Dealing with China Isn’t Worth the Moral Cost | Hacker News Reader

Dealing with China Isn’t Worth the Moral Cost

nytimes.com

357 pointszachguo261 comments

In this light of recent heat up of issues with China, I want to share a positive story to contrast: I had a daily driver in Chengdu for over 1 month who spoke no English, zero, none at all - not even "yes" or "no". We communicated via Google translate (on VPN). He would play Chinese music and then some days I would play some American rock and roll. We bonded in inexplicable ways. I had always commented on how I love the carved wooden letter that hangs on the taxi's rear-view mirror. The ride was almost 1 hour in the morning and 2 hours in the evening back to the Hotel. We became friends. On the last day, he took the wooden ornament off, cupped it in his palm, held it against his chest, gave it to me with a glimmer in his eyes. Fuck, that was the most amazing human connection I've ever made.

I've worked in China in the semiconductor business, stayed there and absorbed some of the things the west does not even know. I recommend reading "Poorly Made in China (2011)" by Paul Midler. It is surprisingly good - factual, objective look of deep issues with China's way of doing things. I resonate with the book with my personal experience.

Diplomacy is about being able to negotiate well, build trust and foster long term relationships, acknowledge mutual interests, differences and work towards solutions to problems. China has lost the brand image, probably forever. Despite a few positive experiences on the individual level, I hate working with Chinese businesses and would never want to go there. Fuck the Chinese government and its tentacles (Chinese corporations). The Chinese leadership does not understand that leadership is about inspiring others, taking care of the weak, keeping your promises and being able to independently think, innovate and set an example for other nations to follow. The way it is going, I can guarantee with certainty that they can have all the financial leverage, moral leverage is what you need in the long term; they can never become a superpower.

Edit: grammar

> I had always commented on how I love the carved wooden letter that hangs on the taxi's rear-view mirror

In many cultures it is disrespectful to make such comments, because they convey a thinly veiled demand to get the thing, otherwise the other person loses face for not being generous.

Perhaps I missed this obvious cultural sensitivity, I thought his gift to me was from genuine generosity in the true sense of the word.

Don’t let some rando from the internet re-frame your personal experience. You know better than them

Don't change your opinion based on one random comment.

While you may have missed it, you're the best judge of whether he gave it to you out of genuine goodwill. If he did, then you're good.

Too little info to tell for the specific case, but I heard many such stories, not just from east Asia.

In general, gifts are complex. In some cultures you must refuse it some specific number of times, not to look greedy. But then you have to accept it, because getting help/gift is a bit submissive and results in gratefulness, and however little, the feeling of owing them back, which can create social ties.

Yeah, but that’s within the culture. They’re not dolts. They know foreigners aren’t well versed in their nuances.

Can you imagine thinking that Americans would feel disrespected because a visiting foreigner made a cultural faux pas?

Oh my god, they didn’t stand up for the anthem!!! They asked my salary!!!

Americans are currently feeling extremely disrespected and salty af because the Chinese government built from a different culture made a cultural faux pas of demanding organizational accountability for the speech of an employee, something that happens every day in China, both now and before there was ever a Communist party.

Not sure why this has been downvoted. It's an interesting way of looking at the issue. You don't have to agree with what China does.

I get your point but I've seen a lot of Americans be outraged at non-native English speakers use words or expressions they deem inappropriate, and show zero tolerance for the fact the people in question aren't necessarily fluent.

It happens a lot here in fact.

Right, or Parisians or people in Quebec, non metro Germany, non coastal China, etc. Those aren’t cultural faux pases, really.

The situation described is two people who are acquaintances from different places trying to have an interested conversation, not just random people bumping into each other.

I'm not Chinese but I'm guessing it's cool.

https://blog.speechling.com/being-polite-in-chinese/

https://www.writtenchinese.com/the-right-way-to-compliment-a...

In the context of their continued friendship, it's quite likely that parent comment, as far as we can tell from the limited description of its delivery, would be interpreted favorably by the other party.

> The way it is going, I can guarantee with certainty that they can have all the financial leverage, moral leverage is what you need in the long term; they can never become a superpower.

I feel the same. This is especially apparent with how they handle their territorial disputes in South East Asia.

Hard to become a superpower when you are antagonizing your neighbors.

> Hard to become a superpower when you are antagonizing your neighbors.

Er, is this true? I'd have thought quite the opposite: hard to become a superpower _without_ antagonizing neighbors.

Yeah but superpowers do try to avoid it, not actively foment it.

Do you truly feel that the US has antagonized Canada and Mexico within the past 100 years? I'm pretty sure they're our closest allies.

It's technically (just) more than 100 years, but the Zimmerman Telegram (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram) is not something your (potential) enemy sends to one of your "closest allies".

I definitely think there has been some antagonism from the US government towards Mexico a lot more recently than 100 years ago

The line of 100 years just misses the US occupation of Veracruz and the Zimmerman Telegram (or the Mexican Revolution in general), which was one of the lowest points of US-Mexico relations. US-Canada relations were pretty testy in the pre-WWI era as well, and the declassification of War Plan Red [1] did cause a brief stir.

Then again, the US has antagonized many countries simply by electing Donald Trump.

[1] In the inter-war period, the US military used a series of color classification schemes to sketch out what the US response to wars with various countries would look like. Red was Britain. And in event of war with the UK, the US plan was to invade Canada, irrespective of Canada declaring neutrality (which was Canada's plan in such a scenario).

Which countries has it antagonized? China? Canada and Mexico have signed onto the USMCA. Japan and India's leaders both seem to adore Trump. Watching Trump at the U.N. two weeks ago, he seemed to be a very capable diplomat and seems to have good relations with most nations.

Canada and Mexico signed the USMCA not so much because they felt it was better than NAFTA but because they didn't want Trump to do any worse. And it's not like Canada is happy about Trump's emergency steel tariffs that hit Canada's exports--the fact that USMCA would cause Trump to lift them was one of they reasons to sign it, and Trump certainly was in no rush to lift them afterwords.

Not to mention there's lots of dislike towards Trump's tendency to rip up treaties just because Obama signed them--Vietnam wasn't happy about Trump dropping TPP, Europe was not a fan of him leaving the Paris climate treaty or the Iran nuclear treaty, etc.

"I'm altering the deal, pray I do not alter it further." But yes, totally okay with USMCA, that's why we decided to put the US first in the name.

100 years seems like an arbitrary cutoff, and we sure as hell "antagonized" Mexico on our way to becoming a superpower not that much earlier than that by... Taking half their territory.

Canada has almost always been a virtual non-entity due to things like their incredible population sparsity and longitudinal cultural/economic integration with regions of the US. They are a counterexample, but the pattern very much points in my direction IMO.

On top of that, we're talking about _becoming_ a superpower, not being one. Once you're already a superpower, your neighbors often become varying degrees of vassal, which is why Mexico and Canada are among our closest allies. You're hardly a superpower if you haven't neutralized your neighbors (diplomatically or otherwise). Look at the blood feuds over tiny bits of land in the rest of the world, and consider how cool Mexico seemingly is with their land's massive, unprovoked conquest. They accepted it (and their good relationship with us) because they didn't have a better choice.

How many superpowers can you think of that didn't antagonize their neighbors, especially on their way to becoming one? Rome? Persia? Britain? Russia?

Considering the three past superpower: UK, USSR, and USA. I find that the degree of which they antagonize their neighbors depend on their geography.

UK is an island and a seabased power whose primary interest in Europe was to prevent the creation of a dominant European power which could overpower it. Therefore it created a number of alliances and rivalries to serve this purpose. On other continents, however, it were more aggressive to secure trade and colonies.

The USSR as a landbased Empire that had a flat border to the west, was fairly hostile to its western neighbors in Eastern Europe and even to China to the East. Although a Russian would argue that they created buffer states in response to the memory of being invaded twice by Napoleon and Hitler.

The USA is a sea based empire with a continent behind it. Therefore it originally was very hostile against its neighbors, be they Native American or European colonies. After securing the continent by reaching the Pacific, it ensured the dominance of the Caribbean through the Monroe Doctrine (similar to China's position vis-a-vis the South China Sea) today. And then afterwards played Balance of Power against any major power from emerging on Eurasia.

China has a number of formidable foes on its immediate periphery. It is almost impossible to dominate them all militarily, especially with the US against it. Therefore it will attempt to establish economic dominance over Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The Belt and Road initiative alleviates it from a over reliance on Sea based imports of oil (especially through the Strait of Malacca which the US navy could easily blockade).

Their goal is never be become a superpower.This is just western paranoia Their action is based to protect their interest and to avoid chaos in their society. China experience with the west is based on their experience in the Opium war.

Never assume. Chinese presence in the South China Sea, Vietnam's EEZ hints otherwise. Chairman Xi is a somewhat ambitious bureaucrat with no sense of humour. We'll see how he handles HK: soft power or Tianamen style.

> Hard to become a superpower when you are antagonizing your neighbors.

I think the historical super-powers would disagree. Rome conquered all its neighbours. Britain had mostly terrible relations with France from the 11th to the end of the 19th century (and, at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_great_powers, both can be reasonably viewed as superpowers in the 19th century).

And I'm fairly sure that the USA's relations with Latin America could readily be described as "antagonizing your neighbors" ...

World has changed a lot since Roman empire, the British empire and the French colonialism. I am not convinced if the same dynamics still apply. You acutely omit the fall of the Nazi party for example. They didn't like their neighbors, tried to invade them and we all know how it went. You should be making a list of all the potential superpowers that didn't become by pissing off their neighbors.

I wonder if the Nazis had stopped at Poland, Austria, and Hungary and just built up their power more slowly if they wouldn't have survived? The U.S.S.R. was no better but they had far more staying power and the remnants of that still influence politics to this day.

The main point I take from history is that the past does not necessarily determine the future. There's no such thing as fate. The Nazis could have won if they didn't make certain strategic errors. If Rome didn't make certain strategic errors, it would still be an empire today. China itself is older than Rome and there's really no guarantees that they don't win this whole cold war or whatever it is that's brewing.

I think the point I was trying to make is - I cannot imagine an empire such as the British empire going around conquering and taking over the world today. We have nuclear power. We have instant communication on a global scale. Organizing is easier than ever on the internet and once we have satellite internet, it is game over.

I just don't see the same type of century old analogies panning out in today's world. A superpower cannot antagonize, bully, invade and destroy neighbors like they used to in 13th century.

Your point of the Nazi party sounds plausible - if Nazi party had slowly built up their power, I think they'd had a hard time spreading on a global scale.

Maybe. I think nuclear weapons are a deterrent for these world wars that happened in the 20th century and I agree on that point.

But the cold war still happened and it lasted a long time and there were many proxy wars fought in the process.

If world economy tanked for some reason and we found ourselves in another great depression, then all bets are off, though. Desperate people will do desperate things. They are more easily manipulated.

Any number of things could shift and the world is not as well put together as we would like to believe. It's a lot of duct tape and glue holding the whole thing together.

How is China older than Rome? I see no more continuity in culture or society between those.

