China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants
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In fact people can still connect to local network then, they just disconnected the link from province level ISP to Internet.
Some young mans built local websites provides movie, softwares downloads, news and bbs inside the LAN. They travels to nearest town outside Xinjiang every week by train, download new resources in net bar, bring them back in hard disk and update their websites. Nobody knows how long will the disconnection last and somebody prepared to maintain the LAN from long years. It makes me recall 20 years ago I access contents on Internet through CD-ROM in magazines.
In the end, the Internet recovered and these websites soon disappeared.
You can still found some of it by googling keyword "新疆断网", and Google Translate them if you interested to read.
In summary: In the first few days, people miss the access; Then, they built their own network, providing news, BBS, downloading and even online gaming services etc.
If they had enough time, I could assume they will build a complete alternative of China's Internet, just like what happened in the China's Internet then the access to the true Internet is limited.
But "enough time" is what they don't have, when the access been restored, most local websites are faded.
SpaceX's plans to launch their first set of satellites for their Starlink broadband constellation[1]. Uighers may be the first population to sign up for satellite subscriptions, although the Chinese government is probably looking for ways to extend Great Firewall[2] capabilities to satellites too. Hopefully users can afford the tentative pricing model of $750/year for a Starlink subscription.
[1] http://www.dw.com/en/spacexs-starlink-satellite-internet-its...
I wonder if this will trigger space warfare, which might push nations to invest more into space, and maybe we'll finally become space-faring species in my lifetime!
Iridium: 781 km
O3b: 8000 km
OneWeb: 1200 km
Starlink: 1,125 km and 340 kmIf they can at all. Uighers can't even buy a knife without it being engraved with a QR code of their national ID number.
They seemed quite free to do what they wanted to between themselves (such as buying a knife) although I imagine their political rights wouldn't be very strong.
Direct link to the photo:
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2017/10/xinjiang-household-kni...
Or maybe that's just twitter, facebook, reddit...
Then you hear about bloggers being imprisoned for pointing out corruption according to the government’s own definitions.
China’s authoritarianism looks attractive when it’s about infrastructure and efficiency, but the underside of it, the collective silencing and destruction of debate, the “blank spots” it introduces into its citizens understanding of history and the world, are truly disturbing.
China’s existential threat is an opportunity or technology which enhances its ability to control citizens but leads, in the long term, to destabilization of the regime. Could be AI, could be something else. But at some point one of these forbidden fruits will poison and what appears to be a manageable, technical problem will become a societal one that no one can control or censor.
I don't understand. Can you explain that more? How does AI or other tech create something that cannot be controlled or censored? I can only see, say, facial recognition, being bad for freedom of the Chinese citizens.
If that data leaks, is hacked by a state actor and released, or becomes the tool by which bureaucrats seek to manipulate and blackmail each other, it could destabilize the party itself.
So, bigger than the push to make it appear worse than it is?
Because that has been a tactic with any competing nation/enemy du jour of the west for over a century...
Not to mention that everything is judged with US-norms and interpreted through US-preferences in all those articles (aside and above the interpretation through their national interests) -- as if, e.g. rugged individualism and puritanism -derived principles is some universal law and e.g. a collectivist spirit, or some religious-derived norms, or other such cultural ways, are by default bad.
There is nothing special with Chinese people that makes dictatorship good for them while it's bad for us.
In the main, they are not. But they are general platitudes, whose interpretation is left to the individual countries, and is subject to the power relations between them.
A country, then, might be seen accusing or even bombing another (supposedly) in defense of those rights, when itself doesn't follow them.
>There is nothing special with Chinese people that makes dictatorship good for them while it's bad for us.
If only it was so simple. First, there are different concepts of what's OK and what's not. A crude example: US people don't like kings. English people are OK with their (but they don't have much power there). Thailand people love them.
Then, there's selective judgement. E.g. the US can have the largest prison population (25% of the world for 5% of it's population), and the most death sentences, mass surveillance programs, arbitrary cop killings, or even torture camps off-site, but it's OK because it has "free elections" (where two parties alternate in power for 50+ years and vote for more of the same -- never mind gerrymandering). Whereas another country is portrayed as some nightmare regime for not having elections, whereas life there might be better in those other terms. Sure, there are people that complaint for all of the above, but they still happen (and have happened for decades), and few judge the government/country in whole for that or say that it must be overthrown/invaded whatever (whereas for other countries, they do).
There's also selective enforcement, e.g. in how Saudi Arabia can be a worse regime for its citizens in all of those aspects, but as an ally it's not scolded for that, nor does it face sanctions/retribution that non-favorable (i.e. competing) countries that face.
Then there's people who have no idea of world history, little understanding of diplomacy, and how fragile states can be, and what local antagonisms and powers are held back even by some "bad" at first analysis regime, that play god, intervene (to bring "democracy") and, even assuming they do that in earnest, they end up causing civil war and chaos (see Libya, Iraq, and so on). So while "There is nothing special with Chinese people that makes dictatorship good for them while it's bad for us", there could very well something special with China as a country, and it's constitution of people's, history, antagonisms, etc, that a change would unleash hell.
It is so simple because I'm not talking about US people and what they like. Not everybody in a country likes the same things... that does seem like too much simplification btw.
I'm talking about flaws that make a political system a tyranny. And they're the same for every country as History has repeteadly shown.
there could very well something special with China as a country, and it's constitution of people's, history, antagonisms, etc, that a change would unleash hell.
