen, after witnessing several terrorist attacks by the Uighur which slaughtered hundreds of chinese people, will obviously have a different perspective. This isn't a one time isolated incident... these were multiple attacks occurring with no end in sight.
Rather than not minding insults to opinions you disagree with, why don't you have an open mind and post why you disagree rather then insult the person you disagree with?
Uighur attacks only happened after a decade of repression. The CCP govt moved Han chinese into the region and took away employment and other things that Uighurs used to enjoy turning them into second class citizens. Some people out of frustration committed the attacks which is exactly what CCP wanted to fully go in and start clearing and fully occupying them.
You sound like a Han Chinese. Imagine yourself in their shoes. There's lots of Chinese diaspora in other countries. What if one of the countries decided to do that with the Han Chinese? Would you still side with the host country?
Imagine yourself in the shoes of the person who was killed by a bombing. Imagine yourself knowing family members or your kids getting slaughtered by these terrorist attacks.
Let me put it to you clearly. The situation is complex, no side is right, but to bury the action of one side and justify the actions of another because it's convenient for some stupid US-China rivalry is the wrong way to view it.
I'm not saying either side was right. I'm saying it's wrong to comment on how this is disgusting. It is a valid opposing perspective, just like how your perspective is valid.
What isn't valid is insults and a mass mob mentality.
I'm not American so the US-China rivalry comment is not relevant to me. If my family was killed by a bombing attack I would want to get to the bottom of why it happened in the first place without just blaming an entire population and justifying their genocide.
I am not saying that jihadist extremism is not to blame. But I don't think an entire Uighur culture is to blame either and especially not Uighur people who are being victimised.
>I'm not saying either side was right. I'm saying it's wrong to comment on how this is disgusting.
It's not wrong at all to comment on this. What the Chinese govt is doing is plain disgusting and they should be held accountable just like anybody who is supporting them. We hold extremist groups who carry out attacks responsible, so why not a racist, genocidal govt who instigated the whole thing anyway?
>I'm not American so the US-China rivalry comment is not relevant to me. If my family was killed by a bombing attack I would want to get to the bottom of why it happened in the first place without just blaming an entire population and justifying their genocide.
When someone bombs your family you take the time to find out why they were bombed and try to understand the otherside before shutting down the otherside.
But when someone voices their own opinion. You just call their opinion disgusting and accuse them of genocide.
The man is obviously not supporting genocide. If the chinese are supporting genocide than the man obviously doesn't know but an accusation of genocide needs extreme proof and right now there's only rumors.
Maybe what's really going on is you're selectively applying your empathy to whatever suits your preconceived viewpoint.
>When someone bombs your family you take the time to find out why they were bombed and try to understand the otherside before shutting down the otherside.
I didn't say I would try to understand the side that bombed my family. Those would be the terrorists. I said I would get to the bottom of what happened and why it happened. I would not condemn an entire people or a culture (unless of course every single one of them believed the same thing as the terrorists) to seek some sort of sick justice. Please don't invent things I didn't say.
>The man is obviously not supporting genocide. If the chinese are supporting genocide than the man obviously doesn't know but an accusation of genocide needs extreme proof and right now there's only rumors.
It's not rumours. There is genuine proof. My own government declared it as genocide after investigation (Canada).
>But when someone voices their own opinion. You just call their opinion disgusting and accuse them of genocide.
My comment was directed at the Chinese govt and whoever supports them (obviously knowingly). I didn't call his opinion disgusting. Please learn to comprehend at a level above that of the sixth grade.
>Maybe what's really going on is you're selectively applying your empathy to whatever suits your preconceived viewpoint.
Yeah and you are selectively applying your generosity in trying to understand those you disagree with to whatever suits your needs.
>I didn't say I would try to understand the side that bombed my family. Those would be the terrorists. I said I would get to the bottom of what happened and why it happened. I would not condemn an entire people or a culture (unless of course every single one of them believed the same thing as the terrorists) to seek some sort of sick justice. Please don't invent things I didn't say.
I didn't invent anything you said. I'm telling you what you should do.
>It's not rumours. There is genuine proof. My own government declared it as genocide after investigation (Canada).
Alright. Show me the pictures of the mass killings and the slaughter that's occurring in China. I want to see pictures of the executions and the graves. We have pictures that corroborate the events of Nanking and the holocaust show me the pictures of the genocide that's occurring in China.
>My comment was directed at the Chinese govt and whoever supports them (obviously knowingly). I didn't call his opinion disgusting. Please learn to comprehend at a level above that of the sixth grade.
This whole topic is about a comment calling the original topic disgusting. My comment is defending the original comment. You attacking me is agreeing with the premise. Stay on topic.
>Yeah and you are selectively applying your generosity in trying to understand those you disagree with to whatever suits your needs.
I'm not. Show me the pictures and proof of the "genocide" and I'll do a 180. I'll believe you.
>I'm not. Show me the pictures and proof of the "genocide" and I'll do a 180. I'll believe you.
>Alright. Show me the pictures of the mass killings and the slaughter that's occurring in China. I want to see pictures of the executions and the graves.
Again you've shown yourself to be no more mature than a sixth grader. First, educate yourself about definition of a genocide. It's not all "mass killings and graves" that you are lusting after. A genocide can be a systematic destruction of a people through incarceration, torture, humiliation, destruction of language, cultural practices etc. simply based on their race, culture, or religion. Same thing that's happening to Uighurs. Vox did an expose a couple months ago using satellite imagery to find hundreds of mass detention and slave labor facilities corroborated by statements from victims.
A genocide is systematic destruction of people through killing. That is the oxford official definition and that is the colloquial meaning of the term. When people hear the word they don't think torture, they don't think cultural assimilation, they don't think birth control.
They think slaughter.
Using the word genocide in the way you define it.... makes gitmo become a genocide camp. You're own civilized neighbor the US of A is also basically conducting genocide of middle easterners under your highly convenient definition.
But I don't need to tell you this. You know this already. You throw down that word with the full knowledge that whenever you use that word people will think mass killings. You only fall back on a convenient definition when someone calls you out on the technicality. This is what the articles you read do to manipulate the sentiment, and you accept it because you enjoy calling China a country that is conducting mass genocide. You enjoy perpetuating China with a reputation that is an extreme version of the truth. This is what's going on.
I would tell you to educate yourself but the mind is not only limited by what it is capable of learning but also by genetics. Your limitations are of the latter kind, there is nothing for you to learn because you are already aware of what you're doing.
There's nothing left to argue on the main topic because we both never disagreed that detention camps exist. We can argue about the definition of the word "genocide" and about how your misguided brain works though, I'm sure there's still a disagreement on those two areas.
With regards to Gitmo, you are again purposefully lying. There are plenty of arabs and muslims living in USA with no problems. We have comedians (Hasan Minaj) making fun of Trump. Which Chinese, let along uighur, can make fun of Xi in China?
Now since we both agreed that the detention camps exist, and also the women of that group are being sterilized against their will, it meets criteria b, and d of the Genocide under the UN charter.
As for my genes, they're full capable of learning and not limited by brainwashing as you have been subjected to. Sorry for you and the rest of the CCP shills.
No it's not. First off he's not advocating genocide and second off you need proof that genocide is happening before you can make such a serious accusation.
You're telling me that a holocaust level genocide is happening in China right now? Serious accusations require serious evidence. Prove it. Something like pictures of mass graves like the ones you've seen in the holocaust or the rape of nanking is sufficient for me to do a complete 180.
What's going on here is mob mentality and you're part of it.
Macron is trying to incorporate French Islam into French society. His tactics may be good or bad, I'm not qualified to say, but he certainly is not trying to eradicate a population or its culture, and he is not rounding up religious minorities into concentration camps. Whataboutism only works when the crimes are on vaguely the same scale; this is like comparing bank robbery to music piracy.
I find it quite hard to believe that there is not any degree of distinct Islamic culture that has developed in France (both in the sense of present France and the broader sense of historical French territory) under the influence on broader French culture.
And by “hard to believe”, I mean entirely implausible.
I am not well-versed in the details of Macron is doing regards Islam in France, but I am certain that he is not committing genocide, which is what the CCP is doing, and what the OP is defending. Like arguing that the Nazis were doing the jews a favour with the holocaust. Beyond, beyond, beyond ludicrous. I don't even know where to begin with the idea that the victims of genocide benefit in any way from said genocide.