China has had dynasty changes and civil wars for sure. But the language and culture are continuous for thousands of years. How many people speak Latin these days versus Mandarin?

Try again but ask about Romance languages.

Rome never forced Latin language on their members the way Mandarin was. Count the extant variants of Chinese and how they declined. In fact Greek was held in high esteem in the Roman empire.

Yeah this. Not just Rome, but think about the Spanish Empire. They conquered south and middle America seeking gold and forcing Catholicism on the natives. The British Empire? Hard to argue it was some sort of moral authority. They were just as bad as the Spanish. What makes a super power? Money and military. That's all. We can dress up American power with all the highest ideals we like, none of it means a thing without money and might.

Then in the 20th century there were two proposals of Anglo-French union (1940 and 1956). That would have made an interesting alternative timeline. :)

Rome conquered all its neighbours

This is not entirely true; Rome sent in the legions only when it had to. It “conquered” most of Britain via soft power, coopting local elites, introducing hypocausts, aqueducts and so on. Where it had to use hard power, it failed hence Hadrian’s Wall.

Assyria was a superpower for a lot longer than the USA has even existed. Their relationships with their neighbors was almost entirely antagonistic.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f4af/bb82f1b7920fa9444e29eb...

Nearly the entire history of the Ancient Near East was superpowers antagonizing their neighbors. Throughout human history, superpowers NOT antagonizing their neighbors is almost unheard of. The easiest way to become a superpower, historically, was to antagonize your neighbors.

> moral leverage is what you need in the long term; they can never become a superpower.

I do not understand what you mean by this, and what long term is to you. I want to be convinced, but I fail to see this as true.

What would be a superpower in your eyes, and which of the past examples of morally problematic powers (USSR, British/Spanish/Portuguese/French empires,for example) do you consider not to meet the definition, or not to have been "long term"?

>> moral leverage is what you need in the long term; they can never become a superpower.

> I do not understand what you mean by this, and what long term is to you. I want to be convinced, but I fail to see this as true.

I too am curious what it means. The only thing comes to mind is a variation of the just world fallacy.

I guess one thing that is obvious, is that an oppressive country like China can never win the race to attract the brightest, most creative minds. Nowadays people have options on where to live and from what I can see, these kind of people mostly prefer to live in more liberal societies.

This is probably the best defense one can have, but it is not clear that the door will stay open forever.

I am not sure the foreigners, but actually right now more and more Chinese students studying aboard are back to China to work. In case you don't believe it, just added the link from QZ.com: https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-...

This assumes that having the brightest and most creative people is necessary to become a global superpower. That's a particularly modern and Western way of thinking; a lot of powerful empires in the past got that way by fostering a sense of moral superiority in the ordinary people. The British empire, Ottoman empire, Roman empire, etc were all built on the idea that the people were better than everyone else so it was OK to take from other nations. And it worked - those empires lasted hundreds of years, thousands of years in the case of the Romans.

America has been a superpower based on capitalism for under a hundred years. That isn't long enough to see if it's a better way of building power than other philosophies just yet.

"a superpower based on capitalism"

This seems to me like a bag of words, not a real concept that means something. It's like saying America is "a superpower based on Christianity," or "a superpower based on immigration," or "a superpower built on the back of slavery," or "a superpower based on the proposition that all men are created equal." Capitalism isn't even a philosophy, it's a side effect of freedom.

# Capitalism isn't even a philosophy, it's a side effect of freedom.

Is it? In the country where capitalism came from "in 1831 a mere 4,500 men, out of a population of more than 2.6 million people, were entitled to vote in parliamentary elections" http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/stru...

Voting has nothing to do with freedom. And Scotland didn’t invent capitalism, what are you talking about?

England / UK invented capitalism. In 1831 you already had GB. (correct quote was that you got 3% of the population as voters - but you argue that it doesn't matter anyway) I don't quite understand what kind of freedom they had at a time when the body that coins all laws was determined by 3% of the population.

Would they even need to attract foreigners? They have more people than all of North America and Europe combined.

In fact they did attract foreigners, how many businesses want to cozy up to them? Some countries would very much like to deal with their citizens the Chinese way too.

They do not need anyone to migrate, which is entirely different.

I guess one thing that is obvious, is that an oppressive country like China can never win the race to attract the brightest, most creative minds.

They have over a billion people have have made significant investments over decades to indoctrinate nationalistic fervour. They have zero need to attract anyone. By statistics alone they have more “bright, creative” people than US+UK+EU combined, and far greater willingness to employ those people for national goals. The same people we have working on adtech and similar nonsense.

I see it as a difference where people want to join, or are forced to join. Nobody wants to be part of a immoral power, because the immoral stuff will happen to you too. People want a just and fair system.

I split it like this: do you have people at the borders to keep people out, or keep people in. If you have to use force to keep your own citizens and regions in, well good luck to you.

On the other hand, if you have to refuse people and regions to join you, you're in a very good position.

That's why you can only keep using force and supression for so long, and history has shown that we evolve to more fair, moral systems.

People want to join anywhere where it's economically better. Following the victor, whoever they are, whatever they believe, is a common feature of all empires. The reality is that most people are too busy for either politics or morality.

Maybe he's thinking the causes and effects in the reversed order.

PS, why US is not on your problematic powers list for what's done/doing in the Middle East?

So to sum up - we should deal with a regime that runs concentration camps and threatens its neighbours because you once met a nice taxi driver. I'm convinced!

Try reading the rest of the comment.

What a shallow reading! The point is that you can have wonderful individuals in an otherwise hostile culture. Or, human connections transcend barriers. I’ve had similar experiences as a foreigner in China among other countries.

I've read stories of wonderful individuals who were also Nazis, but the Nazis still needed to be destroyed.

No, to sum it up: bad, immoral, oppressive governments do not reflect the perfectly good human qualities of some/most of the population they govern. Hate the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.

> The Chinese leadership does not understand that leadership is about inspiring others, taking care of the weak, keeping your promises and being able to independently think, innovate and set an example for other nations to follow

Which nation is demonstrating this leadership then? In the current world, no one.

I believe firmly on the other hand: hard power is what makes a superpower, superpower. US is the superpower not for the moral sugar coating, which itself is an afterthought and curated national mythology by the said scholars, but for the dollar's reserve status and the military that enforces such status.

China probably couldn't be the superpower like US in 90s, a role model that everyone aspires to be. However in a world everyone is equally self-centric and nationalism-driven, it surely can be a superpower.

> they can never become a superpower.

China has long been a world super power for thousands of years, and probably only lost that title after European renaissance. Read some history[1] dude.

> I had a daily driver in Chengdu for over 1 month who spoke no English, zero, none at all - not even "yes" or "no". We communicated via Google translate (on VPN).

> I recommend reading "Poorly Made in China (2011)" by Paul Midler. It is surprisingly good - factual, objective look of deep issues with China's way of doing things. I resonate with the book with my personal experience.

> Diplomacy is about being able to negotiate well, build trust and foster long term relationships, acknowledge mutual interests and work towards solutions to problems. China has lost the brand image, probably forever.

I don't understand your sentiments here. You started your story by telling everyone you don't speak Chinese and can't communicate with local Chinese people and then later you said China lost the brand image, how can you come to that conclusion if you don't even speak Chinese understand the culture? Without understanding each other, how do you "negotiate well, build trust"? If all you know about China is based on the readings on NYT on China and a 2009 book about Chinese products (which btw, was originally published ten years ago in 2009[2], not 2011 as you mentioned) and your experience in semiconductor sector, then your view about China is very biased(due to NYT's long standing anti-China editorial board) limited, narrow minded and a decade outdated.

Lastly, your repeatedly usage of F-bomb doesn't make your arguments stronger, but make your seem like you have poor vocabulary.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China

Hi, I'm curious what you think of the five demands

Disclaimer: I am biased just as most people here in the discussions. But I am bi-lingual and I read lots (hundreds) articles both in English & Chinese (Simplified & Traditional) and I've been to Hong Kong and have had personal experiences working with HK Police. And I also have Hong Kong friends both native (born in HK) and immigrants from mainland.

There was an OpEd[1] written by Ronny K. W. Tong, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, posted on SCMP, a major local Hong Kong newspaper published in English. I agree with it.

Of all the five demands:

1. Full withdrawal of the extradition bill.

This is kinda of BS, even though HK government has completed gave in on this. The bill is effectively dead. But just think about it, this is about a case where a murder suspect who committed murder and was supposed to be face justice. HK law is probably too lenient on capital punishment than in mainland, which the suspect is mostly like to be served with death penalty. I can understand the fear HKers towards a in-transparent justice system with potential political descendants abuse.

2. A commission of inquiry into alleged police brutality

This is also BS. My first hand experience with HK Police has been very positive and professional. Any riots with colour revolution approach and significant violence against law enforcement, major damages to public infrastructure like subway stations, government buildings, and not a single protester was killed but hundreds of HK police officers were injured some were badly injured, a few were blind due to protester shooting high powered laser beams into the eyes of officers in short distance and doxxing against thousands of HK police officers and their spouses/children, this is practically unheard of anywhere in the history. The restraint there is unmatched.

Can you imagine if this happened in the U.S.? Any protester & violent rioters dare to post threat to law enforcement/police officers, they will be shoot or tased or choked dead. Pretty sure you will get near zero chance to win in arguing police brutality with the judge either. Ok, maybe U.S. is not a good example to compare to because gun ownership makes it unique. But what about the HK Police during British ruling? I haven't seen any comparison report before 1997 vs. after 1997. I will challenge the protester to do some homework on that topic and leave it at that.

3 Retracting the classification of protesters as “rioters”

BS x 3. See #2. Protest became violent, lots of HK Police officers were hurt and injured, even officers' spouses and children became doxxing victims. If this is not riots what is?

4. Amnesty for arrested protesters

BS x 4. You know what's screw-up after all these arrests? The foreign judges free them! Yes, you heard that right. Hong Kong inherits the legal justice system from the British ruling, like any other western countries, the judges are appointed for life. And you know what, most of the top judges are foreigners who are also citizens from the Commonwealth, by definition, that means these judges also pledge the allegiances to other countries in additional to Hong Kong. How could the judge be unbiased if they have dual/triple citizenship? What if their allegiances to other Commonwealth countries has a conflict of interests to their jobs as Hong Kong judges? This is also unheard of in any countries with a fair record of justice systems. Obviously, those foreign judges doesn't like to be criticized.[2] They want to keep it that way.[3][4]. If I were a Hong Konger, I certainly won't like to be judged by a foreign judge especially the judge pledge the allegiance to a hostile nation (UK) with a strong political biased than my own country (China).

5. Dual universal suffrage, meaning for both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive

This wasn't part of the 1997 deal between UK + China. Hong Kong had never had universal suffrage under British ruling. So what makes the protesters think they will have a leverage on negotiating that? If the government doesn't agree to it, they burn down the whole city, block the subway and airport and make every Hong Konger suffer? I am being cynical here, under the current situation neither Beijing nor Hong Kong government would consider that.

I've read many OpEds and discussions, the consensus of mainland media focus on the living standard of average Hong Kongers were the major cause of social unrest. I agree with that.