It's difficult, but by no means impossible to make a peaceful transition from dictatorships to democracy. There are many examples: Spain, Portugal, many South American countries, East Europe... most likely cause of hell unleashing is nothing cultural or historic, but money.
The West has been externalizing manufactures to China the same way we've been buying oil from Saudi Arabia. Those regimes are now armored with tons of money from any pressure to open.
When does it cross the line from bad to Hitler?
There's no line; fascism is a subset of bad, not a separate category.
Beijing used to have a lot of Uyghurs before the 2008 Olympics, but they were mostly all driven out and not allowed to return after the event.
Enforcing QR codes on knives is one thing. The real weapon is forbidding all social media apps except for (the thoroughly government monitored) WeChat.
http://www.wsj.com/video/life-inside-chinas-total-surveillan...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/...
I doubt most people there are willing to pay a significant premium for uncensored internet. And this is assuming that the government doesn't ban/crack down on "illegal" satellite internet.
1. Smuggle rooftop CPE into country? Manufacture domestically in grey market factories?
2. Very low cost for Chinese law enforcement, in Xinjiang, to buy and use portable spectrum analyzers to locate the Tx frequencies coming from a 30cm-50cm sized rooftop phase array antenna, aimed at the sky. To be a viable satellite broadband product it has to have a fairly strong Tx (in EIRP). No matter what band it is in from 10.5 up to 70GHz.
Also, what if upstream transmission rate was reduced?
2) Not going to help much unless the upstream is so little that's basically useless. The same antenna is used for both Rx and Tx so you still need significant gain to overcome the path loss and have sufficient link budget for the space-to-earth traffic.
https://m.alibaba.com/product/1805114851/Beautiful-FRP-Anten...
Long answer is
- reduce buying stuff from China.
- reduce buying stuff on aliexpress or alibaba or even amazon. try buying local
- call out leaders and entrepreneurs on social media when they are acquiescing/favorable to China (Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, etc)
- try to start up manufacturing of hardwares in your city/state/country
- call out China's totalitarianism in your circle of influence
To keep the billion people who live in China safe from civil war and rampant terrorism is already a great achievement -- even it comes at the expense of some nice things such as human rights. In fact, China manages to do more than just keep itself stable; it's actually improving economically. That state of affairs is a lot better than many, many countries can even dream about.
A push for human rights increases the chance of a government collapse. That's what happened in the Soviet Russia during Gorbachev. It was everyone's luck that it resulted in relatively little suffering. A similar fall of the government in Syria, Yugoslavia, Iraq, etc were absolutely horrible for the people living in those countries. It is very hard to accept even a small risk of such an event in China; the suffering it would cause is beyond imagination.
Therefore, many people are quite happy with the approach followed by the Chinese government. In fact, it gives many people a hope that China might become a little similar to Singapore. The Singapore government has some issues with human rights (of course, much more modest than China), but is still highly respected both inside and outside the country precisely due to the prosperity and safety it brought to people.
Of course, for people who absolutely prioritize human rights, this is not good enough. But such people have relatively little influence outside the Western civilization. One certainly cannot blame people who prioritize the safety and prosperity of their family above human rights, and these people seem to be by far the majority of the Chinese population.
In practice, naturalizing as a Chinese national is extremely rare, even more so when the sheer population of the region is taken into account and compared to other comparable regions, such as the European Union, United States and India. Majority of foreign permanent residents simply remain that for the duration of their residency, without ever being asked or forced to naturalize. During the Fifth National Population Census (2000), only 941 naturalized citizens that do not belong to any of Communist Party of China's recognized 56 indigenous ethnic groups (which already includes Koreans, Vietnamese, and Russians)[13] were counted in China's mainland.[14] As of 2010, the total number of naturalized Chinese was only 1,448 in Mainland China, out of the population of over 1.33 billion. In 1990, there were over 3,000.[15]
More foreigners have applied for naturalization as Chinese nationals with permanent residency of Hong Kong since the handover in 1997. Among Hong Kong residents from 1997 to 2012, 3,411 Pakistanis, 3,399 Indonesians, 2,487 Indians, 1,115 Vietnamese, and 387 Filipinos have been naturalized.[16] One case of mass naturalization occurred in 2003, when less than 200 Damans, an ethnic-Nepali people who had resided in Gyirong County of Tibet for over two centuries, were granted Chinese nationality. The serial numbers on their naturalization certificates suggested that around 4,000 people (including the Damans) had naturalized as Chinese nationals in Mainland China until 2003.[17]
https://www.hrichina.org/en/content/4573 http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/04/13/the-myth-of-one-china/
Well, there are a "whopping" 1500 new naturalised citizens since the passage of 1998 citizenship law :)
2.) At some point, you can't keep using the excuse "but 1 Billion people" for doing disgusting things. When you harvest prisoners' organs. When you imprison 120,000 minorities in camps. When you build an artificial island to the horror of 10+ other countries around you. When you keep threatening to invade Taiwan. When you prop up North Korea. When you monitor and censor everything.
3.) You rule out the possibility that China can have a republic or democracy. which is shameful. Granted it's low, but Authoritarian regime doesn't have to be a certainty.
2) You can always use the excuse "I don't want a billion people that I care about to go through the hell that is Syria."
3) I don't rule out that possibility at all. I'm just saying the risk that it won't work seems too high given how bad the outcome would be if it doesn't work.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's risky, especially for China which hasn't had a history of being successful without an authoritarian government. And which had a terrible history of chaos when it didn't have a strong government.
