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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

A more interesting tactic would be to make economic sanctions dependent on values-based policies. Stop censoring certain kinds of speech, and we'll lower tariffs a bit. Stop persecuting Uighurs, and Huawei can have Android back. Strongarm the communist party into being less evil, instead of bluntly attacking China as a whole. I think most of China's people would pressure its government to agree to those kinds of deals. It's really just those at the top who are doing all the bad stuff. The rest are just excited about their newfound prosperity and want to hang on to it.

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I don’t disagree, but sadly our current government acts in a purely self-interested way- or in the interests of our ruling class anyhow- and any talk of doing what’s right by any administration in living memory has been insincere. But ideally I see what you’re saying.

This is more an outsider's imagination. The communist party will never make this kind of deal with you. Bringing this kind of topic to the table will immediately make them walk away.

Right now the US administration is limiting the trade talk within trade talk, avoiding politics. However, if the trade talk really falls apart, I have no doubt the conflict will escalate and politics will be openly involved.

You can't sanction major economies without hurting yourself. It's why sanctions are used on nations with weak economies. Systematically important economies like the US, EU, China, Japan, etc are "unsanctionable".

Sanctioning china for "values" is as absurd as china sanctioning the US for "values". How would everyone react to china sanctioning the US or Europe for invading much of the middle east and north africa. Everyone would laugh.

Also, sanctions are acts of war at best and war crimes at worst. Economic sanctions exist to starve and hurt the population to punish the government. By any objective measure, it is a war crime and crime against humanity. "Luckily", rules and laws don't apply those with the greatest weapons.

Also, I highly doubt most of china's people would side with the US against their own government. No more than we'd side with China over the US government. That's not how people work. Especially if foreign government are attacking your own government.

Either we go to war with them or we decide to live with them. China has 1.4 billion people. The idea that we'd pressure them to act a certain way is ludicrous. More than anything, it'd probably have the opposite effect.

> I highly doubt most of china's people would side with the US against their own government.

Every week there's another article about a new way Chinese citizens are circumventing their government's censorship. Nobody likes being kept under heel. And I seriously doubt the concentration camps would have widespread support - most likely their existence is censored from the rest of the population altogether.

They wouldn't be siding against their own government, they'd be siding against the authoritarian communist party. They'd be choosing things they really want (economic growth) in exchange for the ending of actions they either don't care about or dislike. The CP is already in a precarious balance, trying to maintain strength without turning the general population against them. Some in China already wish it would bend to the sanctions. The above kind of deal would raise the pressure on the party, weakening the tumor sitting on top of a major new contributor to the world economy.

Really? Censorship? And here in the US, people are trying to circumvent censorship too. So what? Doesn't mean we are going to side with china over the US. Also, there have been articles of china's demise for decades now. If you enjoy cringe, look up gordon chang and read some of his stuff.

But I agree with you about nobody wanting to be kept under anyone's heel. Do you know any chinese history? Do you know whose heel's they think they've been under for 200 years? The west's heel. Nationalism and economic growth is how the chinese government maintains power and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

As for the "concentration camps", I'm guessing the support depends on how it is framed. If the chinese government frames it as punishing separatist terrorists, I'm betting it will have as much support as japanese internment had in the US.

Also, the authoritarian communist party is their government whether you like it or not. Considering the economic growth that china has experienced, I'm betting the party and the government has enormous support amongst the population. And in any confrontation with a foreign government, the people almost always rally around their government - authoritarian or not.

Finally, "some" in china might want their government to "bend to the sanctions", but I'm guessing the vast majority of chinese don't. Also, historically, governments tend to fall when they appear weak, especially in relation to a foreign power. Also, you are conveniently ignoring the fact that there are "some" in the US who think we should "bend to their sanctions".

If you think that chinese people are going to side with a foreign government against their own ( authoritarian or not ), then you really don't know history or human nature.

> And here in the US, people are trying to circumvent censorship too.

I don't know what you're talking about; the US is the least-censored country on earth. You can't even pull provable, inflammatory falsehoods off of Facebook without people crying censorship here (which is its own problem).

