China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
economist.com
economist.com
It's hard to think of any more dangerous invention. Even nuclear weapons aren't as dangerous as a sustainable model for modern tyrannical government.
This is an invention that would be exported and widely adopted.
The liberal democratic model of government spread around the world not just because the people saw it work in America and decided that's what they wanted, but also because the ruling aristocrats saw that it would be net better for them. The French Revolution probably helped convince them it compared favorably to the guillotine.
If another model is pioneered and proven that's better for the ruling class, it won't be difficult to find regimes eager to adopt it.
The problem is, the higher we go on the Maslow pyramid, the more likely it is for it to fail. You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it).
And totalitarianism by definition has problems accepting criticism.
The only way for totalitarianism to “work” is if the rulers are both much smarter than the population as a whole and also benevolent.
Regarding China, let’s see. These kinds of regimes don’t fail immediately. Just the cracks get bigger and bigger. From what I heard there’s a consolidation of power going on, that’s generally a sure sign of the first cracks appearing.
The Chinese rich I've interacted with are also (in my experience, at least - I don't have stats to support this) really ignorant of how bad a lot of their countrymen have it. A friend of mine's father is some sort of government official in a tier 1 or 2 city, and he's told me that the rich and poor are segregated enough that he himself didn't even realize his family was anything other than middle class until he came to Canada and saw it wasn't exactly normal to have parents who can afford 100k+ annual tuition, luxury cars and apartments, etc.
I dont think thats realistic anymore. Once they are able to hit first and hit hard when opposition forms, they are pretty much untouchable.
The whole argument, of autocratic regimes having a higher chance of collapsing the longer the reign looks like a naive outdated approach to me. It bets on a critical mass of opposition forming. With total surveillance this wont happen.
A successful mass protest has to start somewhere. If you arrest those first people willing to risk everything you quell the entire thing. Its the basic concept of 1984. The only thing holding back this dystopia was the lack of a big brother state with sufficient insight.
If you look at collapses of authoritarian regimes due to public pressure, they happen to a similar pattern. A small group of people start a protest and depending on how hated the regime is and how bad the living condition for most people are, others will join in, the more the less likely it becomes for them to be individually picked out.
This only works if the initial small group has enough time to motivate enough people to join in so that it snowballs. Earlier approaches were to minimize the time the small groups had to snowball with quick and hard actions, but with more and more surveillance, it becomes possible to target people even before they join. At a certain point it becomes possible to watch over every last citizen and target anyone who might be willing to start something like this in the future.
You create an upper middle class for the "creatives" and you restrict the areas of creativity to military and industrial use.
Most well off people that I know are happy to think the poor deserve to be poor and repressed (different people have different reasons for justifying it. Few seen to really care).
The party can pick the smart people from population to join.
China was here before. Cutting yourself off from the world just means you eventually find yourself having fallen behind everyone else.
The CCP does have the benefit of learning from the failures of the Soviets.
> China was here before. Cutting yourself off from the world just means you eventually find yourself having fallen behind everyone else.
That mainly happened because they were so dominant in their sphere that they didn't bother themselves with far off areas that seemed primitive to them. I'm pretty sure the CCP has learned from that mistake.
They're walling off foreign political ideas and avenues for domestic political organization, not foreign technological advancements. They are very explicit about that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...
You could split a country economically into a wealthy economic zone and a zone for the working class.
Or you could have a wealthy country that helps another country to be totalitarian, for the right economic gains.
After Augustus Rome still had a couple of hundred years of expansion where a nationalist could argue, “hey look at that! Things are still going good.” But they couldn’t outrun the rot in the system forever.
After Xi will China get another strongman? I think this is the key. If there are a series of total dictators things will decay. Whatever justifications a dictator uses for their rules, ultimately they are going to try to implement policies that keep themselves on top first.
Which is why I am personally a lot more alarmed at the current US Presidency than most of my peers. Inept rulers have historically been the best predictors of a civilization's downfall. The fervent opposition to the administration by ordinary US citizens gives me hope but if Republicans continue to hold on to power after November, I really do feel that all will be lost.
What we are seeing today is essentially a low intensity conflict[0] not unlike what took place in white Rhodesia/Namibia, Northern Ireland during the troubles, etc. There is a economic reason why these conflicts could not last indefinitely, no matter what ideologies drive them.
China seems to want to create a monoculture with norms that don't bend from locale to locale. I think the saying is: if it don't bend, it will break.
Northern Ireland (in the 1900s) was less about resistance to a tyrannical state, and much more about a population split 50/50ish who had hated each other for a few hundred years. British action there was far from exemplary, but had the people of Northern Ireland woken up one day to find they were part of the Republic of Ireland, precisely no problems would have been solved.
