China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
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China is pretty obviously building their empire. They, as a government, appear to have almost no regard whatsoever for human life. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard whatsoever for national sovereignty. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard for the environment.
It just seems completely inevitable to me that China eventually wants to conquer the world. Why is the west enriching them, and by proxy funding their research into war machines when it seems obvious that these things will eventually be used against us?
These acts are atrocities, no doubt. But these atrocities aren't being committed by some dictator in some small, isolated country. These atrocities are being committed by a regime that has all but said that it intends to conquer the rest of the planet and export these atrocities as the standard operating procedure for the entire planet, and which very probably WILL DO THIS if something doesn't occur to change the course.
People are upset about the "trade war" we are currently in, or about to be in, or were in, or whatever the pundit of the hour says. I can't say I agree that restricting trade with China, and encouraging the infrastructure being built there to be built in the US, or at the very least in a country that respects human rights instead, is a bad thing.
We (the U.S) tolerate their disrespect for human rights because we also do not respect human rights, as demonstrated by our relationship with Saudi Arabia, our many horrible wars, etc. We also do not respect national sovereignty, as demonstrated by our covert wars in South America, our firebombing of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and our occupation of the Middle East.
We do business with them because they are like us. Or at least, like our business people. They want to grow their power as our businesses do. Not all business people are like this, but we allow the influential businesses to support these actions and we as a people do not stop it.
I'm sorry but this statement is just absolutely and completely ridiculous. I don't know if you've either never been to The United States, or you've never left The United States, but the difference between the respect that we have for human rights, and the respect that much of the rest of the world has, is stark.
Individual Americans may respect human rights. Just like individual Chinese do as well. But when you challenge them as a nation, well, then the needs of the stong outweigh the needs of the weak.
So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? Let's tone it down, USA did not go there to kill a million people, it happened because of the war, and Saddam might have killed 2 mil if he was alive for Arab Spring. Not saying that Iraq war was justified but there's a huge difference.
The war had bipartisan support and the leader that started it was re-elected in the ultimate poll, so I'd say the majority are fine with it.
If they had issues bigger than killing hundreds of thousands of people then...
And I'm saying this as an Australian, we weren't much better.
Yes, even with the strawman wording you put forth, I suspect that > 50% would come down on the "don't care" side.
If you worded it in a way that was designed to tease out revealed preferences, like: "Have you considered the plight of Iraqis in the last year?" you would get even more dramatic results.
And how many Kurds were killed by Saddam Hussein? How many Shias? I think the Iraq war was a terrible mistake but that doesn't mean that supporting it means you don't care about Iraqis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
Please go justify that and then say USA cares about sovereignty of nations!
We elected a government and enabled a system that led to this. How can we judge China as worse? More importantly why do these judgements fundamentally even matter?
The real question Americans should ask themselves is : what is our vision for the future? How can we regain our glory?
Anything else assumes authority without investment. A strategy that is destined for failure.
The U.S. is indeed by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet in terms of the state repression imposed on the average citizen, certainly far better than China in this regard. At the same time, in foreign policy it behaves exactly the same way any other nation state does - pursuing its perceived interests without consideration for anything else other than objective constraints to its power. Since the U.S. is by far the most powerful nation state in the world, its list of foreign atrocities far exceeds that of anyone else since WW2. However, that's not any different from any other major power in world history and there's absolutely no reason to think China (or anyone else) would behave any better or worse given similar ability to pursue its interests unchecked.
The US has the biggest prison population in the world by a big margin, 655 per 100k people (El Salvador is in second place with 604/100k and China is at 118/100k). I'd call that state repression.
In other measures it does better, like the so-called democracy index, where it ranks #21 (flawed democracy), which is better than China at #139 (authoritarian). In the reporters without borders press freedom index it's at #45, with China at #176 (almost dead last, out of 180).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
I would argue that state repression is not only about direct interaction with police and other agents of the government, and that economic inequality and poverty is less direct, but just as real, relevant and serious form of oppression. If you buy into that premise, then the recent UN report is pretty damning.
http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1
Some quotes:
"About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty."
" Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations in among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world."
"For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best, but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship."
I'd say that compared to China it really is better, in most regards, but "by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet" is a stretch, to say the least.
I would also note that even including all of the damning things you list, the U.S. on average falls behind most rich democracies in the world, but is still far ahead of most other states, except in the incarceration rate [1]. Rich democracies are an outlier.
