USA Sanctions Chinese Officials, Including Politburo Member, for Xinjiang Abuses
npr.org
npr.org
The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.[4][5][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Chinese actions to reduce births for example are very well documented.
> [The atrocity in Xinjiang] very specifically meets one of the five criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, which specifically says the suppression of birth.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/04/887239225/china-suppression-o...
HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567
In this case, people are doing this in order to whip up further hysteria. I recall in 2011, when Western media promoted false claims of genocide in Libya, in order to justify the bombing of the country and the overthrow of its government. Same thing in Iraq in 2003. There's a pattern here.
There are consequences to this sort of demonization. You're supporting a hysteria that has a good chance of leading to war.
In China forced abortions and mass sterilization are selective based on ethnicity. Combined with reeducation camps and differential taxation based on ethnicity and number of kids is not simply enforcing a policy. The Chinese government is even dealing with the excess male population from their previous one child policy and preferential marriage laws to eliminate an ethnic group.
This is systematic genocide, even without the obvious mass graves.
It would be interesting to hear how you compare the actual killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq by the United States to the Holocaust, given that you've now compared the 2-3 child policy to the Holocaust.
Meanwhile “it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.” https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/china-cuts-uighur-...
“They gave Omirzakh, the penniless wife of a detained vegetable trader, three days to pay a $2,685 fine for having more than two children.
If she didn’t, they warned, she would join her husband and a million other ethnic minorities locked up in internment camps — often for having too many children.“
Of note a significant number of couples must have 3 children to maintain the population as some children die or never have children of their own. But, again that’s just one policy they are doing many other things which all add up.
The Uighur population of Xinjiang has grown rapidly over the past 5 years (something that you've said proves there was no genocide in Iraq), and what you're reading about in the news is the draconian enforcement of the same family planning policies on Uighurs as have up to recently only applied to Han people. Ethnic minorities used to be exempt from the one-child rule. Now, rules have been relaxed to 2-3 children, but they're being applied to minorities as well. You can denounce this policy without comparing it to the Holocaust, Rwanda, and other actual genocides.
So sure the Iraq war combined combined with a sectarian civil war, and after effects from the breakdown of the economy and social order possibly reached a few hundred thousand deaths. But that’s by definition not a genocide. If you want an American genocide look back to what happened to Native Americans.
And to be sure, America's government does plenty of terrible things as it is.
Treasury Sanctions Chinese Entity and Officials Pursuant to Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act
> The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.
> The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-chin...
Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing. Hollywood was tailoring their products to appease the Chinese government and be allowed in the market, anyone who wanted to do business there like NBA owners and players were biting their tongues and hiding their political opinions. But not Trump, he turned the tide and made America care about human freedom again.
Ok, fine, crazy thought. But it raises the question, why aren't any of our other leaders even pretending to try and be that person?
Don't you think that's a very easy question to answer?
A ton of money, an amount of money serious enough even for America to be made concerned.
Pretty much everybody with stock market exposure, including pretty much anybody in USA who counts as an elite, will loose big time if one day Beijing presses the Delete button, and half of Fortune 500 vanishes.
Remember, it was Apple out of everybody who was granted an exemption from punitive tariffs on China.
And, yes, those decisions were influenced by money but they were also influenced heavily by American Exceptionalist arrogance. Of course our culture will dominate theirs and they'll take their rightful, subservient place to us in the global order.
Never mind that they literally converted their own conquerers to Chinese culture TWICE (mongols/yuan, manchu/qing) in the last millenium.
I mean they would prohibit all vital operations of these companies in China. What would Apple do if China will give them a Huawei treatment?
They wouldn't even be able to move away from China, if their Chinese suppliers would be told to cease doing business with Apple globally.
Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.
Second to that: check what you saw in the previous half of the year. A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China. Would US elites be ready to deal with angry unwashed masses who, with some help, and incitement, would go torch their houses because they can't get not only their new Iphone, but basic medicines, clothing, car parts, basic household goods, widgets for their businesses, and such?
Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.
I don't think it'd play out like that. It's been a few generations, but Americans have experience with wartime rationing that was far more extreme. They didn't riot and demand a peace treaty with Hilter and Tojo, so they could could get the consumer goods they had been used to having.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States
https://www.history.com/news/food-rationing-in-wartime-ameri...