Heavy policing may put a lid on the problem for now but in the long run it will only undo several generations of hard work pacifying the region.
[0]:http://www.cqvip.com/qk/83491x/201503/665772571.html, the text is paywalled but a short excerpt containing relevant information can be viewed at https://www.1xuezhe.exuezhe.com/Qk/art/591377?dbcode=1&flag=...
China has a social credit system that is locked in with this totalitarian system. Based on how irrational humans are I fully expect a huge spike in suicides. Once people get into so much social debt that people stop associating with them and they are locked out of work and simple things such as garbage collection they will start to end their lives.
I want to be wrong about suicide and right about social credit systems though....
What if you're wrong? You have doubts, where's the evidence?
> What we are seeing today is essentially a low intensity conflict
This part I don't see at all. Who are the sides in this low intensity conflict? The examples in Wikipedia are distinct identities or states. What identities are in contention in China?
There's not enough data to make predictions like that. But one very good reason for optimism is that China's current totalitarian stability is an unstable false vacuum. It's sustained by the outrageously rapid economic growth seen in the decades since the cultural revolution.
Basically: if you're Chinese, your grandparents (if they were lucky) survived a devastating world war and invasion by Japan, an even more devastating civil war, and a yet more devastating still famine forced on them by the nutjobs who won the civil war.
And now their grandkids are all running around with smartphones in their pockets, collecting college diplomas and international graduate degrees, vacationing in Thailand and Hawaii, and generally dancing on the world stage like the Americans do.
That kind of success pays for a lot of totalitarian angst. But it won't forever. These folks' kids aren't going to be happy with only 2% GDP growth as payment for their political dominance by a corrupt elite. The proletariat never has been.
I am not in the clairvoyant business. Expressing doubt is as much as I could do.
>This part I don't see at all. Who are the sides in this low intensity conflict?
Armed insurrection has been ongoing on since the early 90s[0] loosely organised by ETIM[1] as well as various affiliated Islamist groups in neighboring countries especially of late. They are backed by sympathetic donors in the Gulf states, Turkey and (allegedly) the CIA. Since then there have been several high profile riots and terrorist attacks both in[2] and out[3] of Xinjiang.
Obviously they are fighting against the police and the army loyal to the government. In addition there are local entities known as Bingtuan[4] that are best described as a military-industrial complex with several company towns at strategic locations throughout the region. They are under the direct command of the state department and are expected to counter the provincial leadership should they become insubordinate.
There are also smaller groups of Hui (Chinese Muslims) seeking to consolidate their identity and Kazakh irredentists seeking reunification with Kazakhstan, but they are much less significant and tend to be allied with he government against the Uighur.
[0]：https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baren_Township_riot [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan_independence_mo... [2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_rio... [3]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack [4]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Production_and_Constr...
Why do you think the Chinese government can't sustain the cost? Intensive policing is manpower intensive, and China presently has manpower to spare. They also don't have to deal with democratic pressures to contain the cost and redirect the savings to programs that benefit the general public.
The ruling class has luxuries that they could not have developed for themselves without them being broadly available. I'm thinking of things like cell phones, the Internet, and possibly the money system.
Parasites need a viable host.
I think _that_ is the sustainability problem we need to talk about. We're feeding them and starving ourselves.
And in twenty years they will not, that is the crux of the issue.
If the system mistakes you for someone else, you might get your door kicked down, your dog shot, and get dragged in and interrogated. Then you will come to realize what will happen if you really run afoul of them. So maybe you think twice if you're planning an infraction in the future.
So they may well want to round up the top N suspects, knowing that N-1 are innocent.
Autocratic regimes have lasted for as long as 3000 years (pharonic Egypt).
I'm sure lots of people want to believe the Chinese system won't work; but that doesn't make it true.
If Egypt was truly superior, it really should not have been so easily conquered by Ptolemy and then Rome which both had a much less authoritarian society.
" Oh don't worry this nightmare will stop in about 2 decades"
In other words, the economic system determines the political system. When hunter-gatherers became farmers, the political system changed. When farming as the center made way for manufacturing and industry, the political system changed (as did culture).
I don't see this as much different than Americans driving Lakota onto the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Just two years ago the US federal government arrested and injured many on that reservation. Or Americans driving Vietnamese onto strategic hamlets. Or locking Japanese up in the 1940s. I don't see what innovation the Chinese have made.
Take Turkey for example, under Erdoğan. Let's say he is, or wants to be, a traditional dictator. He's probably gone in 10 or 20 years due to age. His regime ends with him, very likely, because there's no broad cultural underpinning to his regime and legacy. That's the case in most totalitarian examples of the last century.
