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Comment by FooBarWidget | Hacker News Reader

There is a Canadian named Jerry Grey, who went on a bicycle ride in China. He literally rode hundreds of kilometers in Xinjiang, away from mainstream tourist attractions, to remote places he himself is interested in. He was able to do that without government supervision; all the government checkpoints let him pass without much scrutiny. What he reports on is very different from mainstream media reports.

One of his blog posts:

https://medium.com/@jerry_grey2002/abc-four-corners-tell-the...

Does anyone know why his report is so different, and why the government would just let him go whereever, unsupervised? Do people here believe that his report is genuine, or do people here believe that it's fake?

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As someone who lives in SEA and used to live in China, he's able to move around because he lives in China and I assume has a long term visa and speaks Mandarin. And he is going with the blessing of the Chinese state media:

https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/12754321240702976...

What he is saying does not seem remotely credible unless he has the evidence to back it up.

I don't think he's completely making up that he's been to Xinjiang, but what he is writing is propaganda and should be treated as such.

Didn't Global Times report on him long after he had already made the trip and blogged about it? Or are you saying: it's all one big scheme, planned way up front?

Given his Twitter feed looks like a Chinese diplomat's[1], I would assume he is part of the pro-Beijing influence network. I mean, why would someone dedicate 6 months of their life to convincing the world that something isn't happening which is reported on widely (even by some limited Chinese media)?

I have no idea if he is scheming with the the government or if he is simply trying to curry favour, but if you are a gwai lo (westerner) in China and want to get ahead for any reason (visas, job whatever), this is precisely what you would do. Whether its voluntary propaganda or paid propaganda, it's still propaganda.

edit: This is the kind of blatant propaganda I'm talking about: https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/129826250774052044...

[1] - https://twitter.com/Jerry_grey2002/status/129669725507268608...

I've been to China numerous times, my Mandarin sucks, I stand out, and I went wherever I wanted. Didn't try to go to Xinjiang, admittedly.

There's paperwork that says you have to check in with local authorities wherever you go, tell them what hotel you're staying at, and all this other stuff, but nobody actually does it. If you caused trouble, it'd probably be held against you after the fact is all.

There's no reason to assume this guy is some kind of agent because he had freedom of motion. He probably liked all the people he met, sees lots of ignorant anti-China commentary on the English internet, and is pushing back (perhaps too strongly).

> There's paperwork that says you have to check in with local authorities wherever you go, tell them what hotel you're staying at, and all this other stuff, but nobody actually does it.

That's wrong: if you're staying in a hotel, they're doing the paperwork for you. You only have to do it yourself if you're staying in a private residence.

Maaaayyybe at a big western oriented hotel in Shanghai.

I personally stayed at plenty of places without giving them my ID.

The section on separatism is unadulterated pro-authoritarianism. Examples of regions that have peacefully seceded from a nation abound. Norway from Sweden, Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, multiple states from the former Soviet Union. Scotland had a referendum on independence recently and though they chose to stay part of the UK, there was no threat or chance of violence. Freedom to seceded, or coerced union are both choices and 'everybody does it' is the worst excuse ever. Pure whataboutism.

The fact that the US has indivisibility in it's constitution is a weird historical wrinkle, and one I find hard to reconcile given that they chose to separate from Britain. How they didn't recognise a general right for self determination is beyond me. But then I am a Brit.

I'm married to a former Chinese citizen and have family in China, and while Ive not lived there I've been many times. It's oppressive enough of minorities just in the relatively peaceful areas I've visited. There's a superficial respect for ethnicities, but that's coupled with a sustained campaign of cultural suppression, dilution and colonisation.

For example there's no smallness of degree of ethnic blood too thin to count as part of that ethnicity, and ethnic groups get privileges Han don't, encouraging registration as minority members. Plus registration is just a matter of getting 'notorised', which is an unbelievably corrupt system. The result is that the vast majority of official members of 'ethnic minorities' have virtually, or actually no connection with the ethnic culture, but get full say in how their 'minority' is represented and treated. All the people who get an official say in minority relations are functionally 100% Han, and party members to boot.

>The fact that the US has indivisibility in it's constitution is a weird historical wrinkle, and one I find hard to reconcile given that they chose to separate from Britain. How they didn't recognise a general right for self determination is beyond me. But then I am a Brit.

This is incorrect. The US Constitution doesn't mention indivisibility [1]. The Tenth amendment provides some Rights to self determination:

> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

---

So while the constitution doesn't address succession by a state, the historical context of our Civil War, and court cases in its aftermath ended most of the debate on if and how states could succeed from the Union.