But, I don't see any US president standing for it before the election, or at least attempting to sell it to his electorate/funders, unless pretty much a hot war is happening.
USA was the biggest industrial power by late thirties, and I think no country would've stood for Germany in the open on the global arena by then. The situation is more than a bit different now.
Be hopeful that the politicians will be as logical as you are.
I don't think it would be a hard to sell the American public on some kind of rationing if Beijing suddenly embargoes the US in a way that necessitated it. Given the economic dependencies that you cite, I think a US-initiated decoupling would likely proceed slowly enough to not cause critical disruption, just higher prices.
Well, all those people would instantly be out of a job for one. What Huawei factories in the US are being shut down? It's one thing to lose market access, it's another to lose jobs.
> Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.
Cheap is a better word here. There is not a single item in China that can't be replicated elsewhere in the world for consumer products.
> A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China.
Because of cheapness, not because they can't be created elsewhere. Many countries can create these goods, including the U.S.
> Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.
Americans might not be "ready" but they can definitely decouple with China if push comes to shove.
> We estimate China only makes $8.46 from an iPhone
> No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree
It should also be noted that there were plenty of experts who would tell you that the world is now too economically intertwined to be able to support any major war between major powers... in 1914. Economic integration preventing global conflict has been disproven time and again in history.
> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree
It's worth noting that most of the wiki article is basically a list of counter-examples that proved that statement false. There have been a half-dozen wars between McDonald's-havers.
Sell to another country at lower prices, and less profit than the can get from the US?
If the dreams of people like Elon Musk come true, USSF may end up being a far more important organisation than AFSC ever was.
Guess which age group has an outsize influence on Reddit?
But he wasn't openly in league with hostile powers, wasn't blatantly corrupt, and didn't utterly meltdown when faced with a crisis. Arguably, this is because Chaney and other Neo-Cons were calling the shots, but things seemed mostly stable.
Trump is all of those negatives but without the veneer of good faith and competency.
Trump isn't going to be rehabilitated like Bush. Politics aside, George Bush seems like a genuinely decent guy at a personal level. Trump, on the other hand, is a nasty, selfish bully; he always has been one, and he always will be one. As long as he remains alive, he will constantly remind America if his nature.
> Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing.
Trump won't be celebrated, since there's no strategy behind what he does: it's all short term self-interest. Bolton says he begged Xi in person to buy US farm products to help with his re-election (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53086042) and approved of the concentration camps that are being sanctioned here (https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslim-bolton-73ebf1e2-9d...).
If anything, Trump's bumbling, impulsive actions caused aspects of an already solidifying consensus on China to firm up a little quicker.
China regularly arrests dozens of foreign citizens on bogus charges every month. This is what people saying that China's incarceration rate is so low forget to say. A foreigners in China has a much higher risk to be extra-judicially jailed.
And yes, US government largely shows that it doesn't give a .... when its citizens are being jailed overseas, unless a huge media expose forces it to do so.
Care to list the 25+ people arrested in June?
I agree on over-incarceration the most. Police brutality needs to be backed up by numbers, not just a video or two every year that gets shown 1 million times on all media.
Most of those "refugees" are simply economic migrants. I don't blame them at all, but there's a point at which we need to have laws to see who/how people can get into this country to become a part of our society. Doing nothing and basically letting anybody who can walk here get in is NOT the answer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Please before you call hypocrisy on the US government at least engage in the quality of the action they are currently taking.
This is about the US' geopolitical struggle with China over the question of whether or not China will become an equal power with the US.
If forced to draw some sort of moral hierarchy I'd say yes, it's still not quite up to the organized atrocities committed against the Uighurs. But our disorganized, systemic atrocities are vast, and every other first-world nation is horrified.
Let's supply and equip KSA with bombs to kill minorities and majorities in Yemen, and also blame Chinese for abuses against ethnic minorities. We are terrified to death of seeing tear gas on streets but we supply bombs to the Middle East.
And don't get me wrong. I think anything to stop abuses in China is great. But, when I'm reminded about those double standards, I just realize it's all bullshit.
I stopped reading politics. I only listen to people that talk about peace. Everyone else is after some hidden agenda.