The five demands have no bearing on changing the lives of lower class Hong Kongers and on the future hope of young Hong Kongers. Instead, they should be asking for changes in legislation on public housing (one of most expensive places to live on earth), on economic stimulus in creating jobs for youngsters, narrowing a huge income gap between the ultra wealthy and the poor lower class (a city with slightly less population with 20 billionaires with net worth over $2B, totally $170B, or 55% of the GDP controlled by 20 people/families, how did Hong Kong end up like that?[5]). The social economical divide is astonishing.

Although democracy is arguably an ultimate destination for citizens to ask for, democracy doesn't necessary solve Hong Kong's social + economical problems that I outlined. Additionally, democracy doesn't necessarily bring prosperity, there are authoritarian states that people have a much better living standards, namely Saudi., UAE, Qatar and a bunch of middle eastern countries, and then there is Singapore.

The 5 demands of Hong Kong Rioters totally miss the point of urgent issues and introduce violence and break law & order is the wrong way for all of Hong Kong people. Let alone vast majority of the Hong Kong people did not fully agree with the protesters to begin with.

That's my opinion on the 5 demands.

[1]: https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3017719/hong-ko...

[2]: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/209614...

[3]: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/2096355...

[4]: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2128060/why-c...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hong_Kong_people_by_ne...

>This is also BS. My first hand experience with HK Police has been very positive and professional. Any riots with colour revolution approach and significant violence against law enforcement, major damages to public infrastructure like subway stations, government buildings, and not a single protester was killed but hundreds of HK police officers were injured some were badly injured, a few were blind due to protester shooting high powered laser beams into the eyes of officers in short distance and doxxing against thousands of HK police officers and their spouses/children, this is practically unheard of anywhere in the history. The restraint there is unmatched.

Uhh have you seen the videos protesters are posting on Reddit? HK police ganging up on someone and kicking them while they're down, shooting someone in the torso point blank, going in plainclothes among protesters and throwing Molotov cocktails. I hope you get paid a bonus when they order you to drive the tank.

One of the surprising things to me is how much China seems to have played their hand too early (and too strongly). People have been sounding alarms about China for a while but if they had played it cool everything likely would’ve ticked along as it was. Everyone would still ignore the human rights abuses, and IP theft, and creeping influence in our institutions around the world, etc. Instead China has managed to really put it right in front of every average persons face and now there’s a real chance things could shift away from China. And what for? Ego? On the one hand I think the CCP bought a dud with Chairman Xi. But maybe that’s good for the rest of us.

What if any do you feel Trumps role was/is in any of this?

It's a reasonably valid point. During his administration, right-wing autocrats the world over have been emboldened, and he hasn't spoken against them. See, for instance, Khashoggi, the Kurds, or the Skripal poisoning incidents in recent memory, or, more to the point, the promise that Trump would say nothing of the protests in Hong Kong if he got his trade deal [0].

You're being downvoted, but while it's not a direct cause and effect, he has supported and encouraged authoritarianism the world over.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-china-promise-hong-kon...

Would you say that Trump's trade war has also forced Xi's hand? China could afford to ignore these issues when its economy was still growing. But a shrinking economy has forced China to consolidate power and clamp down any dissent

Trumps trade war has been an effective policy. It may not have been the most elegant or the only option. But all things considered not terrible. It may backfire into a recession. Taking some action was both overdue and likely to happen regardless of who was in charge.

I am otherwise aggressively anti trump.

I think you're attributing too much to Trump here. Trump is part of the same movement of rising authoritarianism and strong man politics. He may be the poster boy, but Putin has been there for decades.

My opinion, which I can't support, is that the dream of information technology automatically progressing democratic and liberal ideals has failed. Information technology is no different than chemistry. It can be weaponized effectively. Right-wing parties around the world learned how to powerfully engage with the masses. It really was a meme war. Propaganda is undoubtedly effective even when it's standing right next to the truth.

If you only read the news you would think it's only national leaders taking over and oppressing the populations. I don't think so. I think this is a trend towards grassroots nationalism and fascism. The people want this.

Was there ever a dream of the internet promoting specifically left wing democracies? I don't remember any of that in the early days. Surely the opposite - a lot of early hacker culture was libertarian in nature. You seem to simply describe anything not left wing as "grassroots nationalism and fascism" but that's not a reasonable view.

This is a conversation I'm really interested in but upon rereading my original comment I think it was low quality. I didn't mean some of things that I implied.

No I don't think the dream was for left wing ideology. I meant classic liberalism and democracy which aligns well with libertarianism. So regardless of political leaning the dream was that information will free the people. What we're seeing is that information is being used to entrench the establishment. It is the opposite of libertarian today.

Fascism and nationalism were in a time in history attached to left wing ideology rather than right wing. I don't want to imply that those movements are inherently left or right. But I do see that today they are attached to the right, who are using information very effectively to achieve their goals.

Trumps actions don’t explain China’s actions that we’re talking about here. If anything, assuming someone smart was in charge in China, Trumps behavior would be cause to show more restraint for now in places like HK to play it very cool and not give your opponents ammunition to accelerate trade wars, etc.

Trump allegedly offered silence on Hong Kong: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/politics/trump-xi-hong-kong-p...

> One of the surprising things to me is how much China seems to have played their hand too early (and too strongly)

China is a dictatorship, Xi a leader for life. That dramatically changed Beijing's political profile.

Pre-Xi, one could argue China had long-term planning capacities. The rotation of leaders and intraparty competition limited corruption and promoted political fitness. Dictatorships have neither. They're cronyist, corrupt and focussed on short-term political survival.

A strategic China would have waited until 2050 to deal with Hong Kong. Instead, Xi got insecure about Winnie the Pooh or whatever. A strategic China would have slowly accumulated technology, capital and soft power. Instead, they're pivoting into a wall.

> On the one hand I think the CCP bought a dud with Chairman Xi. But maybe that’s good for the rest of us.

In the short term, sure. In the medium term, it's a security nightmare. In the long term, we're going to watch billions of peoples' humanity and productivity get squandered. That's a loss to everyone.

Good points made above. Out of curiosity, is there a route to a return of rotating leaders without a voluntary abdication by Xi?

> is there a route to a return of rotating leaders without a voluntary abdication by Xi?

History has limited examples of such peaceful (i.e. no civil war) transitions of power. (Most are from the modern era.)

My guess is the CCP’s senior guard would need to orchestrate his “illness.” But Xi has done a good job of purging the Politburo of able competition.

If I were giving this question serious study, I’d look at the PLA.

I’m not sure he’s up to the level of Stalin, but he’s sure purged many of those whom he thought might threaten his standing —most under rather made up circumstances like corruption, where you know, everyone is corrupt, but they all play the game, except if you’re out, then of course, you’re denounced, striped of property, put in jail, or worse, depending. It’s so reminiscent of soviet politicking.

There has to be a faction within the Politburo, or at least within the Central Committee, that is becoming increasingly skeptical of Xi’s hardline policies, even if all those with pre-existing loyalties were politically purged before. I suppose the question is whether they all find themselves suddenly facing corruption charges one day before they have a chance to consolidate any power.

Last good example in China was Mao, who basically had to die to lose power.

Along those same lines, I'm very interested to see which direction Russia heads after Putin kicks the bucket.

I was under the impression that Deng Xiaoping had similar levels of influence and power during his first 10 years in power and that he stepped down due to a weakened influence following Tiananmen.

I think HK is a huge part of this. They probably thought it would go away quietly but to see this level of support slowly growing and refusing to go away must be alarming. Notice how it was specifically the HK stuff where they are going scorched earth (NBA, Blizzard, co-opting celebrity messages, etc).

I think especially when it comes to entertainment they know how much it goes into shaping their own public discourse and they cannot lose that.

> They probably thought [Hong Kong] would go away quietly

Hong Kong is a problem manufactured by Xi. Most Hong Kongers identified as Chinese not more than a few years ago [1]. Come 2050, almost every Hong Konger would have lived under Beijing's rule their whole life. The sensible thing was to wait.

But Xi got impatient. So we got this mess. Hong Kong accelerated the outcome for a die cast when Xi installed himself as leader for life.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-anniversary-idUS...

Hker here. In 2008, even the most radical forum on HK Internet praise the achievement of China , we celebrated the Chinese Olympic and mourned for the great earthquake in Szechwan.

We all shared the same view with the west that China will eventually transform itself to democracy and we shall have harmony in 2047.....right until China shattered the promised universal suffrage.

Also, China had singlehandedly groom the separatist sentiments HK. Initially in 2014, there were only a handful of activists and they weren’t even treated seriously even within the pro-democracy circle. But lately you see Chinese state media started to put the separatist hat on every pro-democracy movement and figure. You can imagine people are extremely frustrated by this narrative and many young people started to wholeheartedly support independence (no matter how impossible it seems).

You're giving China too much credit here. It has single-handedly gone down the wrong path with HK in the same way that it did so with Taiwan maybe 30 years ago. But in both cases, you don't think the nativist/chauvinist local media and Western propaganda had anything to do with it, in fanning a negative identity ("not Chinese")? Nothing at all?

No , because there’s only one major newspapers that is pro democracy. All other major media is either centrist controlled by businessman, or flat out pro-CCP.

But even back in 2008, the pro-democracy paper namely Apple Daily also was celebrating our Chinese identity, and praising china’s progress.

They should have seen this coming a long time. It's not like it's without precedent. There have been demos in Hong Kong since around 2001 or 02, just about each and every time Beijing tried fiddling with the Basic Law, or restricting freedoms. Along with the yearly July Marches. The 2014 umbrella protests should have been clear, though other demos were much smaller.

But it long predates Xi, he's just stepped it up, and been particularly clumsy with it. They've been fiddling with HK's agreed status pretty much since the moment of handover.

I fear you're getting the wrong message. The protesters will be crushed just like the yellow umbrellas were.

HK, China is declaring that it will flex its muscle.

There's nothing clumsy about it.

They've allowed the regular democratic demonstration to escalate from thousands to millions. That wasn't necessary, it was clumsy. They cleared the umbrella protests long before they escalated to huge, and well over half the population.

Flexing muscle now will risk destroying the advantages of Hong Kong in the process. It will almost certainly have to come with some international reaction.

Given the sheer numbers, and visibility, if they react similarly to Tiananmen, the international reaction will be far larger than then. Whether it will be sustained...

There is a useful parallel in history for keen history buffs.

After the Seven Years' War, a certain European country accidentally kicked off strife with its colonies which morphed into a struggle over legislative sovereignty. For a decade, this simmered until a particularly hard-nosed governor ending up allowing a confrontation to escalate into a very notorious act of vandalism, one that was nearly universally condemned, even on all sides of the conflict. In response, the government enacted a series of laws to punish not just the perpetrators but the entire colony. They hoped to turn moderates into loyalists, to better rein in neighboring radicals lest the same happen to them. Instead, they turned moderates into radicals, and furthermore caused the radicals to shift their demands from autonomy to outright independence, especially as the government chose to double down on their mistakes at every opportunity instead of reversing course hard and fast.