The cultural reformations that enabled the China boom, starting with Deng Xiaoping, are being systematically rolled backwards.
The economic gains from the late 1970s to ~2009, were very easy compared to the challenges that come next to continue pushing the per capita results ever higher. When you're starting from $175 GDP per capita in 1980, just about any meaningful improvement at all in the system will get you to $1,000 or $2,000 per capita.
My point being, only when the tide goes out do you see who is swimming naked, to borrow a line from Warren Buffett. China's vast growth no doubt masks immense problems that only become clearer in their scope and risk as their 30 year economic expansion matures (as it is now).
The people of China will tolerate a lot of things if you take them from $200 GDP per capita to $10,000. China is not going to be able to replicate that climb again, from here forward. That will have consequences, as the social contract in China requires perpetual, preferably rapid, improvement.
What China has done is extraordinarily expensive. They paid for it with a unique, historically singular export machine and trade surplus and starting from a context of a near zero welfare state (diverts capital from investment & growth) and from a setup with nearly maximum economic slack (easy to fill in for decades).
What other nations have anything like that setup to replicate from? Russia (fascist dictatorship, long totalitarian history) for example doesn't have that sort of extreme economic slack, its GDP per capita is already up where China is at today; the same goes for Turkey. The Russian system is mature, slow growth, with considerable existing structural financial demands that prevent the vast free use of capital as in China.
China's rules today are not the same as China's rules in 1996 or 2006. Culturally they've lost a lot of the modest freedom gains that were acquired over decades, in just the last five or six years. How does that impact the ability of their economic system to continue to scale over time, as the oppression ramps up?
These are two different systems - Deng vs Xi - not a continuing of the same system. Xi gets to ride on the accomplishments of the Deng revolution, including the financial capabilities it made possible. I think it's a fair question as to whether China can keep moving forward as they previously were, while simultaneously removing the Deng approach that made it all possible in the first place.
At the height of civil war the western classical liberal democracies looked weak and near collapse while Soviet looked too strong and awesome until one day it just collapsed. It is a bubble boy vs Sewer Rat thing. The bubble boy looks extremely clean and insulated from bad things until one day it just dies of common cold. The filthy NY sewer rat however survives carrying in itself 10 different types of plagues.
> China seems committed to making totalitarianism "work."
We need to take a backseat and realise that American media simply does not get China, India or Japan. They are judging the world from their own spectacles which might be wrong. An average Chinese today is freerer than an average Chinese 30 years ago despite all efforts by their government. An average American today is less free than an average American 30 years ago.
I am incredible hopeful for India and China in upcoming efforts. I recently spoke to a Chinese attache at local embassy. He was as ecstatic to be outside China as now he could access Youtube and Facebook. He considered his own government moves to ban these services in his country absolutely stupid and saw them as a hindrance to help China emerge as a soft power.
FYI the American Civil War ended in 1865 while the first Soviet was in 1905. And the first ~10 years after the ‘17 revolution were absolutely terrible in the Soviet Union. So your statement just isn’t correct.
Btw I suggest you reread your French Revolution history. The aristocracy was very much back in power within a year of the king getting his head chopped off. And then they propped up Napoloen who decided he needed to conquer the world. The next 100 years were spent with the elites of one European country or another colonising and pilaging most of South America, Africa and Asia. So much for freedom and equality and the aristocracy learning any lesson. They are still more of less in power with the same mindless global ambitions unless you haven't seen the inequality numbers and have your head buried deep in the sand.
The one country to avoid this, Britain, learned the lesson of the French Revolution. They maed enough reforms that there was no constituency for revolution.
Er, Britain had been a constitutional monarchy for a long time before the French Revolution, and many of the others made reforms rather than being overthrown, and in many cases, like Britain, well before the French Revolution.
Your version of history is badly distorted.
The 2nd Amendment specifies that a well regulated militia is necessary for a free state, and that the right to keep and bear arms cannot be abridged by the Federal government.
Nothing in that amendment specifically mentions the purpose of preventing totalitarian government. That's a modern interpretation, albeit one currently upheld by the Supreme Court.
You have to take into account the context. It was written and ratified by people who'd just staged a revolution against what they described as a "tyrannical" regime, often using their own personal weapons.
To note that the Constitution doesn't mention "totalitarianism" is to note that it doesn't contain an anachronism. It's a modern coinage that's not to far in meaning from "tyranny."
Exactly. If America has learned anything from the past half century of foreign military adventures, it should be that a big modern Army can't easily defeat a motivated insurgency that has the support and sympathy in the local population.