I personally don't believe these sanctions have "the right reasons" behind them because the US selectively allies with countries with a similar legal and moral track record as China. If the action is not taken on justice, fairness, or moral grounds I think my implication above is pretty fair.
What countries does the US ally with that have a similar track record as China does in Xinjiang? The only thing recently comparable that comes to mind is Myanmar, with the Rohingya. But I'm not sure to what degree the US allies with Myanmar.
Basically if China wants to be a world leader equal to or above the US, we need some guarantees that they aren't going to plunder the world for their own nationalism. If not, then they need to feel pain until they do.
While I'm personally incompatible with many (most?) of the Chinese values as seen from the west, I'm sure most Chinese appreciate them as they came attached to personal prosperity like their parents never dreamed. You believe US values are or should be generally accepted by the world as "the gold standard" for everyone. Did you have to handwave anything and say "yeah, except that, and that, and..."? Or "but what about what they do?" This is a very self-centric view of the world.
Chinese nationalism doesn't agree with me, but neither does yours. The difference between the 2 is that I'm on your nationalism's good (less bad?) side, so it suits me today. Most of the world is on their bad side and do not share your enthusiasm about your values. Many other Western countries are already distancing themselves from the US with regards to many actions (take as an example the Iran sanctions) because it turns out in the end it shares the same "plunder the world" principles. Perhaps a bit more carrot, less stick than the Chinese one. Even citizens are showing less and less appreciation for it in the streets. I applaud the fact that they are free to do it, not that they're fearing just less retaliation than the average Chinese would in the same position. I can't unsee that so many condemnation-worthy violations piggy-back on these real values, in the end making the whole thing a "chocolate-poop-cake". It has chocolate, everyone likes chocolate.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy of assuming your personal world views and nationalism happen to be universally above the rest and the fix is for everyone else to "feel the pain" of our nationalism until they accept it. If that didn't sound a bit off then you would have used you regular account.
China's system is, we have a cabal of secretive elites that run the show and they can't be elected or unelected by the people.
Which one should be the world standard?
Yeah... "some sort" says it all doesn't it?
It's a much deeper discussion that this topic or medium affords. But that very same system took away through various means millions of citizens' right to vote, and routinely generates situations where the will of the majority is overridden by a minority. And there's a lot more where that came from. You are given just enough power to feel in control but not enough to be in control. You have a voice but nobody really has to listen.
I grant you that, there are clearly far more freedoms in the western world in general than in China. But there's nothing better about US's system of values than say the Icelandic one (quite visibly the opposite actually). But...
It all boils down to one simple fact: the US imposes it's own views on the rest of the world via military and economic measures against anyone who doesn't comply, doesn't have anything truly of value to trade, or threatens that military and economic superiority. See Saudi Arabia, one of US's closest ally vs. China, one of US's biggest enemy. Both have the same values yet get very different ends of the stick. There's nothing making this system better other than the military and economic force behind it.
And I'll leave you with a bit of foods for thought: large scale organized crime groups also elected their leaders through "some sort of democracy", and have economic and "military" power to impose their will even over entire countries. What does this say about their system of values? Must be tip top.
When did it take away citizens right to vote? You're talking about felons not being able to vote? Yeah I agree with getting rid of that, getting rid of gerrymandering etc. You can be a critic of implementations the system and yet still support the underlying mechanism.
You're supposed to feel like you have a say and not BE in control. Yes minority groups will have less power, that is fine.
"There's nothing making this system better..." "I grant you there are clearly far more freedoms in the western..."
The US will basically spread democracy and capitalism. True capitalism is bad for the entrenched CCP, Russia oligarchs, etc because the US multinationals will inject their capital in the system and take control of everything. Of course they want to keep power. I think there should be some guarantees of the country keeping some ownership over their production.
CCP and Russia are trying to lock down their systems and increase their competitive output, so that when they clash with the West they can compete on value/innovation.
I'm not saying the system is perfect, it's obviously coopted by different groups. But it is as close to perfect as exists in the world today.
So the theory is great if only we ignore the practice? A protection racket works on solid mechanisms and even principles in theory. The implementation just needs the small detail of breaking the law. It also looks great from inside if you benefit even the least bit from it, but criminal from the outside.
> The US will basically spread democracy and capitalism.