The big difference there would be the relative sizes of the two parties at play, and distance between them.

And for the non-history-buffs, what country are you talking about?

I think the very notorious act of vandalism is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

The notorious act of vandalism was as much an act against the monopoly of the East India Company than just the governor's stupid hard line approach. The daft thing is the tea boycott was dwindling. Dwindling until IIRC the tax was reduced and the East India Company got the monopoly they had been lobbying for in its place.

This provoked other British tea merchants to organise a campaign, publicity and letter writing to colonists to try and get the boycott going again.

It was the Company that then chose to send the four(?) ships to Boston.

T'was mostly the East India Company lit that touchpaper. Then, as you say, a series of government responses that turned moderates into radicals, and subjects of the Crown into Americans.

If that's the case, I think it reveals an incredibly myopic understanding of the situation. I and people I know have been watching events unfold in Hong Kong with a feeling of helplessness and distance. But now that Western companies have made themselves targets for trying to censor support for Hong Kong, it has given us a local focus through which we feel we are able to participate. cf. Streisand Effect.

Tin foil hat time:

I wonder if this was intentional?

Perhaps the CIA orchestrated these companies play?

It doesn’t seem entirely implausible.

Pure speculation, of course, but it is kind of in their wheelwhouse. If there were a connection, I imagine it would take the form of influencing individuals like Blitzchung and Daryl Morey to make their pro-Hong Kong statements in the first place, anticipating the response, and not plotting with the companies themselves (that would be way too crazy).

Playing them like puppets, yes ;)

> I and people I know have been watching events unfold in Hong Kong with a feeling of helplessness and distance

Thank you for keeping an eye on HK. How you can help from abroad: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cv0ws4/how_can_yo...

If you're in the US, contact your senators and representatives to voice your support for passing Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. May be Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against Chinese officials also (much like the recent visa ban for Xinjiang officials).

Boycotting Chinese companies/products may also be useful in the long run.

Hong Kong forced their hand early on this, but I suppose the whole series of events that precipitated the protests in the first place could have been delayed a year or two. I feel like things were pretty close to a breaking point already, though, following Xi's lifetime appointment and opposition purge.

To the extent China succeeds in influencing the world economy, whatever they do will be portrayed as "playing their hand too strongly" by those who perceive China's success as coming at the cost of their own.

So while I think you're basically right, I'm not sure under what conditions we'd be hearing comments such as, "China has grown into a legitimate economic power by playing fair and square. They really caught the rest of us napping."

What playing their hand too early means is that they’ve hurt themselves with dumb moves. What good is having influence if China use it stupidly, makes everyone pissed off, and everyone closes their doors to China? Xi and the CCP have hurt China here.

Soft influence. Release a couple more international films. Allow at least one major American company unfettered access to the Chinese market (better if it were an underdog American company whose brand is an up and coming younger hip version of some big corporate player) to demonstrate the possibilities inherent in playing ball w/ China. Continue to advertise world leadership in AI research and invite cooperation and share advancements with neighboring countries. Continue and expand their space program with international cooperation.

In another 10 years they’d take the mantel of world superpower from the US.

But I guess it’s true of totalitarian government as it is with most evil: it contains the seeds of its own destruction

Agreed, largely. At the rate we're going, that mantle will be theirs for the taking before long.

They are really shooting themselves in the foot over HK

For the Communist Party, it's not about HK, at least not exclusively. It's about everybody else in their sphere of influence, including Taiwan, who will be emboldened if HK prevails.

HK is basically an exercise in calling Xi's bluff. Everyone will now see his cards, whatever they are. The residents of HK have judged that now is the time to do that, for better or worse, and they deserve our support.

A few years ago, South Korea's then conservative government decided to let US force build an anti-missile radar facility called THAAD, which conveniently was powerful enough to see through Chinese airspace up to Beijing (or so I've heard). Of course China didn't like it - and actually a lot of Koreans objected to it, viewing it as needlessly putting ourselves in the middle of geopolitical game between two superpowers.

But then China went completely overboard, banning Chinese tourism to Korea, and forcing out many Korean companies from Chinese market. And to what end? It hurt Korean economy a bit, but the primary effect was that Koreans' opinion on China cooled down remarkably.

As some of you may remember, the conservative president got kicked out in 2017 amid national protest - we now have a reformist president who is less pro-American than his predecessor. If China waited just a bit, they could have negotiated a better position. But they had already played their cards. THAAD is getting built anyway.

It seems China's national pride is getting in the way of their diplomacy.

It is said (by his acquaintances) that Chairman Xi is not a smart guy ("brain dead" is the word). He only has elementary to junior high level of education. Anything higher (including his "PhD") is fake.

His solution to every problem is fight (power struggle) until all your opponents are down. It may work in China's party politics but if taken to the international level, it fails. You can see this same solution being applied to the handling of Hong Kong.

He also believes that China is invincible because they have this massive supply chain thing which nobody else has.

Genuinely curious -- do you have a source for this?

Yes, I didn't make those things up. They are not all from a single source though. I don't keep a list of everything I have read but here is one (in chinese):

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E6%9D%8E%E9%94%90_(1917%E5%B...

https://www.voachinese.com/a/voanews-20180413-former-secreta...

Can you do an English TLDR?

The scary part of the Chinese strategy is conteolling people with AI and social credit score together. So far it seems that it works.

My original post is the TLDR.

As for control, intense power struggle is happening at the top right now, between Xi fraction and his opponents. Of course due to the opaque nature of Chinese politics nobody is sure.

Xi wants to be China's most powerful man since Mao but he is very insecure. So he is tightening control of the whole China, including Hong Kong (the extradition bill). It is working in the mainland but in Hong Kong it caused a blowback.

Thanks!

For me as an outsider it looks like Chinese people are scared from another massacre (for a good reason), but it's interesting to know that Xi's power doesn't look that stable for you.

Both links say the same thing - one old man, an expert on the history of the CCP, says Xi Jinping has a low level of cultural intelligence. They don't support the idea of this being a widespread notion.

Great point. Seems like Xi never read Sun Tzu's Art of War.

You bring up s good point. Maybe that was too bourgeois for the party, or at least part of the past that needed extirpation since it was associated with the nationalists.

But in the other hand they have begun to bring their glorious past (myth or otherwise) back into the fold of their national story...

I believe the CCP is looking ahead at the next decade or two and realizing that the global economic boom is over for everyone - especially for them.

The experiment with free-market capitalism has to come to an end one way or another, and the CCP has chosen to be in control of the situation instead of letting their citizens decide.

   I believe the CCP is looking ahead at the next 
   decade or two and realizing that the global economic
   boom is over for everyone - especially for them.

That seems like a credible way of thinking if you were only concerned with short term goals. But how does China see the next couple of decades play out - both for them and for others if they, like you say, took control of the situation?

Would they just sit back and let the turmoil play itself out? Would they not be drawn into it somehow via North Korea / Russia or their interests in Africa and the new Silk Road (the Belt & Road initiative) ?

You're more than welcome to stop buying Chinese products anytime you want.

Everyone ignored a superpower's rampant abuses over the last 30 years and still did business with them, what exactly makes you think that same world will stand up for "human rights" this time?

It's funny how certain places care about rights far removed from their own existence while ignoring those right in their face.

The US still has the most people imprisoned per capita. 85% of which are for non-violent crimes, mostly drugs. To ignore that (mostly)black guy who got 5 years federal prison for selling weed who now has to work for $0.70 an hour (sound familiar?) while actively campaigning for the release of violent muslim separatists who want to create their own country in far western China is staggering.

I guess freedom is just a word to some.

That or Americans in general are 10x more evil on the whole than the rest of the developed world due to their prison population? Perhaps the police are 10x more effective than everyone else.

I'd be interested in the number of US citizens that actively campaign about their prison system compared to those who talk about China bad.

Let's face it, unless you are an expert on the subject virtually everyone you meet simply repeats what the news media tell them, that's the extent of their knowledge on basically all topics.

Now, how many people watch, experience or live outside of that nationalistic media-infused bubble? Fraction of a percent?

To talk about another country with no experience of it is farting in the wind. There's really no point discussing China with Americans anymore online because there's far too much emotional baggage, media disinformation and talking points repeated verbatim. The fragile ego's of the biggest, strongest, most militaristic country is on show for all to see while China charges forward towards being the largest economy on Earth.

Undoubtedly when that day comes, "biggest" will mean GDP per capita, not gdp and those fragile sandcastles of the national psyche can rest easy for a decade or two longer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...

Millions of people in US prisons faced "justice" and lengthy incarceration as far as American society is concerned, why exactly do you consider the imprisonment of Chinese Muslim separatists undeserved? They are bombing civilians and actively trying to create a new nation-state. Who is the bad guy here?

Exercise for the reader: when was the last foreign civilian child killed by both the US and China? How many civilians have been killed by each countries military in the last decade (last two decades)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Xi is inept, but the playing of a poor hand is somewhat forced by the US. Recall there was already a pivot to Asia under Obama to counter China's rise, and before that, if it weren't for 9/11 and the Iraq War boondoggle, Bush Jr. was planning to do the same. Since the end of the Cold War, the US has never given up on destabilizing CCP rule, and with hands free now the heat was turned up to 11 on all fronts. China had been preparing too. The Belt and Road Initiative was a preemptive seeking of alternate routes of trade in preparation for the then-anticipated American sanctions.

Everybody in Asia knows this. Only the American public doesn't and thinks this dynamic is something new.

> China seems to have played their hand too early (and too strongly)

China got away with the Tiananmen massacre. Is this worst than Tiananmen? Sadly people have a short memory and dealing with China is profitable for Western companies. I hope not but most likely this episode will be forgotten soon.

"China" didn't get away with the massacre: the oligarchy lost any remnant of respect for the people, enforced the one child policy with forced abortions widened the gulf, the dead are still dead...

They got away in the sense the US imported $11B worth or goods from China in 1989 (the year of the massacre) and $539B in 2018.

source: https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

Everyone is only talking about the issue from a moral standpoint (which is of course important), but there are real financial risks as well. The government controls every aspect of business in the country. Deals can be altered or nullified at any time without recourse. No contracts can be enforced since the government will always be on the Chinese business's side. There is zero IP protection.

You could invest a billion dollars in the country and be kicked out for no reason without seeing any returns, as the NBA just found out. Yes there is a lot of opportunity in China, but relying on the goodwill of an authoritarian government is always a mistake in the long term.

Tesla is doing just this right now. It looks scary actually that they got so much freedom in theory. It will probably bite back some time.

Hindsight 20/20? Xi has only been a leader for 7 years. The trajectory that China was on previously was markedly different - more openness, more freedoms. Xi's turnaround hasn't been immediate either. The fact that businesses went into China a decade ago shouldn't be taken for shortsightedness — the future did look very different back then.

The trajectory changed under Hu in 2009 just after the olympics. Xi accelerated the trend, but didn’t start it.

It's scary how effective the US and China are at propaganda warfare. It seems like only yesterday everyone was on friendly terms, now we hate each other.