The 2nd Amendment may have a lot of costs, but the private gun ownership it provides for would definitely make it much more difficult for a domestic totalitarian regime to establish itself in the US.
I'm also pretty sure that Iraqi civilians didn't have much access to small arms prior to the destabilization of the country. Didn't slow down the insurgency any.
An insurgency has a lot of freedom in choosing its targets. If they don't have the weapons to directly attack armor or air power, they can avoid them. And with armor, there are other options, such as IEDs.
Also, I'd bet that an American insurgency against a totalitarian American government would get outside arms and support, as well as sympathy, support, and defections from actual US Army units. I don't think the US military would be able to maintain the same level of cohesion it has during foreign wars in a civil war.
A totalitarian regime would probably repeal the 2nd amendment as one of it's first acts, the the existing stock of small arms and ammunition would be enough for an insurgency or rebellion to start. I'd be much harder for a disarmed population to begin resistance.
Think about any standoff between protesters and police or national guard in the us. Lefty students or unionists or whatever get shot or peppersprayed by cops or national guardsmen with a family to feed and a career defined by obeying the rules - that equation will not change with scale.
In fact, this is precisely what happened with ISIS. I shudder to think what might have happened if the powers to be had not put aside their differences to fight a common foe.
The West has had, for the last 200 years (and arguably for the last 500) the advantage that its economic system is better than its rivals. This is a massive, game-changing advantage. But it's not obvious to me that the West is still ahead economically -- look at China's growth rates over the last 40 years. Admittedly they are coming from behind, but because of their population they only need 1/4 of the GDP per head of the USA to be ahead on total GDP.
I would say there's about a 50% possibility that China will make an authoritarianism that works, that's at least as successful economically as the West. And if that comes about it will be a real game-changer. And frankly, I don't think the West is up to the task of meeting the challenge; certainly I would not bet on Trump, Merkel, May et al doing the right thing.
This is mainly colonialism. The Han Chinese state is subjugating the Uighur people and taking their now strategic land.
I heard once that in a world where everyone agrees to being spied on by carrying a mobile, the mobile-less will be suspect. I never thought this would actually be the case, but there it is: people must install government spyware on their personal devices.
Reading this gave me a new appreciation of how human rights are broken in China. I sincerely hope that those people recover their freedom.
As recent history had shown, even Western countries, proud of their freedom and Enlightenment values, may realize that something bad is happening when it's too late. Seeing how surveillance is making comparatively small advances here, I'm slightly more worried that privacy might be completely extinguished from the world one day.
Domestically there are 3.3 million Muslims in the US. There are ~50 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with most of the former detainees having been released without charge. Some of them were charged as enemy combatants and or terrorists. And Guantanamo is widely considered a black mark on the US reputation.
The US has millions of Muslims that co-exist entirely peacefully with a very large Christian majority. After 9/11, at the height of anti-Muslim emotions in the US, Muslim Americans weren't put into camps by the tens or hundreds of thousands; they weren't slaughtered; their rights weren't wiped out; their culture and religion wasn't made illegal; the US didn't arrest them by the hundreds of thousands in targeted fashion. In fact, it's extraordinary just how peaceful and calm the situation after 9/11 actually was: if you believed the propaganda, America surely would have killed or arrested every Muslim in the country, except the propaganda is all a lie.
The US is not trying to destroy Islam in the US. The US is not interning millions of Muslims, trying to eradicate their culture and beliefs. The US is not torturing its Muslim population of 3.3 million. The US is not restricting their movement, their worship, or keeping them from owning guns or knives to defend themselves. The US is not razing their places of worship. The US is not building massive camps to put hundreds of thousands of Muslims into.
The US isn't doing anything even remotely similar to what's going on in China.
and at home the US strips away freedoms from their own people with the justification of "national security".
What I remember most was:
1) nearly hourly MMS messages to my flip phone from unknown numbers with an unknown attachment. Since my phone was bought outside China, the MMS attachment didn't automatically open the likely spyware.
2) Being followed and monitored by plainclothes policemen
3) Having my hotel room searched while I was away. Having police come to my hotel room to interrogate me but lacking access because I had the only key to the room (very very cheap hotel).
4) Armed convoys of Chinese army soldiers constantly going up and down major streets.
The modern world is so complex and changes so much that the only way to get this is a free flow of information in which everyone can honestly say what is happening in their particular part of the society, and everyone can make suggestions and offer evaluations.
Authoritarian regimes shut all of this off, such as through turning the press into a governmental propaganda machine, and dictating what university professors can research.
The consequence is the top decision makers live in an epistemic bubble and become increasingly out of touch with reality, and increasingly subject to group-think. And that in turn leads to poorer and poorer decisions, and eventually the system comes to an end. I think it is quite predictable that this is where Xi's regime is heading over the long term.