> there have been articles of china's demise for decades now

I'm not talking about its demise. Quite the opposite. I'm talking about its people being smarter and more worldly than they get credit for, despite president Xi's very best efforts to the contrary. It has academics who are regularly imprisoned for criticizing the government and advocating for personal liberty. Scores of people cheat around the latest propaganda app (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/world/asia/china-xi-jinpi...). People use GitHub, for lack of better options, to exercise some small amount of free speech (https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/709490855/github-has-become-a...).

There's a will. Chinese people don't want this kind of country. Many of them have just given up fighting it. We could help.

> I'm betting it will have as much support as japanese internment had in the US

Japanese internment has been looked back upon as one of the greatest human rights transgressions the U.S. has ever committed. It wasn't at the time, of course, but that can't be helped. It's also beside the point. I'm not saying "America is good and China is bad". I'm only saying, Xi's ruling party is bad. America has done some bad things too. It's still doing some bad things, like what's happening at the southern border.

Maybe what you don't grasp is that Americans are free to criticize their own government. We can have our own sets of values. I have a pretty low view of my own country right now. That doesn't mean I can't also point out China's problems and America's opportunity to do something about them. Of course, I also have very little faith in my government to take that kind of opportunity right now.

I didn't say the US is the most censored country. I just said we have to deal with censorship here too.

Once again, you harp on censorship. I'm against it too. But what does that have to do with what we are talking about? I don't like censorship in the US but that doesn't mean I'm going to support the chinese government over the US government. For some strange reason, you seem to believe that just because people don't like their own government, they'll support foreign governments. That's not how life works. Every citizen in every country has gripes against their government, but that doesn't mean they would welcome foreign intervention in their own country.

And if the chinese people don't like their government then let them deal with it. Not sure who you are or what your agenda is that you think "we could help". Who are "we" that we have to interfere in other countries?

I'm american. I complain about the government, the establishment press and censorship all the time. What are you? You seem to claim to be american but want to "help" the chinese people overthrow their government. And for someone who claims to be american, you seem to claim to know how the chinese think and want. I suspect chinese people know what chinese people think and want. It's as strange as a chinese person saying they know what americans think and want. How would they know?

Why didn’t this work with Carter?

Carter?

Your use of the term "evil" says a lot about the warped Western perspective. Without diving too deeply into pedantry, it is the West that claims the cognitively dissonant idea that religiosity is subject to the State while also demanding the State act religiosly (just wars, responsibility to protect, etc.). For all the pseudo-commie bluster, China is a Han ethnostate. Lies that benefit the State are just. Brutality that protects the State is just. China has decided that a Muslim population in its borders requires brutality, and this rubs westerners wrong. China has decided that mass surveillance should be open and accepted, and this rubs westerners wrong. But the West is very comfortable with destabilizing Ghadaffi and instigating regional chaos, which was and continues to be incredibly brutal. The West appears to be quite comfortable with mass surveillance so long as nudes abound, food arrives at our doorsteps, and ideologies we collectively find icky are suppressed.

Moralising is a habit of those who lack the strength and/or will to get what they desire through other means. The West dethroned its warriors and elevated its priests; China is dethroning its priests and raising up its warriors. Time will tell which class of leader shall overcome, but history is pretty clear about what kind of societies rise or fall.

Speak for yourself. I'm not comfortable with mass surveillance. There's little I find intolerably "icky". It's not even the "Communist" in China's Communist Party that I see as evil; I consider myself a democratic socialist. The fact that I live in a flawed society doesn't mean I can't condemn blatant censorship and concentration camps. Honestly, parts of your comment make you sound like a sociopath.

It's not exactly sociopathic to point out the hypocrisy of the US standing on some kind of moral high ground while blowing up whole countries and killing millions of people directly or indirectly.

Sure. This is the part I was referring to:

> Moralising is a habit of those who lack the strength and/or will to get what they desire through other means.

America isn't a very good world citizen in 2019. I honestly wouldn't take issue with a different world power taking the lead if its ruling party weren't even worse. But rest assured, the people in charge of China right now are indeed worse. And my own country's problems don't change the atrocities that they commit.

Democratic Socialism is socialism, and socialism always finds a way to murder people and increase poverty in the name of equality.