From Texas v. White [2]:

>When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

That establishes that succession must have the consent of the States, which is a similar bar to amending the Constitution. But its interesting that the case cited pre-constitutional law, i.e. the Articles of Confederation.

[1] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White

Yes that was an unfair dig, my apologies.

> The result is that the vast majority of official members of 'ethnic minorities' have virtually, or actually no connection with the ethnic culture, but get full say in how their 'minority' is represented and treated

Your whole last paragraph was genuinely interesting and not something I've heard of before. Do you have a source I could read for more information?

It's really just my own observation and discussion with family and friends. We can see it happening.

This phenomenon is certainly not limited to China. Elizabeth Warren is the public example who comes to mind, although I suspect that many of us know people who claim particular backgrounds for their personal advantage.

Warrens actions were misguided, but it’s a stretch to read malice into it. To me the line not to cross is marginalising the voices or representation of those genuinely culturally indigenous, or of a minority.

> It's oppressive enough of minorities just in the relatively peaceful areas I've visited.

What first-hand things (that you saw for yourself) can you use to corroborate this?

When I first went to China I read up on my wife’s home town online and found out about a native book store trying to preserve their culture so I though I’d check it out. When I visited it had been raided by the police ‘to prevent copyright violations’ and closed down. The shops everywhere were chock full of ripped off CDs and movies, but here this one time they decide to enforce that?

My wife is native Han but about a third of her relatives are officially minorities. None of them speak the minority language or read the script or have anything to do with minority culture. Minority script is used all over the place, but I talked to a university lecturer that’s a friend of the family, he told me most of the signs are gibberish, and told me how to spot ones that had been put up upside down. It’s a farce.

> Examples of regions that have peacefully seceded from a nation abound. Norway from Sweden, Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, multiple states from the former Soviet Union.

Czechia and Slovakia in 1993.

Do we feel like someone riding a bicycle through a region would necessarily discover something about such camps?

If I randomly traveled in any country would I know about these things? Would I know if I was "without government supervision"?

I'm not inclined to believe that any given rando foreigner would somehow provide a good view of what is going on locally.

I've traveled plenty, there's a ton I could not see / know.

I've actually seen this concept put forth a lot, especially when it comes to China that rando traveler didn't see something so we should doubt it (often put forth with stories about how little crime there is). I don't really understand why anyone would think that makes sense... particularly with all the rest of the information we have on this topic.

Neither my point, nor his point, is "this guy didn't see it while cycling, so they don't exist". In fact, he has stated multiple times that he isn't denying existance of camps.

As for what his point is: you should read the full article, it's nuanced.

I'm less concerned with the article than this strange idea that someone on a bike not seeing a thing ... means something relative to all the other information we have.

He repeatedly mentions Arabic as the local language instead of the various Turkic languages of the region, indicating that he most likely doesn't speak any of them, so he probably didn't have much interaction with less-educated people, who'd be the major targets of forced Mandarin education etc. So when he talks about people feeling safer now, is that representative of everyone in Xinjiang or just the people he chose to associate with?

It's not unlike a European visiting the US when they were busy killing natives and enslaving blacks, but being thoroughly enamored by their egalitarian democracy.

He says he’s talking about the written language on signs.

The written language should be Standard Mandarin in combination with one or more of Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Xibe etc. depending on the composition of the local population. They're written in scripts related to the Arabic script, but the languages themselves are very different.

How to compare that with this experience then?

https://youtu.be/v7AYyUqrMuQ

Also, it's interesting that on Twitter of sharing related articles you'll have Asian people with accounts commenting with very short messages simply saying "you're stupid" or similar without explaining themselves nor actually engaging with the comments - their replies getting 4+ Likes from near bot-looking accounts.

It seems the CCP is working hard to craft the narrative worldwide.

Can you show some of those tweets? I don't think I've ever seen them, so I'm curious.

I think those would be easy to find. Most of the accounts will have locations of Chinese mainland and only post good things about China and bad thing about others. Some of them will post funny/beautiful photos/videos to gain following as well. Since Twitter is banned in PRC, why would people be constantly on VPN just to post this stuff. All you need to do is, find state sponsored account, see the users retweeting/liking their tweets like this account: https://mobile.twitter.com/eaglet_CH

There are accounts at a higher level than this, who would make more sense in countering and spread positivity as well.

Few articles about bot networks.

- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/china-s-d...

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/12/182000-...

I think no one is doubting that, but I have yet to see any tweets from these bots are having any effect at all to turn the topic around (usually it's very one-sided against China). Do you have any examples that it might corrupt the discussion?

