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Comment by eddieplan9 | Hacker News Reader

I am deeply disgusted by false equivalency used in many posts this thread. Whatever you think the West is doing is not even close to this. The Chinese government owns and runs more than 50% of the economy and 100% of the industries they deem essential. They can not only cut your off completely from planes and trains, but also your electricity, driver license, internet, telephone, banks, ability to get any travel document, ability to stay at any hotel, etc. Let that sink for a bit, before you claim that Google or even NSA can do something similar.

I am a Chinese expat, but I don't have a National ID. I have a Chinese passport, but I cannot even buy train tickets online (yet i can ride the train) with it and I cannot open a bank account in my own country. Things will get worse with 'social credit' as another barrier because I won't have a credit history with them.

[edit] removed claim that Chinese expat won't be able to fly in China without National ID because some say the viral news is a rumor. Honestly i cannot tell any more.

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> I am a Chinese expat, and thanks to this policy, I cannot fly in China because I don't have a National ID. A Chinese passport won't do.

This is patently not true. There are plenty of Chinese in the previous generation that gave up their hukou/ID card as required when they gained permanent residency in another country, and use their passport internally (when returning to work in China) like us foreigners must (it seems like these days it isn't necessary to turn in your hukou, but it was in the 90s). A previous colleague at MSRA was in this boat. It was troublesome for sure, but he could fly (even a Chinese can fly internally with a passport, as my wife did when we went from BJ to GZ), open bank accounts (like foreigners can), and so on. The only thing I know he had trouble with was permission to visit Taiwan, they couldn't handle a Chinese citizen without hukou, but that was it.

I'm as critical of the Chinese government as anyone, but bad information really doesn't help.

> This is patently not true. There are plenty of Chinese in the previous generation that gave up their hukou/ID card as required when they gained permanent residency in another country

Do you have a cite for this? I know you lose PRC citizenship when gaining another citizenship (and thus a foreign passport), but I was not under the impression that was true for "permanent residents" of other countries. You can be an Chinese expat while still being a Chinese citizen.

Also, Chinese National IDs cannot be renewed overseas, while passports can. I think the law was pretty explicit that Chinese citizens can't fly under their passport (though they can jump through hoops to get a temporary national ID to fly). I know people who were in a bit of a pickle when this law came into effect because they were overseas when their National ID expired. It's certainly another hassle and bother for expats.

> the law was pretty explicit that Chinese citizens can't fly under their passport

This is false. There were rumors in May 2017 that some airports in China started to reject passports for Chinese citizens per some new internal regulations, so that is probably what was initially reported. As is always, the follow-up was never reported again: top aviation administration and public security department later clarified the law still allows using passports. The real reason for the few occasions of passport bans was because those few airports didn't have networked passports readers to verify it.

> There were rumors in May 2017 that some airports in China started to reject passports for Chinese citizens per some new internal regulations, so that is probably what was initially reported.

That explains it, that's about the time my friend was trying to figure out their document situation for a trip back to China. They ended up opting not to fly domestically because of the uncertainty.

Some people forget or lose their IDs. They can always get temp IDs at train stations or airports.

I don’t have a citation, just personal experience of knowing people who were exactly in this situation. You don’t lose PRC citizenship when losing your hukou, you still qualify for a chinese passport. The policy in the 90s was that you had to turn in your ID card/hukou when going abroad to study and work, and there was no easy way to get it back. I don’t think that is true today, but it’s a reason why many older Chinese in the tech industry have citizenship but no hukou.

You can fly internally on a chinese passport. Again, because not all chinese citizens have or qualify for ID cards.

> I think the law was pretty explicit that Chinese citizens can't fly under their passport

Please stop spreading misleading info. Chinese citizens are allowed to fly domestically using passport, I did that dozens of times. It is also explicitly listed on Civil Aviation Administration of China's web site, link provided below, it is explicitly mentioned on the first line.

http://www.caac.gov.cn/INDEX/HLFW/HLZN/CJ/

Have your extensive comments about the CCP on HN caused you any hassles?

The fact that comments cannot be deleted is increasingly unethical as ML makes privacy easier and easier to pierce. People who made rational decisions about the risks of sharing various opinions on a small site in 2010 are now locked into the consequences a decade later when both technology and political landscapes have changed.

It would be truly surprising if HN history doesn't eventually play a key role in someone being imprisoned or executed due to having expressed views that a country, religion or other organization finds objectionable.

I sometimes censor myself online by deciding not to comment or reply to things - both here and on other places for precisely this reason. Not fear of imprisonment or execution, just a concern that the comments might cause me hassle or grief at some point.

I might be rejected for a chinese visa someday, but that will just be a canary in the coal mine, I guess.