Yet we do not see any serious examination from the economist on threats to democracy from surveillance. Infact it is at the forefront on hit pieces on Snowden accusing him of treachery [1] which means their concern for 'surveillance' is entirely fabricated.
Why is Assange still stranded and Snowden in Russia? What consequences has there been from the revelations on western security services and rubber stamp courts? No answer from the economist because they aren't even asking the question. Yet another cheap ploy to use 'human rights', 'democracy' and 'freedom' to attack other countries while soiling these principles.
The economist is a principal cheerleader of neoliberalism, shock therapy and other exploitative economic policies that directly lead to corruption, theft of national resources by uncontrolled privatization and oligarchies in third world countries. Nothing to do with democracy.
This kind of hypocrisy and grandstanding has run its course, its a dangerous distraction designed to lull readers into complacency while entrenched interests that publications like the economist support make democracy more and more meaningless.
[1] https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2014/01/10/tr...
Generation(s) of Han Chinese and Uighurs get together and start having children. An act of loving subversion, if you will. At what level of mixing does the dangerous Uighur contribution become safe to you? 50%? 25%? 12.5%?
[Only somewhat tongue-in-cheek.]
The largest group of Muslims in China are the Hui Muslims (about 10 million of them). They are the descendants of the Muslims that were absorbed during conquests in the Tang and Ming Dynasty.
They eventually integrated and married other Han Chinese. They are still Muslim, but also identify as Chinese. There are also affirmative action programs for them, making it easier for them to into good colleges and government jobs.
They were also exempt from the 1-child policy.
They are how Asians are in the US, the "model minority."
Please explain, then, why race is a category used to reduce a person's numeric "trustworthiness score" in China. If one is ethnically Uighur instead of Han or if one has received religious education then one is deemed by the government as "less trustworthy" -- not because of behaviour or evidence of a crime but simply because of ethnicity.[1][2][3]
Since this score is used to determine whether freedoms are restricted (e.g. travel, communication, and forced "re-education"), it is racism.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thousands-chin...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-educatio...
[3] (TFA) https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...
Typical western values are seriously underrated and are not taken seriously.
We depend on Putin's mercy for energy, because a lot of us skipped game theory in kindergarden apparently. Someone mentioned cell phones. Yes that'd be good, to have a full end to end electronics pipeline around here. And so on.
What, like nuclear bombs?
Because that's what most likely will kill you in a large scale conflict between superpowers.
There ought to be a law that you can't advocate for war unless you've actually been to war...
He's in for a big surprise.
On the plus side, the surprise will be quick.
I'm not saying I agree that war would be good.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Paying for the content ought to do the trick.
Get real, only suckers pay for such things.
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https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
They don't care about things until a mob of similar people care about it. It is group thinking and virtue signaling at its peak
He who holds the biggest stick writes the book of law
The book "Liars and Outliers" addresses this question some, at least in broad hypothetical terms.
The problem is people clinging to old time religious beliefs that women are inferior and must be veiled and that infidels are not worthy
We've slowly dispelled Christian fervor (which used to be just as bad as Islamic fundamentalism) by slowly improving the scientific literacy rate and living standards in the west. Must of the Islamic countries haven't seen growth like this. How do you root these out?
Not sure if China's hard handed approach may work. Maybe it will, who knows. Maybe it will fail. But we at least must do something about it
Like oppress an entire region of people who aren't committing violence to get to the handful who are?
Example: http://www.france24.com/en/20180511-saudi-financed-belgian-m...
And while freedom of expression is important, it is limited (especially in Germany). Racists expressions are a no-no pretty much everywhere.
Now Jews feel increasingly unsafe in the streets of Europe.
I'm not sure about the rest of the "western" world. But I this the way it is in the United States.
Violence is obviously already illegal, as is anti-semitism in many western countries.
I doubt your sincerity about that and the rest of your arguments.
"28 % des musulmans de France peuvent être regroupés dans ce groupe qui mélange à la fois des attitudes autoritaires et d’autres que l’on pourrait qualifier de « sécessionnistes ». L’islam est un moyen pour eux de s’affirmer en marge de la société française." [28% of muslim living in France can be grouped in this group that mix both authoritarian and « separatist » attitudes. Islam is for them a way to affirm themselves at the edge of the French society.] Un Islam de France est Possible, Institut Montaigne / Hakim El Karoui, 2016.
What about population pressures? What about religous disagreements, what about nationalism? Old grudges?
Why can't fundamental belief systems be part of the substrate of this equation that results in war. They change every other aspect of life and politics in many cases.