[1] I'm not sure that's quite true any more if you count in all the Chinese internment camps and other non-disclosed facilities - the U.S. never had secret prisons at scale, other states do.
I think you're wrong about the incarceration rate though, by a lot. China has an official prison pop. of about 1.5 million, to have a rate close to what the US does it'd need to have 7.5 million [1] people in the internment camps, which AFAICT is way higher than anyone estimates (I couldn't really find any good estimates, but for scale the total population of Uyghurs in China is 11 - 15 million)
[1]
(def us-pop 325719178)
(def us-prison 2121600)
(def china-pop 1403500365)
(def china-prison 1649804)
(defn rate [prison population] (float (* 100000 (/ prison population))))
(rate us-prison us-pop) ;=> ~651
(rate china-prison china-pop) ;=> ~117
(rate (+ china-prison 7.5e6) china-pop) ;=> ~651
Note, however, that none of those speculations is in any way meant to excuse the incarceration rate of the U.S., which is an exceptionally outrageous state of affairs. It also goes to show that using incarceration as a tool of social engineering is by no means the sole province of totalitarian systems of governance.
Your speculations about China sound about right to me, but as a European looking in from the outside, any time someone talks about how much freer Americans are it scares the shit out of me. The US might be the domestically freest of the global superpowers, but that doesn't mean it's any good, it just means the bar is set _really_ low.
I feel a lot of people have this perception of China as a Technologically powerful North Korea... Nothing can be further from the truth.
China is like an asian tiger... Japan, Singapore or Taiwan.. or maybe not exactly an asian tiger, but somewhere in-between North Korea and an Asian Tiger but leaning much more closer to an Asian Tiger than it does its' historical regime based roots.
You guys need to visit China to get a more realistic perspective. I recommend Shenzhen.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/07/edward-snowden...
He is literally not allowed to denounce the government for breaking their own laws.
I agree with what Snowden did, and respect him for having the courage to do so, but I'm not sure if you're trying to demonise the US government or legitimise the Chinese one by claiming the prosecuting someone for publishing classified documents is equivalent to prosecuting someone for disagreeing with the ruling party.
A dystopia doesn't have to be as all-permeating and starkly obvious as the one depicted in 1984 to be a dystopia.
A) Option that marginally (and in some cases significantly) increases personal convenience while incrementally undermining the long-term probability of western moral aspirations maturing to their full promise and forming the basis of a more human-centric global future.
or
B) Option that rejects the temptation of new gadgetry / marginal personal convenience improvements but that withholds some small amount of fuel from the growing moral conflagration. This option is increasingly associated with social circle friction.
This is perfectly exemplified, on a much less serious level than human organ harvesting and trade policy, by the Chrome vs. FireFox situation, or by the choice to use FaceBook.
There needs to be a realization that the current version of extreme economic policies governing large multi-national corporations like Google, FaceBook, Exxon, etc., are diametrically opposed to western moral aspirations w.r.t human rights, and are in fact fueling the demise of said aspirations. These corporations are not "American" or "Chinese" or "Other Nationality" in any way that matters for actual human beings, but exist as increasingly-autonomous global entities that are radically reshaping the geopolitical landscape and diverting increasing amounts of power to actors that have an open disdain for the human condition. People who oppose the current trends of inequality growth, corruption normalization, environmental exploitation, human rights abuses, and other deleterious effects of extreme capitalism don't seem to have an option other than to reject the consumerist culture / mindset that it's all built upon.
Voters value bread and circuses above ethics or human rights of faraway people. In a democratic country, if a politician would implement impactful policies aimed to improve human rights elsewhere at the cost of local economic harm and inflation hitting their workers, then that politician would get voted out of office and these policies reversed - so they don't do that.
If some politician genuinely desire to help human rights elsewhere, then they'd still not implement such overt policies (since they'd get reversed and help no one) but implement subtle diplomatic pressure.
The same logic, by the way, explains the current situation with climate change.
It is not ethics however that is driving a wedge between the United States and China. It is China's efforts to solidify its power over the Asian Pacific seas (in)conveniently named the China Sea and their trade routes, their One Road foreign policy efforts, and China's efforts to remain outside of the international order while also participating in it (e.g. IP theft, etc).