It won't. The Jews in Germany weren't offer even the shitty options the Uighur have. The German state never tried to assimilate the jews. Even worse - the government sent to the camps even jews so thoroughly assimilated that it was surprise to them that they were having Jewish ancestors.
Uighurs have been committing terrorist attacks since way before these camps have existed: 1992 Ürümqi bombings, the 1997 Ürümqi bus bombings, the 2010 Aksu bombing, the 2011 Hotan attack, 2011 Kashgar attacks, the 2014 Ürümqi attack and the 2014 Kunming attack. And bombing a shrine in Bangkok killing 20.
Home made bombs dropped in markets, driving trucks in to crowds of people, random knife attacks. Doesn't sound unfamiliar here in Europe. They're all reading from the same book.
What China is doing is pretty horrible but it's not like Xi woke up one day and decided he didn't like Uighurs.
The CCP has been colonising its western territories for decades. Your defence and denial of genocide throughout this thread is pretty vile all things considered.
The article says this genocide should stop yet there's not a single mention of anyone dying.
Hundreds of camps have been spotted, plenty of interviews given by ex-detainees. No doubt Uighurs are being detained en masse but I wonder how many don't ever make it out.
"The Genocide Convention, to which China is a signatory, defines genocide as specific acts against members of a group with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part. These acts include (a) killing; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about the group’s physical destruction; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Any one of these categories constitutes genocide."
It seems that the CCP admit the goal of forced assimilation. We might even say that their goal is an ethnocide. But calling it a genocide is using a definition of the term that is controversial (and not accepted by a majority of scholars). The core of the debate is on what "intent to destroy" means:
"The specific intent element defines the purpose of committing the acts: "to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". The specific intent is a core factor distinguishing genocide from other international crimes, such as war crimes or crimes against humanity.
In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) noted in its judgement on Jorgic v. Germany case that, in 1992, the majority of legal scholars took the narrow view that "intent to destroy" in the CPPCG meant the intended physical-biological destruction of the protected group, and that this was still the majority opinion. But the ECHR also noted that a minority took a broader view, and did not consider biological-physical destruction to be necessary, as the intent to destroy a national, racial, religious or ethnic group was enough to qualify as genocide.[29]"
The last time the human race stopped an industrial scale genocide, half the world had to unite under their own selfish reasons. That's no longer possible thanks to nuclear weapons, so our battle will have to be fought first with introspection and reflection.
We can't do anything decisive to help the Uighurs without ripping apart Chinese sovereignty and causing even more collateral damage, so the best we can do is once again find our principles. We will need them to unite us and guide us through the economic pain and chaos that a proper solution like embargoing China would require.
> We can't do anything decisive to help the Uighurs without ripping apart Chinese sovereignty and causing even more collateral damage, so the best we can do is once again find our principles
Yes we can. Boycott CCP controlled businesses, their manufactured goods and services. Ensure strict sanctions are levied on CCP members. Ban travel of CCP members to and from countries that respect the rule of Law.
But nope. We would rather, like cowards, keep our mouth shut and do nothing while this genocide continuous unabated.
And for all the folks who are saying "well that doesn't work" do look at for instance international pressure on South Africa near the end of apartheid. Internal and external pressure in concert can have effect.
> Boycott CCP controlled businesses, their manufactured goods and services. Ensure strict sanctions are levied on CCP members. Ban travel of CCP members to and from countries that respect the rule of Law.
That's typically not worked in other countries. For example, see Russia, which has been under exactly those kinds of targeted sanctions and yet which continues to openly murder opponents of the Putin regime across the globe.
> That's typically not worked in other countries. For example, see Russia, which has been under exactly those kinds of targeted sanctions and yet which continues to openly murder opponents of the Putin regime across the globe.
Russia is almost a semi-hermit State unlike China. Russia was never an "export powerhouse". China is. Russia doesn't have the kind of population China has. Russian population is less than half of USA. Sanctions don't have a major impact on Russia as US was never its major trading partner. But sanctions on China will be a huge blow as US was China's main trading partner. You can't compare Russia and China. They are not the same.
But can that be effective, really? Many times economic sanctions are a joke (see the ones dished out by the UN). If they become too hard, a nuclear state can threaten nuclear action just the same. What then?
Think you have a point. But if they can get away with it this time, they be comfortable to cast their influence wider. Then wider still. So I guess to say it's not a problem now means it'll be a bigger one later, and more dangerous.
What do you imply? WWII was fought by sticks, and stones in comparison to even cold war era weapons, and the combined death toll far, far surpassed the biggest estimate for a possible loss of life in a nuclear war in between Western, and Eastern bloc, even if each side would intentionally target each other's biggest cities.
Uh, there are many accounts from people who were at various camps if you just search, because the typical stay is much shorter than let on in propaganda. In fact, pretty much all accounts are from people who were released. These are much closer in nature to the US border detention camps, with "prisoners" entering and leaving regularly.
We are going to see more of this, once the millions being detained get out or were killed entirely. More leaks will come. Be patient, CCP's crimes are coming out.
China has built almost 400 new camps since 2017, while new testimonies have emerged alleging slave labour, forced sterilisations and organ harvesting taking place inside the camps too.
This is def. bad, though I feel somewhat hypocritical, since we're doing forced sterilizations here too... definitely it needs to stop in China AND the USA.
I'm trying to avoid downplaying this, but the articles linked from your link suggest this is primarily the actions of a single doctor. It seems possible this is an opportunistic individual taking advantage of the migrants who don't speak the language. The practice is obviously abhorrent wherever it happens, but it's not an exact comparison.
While what's going on in the US is definitely bad, that appears so far to be an isolated incident involving a small number of individuals, and, while terrible, it's not really at the same scale as China's organized organ harvesting of minorities and dissidents. Evil is evil, and clearly the U.S. has done wrong, but whataboutism like this reads as an effort to dismiss the issue.
I tried raising awareness about China's bullshit at work once, and was met with awkward silence and was later told in private that I came off as ignorant/immature.
All because I said China should be regarded by the West as an enemy/hostile state. Hell, it's the one thing I can side with the current administration on.
To me China is not much different than pre-WWII Germany: over-the-top authoritarian, has ambitions to influence the direction of things at the world stage, and is currently scapegoating an ethnic minority and putting them in concentration camps.
That wasn't the first time I tried bringing those things up in a group setting. In other occasions I was only met with awkward silence too. Feels like there's some subtle but insane denial going on.
With the business world's dependency on China for cheap manufacturing, I am not surprised one bit. I feel like China has been trying to sink its cultural claws in us for a while... why else is seemingly every business always celebrating Chinese new year every year? I feel like the number of lunar new year celebrations have increased dramatically in the past 5 years
Honestly, I see us heading towards a world war... w/ water becoming precious commodity - I can't see who's gonna win, or even what the pairings might be...
Maybe EU, USA, Canada, India, Israel, Japan vs China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran, Saudia Arabia?
Except there's some racism/xenophobia between Russia, Islam, China, so maybe not...
But a lot of those places lack water, so that could be motivating factor for more strife, and ignite border clashes, and we might pick sides and others pick their sides and before long it's everywhere and everyone fighting.
Russia, China and Saudi Arabia are not friends. Why would they ever pair militarily is beyond my comprehension. Saudi Arabia is armed by the west btw.
As for EU vs Russia - you really think the EU is that suicidal? It would be nuked into oblivion in a matter of minutes.
As for water. Two of thee largest nuke holders are the US and Russia. The US has Canada whth the largest reserves of water. Russia has plenty of it as well. So you think either is going to be attacked by any country for water?
Found the lack of zealous cancel culture in China refreshing. For some reason people find the constant self thought policing in the west to be on the right side of history on all topics, all the time burdensome.
This reminded me of what we used to make fun of North Korea for, except its much much more extreme and it’s not funny at all. Its just monstrous, isn’t it? There should be sanctions
The international community could do a lot more to stop this horror. International leaders could condemn this for a start. They could put sanctions on the chinese ruling class, or Chinese businesses, as well as exclude Chinese participation in international events (such as the Olympics).
Your local representative could raise awareness to such measures to the ruling class in your country, and vote in favor for them in your national assembly. At the very least your local representative could call to shame any other member of the ruling class that is not publicly and vocally condemning this horror.