All these claims are just a boring old geopolitical game, which has been played over land control for as long as sovereign states existed (and it was modified only slightly from the tribal times).
There's nothing "fair" or "right" or "reasonable" about these games. It might seem as a zero-sum game since only one country can usually own a given piece of land. But actually, it's not zero-sum: each government increases its domestic popularity by yelling loudly about how the evil neighbors are taking away what "rightfully" belongs to their own nation.
If you want to read more about this, I can recommend these articles:
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/risky-business-south-...
https://www.lawfareblog.com/south-china-sea-dispute-brief-hi...
http://www.newsweek.com/china-south-china-sea-islands-build-...
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/chinas-artificial-is...
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/28/asia/south-china-sea-islands-...
Strictly, no. That was the USSR. Soviet Russia (the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) didn't experience government collapse, though it did change its name to the Russian Federation.
I personally am unsure whether the CCP is really holding back the gates against a resurgence of death and suffering on this sort of scale (after all, in its earlier years it was responsible for the Great Leap Forward). But if we are to judge by the economic growth and stability imposed upon China since then, they seem to be doing a decent job. Unfortunately I imagine it will be many decades until we can know for sure.
In the earlier years, CCP was responsible for some of the worst suffering that the 20th century has seen; worse, it was totally without purpose. It was not even helping some people survive at the expense of others, it was just destroying millions of lives to satisfy the egos and delusions of a few leaders who were especially good at brainwashing people. Those leaders deserve to burn in hell for eternity, in my opinion.
Today's CCP, despite the continuity in the government, is very far from doing that. Of course, it wants to stay in power, as almost every government does. But I do not know whether, in staying in power, it's also helping hold back the gates of death or suffering.
As you say, the evidence so far, limited as it is, is slightly positive. China moved from one of the poorest large countries, with a horrible past, to a place where many (although not all) people are happy to return after they travelled the world.
But in truth, we'll never know for sure, since we can't see the alternate timeline of history. In a few decades, we'll merely have a bit more evidence one way or the other.
However, I do see a lot of moderate to terrible disasters that befall other countries that try to change their system of government. So I personally have a very high degree of concern about the risk that comes with such changes.
It's easy to excuse horrible acts by saying it's for the greater good, but it's rarely actually the case. Chinese civilization won't collapse if they stop harvesting organs and imprisoning people who are even mildly critical of the government.
Horrible acts are occasionally better than the alternative, if you think of the number of lives lost compared to the number of lives saved.
I am not sure that these actions by the Chinese government are perfectly justified by this argument. But I think it's possible. Often, governments fall and civil wars start from a tiny spark of seemingly innocuous political dissent that grows out of control. I am sure you'll find many examples of that in history.
The stability of Chinese society, just like the stability of any modern society, is always hanging on a thread. You may just not realize it because you (I hope) live in a country that is not drowned in blood. A small problem can easily grow into a disaster, and then no one can stop it -- look at Yugoslavia, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Sudan, Congo, Liberia, Georgia (ex-USSR). And these are just the ones I remember watching live, in disbelief.
About organ harvesting.
From what little I read about it, prisoners may be executed, and their organs given to people who need them for medical reasons. I assume you're not against organ transplantation, since that saves lives at no cost to their original (dead) owner. So I assume you're only against the execution of prisoners.
Opinions on capital punishment vary, even in the US. What's viewed as fair and just penalty in California or Florida, has been viewed as unreasonable cruelty and violation of human rights in Maine for well over a century. Of course you're right that in the US, most people would not be ok with executing people for political views (except state treason), and even less so if the execution is timed to make their organs available to others. However, I think you could allow a larger difference of accepted practices between two completely different countries than between states of the US.
It seems that you are arguing in bad faith. The problem with organ harvesting isn't that they harvest them from those sentenced to death; it's the discrepancy between number of operations and organ availability and number of capital punishments.
In a country like China, US, or Russia, it's much harder to stop a civil war or chaos, and the damage from that is immeasurably greater. So avoiding it is really important.
I didn't understand what you meant about the discrepancy. If you don't mind explaining, I'd appreciate.
That equivalency is a linchpin of any aspiring fascist state. Please try and question it, you will notice that ir doesn't make much sense.
Russia risked that chaos, but it had little choice: the USSR was a complete economic disaster. If China today was as bad economically as the USSR in 1985, a big part of my argument would disappear.
In some limited sense, I might even say that the Chinese economy today with the old regime is more promising than the Russian economy today after all the changes. And even if I'm wrong on that, still the Chinese economy is at least decent. So the people in China have a lot more to lose from chaos than the people in the USSR did.
Another thing. You're saying Russia is in a better state today than 30 years ago. Yes, but Russia is governed by a strongman, who doesn't allow much political dissent. Are you sure that without him Russia wouldn't be in chaos?
And if you think that what is going on in Russia is an acceptable compromise, then why would you be uncomfortable with the Chinese government? The difference is not that great.
By the way, authoritarian governments had been around for millennia before fascism was even a thing. I don't see why you would equate the two.
Some nice things? Nice things??? What the actual lord upon almighty.
Nobody cares about oppression until it directly effects them, and these days: by the time you're effected by it, its too late.
I'm less concerned with suppression of human rights in China than I am with the Imperialist destruction of civilisation that the West has been engaged in, all over the Middle East. But! That does not mean I'm not concerned about China, as an individual. Its just that there are worse things to worry about than China.
Many things are partially ordered.
Normal people in Xinjiang would prefer a stable Xinjiang not some groups' idealized usually chaotic one.
