U.S. issues China travel advisory amid increased tensions | Hacker News Reader

U.S. issues China travel advisory amid increased tensions

reuters.com

75 pointsh-63 comments

After traveling for over 2.5 years through 30 countries in Africa (still going)[1], I've learned travel advisories are extremely Political.

Senegal wants to get a fair price for it's resources and asks for that? France issues a travel warning and decimates their tourist industry for a few years.

It's common place for Western countries to issue travel warnings when they just don't like what a certain country is doing politically. It's often got nothing to do with traveler safety.

[1]http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme/

Sounds believable that countries do these alerts for sometimes political reasons, but China is actually keeping people from leaving the country for unspecified reasons and is seizing people, even their own citizens.

Plenty of countries do bad things to their own citizens that have absolutely no impact on foreign tourists who visit.

I'm not saying it's OK, but it's hardly a reason to warn people not to go there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/politics/china-canada-...

China has been holding 3 Canadian's, likely in retaliation to the CFO of Huawei being held. So it may seem warranted here?

The reason why those seizures are happening is why this "escalatory" bulletin is newsworthy.

This is another bullet point in an escalation trend we've been seeing between the West and China, mostly surrounding infrastructure and political pressure/flurries of arrests and high profile detainments, in both regions.

China is issuing the same warning to Chinese citizens traveling to US

And which Chinese citizens are we holding hostage in retaliation for an exec being jailed?

China's warning is related with US randomly violence, gun shooting, robbery etc (if you understand Chinese: http://www.china-embassy.org/chn/lszj/zytz/t1597786.htm). US and China are very different countries, like in China, the downtown of metropolis is very safe at night, but in US is totally different. And also, gun shooting in US is really normal, but extremely rare in China.

This reads like an faq for people coming to US. First item reminds people to buy travel/health insurance. Second item warns against going out alone in late night. Etc. I didn't see anything political in it.

But VOA think that's not normal, and it's a political signal. Do you believe? https://www.voachinese.com/a/news-us-china-travel-20180703/4...

What about looking at the price of traveler's insurance?

Something most people don't know.

Your travel insurance policy is not valid if you travel to a country that has a travel warning issued by the country that the policy is issued by.

So essentially, if you go anywhere even slightly "not first world" your travel insurance is useless.

Yeah, but I'm talking about if you got quoted for a policy on a specific journey, not just some blanket "travel insurance" policy.

I'm pretty sure they can't quote you for a trip to Elbonia and then say "lol j/k we don't have to cover anything because there was a warning against Elbonia at the time".

(I could maybe believe they could exclude events happening after a warning after the policy was issued.)

> I'm pretty sure they can't quote you for a trip to Elbonia and then say "lol j/k we don't have to cover anything because there was a warning against Elbonia at the time".

That's exactly what they do.

It's in the fine print. Read it.

As above, I can believe that they would drop coverage if a warning were issued after the Elbonia warning, or if the coverage is void if e.g. you engage in political activism.

I don't know any insurance commission that would be okay with the fine print saying "the coverage on the specific trip to the country you asked for was void from the moment it was issued because warning and therefore you were paying for nothing".

Can you cite a case where a travel insurer issued a policy that covered nothing from the moment it was written for a specific trip to a specific warned country?

> So essentially, if you go anywhere even slightly "not first world" your travel insurance is useless.

This is an absurd claim.

Can you present one example of this happening? Travel insurance clearly shows the countries it will cover you for, any claims denied are likely for very different reasons.

I've made a few claims in the developing world with nothing more than testimony+pictures, the police report was essentially worthless and likely never translated.

To put this in context, the US Travel Advisory for China is "Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution". This is the same as the travel advisory for the U.K., most of Western Europe, and the touristy parts of Mexico.

Map of US Travel Advisories: https://travelmaps.state.gov/TSGMap/

According to YouTubers fitting the description, lots of ex-patriate westerners have been leaving China in recent months. The climate there has changed from tolerant/friendly towards westerners to "we don't need you."

(serpentza and laowhy86 on YouTube are how I became aware of this.)

Yeh I saw there videos. Seems like it has been building for a while

More like those two did not possess enough skills to qualify for a better visa. No country inherently needs immigrants who can't contribute anything. Zero sympathy for them.

laowhy86 and serpentza subsisted off a horde of uninformed people who couldn't be bothered to even read Wikipedia articles about a country. This is evident through the clickbait-y style and non-existent intellectual depth of their videos.

> No country inherently needs immigrants who can't contribute anything. Zero sympathy for them.

We're all people of the earth who do not need inherit value to live with some imaginary line on the ground.