The countries you picked as an example is a little curious. Sanctions against Russia were really weak and limited, I don’t think anybody had any intentions for them to work at all. The sanctions of Cuba and Venezuela (or embargo in the case of Cuba) were targeted against their autonomy, i.e. countries were not OK with their economic policies so they imposed the sanctions (which were more devastating then any action by the government in Cuba). In the case of Venezuela the sanctions are targeted against a democratically elected government in favor of an opposition that was never elected. The goal here is to abolish democracy, what do you expect the Venezuelan government to do?
This leaves North Korea, which is a genuine example of sanctions not working (and in fact casing harm in them self, since the victims are often starving citizens). However threats of further sanctions have worked in the past to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear weapons program (which they later developed anyway). So I’ll give you that one.
But now let’s turn to South Africa. The Apartheid government was supported by many rich nations throughout the late 20th century. Their crimes got worse and worse over the years. Until the international community finally came together in the last decade of the century and imposed heavy sanctions, even excluded them from participating in cultural and sporting events. The apartheid government finally collapsed and South Africa got their first democratically elected precedent that represented a majority of the nation in 1994.
But I don’t think it is fair to talk only about the failure of sanctions to actively work in this context, the alternative here (as per ancestor comment) is military intervention. I could just as easily come up with a list of countries where military intervention did not resolve anything (or left the country seriously damage):
• Cuba
• Libya
• Syria
• Afghanistan
• Yemen
• Somalia
You could make the case for Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia, or even Nazi Germany. But those cases are more nuanced than that, and claiming that military intervention was a “response that worked” would be an inexcusable simplification of how the events unfolded.
I doubt you can fully eliminate China-sourced products but looking at "TAA compliant" products is a start. TAA compliance is a US federal standard that guarantees a minimum level of manufacturing involvement in TAA countries [1], which is a list that does not include China.
I'm not going to pretend I'm able to avoid China in all my purchasing decisions but I now do some research to avoid China-made or at least China-designed products.
Sounds like there might be demand for some certification that looks into the whole supply chain of a company, and can offer levels of “Made in the US” certification, bronze, silver, gold, platinum for 100% end to end. Similarly, it would be great for an estimate and certification of carbon emissions of the supply chain for each product.
Made in the USA is a bit...of a pipe dream. U.S. cost of living is higher, so prices for all products would skyrocket.
However, there's MANY countries that are NOT China. We could instead certify products against supporting bad regimes, and using slave / prison labor in the supply chain.
For products where labor is a big input, yeah the delta is probably too high for most unless we get carbon taxes, tariffs, or some other factor that evens the field, but the US also supposedly has quite a bit of highly automated manufacturing. And the purpose is to allow people who place a premium on that to consider it.
But yeah, it could also serve to give visibility into the breakdown of countries of origin, for those who just want to avoid sending money to countries they view as abusive.
My guess would be politics. Congress in the US is democratically controlled while the Senate and Presidency are republican controlled. The current administration is fairly anti-Muslim and has ignored the Uighar issues entirely, the current administration likely told the State Department not to issue the visa.
The current administration appointed a Uighar-American as National Security Council Director of China to advise the president on China issues. However, this appointment was ignored by US media, for reasons we can only speculate. While much of the administration's response to China issues has been characterized as "heavy handed" by the same media, that leadership is responsible for influencing the EU to take a similar approach. There's much of Trump I don't like, but I wholly approve of that administration's actions regarding the whole of China.
However he also supported China's anti-Uigher policy in secret remarks[1] to President Xi. There seems to be a hidden agenda at odds with the public agenda.
This is why it's important that the White House challenges China for the right reasons with the right strategy. Trump is certainly the most anti-China president in years, but he often contradicts himself and frames it with racist, partisan, and protectionist rhetoric, actually damaging human rights-based anti-China opposition. Not to mention he's intent on weakening the levers of soft power that the US has traditionally used as he damages alliances and withdraws from global organizations like the WHO.
It's not enough to be publicly anti-China. Effective leadership demands a focused message, effective coalition building, and unifying rhetoric where Trump has turned it into a partisan wedge like everything he wades into.
Emissaries and consulates are typically ran by career government employees in the US but their operation is overseen by the Secretary of State (a presidential cabinet member) and the State Department. So the presidential appointee has a lot of power over what does and does not happen at consulates/emissaries.
IIRC, There was a deleted twitter thread where tankies was going through social media exposing affiliation of popular Uyghur atrocity propagandist and yours truly had links to ETIM on facebook. Omir provided some of the earlier testimonials against the camps, he's a propaganda circuit regular but his testimony has been pretty consistent, and his treatment is about what I'd expect China would reserve for ETIM and ETIM associates aka Chinese Gitmo.
> I'm curious why this man was denied a US visa in 2018 despite an invitation from Congress to speak about his experience. [1]
After assuming goodwill, and a genuine screwup on the part of US "visa lottery," the most simple, and making sense reason is the communist infiltration of US government.
This is nothing to be laughing about. Internal saboteurs are an extreme threat. It is literally the History has been all about: fates of entire nations being decided by well timed political back stabs.
There is undoubtedly a strong connection between the Chinese government and business there, But you’re going to run into ethical quandaries in any country in the world if you’re attributing responsibility of government actions to the whole of the people.
As an American, I am appalled at some of the things my government does. I don’t avoid things made in the US because of that.
I hate this type of comment. Just so black and white and uninformed. Bluntly there are not many things you can purchase that do not come from or have parts made in China. Food maybe?
So like Guantanamo, the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and close to a century of Kissinger and his ilk, is added to one's karma if they buy US products?
I find "whataboutism is not an argument" is a knee-jerk conditioned reaction against putting things in perspective.
It's almost a Pavlovian thought-stopping response by now - "sure, we have faults but we know them already, can we now concentrate on treating the enemy as some unique evil again?".
That wasn't whataboutism. There isn't any arguments there also. It was simply pointing out that if this man's torture is being added to your karma if you buy anything chines then that would mean that buying anything US made would add all those mentioned things to your karma.
Exactly. The problem is, the West gets a moral high ground and even if they get criticism for their actions, the highest repercussions they encounter is "a slap to the wrist".
West gets moral high ground not because it's blameless - it isn't - but because it's faults are smaller. It could be counterproductive to judge something on a boolean scale - "perfect" vs. "not perfect so perfectly bad".
West is much more transparent than non-West, so we have better chance to differentiate good parts from bad parts. If we don't have such opportunity, and we consistently get burned with bad parts, we're forced to assume the whole non-Westness is bad. Here "West" and "non-West" is somewhat similar to "USA" and "China".
If China would be more transparent, if West would see differences, and interactions between those differences, and could judge the parts by those interactions, the scope of blame can be refined. Similarly with more transparent West we can see evolution of society or its parts towards more or less cruelty towards each other and judge and act accordingly.
You can only say this because you've been brainwashed into thinking all the atrocities committed before, say, 1950 don't count anymore. That was a different time! Racism is solved too.
*edit, that should probably be 1975 because we pretend the Vietnam war never happened
Perhaps you should think about why, when faced with evidence of an atrocity, your reaction is not "this is horrible and should be stopped" but "look at all these hypocrites denouncing the horrible thing". It seems to me a serious moral miscalibration.
You can resort to name calling if you want but the fact remains that none of the countries we've sanctioned for human rights abuses have stopped them. Which becomes continued justification for maintaining sanctions. At what point do we admit that sanctions are pointless?
And it' not a single call, it's a prolonged process. There is progressive movement in USA which claims to focus on those societal deficiencies. There is a lot of work to change things, but also a lot of promise to improve them.
China is acting like that global villainy country now. They problems with all it's neighbors, well even with a country which is separated by 100kms by sea (AUS). They're quite intelligently meddling in Nepal govt. to threaten India, at the same time taking over villages of Nepal. .They have problems with Mongols, Muslims, Tibetans, Hong Kong. All while actively debt trapping poor nations. They foul cry when a nation blocks chinese tech, but every foreign tech is pretty much banned in entire China!
I don't see any end to this. In the current COVID situation, not even a group of nations could stand up to china's domination. Maybe it's just too late to take any action. They're playing dirty, so ideally we should to. But could we? I doubt. They're lobbying power is way too tremendous. At least my country, no leader has a spine to stand up.
I believe Uighurs have been rounded up and forced to watch indoctrination videos, in a gross violation of their human rights. Forced sterilization seems plausible too given the history of the one child policy.
I don't believe this stuff about torture cages. The Chinese government is trying to subdue the Uighurs by torturing them for 20 days and then... just letting them go?
