By "early Nazis"? No.
And the purpose isn't restricted to the people in them, it goes way beyond murder.
> While the separation of inmates into categories was merely a tactical-organisatory measure for the the purpose of administration of the camps, the arbitrariness of committal demonstrates the essential principle of the institution as such. The existance of a political opposition is just a pretext for the concentration camp system, and its purpose is not achieved when the population more or less voluntarily conforms as consequence of the most monstrous deterrence, that is, to give up its political rights. The arbitrariness has the purpose to deprive those under the totalitarian regime of all their rights as citizens, which finally become as outlawed [vogelfrei] in their own country as otherwise only the stateless and homeless. The deprivation of humans of their rights, the killing of the juridical person in them is just a precondition of their being totally controlled, for which even voluntary agreement is a hindrance.
-- Hannah Arendt
That was true in China even before those camps, and that people with a cartoon understanding of history, concentration camps, Nazism, just about anything related to this, roll their eyes at "making" someone a "villain" is as predictable as it's their own fault.
1. Tiananmen Square was a brutal massacre that gives a visceral reaction
2. The hunting of the Falun Gong practitioners seems insane. I had a friend in the US whose family members were disappearing and were being harassed in the US. They were getting phone calls with recordings of their wiretaps.
3. China is holding ethnocidal camps for the Uyghurs
4. China threatens war quite often, whether it be about disputed islands in the South China Sea or even whether China should get to artificially set currency exchange rates. (I understand that the US is practically speaking much more belligerent, though many US citizens may be blind to their own behaviors)
That sure looks like cartoonish villainy to me.
Another way to look at it. Imagine you're an amoral government bureaucrat ruling Xinjiang, and you're getting pressure from above about the terrorist attacks there (especially when Xinjiang residents are committing terrorist attacks in other provinces). Your KPI is to reduce the number of terrorist attacks to zero, and you have near unlimited funding. What's the simplest approach? Lock up anybody who has even the tiniest possibility of committing a terrorist attack, and institute the maximum amount of surveillance and monitoring that's technologically possible to identify any planned attacks. Also prevent your residents from going to other provinces, so even if they do manage to conduct a terrorist attack, it won't piss off anybody important (other province governors). That's the logic behind it.
I think you've misunderstood the nature of rhetorical questions. I'm not interested in the Chinese government's pretexts or rationalizations. The problem is the violation of the basic human rights of people who have done nothing to warrant it.
Thought stopping cliches will get pushed back.
Violation of human rights (if these are even recognised by PRC under your definition; they're not) are committed on both sides. Trying to weigh them is silly and does not make them any better. Measuring others by your yardstick is a kind of imperialism.
What cliches? You mean like the hypocritical and fundamentally dishonest nature of totalitarianism?
> if these are even recognised by CCP under your definition
They clearly don't recognize them because they are committing them.
> are committed on both sides
Two wrongs don't make a right.
> Trying to weigh them is silly
There is nothing to weigh. What the Chinese government is doing in Xinjiang is plainly wrong. Making excuses for it is silly.
One the other hand, military action could plausibly cause long-lasting international upset.
I don’t envy Xi Jinping’s position.
The PRC claims that Taiwan is a Special Administrative Region of the PRC while the ROC claims de jure sovereignty over all of China. There are significant political parties within Taiwan itself (the Pan-Blue Coalition parties) that support the One China policy.
If there isn't even internal consensus regarding independence in Taiwan, I think it's fair to say that the issue is a little more complicated than "China is sabotaging recognition of Taiwan's independence".
BTW, the ruling party of ROC was pretty authoritarian back then too. IMO, the contrasting political development of the ROC and PRC in the last few decades is worthy of further evaluation and consideration.
Edit: sorry for the country typo; Was thinking about a trip to visit my friend in Shanghai who lived there until moving to Singapore recently.
The US has agreed not to have official relations with the ROC, but the US has _never_ recognized the PRC's claims of Taiwan and the rest of the land controlled by the ROC.
This is false. The US has "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Strait since the 1970s, but it has never supported the notion that Taiwan (and Kinmen, Taiping, etc.) is PRC territory or that the mainland is ROC territory.
