So can anyone tell me why we should support what China is doing? Why should any entrepreneur or tech worker go there and support this government? How come China seems to get a free pass on human rights issues like this by western society?
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.
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.
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.
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