>We're all people of the earth who do not need inherit value to live with some imaginary line on the ground.

I'm not agreeing with the GP, but the world simply doesn't work that way. Travel across the "imaginary lines" you speak of are controlled via military might, so perhaps they're not just "imaginary". See how well you fare attempting to run across the NK/SK border.

Being "made up" (what I think GP means by "imaginary") doesn't mean that such things lack force. For instance, class is "made up" and some ontologies of race and gender fix them as "made up" - this does not, of course, mean that class, race and gender do not have very real effects on society and the individuals therein. But humans have power over human abstractions, so such "made up" things can be changed, as opposed to what I presume OP would group into things not "made up", such as the laws of physics. Being "made up" hints to a possibility, no matter how remote, of a different (and dare I say better) world.

Calling them "imaginary lines" was an obvious attempt by the GP to disregard them as meaningless. They are not meaningless, that was my point.

But by the same token, if we assume that GP is more than a simpleton (in the principle of charity) we must say that they would also consider art (always created by human intention) to be "imaginary lines", but I doubt they would deny paintings can have meaning. Words (usually though not always naturally evolved), by the same token, are just scrawls, but they have meaning despite being "made up" in the same way. GP knows they have meaning because he/she is using them in such a way. I read the idea that the lines are imaginary to mean that they don't have to be that way.

Headline is somewhat misleading, since that advisory seems to be the same as previous year (and maybe previous years?).

One Chinese idiom is “kill the chicken to scare the monkey” — right now Canada is the chicken.

I guess 30 years of peace and prosperity was too much for people to handle.. we can't just read our history, we have to learn the hard way.

I dunno... a travel warning about a country with over a million people currently in camps seems reasonable.

We have about 1/4 their population and over 2 million people in prison I'd think people visiting the US from China should be the ones that are worried.

prison =/= forced labor camp for political prisoners or Muslims

I have yet to see Trump arrest the hundreds of thousands of people who marched against him and send them to perform slave labor in Alaska. Or arrest members of the media or opposing political parties who criticize him

I only wish that was true[1]. Of course, that does nothing to let the Chinese government off the hook for imprisoning and 're-educating' their Uighur citizens.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

>I only wish that was true[1].

he said

>for political prisoners or Muslims

Penal labor is bad and all, but equating what china's doing with what's happening in the US is giving china too much credit.

I wasn't trying to give China any credit, what they're doing is reprehensible, no doubt about it. I was suggesting that the situation of African-Americans in the US prison system[1] is less different from the Chinese example than we'd like to think.

1: https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

Wow, terrible that this is downvoted.

Do you think it would be better for people requesting political asylum to go to US or China?

That totally depends on who you pissed off, see Snowden.

No rule of law could be a hint.

And increasingly willing to throw people in those camps for less and less.

Somewhat like we're suddenly more willing to un-person people in our own society with less pretext, less proof, and less due process. It wouldn't be the first time in our history such has happened. Such things happen in US history as a precursor to wars, and during wartime.

...And all other times. The entire history of the US was built on an entire group of people being legally “un-personed” for purely economic reasons. Are you sure it’s this phenomena you find troubling, or is it just who’s being targeted today? I’m trying to be charitable, yet I’m struggling to frame your comment in another way.

...And all other times. The entire history of the US was built on an entire group of people being legally “un-personed” for purely economic reasons.

Not purely economic. There were ideological reasons used as well.

Are you sure it’s this phenomena you find troubling, or is it just who’s being targeted today?

The troubling part, is that the population who historically had the rights, and practiced the exercise of them is now giving them up, spreading the narrative that they don't matter, and trying to take them away from others through de-facto power or intimidation. (Which has nothing to do with indelible characteristics, and only has to do with the status of citizenship.)

I’m trying to be charitable, yet I’m struggling to frame your comment in another way.

This is precisely the language the "un-personing" perpetrators use to intimidate people into silence and giving up their rights. Sorry, but I'm not buying it.

You interpreted what I said as an attack on your “personhood?” It seems to me you’re falling into the same trap of exaggerated outrage that’s so in vogue, in which taking offense is seen as something approaching a valid point or position. It is very difficult to engage with people who do this.

You interpreted what I said as an attack on your “personhood?”

No.

It seems to me you’re falling into the same trap of exaggerated outrage that’s so in vogue

Basically, I'm making this observation about you.

It is very difficult to engage with people who do this.

Basically, I'm making this observation about you.

Which country? U.S. immigration detention camps had close to half a million people at one point.

Oh come on. How many of those people had legal visas? And how many of them were doing forced labor to death?