Speaking of human right, raising living standards is the most pressing issue in China, and there are still many poor people in China need the help from the gov't. When they got richer, there will be more middle-class buy things from the West and the rest of the world.
Some countries can still bash China on many issues whereas making bigger deals with China at the same time.
China is still an entry level player on that.
The world cannot leave the U.S. and China and any countries on this planet even though I guess quite a few folks hate each other. Because they buy things from each other.
Money talks, if you will.
Digital age is double edge sword and everyone is going to bleed under the pretext of security.
The idea that the differences between China and freer countries are merely a matter of the 'narrative' is patently ridiculous. It is also false, because according to the Chinese constitution, "...citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration." So yes, China officially has the same narrative, it just doesn't have any due process, has massive surveillance not even remotely comparable to Western countries, and suffers from massive corruption in the hands of a single 'party'.
West has lost all moral ground to become a world leader on these issues after what has happen and is happening to various middle eastern countries in recent day.
And what is current happening to these communities in China are direct side effect of West's interest in these issues and exploitation (e.g their rebel leader is current living in American) and every country has right to clean their backyard not just US or some other country.
You're also deviating from the topic. It is quite obviously and ostensively possible to have all these benefits for your citizens without oppressing other countries or waging unjust wars, in fact the majority of countries with a high degree of freedom, a multi-party system, and a high degree of due process are currently not waging any wars at all.
The other point is why the world should go by force for democracy?
Democracy is freedom, I don't like that democracy I am happy with dictatorship why someone should cry ? ( not pointing at you).
Lets say whole population is happy with their dictator and living a decent life,unless someone is arming rebels and inciting political turmoil by funding innocent people. Why you should interfere in their lives ?
So the question here is , is this political turmoil in China is happening purely by the desire of local populace or someone is funding because they have a hidden agenda ? As we have seen in recent year and seeing this elsewhere e.g in Syria where Us and West are engaged , this has not been just local desire but neighbors and everyone else interested in certain Geo-political goals, which kills the idea and need for democracy.
Democracy should come by learning by indigenous people, for indigenous it should not be "MY" desire or someone else desire.
Almost every democratic country if you hadn't changed the topic again. We were talking about waging a war, not "being complicit" or small-scale interventions like e.g. currently in Afghanistan. For instance, sending fighter jets equipped with cameras instead of bombs is not "waging a war".
I also don't think that it is fair to portray e.g. international alliances against ISIS as evil and unjust wars.
> The other point is why the world should go by force for democracy?
We shouldn't. I said that it's in the genuine interest of all Chinese people to get rid of their one-party system, get due process and fairer application of law, and have a multi-party system.
>Democracy is freedom, I don't like that democracy I am happy with dictatorship why someone should cry ? ( not pointing at you).
Because democracy is not primarily about your personal freedom, it's about maximizing freedom for everyone and also about due process and separation of powers. Being happy about dictatorship is not a consistent political position. If you benefit from a dictatorship, then it lies in the nature of dictatorships without due process that that's a mere coincidence for you. You could just as well be sent to a Gulag and tortured in besaid dictatorship. But the fact that you're personally happy with some particular dictatorship is not a valid argument for dictatorship as a form of governance. Nobody really wants dictatorship in general, if at all you might find a dictatorship from which you benefit somewhat desirable. I am not for democracy, because I personally benefit from it.
Why crying about it? Because the dictatorship you crave will invariably be bad for many other people, and normally functioning human beings are generally capable of compassion and empathy.
Lets say whole population is happy with their dictator and living a decent life,unless someone is arming rebels and inciting political turmoil by funding innocent people. Why you should interfere in their lives ?
You should not, at least not from the outside, and I have never argued for that.
However, the whole argument is fairly academic, because the vast majority of people are simply not happy with dictatorships. It's just easy for countries without due process and lots of terror and intimidation to mask this, e.g. people in surveys will not tell you the truth. In fact, the more totalitarian the country, the less critical they will appear to be of their leaders. Of course, people under Pol Pot were afraid of making critical remarks, because they did not want to be suffocated with a plastic bag.
That being said, since you were deviating again, I have not claimed that China is a dictatorship.
Democracy should come by learning by indigenous people, for indigenous it should not be "MY" desire or someone else desire.
I believe there is ample evidence, both historical and individual, that democracy is everyone's desire upon sincere reflection. Or, at least there is a historic development towards democracy that has had positive effects that are impossible to deny. That's a mere tendency, of course, you will always find naysayers. There is also a lot of disagreement about how to get there, and that's quite reasonable.
Believing something that is true shouldn't be counted against oneself.
How many times in discussions on Chinese or Russian subversion or suppression of internal debate and freedom do you see posts trying to justify it or neutralize criticism using 'whatabout' tactics, aiming to change the discussion by pointing the finger somewhere else? Every time, because the behaviour can't be justified or supported on it's own terms. Whataboutism is pretty much the only justification available.
How many times in stories on US, British, etc internet surveillance or erosion of freedoms do you see someone say 'whatabout' another country doing the same thing and trying to justify our loss of freedoms based on other country's behaviour? Never. It just doesn't happen because American, British and other democratic societies look to their own democratic institutions, processes and freedoms to resolve these issues. We might look at loss of freedom elsewhere as a warning, but never as a justification that it's ok for us to lose them too. There are actual things we can do to protect our rights, so there's no need to wring our hands and say actually it's ok because somebody else is doing it. We don't give a fig what somebody else is doing, when it comes to protecting our own right and values, and nor should anyone else.