Also...SK was for a long time a authoritarian American client state and being a neighbor of China and Japan was in no position to "dominate it's neighbours" even if it wanted to
They would if they could. Most other nations are nowhere near the level of sophistication of China on 'making stuff'. It's not just cheap labour, it's a myriad of other things related to it that China specializes in.
China is not trying to take over the world, they just want to be the 'superpower' in their sphere, and to be the centre of their Universe.
Which is fine in some ways, problematic in others.
The list is long.
You need tons of people with tons of little bits of specialization, tons of factories run by experienced people, tons of workers for those factories willing to put up with rubbish, you need all the support: capitol, financial systems, export sophistication etc..
Surely, any group of people well enough organized could build maybe one such city of a few million people in ten years, but that's small.
In the meantime, in India, they can't get the electricity grid to work. Factories? No way.
Which is why we see a lot of software outsourcing in India, factories in China.
For assembling Nike shoes or something, other parts of Asia might already start to make sense. But for real manufacturing of most things ... it's China for the foreseeable future.
Up to the 20th century, the west had a surefire meta-strategy for dealing with world-conquering former empires like China. You bring them into modern industrial economics while exporting western culture. The massive changes would destabilize the old regime and turn it into another trading partner.
In 2018, media and economics have changed to the point where everything's now mediated by computers and networks. Things have changed so much, all we can be sure of is that meta-strategy no longer works in quite the same way.
These atrocities are being committed by a regime that has all but said that it intends to conquer the rest of the planet and export these atrocities as the standard operating procedure for the entire planet
You can say this for just about everyone on the world stage. Spain, France, Britain, and the US have all taken their turns as the lead player on that stage, and the quoted sentence could be applied to them all, just with different levels of severity for the atrocities. The long arc of history is really just about asymptotically reducing the level of atrocities to zero. The question of Chinese ascendancy is just a matter of when and how large the local spike in atrocity might be.
(EDIT: To clarify, the local spike in atrocity for Britain and the US were smaller than what came before, and the affect of their hegemony has been net positive.)
True, but you could argue that these countries had excuses. At the time of the worst crimes (colonialism, slavery, etc) there were no examples of benign, free trading partners, abiding by international law - all this had to be designed, philosophized, created - and the modern western countries did all this because they saw how bad those atrocities were. I'm not saying all western countries are benevolent or don't commit atrocities now, but certainly most try to uphold international laws and human rights and their populations have a very big democratic voice that is constantly fighting towards these ends, despite what political leaders and power elites want.
Compare that to China, which is not even attempting to abide by any of these standards - despite the fact that these laws, ideas, and rules have been around and well established in the entire rest of the world for at least the past 50 years.
At some point, you'd think the west would wake up, China is super nationalistic, powerful and has no regard for human rights.
* It's hindsight to say China' embrace of authoritarianism, nationalism, and expansionism was inevitable. Even around ten years ago it was a much different place, with much more freedom of expression (you could find fascinating discussions of democracy by leading figures on Weibo, for example) [0] and a slow process of liberalization. And if it was an error of foresight at the time to assume that the then-current trend of liberalization would continue, it's an equal error to assume the trend of today will continue. By far the best outcome for the people of China, the region, and the world is for China to liberalize; a global contest would be very damaging and expensive; a war could destroy several civilizations, including the U.S. While it would be foolish to ignore current trends, it has proven equally foolish to accept them as an inevitable future and to let the bad guys dictate your values and the future.
* The people of China are not the government of China; it's difficult to oppose the latter without hurting the former. The people deserve freedom, human rights, food, shelter, and prosperity and the things that go with it. China's economic growth arguably has lifted more people from perilous levels of poverty than any event in human history, and they still have a ways to go. If the West didn't trade with China, that never would have happened.
* Of course, the West has profited immensely from China joining the global economy.
[0] China Digital Times (CDT) used to carry many of them, possibly still available in their history/archives. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/
And ten years before that, it was using deadly military force to subdue similar democratic thoughts in Tiananmen Square.
(Also, Tienanmen Square was in 1989.)
I think the threat angle is questionable, even if China perfects altering human genetics to create a superior breed of humans, the theory of mutually assured destruction + our arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear payloads + the concept of a deadman's switch is still pretty solid insurance against anything they can do on a macro level along with any other major world power like Russia.
Any war/history buffs out there care to chime in and change or reinforce my opinion on the topic with some concrete facts and data?