I will fully agree with you on greed, however. And I'd even go as far as to agree with you on religion being a tool rather than the real factor. But there's also another thing you're missing on the religious issue. The terrorists in Xinjiang killed hundreds of completely random people - and often in close contact with weapons such as knives. Well random in at least they tried to target non-Muslims. That's something I think the vast majority of people simply could not bring themselves to do. That just takes a whole lot of hate, or at best complete sociopathic disregard, for somebody you know absolutely nothing about. And religion, fundamentalistic religion in particular, is something that helps breed that hate. And it also lets people believe that after they go kill those random people, somehow they're going to end up in a magical place where until the end of time they get to go screw 72 perpetual virgins while being served by 80,000 servants. Haha. Maybe we've come full circle and the religion itself ties right back into greed!
This is unsubstantiated even in mediaeval times. For example the crusades were minor skirmishes compared to what is the invasion of spain and the balkans - not to mention all the other places in Africa, Asia and the middle east.
It is also implies that Islam can be reformed (because it's just another religion) and is just behind for developmental reasons, but there are fundamental differences.
Broadly speaking, Christianity is Orthodox - it is important what you believe, Islam is Orthopraxic - it is important what you do.
More importantly, Islam makes a virtue of violence and conquests and Christianity is centred on piety. Now clearly they can be binding forces for tribes and it is possible for Christians to be quarelsome and muslims to be peaceful but this is in contradiction with the teachings. (And all the refutations to this w.r.t. to the Quran either only apply to believers, or are superceded later in the Quran).
In long-Islamic countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, there are a large number of pre-existing minority religions: Yazidis, Mandeans, Samaritans, and a number of others -- as well as long-established Jewish and Christian communities. Those communities have been surrounded by Islam for more than a thousand years, and while they've undoubtedly got some legitimate complaints about Islam, the fact is that they're still there.
Compare and contrast to Christianity. Before Christianity took over, Europe, like the Middle East was a rich tapestry of pre-existing religions. None of them survived: they were universally exterminated with extreme prejudice. This was not a gentle process: Norway, for example, was Christianised by as man whose favoured way of dealing with stubborn pagans was to force iron rods down their throats and force poisonous snakes into them.
So no, Christianity wasn't a more tolerant religion. The absence of any survivors -- in contrast to Islam -- is a testament to this.
[1] https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1110721/-a-quoi-serven...
The current situation stems from much more than just religious choice.
The Spanish case is also totally different and you can't blame them to get back again their territory and hold a grudge against the religion of their former invaders. I agree however that this is more complex than a simple religion choice, because in most case, this is not a choice (especially centuries ago) and its intertwined with a lot of other factors.
The Spanish case is not different. Much of Spain had been Muslim for as long as it had ever been Christian, and the Christians had been part of the empire for centuries. The expulsion wasn't an ancient grudge over being conquered, if it was then they wouldn't have also forced the Jewish population to do the same thing.
Oh, and if Spanish aggression was justified, colonialism justifies the current aggression in the Middle East.
But that's history. If we're talking about the present day, that's another matter entirely. The Islamic State is, today, roughly as ruthless and intolerant as Christianity used to be. This is not a defence of the Islamic State: what they do is evil and abhorrent and deserves to be stopped. And ISIS is in many ways a "natural" extremity of Wahhabi fundamentalism, which is deeply problematic wherever it is found. I'm not bringing up Christianity's appalling history in Europe for the sake of exculpatory whataboutism, but rather to make the point that no religion is a monolith, and that the same broad umbrella can contain both tolerant sects and theocratic genocidal ones.
So my contention is that Wahhabiism and its even worse offshoots should not be conflated with Islam as a whole, which both historically and continuing into the present day has been a largely (if unevenly) tolerant religion. Those tolerant elements should be acknowledged and accepted. When people condemn Islam as a whole, this diminishes the standing of tolerant Muslims (who can then be attacked as some kind of fifth column), and increasing the standing of extremists (who can then position themselves as stalwart defenders of the faith).
So not only is the "Islam has always been intolerant, and therefore must be opposed" argument simply wrong on a factual basis, it's also bad tactics. Unless you want to be in league with the extremists.
China's "hard handed approach" is about ethnically cleansing conquered territories, crushing whatever indigenous subject populations they can't outright displace, and destroying any institutions or social organizations that exist independently of the CCP.
See: Catalans, Scotland, Kashmir, Palestine, Tuaregs in Mali, etc.
I keep wondering what China is going to do when these efforts fail (genocide being the primary worry). Xi's dictatorship will only grow more powerful and oppressive in the next five or ten years, as is nearly universal with the history of dictatorships. I don't believe China will be able to strip away the religious beliefs & culture easily, nor near-term. The only way they can do it, is over a very long time frame, and by trying to forcibly prevent the next generations from becoming Muslims.