> His wife had sent endless letters to the UN and Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan, where he was previously naturalised. She had also sat for an interview with Free Asia Radio, all of which pressured two Kazakh Ambassadors to finally visit him and soon after the Chinese authorities to free him.
Omir Bekali is in the unfortunate situation where when someone is abused, they will receive more help the worse their abuse which incentivizes exaggeration when people are at their worst.
But on a forum like HN where people simply don't understand the world even at a base level it's hard to know how to deal with these situations.
China needs to be stopped, so do you let these lies continue?
This is disgusting, the level of genocide denial in this thread is something I would not expect to find on HN. We literally have satellite images of these camps, videos of the abuse and still people like you deny. @dang, do we have rules about this?
This is so much worse than anything I’ve read on the subject up until now. As someone who has worked closely with a man who was born, raised, and educated in China, I can attest to the brutality of the regime. He simply would not say anything negative about CCP. The fear was more real than simple anxiousness. I sensed that he believed there could be real consequences for crossing the government, even in private in a conversation with someone in the US.
Not sure why you say “even iPhones” as this kind of high-end tech is likely among the most difficult to manufacture outside of China. But even iPhones are starting to get manufactured in India, and you also have other smartphones being manufactured in Vietnam (I believe this include the new Pixel).
Trump’s China tariffs have already forced many companies to move to Vietnam/India/Mexico/etc. The few remaining are likely hoping Biden will win since he said he would end Trump’s China tariffs.
Just like nobody is boycotting the US/EU from its illegal wars and border concentration camps. Gotta make that cash to feed and keep people happy. The sad stone cold truth.
One thing we could do against this is to lobby our govts to crack down on mainland chinese spies and ccp supporters in our areas. In Vancouver, there were counter-protestor chinese who were recording and taking photos of hong kong protestors. Our govt needs to be very careful of who they let in from the mainland china.
I am sad to say, we in the US, UK, and EU can barely save ourselves from our own domestic troubles to present a strong authority to counter these human rights abuses.
We kind of squandered our ability to police the world (right or wrong) given the distractions we created internally. Russia and China must be loving the situation.
>Ӧmir was born to Uighur and Kazakh parents in Xinjiang, or formerly East Turkestan before the Chinese invasion of 1949
This is the first time I've seen the claim that "East Turkestan" (as in the "country") actually existed before 1949. I realize that it could totally be that the history I learnt growing up deliberately omitted that part, and/or the definition of "countries" were more in wonton before the end of WW2. But could someone provide some creditable source to support that claim?
For the First, even Wikipedia warned that it lacks citations and verification, so I don't think it should be considered as a "creditable source". Also it's only a tiny portion of Xinjiang.
For the Second, even if we consider it 100% true, it doesn't really support the original claim from that interview article, in several ways:
1. It's a small portion of Xinjiang, and the claim _implies_ that the whole Xinjiang was "formerly East Turkestan before the Chinese invasion of 1949"
2. The Second ETR was pro-communism, pro-Soviet, pro-CPC, and against the rest of Xinjiang that's under RoC control. In 1949 CPC won the civil war against RoC (KMT), took control of all of Xinjiang. So I don't see in anyway it could be claimed that China invaded ETR in 1949.
One thing I don't understand is why do those condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs have to add the (likely dubious) claim of China invaded Xinjiang in 1949. It's not like doing a domestic (cultural) genocide is something "better" than invasion and genocide, so why add some dubious claim to your legitimate claim?
> One thing I don't understand is why do those condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs have to add the (likely dubious) claim of China invaded Xinjiang in 1949.
The best-organized Uyghur groups outside China are various separatist organizations, so they have a natural advantage at getting journalists together with eyewitnesses while putting their own spin on things.
So it's not like they're adding a dubious claim to their legitimate claim, rather they've been making the same dubious claims all along and it's just now that a legitimate claim has been added that people are finally listening to them.
It’s much more humane to just bomb or waterboard them.
/s
We probably killed a lot more innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq; they’ll just discard the criticism as an excuse for starting a trade war
This is obviously quite horrible for Uighurs. But to me this is actually also a very serious security issue for westerners. For multiple reasons: 1) this type of inhumane treatment has historically been used to justify wars, 2) there is a starkly different culture, and worldview as well as a very effective authoritarian regime "supporting" it.
3) We have very dire global economic conditions.
4) The people being tortured have more racial, ethnic and cultural similarity to people outside of China than inside.
In the past we have seen global wars in similar circumstances. There needs to be a serious effort at an alternative resolution. But it seems like it would be much easier and likely than any clever development in a positive direction that the massive arsenals would start to be deployed.
I think it would be really important for a good book to come out and to be publicized tremendously, like The Archipelago of Gulag or If This Is a Man, that would capture the public conscience to what is happening. Unfortunately written in the first person.
A huge caveat should be given that as this guy is currently applying for political asylum in the Netherlands, he has every motivation to severely exaggerate the experience. Outlandish claims such as forced abortion and even organ harvesting (a classic propaganda tactic by the Falun Gong cult against CCP) are being thrown around in the article with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. I think it's totally plausible that he suffered some of what he described in a secret prison during some periods of his ordeal, but it would be absurd and nonsensical if all the guards do all the time in every camp is to torture the inmates non-stop, as he described.
Also, there were indeed several terrorist attacks committed by Uyghur extremists throughout the years, each with dozens of civilian deaths (e.g. hacking people down indiscriminately in a train station, or detonating a bomb in the downtown), which the article conveniently totally ignored. If such attacks occurred in the West, they would garner a very strong response and an outpouring of support, as what happened in France. Instead, whenever the western media mention them (in passing), they needed to even add quotes around the word "terrorist attack", which is simply absurd and is double standards at its finest.
Of course the CCP's description of camps where "people can leave at any time" (if they ever claimed that) would also be a vast stretch. The camps are not nice and are most likely forced. But the truth is, as always, most likely somewhere in between. Cultural integration is a very hard problem, also for Muslims living in western Europe as we all have seen. Of course a western government could not force everybody into a camp, learn the national language well (just as many Muslims in western countries don't even speak the national language well, so do many Uyghurs not speak Mandarin, and this is related to their economic plight and ease of radicalization), and ask them to renounce extremist/jihadist thoughts, so it is understandable that the camps are an aberration in western eyes. But to describe it as some sort of Nazi-style concentration/extermination camp is also wildly inaccurate. Many people seem to fail to/refuse to recognize that. To see such a clearly distorted and sensationalized account getting so many upvotes here (many more than an Economist article a few days ago which still fiercely criticizes the camps but is at least more up to journalistic standards and objective) is quite disappointing, I have to say. I guess people like to see what they want to believe, so that the world can easily make sense to them (i.e. CCP is the embodiment of "evil", no matter what that word even means and, the reality that the world is never black-and-white), and HN is unfortunately not that different.
>After an 18-month legal struggle, he was granted political asylum in the Netherlands, while his wife and children are living safely in Turkey.
So after such inhuman tortures living safely with his wife and kids in Turkey was not enough for him? Why on earth did he leave his family for the Netherlands? And why there was the 18-month legal struggle?
I believe the struggle was because judges are not as easily fooled as the general audience. They need real proofs, not just his own words and some scars on his hand.
All this looks very much like he just invented this horror story to get a refugee status in a rich European country. As for me, I'd rather believe the Chinese government who says it is fake news than this Kazakh-Uighur.
Another question: why not Kazakhstan if he's half Kazakh? Why first Turkey and then the Netherlands?
In the article he mentions “Their goal is just to exterminate all Uighurs in one way or another”, if that is the case, why not just shoot them all? Why did they let him out?
On the other hand, why even torture someone and then let them free so they can speak out against you? Torturing seems like such a hassle.
If I were an evil dictator with the means in the modern day and I wanted to really intimidate a population, I would abduct some of that population and just secretly kill them and burn their bodies. Nobody can then prove whether you actually killed them. You could say you re-educated them and then let them go, and their present whereabouts are no longer your business.
The article explains why they let him out: he apparently also has Kazakh citizenship, and his wife started making noise via diplomatic channels.
As to the larger question, most genocides stop short of literally just shooting everyone. That doesn't mean the goal still isn't eradication of a culture.
China does care about legitimacy internationally, and simply shooting millions of people into roadside ditches would be a step too far. But this process of concentration camps under the banner of combating terrorism is enough of a fig leaf, and enough of a slow progression, it doesn't generate the same sort of immediate opposition abroad. As we see here sadly.
