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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

I do not understand the cowardice and fear the Chinese government seem to have of a small buddhist settlement in the middle of nowhere high up in the mountains of Tibet... It looks like they feel the opposite of a superpower and that a few buddhist monks might threaten them so much they have to destroy them. It's very easy to forget how free we are by comparison to those persecuted in occupied territories.

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Chinese government is attuned to history. Chinese history is a constant cycle of disintegration and reunification and the current government knows it is not special. At some point, it too will disintegrate into 100 pieces. It's just that they don't plan on making that any time soon. Anything they can do to delay the inevitable, they will do so.

> At some point, it too will disintegrate into 100 pieces.

That generally doesn't happen with democracies; they could adopt democratic reforms.

China has a much longer history than the modern democratic nation-state. The US has held itself together for a couple of hundred years... that's not a bad track record but it is very, very short.

That's a pretty uninformed understanding of US culture and history, the western legal system dates back far longer than just a few hundred years (over a millennium).

A more apt comparison is the post cultural revolution government, which occurred during the last century.

> the western legal system dates back far longer than just a few hundred years (over a millennium).

But not western democracy. Notable mentions are Greece and Rome, but those cultures also became history.

And the Roman Republic lasted a while, but it was eventually replaced by the Empire.

The U.S. has managed over 40 peaceful transitions of power in that period. Democracies around the world have demonstrated far more stability and effectiveness, not to mention justice, liberty and prosperity, than those other forms of government that had lasted for millennia. That's not just in the West, but in Japan and South Korea, and in parts of China itself: Taiwan and Hong Kong - the most free, stable and prosperous parts.

> The U.S. has managed over 40 peaceful transitions of power in that period.

Over 40 peaceful transitions, really? What about the Civil War and the assassination of JFK? Not to mention the recent Donald Trump fiasco. I'm pretty sure if he got elected, we would have a few more presidential assassination attempts coming our way. I mean if you want to prove that democracies bring stability, you need a better example than the U.S..

It's just the totalitarian statist mindset. The State is the most important thing, and it is important to statists that they be able to impose whatever it is they want to impose, and that any individual liberty be quashed. They turn everything around such that someone just trying to live their life is somehow opposed to the state's authority unless they're in line with what the statists want.

Well there's always the Taiping rebellion in the 19th century [1] if you want an example about what happens when thing go bad with religion in China.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

Self organized groups are just like fire to wood. They are deeply aware of this. Anything like that would be removed with top priority. On the other hand, Chinese nowadays have poor performance while working as non-top-down groups. We lost that DNA through the Ed system and social norms. It's really sad.

>It's very easy to forget how free we are by comparison to those persecuted in occupied territories.

Pretty insulated thinking there.. Try traveling to Indian reservations or gentrified urban areas.. Or perhaps research Japanese internment camps in WW2. Or hell even look up Guantanamo Bay today. Superpowers flexing their muscle on a "threatening few" is extremely common.

What do those examples have to do with the parent not understanding the Chinese Government's cowardice and fear?

I don't regard it as insulated thinking at all. It makes perfect sense to be bewildered by such a disgusting display of cowardice and irrational fear by China.

Someone on a public forum says: X nation is doing a bad thing; one of the responses inevitably is: yeah but the US did a bad thing. There should be a 'law' named for that attempted topic distraction in public forums.

> There should be a 'law' named for that attempted topic distraction in public forums.

there kind of is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Here are even more names for this fallacy: tu quoque and whataboutism.

Thanks. "Ad hominem once removed" was as close as I could get.

While this might apply in some cases, I feel for most it's about putting things in perspective.

To me, OP put things in perspective.

For example, do we attribute the US governments use of eminent domain to gentrify urban areas as "American Government's cowardice and fear?"

By putting things in perspective, we realize the "Other Nation" maybe isn't doing it for nefarious means, but rather just operating like any other Nation.

Ah, the old 'Tu quoque' fallacy. Even so, let's examine some of these claims a bit:

> Indian reservations

Yes, the state of the modern Indian reservation is tragic, but doesn't that have to more to do with too much government assistance[1][2] rather than government stepping in to destroy?

> gentrified urban areas

You're not trying to suggest that living in a neighborhood that's getting nicer and more expensive is somehow akin to the government coming in and demolishing the whole city block are you?

> Japanese internment camps in WW2

Well taken point, and a black mark on the history of the US government to be sure. But there's much to be said about the state of exception in wartime[3] and it seems unfair to compare measures taken during unprecedented war with China's actions during unprecedented peace.

> Guantanamo Bay

Yeah, this is a shame. But hardly seems comparable, considering the Chinese are literally putting thousands of families out of homes and seeking to destroy an entire religious minority, and at best Guantanamo Bay is an infringement on the civil liberties of a relative handful of individuals. Not that it's right, but it certainly is at the top of a long slippery slope on which China is currently racing to the bottom.

andy_ppp's comment is apt...we have problems, but we still are far more free than almost anywhere else. And it isn't insulated thinking at all; Americans are objectively freer than the Chinese by almost any metric.[4]

[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-g... [2]https://mises.org/library/native-american-reservations-%E2%8... [3]http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23630 [4]http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

Re: governments stepping in to destroy, how do you think American Indians ended up where they are today? It was hardly voluntary. And on top of that, the treaty rights they nominally have are often not enforced. Mineral rights are held "in trust" by the government and are not managed for the Indians' benefit.

China is primarily Confucian today, with more rigid social structures/order and a "parental" ruling class or oligarchy, so any different ideology, especially one that does not advocate for social/political structures (as not typically involved) is seen as a threat.

This place is in Sichuan Province.

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