Regardless of how you think we should handle illegal immigration, we're talking about two very, very different things here. Apparently there's good reason to believe that even if you follow all the laws of China to the letter, there's a risk they'll throw you in a death camp anyway, just because you're American.

It was tongue-in-cheek remark, since they said camps. Is having a legal visa a requirement for having human rights? How many Americans were thrown in Chinese death camps last year?

Also, 'death camps'? That's mind-killing rhetoric. "Let's have a cold war" rhetoric.

The USA imprisons a way higher % of our population without trial than the Chinese do. Check the plea bargain stats. Is it China's place to try and police our internal problems?

Not necessarily. Heard of the Uyghurs? The Chinese authorities have not been known for thinking Others have human rights, at least since Mao.

Since when did putting millions of ethnic or political minorities in death camps become synonymous with imprisonment for crimes actually committed. You know what you get when you get imprisoned in America? Food, warmth, and lawyer and a judge!

I'm not saying being imprisoned is good. But this level of reverse whataboutism is mind killing.

Since when was China a monolith since Mao? Ever heard of a guy named Deng?

I'd suggest reading some Chinese history, and also a bit about the current plea bargain disaster in the USA, if you think all of those people actually got due process.

As far as us being world police and telling other nations how to manage their affairs.. I'm against it. The Chinese government has done a lot of good and a lot of bad. Let's worry about our domestic problems first.

We should continue to trade, keep the peace, and continue the amazing 30-year-run the world has had since the end of the cold war. Starting another one would cause a lot of harm.

Here's some context.

October, China ups the rhetoric https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/china-vows-defend-tai...

January, China ups the rhetoric more. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/asia/xi-jinping-tai...

Taiwan is a military ally of the USA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_non-NATO_ally

And then immediately after this the govt said travel there is risky.

If China tries to invade Taiwan to take it back, the USA must go to war or the entire alliance network on top of which world peace was constructed will lose its reputation. For our grandchildrens' futures lest NATO collapse (because why contribute if the USA won't defend you), going to war with China to deny them Taiwan might be the only option.

Shit is more serious than you think. War is brewing. Right now.

Accepting a plea agreement does not constitute being thrown in prison without trial.

What human rights are being violated again? You don't have a right to just be in America. That's not a human right.

The whole point of this article is that China has just begun threatening Americans, so what happened last year is irrelevant.

>You don't have a right to just be in America.

Nobody is claiming this straw man. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_detention_in_the_U...

So you agree that China hasn't thrown Americans into death camps? This rhetoric leans more towards being motivated in part from a failing trade war with China, not based on a real threat.

I'm sorry but 30k illegal immigrants in a relative mansion with butlers is nothing compared to what everyone knows the Chinese do to undesirables. If you're an American, you are now an undesirable.

Here let me put it this way. Go to tianenman square and make a speech about it. You know you'll die in China. You knew that 10 years ago. And things just got worse.

Refugees do have rights, and signatory states have obligations under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and as amended in the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. The U.S. is signatory to the convention and protocol. And also the 1980 Refugee Act applies in the U.S.A.

I don't want to argue there are no violations of rights occurring at all. That's an extraordinarily improbable stance to hold.

But if you don't see something different about illegal immigrants detained in America, and what China is known to do... Then there's simply something morally wrong with you.

You're proving my point with that rush to demonize.

The travel warning has nothing to do with uighur camps. Americans and Canadians aren't Uighur and aren't part of that conflict. It's like saying nations would issue travel warnings about the US because of fear of drone bombs.

This is an escalating tit-for-tat related to the Huawei CFO. And all too many are just so certain that the place they were born is just so righteous.. it's probably going to continue to escalate.

I would argue the Huawei CFO situation is just another escalation in the tit-for-tat battle that accompanies a rising power trying to displace an existing power. Most times, this leads to armed conflict of one sort or another.

I mean, in the long arc, sure, but I'd really like to not see it get there.

The Huawei thing just seems so avoidable. We renege on a deal with Iran that the Iranians were honoring, we start a trade war with China for mostly domestic-political reasons, and then we lump the 2 together into a justification for borderline-kidnapping of their citizen in Canada?

Whatever happened to getting together at the table and negotiating about this stuff?

Not that I disagree with your reasoning (and that going after Meng Wanzhou is a strange and seemingly unnecessary escalation), but China does not really negotiate honestly or play by any set of recognized international rules. I guess you could say the same of the US, but then you see the dilemma.

My, unfortunately cynical, takeaway is that no matter how “woke” we like to think we have become as a global society, everything still eventually boils down to might makes right.

Germans called it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik

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