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Comment by dave2000 | Hacker News Reader

dave2000

No, it's perfectly meaningful to talk about Israel/Palestine - and by extension the US - when criticizing actions by China. Otherwise you end up with the same narrative you get in pretty much every media outlet in the world; whatever the US does is good, no terrorism or support for murderous dictators there (cough south america..cuba...saudi arabia..iran...iraq...indonesia etc etc etc ), and whatever China does is bad.

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China and Tibet is more like what would have happened if the Arab Legion and the other Arab powers weren't so blindingly incompetent in 1947.

There's a long, long history of China controlling Tibet, back at least to the Tang dynasty. The ChiComs are nastier about it than most of the previous Chinese governments, but that's what you get when you refute the old mandate of heaven/chakravartin mashup of political legitimacy espoused by the old empire for ... what justification do the ChiComs give for their political legitimacy? Having the biggest boot and the willingness to murder millions and imprison more, I suppose.

> what justification do the ChiComs give for their political legitimacy?

Well, it's right there in art. I of their own Constitution, I think: "The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants."

It might have its problems (will the country forever have "workers" and "peasants"? Does the working class include peasants? Who does a democratic dictatorship actually dictate to? etc etc) but it's still better than divine mandate, tbh, which might explain why it's not been toppled yet.

The same legitimacy every other large government has. At least they only piss in their own pool -- not mess with peoples all around the world.

You may want to visit Africa. The time China was insulated to it's own people only is long gone.

> You may want to visit Africa

Or the Pacific islands or South China Sea (where things are going bad fast). Even calling Tibet part of China is interesting. Ukraine is Russian now by that logic.

Chinese govenment's justification in Tibet is mainly legalistic, as follows: Tibet was a part of the Qing Empire. Qing handled over all administrative power peacefully to Republic of China. People's Republic of China overthrow Republic of China, therefore inherits all of its administrative rights. Of course, the later part is muddier because officially the civil war is not over.

On the ground, for the people, the real justification are different. It used to be the liberation of common Tibetan people from a regressive serfdom and a brutal theocracy, not unlike the communists' justification for themselves elsewhere in China. Similarly, after Deng, the justification is more about improving people's economic status and living conditions.

Discouraging. Demolishing Larung Gar was likely on China's to-do list, but was probably moved-up in response to Obama's meet with the Dali Lama last week. China's real motivation in Tibet is water, arable land and secondarily eliminating a religious threat to central party rule. Everything else is pretense. Israel's motivation in Palestine is its own security from universally acknowledged threats it faces from its neighbors. There is no longer any occupation, no Israeli sovereign claim over Palestinian sovereign territory, and there are no resources to grab and no pretenses needed for Israel to justify its actions. A better comparison would be Russia in Crimea, where under the pretense of protecting a pro-Russia minority, Putin makes a grab to control oil and natural gas resources in the area which Ukraine previously sought to exploit.

A lot of what you said is just not true. Israel takes a lot of West Bank water. And while the illegal jewish settlements might not be a sovereign claim by Israel. Israel isn't doing anything to stop them.

It's used as a cheap source of labour by many Israeli companies too. And while not occupied in the classical sense, everything's going in or out is controlled. The airspace is controlled, the place is heavily monitored and the populace are under no illusions as to has the power.

Its pretty clear everything going in and out is not controlled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_Palestinian_rocket_at...

So some rockets and mortars were smuggled in? Let's ban most civilian use of road and kill the economy. At least that's what the Wikipedia article on the west bank says. It's compared to Apartheid South Africa for good reason.

Yes, and Nevada and California make the same complaint of Colorado. Cities and states inland of the US Great Lakes make the same complaint. Water rights are disputed globally, and that doesn't make Palestine the equivalent of Tibet. In Gaza (and Sinai), Israel gave up its settlements. In the West Bank there is one disputed formal settlement, and several nutcase Israeli squatter camps under dispute. The reality is that both the PA and Israel gain from the dispute in and around the West Bank because it appeases and gives fodder to hardliners on both side. No comparison to Tibet there, sorry.

> Nevada and California make the same complaint of Colorado

I hope this is supposed to be a joke. There is the small difference that citizens of Nevada, California and Colorado elect their representatives in the Congress and other institutions where the decisions on how to share the resources are made.

While Israel just takes what it wants by force, and the West Bank Palestinians have no say in it.

No joke. The 2008 Great Lakes protection compac provides the Great Lakes States authority over the water and neighboring states have no say in it. The Colorado river compac deal similarly with Mexico and several states. And, just like the Great Lakes and Colorado do supply water outside their boundaries, Israel's water authority does so for the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, Israel is working with Gaza on a desalinization plant. Water conversation is not an Israel-Palestine issue ... its a global issue. The bottom line is that Tibet != Palestine and China != Israel.

The Great Lakes compact was presented in the US Senate, passed through the House of Representatives, and was signed by the POTUS. All these are democratic organs that all the US citizens contribute to elect, meaning that all the states had a say in it. Palestinians don't have a say in what Israel does with their water, resources, economy and land.

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