Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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