That's an easy rule of thumb for telling if a society is generally free or not.
> The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8700 “mass group incidents” in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005.[2] In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated the number of annual mass incidents to exceed 90,000, and Chinese sociology professor Sun Liping estimated 180,000 incidents in 2010.[3][4] Mass incidents are defined broadly as "planned or impromptu gathering that forms because of internal contradictions", and can include public speeches or demonstrations, physical clashes, public airings of grievances, and other group behaviors that are seen as disrupting social stability.
The Chinese Civil War of '49 and then the Cultural Revolution (where most of the then-current Party leadership suffered) is still within living memory of the ruling class. Of course they understand that there is an implicit contract between themselves and the rest of society, even if it the terms of the deal are not arrived at in a democratic fashion.
The question is not whether China will eventually devolve more political power to the populace——that is almost a given, considering the growing economic and cultural power of the middle class; it's whether this will happen suddenly and violently via another revolution, or gradually by the Party bringing dissenting voices into the fold widening the circle of acceptable, public political discourse.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2013/01/15/chinese-societ...
And it would be so good -- for the people of China more than for anyone else. But it would be good for us all.
Yet, it's difficult to watch Xi's tenure unfold and not have worrisome questions about the inevitability of this result, especially given new technologies available to potentially aspiring totalitarians.
This idea was popular in 2013 when this article was written, but Xi's regime has indeed shown that greater prosperity can be had with increased repression. Turmoil in America only underlines this.
for now, anyway. plenty of looming societal issues remain uncertain until we see how they unfold: their aging population, lack of social safety net, mounting domestic unrest, increasing lack of labor cost competitiveness, etc.
As a Chinese-American, I see both sides of this issue, but China's own long political development sees the role of the state explicitly as a paternal protector. The state represents and protects the people's interests, without their explicit participation.
This is obviously alien to a modern Western mindset that sees political legitimacy as only deriving from elections, but that means that even early modern states (e.g. 19th century Britain or the US) is politically illegitimate since the franchise was restricted to a very small slice of property owners.
What Britain or the US did in the 18th or 19th century is not relevant to the discussion, what matters is today.
It is not a Western mindset to think that lack of participation in the political process leads to repression. Lack of participation, or the inability to participate, is in itself a form of repression.
Who invented democracy? Who were its earliest proponents, and later 'rediscoverers' and adopters during the late Enlightenment? Does not the culture and the government co-evolve with one another over time, such that they form a single functioning unit?
On the contrary, it is the idea that the formal system of government can be completely shorn of the context of the society and the cultural mores from which they arise that is naive.
The failure of the majority of states outside of the West to be democracies in actual fact even when they have the formal process of elections should demonstrate that simply imposing a foreign system of rule on a nation that has no experience with it is highly unwise. How well have the democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan turned out?
I find it pretty surprising that you speak with such certainty and conviction about Western liberal democracy when the
I'll leave you with this quote from Aristotle, who certainly believed there was a relationship between the people and the form of governance they could attain:
"The nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe are full of spirit but somewhat deficient in intelligence and skill, so that they continue comparatively free, but lacking in political organization and capacity to rule their neighbors. The peoples of Asia on the other hand are intelligent and skillful in temperament, but lack spirit, so that they are in continuous subjection and slavery. But the Greek race participates in both characters, just as it occupies the middle position geographically, for it is both spirited and intelligent; hence it continues to be free and to have very good political institutions, and to be capable of ruling all mankind if it attains constitutional unity." [1]
Agree or disagree with his (perhaps chauvinistic) assessment of his own people, but he at least realizes that governmental forms do not exist in a vacuum.
> This kind of thinking is also used as a defensive tool against real debate about the morality of what China does.
I would love to have a moral debate about what China is doing, but that would require moving beyond a reactive 'they are not a democracy, and hence automatically wrong'. I am saying this as a Chinese person whose family personally greatly suffered during the Cultural Revolution.
Let's have a real conversation about, what the proper role of government is, what its ends ought to be, and how that interacts with the experience of its host civilization and its history.
[1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
Fake prosperity between 2012 and now. 300%+ debt ratio. High government debt. High (state) corporate debt. creeping up Household debt. Several provinces disclosed 20-30% fake revenue. Xi's government now stresses stability over GDP growth (sign of weakness). Several high-level Chinese economists warn of an economic crash in China.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/chinas-crackdown-on-money-fl...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-s-insurance-regulator-to-...
Meanwhile over here it's taken as assumed that cities cannot and/or should not grow ever again.
How do you mean?
You don't think that's far too much of a generalization?
Houston has added a city the size of San Francisco since 1980. Austin and Charlotte doubled in size since 1990, and are both now comparable to SF in size. Las Vegas grew by 140% or so since 1990. Seattle's population curve goes vertical the last decade, they added about 16% to their population in seven years, and 50% expansion since 1990.
New York has added a million people in 20 years, after five decades of stagnation. There's plenty of development going on there.
http://neighborhoodeffects.mercatus.org/2017/01/26/why-the-l...
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/06/the-other-side-of-har...
That's a lot more true in parts of Western Europe than the US. The US has seen a burst of further urbanization, after a few decades of flatlining. Cities like Las Vegas, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Austin, San Jose, San Diego, Charlotte, Denver, El Paso, Orlando, etc. are still 'young' in their most recent expansions.
Charlotte NC, for example, has doubled in size since 1990, as has Raleigh NC. Charlotte is now comparable to Frankfurt and Stockholm in size.