Altering human genetics might lead to a creation of radiation-resistant human. If such mutation gets to a significant percentage of country population, such country might actually welcome an unfolding MAD scenario. (Subject to radiation-resistant food and energy supplies etc)
I think it is ultimately possible - elephants have large bodies but less cancer, cockroaches posses high resistance to radiation, etc. Would this be called "human" is another question...
The fear of China is a reflection of white colonist mentality. When viewing the world they see it in terms of what they would do, not as what other cultures realistically would do.
I was pretty skeptical that this story was as one-sided as they (along with any other protestor/activist) would represent it to be. I remember wondering what I was really signing a petition for, and hesitation in doing so.
This report fills me with regret for not feeling more empathy, as I must imagine they knew people or knew of people who this had happened to, in order to sit out there all day, so consistently. I haven't seen any of the protestors in years, despite their previous frequency-- I hope they're all well, as are their families.
Has anyone else seen this in other cities, or had other experiences with these folks in Boston?
With that in mind, what do you think is their end goal? Is it just out of desperation they create petitions and such? It seems clear that China doesn't care much about the West's disapproval.
USA hands asylum like candy (overworked courts?) but honestly, if 5% of what we read is true, the Chinese deserve it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35575186-patriot-number-...
This made me think of nothing so much as the "Log Song" from Ren and Stimpy:
It's log, it's log, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood. / It's log, it's log, it's better than bad — it's good!
Together with other 2 groups, "轮" unintentionally built support to current Chinese govenment among oversea Chinese especially young students. If you happened to have chance to meet many oversea Chinese, you can test if it's valid.
edit: Google translates those three characters as "exclusive wheel"... the mystery continues
独 "dú", "independence" - refers to independence movements in Taiwan, Xinjiang (Uighurs) and Tibet
运 "yùn", "movement" - refers to the "minyun" democracy movement in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_democracy_movement)
轮 "lún", "wheel" - refers to Falun Gong
So basically, the major movements and organizations that the Chinese government opposes. China attempts to quell independence efforts in these three regions, puts down and censors information about democracy (see e.g. Tiananmen, 1989), and suppresses the Falun Gong cult/movement.
Edited to add: By a man that is better known for his writing on political persecution, IIRC. However, this is the only book I've read and can personally recommend.
Wild... I had no idea this was going on. There are a lot of things about China that I disagree with, but this might be the worst thing I've heard so far.
Perhaps through a search engine of some kind. One with a harmless-sounding name. Maybe "Dragonfly" would be a good name.
> identify involuntary donors
err... dissidents. Highest political crime - being a 100%-match for a Central Committee member who needs liver transplant.
I'm sure we can all be happy if, with the help of Google, China becomes a more harmonious society, without any pesky troublemakers, and that hard-working Chinese Communist Party officials get the transplants they so deserve.
In this case, if Google ever does return to China I doubt the authorities would find it more useful for such purposes than existing sources such as iCloud, Bing, and Baidu already are.
If we want to actually make a difference, we might consider calling for those existing services to change their ways. Harder to pressure the domestic Chinese companies, of course, but it's surprising how little attention is paid to Western companies who are actually in China and benefitting from it.
Better off looking like an alcoholic on paper.
And they do get away with it. All so I can buy a phone for 20% less that it would cost to manufacture in my own country. A few million dead, disfigured, tortured, scarred, raped. Billions living under thought control. Chump change to keep my clothes dirt cheap so the Walton family can buy a few more islands in the Caribbean while Jeff Bezos accumulates enough money to buy the moon.
Are you really saying that if US President had balls to push China on human rights then China would retaliate by refusing to produce cheap phones and clothes for US? Or say Russia would stop selling the oil?
To murder someone and profit from the sale of vital organs is simply beyond my comprehension. I cannot fathom a more monstrous act.
These are people who are already subject to execution. They get to stay alive a bit longer in order to preserve the organs. So rather than causing death, the possibility of organ transplants is what keeps these people alive.
And then there’s the extraordinarily perverse profit motive to arrest more dissidents for organ harvesting.
The testimony came from an officer who stood guard while it happened.
-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/i...
Do we have actual hard numbers? The 4000 fulun gong seem insufficient for the volume reported.
> Because China lacks an organized organ matching and allocation system, and in order to satisfy expectations for very short wait times, it is rare that multiple organs are harvested from the same donor.