Because he was a schmuck on a bicycle exploring a region more than twice the size of Texas, and not an actual journalist? Seriously, the OP was from freaking buzzfeed and it still listed the research team. These are not equally valuable accounts.

> Does anyone know why his report is so different, and why the government would just let him go whereever, unsupervised? Do people here believe that his report is genuine, or do people here believe that it's fake?

Honestly, I would expect the report of a tourist to be genuine but not reliable, especially when it comes to political stuff short of a devastating war. They'll probably be honest about what they saw directly, but probably won't find themselves "where the action is." They'd also lack the context and are poorly equipped to understand the larger situation, and are more vulnerable to being mislead. I'm reminded of all the times in my travel journals where I overgeneralized from a small experience or uncritically reported what some tour guide or random person said about something. They could have been lying, mistaken, or leaving something important out, but I lack the ability to tell.

Also, IIRC, the restrictions in Xinjiang are more around journalists and diplomats (that have different visas that subject them to more scrutiny).

I think individual experience is going to vary depending on how much you are trusted. SerpentZa was a vlogger who was there in China for a long time. In contrast to your example, he has mentioned about being stopped at various places and CCP trying to honeytrap him. Even though his wife is Chinese, he moved out of China eventually[1]

But I would agree to the sentiment that American/European media might not be giving the complete picture. If you read local sources or wire feeds you will realize the partisan reporting they do. This is not just true for China, take one more big Asian country India, it has a lot of English media press, you can see the bias easily in reporting of even big names like NyTimes, Guardian. They like to report on mostly negative stuff, skipping reports which connect events as well, so you might end up with a perspective that things are worse than they might be. I can link reports to show how coverage gets omitted from even wire feeds but that is offtopic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgqdfAomVI

Travel in Xinjiang isn't restricted for foreigners at least a year ago. There are a lot of security checkpoints, but they will just ignore you if you're not brown.

> but they will just ignore you if you're not brown.

Is that true? Based on Vice's reports last year, journalists and tourists where forced to show their phone to border agents and to install some surveillance app: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/3/20681258/china-u...

It looks like that's done at China's borders. Most journalists and tourists fly directly into China.

... crossing the border from Kazakhstan. It's not surprising for border checkpoints to have heightened security. If they had traveled by plane like actual tourists, it would've been less of a hassle.

> but they will just ignore you if you're not brown.

It's not Xinjiang, but, as an obviously foreign Westerner, I was waved through the security checkpoints around Tiananmen Square. The setup was geared towards Chinese National ID cards, and the guards didn't want to bother with my passport. The main reason for that was probably laziness, but maybe a secondary reason was the goal of the security was mainly to control the domestic population for political reasons, and foreigners don't figure into that goal.

In August and September 2019, when I was in Xinjiang, we went through several checkpoints every day. the locals were in and through in about 20 seconds, I was with my Chinese wife, she could pass through in seconds too, but myself and an Australian friend were processed manually every time, it too between 20 minutes and 90 minutes, depending on the staff there. The Uyghurs got much better service than we did. However, I will point out that, at all times, they were polite.

Also, at no time did anyone ever ask to see my phone, my cameras (I had three) or ask where we had been the previous night - we slept several nights in unregistered locations, once in a culvert under the road, once behind a service station, once on the floor of a shed next to a service station and once, in Dabancheng in a cemetery just off the road. No one ever questioned us or asked for anything other than usual passport details

>You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

I trust journalists more than some rando for starters. But even besides that, I have a much harder time believing statements made on a blog by someone with very obvious opinions over direct visual evidence of a clear ramping up of detention centers.

You're twisting my point. I could as well turn it around and ask you these:

You really think everybody who's not a journalist and reports on China, must be a liar, and cannot possibly be genuine?

You think all journalists are unbiased and truthful?

Blog post that casts doubt on Adrian Zenz - likely CCP propaganda. I've noticed this a trend in the last few months on Reddit and other forums where random people are trying to smear the guy. If you browse through his other posts, its clear this Jerry Grey is anti-US, pro-China and pandering.

No he isn't...

And, if you prefer to believe Adrian Zenz, then please feel free to do so. But before quoting him in public, please inform yourself as to his background and credentials - I don't attempt to smear him, I simply point people to his medieval beliefs. Let them judge for themselves - if you're a religious zealot then you might believe what he says, I don't think sensible people, even believers will be too enamoured by his writings.

Another one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oKvulTU8oU

> https://medium.com/@jerry_grey2002/abc-four-corners-tell-the....

Thank you for that really insightful blog post. A very thorough takedown of that poor documentary.