> Have your extensive comments about the CCP on HN caused you any hassles?

CCP currently cannot monitoring all foreign websites, so (currently) I don't think people will be hassled because of few archived comments on HM. But who knows, that may change in the future, and somebody may report you just like what people did during Cultural Revolution[0]. So, keep yourself anonymous under another name is always important.

In China, domestic websites are required by law to verify you and record your true personal identity (Phone number for example) when you trying to post anything on it, so you can't be anonymous. When I using that kind of website, I never do anything sensitive (Or even post anything useful).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

You dont need drag net fishing all the time.

You can just mine data of a person when they are of interest.

Just because it doesn't happen now, doesn't mean that will always be true. Even anonymous accounts are unsafe. ML with writing analysis and known writing samples could very likely allow attribution of even anonymous writings. May we never live in that world!

> The fact that comments cannot be deleted is increasingly unethical ...

Just assume that a few seconds after you post a comment Google, Bing, Facebook and a few other major Internet sites have scrapped your comment and are analyzing it.

And there a few aggregators that repeat the HN content and alternative UI for HN.

And some users make a local copy to run some statistics or detect dupes or just for curiosity. Some moron even made a Chrome extension to show the deleted and edited comments in HN.

And assume that the spy agencies of the major countries are making a nice backup of all your comments.

So after pressing the send button, just assume that there are 30 copies of your comment floating around.

A delete button only deletes one of them. The idea of Tweeter that you can delete a tweet and everybody really delete it is hilarious. Just assume the there is no "delete" button, it's just a "hide" button.

"Deleting" a comment is useful against a clueless neighbor that hates you because your dog barks too much. If a country with nukes hates you, they probably have the technology to save a copy of the "deleted" comment.

What if someone pretends to be you and posts incriminating posts?

"Deleting" a comment is useful against a clueless neighbor that hates you because your dog barks too much.

Probably a more common problem than spy agencies, just saying.

What you write is a reasonable precaution in 2018. Many, many HN posts and accounts were created before the Snowden revelations, before Xi came to power and before the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Many comments will be and have been mined years after their original posting. It's truly doubtful any country was logging every HN comment in the year you opened your account, for example.

Totally agree with you on this point. Most westerners don't have knowledge about Chinese "hukou" system and easily mislead by false information.

Most "Chinese" online seem to be paid trolls who deliberately feed misleading and false information. Either that or they have a switch in the brain where any critisism of China leads to a nationalistic brain freeze where they regurgitate silly propoganda.

The Hukou system is broken and inconsistent. Getting mine revoked was the biggest pain the ass. I'm sure there are anecdotal evidence to support your view, but the reality is the law is very differently applied depending on where you are in China. I know from first had experience the the original poster is correct.

Most Chinese abroad (that I meet, might be biased of course) seem to be students on a sort of foreign scholarship from the Chinese state. And they are terrified of the consequences of discussing this. Probably for exactly that reason.

Or could it be because they have benefited from the system, they think it's a good thing?

For example, I rarely see expats in Asia complain about why there are so many Hollywood movies in Asia.

This isn’t true or fair. Your comment doesn’t even follow through with the shillness claim.

Hukou is broke for sure, but airports are under control of the federal government and have no problem in letting hukou-free individuals travel on passports. My colleague was able to go mostly where I went, except Taiwan as stated above, and our work travelled to a lot of weird airports in the middle of nowheres.

That is simply not true. Maybe your friend lived in a different Hukou area. Either way, just because your friend can, does not mean every can.

This is the problem with China. Just because the system works for Jack Ma, and Xi Jinping's family, doesn't mean it works for everyone

Again, the airport doesn’t care where you got your hukou when they look at your passport.

I would say this also applies to many "non-Chinese" online. They either fall for racist stereotypes, or they have a similar switch in their brain where any mention of China means they are doing something nefarious and evil.

I'm not saying the original poster the "Chinese expat" make up a story. But he gives misleading information. Claim it's fake maybe not accurate.

1.The national ID is revoked only under some special case that the citizen is believed to be leave the country and give up the citizenship.Not for short term stay like visit/travel. For those whose Chinese national ID being revoked, they are not the equivalent of expat in Western country although technically you can insist it's expat. Again as you said the policies in China varied from place to place and even from time to time. Many emigrant such as aged family reunion emigrant can even keep their national IDs

2.China becomes a business orientated society. There's no reason to exclude passport owners to buying a train ticket online if there's a way to do it. The difficulty here is the cost of passport reader which is monopolized by only few US and European manufactures that only border control agencies can afford, while resident ID readers can be purchased from multiple domestic providers competing for quality and price. It's pure technical and economical reason, not because a regime want to do sth against its own people.