As someone with family all across Asia and the West I really hope the US and China can resolve their disputes soon. This is really not a nice position for us to be in.

Hopefully, the west doesn't budge until China stops commuting human rights violations (won't happen but would be nice)

Maybe I'm a cynic but I don't believe that's the real issue. We're friendly with plenty of countries that do far worse. I think it's about economics and strategic interests.

Not nearly on the same level economically though. The problem is that China both denies basic human rights and is big enough to push these viewpoints in the west. The same can't be said of minor trading partners.

I don't agree. The Saudis have been extremely effective at pushing Wahhabism across the world. In many places traditional (usually more tolerant) forms of Islam have basically disappeared.

The Saudis are not a minor trading partner or minor player in the global economy though. For decades they've been the cornerstone of the global fossil fuel economy and the controlling member of OPEC.

While the US has been able to heavily shift off of Saudi oil more recently, now the Chinese are picking up that supply and are becoming increasingly dependent on the Saudis. That's a remarkable position of power & influence across multiple decades, to have superpowers vested in your stability and well-being (the well-being of the House of Saud specifically).

Very few countries have ever had the sort of oil-derived slush fund (which enabled the Wahhabism push) that the Saudis have had since the early 1970s. However, for the Saudis those days are ending, as their population has skyrocketed and their oil output has not kept up (and can't), so they're under persistent budget crunch and their domestic population is increasingly growing restless as stagnation (more realistically they're seeing rapidly declining average standards of living) and unemployment become serious problems. Saudi Arabia's population has doubled since 1990, while their private industry has gone nowhere and their oil output has been near the ceiling. All you have to do is run that population growth forward another 20-30 years and it's obvious what's about to happen. The loose funding capabilities of the Saudis will decline markedly in the coming decades.

US dependency on Saudi Arabia is not just about our access to their oil. Due to quite prescient agreements dating back all the way to 1974 is the reason that Saudi Arabia, to this day, only sells oil in the dollar. [1] We made them a deal that seemed too good to be true. They simply sell their oil in the dollar (and only the dollar) while investing any surplus resources in US treasuries, and we'll provide them with military aid and equipment. Essentially getting a free military alliance with the strongest military power in the world in exchange for nothing.

Of course it's not nothing. Imagine we do things some might consider a bit dubious. Perhaps accepting the running of a deficit in the trillions of dollars, or injecting trillions of dollars into the economy and calling the resultant price inflation growth. The natural consequences of these sort of actions are things such as inflation and a weakened dollar on the international scene.

But now here's the interesting thing. Imagine we do create inflation or weaken the dollar and so there is a surplus of USD in circulation and things start to increase in price. And now imagine a country wants to go buy oil from Saudi Arabia ( though now a days, it's not just Saudi Arabia but the majority of oil producing nations ). The first thing they need to do is accumulate the USD. And since they're getting less oil for the same USD (due to said inflation and/or a weakened USD) they need to take even more USD out of circulation than usual. They then go buy their oil. Saudi Arabia then ends up using that USD to secretly buy US treasuries. That money is now back in the hands of the government and out of circulation and, like magic, the inflation and/or weakening of the dollar starts to revert.

---

This was an extremely clever strategy. This is why things like China and/or Russia increasingly becoming buddy buddy with Saudi Arabia is such a big deal. It's also why Saudi Arabia can get away with practically, if not literally, anything (so long as they keep on the petrodollar agreement). But the petrodollar also ended up creating a bit of a funny relationship. We thought we were using Saudi Arabia, but ultimately we ended up dependent on them as our economic behavior took them for a given. So we now have the nation with the largest military force in world and the largest economy in the world behaving in an oddly deferent way to one little nation in the Mideast.

So I do fully agree with you - the next 20-30 years are going to be incredibly interesting. But not just for Saudi Arabia. The interplay between oil, economic power, and all of these other major issues (let alone huge wildcards like space) mean we're in for one terrifically unpredictable and interesting future.

[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untol...

[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/27/saudi-arabia...

It's also why Saudi Arabia can get away with practically, if not literally, anything (so long as they keep on the petrodollar agreement).

By sheer coincidence I’m sure, just before Iraq got invaded, Saddam was planning to start pricing oil in EUR.

I have to agree with geowwy on this one. I think the issue is more that China hasn't been playing by the US's normal business rules for a while now, while most other bad actors the US is friendly with do play. For example, currency manipulation, outright IP theft, state-sponsored propping up of US business clones, mandatory dual-ownership of companies, and now strong-arming US companies if they want unfettered access to the China market. Enough influential people's feathers got ruffled to get the ball rolling, which just happened to coincide with worse-than-usual human rights violations.

What other countries USA is friend with has concentration camps? Turkey and Saudi Arabia have problems but I believe human rights situation is better there than in China. What else?

The USA itself has by far the highest incarceration rates of any developed country, over 5x that of China. In certain demographics this rate is as high as 1/3. By the numbers this is more than what the Uighers experience in China, and e.g. Europeans can and do criticize the USA relentlessly for it.

If you're wondering how people in China justify the government's treatment of the Uighers, the answer isn't that they have different moral instincts than you. They justify it to themselves in the exact same way you justify America's incarceration rate to yourself. (If you're thinking that it's different, because what they're doing just feels dystopian and evil, while we're just doing the best we can, obviously realize that this is pure tribal bias. Others might have the reverse associations.)

Of course, what I am doing is textbook whataboutism. But that is the correct response to a claim that some foreign country is uniquely evil.

The Uighers do not have access to due process and a trial. I find that a glaring, obtuse omission in your argument besides doing whataboutism. It is a terrible situation in the US in regards to incarceration and our politicians (Bernie Sanders for example) openly, freely, fearlessly oppose it. I urge you to take a deeper look into China's state powers and complete lack of liberty, due process or law (yes, there are courts and written law in China but they do not appease the dissidents of the CCP's agenda).

What you're comparing is a regional regression of a particular demographic or culture. Imagine locking down 1.4 million people of Seattle metropolitan region because they worship no god and enjoy particular rituals, sending them all to re-education camps and then building HUGE projects to house them - all sponsored by the Federal government with strict orders from Washington, and the entire operation carried out by military and special police forces, setting up checkpoints in Seattle. Oh and I forgot that the threat is simply to sell your organs if you squeak and then kill you.

You're completely right that there's a big difference in how much control the government has over the legal system. I'm just trying to communicate how the end result looks similarly justifiable to the people in each country. After all, that end result is what we are upset about.

> What you're comparing is a regional regression of a particular demographic or culture. Imagine locking down 1.4 million people of Seattle metropolitan region because they worship no god and enjoy particular rituals

You're not really engaging with the example -- you substituted it for another. I'm sure if you proposed locking up 1.4 million people from Shanghai for no good reason, the average Chinese citizen would react in horror, while they would dismiss what is actually happening exactly as you did, as a "regional regression of a particular demographic".

My bad, I see the problem with the Seattle analogy. Let's just say locking down people of Alaska (remote, has some culture). It would still be equally outrageous.

Due process and a trial has not done Americans any good because the laws are unjust.

Problem with your answer is that I'm not from USA. My question was about other countries not USA.

Lastly, two wrongs don't make right.

Australia has one on Nauru despite repeated condemnation from various international bodies.

Referring to Australia's offshore immigration detention facilities as "concentration camps" in this context is incredibly misleading. There is absolutely no fair comparison to be made between Australia's detention of illegal immigrants in these facilities and China's human rights abuses. Regardless of your views on the human rights implications of Australia's mandatory detention policies, labelling them as such is dishonest.

Nauru isn't anywhere close to that. According to a close friend who visited, it's not really that bad of a place. I think that there has been a lot of political play around it to drum it up as worse than it is.

Interesting perspective. Do you also have a close friend who visited Chinese concentration camps for comparison? Why do you think one is drummed up by political play while the other is not?

At least we can view the detention centers on AU without a satellite....that says more than enough

What about Guantanamo Bay?

It is USA. I'm asking about other countries.

I think the issue is that China wants to be #1 while America doesn't want to be #2. No one wants to be #2.

In 2010 I asked two different party members* about the western Muslim relations. Both had the same answer that it was the same as the black people prison population in the US, and a red herring the US used for leverage. My Chinese and their English was never good enough to discuss things like due process. At any rate, the pressure on human rights needs to come from countries other than the US.

* being a party member not quite what you’d expect. Requires being in the top 10% of your HS class plus learning a bit of propaganda, and agreeing to harsher punishment for committing crimes. The ones I spoke to were successful business people, and willing to criticize the party.

Reading the news the past year or so has been like watching a slow motion bar fight break out. One person says something nasty, the other gets right in their face, the first gives a slight shove, and both can't back down or they'll look weak...

Maybe "friendly" in the sense that both sides were deliberately ignoring the things they didn't like about the other in the interest of keeping global business chugging along. But not actually friendly. Part of the reason things heated up so quickly is that there was a lot of stored propaganda ammo to use. For example, US condemnation of China's human rights violations dates back decades, and only got swept under the carpet by Clinton in the interest of pumping economic ties instead of continuing trade sanctions [1].

[1] https://www.heritage.org/report/the-collapse-clintons-china-...

I too wonder how the nytimes seems to be pushing an agenda of isolationism, whereas that used to be a policy of Trump - and the nytimes used to oppose Trump. Is it possible that protectionism is now part of a consensus thing in the US?

It still may that all of this is for show and part of the trade negotiations, go figure. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-09/china-ope...

(Trying to read between the lines here)

Not really, it's really the result of Xi's consolidation of power. People have been writing about this for a long time, but no one was reading until now.

Even the US govt has written about China's influence in media. [0]

[0]: (2015) https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Directed%2...

you know what you miss out on on the internet? being able to take little moments of silence to mull over things while sharing a pitcher of beer with your debate antagonist. we lose out on bonding time and unspoken comraderie and the straight-up emotional information content that invisibly flows between people near each other.

despite such words on the web, most americans and chinese folks don't hate each other, and we'd get along fine if circumstances put us in close proximity. don't lose your faith in humanity because you can't feel the other person at their keyboard.

> It's scary how effective the US and China are at propaganda warfare.

Consider discussion on HN.

TPP is said to have been about "free trade". I've seen little mention of hegemony, or of corporate capture of US policy. None of TPP's ISDS enabling companies to sue governments for profits lost to health regulations, even as the public health disaster of junk food is extended throughout the Americas. Nor of requiring China to change its industrial policy, to optimize for industries shaped like US pharma.

This on a site focused on an industry with a different shape, that has long recognized itself as ill served by patent policies optimized for pharma.

When the current round of trade negotiations was breaking down, there was some discussion in business press, that pharma was perhaps pushing too hard, and would be wiser to get a less aggressive deal signed now, and push further later, rather than risking all. But on HN, you'd not even hear they were a player.

You'll see no mention here of the Unequal Treaties, nor analogies to the Opium Wars.

China must change it's laws to be more like ours, as is only proper. Even those laws, like copyright term extension, which we feel were against the public interest, and pushed through by corruption. It's the principle of the thing...?