As news of what's going on there spreads globally, to the Middle East and other bordering Islamic regions, China may have to build considerable border fortifications to keep terrorists out (people seeking revenge, or just an excuse to wage jihad, and attempting to flow weapons in). China of course borders Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan - all Muslim majority nations.
I think that is at best fragile as a general statement. I would argue that increases in local support are dependent on other factors besides heavy-handedness or harshness, and that these vary on a case by case basis. For a plethora of counter-examples see:
The history of the Jewish people, Native Americans during colonialism, the anabaptists or the calvinists in European history, the Muslim populations after the conquest of Granada.
Wow, such an uninformed generalized comment. Not something you would expect to see at hacker news.
Anyway, just because the West had problems with Christianity does not mean the East have the same problems with Islam. That is one of the reasons why Islam has more practicing followers than any other religion on earth.
The main reason there are so many islam followers is that they have more kids on average.
[0] http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
In a legal matter, what general Muslims think about it (like a pew poll) does not matter because most of them, just like any other population are not experts in judiciary.
Regarding your points about Muslims having more kids, there is nothing preventing these kids from turning away from the religion, just like the kids of old devout Christians today no longer identify as at least practicing Christians.
0. https://yaqeeninstitute.org/en/jonathan-brown/the-issue-of-a...
I think the lesson of the 20th century is that denying people's humanity and dignity as individuals leads to corpses piling up very, very fast.
Unfortunately if you compare Islamic societies in the late 19th/early 20th centuries to those from middle of the 20th to now it's seemingly become regressive and insular.
Let's not forget that if you go back a few centuries further Islamic societies were progressing and preserving scientific knowledge while Christendom was rolling around in mud (I'm exaggerating).
You have to go back to the Abbasid Dynasty to reach the Islamic renaissance / golden age, prior to the Mongol destruction of that and the moving of the Caliphate to Egypt. By the time the Mongols sacked Baghdad, the Abbasid Dynasty and the renaissance had much eroded compared to its former glory. We're nearing a thousand years that you have to go back to reach the Islamic golden age.
Big names in evangelical culture with TV air time or even visits to the White House also trumpet on a regular basis that the end times are near, blood will need to be spilled, the muslim hordes are invading, etc. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem was literally a move designed to please Christian fundamentalists who view that as a step towards the End Times, and the reaping that follows it.
At most, Christian fervor is more polite now, if only because there are fewer lands left for them to conquer and they're more comfortable.
Context: I spent a decade in the ministry.
"115 right-wing inspired terror incidents. 35% of these were foiled (meaning no attack happened) and 29% resulted in fatalities. These terror incidents caused 79 deaths.
"63 Islamist inspired terror incidents. 76% of these were foiled (meaning no attack happened) and 13% resulted in fatalities. These terror incidents caused 90 deaths.
"19 incidents inspired by left-wing ideologies (including eco-terrorism). 20% of these were foiled (meaning no attack happened) and 10% resulted in fatalities. These terror incidents caused 7 deaths."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...
https://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigation/2017/06/2...
Are a minority of the people of Xinjiang committing violent acts because they want a Caliphate and to convert Han chinese, or are they doing it because the Uighurs are treated very badly by the Chinese government and they want autonomy and rallying around a common religious identity is their own recourse, especially if they want help from overseas?
Why do we not treat the Northern Irish who rallied around their religious identity and attracted the sympathies and support of American Irish?
Why when Tibetan Buddhists commit violence we don't say it's their religion and immediately start looking for geo-political or economic reasons?
When people are abused, tribes develop and they rally around whatever they have left: skin color, language, religion. While I have problems with Islam's doctrine, and religion in general (especially Abrahamic religions), it's extremely simplistic to attribute everyone's motivations and actions to the doctrine and not look at what drove individuals to commit acts against the state.
Why when Tibetan Buddhists commit violence we don't say it's their religion and immediately start looking for geo-political or economic reasons?..."
To be perfectly frank, a large part of the reason is just propaganda.
For instance, are Buddhists slaughtering muslims in Myanmar? Yes, without question. But a lot of our policymakers probably are thinking, "Man, we invested a whole lot in the Buddhists against the military government over there." (You know, Ang sang suu kyi and all that.) We, kind of, can't go back now. Maybe it's a lot like the sunk cost fallacy. But on a geopolitical scale? You're only willing to fold when the whole thing just collapses. And it hasn't, yet. So we keep trying to make it work.