Your thoughts about somebody being paid (maybe with wu mao) is interesting and also a quite common belief

It is not difficult to make a passport reader, and the Chinese are definitely capable of that.

You can read the contents of the RFID chip using $100 off-the-shelf hardware, and the decryption key is the OCR string on the “main” page of the passport.

The piece of glass where you lay the passport, the OCR, and the case itself I’m sure any Chinese contractor could easily do as well.

I'd have thought the Chinese passport and National ID would be linked into a single system: given a passport they could find the corresponding National ID (or lack or) or vice versa. Then why would they care whether you use one or the other in any particular situation?

For what it's worth I doubt many of those commented have ever lived (or even visited) China. It's easy to create a false equivalency when you have no real experience of the situation.

This is a different situation, and it's sadly Orwellian.

I think this is an important point.

I had a coworker who grew up in Romania under Ceausescu and the stories he told! He talked about neighbors just disappearing one day and someone new living in the home. People didn't bat an eye since if you started asking questions, you might be next.

He mentioned how there was an election for president and it was a write in ballot. Someone wrote "Mickey Mouse". Despite voting in a booth in private, they figured out who he was and he had to report for "reeducation" every weekend. This involved sitting in the police station watching propaganda all day Saturday and Sunday.

I don't think people in the West can even fathom what it's like to live under an authoritarian system like that.

I can second this. I moved from western Europe to Romania. I've been here for more than two years now and I've heard some pretty insane stories. Most of the people I know are young and were children or teenagers towards the end of communism, but their parents lived through it all.

I've browsed this site for years now, and I do see this pattern in many posts that critique China.

A large number of replies turn the conversation towards how the West is equally bad or worse. Another set of replies talks about how China may inevitably come out ahead.

You can check yourself by Googling 10 HN threads that critique China, versus say, Japan or Poland.

Is China running some indirect social public relations in the style of Russian Facebook ads for Trump? Or is it simply China hawks / nationalists or other casual supporters? My personal conclusion is that there's a decent chance it's a bit of both. And the likelihood of the first may be concerning.

But seriously, check out the pattern and come to your own conclusion.

P.S. If it matters, I'm ethnically Chinese as well, and think well of the Chinese people in general.

The fact that you think you need to create a throwaway account speaks to how much the climate has changed for us. There is a real fear considering how totalitarian and intrusive the government has become, that they will target anyone who disagrees even on a benign forum like this.

I'm sure one of the many pro-china robots will cite something liek "THE NSA IS JUST AS BAD" but the reality is China is 1000000 times worse.

Just mention how Taiwan is in reality an independent country and they go full retard.

Absolutely. Many years ago, a family friend hosted a blog on his home server that had an anti-CPC article. A few weeks after the publication of that article, he found his router flashed and the blog content defaced.

I'm a normal person with a normal life, hence the throwaway to reduce even the small chance of getting hit back, something that China seems to like to do (not coincidentally the exact topic of the original link).

I'm not into conspiracy theories, but we know what Russia has likely already done on social media. China is just as clever and resourceful, if not more, and they want to save face. This makes indirect social media influence a temptation that is difficult for the CPC to resist at best.

>Is China running some indirect social public relations in the style of Russian Facebook ads for Trump?

One possible answer to your question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

You're right I hold the US government to a higher standard.

When I or many others say "China's doing this but look what the NSA is doing", I am not trying to be a CPC apologist by pointing at the NSA. I am being pro civil liberties by using the CPC as an example of what happens when you don't hold your government to account.

America gets to enjoy its relatively high degree of civil liberties precisely because its population is so often critical of and suspicious of its government. Even when the criticism is laughable in comparison to other countries.

I have no problems with criticizing US government agencies for shady or illegal things they did, but there are plenty of posts about those topics already. Doing so in a Chinese related thread comes across as whataboutism, especially because whatever good intention you may have, it is indistinguishable from those that attempt to direct the discussion away from China's issues.

Refusing to engage in whataboutism makes you vulnerable to propaganda from your own country - it allows your government to redirect negative attention towards it's own behaviour to other countries by influencing media organisations to publish certain articles. Of course, some people inevitably says "what about our own government", and this behaviour can be countered by labelling it as "whataboutism".

It's been fashionable for a while to bash the top dog. No, the US isn't perfect, but how can you equate it to the shit china does day in and out.

It will be interesting to see what the US resembles when its numbers exceed 1 billion people. China in many ways is simply setting the precedent now, how the US follows remains to be seen.

US exceeding a billion people? All countries except some in Africa are on a population decline long term.

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/2c9342e9aa17d2237eade9...

https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-...

https://vimeo.com/79878808

It'd be great if these optimistic projections are what happens, but today's american culture and economy is still very growth centric - I don't see it happening.