Not if you want the organ recipients to survive, which presumably is the point of the whole exercise. The odds of them matching with one recipient are tiny, the odds of them matching with 2 are tiny squared.
(i feel sick now)
Looks like their concern was well-placed.
I won't make the direct comparison because it'd normally seem hyperbolic in 2018 ... but this is happening in 2018.
If this is true, it has to change the narrative quite firmly.
World leaders behind the scenes are very wary of China, they're a) afraid of speaking out and b) have to be diplomatic on some level.
The rubber hits the road (i.e. the 'money') is Apple.
And yes - of course world leaders should be far more aggressive about this.
Sadly, as aggressive as Trump can be, I'll bet he turns a blind eye if he gets a good trade deal.
Though I'm no fan of his, I'll bet he could garner an instant 10% boost in global approval by requiring the closure of those camps as part of any future trade deal. And the thing is - he actually does have enough leverage to get away with it. It would be a major, major international coup of the humanitarian kind ... something so many of his more social/lefty peers could only dream of doing. It'd be nice to seem him try, but I'm not holding my breath.
However, there is not any hard evidence (that I know of - I'd be happy to be corrected) of recent harvesting or coerced organ donation from recent years - in particular, in 2015 China agreed to stop using prisoners as organ sources (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/04/china-stop-usi...).
So I'll be curious to hear the final report - whether it mentions recent abuses or not.
The big problem is that the provinces and local governments aren't really that great at following the central government's direction unless the latter is really serious (who can't focus their attention on some many things).
The central government also don't care if some local politicians are involved in the prison organ trade for a few extra rambos, as long as they keep it under the radar....
you probably haven't noticed that China is the country of red flags?
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-10/08/c_134693630.htm
(sorry, man, you've just walked into a similar old USSR (also a country of red flags in all the senses) joke)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_histocompatibility_compl...
I don't think the Chinese government is great either, but I'm pretty cognizant that the level of anti-China FUD is directly proportional to the accelerating economic growth and foreign influence of the nation. China is causing very positive economic development in Africa, Pakistan and other regions that are more than happy to partner with it.
I for one am not so worried about a Chinese Surveillance state being thrust upon Europe or the US.
Then it should have almost halved since 2010:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263616/gross-domestic-pr...
I find this is an area where a "moral decision" is rather clear-cut.
And it highlights the... "amorality", at best, of much of our relationship (whether speaking at the personal level or the state/economy level) with contemporary China.
With our technology, we've enabled and empowered a political and economic structure that has not... "sorted its shit" as part of achieving same. Simultaneously, we've hollowed out our own system -- the checks and balances, as well as raw job counts.
The U.S. is far from perfect. Nonetheless, literally, physically "ripping the life" from one person, as a judgement, to benefit another. That is some symbolism. And a hallmark of what our own society has at least publicly considered to be "dystopia".
----
P.S. I responded to a reply with the following, but the child comment was deleted before I finished. It was a more than fair point about what happens (over here), and the opportunity for response allowed me to better qualify the... "us versus them" -- or perhaps lack of a "versus" -- present in my original comment. So, copy/pasta of that reply of mine:
My "the U.S. is far from perfect" is an understatement -- one I worried about. I agree with your point, and I find the behaviors you point out abhorrent. Prison for profit; Econ. 101 teaches you what you're going to get from that.
The U.S. has, however, been pretty aggressive in regulating organ transplants. When they happen. How limited, hopefully ethical, supplies are distributed.
Of course, over this hangs the spectre of economic disparity, corresponding health insurance disparity and health care access...
Yes, the U.S. is making plenty of life-altering, life-destroying decisions. The "death panels" that actually exist but don't make it into the political discussion (i.e. not the ginned up political phantoms).
And, some of those disparities seem to have been severely exacerbated, domestically -- progress actively reversed -- through off-shoring, outsourcing, and the winner-take-all, short-term reward.
As I grow more depressed writing this, well, at least we aren't ripping out "prisoners'" organs -- yet.
(We go overseas and buy nice foreigners' kidneys, for that.)
I'm starting to warm to the idea of using tariffs and other punitive measures to drag manufacturing back to US shores.
"China is estimated by the Federation of American Scientists to have an arsenal of about 260 total warheads as of 2015, which would make it the second smallest nuclear arsenal amongst the five nuclear weapon states acknowledged by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."