Thank you for taking the time to read it. The documentary lacked any clear evidence. I've written to the ABC several times but they won't reply to me. The Host of the Documentary was the person who sent it to me and I gave her the opportunity to review and reject for 48 hours before I posted it. She didn't even reply to me. So far, I've had absolutely no contact with the ABC except for the one DM on Twitter, where Sophie, the host, personally reached out to send me a link to the Yt site

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9AyqT6RC4E Here's a link to an interview with a British Journalist who tried everything she knew to get me to say the things she wanted me to say, then disregarded what I did say and wrote a whole bunch of lies. I am the guy who rode the bike and I am the guy who is being persecuted by people for having an opinion that differs from theirs - I simply say to all who read this, if you don't believe it, please get on with your life because discussing it with me further will only make you more angry - I don't lie about what I saw I have nothing to gain from doing so. I've read through the thread here and would like to put my own position on the record... I live happily in China and I like it but I don't love everything about it. I have issues that I don't like but generally, it's nicer here than the other places I've lived, so I choose to stay. I don't get any benefit, payment, visa or other bonus from China, Chinese people, the Chinese government, I'm simply a cyclist who saw things that didn't add up. I'm retired from work, so no professional gain there for me and I'm not connected in any way to any department in the government here. I do speak some mandarin but the only reason I was allowed to travel in Xinjiang is that everybody is allowed to travel there, there aren't as far as I know any restrictions. I don't know if journalists, with a visa that identifies them as journalists would have a problem because I've never asked a journalist, in fact, I've never yet met one who has been there, online or in person. Which is part of the reason for my skepticism I don't hate America or Americans, I've never been there, I have no intention of visiting but that's only because I have more important places I want to go and need to go with family in the UK and in Australia, the USA isn't on my radar. I want to correct a mistake which labelled me as a Canadian, a simple mistake ,I'm not, I'm British Born Australian citizen. I don't like politics either Chinese or otherwise and so, I don't get into this because of politics, I simply posted a few nice pictures a few months ago and people started to ask questions - when it was apparent that my travels were considered by many to be either illegal or propaganda, I became a little more vocal. Hence Global Times and CGTN both wanted to talk to me. It seems the world is full of people willing to believe everything they read in the news and if someone speaks out against it, they are immediately shot down as liars, CPC bots, paid propagandists or something else, I've been called a lot of names. The fact is, there are problems in Xinjiang, I never deny this. There are prisons and camps there too, I never deny this but there are also world recognised terrorists there (ETIM the East Turkestan Islamic Movement funded initially by the CIA and then by Al-Qaeda but declared a terrorist organisation by the US Department of State) and these need to be handled. I am no expert on politics, terrorism or anything like that, I simply say, what I saw, doesn't match what I hear in the news. You want to believe what you see and read in news reports, I can't control that, but if you want to really know what's going on in Xinjiang, then stop reading reports from US government sources because they have openly admitted that China is their enemy and their propaganda war is far more than I, a simple cyclist can compete with. Believe or don't believe what I say, it's up to you - I only want people to question what is being said and if that means challenging me, then so be it, but please don't blindly challenge me because I disagree with CNN or Fox news - challenge me with something real. So far, every piece of information I have heard about Xinjiang has come from one of three sources: Adrian Zenz, a religious fruitcake (please don't challenge me on this, read his own books) Satellite imagery which has been analysed mostly by one man Nathan Ruser, who works for ASPI, an Australian think tank funded by weapons manufacturers and Uyghur dissidents who are attempting to gain independence from China and are mostly funded by the CIA through the National Endowment for Democracy. Now, if those three sources don't get you questioning the narrative, then you are simply being blindly lead by the hand into a conflict which may be what you want. It certainly isn't what I want - I would like everyone and anyone to go to Xinjiang and see for themselves - the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been, has looked and hasn't found anything wrong with what's going on there - perhaps they don't like Uyghurs, I don't know but I would have thought an organisation representing 57 countries with Muslim majorities would have found something wrong, yet they didn't. The World Bank has also visited and didn't find anything wrong with what they saw - they did however reduce funding because they weren't able to visit everywhere they wanted, not because China wouldn't let them, but because they ran out of time. And finally, the UN Chief of Counter-Terrorism has visited too, (Vladimir Voronkov is his name, you can google it) and made positive reports. I ask everyone here - please don't believe me, but please don't accuse me of anything other than raising awareness that another "WMD story" appears to be in the making. Something I would dearly love to avoid. Thanks for reading

Because he doesn't work for the open technology fund/radio free asia/CIA. Or Adrian Zenz, referenced here, one of the only 2 primary sources they started the whole Xinjiang media episode in the first place. The other one being another NED/CIA shop like this article.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-...

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