Or take Gilbert, Scottdale and Chandler Arizona, as part of the Phoenix metro area. Gilbert has gone from barely existing (30k), to 240,000 since 1990. Scottsdale nearly doubled. Phoenix has grown by 60% since 1990, adding about 600k people.
Urbanization in the US over time:
1970: 73.6% -> 1980: 73.74% -> 1990: 75% -> 2000: 79% -> 2015: 81.6%
That urbanization increase since 1980 is nearly equivalent to three NYC size cities.
On urbanization, the US now matches up with the UK (83%), Spain (80%, France (80%) and Norway; is far ahead of Italy (69%), ahead of Germany (75%); and far behind the Netherlands (91%) and Denmark (88%).
I'd expect US urbanization to continue. It's likely heading toward 85% in the next 20 years. The income and opportunity is extreme between rural and urban in the US, that will continue to drain the rural areas (which almost universally have zero population growth).
The urbanization shift is equivalent to 27 million people (versus if it had stayed at 73.x%). Or 30 San Franciscos.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...
Additionally, their economic rise has contributed to higher wages and hence a relatively weaker position in the price sensitive globalized labor force, and they are beginning to lose out to more competitive countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and India. Since exports make up such a fractionally large portion of their GDP, this is another hazard.
ps1: Whether or not those attacks are done by terrorists, or oppressed minorities, I have no comments. ps2: This not a defend. Merely suggest one of the motivating factors. Whether or not CCP intentionally let that happen so they can do this, I have no comments.
???
If "...oppressed minorities..." commit acts wherein "...hundreds of innocent people were killed..."
aren't they "terrorists"?
Or am I thinking about this whole thing wrong?
To me the parallels to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are the conflicts involving the Rohingyas in Myanmar, the "deep south" in Thailand, and maybe the "pirates" around Malaysia and Philippines.
These conflicts are all being handled with far heavier hand than what China is doing in Xinjiang.
If China establishes autocratic regimes in the global South it will seize those governments and leverage that to gain power over the West. It's myopic to think their goal is anything less than absolute domination of the world.
There is still a part of China that is not even controlled by China (Taiwan). They are surrounded by lots of other powerful countries, Russia, India, Japan and so on. The US military is driving around right in front of them.
They are getting accused of wanting global hegemony based on thing like building bases in the South China Sea. Something that other countries have done before China.
Seems to me if anything China has behaved incredibly passive. Maybe in the back of their minds they have the idea that this strategy will lead to some kind of soft hegemony but that is just speculation based on nothing.
I'd say a decentralized mesh network is a step in the right direction, but if there's spyware on all the phones; that doesn't help as much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
Mobile ANPR is becoming a significant component of municipal predictive policing strategies and intelligence gathering, as well as for recovery of stolen vehicles, identification of wanted felons, and revenue collection from individuals who are delinquent on city or state taxes or fines, or monitoring for "Amber Alerts". With the widespread implementation of this technology, many U.S. states now issue misdemeanor citations of up to $500 when a license plate is identified as expired or on the incorrect vehicle. Successfully recognized plates may be matched against databases including "wanted person", "protection order", missing person, gang member, known and suspected terrorist, supervised release, immigration violator, and National Sex Offender lists. In addition to the real-time processing of license plate numbers, ANPR systems in the US collect (and can indefinitely store) data from each license plate capture. Images, dates, times and GPS coordinates can be stockpiled and can help place a suspect at a scene, aid in witness identification, pattern recognition or the tracking of individuals.
When machines are able to complete every task better, win every strategic confrontation, and so on, there will not be any point for humans to make any significant contributions - including art. Even video and audio will be faked easily.
When their every move can be scrutinized and next moves easily predicted, they can be easily caged and controlled. Raised to go along with anything, because "resistance is futile".
The world is being turned into monocultures and farms. And humans are building a zoo for themselves. No one will really run the place in the end.
this isn't going well...
It does cost vast amounts of money though. China spends more on surveillance and the police than the entire military budget.
But would they prefer even more to have a choice in the matter?
"Crime" is a very loose term. Things like robbery and assault are obvious but there are a lot of laws out there that have no real "victim", or are enforced only when the powers that be have an inclination to.
They're okay with the surveillance if it's going to prevent terrorist attacks or even more localised crime.
And most of the citizens couldn't even be bothered about losing access to non-Chinese Internet websites. The Chinese ones are good enough or sometimes even better, tailored to their tastes.
I don't deny the benefits of information age, that is huge blessings for everyone. Probably it will take some time to reap the real benefits but I am afraid the cost is getting higher, as too much information/disinformation to filter out facts from fictions. And in most of the cases states and media agencies are part of that fiction and friction created in the society, take it China or US.
The problem is that 'their' only objective is to undermine 'our' goal of having a balanced, honest discussion that arrives at some kind of valid, valuable truth. If a troll or discourse control agent can undermine that process, then they've 'won'.
And it's pretty easy to do. Actually, demanding sources is a great tool for undermining absolutely any discussion you like.
Someone claims something you don't like? Demand evidence/sources. If they can't produce them, you've won. If they can produce them, call into question the bias or veracity of the sources. You win again.
The basic tools of the troll trade are well known - derail, distract, discuss to death. Question motives and bias, use whataboutism, sling mud, lead a discussion into the long grass, debate every single point to death, ad hominem attacks, play the victim...
I think communities perhaps need to become more aware of those discussion patterns and vote according to whether something is using troll tools, rather than whether you agree/disagree.