"As of 2017, the U.S. has an inventory of 6,800 nuclear warheads; of these, 2,800 are retired and awaiting dismantlement and 4,018 are part of the U.S. stockpile. Of the stockpiled warheads, the U.S. stated in its April 2017 New START declaration that 1,411 are deployed on 673 ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers."
EDIT: No one wins, it's who loses the least. The whole point of having them is so the other person doesn't use theirs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_m...
Which is also no one. Whether or not humanity is completely wiped out, this is an extinction-level event, and the entire nation-state system that spawned it becomes meaningless in the aftermath.
The US in contrast has 4000 active warheads, with at least 1300 on capable ballistic misfile delivery vehicles. If used in a countervalue attack, the Chinese would cease to exist as a relevant people.
Which as a long way of saying the US can escalate more than the Chinese, but actually getting into an open and direct conflict is a morally horrific idea.
But I've also learned a limited amount about the Chinese moral perspective in college, and it can be a useful exercise to examine how someone who doesn't have a Judeo-Christian/Locke moral framework may view this practice.
In some ways, the harvesting of organs from political prisoners can be viewed as the trolley problem. Killing one political prisoner (an 'undesirable' in Chinese society) could save a number of lives of upstanding citizens.
The practice disgusts me personally, but I can see a reasonable argument in support of it.
This is just the extreme end of it though. All states ruled by those who don't believe in the value of human life irrespective of what value that life is to them is at least capable of such atrocity and at worst presently committing it.
"They shouldn't have become criminals." "They cost us money, make them earn their keep." "The constitution permits this." are examples of how we justify that bit of inhuman utilitarianism.
There is no such thing as a western perspective or morals. Just like there is no such thing as an asian perspective or morals. The western, just like the asian or even chinese, perspective is so vast and disparate and diverse that it is futile to pigeonhole one region into a single perspective.
Case in point, the "west" encompasses everything from christian charity to nazism to black enslavement to native genocide. We aren't a monolith with one set of values. Never have been, never will be.
And if you think western perspective views this as 100% morally bad, then you haven't researched the history of western medicine.
> But I've also learned a limited amount about the Chinese moral perspective in college, and it can be a useful exercise to examine how someone who doesn't have a Judeo-Christian/Locke moral framework may view this practice.
There is no such thing as judeo-christian anything. The judeo and christian are morally antithetical. The basis of christ and christianity is the fundamental shift from judeo values and morals to christian ones. I grew up christian but am an atheist, but I cringe whenever people use "judeo-christian". Also, "judeo-christian" has nothing to do with Locke's philosophy.
> In some ways, the harvesting of organs from political prisoners can be viewed as the trolley problem. Killing one political prisoner (an 'undesirable' in Chinese society) could save a number of lives of upstanding citizens.
In the west, we call this utilitarianism. It isn't anything special to china. One of the most important thinkers in the past few hundred years ( john stuart mills) formulated the philosophy.
The problems with china isn't a "chinese" problem. It is a human problem. Whatever china is guilty of is what we all are or have been guilty of.
I have Jewish friends, they are not morally antiethical to Christian values, they are moral people who I love.
Everything I know about Judaism informs me that its practioners share my morals.
Please state specifically where you believe the gap between Judaic morality and Christian morality lies?
Can you say why you cringe at the term Judaeo-Christian?
> term “Judeo-Christian” was coherent, useful, and defensible. In general, I take a very skeptical view of the term, because I think it misleads the public as to the nature of some important facts and dynamics in the history of the West.
Not the OP. The term Judaeo-Christian is dumb because it implies some kind of equality in the contribution of Jewish and Christian thought on morality and law in shaping the modern world and the world views of those living in Western society. It’s an American idea, a product of the post WWII consensus where the major religious traditions in the US had been operationally been Pritestantised[1]. In reality the contribution of specifically Jewish law or philosophy on the West rounds to zero. It’s certainly no more important than the Muslim contribution and few people talk about Abrahamic morality. Maimonides and Ibn Sina both made contributions to philosophy that are foundational, and situated from their culture. While many, many Jews have contributed to Western culture the fact that they are Jewish has no real impact on that influence. Spinoza’s philosophy shows vast intellect and voracious reading but Jewishness? Not so much.
[1]http://www.gnxp.com/new/2009/08/29/we-are-all-protestants-no...