Toys R Us just said yesterday that one of the major causes of their bankruptcy was a decline in birth rates.

I'm not sure I would take them at their word -- any kind of circumstance beyond their control flatters them.

their bankruptcy is 100% due to their leveraged buyout

Though note that it really is long-term.. it takes a couple generations for the population to stop increasing after birth rates drop, since the previous generation still contained more children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#Populatio...

Agree, but we're on the right path.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/decline-i...

The U.S., like Canada, Australia, Brazil, and many Spanish-speaking countries in America, along with the former colonizing countries of Western Europe (e.g. England, Holland, France), is an immigration-based country, and so birth rate is only one factor. Given the number of people from China, India, and elsewhere who would immigrate to the U.S. if they could, it's not inconceivable that one day the U.S. will welcome them and their money so Americans can profit from another residential property Ponzi scheme.

It's become fashionable to ignore China's misdeeds because of the money and hype.

Yes, but my concern, personally, is that we're just getting a sneak-preview of a system that will eventually end up implemented here. We don't have a social credit system, but we do have a do-not-fly list and, if you get put on it, you don't have any way of finding out why. Your "regular" credit score can shut you out of not just loans but jobs, apartments, and other basic services. How much of a leap is it, really?

> but I cannot even buy train tickets online (yet i can ride the train) with it and I cannot open a bank account in my own country

Side point but generally speaking you don't need a national ID to open a bank account or buy train tickets online. Banks do require a +86 mobile number, which you can get with your passport alone. You can then use your +86 mobile number, passport, and hotel address to open a bank account. You can then add your bank account to WeChat and buy train tickets there. You will have to line up to pick up your electronically-purchased tickets as paper tickets, using your confirmation code on WeChat and your passport, which is a huge inconvenience compared to those swiping their national IDs to get into the trains (they built the entire train system basically only for locals), but there are separate lines for ticket pickup that move quickly, so it's not as annoying as getting in line to buy tickets and the finding out that seats are sold out. At least your WeChat purchase guarantees you your journey and seat.

You can also use Alipay instead of WeChat if you prefer.

That said I'm not sure if there are additional restrictions on Chinese passports, but a non-Chinese passport can use the above procedure.

Of course it's a massive pain in the ass because of all the stupid SMS confirmations and things involved in the process. Easily the worst UI/UX I've seen of a ticketing system. The trains themselves are fantastic though.

Also, yes, everything is tracked to your passport number, so even if you have no national ID you do still become part of the same "credit" system.

Until your passport number changes on renewal. My bank and job freaked out when I renewed my passport, and it became common for them to ask for my old passport also when needing to do anything official.

Whatever you think the West is doing is not even close to this. The Chinese government owns and runs more than 50% of the economy and 100% of the industries they deem essential.

Thank goodness. However, what you're pointing out is that the difference is not because the principles are different. The difference is primarily that in the west, the people who would do this, don't yet have 100% coverage over society.

>However, what you're pointing out is that the difference is not because the principles are different.

Yes, they are. The reason "the people who would do this don't yet have 100% coverage over society" is precisely because, at least for now, principles in the West find this sort of authoritarianism repugnant. This is exactly the kind of false equivalency the parent is talking about.

I'd argue that's not entirely true. Consider, for example, the fact that corporate prisons exist in America. I would say there is a difference in governance, but I hesitate to speculate about cultural differences.

I'd agree that there are a lot of people who find that kind of authoritarianism repugnant. Then, you have lots of people who work at various tech companies who basically engage in censorship. There are also a lot of people who will wield institutional power to engage in censorship. There are entire academic fields where professors and researchers are fearful of discussing their findings in the mainstream, because they can be castigated for doing so. There are large numbers of people who will use physical violence as a means of political coercion, and there are many, many people who will give their tacit approval of this.

A lot of people in the West find that kind of authoritarianism repugnant. A lot of people in the West find satisfaction in exercising repugnant authoritarianism.

>A lot of people in the West find that kind of authoritarianism repugnant. A lot of people in the West find satisfaction in exercising repugnant authoritarianism.

"A lot of" is a conveniently vague quantity. However you quantify it, it's absolutely nothing near the scale of institutional and cultural support for authoritarianism in China.

However you quantify it, it's absolutely nothing near the scale of institutional and cultural support for authoritarianism in China.

However you quantify it, there's far, far too much of it here in the United States and in the Western world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9mkA1GBY2k

This kind of anti-nuance approach is problematic for two reasons. For one, it serves the propagandistic purpose of sheltering China from criticism by falsely equating them to the US. For another, if you're constantly equivocating between completely different scales of moral error, you're not going to understand when one set of practices is better than another and you're not going to be able grasp what moral progress looks in a complicated world.

Criticism is not the same as censorship.