Lots of countries became democratic and capitalistic because the US explosively "spread" them? What was the cost for those countries to still not achieve that? Protection rackets might have more satisfied customers.
> True capitalism is bad for the entrenched CCP
I'm not sure you understand what "true capitalism" means. Short version, it's not great for the regular person. There's no room for protections and you're only as valuable as your contribution to someone else's bottom line. Sounds familiar? Now I honestly wonder what happens if you apply "pure capitalism" to a country of 1.5 billion knowing that either the theory or the practice encourage lobbying (buying) for laws to favor the few, and selectively adjust the democratic process to eliminate the most inconvenient votes.
> But it is as close to perfect
In theory. But you'd have to be naive to believe that the US goes anywhere just to spread the good word, especially considering the current track record doing that and that since as you agreed they themselves are far from nailing the practice. Other countries have nailed both, take Scandinavian countries where people are treated equal, the GDP per capita is similar to the US's (+/- $10k), and the democratic process works in practice. Why isn't the US importing that rather than being concerned with exporting theirs?
Look, I don't know where you get your facts, your opinions, your education from but it's not the right place. The system failed you and hasn't prepared you for this conversation.
you are leaving aside the fact that your system also involves an armed invasion by the USA if a certain country does something the USA doesn't like.
Naive view of the world to think what happens outside your neighborhood is of no concern for you.
The irony is blinding here. The kind of entitled opinion that can only be supported by strong ignorance and is only remedied by education. Every one of your arguments can be refuted in half a line just like in all of your other comments. And you'd reject every one of your arguments if they were used against you.
Are Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc. better off now than they were before being bombed to shit to "fix their dictator or terrorist problem"? Is Iran better off after making a deal with the US and sticking to it? Central America after all the "fight the communists" regime changes? When a country gets taken over by a leader undemocratically elected with a minority of votes should there be a military intervention to fix it? How about when you spy (with every advantage that entails, economic, political, or military) on every other country and citizen on the planet? When you blackmail entire countries to get your economic interests? When your citizens are illegally shot on the streets and abused by corporations but their voice means next to nothing?
In the meantime China has seen the biggest economic boom any developed country has ever managed to maintain ever so the US feels threatened and ups the "dictator-like" measures against the world.
There's a reason you use a throwaway account. Your opinions aren't controversial, they're embarrassingly immature, uneducated, ignorant of the realities of the world we live in and you don't want that to rub of on you actual account. I guess you're not at risk of being shot in the back by police (or ever reading a book instead of an Alex Jones podcast) so you are still free to maintain this happy view of your "we're definitely not acting like the dictator of the world" system.
I’m voicing the reality of the situation, in that the world is not a nice place when you let things fester all over the world.
China has done great at mobilizing their population, definitely. But don’t you worry that having unlimited power in a secretive cabal (CCP) is a bit dangerous?
I disagreed vehemently with Iraq. If the US just lets any place fester into an autocracy, then that autocracy has the base to expand their sphere.
So instead of the US capitalist sphere with its obvious but controllable problems... we’ll have your world where strongmen can expand their spheres. In those spheres, our businesses can be pushed out or taken control of without rule of law. So our country diminishes and eventually collapses.
So you sit on your high horse and play armchair quarterback, when in reality you benefit from the imperfect hegemony the US established for much of the world. Countries in our sphere have benefitted greatly: SK, Japan, Europe, Taiwan, India, Mexico, etc.
Guantanamo Bay and the Xinjiang camps are not comparable. For all its faults, Guantanamo is essentially a POW camp that contains enemy combatants. No American citizens are detained there, and none were ever meant to be.
The Xinjiang camps were specifically built to forcibly indoctrinate civilian ethnic-minority Chinese citizens and suppress their community and culture. They operate on a much larger scale, and also provide a captive labor pool that's being exploited.
> essentially a POW camp
The US government refused to treat people in Guantanamo Bay as POWs. That's why they called them "enemy combatants." POWs have rights.
Guantanamo Bay itself was only a tiny part of the larger War on Terror. The US ran prison camps scattered throughout the world, in which it tortured prisoners. The US kidnapped civilians and flew them to secret prisons, or to be tortured by allied countries like Egypt. One person was even kidnapped by American intelligence off the streets of Milan.