It would have been far easier for Nazis to shoot all "lesser" races too, yet they used to send people to concentration camps first. And yes, people used to be released from those from time to time too. The answer with Nazis was that after arrival at a concentration camp the weak were sent to immediate excution, the rest were kept for labour, and everyone was stripped off their possessions first - which was very convenient because people were told they would be relocated, so they brought valuables with them. That centralized the wealth gathering, execution and labour into a single package, which made a lot more sense than trying to do it on the spot everywhere they went.
But specifically in the case of Uighurs - you can eliminate a culture by erasing its identity, without killing the people. That seems to be what China is doing - they are not straight up killing them, just putting them in camps for "reeducation" so they behave and think like model Chinese citizens, with harsh punishments for following their original culture. That way, "Uighurs" as a group will be wiped out without necessarily killing them all.
The logistical cost varied depending on how deliberate the action was. Some killings, like the famous one in Romania, took a lot of planning. Others were more ad hoc, mostly using squads that would have been operating anyway, or using groups of nationals that could not have been turned to a more “useful” purpose (forgive the cold language!) It’s a large topic.
No it isn't, and it doesn't take much research to find out why. Any time the Nazis did it(like in Lvov) it took a huge amount of work to help with burrying/burning the bodies, Nazis didn't want to do it so they would conscript the local population, which was then likely to strike back as they knew exactly what would happen to them. If you told people you were "relocating" them they were far more likely to come peacefully, and concentration camps provided a very valuable source of labour to nearby areas. As for feeding them....it doesn't take much to find out that they were barely fed anything. Pretty much only the prisoners who received outside parcels with food survived more than a month or two, simply because the prisoners weren't fed, given proper clothing or any care whatsoever. The same with "massive housing complexes" - Auschwitz initially used existing military barracks and then built very simple huts for Birkenau. It's hard to call it housing.
Are you like....just saying what feels right without any historical research or background whatsoever?
The cost of a mass grave is that now the entire city knows you're killing people and you're coming for them. It leads to formation of resistance forces, kills your soldiers, stops the occupation from progressing.
Transportation is free because you took over the railways. Building concentration camps is free because it's done by literal slaves who have no choice anyway, and is done with local materials taken from existing housing. It's not like Nazis were paying market prices for any of this.
Like, I have no idea why were even arguing about this. Go and visit Auschwitz, it's all explained in the museum there. Read some books about occupations of Lvov or Warsaw - Nazis very quickly stopped executing people en-masse because it was more trouble than it was worth. You can say you disagree, but that's just arguing with facts.
That's why they built the extermination camp in Auschwitz. There were direct train tracks to Auschwitz via rail from pretty much anywhere back in the day.
It's even more bizzare if you look at the original claim.
"China isn't committing a genocide like the Nazis, because they could just shoot everyone. But, the Nazis didn't do it either, so the Nazis weren't committing genocide like those damn Nazis either"
In this context it seems to mean that it's politically easier to "re-educate" the Uighar away than straight out kill the Uighars. If some die during the process China doesn't care but it can't be accused of genocide which would raise more concern globally.
Given that his entire family in China has effectively been erased as far as he knows, I think the CCP has a pretty strong level of control in the vast majority of cases.
He currently lives in Netherlands while his wife and child are in Turkey.
Of course there are primary sources, it's just that they're usually in Mandarin or Uyghur or some other non-English language of the region, and they're not nicely reduced down to a few key statements like a news article.
However bad communism is, please don't take HN threads in generic ideological directions. Those are off topic here. Hundreds of explanations of why that is may be found at these links:
Out of curiosity, is there a HN equivalent to removeddit? There have been situations where I would have liked to be able to see if something had been edited, or look and confirm what the past version of a comment had been.
Not that I know of, but there are lots of third-party HN projects out there.
We've sometimes thought about tracking and showing the edit history of HN comments, but I think this is one place where (let's call it) over-surveillance could lead to more harm than good. Certainly some users abuse editing, but there are also many cases where it's important to let people save face, give them an out, and so on. HN is supposed to be a community and it's important for communities to be forgiving. A certain degree of forgetfulness creates greater ease and freedom. No one wants to be around a superintelligent flaw-pointer-outer. So I think an edit history tracker would have unintended consequences and on balance is probably a bad idea.
Ultimately, this is specific of any form of government with too much power over its people. That’s a requirement of communism which is why this is often attributed to communism as an expected outcome.
It’s entirely possible in any form of government that disarms and controls its people, rather than empowers them.
That is not true. Communism in its core is incompatible with any other system of beliefs. It must replace religions and customs in order to succeed, it must rewrite history in order to seem valuable.
Strong disagree. Religion is opium for the masses. What would replace the time wasted in religious activities? Facebook? We all know where that got us.
What does a portrait of the dear leader and a couple of his ideological predecessors look like to you? That is right - the holy trinity. Communism does not get rid of religion, it mimics plagiarizes and tries to replace it. Ever wondered why Russians celebrate New Years under Christmas trees? It is exactly the same thing as renaming pagan holiday to make it seem Christian. Whatever your grievances against religions are, they will rename applicable under communism
I agree that if you simply replace it with faith in the party or something similar it's not an improvement. However a post-communist country where religion is increasingly irrelevant and which has a living memory of life under communism is better positioned to try for something better than either of those the next time around.
These existed long before the concept of communism, we can debate communisms merits (of which it has some but not many) or we can actually discuss the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by a dual capitalist/communist society regardless of their political theory of choice.
We aren't talking about magnitude and frequency. If we were I could point out that communist governments tend to be younger and dealing with more domestic strife as a young government may lead to a higher likelihood of crimes being committed by the government regardless of political economic theory.
These phenomenons are not new and arguably were perfected before communism existed. Please don't muddy the waters to make this an attack on a political philosophy when these behaviors are an affront to human life regardless of who perpetrates them.
I think it's fair to note that there is a lot of correlation between these kinds of atrocities and communist regimes. It's also fair for you to note that correlation isn't causation, and the cause (or causes) could be other things, such as the age of the regime. To which others could rebut further (e.g., this isn't the 18th or 19th century any more / genocide and ethnic violence are now exceptional / there are lots of countries to model oneself after; a young government could be "forgiven" for violations by rogue officers or soldiers but atrocities perpetrated under communist governments are routinely top-down policy; etc). This is reasonable debate and it's how we understand and solve issues collectively. Analysis like this is exactly the opposite of "muddying the waters".
I agree with your point. I don't imagine the parent would dispute a link between the Nazis' genocides and a fascist ideology (or at least I hope he wouldn't), but for some reason trying to understand this atrocity through the lens of political ideology is "muddying the waters".
The problem is that communism centralizes control (obviously of the economy, but in effect many other things) and when control gets centralized, bad things like this are more likely to happen.
The same is true of centralization in democracy, but to a lessor effect due to the distributed nature of power in democracies.
Decentralization on its own isn't the answer either.
Look at what happened in USA after the Civil War. Progress was gradually erased on the state and town level. "States' rights" became a fig leaf for oppression of former slaves. The Constitution guaranteed them equal human rights, but reality was something different because the federal government gave up. It's hard to believe that this lasted until the 1960s.
Can someone confirm whether genocide is actually occuring? I understand cultural genocide is happening, but is mass human slaughter at the level of the holocaust actually occurring?
I don't condone the actions china takes but I don't want to read an exaggerated story either.
Sadly, it’s not realistic to expect people to spend 3x their normal shopping time. We need to make it easier to identify, either through government action, or some commercial solution.
I was trying to buy headphones from a market chain the other day and all the models in 100 eur range were made in china. With some having designed in xxx and made in china.
As long as the majority of the US population doesn't know or doesn't care about the issue, it won't make a whiff of difference. Everyone just keeps buying with their wallets open because it's cheap and available. All the while we distract ourselves with our ridiculous internal politics.
This is horrible. No doubt this is an allergic immune response to terrorism. The actions here on a different level than what's going on in Hong Kong, possibly because of this:
"In July 2009, riots broke out in Xinjiang in response to a violent dispute between Uyghur and Han Chinese workers in a factory and result in over 100 deaths. Following the riots, Uyghur radicals killed dozens of Chinese citizens in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the August 2009 syringe attacks, the 2011 bomb-and-knife attack in Hotan, the March 2014 knife attack in the Kunming railway station, the April 2014 bomb-and-knife attack in the Ürümqi railway station, and the May 2014 car-and-bomb attack in an Ürümqi street market. Several of the attacks were orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement) which has been designated a terrorist organization by several countries including Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in addition to the United Nations."