Criticism is not the same as censorship.

Forceful de-platforming isn't criticism. Criticism is argument. Force isn't argument. De-monetizing videos for unstated political motivations isn't criticism, it's censorship. Making irrational noise, intimidating, pounding on windows, lighting shops on fire, throwing things through windows -- those things aren't criticism. That is force, and many of those are examples of criminal acts. It's non-governmental censorship.

So many of the things which the Extreme Left use as a means of "convincing" people are the exact same things which bigots of the past did to black people and gay people:

    - exclusion from clubs and professional organizations
    - public rudeness, yelling
    - refusal to serve
    - not renting homes and apartments
    - getting them fired

You can tell the good people from the bad people this way: When the bad people win, it's time for them to unleash their acrimony and to do unto others. When the good people win, they hew to their principles and exercise forbearance and generosity.

Not an excuse at all.

I believe the negative sentiment towards the NSA, Facebook, Amazon and Google have to do with the fact that activities like collecting and storing sensitive information on individuals brings Western society one step closer to the situation in China. The capability now exists and a historic record about an individuals behaviour can be summoned easily.

What scares me is the idea of laws you're breaking which don't even exist yet, scary stuff.

It's fashionable among certain segments of the population to bash America whenever they can. It's almost pathological. Any time something negative is mentioned about something happening outside the US, there is an inevitable deluge of "well yeah but really bad stuff happens in America too!" comments.

I feel that most people doing this subconsciously feel like they're acting as a counterweight to the ultra patriotism of other segments of the population, but in acting as such a counterweight they appear as absurd as their ideological opponents.

Both sides annoy me for the same reason: they are blind to reality.

To your point, this exact thing happened in the last major thread on China, where commenters were defending the Tiananmen Square massacre:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15993956

> Whatever you think the West is doing is not even close to this.

But I worry the West will be watching this closely to see how they might implement something similar.

How could they? Americans are too paranoid to allow an ID card, much less a centrally tracked loyalty-points number to use at party-owned shopping, transit, utility, housing....

Are we not getting a national ID card soon? (State drivers' licenses that meet certain requirements.)

You're thinking of the REAL ID. It's controversial if it counts as "national ID" or not but it's mostly linking state databases and settings a standard for security.

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

In the US there are mandatory Social Security numbers; one needs photo ID to do much of anything; and there certainly are credit scores.

The large population of undocumented immigrants begs to differ.

And homeless people who have lost IDs etc yet fail to promptly die and find ways to even get online.

How many have a bank account?

This population has a shit life of pariahs, getting ripped off at the work place, avoiding check points on the road, worrying of being Anne Franked by ICE, never leaving the country, and generally avoiding airports and train stations.

Ok, as a regular citizen, in order to go to school, university, hold a regular job, etc. the things I mentioned are unavoidable.

I'm worried that paranoia is a thing of the past. I somewhat concerned that a (free) national ID scheme will be the result of the "Voter ID" push from the GOP in recent years.

I think if you saw a similar system implemented in the US it would happen mostly with private companies doing it. The obvious place to start is some combination of social media and your credit card records. Crawling through your e-mails, search history, and Internet activity is another likely avenue.

Heard of the no fly list?

> I am deeply disgusted by false equivalency used in many posts this thread. Whatever you think the West is doing is not even close to this.

It's terrible, it's even happening directly in the replies do you. This whole post has been almost totally derailed by whataboutism, and a lot of it is literally textbook:

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

> The Guardian deemed whataboutism, as used in Russia, "practically a national ideology". Journalist Julia Ioffe wrote that "Anyone who has ever studied the Soviet Union" was aware of the technique, citing the Soviet rejoinder to criticism, ["]And you are lynching Negroes,["] as a "classic" example of the tactic. Writing for Bloomberg News, Leonid Bershidsky called whataboutism a "Russian tradition", while The New Yorker described the technique as "a strategy of false moral equivalences". Jill Dougherty called whataboutism a "sacred Russian tactic", and compared it to the pot calling the kettle black.

False equivalency is a tool that's deployed often on HN these days to steer (or derail) threads. I assume it's due in part to PR/propaganda teams working to manage/manipulate sentiment.

It certainly feels like that, but I doubt this is the direct result of modern propaganda teams. What I think is more likely is the propagandists were so successful decades ago that their whataboutist memes got so integrated into the American/English discourse that many people repeat them unthinkingly.

Take a look at Grassroots for Hire, https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-...

Whether they are "hired guns" or not, there are usual suspects that invariably whataboutism on these stories. Anybody can figure out who they are on their own.

I agree that it's done by people without realizing they are doing it, or without appreciating the significance of the problem. I would cite the internet impulse for "Actually..."-style comments, and the desire for contrarianism as significant cultural factors as well.