Sure, HN's competence is largely localized to tech. It's been observed that its discussion of other fields, like medicine, can get quite bad. International trade policy is not a core competency.

But I feel like I'm watching a page out of history. Yet another war frenzy, and the choice to set aside institutional and societal intellectual integrity and competence. Perhaps someday, the NYTimes will yet again apologize, and FOX won't... and neither will undo harm and lost opportunities, raise dead and wreckage.

But HN does have a core competency of tech.

So what would it take, to create a discussion medium which might do better?

In which topics like this could fruitfully be worked through? Regardless of ignorance and emotion. And of well-funded expert disruption. Where pro-life and pro-choice communities could coexist, incentivized to remain, and productively engage? /r/The_Donald and Sanders. #TSLA and bulls.

What would it take to create a sane public dialog in the United States?

If China paid the CEOs of these companies to stay quiet we’d call that bribery and corruption. Add in some market separation in the transaction and people just say that China is too big to ignore. CEOs get a free pass.

Thanks to South Park. I really credit them with changing minds.

it's certainly an improvement on their usual "lol everything is stupid, only lames care about things" take

Sometimes it takes that sort of character to point out how crazy the situation is. Even if 99% of the time no one cares, they were the right at the right moment.

What episode? Sorry, I have not kept up with it for a while now.

Band in China: https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s23e02-band-in-china

The one before that was pretty good too, that one was critical of the US

Damn, cannot watch it in Taipei. Copyright issues.

Could you please shed some light from Taiwan about what has been going on lately with China, US and HK? What is the public opinion?

It was discussed extensively at the links below, where some users have also posted links to other sources for those that don't mind bypassing the copyright restrictions.

After 'South Park' Censorship Episode, China Deleted the Show from the Web

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21189899

South Park Responds to Being Banned in China for “Band in China”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21186916

'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21189967

Surfacing one of the comments from the article here since HN commenters (being primarily US/European) seems to exhibit similar views --

The thesis here bespeaks of the very arrogance we have regarding "dealing" with China. China is a major world power. Its existence and growing economic prowess are not dependent upon our acceptance, investment or "good will".

We continue to deal with China in an extremely condescending manner. To "deal" with China means we have to accept China for what it is; including that its political system is different from ours. It is not going to bend to our system of liberty and individual civil rights because we think that's the natural order of things. And in all frankness, our current political morass is hardly a paragon of virtue to which other should strive.

We can choose to ignore China and attempt to isolate it. But that didn't work out so well when we tried it after 1949 did it?

All these tariffs are accomplishing is incentivizing Chinese corporations to rapidly expand their production capabilities in facilities located in other nations. So in fact, we are financing China's increasing power and influence over both its neighbors and within the global economy.

We're now at a point where China doesn't "need" us. So we simply have to decide whether we want to interrelate with another major world power as it is or move towards confrontation and chaos.

Issue is, China is attempting to to force its viewpoints on other nations, eg. by denying prize money to the winner of a tournament for speaking about Hong Kong, and something about NBA I didn't follow.

To be fair the US throws its weight around quite a bit on exporting its morality (human rights, democracy, freedom of speech, etc), and sometimes not to the best of results.

I don't know if there's been any large political organization that wasn't super pushy about its world view.

I think the issue is that its viewpoint is so different from America's. It's sort of like US politics, depending on who's in the white house the government can have a very different idea of reproductive rights, climate change, and religion/secularism.

Those are big changes but China's morality is even more different. Suddenly criticizing the government is treated like hate speech.

I 100% prefer the US pushing it's agenda over China.

That's a great insight that almost no body in the world really notice: hate speech. Hate is a very good tool to consilidate public and create personal identity extreme efficiently. The technique is used by Hitler and also by CPP in early time maybe without rational calculation.

After world war too hate speech is almost prohibited in all "civilized" countries. However there are 3 targets can be used without consequence: wall street bankers, politicians in Washington, rigemes usually are inferior in morality. The first 2 targets are virtual targets so they are used in election frequently. Not showing fighting spirit create personal identity by fooling people is a recipe for failure. Many politicians use the technique. Example: Rubio, Hillary, etc. China, Russia, are good target for boost support in election to show a fake hero image

Hate is human nature from evolution because human , not like any other species, were evolved not only from other environmental pressure but also from war and killing each other. It boosts the fighting capability of a tribes and promote consolidation. That's why it exist at first place. War is also part of human nature. To find excuse to attack others , creating evil is a good way to get public support. Western journalists are doing this job very well by distorting the reality and mix their interpretation into selected facts in a very deceptive way. All the direct and proxy wars in last 20 years (Except Afghan) are approved by public because of their work.

A good study of the topic should get nobel peace price. However, noble prize commitee itself has the same mentality as western journalists. A lot of winners a fake hero based on face value of commitees perception that eventually create more confilicts in the world.

If China has decided that its economic relationship with the US is contingent on American citizens (e.g. Morey, the NBA executive) not criticizing Chinese policy, then the economic relationship becomes impossible. Criticism cannot be stopped.

>China is a major world power. Its existence and growing economic prowess are not dependent upon our acceptance, investment or "good will".

China is less than 15% of the world economy, 'the west' makes up a vast majority of the remaining 85%. If it is a war of values I don't think China really has a chance if they want to participate in the world market.

>All these tariffs are accomplishing is incentivizing Chinese corporations to rapidly expand their production capabilities in facilities located in other nations. So in fact, we are financing China's increasing power and influence over both its neighbors and within the global economy.

This is the same naivete that got us into this situation in the first place. What, are we "pot committed" and have to continue putting up with this behavior when it starts to actually affect our culture (or mine, since you are implying you're not from the US/Europe)? We don't have to keep financing any of this. We made a deliberate choice around two decades ago to outsource our manufacturing base to them. We can un-do this decision - it will be really expensive, and there will be short term pain for sure - but greater re-ordering of the global economy has happened in the past. Believe me, I'm more than willing to entertain arguments about how Hong Kong should be left alone and that is China's problem to deal with. But in my humble opinion - which I'm grateful that I can express without being censored - the US should make integration as painful as possible. If the cost of "China's Rise" is free speech in the US, then screw it. All bets are off.

Edit: realizing that you copy-pasted a comment from the article itself, which I couldn't see because of ad-blockers.

My grandfather ran a company that designed sawmills. During the 70s and 80s, he did a lot of business in the USSR and he has told many stories from that crazy time. I don't know if he ever was involved in bribery (he has alzheimer's now so even if I asked him I don't know if I'd get an answer that makes sense, and my grandmother has no idea) but he did however experience the corruption of the communist party first hand. Some of the people he did business with became the oligarchs of modern day Russia, leveraging the power and influence they gained from the forest industry to move in on the energy industry.

I'm a bit conflicted about what my grandfather did. As a child and teenager, I always heard the stories as bringing propserity to a poor country, one sawmill could supply tens of thousands of jobs. However, the people he did business with was some of the most dishonest and bad people ever, and my grandfather went into great lengths to make sure that they were never too dependent on the Soviet market and always travelled to Moscow with a lawyer. He never trusted them, and in the 90s and 00s when it surfaced that some of his old clients had become wealthy off the breakup of the Soviet Union, and was now using that wealth to suppress and gouge working people, my grandfather just reacted with "yeah, that sounds like something a shifty guy like him would do".

I still don't know how I should view my grandfather's role in this. The deals he made supplied the USSR with jobs which helped the people, but it also empowered really bad people. I think the same way about business in China, on the one hand the billions of Chinese deserve global abundance just like the rest of us, on the other hand fuck the CCP.

just another propaganda brought up by trade war

I would say it cannot be categorized as propaganda. NYTimes editors seem to be decent people. However, that's very dangerous because its more deceptive to spread fake information(i.e. the civilized internatinal communtity is fighting against a evil regime abusing human rights) unintentionally that eventually will cause more conflicts.

It's quite insteresting that while most English speaking community blame Chinese censorship, there's an invisible censorship of political correctness that prohibit the other side of the story which might be truth. The same invisible "censorship" makes me use current throw way id because my opinion based on what I know seems very evil motivated or might take money from CPP.

Chinese speaking media have different stories which lead majority of Chinese having different oppinions than Westners' naive human rights view based on their moral superiority. To them the the narrative of HK events is another lie just like WMD. The response to Morey is an angry response to defamation , not bully to freedome of speech that US politicians and journalist love to describ about Chinese government.

Ironically it's also NY Time disclose some information about the other side of story[0].But thats a very small piece. There are much more than that. Westeners just don't know because of invisible collective censorship. The people under visible censorship some times know 2 sides stories while the other side are easily fooled by the "independent" journalists who distort the reality based on own their values and invisible censorship. I'm also using the opportunity to see how many downvotes I can collect as an observation of invisible censorship.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/world/asia/hong-kong-prot...

Is dealing with the US worth the moral cost?

Is depending heavily on China for critical business functions such as manufacturing seen as a risk by big companies?

It's interesting to see the zeitgeist of this evolve. Just 6 months ago much of the public was very blasé about China, but experts in many realms were sounding alarm bells. A few months later, now look at it.

> It's interesting to see the zeitgeist of this evolve

This is how systems exhibiting punctuated equilibria evolve.

The physical analogy is a pile of sand, accruing by one grain at a time. It will eventually collapse, that is known. And it will do so suddenly, anyone who made sandcastles knows this. But knowing when it will collapse is strikingly tough.

With sand, the correlation comes from friction between grains. With people, the correlation comes from social pressure. Once the friction is overcome, the social pressure breached, the system changes rapidly.

Sounds very much like stock market crashes.

I wish I could recolor the usernames of the smartest people on HN like you, so I'd be able to quickly discern in future articles whether a bright and smart person like you is commenting.

It doesn't help when both sides were escalating constantly like two drunk blokes starting a bar fight. This is supposedly the current president's negotiation style.

Should China split into smaller localized manageable regions?

Yes. China is actually a multi-race country. Their culture is diverse.

Should the United States be split into smaller localized manageable regions?

I would argue yes, personally.

...

it is?

It is, but on a federal level I think it still needs to be split up into multiple regions. I.e. the north-east, south-west, etc. Choosing to subdivide further at a state level would be optional.

Xi and China's party enjoy the power that comes with control and unity. Heck China doesn't like the Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea being 4 distinct areas. Other nations might be fearing China now that it has grown rapidly from 1T GDP to 13T GDP. Other nations don't really have an influence on whether China will split into smaller regions quite like how China has an influence on whether international corporate lobbiests will try to lobby (successfully or unsuccessfuly) for Trump's impeachment.

In a perhaps humorous way to look at a difficult situation, this was all started because of some memes about Pro Basketball. It's sort of snowballed from there, but maybe this is a good cultural touchstone to comment on. American culture permeates a lot of world culture. It dominates pretty much everything. China thought it could import some of it, and then export some of theirs back when the taste of what they'd brought in started to sour. Not so, it seems. Americans like their crass free speech and their memes.

...

