China 'holding at least 120,000 Uighurs in re-education camps' | Hacker News Reader

China 'holding at least 120,000 Uighurs in re-education camps'

theguardian.com

97 pointsghostcluster35 comments

So IF the future favours China, and IF the west lets it happen without outright/proxy war, and China wins... with all these ML techniques in hand, and with all of our digital footprints slapped around everywhere, am I paranoid to assume that even this comment can be construed to have 12% negative sentiment towards the CCP? And the cut off for "Normal Dissident Sentiment Levels" was 10% so I'm going to one of their camps?

That assumes China becomes the world. Seems far fetched. But assuming western countries would not follow their practices also seems far fetched. I feel the west already does much of the surveillance China does, only not as openly. Our camps are reserved for terrorists for the time being. Pray that term does not get expanded.

We do a lot of the same stuff, it's just framed completely differently under the label of freedom. I feel that even if the US became a dictatorship, there would be denial about it, likely we would continue to hold mock elections ala Russia, or maybe even real elections where the outcome is clear because the people have been so thoroughly controlled and manipulated.

It reminds me a lot of 1984 where the three different powers, on the surface, have utterly different values, but in the end act in exactly the same ways.

It’s really a false equivalence the kind of stuff the NSA or FBI does is different in kind and character than what’s going on in Xinjiang. What the NSA does is largely invisible to you and has a low probability of affecting you. The surveillance and security apparatus in Xinjiang is very visible, residents must install monitoring apps on their phones or face punishment, casual conversation or even expression of religious traditions can get you a visit and interview by the security apparatus.

I’m afraid to even message people I met last year in Xinjiang for fear that communication with foreigners could flag them for scrutiny.

FISA warrants, national security letters, PRISM, MUSCULAR, etc are all things that highly concern us, but I think Uighurs would trade what we have for theirs in a heart beat.

Yes, I didn’t mean to say we are there yet, just that the apparatus is in place and we’re moving rapidly in that direction. But I do think that when it happens, it will take a different flavour in the US that uses American values and sensibilities, and in the end Americans will support it just as the Chinese do their government.

It does not seem so far fetched in current times. Nationalism, Racial/political/group supremacy, opinion extremism/supremacy leads to wide scale divide. And has always been the achilles heal leading to the fall of many nations throughout history.

Unity, even the unity found in Russia, China, and North Korea, has caused nations to reach higher levels of greatness and prosperity.

Hence, the reason China is so concerned about dissent.

Authoritarians don't quash dissent so that their nation can achieve higher levels of greatness and prosperity. They do it to maintain control.

maintain control

achieve higher levels of greatness and prosperity

Atleast that is what the Chinese Communist Party is all about. They are significantly engineering and technical backgrounds, not politicians. They cannot weave and deceive through people issues.

So what you're telling me is that all the politicians figured out that they need to get an engineering degree in order to have viable political career?

Actually what I am trying to say is that politics in China runs very differently than it does in other countries.

What I’m saying is that “we’re doing this bad thing to further the greatness of China” is a justification for what’s going on, not an explanation. I mean, if a thief took your wallet, would you believe them when they explained that they did so for safekeeping?

*born into the right family

> Atleast that is what the Chinese Communist Party is all about. They are significantly engineering and technical backgrounds, not politicians. They cannot weave and deceive through people issues.

That must be why they're so worried about Winnie the Pooh then ? "Somehow" and like with every other authoritarian there seems to be a LOT more concern about the ego of the leader than about China itself. Wouldn't you agree ?

> Atleast that is what the Chinese Communist Party is all about. They are significantly engineering and technical backgrounds, not politicians. They cannot weave and deceive through people issues.

The leadership of the Communist Party may have lots of people with technical backgrounds, but they quite obviously do actively work to, and do well enough at, weaving and decieving through “people issues”.

Also, they are politicians: having a technical background doesn't make a politician any less of a politician.

One should choose one's enemies carefully. You become them.

I'm extra paranoid and a likely outlier, but I'm already regretting what little displeasure I show towards the CCP on the Internet.

I think what increases my worry is how, in other leading countries, at least 30-50% of the population is wary/skeptical of the government at any time. With China – my impression may be tinged by the activities of the 50 cent army – most citizens seem to accept the party says, with particular distaste for people who dare protest. It's hard to say for certain: China doesn't really participate on the English-speaking Web.

The right in America is starting to up their noise about Chinese shills on the internet, while the left continues to make noise about the Russian shills.

We're in a way being made into a proxy where Americans are making their allegiances to either Russia or China.

>> so I'm going to one of their camps?

You used the world Normal with capital N, so yes

What's the difference between a re-education camp and a concentration camp? Under what circumstances could Chinese treatment of Uighurs be considered genocide? Is there a red line of moral outrage that if crossed, would result in a boycott of Chinese products, or will we continue to buy iPhones no matter what crime is perpetrated by the CCP?

If we look back to WW2 and Nazi, US did still conduct trade with Nazi Germany, but the trade volume fell between 1929 to 1938, when US started putting up protectionist policy (soooo eerily similar to China today). when Nazi invaded Czechoslovakia, FDR slapped a 25% tariff on Nazi (but it wasn't an embargo).

Let's hope this time if China invades any country (Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam), we contain and hopefully counter right away.

If that happens get ready to watch ram/ssd prices to go through the roof.

Laojiao and laogai have been something that China has done since forever. Probably just as many Han in it as well, it’s a nice way for officials to make some extra spending money. I don’t see anything new in this article, those camps have probably been there forever. Why do you think many Uighurs hate the Chinese government in the first place?

But with the (official) dictatorship in China, is this concentration camps reincarnated? Nazi reincarnated? Xitler is a real thing?

For now, I would say no, only because nobody is getting exterminated. For now.

This is a hypothetical question unrelated to China's activities in Xinjiang: If I take an ethnic group off their land, put them in camps, force them to perform hard labour and prevent them from raising children, but do not murder any of them, could that be considered extermination?

Culture extermination. They’re basically trying to erase the ethnic Muslim culture but not necessarily the people. In that respect it’s not much different than what the US OR Australians did to indigenous peoples.

Are you seriously whataboutism events that happened few hundred years ago???? Wow. And you work for google. God help us all

[flagged]

That could be considered "genocide," under many definitions of that term. For instance:

> By "genocide" we mean the destruction of an ethnic group…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_definitions

FYI, Nazi concentration camps and Nazi extermination camps were different things.

The Guardian citing a US-funded propaganda outlet reporting on an ethnic group that the US/Saudi Arabia use and fund in order to undermine the Chinese state.

Forgive me for being skeptical, but this is likely a propaganda piece, and no more credible than someone simply writing what they want on the internet.

Do you know what sort of paper the Guardian is? Favouritism towards the US is not something they're famous for.

Do you know who they're citing? A US-funded propaganda outlet...

Wikipedia says: Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting corporation and propaganda apparatus of the United States[2] that broadcasts and publishes online news, information, and commentary to listeners in East Asia while "advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy."

How about Human Right's Watch, linked to from the Guardian piece?

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/10/china-free-xinjiang-poli...

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