In Iraq, the US worked with Shiite militias that tortured and killed large numbers of people suspected of being sympathetic to the insurgency. The US itself ran prisons like Abu Ghraib, in which prisoners were tortured. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in Iraq, as a result of the illegal invasion.
No senior figure involved in these crimes was prosecuted.
So when the US government suddenly develops a conscience, consider me skeptical.
2. The world must not be distracted by such facile whataboutism. What the CPC does to its people, from Xiangjiang to Hong Kong is terrible. Would I like to see the US clean up its own act? Sure. But in the meantime, I am happy to see the US take a string stance against CPC totalitarianism.
I believe it really doesn't matter at all if it is actually about human rights, they're human in either case.
Is it worse for the government to bomb a foreign country, or to bomb its own people? Of course they're both bad, but there's a reason the international community reacted one way to Syria and one way to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
Yes, Syria has no nukes and no military power. That's the extent of the why. Russia, for examples, has nukes and military power, and look at what happened in Grosny and the international community.
But all of that is besides the point, of course. It's allegedly about human rights, not about only killing & torturing people as long as they're not citizens of your country, the secret law of civilized society.
The "crime of aggression" is one of the most serious violations of international law that exists. One of the foundational principles of the post-WWII order is that countries cannot go to war against other countries, except in self-defense (very narrowly construed) or with permission from the UN Security Council.
What countries do within their own borders is much more their own business.
> there's a reason the international community reacted one way to Syria and one way to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
The reason is simple. Syria is not a powerful country, but the US is. Everyone recognized that the invasion of Iraq was aggression, and therefore illegal under international law. Nobody was willing to do anything about it, because the US was then the world's sole superpower.
"Injustice to one is injustice to all"
So, no, not "hypocrites".
It's simply without a trial. All states have nice words for why they have to target whom they target. Let's not fall for propaganda.
The scale is different: true. But same-scale is not a prerequisite for hypocrisy.
the Uygurs are imprisoned based on their race. With or without trial makes no difference.
And some of them are probably normal people.
But the intention is to catch extremists, the flaw is to not follow due process.
Whereas in China, the intention is to commit cultural genocide.
Like in Abu Ghraib, where they created a torture dungeon for thousands of Iraqis, from common criminals to suspect rebels, generally without trial?
This whole "no, it's just some really evil individuals that we tortured, we are the good guys here" narrative is disgusting.
this is the main point. both states like to do it without trial.
What's more important is intention. One side tries to catch murderers and sometimes does not follow due process.
The other side tries to kill off the culture of an entire people by violently "reeducation" millions of human beings.
Honestly, I find it disgusting that people here seem to be mostly fine with those crimes, and even try to defend them.
Guantanamo was supposed to be for the worst of the worst terrorists. No doubt a few were mistakenly selected but by mistake (USA has no interest in spending so much money and limited resources on a, say, innocent Pakistani cab driver.)
China has essentially put in camps /jail millions and millions of its citizens, simply because they are Muslim. And they're trying to wipe out their identity.
Now tell me how they compare ?
I'm not sure this is true. Could you please post the numbers at guantanamo and the numbers imprisoned at Xinjiang? That would help clarify this point, thanks.
>numbers at guantanamo
Hundreds at any one time, under a hundred currently, well less than a thousand peak[1]
>numbers imprisoned at Xinjiang
On the order of millions[2]
If you want to be disingenuous more effectively I suggest you get better and choosing when to ask for citations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
That it was a deliberate disingenuity seemed to have flown far and high over your head. What do you think I was trying to do?
I would like to educate you. USA has done just that.
No. Because they are Uyghurs. The Hui are a totally different phenomenon; Islam is one of the traditional religions of China. (Granted, with much less uptake than Buddhism got.)
And the "anti-extremism" push certainly applies to Hui Muslims as well, who had their mosques "renovated" to look less like mosques: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=763356996
The fact that certain individual Uyghurs are not targeted is not evidence that the reason oppressed Uyghurs are being oppressed is not "because they're Uyghurs". It's evidence that being a Uyghur can be mitigated.
But if you prefer, "because they are members of a group with very questionable allegiance". This phrasing picks up the other Turkic groups in the area while still clearly excluding the Hui.