I'm actually fairly amenable to arguments about national sovereignty and am willing to hear ones about how we (read: the West) need to back off about Hong Kong because, well, we made that deal and China wants to follow through with integrating them into the Mainland. That has been the plan since 1990s. But is this the price I have to pay? Importing Chinese cultural norms to my country? My pro sports stars literally kowtowing to insistence that we "respect" the wishes of an authoritarian Communist government? Fans at games getting kicked out for waving Hong Kong flags? Well fuck that, and fuck anyone who thinks that's just "the cost of doing business". We've let this charade go on long enough. Since the 1990s we've pretended that the more their economy "liberalized" the more they'd become "open" to "democracy". This is a rhetorical ploy, used by elites to mostly just enrich themselves in the process of selling out the rest of us - via IP theft or moving the manufacturing base elsewhere to save some basis points. Free Trade Maximalism is what got us here, and yeah you get cheap goods from China ... but is it really worth it. No really. Is it worth this?

Here's what this is really about, and what people who are upset about this are really getting at: we're pretty dissatisfied with how US corporations (and our own government, frankly) have behaved for the last ~30 years or so. It's manifesting with the NBA and video games in China because that pulls in a lot of cash right now and it's run by a lot of characters we don't really like (video games more so than the NBA, if I'm being fair). So, yes, people should be mad at the behavior of Chinese corporations and the Chinese government (but I repeat myself) ... who they should also be mad at is leaders of US corporations who haven't had anything else as a goal but maximizing shareholder returns on a time horizon that matters for no one but themselves.

Nobody cares about wonk trade policy

Nobody cares about economic spreadsheets.

People do care about the NBA, like in a real way. The average American will not allow a beloved American institution to cowtow to ChiComms.

China has overplayed and has done it with the wrong President in the office. Trump is looking for anything to move the needle for him on China and they just gifted him something amazing.

I’m having a hard time reconciling this uproar when everyone is fine with the sanctions on Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela.

I do find it interesting that all of this is happening during thr president’s possible impeachment along with the recent ruling that Americans were illegally spied on.

> Clinton began his term believing that trade sanctions could pressure China to improve human rights conditions. But after a year of debilitating debate, he was forced to reverse his policy of link- ing trade to human rights. >He was right to do so. By continuing to grant MFN to China, Clinton will help advance the $38 billion trading relationship which the U.S. now enjoys with the world's fastest growing economy. Moreover, by increasing prosperity in China through greater trade, the U.S. can help to create the economic freedoms that are the foundation upon which political freedom will someday emerge.

>Clinton began to end this spectacle of confusion last week when he decided to renew MFN almost with- out condition. Perhaps the most important aspect of his decision is philosophical; the President has now adopted the view that trade relations must be separated from U.S. political goals with China. Moreover, he has endorsed the view that increased U.S.-China trade can promote economic freedoms, which in the long run will spur the growth of political freedoms in China.

>This step alone will help to reassure Asian friends and adversaries that Clinton plans to get a better grip on foreign policy.

>Now that Clinton has reversed his policy, he should move quickly to exact a price-of Beijing's cooperation in two areas of critical concern to the U.S. They are:

* Ending North Korea's nuclear threat...

* Better treatment for Hong Kong and Taiwan... -

https://www.heritage.org/report/the-collapse-clintons-china-.... June 3, 1994

The communist is using profit to control the capitalist, the irony is painful.

I heard a cute phrase a long time ago. "We will hang the capitalist with the rope he sells us"

By Lenin.

Kind of reminds me of how countries like Israel and Russia use democracy against us. Capitalism and democracy are our two weaknesses now but only because our institutions have been weakened from within.

It only took 3 paragraphs for capitalism to end up under the bus. Which - sure. There’s much to dislike in the inhumanity of extreme consumerism. But that same consumerism has transformed that nation. Even the NYT has extolled the virtues of China’s rise.

“The world thought it would change China, but China’s success has been so spectacular that it has changed the world.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/ch...

Yes. We should stop giving them a pass. Who is going to be first to give up their iPhone?

The New York Times must have a policy that it will not publish an article if it doesn't have at least a couple snarky digs at "capitalism" and Trump, no matter how tangential to the subject matter.

It does seem that way. Which, I get it. That’s an easy target. I just think that kind of thing undermines the legitimate point this guy is making.

Wow. Now that's a heavy worded article. I recommend watching The Coming War with China documentary on Al Jazeera for a more balanced perspective.

It’s not a bad thing that American citizens are heavily armed. If everyone in HK owned a firearm I think the situation would be far different - or at least give the government a second thought before acting.

Don't you think the Military would step in with all these guys look like they're toys shooting 8 inch thick steel armor?

In my personal view, violence is the last resort for protesting and even then, sometimes I disagree with HK approach (beating officers with pies) despite of the fact that I support the HK's cause.

It is inevitably going to get to that point. The protestors will not quit, so it will end in genocide or guerrilla warfare through the streets. Give it a few more months.

Generally, it's nigh impossible for a military force to take on an insurgency embedded in buildings throughout. That is, unless you deploy scorched-earth tactics which China may be ok with.

Yeah, violence should be a last resort. I think his point was deterrence, though. If the British had allowed HKers arms under colonial rule, would things be different now? I’m guessing China would have attempted disarmament as soon as Hong Kong returned under their control, and today’s situation would be the same.

This was how the British handled the last HK riot https://m.facebook.com/WeNewsHK/videos/2622449657812763

Yes, it would be far different. If everyone had a gun here, things would be much worse.

I'm quite glad I don't have to worry overly about stray bullets flying through my window and literal open warfare in the streets.

May your chains rest upon you lightly.

It's peaceful here because guns are so common. The gov't tries shows of force on rare occasion, and is reminded that's a bad idea.

The price you pay for this 'peace' is quite high however.

And which country would you rather live in, China or America?

China

Actually not. Don't be a deep-urban criminal, and you'll enjoy great peace.

List three examples of government shows of force that were successfully foiled by armed civilians. Should be trivial if you believe it happens regularly.

I didn't say successfully foiled. Gov't usually "wins" these cases, but at great cost & deterred for long after. Pyrrhic victories.

I didn't say regularly. I said "rare". Sometimes decades between them.

Athens. Waco. Bundy Ranch. Twin Peaks.

>The gov't tries shows of force on rare occasion, and is reminded that's a bad idea.

Sorry, when did the US government try a "show of force" on its own soil only to be "reminded" that it was a bad idea?

I don't recall any popular uprisings or coups in the US in recent memory, despite gun owners swearing blood and violence constantly in regards to gun control laws, the IRS, the Supreme Court and any Democrat in office, and the Federal government won the only civil war on record.

As far as I can tell, the only people who have arguably successfully resisted the armed might of the American government have been people who were not Americans, and, ironically, who did so without Second Amendment rights.

> when did the US government try a "show of force" on its own soil only to be "reminded" that it was a bad idea?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/29/standing-roc...

Since we're talking specifically about the Second Amendment doing the "reminding", where are the mass casualties taken by the police and government forces by the armed militia?

I'll grant you that it's a protest, but most of the alleged violence described in that story seems to have been committed by the police. Peaceful protesters being beaten and mauled by attack dogs by definition don't count towards a valid argument for the effectiveness of the Second Amendment.

The protestors also lost - the pipeline was built, regardless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_Nati...

This probably would have gone down differently had the occupants not been armed.

Then the main perpetrators were not convicted in court either.

>This probably would have gone down differently had the occupants not been armed.

I don't know, being armed didn't help at Waco or Ruby Ridge. Maybe there were other factors at play in the government's behavior than simply being afraid of an armed group?

Gov’t was dissuaded from such tactics for long after those & similar instances.

...but not by an effective, armed resistance. So not because the Second Amendment worked as advertised.

Stop adding qualifiers. Armed citizens, be they ineffective & disorganized, were enough to dissuade heavy handed gov't tactics for a long time - lest effective & organized arise.

We are discussing your assertion that due to the Second Amendment, an armed populace has "reminded" the American government that its use of force is "a bad idea" on multiple occasions.

The purpose of the Second Amendment is to guarantee the capacity of a "well regulated militia" to commit armed violence "in defense of a free state." Resistance and protest which does not involve armed violence against the state by definition is not relevant to discussions about the effectiveness the Second Amendment. This is not adding a "new qualifier," it's merely taking the intent of the Second Amendment seriously.

>Armed citizens, be they ineffective & disorganized, were enough to dissuade heavy handed gov't tactics for a long time - lest effective & organized arise.

This is an assumption on your part which willfully ignores evidence to the contrary. You're like Batman, thinking the bat costume works because "criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot", only with guns and the government.

Until you can actually prove that the government - which has been militarizing and becoming more aggressive since 9/11, mind you, not less, and which shoots unarmed civilians in the streets in broad daylight with impunity and often gets commended by the gun community for doing so - has changed its tactics out of fear of an armed populace and an effective uprising, I'm going to consider further conversation to be fruitless.

No, the 2ndA reads as "DESPITE the existence of a well [gov't] regulated military, the people may nonetheless own military weapons". This written shortly after the author wrote (paraphrased) "despite having strong militaries, European countries are terrified of armed citizens".

Your "with impunity" reference is not couched in reality.

Good luck holding to your narrative. Reality differs.

It's not just fear by officials of being shot (although that certainly is a factor, i.e police "no-go zones" controlled by gangs. As opposed to single unarmed minority motorists who can be bullied with impunity.).

It's also threat of public blowback from armed firefights leading to uncomfortable "why?" questions and detailed examinations of policies and the details of what happened.

Ass covering bureaucrats hate that. It could affect the pension.

There was a photograph of a protester holding a sign saying "We need the second amendment": https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2019/07/29/hong-kong-proteste...

Armed protest would be just the thing Beijing needs to send in the mainland military to "help their friends in HK". These days, if you're a regular citizen, even a large group of regular citizens, trying to start a violence escalation game with your government is going to get you killed, and fast.

These days, if you're a regular citizen, even a large group of regular citizens, trying to start a violence escalation game with your government is going to get you killed, and fast

The most powerful militaries in the world are regularly confounded by widely dispersed rural insurgents with little more than ancient rifles. What do you think is different about China? Do you think the PLA would have fared any better in Iraq or Afghanistan?

“These days” escalating violence against a government has proved to be very viable.

It will turn into another Syria. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7538571/Hong-Kong-m...

https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3031905/hong-ko...

Morality is a complicated thing.

More people die of murders by gun in the united states then in china.

Is it moral to deprive man of his right to own a gun in order to allow another man to keep his right to life?

There's hatred raging against China due to hong kong, but the truth is far more complex. A hundred times more complex than even the example I gave.

Centralized control has a cost, but it also has a benefit.

You need to understand that just because there are upsides and downsides doesn't imply they're in any way equal, and pretending they are causes plenty of harm.

No it doesn't but if you knew what u were talking about you would know that the United States is just as bad as china. The difference is the United States isn't open about it.

The state allowing freedom of choice and certain members of society abusing that choice is not nearly as bad as a state which executes its own citizens for various baseless reasons.

A corrupt state controlled by corporate interests that spies on its own citizens and limits freedom of speech under the guise of national security is just as bad.

China is not executing people for baseless reasons.