Socialism is a deeply religious belief. It has its priests (professors, journalists, entertainers), its churches (campuses, museums, protests and benefit rallies as outdoor/big tent revival analog), its core beliefs predicated on faith that unite the fervent and ostracize the skeptical (diversity is always beneficial, climate change is the fault of the successful, racism is original sin, privilege creates winners and losers in spite of actual value, religions of the oppressed are blameless, etc.), and its intangible and perpetually just beyond The horizon utopia. In every important way, socialism is a religion. It has a general hate for "gods" which functions as a smoke screen for the incorporation of American Protestantism into its modern day Progressive skin suit.

You can see the energy of the faithful when technical questions are provided emotional responses, when differing opinions about generalities are met with personal assertions regarding psychological well being ('burn the hetetic' transmogrified into 'you need medical attention because you have (x)-pathy), and, always everpresent in Leftward arguments,appeals to authority that the one appealing doesn't recognize.

> Democratic Socialism is socialism

US-style “democratic socialism” isn't consistently, except perhaps from a cladistic viewpoint; a lot of it is substantively social democracy which is more of an ideological commitment to the modern mixed economy then an actual socialism.

> and socialism always finds a way to murder people and increase poverty in the name of equality.

I think (assuming you are arguing in good faith) you are falsely generalizing from Leninism and it's descendants with socialism. While at least cladistically a subset of socialism, Leninism and it's offshoots is a narrower and particular subset from which generalizations about the broader set cannot validly be drawn.

> Socialism is a deeply religious belief

No more or less than capitalism is.

Thank you for the well worded responses. I was responding in good faith, and herein also.

>isn't consistently This is the beautiful thing about socialism. It need not be perfect, or even dominant. It just needs a foothold. From there, it is purely a game of time. Put another way, socialists wait for other viewpoints to come around to theirs (Christianity, Academe, Business) or disappear. They do not become Less Left.

>cladistic Ah. See you too are a person of depth. Yarvin's work on the neo-Protestant clade is exceptional but not for the faint of heart. I recommend Spandrell's Bioleninism piece.

>falsely generalizing A salient point. Where are the gulags of the social democrats? Where are the legions of thought police? Where are the desperate informers turning in their neighbors? I know this will be an ugly statement, but I believe the mass murder inclination of socialists is more than saitiated by rampant abortion. It fulfills the same methods and motivations of Holdomer and any other incident of mass death from Lenin or Stalin or Pot or Mao; the greater good. People often forget that the motivations behind the mass death perpetrated by these men and, more importantly, their regimes always had a logical source, for some definition of logic. Socialism doesn't cause mass murder; it justifies it. And to the socialist society, the justification is always good.

>socialist religiosity So what? Capitalism is faith in the selfishness of man. Socialism is faith in the rightness of good. Cargo Cults use the same parts of their brains for reasoning as Catholics. The question, for me, is not the How, but the What. More directly, To What End and For What Purpose. Objectively, the merit of capitalism vs. the merits of socialism a matter of historical record. Put another way, the same god concept that causes a genocide can also cause, quite literally, science. Equivocation has its value, but in the frame of your chosen context it is relatively valueless.

I point out the religiosity of socialism not to say it is singular, rather to demonstrate that it is typical.

> Capitalism is faith in the selfishness of man.

Disagree. Capitalism is faith in the fairness of man. Each person in a capitalistic society has the same opportunity to take advantage of the free market and create their own wealth in a way that doesn't infringe upon the rights of the rest of the people in that society. These rights are guaranteed by the society, regardless of person.

Socialism (such as that in China) does not afford its citizens such equal rights. In fact, the Chinese government has very recently instituted controls which allow them to have a high degree of control over the rights a particular Chinese citizen can exercise. These rights are allowed, regarding person.

That fairness effect is downstream from the expectation of self-interest being the primary motivator behind market decisions.

...okay, bud. I don't think I'm the one acting like a zealot right now.

Why would you? The zealous are continually perplexed by the lack of natural conviction they witness. I am adamant in my interpretation, but I am very aware of how much of an edge case my perspective seems to be.

Would a loophole be China labeling them as “enemy combatants” and then drone striking them? [1]

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”

1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

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