No doubt the efficiency that makes China so effective at arresting the spread of covid also makes atrocities like the concentration camps occur which will no doubt affect many many innocent bystanders. It is questionable whether or not this over-reaction will be effective, but despite this we know that China conducts these atrocities with the goal to end the violence once and for all under any means necessary.
The question is, is a successful quelling of all terrorism worth crossing the line?
Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.
Terrorism is the practice of terrorizing mass populations through use of force in the hopes of promoting an ideological agenda. What the Chinese state is doing right now, that sounds a lot like terrorism on an epically larger scale, doesn’t it?
Terrorism is more than that. Terrorism is the use of violence, harm and killings to promote an ideological agenda.
You're 100% percent correct. What China is doing fits the definition of "terrorism." My question is:
Is is using terrorism itself as a means to an end to end terrorism worth it?
Keep in mind that the US reaction to 9/11 can in itself be defined as terrorism for what it did to the other countries. War is a form of terrorism. Perhaps it is much worse than terrorism as terrorism uses small acts of violence to produce a big effect while in war the big effect is the violence itself.
My own personal reaction to what happened with the US is that the war definitely went on for too long and the extension to Iraq was unnecessary. But whether a war was needed in the first place is something I'm unsure about.
Imagine you were there on the day of 9/11. How could you not go to war? The American sentiment was the same at the time... it had to be done. What other course of action is there to take?
What was going on through the minds of the Chinese everytime they saw slaughter after slaughter occur by terrorism on their soil? How could you not? What other course of action is there to take? This is a serious question. What in your mind should have been done instead?
> How could you not go to war? The American sentiment was the same at the time
Respectfully, I disagree with the premise and the assertion. Everyone I know was confused about "going to war with Iraq" (again) which will always be at odds with responding to 9/11.
There is no disagreement here. Most people didn't agree with the Iraq war. He never said that his statement referred to the Iraq war.
Given the context, he's likely more talking about the immediate response following 9/11. Military action was highly supported following the events of 9/11. There was so much support, in fact, that the president now has the power to send troops to any part of the world without declaring war
> The question is, is a successful quelling of all terrorism worth crossing the line?
> Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.
Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.
At least the USA pretended to be discerning about who they went after.
>Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.
I think it's a fair comparison. The amount of innocent bystanders killed by the the US military will be much more than what happens in concentration camps.
The difference is the wording. War sounds not as bad as re-education and concentration camps. This is because you're use to it. Change the word from war to slaughter, because that is what war is.. slaughter. It's not even an exaggeration... if you've ever seen a bomb or a bullet massacre a human being into a bloody mess, slaughter is a very appropriate word.
When you change the word you'll realize that war and re-education live on relatively the same level of extremism. Perhaps war is even worse than re-education or concentration camps.
The US slaughtered many soldiers and innocent bystanders in Iraq and afghanistan to end terrorism. The Chinese tortured and re-educated many people to end terrorism.
The war on terror deliberately avoided slaughtering white people and american citizens. The slaughtering was kept exclusively to people with middle eastern backgrounds.
These were very very rare. The US would justify sending a cruise missile into the middle east to kill one target that MAY accidentally harm bystanders but they would never conduct such action on American soil to destroy a terrorist cell that MAY harm american citizens.
Extreme precautions were taken to make sure that all killings involved middle easterners. Were the precautions perfect? No. But obviously the killings were kept exclusive to a race.
What makes you think such actions are likely to quell terrorism. If anything I would think that this would radicalise the targeted population. The US response to 9/11 was stupid for exactly the same reasons.
I think such actions are done for the purpose of quelling terrorism. I think whether or not those actions will succeed is highly highly questionable. I also agree with you that radicalization is very possible.
That is not to say that as atrocious as these actions are, that they can't be successful. There are cases in history where the US has successfully assimilated a different culture. Basically the entire native american population has more or less been assimilated into US culture with some small vestiges of the old ways remaining.
I also agree with you that the US response is stupid for exactly the same reasons. However it is only stupid in retrospect. Bush sent troops into the middle east with the majority support of the American people. He lost that support later or aka the people regretted their emotional response in retrospect.
It is highly likely that if such terrorism attacks occurred on US soil again our reaction would be no different. Immediate armed response and only wisdom in retrospect.
Like the immediate negative response to my post, people react emotionally to situations. They never try to analyze the situation which is always much more complex than it actually appears.
>Are you justifying China for eradicating a whole culture and its people due to some extremist attacks?
The US tried to justify over a decade of slaughter of terrorists and innocent bystanders abroad as a reaction to one terror attack on US soil.
Don't try to play word games here. None of this is actually justified. All countries are guilty of crimes.
The question I am posing people to consider is this: If several 9/11's happened on american soil. Buildings toppled, hundreds slaughtered by terrorism in multiple events with no end in sight and we find that the origin of these attacks rather than being instigated by one man from abroad is instigated by parts of a cultural community within US soil.
What is the action that should be taken here to completely shut down this problem once and for all?
Not a rhetorical question. I want some serious answers, but at the same time I also know that there is likely no solid answer and every action taken has a compromise.
Also keep in mind this is not a justification of ANY chinese action. None of it is justified.
Killing millions of people is not a proper response to and isolated terrorist act. Moreover you are trying to justify the suffering of people by using some hypothetical scenario that hasn’t occurred.
> Moreover you are trying to justify the suffering of people by using some hypothetical scenario that hasn’t occurred.
I don't think he's justifying anything. He's questioning the nature of this world where a clear black and white decision is not always possible. He is saying in this case could there be No justifiable action possible?
The hypothetical scenario is likely to help you empathize with the events from the chinese perspective. You cannot relate to the people reacting to terrorism in China. However, by envisioning a similar/equivalent scenario in your own country can possibly help you identify with the situation from their perspective. That is the purpose of the hypothetical.
The question still stands if the posed equivalent situation was happening in America, what is the appropriate response? I don't know how to answer his question, do you?
>Killing millions of people is not a proper response to and isolated terrorist act
Don't play with words here. Millions are missing in concentration camps getting reeducated, this isn't actual genocide. This is not equivalent to sending the military to another country and conducting actual killings. What China is doing is still atrocious but quite different then literal slaughter.
Also it's not a response to one isolated incident. Several terrorism acts with hundreds slaughtered and no end in sight is what is actually going on. I don't think you would call several 9/11's happening on american soil isolated terrorist attacks. Perhaps terrorism attacks in China seem isolated to you but this is not the case to a Chinese person.
You keep comparing apples to oranges in order to fabricate an argument. There is no systemic genocide perpetrated by the USA. Maybe if you believed in your argument you’d reply with your real account, not a green one.
>Maybe if you believed in your argument you’d reply with your real account, not a green one.
Looking at his karma which is barely anything in all accounts likely he has no real account. Also the usage of other accounts is likely a symptom of a post limit. Either he can respond to you with another account, or he can ignore you because he can't respond with the same account. Either way these actions are not sanctioned by the site.
>You keep comparing apples to oranges in order to fabricate an argument. There is no systemic genocide perpetrated by the USA
You can call it whatever you want. There was a sponsoring of troops by the US to slaughter people abroad for over a decade. Mass slaughter in the name of war rather than genocide.
The chinese are not slaughtering people. They are putting them in concentration camps and educating them. Torture, Indoctrination and brainwashing are the more appropriate terms with the accurate sentiment.
So yeah you're not wrong it is in way apples and oranges. Do you end terrorism by slaughtering terrorists? Or do you end terrorism by torturing, brainwashing and indoctrinating them? Pick the apple or the orange.
Oh and in both cases there will be innocent bystanders affected.
I am not defending the wars the USA has had. I also feel that the number of collateral damage in the past two decades has been absurd and unjustified. I did not vote for the man who allowed drone strikes on children. Thankfully, the United States has made an effort in the past four years to leave the Middle East.
Nevertheless, this does not justify the actions of the CCP eradicating a whole culture and it’s people. The argument is still unsubstantiated. No global leaders besides the current POTUS are condemning this behavior either, which is a shame. I can only vote with my wallet.
I never justified it. Nothing was justified here at all. There was also no argument made by me. Nor did I say you were defending the US. All I asked was a question:
What action should you take if there are repeated terrorist acts happening in your country where people are slaughtered by the hundreds? You only know the origin of these terror attacks originate from a specific cultural ethnic group, and you know you need to stop the attacks now or the next attack could harm your family.