For the book length treatment read Protestant Catholic Jew, Will Herberg
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo36...
There is no such thing as a judeo-christian morality or value. It is a political term invented a few decades ago for political reasons.
I don't want to get into a religious debate. Those never end well and there can never be a conclusion because they all hinge on interpreting text hundreds of pages long full of contradictory statements. And never mind there are different flavors of judaism and christianity.
But if judaism and christianity had same values then one is obviously redundant. But obviously that isn't true. There isn't even "judeo" values or christian values. The term "judeo-christian" is meaningless. There is no value, morality or anything underpinning it expect for political expediency.
The idea of "sin" is huge in Abrahamic religion, so the fact that their texts particularly describe what is "sinful and not" I think is a clear-cut sign there is some sort of set of "values" that religious adherents are expected to have.
Not that I agree with said frameworks or give any authority to the texts- and also understand that many forms of these religions interpret the texts different ways, which cause various splits in what is considered moral or not. Additionally, I understand that it is mostly futile to expect most religious people to follow the prescribed morals of their religion or denomination, as it always seems to end up that people have their own specific personal set of morals, and then they just try to rationalize or stretch it to fit whatever religion or worldview they adhere to
Or is your point more that while religions DO have expectations like this- the moral "rules" of these religions don't originate from the religion itself, but instead are general moral values adopted, altered, or shared by many religions? If so, then maybe we are in agreement and I am talking past you.
Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism would all say this is bad.
What’s going on here is not culture, but government.
Of course, you maximize utility by choosing someone who does not contribute a lot to society, and _ideally_ someone who is a net negative. That's a win-win situation. The West is incredibly wasteful with our pie-in-the-sky dreamy research on artificial organs, when such a net positive solution is readily available.
It's frightening that a moral argument can be made along these lines. Does anyone really subscribe to this view? I am unfamiliar with Eastern philosophy, but this seems ludicrous.
On what basis do we determine who gets life-critical medical care?
For a better depiction of how low the respect of life could be, I suggest (at risk of psychological trauma) reading or viewing videos about how some drivers in China would rather run over an injured pedestrian (in some cases small children) a few times to ensure they're dead. Apparently a dead victim costs less than ongoing medical bills.
Here is the best most levelheaded response I found, on Quora from someone who frequently presents a particular point of view: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-not-people-within-the-Chines...
She writes that organ harvesting is illegal, that nearly everyone in China opposes it, and that if someone were caught doing it, they would go to jail.
I'm not sure how to square that with a finding from a tribunal in Britain that "state organised or approved organisations or individuals" engaged in "forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practised for a substantial period of time, involving a very substantial number of victims".
I guess she would probably respond by saying that the source is dubious and it cannot be true because the state wouldn't break the law like that?
Is that the view?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P65pZhZ-pks
Includes a segment about a Chinese dissident being eaten. Boggles the mind how the guy apparently thinks this is real human flesh and not only that, it's from a prisoner.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is just a campaign against China these days. I see bad news every day on the internet about China.
It took one journalist’s murder and dismemberment to finally make Mohammed Bin-Salman politically radioactive in a way that thousands of dead and starving Yemenis could not. As we continue to ignore the Uighur internment camps, and probably this as well, what will it take for Xi?
The Saudi journalist is an odd exception. Any other journalist (remember the Russian journalist assassinated, or the Maltese journalist). Like there is a squeak but not much else --which tells me there is something about the Saudi case.
It being done on foreign soil is part of what made the Saudi case so egregious.
news title: China used to harvest organs from prisoners.
Under pressure, that practice is
finally ending.
date: 2017/09/14
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging
Also, if you look at what Falun Gong teaches, the credibility of the believers should be at question. Per Wikipedia, the grandmaster of the cult believes that homosexuality is a sin, democracy and science are both bad things, and aliens are constantly interfering with Earth affairs.[1] If Falun Gong is not against China, but against, say Thailand, how many of you will blindly believe their accusations? What about Canada?
https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5250
mods delete this comment if it's inappropriate but this is a pretty bewildering release
That's one pricey paywall. For a PDF that's apparently slightly over one page.