I think that, in any given interaction, the odds you are interacting with a paid government agent are exceptionally low. I personally have been accused of being an agent of so many governments in online discussion that I think the hit rate is extremely low.

Exactly. I agree with others who have suggested that the false equivalency problem probably isn't due to government agents. It's just something that has become baked into internet culture without people appreciating that they are doing it or grasping the type of problem it poses.

I don't make that assumption now that I personally know Westerners (work colleagues and such) who are apparently quite happy to make these arguments in in-person discussions.

>whataboutism a "sacred Russian tactic"

It's not a tactic, it's rooted in traditional Russian law and stems from belief that you can't judge others while breaking exact same principle, or generally being immoral yourself. So pointing out that other party is lynching negroes is legit defense from some accusations from that party.

Today I learned that the Russians invented criticizing someone for hypocrisy.

Except of course there wasn’t actually any direct equivalency. The Russian, or Chinese state explicitly and systematically oppressing people as official state policy is not equivalent to illegal oppression by a minority of a minority in another country that it’s government is slowly but successfully fighting.

Were the people trying to hold Russia to account for its knowing, deliberate policies themselves personally oppressing black people? Accusations of double standards were completely unwarranted, which is the whole point of whataboutism. Now we’re talking about America’s largely successful, if incomplete struggle against racism instead of the systematic oppression of people in other countries as official state policy. Thanks for that.

Can someone explain to me why it seems like in the past month or so everybody and their mother has re-discovered "whataboutism" and insists on explaining the concept to me?

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human...

OK, but I first read the Wikipedia article linked a long time ago. Probably like ten years ago.

Perhaps double-replying is bad form but this is still bothering me. Soviets may have deployed the issue cynically, but black people really were being lynched, it really did compromise America's moral leadership on human rights, and embarrassment over the issue was a significant part of what spurred the federal government to begin to intervene. To the extent that you, as I do, view the creation of a relatively pluralistic and multicultural society as one of America's crowning achievements, perhaps we owe the Soviet "what-aboutists" a debt of gratitude.

The idea that the Russians invented rejecting someone's argument on the grounds that the person making the argument is a hypocrite strikes me as rather unlikely. I also see problems with the idea that we can simply dismiss complaints about racism as textbook Russian propaganda.

> The idea that the Russians invented rejecting someone's argument on the grounds that the person making the argument is a hypocrite strikes me as rather unlikely.

That is definitely exactly what happened. We would say something about them invading Afghanistan or forcibly making satellite states in the Warsaw pact, and they would instantly come back with "Well, we're not the ones lynching black people." It's remarkably persuasive if you don't think it through.

I do not claim that that did not happen; rather, what I claim is that there is nothing uniquely Russian about saying "what right do you have to criticize us by a standard which you yourself do not uphold?"

It’s not uniquely Russian, it’s just that it was systematically used by Russia far back into Soviet days making them a very strong example of using it to change the subject and avoid dealing with an issue.

Well, there sort of is.

The term you're speaking of "whataboutism" is not refuting the argument on logical priciples, it's an ad hominem attack.

Just because the person accusing you of doing something wrong is doing the same thing does not make it right for you to do it. What is the argument here to justify your behaviours or the judgment of others for your sins, even if they're guilty of the same? If I kill somebody, am I wrong for calling out somebody else out for killing somebody?

The Russians raised this into an art form. They justified Afghanistan by using Vietnam.

I get your sentiment, but being an expat does not automatically put you on the ban list unless you committed crime or previously had beef with the Chinese government.

Could you share the source for these claims?

I could not find anything that backs what you are saying.

https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-Chinese-economy...

You can indeed open a bank account in China with Chinese passport or even with a foreign passport. There are lots of limitations without the National ID, but do not spread false information if you are not well informed.

Fair: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-05/24/content_294696...

It looks like their is a lot of miscommunication on the issue.

Having seen authoritarian regimes behave on a smaller scale, I would not be terribly surprised if the miscommunication was intentional to see how the desired (very negative) policy was received, before backing down with a retraction to something less onerous.

You forgot to mention they can use facial recognition to ID and publicize pedestrians who don't wait for green light.

The sheer amount of resource and power they can wield against an individual citizen is unparalleled in the entire human history. The only thing stopping them from utilizing it is only its own bureaucratic inefficiency.

> I have a Chinese passport, but I cannot even buy train tickets online

you can. Just select passport and fill the passport number. I did it multiple times.

Welcome to HN where hyperbole is the order of the day.

One could argue that this is hyperbole.

If the US Treasury lists you on the OFAC SDN list, it becomes illegal for most of the vendors of those services to do business with you.

> Whatever you think the West is doing is not even close to this.