It's a hard question, but posing a hard question isn't a justification of of the atrocities committed by China. It's more of an illustration of the complexity of the situation and an illustration of the darker capabilities that can erupt from within every individual when the situation is extreme... Anyway the question still stands... what would you do?
The other part of the of the question is to help people rise to a higher level and analyze the full complexity of the situation rather than have a simple minded gut reaction to everything. The world is complex and no single action can really be placed in a "justified" box or an "unjustified" box, yet this is how people think.
You go after the terrorist organization. Not people who aren’t terrorists. Don’t paint the Uighurs as terrorists. There are millions missing. You tell me they all were a threat to China’s national security? This is the pretext for genocide?
How is this a question? “They attacked China with knifes, isn’t China in the right for erasing them out of existence?”
This is the worst argument I have seen on Hacker News.
> This is horrible. No doubt this is an allergic immune response to terrorism.
That was the start of Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs, but the current leadership in China has adopted a broad policy of persecuting racial minorities. I'm not sure what their ultimate motivations are but they are targeting many, if not most, of China's non-Han ethnic groups without regard to whether they pose a terrorism risk or not.
Not really. Barely a handful out of 54 minority groups that accounts for ~2% of the population. Most are left alone because most of minorities are already sinicized and "compatible" with broader Chinese society.
> ultimate motivations
This is really simple confluence of two major policy changes.
1. New minority policy, no more minority privileges like family planning exemptions from 2 child policy. Particular focus on mandarin fluency to integrate into broader society. Uyghur, Tibet, Mongolia etc, this is important because 99% of China operates on Mandarin, those who aren't fluent gets left behind. Above minority populations also have large rural populations whose lifestyles (agrarian, herding etc) are being phased out due to new land use policies regarding agriculture (food security). Which means urbanization, so there's also a lot of rural-urban labour transfer programs to up train people, i.e. the entire vocational training west portray as slave labour has been regular program in many provinces for at least 10 years for millions of rural Han.
2. New religion policy, rather _A_ religion policy. There simply was never a proper framework for regulating religion post CCP, leading to all sorts of drama. Not just in terms of prosecution, but illegal temples and other unregulated schemes. Lot's of tomfoolery in explosive growth of Chinese buddhism. Essentially, regulate religion, religion must have Chinese characteristics and conform to socialism.
Not new policy, always relevant.
3. Groups that participate in 3 evils, separatism, terrorism, religious extremism get stomped: Uyghurs, Tibetans, HK, Taiwan when that comes around.
Basically, stop 3 evils, spread mandarin, control religion, vocational training for ultimate development goal: urbanization and better rural land use. This is inevitable byproduct of Chinese population size + land constraints. Mix and match interventions, if you're a very religious, rural Uyghur who speaks no mandarin and have no employable skills, you get everything. If you're a Tibetan herder, you get some mandarin lessons and vocation training. If you're a Mongolia urbnite, make sure your kids know mandarin.
Curious, yeah this is interesting. The powers gained to quell the terrorism seem to be getting used to fulfill ulterior motives, not to different from the presidential powers gained after 9/11. Seems to be a common phenomenon.
Do you have a source where I can start reading more about this stuff?
> The Terrorism he talks about involves actual human harm and the mass slaughter of hundreds of people in China.
The OP's imagined, unspecified design to "quell all terrorism" necessarily rationalizes the actual harm that a primary source specified and had photographed in this article. Digressing from actual harm of a religious minority being sent to "re-education camps" to instead discuss a utopian thought experiment is morally unserious at best.
It is, however, insensitive to bring block chain zealouts into this. I apologize for that.
Wow the balls on this reply. And the lies. When did the op post about a utopian thought experiment? Never. That paragraph is an outright lie.
Op poses a question to help the reader view the action from a more empathic perspective. The goal is to quell all terrorism in the same sense as to prevent all future mass killings. This is the action any country will take.
The utopian thing comes from your misguided thought process. Rather what is being expressed here is an attempt to convey understanding that china's actions are a survival response to end slaughter and terrorism not an attempt to create a utopia.
It is a reflection of your own insensitivity that you those words didn't trigger empathy but rather all you saw was a "utopian thought experiment". To top it off you made a joke about block chain then tried to hide your true nature with a feigned apology. It's clear you don't give a shit either way.
No need to apologize for being insensitive and lacking empathy. You are what you are.
I mean, we’ve been telling HN this was happening for the entirety of 2020 now but we just get downvoted and talked down to, so, I’m not sure what you’re expecting by finally being outraged about the whole thing.
We aren’t expecting anyone on HN to concretely do anything about it but feign morality.
Such perceptions are in the eye of the beholder. People with the opposite views to yours see HN in exactly the opposite light. See for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384662. What's astonishing is how precisely complaints like yours and theirs mirror each other. The mechanism and the emotions are identical—they're just applying different filters. But the underlying data stream of posts flowing through HN remains the same.
Purely going by measures, this post has way more comments than the referenced one, which usually puts a post a bit lower on the top list (afaik).
On the other hand, political topics are generally not that welcome here, especially because it will mostly spark flamewars and does not really help anyone. As evidence for the "dislike" of purely political topics, there was at least one political detox period where political topics were discouraged altogether. (Edit: that's why there are more people flagging/downvoting the post, it's not just censorship)
I'm not arguing for or against political topics here, both have their merits. If the above sounds otherwise then it's because english is not my native tongue and choosing words is not my specialty.
Yep, and I am very sceptical of claims how topics like these tend to plunge from front page right during West Coast work hours, and the tolerance to "controversial" topics magically go up closer to end of the day, and the weekend.
You can't imaging a downvoting, or flagging ring being online with such regularity, and reaction time as if it was a full time job for their members.
The ranking algorithms are just leaking. I’ve noticed an innocuous post today only a minute old already downvoted. “RMS” and “nutcase” were in the post, but not in a derogatory context. Sub-120 second action is an improbable level of attention from human moderation, and the action would seem quite capricious. However, if there were some sentiment-analysis algorithm (which can’t contextualize words well) processing comments and “moderating” as they are posted, then that sort of thing makes perfect sense.
It’s social media. Nothing is on the up and up. Everyone has an angle, puts a thumb on the scale and talks their book. Just don’t take it too seriously.
There are several low karma posters (3-4 first time posters) in this thread though, so at minimum it’s encouraging people who rarely participate to join in, which probably seems odd
There is censorship on HN... not only downvotes and flagging... sometimes admins move entire threads wherever they want too... There is also the opposite of censorship (they boost some content)
There are three competing philosophies in this thread:
1) This is because of communism
2) China is being reasonable
3) This is a crime, what can we do?
1 & 2 are diametrically opposed and downvoting each other whereas 3 gets attacked for being moderate.
Calling it censorship is fine but do recognize that it's because your opinion is take poorly more often than not within this thread.
What foreign powers are posting bad things about China? And even if they are, does it matter if it's true? I agree hn is a odd place for this story, though.
here's another horrifying article from last month that shows how the eradication of the Uighurs will work out (since they simply won't be able to reproduce): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minorit...
quote: "In the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar, births collapsed by more than 60% between 2015 and 2018, the last year for which government data was available, the AP found."
China should be immediately stripped off its veto rights in United Nations. Such genocide should not be accepted by the world just because someone has money.
Criticizing the Chinese government's actions for their treatment of the Uighurs will invite state-sponsored "cancel culture" - not just from China but also from the western democratic nations that acquiesce to Chinese whims. This is incredible - look at the life of the professional football player Ozil who was effectively forced to leave Arsenal for his comments on this very subject.
Criticizing China should NOT be censored. (There's another country that also invites this type of cancel culture trolls whenever someone objects the policies of that country. You can guess.)
A.) Ozil hasn't left Arsenal, he's just not played. His contract runs till next year.
B.) Ozil is just a shit team player. Never attends practice, instead vacationing on Arsenal's dime. Even Arsene Wenger, one of the greatest coaches, had issues with him.
C.) Ozil is also a huge fan of Erdogan, somebody who's currently sending troops to massacre Armenia, while also genociding Turkish Kurds. There is a 5 year old conflict that began ever since he came to power
D.) What's the last country? Iran? Russia? India? Because all of those countries and some more engage in trolling activities in online forums (including HN)
The NBA is a totally different bunch from the EPL, and has been doing its best to bend over backwards for China. Sure, the EPL bends over for China too, but not as much as the NBA. I think it's because the EPL prefers the Indian fan base a lot more, idk, shooting in the dark here.