Now that I think of it, an anonymous discussion is probably not protectable from well sponsored discourse control attempts.
Hobby researchers on Reddit have found out that they were able to push a story to the frontpage by spending a very low amount of money (about 200 USD if I remember correctly) for some puppet accounts and making sure that the very early moderation upvotes their story and downvotes critique. That gives us an idea how hard it is to counter concerted efforts of influencing discussions.
* How do I attach sources for my opinions or logical/moral arguments?
* I could spend an hour collating sources and writing a solid, reference based comment. A troll could destroy me in seconds with zero effort by claiming my sources are CIA funded or inherently biased.
* The internet has sources for anything you want to believe. I could easily google a bunch of authoritative looking sources confirming Flat Earth Theory, and then how will you refute them? Spend another hour discrediting those sources? And then what? I write a quick comment about how you’re obviously biased because of your media bubble.
Remember a troll doesn’t need to win the argument - he just needs to (a) cast enough shade so that an observer feels like maybe it’s subjective and neither viewpoint is correct, and (b) make you feel like it’s not worth the effort and hassle to argue with these morons.
If I (a troll) can write two x 1 minute comments that cause you to waste 2 hours of your time proving nothing, I’ve won.
[1] Edit: But they can't respond to everyone and thus accountability is forsaken in the name of progress ...? OK, that doesn't sound right. There is more to the lack of accountability. Which is perhaps just a lack of proper organisation, which, given the size of the world, might be understandable
this kind of article is just free advertisement for the companies selling this crap.
even here, the top comment now is about how someone never felt safer in China, probably because they " have nothing to hide"
Someone in this thread mentioned $4.7 billion (quoted as 30B RMB in this thread) on the security and surveillance, for just Xinjiang, which has a population of 21m give or take, out of China's 1.37 billion people. That's obviously a lot of money (for comparison the entire US intelligence budget is maybe an order of magnitude higher annually), so I'd assume that when in China, and maybe outside of it, basically whatever you do can/could be monitored.
I get the impression that if you're not, I don't know, doing detailed dissident planning it's not an issue, so this would seem the same standard as pretty free Americans would expect. In America, yeah if you spend 18 months downloading textbooks on bombmaking, buying laboratory equipment on Amazon, and then eventually industrial sizes of fertilizer, ammonia, and remote demolition detonators on Ali Express, while getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin from seling a 1-page haircut ebook which has 1 review stating it was useless, while you spend most of your time travelling between Syria and Washington DC, where you're at home on the dark net all day over tor, reading arabic language anti-American calls for terrorism and jihad, you would expect to get a visit at some point between when you start that journey and when you're on skype bidding your mother back home goodbye, saying that you will die for a worthy cause in your Jihad against the U.S. imperialist pigs and asking for her bank account information. I mean sure everything I've just stated (literally the entirety of this paragraph) falls under freedom of expression, freedom of thinking, and freedom of commerce, but as a practical matter you'd expect to be stopped at some point.
So is that the standard? If I go to Beijing but I'm not spending eighteen months travelling between Beijing and Taiwan reading about how to arm rebels for a military coup, how to get what you want by taking political hostages, and taking geographic survey equipment across the street from state buildings in Beijing with a notebook and a "Insurrection for Dummies: How to lead an armed rebellion and communicate with your followers while toppling Beijing's military hegemony" book, as an American could I expect to continue my normal Internet browsing (including reading or posting about "sensitive topics" or whatever)?
I mean on an everyday basis. Note that my Chinese example didn't include purchasing fertilizer and detonators, so I get that the standard could be a bit lower - but does normal American online behavior count? Or would an American not be able to enjoy their usual online freedom without getting lots of problems?
Luckily Links2 supports neither JavaScript nor CSS. People in China should start using that, as to not take part in The Great Cannon.
I tested the page with javascript disabled and manually set the html element back to display: block and it renders just fine.
That's the point he is making.
> if you ran a normal browser.
What's a normal browser?
A seed of distrust and paranoia was sown and was allowed to grow. That does not mean it has any basis in fact.
You should also look at how the Chinese government has oppressed the Uyghurs (and Tibetans and Taiwanese, to name a few).
To answer your question, I'm not happy to see any violence, but as someone who has some humility, and pragmatism, I don't see how more oppression can solve the problem of violence. For the Uyghurs, they view what they do as self defense, just like the Chinese, is self defense wrong? Some would argue only if the force used is not proportional to the offense sustained. For over a century, Chinese of various factions have invaded and massacred tens of thousands of Uyghurs in the region under different pretexts, what exactly can you expect from an ethnic group fighting for their very own survival?
In the other way, the minority's attacks will create Nationalism in the majority, and this will make the attacks more worse.
Is there any way to resolve this?
There are many things that increase peace and security: wealth, education, good institutions/political systems, arguably culture, etc. Surveillance is probably not one of them.
And I would choose China to raise my kids over the US any days. Yes there are repression in China, it would be a lie to deny it, yes I have been around a girl who smoked weed, she was 28-30 years old and she literally had to hide behind a car because it's completely forbidden, highly punished and another citizen can report you.
But China has many advantages, public services are awesome. Unlike France and the US, the government is corrupt but they don't vote any law against Chinese themselves. It's a country which still have some kind of moral traditions and values so far.
And last but not least I prefer government's surveillance than people's surveillance. It's far more easier to free think in China than it is in the US and France. The latter countries are closer to the sesame credit than the latter.
It's not very logical.