That is indeed true. But then, cultures of China and the West are very different. Judging either by the standards of the other is bound to be contentious.

Also, there's arguably some observer bias in the West's pride. Changes in the US after 9/11 were dramatic! What if radical Islamic fundamentalists had done a better job? More waves of attacks, soon after the first?

This person is a chinese expat, with a chinese passport. I think he knows the difference. And you only have to look to the rest of asia to see in this case, it's not a difference of 'culture'.

I'm not disagreeing that there's a difference. I'm saying that it'd be odd if there weren't a difference. Also, it's not useful to lump China with Asia overall.

China is, historically speaking, the most influential country in East and Southeast Asia, as evidenced by the fact that Korea, Japan, and Vietnam all use or used a script derived from Chinese characters and that there is a large Chinese diaspora in even more countries in the region. On what basis would we consider China an outlier? Just the post-war era? Despite ambitions to do so the CCP did not exactly sweep away Chinese culture as it existed prior to the ascendance of Mao.

I'm not sure why we're arguing. China clearly is different from the West. And so are other Asian nations. Not as different as China is, however. Maybe more or less proportionally vs relative cultural influence from China and the West.

I disagree with the idea that it "isn't useful to lump in China with Asia overall" because, in fact, there is a lot of commonality between Chinese culture and other Asian cultures.

Well, there are lumpers and splitters, and I tend to be a splitter.

But anyway, should one judge China based on Western principles and values. If so, what would be the basis for that?

And if not, should one judge China based on principles and values of <some other Asian nation>? I don't see the basis for that, either.

However, it is of course valid for Chinese to judge their own country, based on whatever principles and values they might hold. And to work for change. But that's a very different thing from random Westerners judging China.

Personally, I can't imagine living in China. I have a hard enough time tolerating the US. But it's for sure better than where I came from. Although, I must admit, far from what I had imagined. But so it goes.

>But anyway, should one judge China based on Western principles and values. If so, what would be the basis for that?

I would say that justifying authoritarianism is a perfect example of how appeals to cultural relativism can be dangerous.

There's a distinction that I've been failing horribly to make clearly. I don't like the current Chinese regime. I wouldn't want to live there. And I support projects to help Chinese dissidents.

However, I do my best to avoid judging. Labeling. Appealing to illusory fundamental ideals and standards.

Sure, but maybe "authoritarianism" is just an abstract concept, and there's a lot more to the current Chinese situation th

Without getting into the weeds of what exactly we should say they are, I would argue there is such a thing as a set of universal principles that anyone should be held to (to take the trite, obvious example, we shouldn't excuse the Holocaust on the basis of some distinct German values).

No, there's no excusing the Holocaust. But it is useful to understand how the Nazis got to that point. Wars make people crazy. WWI was a horrorshow. And just a couple decades later, WWII. Germany felt beaten and cornered, and the Nazis offered hope. And then things got totally out of hand.

But if you want to understand it, I think appeals to German essentialism would be among the worst ways.

Also there are counter examples of singapore, hong kong, macau and taiwan to show, no, chinese people are not culturally prone to creating a '1984' dystopia.

You can split hairs saying 'it used to be more authoritarian', 'one party has been in power for a long time', or 'it used to be under the nominal control of a western state' since no place is 1:1, but in the end it shows typical chinese people do not want it either.

13th Amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

----------------

Slavery is ALLOWED if guilty of a crime. So go on ahead and keep espousing "rah rah USA". We're still in a slave country.

Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion? My understanding is that work is optional, comes with a very small amount of compensation as incentive, but is otherwise non-compulsory.

Is any US State or Federal prison running cotton plantations in Georgia with forced, uncompensated labor?

>My understanding is that work is optional

Its officially optional on paper, but in practice it can be held against you and result in worse treatment and longer prison time (such as being used against you in parole hearings). Also, slavery doesn't require being used for labor. While most slavery is for some economic gain to the slave holder, it isn't a required component.

> Its officially optional on paper

Except in that in the federal system and many state systems, it's officially required of all able-bodied prisoners and refusal gets extra punishment, such as solitary confinement.

"solitary confinement" which is properly recognized as a form of torture. So you CAN opt to be tortured instead. Clearly optional

Some states (for instance, Texas) require (with medical exceptions) inmates to work, with no compensation

Yes, and there are plenty of articles about it. For example:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-...

It is also apparently mentioned in Hillary Clinton's memoirs that they had unpaid prison labor at the governor's mansion to save money.

>> Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion?

> Yes, and there are plenty of articles about it. For example:

Let's look up the definition of "slave":

> a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another;

Prison labor is not slavery, this is clearly shown by the fact that you can't buy or sell prisoners on the open market. Prison labor is involuntary servitude. It's still shitty and in need of reform, but hyperbole does no one any good.