Hence I said "and some more" . But I honestly don't know which one? Turkey?
I've seen Iranian trolls, Russian trolls, Sino trolls and Indian trolls only. Of course there are American trolls, that's not worth mentioning since it's a given.
It’s just sad what we humans do to other humans who don’t look like us.
What CCP is doing to Uighurs is pretty close to what the Nazis did to Jews.
But then again, even at home in US, we’re not so different. We have concentration camps and our President encourages it in the name of immigration politics.
We have a long way to go before we can say “humans would make good multi planetary species”.
Genocide is clearly not an acceptable or proportionate response to a few terrorist acts by Muslim separatists.
I, for one, do not welcome our new Chinese overlords. The West needs to stop staring at it's collective navels and get it's shit together, so we can push back at abhorrent abuses like this.
While I think it's a gross over-reaction from the Chinese government, I think I understand the fears which fuel such behavior. CPC has learned a lot from the fall of the Soviet Union and they will do anything in their power to prevent a similar outcome for China.
One of the lessons was that cultural differences between citizens can be a very effective tool to destabilize a country. So instead of promoting cultural autonomy as was done in USSR (sometimes to the detriment of Russians, e.g. see Lenin's remarks about "Great Russian Chauvinism"), they aim to completely assimilate Uighurs and other ethnicities living inside Chinese borders. They feel that it can be an existential threat, so "the end justifies the means". This is why such policy got significantly accelerated after clash with "the West" became inevitable.
If you want to change someone's behavior, you have to understand it first.
All empires did it to varying extents and a lot of people got assimilated in the result. The outcome got cemented by creation of "nation states". Cherishing of cultural minorities is a relatively recent development.
Is there actually any proof of this account? This reads like propaganda designed to sucker both the left (torture, islamophobia) and right (communism and lack of religious freedom).
Next article will talk about WMDs and blown up buddhist statues (stories which convinced both sides of the media to push for war in iraq and afghanistan).
What they do care for is a separatism movement. Not because they can't afford to give some land to those to make their own country, but because they fear that that country (or the population within China's borders if no country is created) will be used against them from foreign powers as a pressure point against China. Which is probably justified, as such a thing has happened time and again.
The West on the other hand, could not care less about the "plight og Uighurs" either. I mean the politicians and policy makers who use the Uighur plighy against China, not because they give a duck, but because it's convenient. They themselves have no qualms with fucking over other countries, or supporting other repressive regimes. As for the people in the West, we have the memory span of a goldfish, and just eat up sob stories presented concerning the "enemy of the day". Cut the prominent stories from the media, and they'd forget Uighurs in a second, like they don't give a duck for other peoples plights.
This leaves Uighurs in a hard spot, which is a crying shame, because short of genocide, what China wants to achieve is impossible. The best thing they should do, and the more humane, to don't hurt Uighurs and to get them on their side (to stop any seperatism ideas), is a friendliness war -- shove them with money, support, etc.
But there's bad blood and BS decisions already, so can this still happen? The Han Chinese need to overcome their distrust of non-Han for this to be a possibility.
I say "the Han Chinese" at large, because the party is hardly the issue here. China would do quite the same thing even if they had a democracy. Those things have happened time and again without communist parties in charge - see the re-education camps for Native Americans, Aboriginals, European camps for regufees like Moria and so on.
China's "Three Evils", terrorism, separatism, religious extremism.
Uyghurs tick all three, tibet only two. There's a reason Uyghurs are being interned en masse, where Tibet only gets heavy grid surveillance and policing. There were hundreds of terrorist attacks over the years causing thousands of death by Uyghur extremist in China, including one TianAnMen. Terrorism is by far the largest factor because the baseline guarantee by the state should be safety, so Beijing grossly overreacts, with full support of the masses. Not just the Han mind you, no one likes their planes hijacked or train stations knived.
>Money
The issue is you can't pay people to secularize. You have to brainwash. XJ is just repeat classic CCP political work + indoctorination + work camps. The dirty secret being that on balance, they work. Last I read China sunk 2.1 Trillion RMB / 300 Billion USD for the entire "security apparatus" in the region over the last few years. I mean I guess they could just cut every Uyghur a 200,000RMB / 30,000USD check and tell them to renounce Islam. Maybe you'll get some takers, but not the extremist, the primary group of concern, at the cost of pissing off 99.2% of the country. So we have education and vocational training and a little gitmo for recalcitrants.
Wonder what your perspective is around countries which are closer culturally to Uighurs? Like i keep hearing they are from Turkish decent - would Turkey have any interest or stake in this?
Turkey's interest in Uighurs is far smaller than Turkey's interest in its own economy, and China is spending a lot of money to prop Turkey up - they're buying influence. Needless to say that making an enemy of a security council veto power while you're allied with the remnants of ISIS, annexing parts of neighboring countries etc isn't a wise choice.
Erdogan may seem unhinged at times, but he's not, his steps are quite rational from an empire-policy perspective.
I'm not sure about Turkey's interest regarding Uighurs at the moment.
I think Turkey has too many open fronts (with US, Syria, Armenia, Greece, Libya, Israel, Iran, etc) to have a concrete idea about how to get into the Uighur thing.
But they will raise the issue from time to time, if not for anything else, to have a pressure point on China themselves, they can use to get some shush money or favorable deals.
>Do you also genuinely believe think Hitler Adolph was gassing Jewish people out of a real concern for sneaky backstabbing, and Stalin Joseph did the same to many more nations he purged? Punch yourself in the face, get real.
Yes, Hitler did have a concern for "sneaky backstabbing" - as did most Germans after losing WWI. It even has a name, Dolchstoßlegenden. It wasn't a correct idea, and it was doubly incorrect to pin it to the Jews, but there's no great dispute that both officials and people believed it.
Does it come a surprise to you that Hitler was actually an antisemite? Did you think he mearly killed 6+ million people as an excuse to come to power while not believing it (not to mention he was already in power when he put that in process).
So, no, it wasn't just a "convenient scapegoat". People did (and do) believe those things, including leaders. Including racist, imprisoned, and disillusioned by a war defeat leaders.
In fact not just Hitler, but tons of people all across Europe, the US, Russia, etc, believed in such "jewish" plots, and still do, which is what fed the pogroms for example.
As for Stalin, he was indeed concerned of separatism from USSR, and he did want to have a good hold on Ukraine as it was an important food producing area.
>Do you think that Xi, and Co. give any real f..k for feeling of Han Chinese? Get real.
Yes. But then again, I don't believe in cartoonish evil characters.
> Does it come a surprise to you that Hitler was actually an antisemite? Did you think he mearly killed 6+ million people as an excuse to come to power while not believing it (not to mention he was already in power when he put that in process).
Before the "final solution (gassing)" was implemented, it was 8 years of progressive discrimination, and repressions, which were used to erode the whatever remaining civic fabric of the state.
And when they saw no real need left for the punchbag nation, and saw no further use for millions of inmates (who still needed some minimal food, and shelter to prevent them going up in arms immediately,) and people who will eventually return Hitler a favour, they decided for a "relatively clean solution."
The few surviving accounts of HSDAP top leaders own stances on the matter all confirm this.
The US also contributes to torture and murder of political dissidents. Capitalism (including the state capitalism found in China) directly causes human suffering and brutality. If people took a critical look at their own country's crimes they would come to the same conclusion.
This comment section gets me depressed with how quick people will jump on the "China Bad" narrative. The US or any other capitalist nation is no better. At the level of nation states, no one can claim a moral high ground.
> They creating their own Al Qaeda, come back in ten years and check how they are cooking.
People often repeat that idiocy, not understanding that the Chinese government is willing to put in prison every single Muslim in China if they started doing terrorist attacks on Chinese soil. The CCP doesn't have to care about the rule of law or human rights in their fights against "separatism" or "terrorism".
This is how the CCP crushed the Tibetan rebellion, a people already long forgotten by westerners who now act offended about the treatment of Uighur, like the republic of China was never a bloody dictatorship to begin with.
They don’t have control over bordering territories and small terror cells. In this argument You are attempting to build China into something they simply aren’t because they lack the capability and jurisdiction. https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/993601/china-uyghur-terr...
They are populating those regions with Han Chinese and are enforcing mass surveillance. I think the endgame is part ethnic cleansing part assimilation and no part Uighur with their historic culture.