FWIW, I grew up in a city on the Pacific rim (San Francisco) and Chinese people have always been a part of my culture. Our first Chinese New Year Festival and Parade was in held in 1858. (California was still part of Mexico only twelve years earlier.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Chinese_New_Year...

I don't hate China, but I fear the CCP.

I was reading a book about China written by an American journalist who was invited to visit in the 70's, when the Middle Kingdom was still literally mysterious to the West, and it dawned on me that there is no way a barbarian like myself could ever understand China. It's too vast, too old. My culture looks like an adolescent compared to yours. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

For example, the persecution and repression of the Falun Gong seems obviously wrong. But then I read about the Taiping Rebellion...

> For over a decade, the Taiping occupied and fought across much of the mid and lower Yangtze valley. Ultimately devolving into total war, the conflict between the Taiping and the Qing was the largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644 and it involved every province of China proper except Gansu. It ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century. Estimates of the war dead range from 10–30 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

I still believe that what the Chinese governent is doing is wrong: Tibet, the Uighurs, the Falun Gong, the censorship and rewriting of history, and so on. But I also have to admit that I see some truth in what you said:

> the truth is far more complex. A hundred times more complex than even the example I gave.

> Centralized control has a cost, but it also has a benefit.

My problem with the CCP is that the stability and prosperity of the Chinese people are too important to be bungled. I don't feel that I'm qualified to tell China what to do, but I do feel that I'm not too dumb to see that some things are obviously wrong.

Your perception about Tibet, Uighurs, FLG is different from a lot of Chinese. You (like most westners) might think it's the other side are fooled or have inferior thoughts about issue. The reason is most people in the world dont' know th concept of unknown unknown.

I'm born and raised in the Bay Area. I'm what you call an ABC an American Born Chinese. Basically American, but with huge roots and connections with Chinese people from the mainland. My parents are 100% born in China. If I can understand them then anyone, including you, white devil, can too.

Don't think of China as some mystical culture that's old and wise that needs to be treated with the utmost respect like an antique vase. They are Human just like you and me and prone to the same biases, stupidity and greatness any person is. Nobody cares that China is a far older culture than the united states, don't let that cloud your judgement, China can be really stupid just like how people in the united states can elect trump as president.

Look, I'm not saying China is right. But reality is far more complex.

For Falun Gong which is basically a cult akin to scientology from the view point of the Chinese what is the correct course of action? Freedom of religion or total elimination of a cult that can harm the people?

For Hong Kong they view it as a state like California or Texas saying that they have rights and the freedom to secede from the country. What is the right course of action here? Americans once asked the question about preserving a union and went to war for such a cause when half the country wanted to leave. What is the correct course of action for China? Do the Chinese have the right to preserver their union?

Tibet is also controversial. https://www.quora.com/Why-does-China-want-Tibet But this is not the full story. China is not some moral do-gooder out to save people from subjugation. The government is human and self interested in itself and its own people. There's economic advantages of having tibet as part of China, but Tibet will benefit overall from cultural assimilation.

Cultural assimilation has a bad connotation to the term and it deserves the bad connotation. But the complex morality comes in when you think about what Cultural assimilation is doing. In cultures that contain poverty, slavery, or even cannibalism, is the elimination of these cultures through assimilation a good thing or a bad thing? Hard to say.

For the concentration camps of the Ulghurs. Unfortunately I don't know enough to comment on it. It looks though from the little I do know that you are 100% right and that this is wrong. Again, I need more information from unbiased sources. It is obvious to me, however, that the situation is very very complex. Concentration camps are not being set up to assimilate ALL of the miscellaneous cultures that make up China, what is the reason why they only do it here? I'm going to look into it. The reasoning and moral compass of most situations like this is never clear.

We are lucky to have freedom of speech, living in the united states but we still can't talk shit about our bosses unless you want your ass fired. Living in China is similar. The government is a good boss that's interested in the economic prosperity of the country and therefore your prosperity as well, but don't talk shit about the boss of China. Makes sense right?

Dude, well met.

I don't mean that Chinese people are mysterious. I know they're human just like you and me. If anything it's the intense humanity of China that makes it so fascinating (to me.)

I'm basically agreeing with you that "reality is far more complex."

I'm saying that reality is hard to grasp because of the size, duration, and intricacy. Trying to understand China is like trying to understand Europe only without all the history books. (Chinese history has been relatively sparsely known in the West until quite recently.)

I used to be like, "Damn the evil CCP!", and now I'm more like "Just stop doing the really fucked up stuff, okay?". I still believe that Communism as a world view is barren due to its denial of God, but that is a whole 'nother story. I'm willing to withhold judgement of the CCP's legitimacy as a government provided they stop oppressing people.

Really, I'd like China to put itself in a better position to criticize the USA's mistakes, so we enter a virtuous circle where we are challenging each other as nations to be better than we are. There is all of the Solar System to explore if we can stabilize things here.

(In re: Tibet, are you aware of the history of how Hawaii became a state? The Queen of Hawaii didn't exactly volunteer...)

I will say that despite the very human problems that China has had over the centuries it still encompasses tremendous wisdom, both in practical affairs-- Confucius --and metaphysics. In my opinion the wisest written document in history is the Tao Te Ching. For example, Ch 17, in a single sentence, devastates all Western ideas of political power (and most Eastern ones too.)

> With the best leaders when the work is finished the people all say, "We did it ourselves."

G. I. Gurdjieff wrote, "The energy of the West must be guided by the wisdom of the East or the world will destroy itself." He meant more than China by "the East", but certainly included it.

While I've always respected the West's stance on their own judgment of values, and the continual holding of it, I'm saddened by any narrative that it's in the face of morality.

Morality is an entirely subjective concept, and should not be used as a weaponry. The West has developed for many years and have ascended through times from ancient religious principles to the notion of modern basic human rights. However, I'd like to address that by saying the notion of "basic human rights" isn't universal, it's a standard of the West. The East doesn't do it perfect, but neither does the West. This whole affair is an eventual reality that happened to spark in the era of our existence, due to an inherent ideological difference. This is no right or wrong here, only a side to take, but to attack the opposite side of being immoral based on one's own judgmental system is simply not constructive.

As humans, the least we can do is to be aware of the situations and stay open minded and be respectful of each other, and our differences. That's how we can together evolve to a possibly harmonious future, at least to the extent of the upper-bound of humanity. There isn't a single standard of morality, and a heavy indulgence on one single side will eventually run yourself into a corner of being seen as practicing double standard.

Let's call it for what it is, a challenger to the current supremacy and that's that. Conflicts arising due to ideological differences is hard to resolve, but to only address the other party as immoral is an extremely short-sighted strategy to addressing any differences between the two. It's a greatly sad affair to see the propaganda machine on both ends flexing their muscle. Either the challenger will be defeated and we accept a new reality, or the existing supremacy loses and accept itself as a second. Bringing in a self-righteous morality to the mix is only going to incur permanent damage to humanity as a whole by prolonging the battle between ideals.

It's an important reminder that morality is not agreed upon by different cultures (heck, even within the US people disagree about say the extent of free speech).

I think it's okay for the article to make mention of human rights because it's written for a US audience. Basically the article is saying "China doesn't share western values" which is like saying "Missouri doesn't share Californian values".

And if that's the case, maybe we shouldn't be cutting deals which make us feel bad.

Precious relativism in defense of idle apathy.

Total control of the lives of your citizens is evil. It’s an evil goal. It’s evil if you’re Chinese. It’s evil if you’re European. It’s a goal for insects. Not humans.

I will morally judge total control of citizens with my voice, my wallet, my vote. all my strength as long as I and my children live.

The problem isn't that China has different values, it's that it's trying to apply those values in the west and to spread it's influence. This crosses a hard line that is unacceptable and if cutting off all relations with China is the only solution then so be it.

China never tries to spread its influence, China is in a purely defensive position and the West continues to tap into China's business and then leverage whatever reaction received as China's evil deeds.

China doesn't invade the Middle East, China doesn't preach Communism globally. It's a really good question to ask who always really tries to spread their own influence.

Then explain why pro CCP demonstrators are intimidating Honk Kong protesters the world over? Explain why their are so many new accounts astro-turfing for China? Just because they don't have the military might to do it directly doesn't mean they aren't spreading their influence. They're busy buying influence wherever they can and using their citizens and former citizens as soft influence in other places. Of course they aren't preaching communism, they abandoned communism decades ago.

You have it backwards. China has the military might but chooses not to, because what the CCP wants is a peaceful resolution within its own region. On the contrary, the West's supposedly moral support of the "peaceful" demonstration is seeing 48/58 subway stations closing due to vandalism, many banks and phone stores getting robbed. These aren't pictures that Western media would portray, but that's the closer to truth reality that's occurring in HK. My friend in HK are evading to Shenzhen for protection, and other friend is attempting to understand the immigration process better to leave the unstable HK. Is this the real meaning of liberating HK? Just because other states, AKA Middle East hasn't gotten enough soft influence to show the world what "liberating" them means (destroyed states that cannot recover in decades), China will not take the soft course and actually stands to protect its own territory.

No, they don't remotely have the military might to invade the middle east, not that this is a bad thing, but to argue they do is just silly, they can't even invade Taiwan like they've wanted to do for 60 years.

As for peaceful, from Tienanmen square to how they deal with the Uyghurs to what is likely to be the case for Hong Kong they are anything but peaceful, even with their own citizens. If they were truly peaceful they wouldn't have to censor their own actions from their own citizens. If they wanted a peaceful solution they'd be happy keeping Hong Kongs current autonomy. Externally, they invaded Tibet, they would invade Taiwan if they could, most of their peacefulness comes from inability and not lack of desire.

Your account was created 6 days ago.

Yes, I can admit that I've created an alternative account. Because the American political atmosphere is endangering my ability to freely express the alternative that's other than the popular opinion.

I only come to hope to bring certain other perspective in peace and hoping for scholarly discussions on perspectives that I've not personally considered.

But of course it's all in the willingness of yourself to believe that there can actually be legitimate and unsponsored grassroot opinions not in favor of the West's perspective.

You are not alone. We are on the same boat. Invisible censorship is more deceptive than visible censorship. I don't blame the system. Freedom of speech? It's not easy although it's a wonderful idea.

If your society has a value system that can easily justify genocide, harvesting organs of political opponents, and imperialism, I am not convinced that your society will sustain long term.

We have seen similar value systems in colonial Europe, Soviet Russia, 1900s Japan. History shows us what this leads to in quantifyable terms.

Yet more propaganda by people itching for war.

Call me when they write an article warning of the moral hazards of dealing with a country that invaded Iraq without provocation, causing hundreds of thousands of people to die; which overthrew the government of Libya, plunging the country into chaos; which armed Sunni extremists in Syria; which has backed Israel's occupation of Palestine for decades; which ran a global kidnapping and assassination program; which operates a vast, unaccountable global surveillance network; where tens of millions of people go uninsured or under-insured because profits are paramount. Once the NY Times publishes that Op-Ed, maybe I'll consider their moral posturing as something other than propaganda.

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