Let's imagine an alternate history where, before the Civil War, they made a law that said you could no longer buy and sell your slaves, but you could still keep them on your property and make them labor for you. Has slavery been abolished? I'd say no, not in any meaningful sense.

Chattel slavery is not the only form of slavery.

Distinction without a difference.

> Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion?

Yes, and it is precisely the reason the US is one of the few eligible countries not to have ratified the main current treaty against slavery, the ILO Forced Labor Convention.

> My understanding is that work is optional

Prison labor is generally mandatory for able-bodied prisoners in the federal system, and this is true in some state systems as well.

> Is any US State or Federal prison running cotton plantations in Georgia with forced, uncompensated labor?

Historically, slavery has often had compensation, and, yes, there are literally forced labor prison farms in the USA, such as the Mississippi State Penitentiary, aka “Parchman Farm”.

There have been some reforms since the origins of the penal slavery system in the US, in which the government involved literally rented convicted out to private businesses, but it remains a system of slavery, often involving a public/private partnership for profit.

Note: this topic is a horrible derail from the OP.

>> Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion?

>Yes, and it is precisely the reason the US is one of the few eligible countries not to have ratified the main current treaty against slavery, the ILO Forced Labor Convention.

That's false. Involuntary servitude is not slavery. Here's the definition of slave:

> a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another;

To be a slave, you have to be someone's property, as in able to be bought and sold as chattle.

> the main current treaty against slavery, the ILO Forced Labor Convention.

That treaty clearly prohibits a much broader class of things than just slavery, it purports to ban forced labor of almost any kind (for anyone who isn't "an adult able-bodied male", apparently):

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

> Its object and purpose is to suppress the use of forced labour in all its forms irrespective of the nature of the work or the sector of activity in which it may be performed. The Convention defines forced labour as "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily", with few exceptions like compulsorly military service. The convention excludes "adult able-bodied males", to whom legal imposition of forced labour is allowed.

OK, so they're not slaves, they're just people who enjoy no freedom, can be sent to and from facilities at the state's whim, and who are subject to forced labor. I feel like this is a distinction without a difference.

The difference is that you committed a crime, landed yourself in jail, are not the property of the state, and have a finite term to serve. Sounds like a big difference to me.

Historically, that was at times abused by simply creating a lot of laws you could wantonly charge black people with breaking. But even setting that aside, we are simply calling slavery (or, at best, indentured servitude) an appropriate punishment for crime, not describing some phenomenon wholly different in kind.

Consider the text of the Thirteenth Amendment. It specifically exempts prison labor from its prohibition on slavery.

Does not seem any different to me, if the only difference is the jail, you can just create a bullshit law to put those people in jail (see the war on drugs).

Explicit slavery as punishment for a crime and/or for a fixed term is not uncommon; clearly the slaves in US prisons aren't fee simple property of the state, but fee simple isn't the only kind of property relationship.

None of the elements you mention distinguish US penal slavery from historical institutions hmthst were unambiguously recognized as slavery.

You mean you have been convicted of a crime. Very important distinction

Chattle slavery, though one of the most recent forms of slavery, and the most heinous to date, is not the only type of slavery.

Able bodied inmates have no choice whether or not to work when ordered to. Companies routinely rent prison labor to avoid having to pay employee wages for work. Private prisons routinely sell non-able bodied inmates to state run prisons. An inmate can neither purchase their freedom nor purchase out of servitude.

That there is a time limit on inmate ownership does not mean there is no ownership.

> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

If someone is found guilty and is given "community service" of a given specification as their retribution to society, is that not technically slavery (involuntary servitude)?

Slavery and involuntary servitude aren't the same thing.

This is clearly shown by the fact that the state can't sell your person as chattel to someone else when you're sentenced to prison or community service.

People can select an institution to do community service. Call in sick. Opt to change their mind and do said service at a different place. Although they owe x number of hours of service their labor is their own and cannot be sold by a third party nor are they held against their will.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. eddieplan9 didn't claim that the US is a flawless, perfect nation. They're saying that despite the issues with the US (and I do agree that there are a lot), drawing conclusions between the US and China is a false equivalency and that things in China re: social freedom is much worse than here. Pointing out flaws with the US doesn't take away from his point.

This isn't addressing what was said.

You posted this in response to someone else's comment, and made clear that you are trying to argue with something else.

You were arguing with "rah rah USA," and that just ain't what was said.

Come on, brother, let's grow up for the sake of us all.

The comment you're referring to is exactly what the parent was talking about. The usual pattern is something along the lines of:

"[OTHER COUNTRY] is doing something bad."

"WHAT ABOUT AMERICA?!"

"It's not equivalent."

"Oh, so America is perfect, then?"

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