The feelings of Singaporean residents about the matter are not relevant to the discussion at all.
The US has never officially recognized that the island Taiwan as part of the PRC, only as part of "China", which is ambiguous because there are two nations calling themselves China (PRC and ROC).
Democracies tend to be more stable than dictatorships because there's a relief valve for massive public dissent - ie elections. Dictatorships often meet their end suddenly, because a revolution is the only mechanism they have to change things. It's therefore better to quell a rebellion violently and cover it up later, than risk the spread of discontentment.
The reason it's not being put down bloodily (as is typically the case) is because it's an issue confined to Hong Kong with a low chance of spreading. If it dud spread over the border, things would be different.
Present-day China, however, actually has a very efficient mechanism (relief valve) for dealing with massive public dissent, which is their largely hierarchical governance model (township -> county -> prefecture -> province -> central government).
When citizens have grievances, it's often against policies perceived to be imposed by local government officials. If the unrest becomes serious enough, many times these grievances are actually brought to the attention of the central government who then have an opportunity to step in to save the day and fire/replace all of the local officials involved (to the satisfaction of the mob). A surprising number of mass protests have been quelled peacefully in China in this way, over the years.
And, the CCP has a very hard time convincing the people of Hong Kong they won’t be prosecuted for dissenting speech after the Causeway book sellers were kidnapped.
Their release valve has hit a bit of a snag here. Democracy is tried and true though, maybe they could give it a try in Hong Kong?
The tactics you describe to quell protests would definitely work in her hometown and 90% of all other population centers in China. The other 10% are doing great and don’t feel like protesting the smaller issues.
A cold, rational CCP wouldn't have gotten itself into this mess. Hong Kong was popularly pro-China before the extradition bill. Re-integration in a few decades would have gone smoothly. But someone got impatient and jumped the gun.
Depends. For economic co-operation or dependency, probably yes. But Hong Kong people has very little faith in the Chinese legal system, most of us know it's a facade, from the grass-root to the super-rich.
That's why, by pushing for the extradition law amendment, which, if passed, would allow the Chinese government to extradite "criminals" from HK based on their laws, the HK government has kicked the hornet's nest.
You over-simplify the integration of a region which has its own strong identity, liberal rules and culture. One can't tell which measures will lead to strong resentment and which will get accepted - among the many that will eventually be needed.
It's probably gonna get worse unless China itself opens up. But in any case, it seems fairly evident that Hong Kong will have to fight this fight alone and the rest of the world will merely watch.
> It's probably gonna get worse unless China itself opens up.
Agreed with both points.
> One can't tell which measures will lead to strong resentment and which will get accepted - among the many that will eventually be needed.
In fact the public opinion was clearly against the extradition bill, but the government has a record of passing bills against strong public opposition (e.g. the High Speed Rail and its Juxtaposed controls).
> But in any case, it seems fairly evident that Hong Kong will have to fight this fight alone and the rest of the world will merely watch.
Not quite. In this fight, Hong Kong has got support from Britain [1], Europe [2], the United States [3], among others. The most powerful one is the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019” [3], a bipartisan bill introduced by US Representative Jim McGovern and Senator Marco Rubio. The bill would put real pressure on China (and pro-Beijing officials) to choose between worse financial access and democracy for Hong Kong.
[1]: https://www.theepochtimes.com/outgoing-uk-prime-minister-the...
[2]: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/18/european-parliament-de...
[3]: https://time.com/5607043/hong-kong-human-rights-democracy-ac...
I don't think a news story changes much.
They broke into the LegCo building on 1/July, if the police force hasn't withdrawn, probably lots of blood would have been shed.
Whether one agrees or not, many of the youth do not see much, if any, hope in Hong Kong under the current leadership.
These people would rather go "scorched earth" (well, probably not Syrian-style scorched earth, yet) than to be appeased with empty promises, again.
You wouldn't need military intervention to make Hong Kong buckle.
You'd just fake some water and food situation, and cut it off. In this heat, they'll start rationing water within days.
I'm old enough to remember the water rationing under the British colonial rule, and even then, that was the tail end of it.