The Quran is equal parts a political construct, religion, and a sociological text that covers everything from spirituality, to the idea of man, to how to wage proper war. Whereas a Buddhist text is not, but rather simply a constellation of philosophical conjectures, and assertions that mostly pertain to one's own consciousness.
The question is simple. Does ideology, and in extension religion, motivate people to be violent? I dare you to actually bring and propose to reinterpret the Quran. It simply won't happen, and until and unless Muslims in majority seek to reform/reinterpret the Quran, like it has been done in Christianity, you cannot progress Islam.
I mean if we're going to be entirely reductive then I think we can also say that ALL ideologies are also the same. The Allies, and Axis powers were in essence both the same thing, and either party weren't in any way morally superior. The Nazis were the same thing as Americans, and whoever won the war is simply a mere coincidence.
In a similar sense not all religions are the same.
This is the one single point that is very hard to accept by the mainstream. Currently, the doctrine of all cultures being equal is something universal. If we accept the opposite view, there are many dangers on the way. Who is going to decide which culture/religion is better? By what criteria? What are the consequences? It's safer to declare equality, and this is what happened in the West - and any attempt to question that is perceived as a regressive view.
You're making the argument that cultural relativism is wrong. I'm making the argument that cultural supremacy often leads you to wrong reasoning about causes and effects, and ergo, bad policies. Are the Palestinians committing terrorist acts because they're Islamic? They're relatively more secular and cosmopolitan than some other Muslim communities, and Palestinian Christians also commit violence. If you ascribe their violence to religious grievances alone, then you are in a quandary. There's no way to solve the current situation without changing their religion. But if you recognize it as nationalistic and a response to geo-political grievances, then there is a political solution that may not require millions of people to be reprogrammed to a different religion.
Imagine if we ignored the Holocaust, and simply ascribed Jewish terrorism in the British Palestinian territories in the 1940s as a manifestation of Judaism -- that God gave them this land? Under that interpretation, it's scripture, and not the reaction to historic persecution, that drives the motivation to carve out a Jewish state. And yes, some far-right Jewish extremists believe this, but that's not the majority, and so you can't paint all of Judaism in this way, and we don't.
But we do paint all of Islam this way, and as a result, we engage in bad, immoral foreign policy.
“Religious fundamentalism seems really bad, guys. Maybe totalitarianism will help? I can’t remember if that has a downside.”
Take a look at the academic lineage of St. Thomas Aquinas and you will see what I am talking about. He studied from Saint Albert Magnus, a guy that studied from a vast bibliography left by the Islamic Caliphate of Al-Andalus (aka Islamic Spain) after the Spanish Reconquista.
Without St. Thomas Aquinas by the way, Reinassance scientists that made the subsequent "European enlightment" possible would have been burned by the Inquisition and we would be in the middle ages, or at least 200 years away from being technologically able to manufacture a computer. Instead of being on Hacker News you would be dying of plague or in some dumb war.
The Islamic civilization was not always as theocratic as it is today. This happened only after the Mongols razed them and nomadic tribes were left. These nomadic tribes were more militaristic and theocratic than the Islamic Caliphates razed by the Mongols.
As for your view on Islam, it's narrow. What you'll find is that literacy rates and living standards indeed have risen quite a lot, look at the data. Further, you'll often find many of the views people hold aren't necessarily religious views, but regional cultural ones. Rape, domestic violence, abortion of girls, dowry, child marriages are all prevalent threats to women in India among its 85% non-muslim population, just like it is in its muslim population, or that of say neighbouring India. Islam isn't the source of a patriarchal system as often as it's claimed, cultural practices that preceded Islam often are, nor is it as often the source of conflicts, the underlying geopolitical situation usually is. What I would say is that Islam can retard modernisation because it makes some conversations (that Muslims have every day in their own societies) much more difficult to have. But none of that has anything to do with the Chinese situation.
Stop saying that Islam is the problem. It's a facet, it ought to be considered, but it oughtn't be oppressed or seen as the sole or even primary reason different groups take political actions. It'd be as if I went around claiming the Troubles was a religious conflict or that Christianity was at the source of the violence despite it being a part of the story.
I mean, Muslim extremists would do the same if they could, but they can’t. I’m more worried about those who can.
For those that don't know, China as affirmative action policies for Uighurs and other minorities. They were exempt from the 1-child policy, they get additional social welfare, and have an easier time getting to college and government jobs.
So with all these perks, most Han Chinese see them as being ungrateful when they commit or support terrorist acts, like the Kunming massacre in 2014 or suicide bombing police stations.
Change a few keywords and it sounds more like the current situation in the USA.
> CCA revenue hit a whopping $1.79 billion in 2015, up from the year before, while GEO revenue hit an even higher $1.84 billion, likewise an improvement over their previous year.[0]