By definition, the word "Law" means: a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior[0]. Who's behavior? Trees? Mountains? No, people's behavior, people who living inside the territory of the country.
So, the right way to put should be: China's laws are more restrict towards foreigners, which is reasonable, because:
1) Foreigners contributes less to the society than locals in general.
2) Foreigners have no proxy or benefiter in the government system, so nobody will speak for them.
(I'm of course speaking of petty law breaking such as smoking weed or jaywalking. If you steal or defraud someone you'll see your visa disappear faster than sin)
I've never heard of this and I grew up in China. Can you provide a source?
Normally the hotel does it for you.
After getting an apartment here I didn't register for about a month. I had to spend some time at the registry office to get a warning. They said if it happens again there'll be a fine, and if it happens a third time you presumably have to leave the country.
On your arrival/departure form it also says:
"Aliens who do not lodge at hotels, guesthouses or inns shall, within 24 hours (72 hours in rural areas) of entry, go through accomodation registration at local police station.
What silly clickbait. I swear the media ( or propaganda ) sure loves to scaremonger with "china".
The brits want it. Europe wants it. Russia wants it. And the liberal and conservatives in the US want it.
The leading surveillance systems in the world aren't in china. It's in britain. It's in the US.
Edit: Holy cow, the brigade is strong here.
How do you even measure that? I have no idea what you're are saying means?
How about on a per capita basis?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/tony-porter-su...
Or how about
1. In terms of quality and sophistication tech. US and Britain pioneered most of the surveillance tech.
2. Experience and age? We have decades head start on the chinese when it comes to tech surveillance.
3. We are more "connected" and a more urban society with surveillable data? Nearly 50% of china still lives in rural areas.
1. Who "started it" 2. How long they've been doing it 3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!)
In other words, you worked backwards to produce vague descriptions of metrics by which your point would be true. If it weren't for the fact that these vague metrics in no way support your assertion.
Not just who started. The quality and sophistication.
> 2. How long they've been doing it 3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!)
Yes. What else would it be? What other metric would you use?
imo the state of the art surveillance isn't in China. It's either in the Middle East (especially in Dubai) or Singapore.
This happened a few years back: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/an-eye-for-an-eye-...
(I used to work in the video imaging industry.)
The OP of this thread is missing the point of the article though. They can call themselves Liberals, Conservatives, Communist Party Members, Nationalists or whatever, but only the elites want mass surveillance and really no one else
> Most of the act's amendments came into effect on 20 July 2016. Amendments that require telecom operators to store recordings of phone conversations, text messages and users' internet traffic up to 6 months were announced to come into place on 1 July 2018; however, senator Anton Belyakov has submitted a proposal to move the regulations' start date to 2023, because of the extreme amount of data storage technology needed to make fulfilling the requirements possible.
What China is doing in Xinjiang is not something many, if any, citizens around the world want.
What people want a dystopian future? That's a pointless statement. Also, Nithin Cota is not chinese nor ughyur. How can he speak for those people.
> What China is doing in Xinjiang is not something many, if any, citizens around the world want.
You can say that about the same things that happened in the US, britain, europe and around the world.
It's also not a prerequisite to be Chinese or Uyghur to discuss this topic. If someone learns and becomes educated on a topic they can discuss it.
He's also not saying that Uyghurs want this. He's saying nobody wants this.
But you said "people of those nations"? Now you are backtracking?
> It's also not a prerequisite to be Chinese or Uyghur to discuss this topic. If someone learns and becomes educated on a topic they can discuss it.
I didn't say it was a prerequisite. My point is that the assertion that "we don't want dystopian surveillance" is absurd considering the amount of surveillance we already have. Okay? Considering the guy wrote for a western news outlet, I'm assuming by "we", he meant the western world.
> He's also not saying that Uyghurs want this. He's saying nobody wants this.
Right. And my point is that we already have it.
The people creating these surveillance networks, presumably. So, I guess, politicians in China, the US, Britain, Europe, and Russia (among others).
Yes.
> Not sure about you but I don't have to put my government issued ID on my kitchen knives.
Neither do I. But that's because I love freedom.
What's the difference between ids on or for knives and ids on or for guns? It sounds ridiculous to us because our murders are by guns. But in china people kill each other with knives.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-atta...
Do you know what some people in the US want? Fingerprinted "smart" guns. More government surveillance/registry/etc of gun owners. What's the difference?
If people in china are killing each other with knives, doesn't "smart" knives or knife registry make sense just like a gun registry?
I guess all the folks in Xinjiang just don’t love freedom as much as you do.
Of course they do. Good god you completely missed my point.
Not sure if calling your own example ridiculous is a good argumentative tactic in short-form debates like this...
>because our murders are by guns
Sure, but a cleavers' main manufactured purpose isn't killing other human beings. The guns involved in mass shootings are made specifically for shooting people en mass.
>If people in china are killing each other with knives, doesn't "smart" knives or knife registry make sense just like a gun registry?
No. Even though the barrier for entry for making guns is getting lower and lower, they'll never ever approach the barrier for entry for making an edged weapon.
Add to that the social utility aspect that someone else mentioned. Firearms are explicitly designed to make it easy to hit a target with lead from far away, which just so happens to coincide with killing people in perhaps the most efficient way possible(barring weapons of mass destruction).
Citation needed. All of those "countries" don't "want it". Perhaps some of the authoritarian leaders in some of those countries want it.
The anecdotal number says Xinjiang spent 30B RMB on the security and surveillance. I have no details about the exact expense items.