If you find this report interesting, this Wikipedia article would probably also be interesting [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
“During the 2000s, analysis of various sources of emerging evidence led to the conclusion that people who practised Falun Gong were being killed to provide the organs fuelling China’s transplant boom. “It is common for Chinese transplant professionals to parrot the Communist Party line saying that those who have been speaking out . . . have a ‘political agenda.’” In 2006 a whistleblower claimed that more than 4000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed for their organs at the hospital in China where she worked. Subsequent independent investigators, including David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific, David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, and the investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann, have concluded that such practices occurred
There is a world of difference between the 2. Imagine if the world order was not created by US and instead China, things would be 10000x worse. When you are the sole superpower, other countries would abuse that privilege to benefit themselves a thousand fold more than the US does. We didn’t think about China as a serious threat 10 years ago because they were poor and not powerful yet the barbarity was worse then. It’s just more pronounced now because they have more power.
The same is true for all countries going to the world stage. Nigeria doesn’t seem like a threat now but in 50 years when it’s more population than the US the racism and backwards beliefs will result in terrible world crimes. The same can be said of Vietnam, and India too. (I am Indian). If these countries get as powerful as China you’ll see them expanding military, bullying neighbors, petty tribalism stuff.
It seems nationalist but I agree with trump to bring our economic industries home. Improve quality of life in these countries and improve human rights, wealth etc. but not to the degree where they are untouchable militarily and economically. Because China is not the worst to come, they are not even close. We don’t think of Vietnam and others as a threat but their tribalism runs deep as well. It takes 1 nationalist leader to increase the pace but when they have power like China almost everyone will abuse it.
In more recent history - of the 21st century, at least, China hasn't started any conflicts in the Middle East, that have killed hundreds of thousands of people, and turned millions more into refugees. On the scale of 'how much harm has each empire done', it is not three orders of magnitude away from the competition.
China's repression is targeted internally, for reasons of internal security. The Department of State targets it externally, for reasons of national interests. Comparing the two, or trying to argue which is worse, is apples and oranges. Both groups, here, justify their behavior, by claiming that if they didn't take action, something worse would happen.
China can not start the conflicts because the world will sanction them. Yet they did exactly that to Tibet. They killed so many, took it over and have brainwashed or arrested everyone who clings to Tibetan culture. They invaded India, did you know that? And would have killed or enslaved all of it until the US stopped it (or was it Russia). China if sole superpower would have concquered Japan, Vietnam, South Korea no doubt in my mind and likely attempted the rest of the world as well.
I also disagree that China would try to conquer the world.
Sure, they invaded India. So did the British. Are you saying if the UK became a superpower again, they would try to conquer the world like they did before?
>It seems nationalist but I agree with trump to bring our economic industries home.
It's worth a try although the chance of it happening given the complexity of modern industrial good is near zero. I don't think Trump actually wants this and if he does his actions are having the opposite effect. To seriously grow an industrial base in the US would require very open borders, a massive federal investment + subsidy and a complete elimination of tariffs.
With the heavy tariffs imposed by China and others on goods from the USA, manufacturing naturally moves there unless the USA retaliates.
In the meantime the short description does trigger the discussion why the US still lets Guantanamo Bay violate the human rights.
China is too strong, so companies will still make deals, will still buy and sell there, will just do whatever the China government wants. The same with the politicians bought by the companies.
Any tribunal will not change anything. Even UN is paralyzed as the all sanctions against China will get China's veto and there won't be any decision.
Even when Mr. Trump made concentration camps for children (just like Germans did during the WW2) did anything change after publishing the information about that?
So my final thought is quite sad: nothing will change, live on, be happy that you live in such a country which respects some other values (e.g. exploits work of children in Asia but not your children, so you can think that nothing happens).
Then, when such news show up while Trump is trying to make his deal with the Chinese and (it seems) even got a hostage recently, this makes me feel a bit suspicious of this article, especially since its content is pay-walled.
(I'm not defending organ-harvesting, which was already reported in the past, but the article must be specific about what has or has not happened, and should not use such vague statements.)
That's true. Have an upvote. There are some troubling stats that can be pulled up in regard to transplant stats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
Admittedly, it's a little backhanded to complain about the accuracy of statistics that are intentionally withheld by a totalitarian dystopian regime.
Downvoted, but relevant all the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611084
Or you could be a die hard trump supporter who prefer to say its suspicious because you don't like that attacking china whill lead in the future to attacking trump policy.
I wonder which one
Making statements about immoral acts by the Chinese government is probably something that takes a little bit of secrecy, security and assurances in the modern era. I have to wonder if you understand the situation.