China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs
buzzfeednews.com
buzzfeednews.com
Pretty cool. Trying to hide the facilities made them easier to find.
There is one view point in China, free reeducation for anyone that disagrees.
Locally we now have “fact” checking to helpfully ensure everyone only hears the one “truth”
Does anyone know of any good satellite data providers with more frequent (somewhere between bi-weekly and daily) data? I understand much of this is dependent on the nature of the project to determine what kind of satellite imagery you would need, different spectrometers at different UV ranges, different swathes, etc. but for now we'll just say something similar to the images in the article here.
I think it's better to shift from that, directly to not letting people (particularly those with means) to make excuses for using PRC goods when it would be almost as convenient to use goods from anywhere else.
It's a start, compared to just letting people say “oh well, guess I'll just give in completely”.
This is something we can actually fight for.
Manufacturing is entrenched in China. Before you can threaten China, you need to have a backup plan. Otherwise, it’ll call your bluff, like it’s doing already.
Please stop spreading learned helplessness. Problems are solved in baby steps. You start with legislation. Without it, nothing will proceed.
Orange Man tried to skip the first step and you see how well that worked...
If I have to get groceries, but to do that I have to put on my shoes first, is that then a shift of target?
We just have to make sure that in X years, the trade agreements have been updated. We can leave the rest to the politicians.
We can put whatever we want in the trade agreements and it won't matter. But if the companies are held accountable for their supply chain through high fines and things like even license suspensions, they will work to solve the problem because it's in their interest.
And which regional or global power could sign those, if that had any binding power?
I.e. how would you convince European citizens that it's right to sanction Chinese businesses that profit from prison labor, but wrong to sanction US businesses that profit from prison labor?
Or ignore those Europeans ... how do you convince US citizens of it? Sounds like they're quite angry about the domestic problem right now.
The problem becomes more obvious when you look at incarceration rates in the US. Of course, the US says "that's not racist, they just commit more crimes". And we (as in "Western societies") tend to believe that because the alternative is uncomfortable. There's a pretty vocal movement in the US that disputes that claim and alleges that the fact that wealthy and powerful people profit from prison labor is responsible for a) the rate of incarceration in general and b) the differences in incarceration rates.
I don't know whether they are right, but once you start going down that route, you better be prepared to walk for a while. If you don't (that is if you treat the Chinese behavior different from US behavior), you're going to do more harm than good, I believe, because people will understand that your talk of human rights is just a weapon in economical/political/military conflicts, and not a principle you believe in.
The whataboutism you're trying to push into the discussion isn't leading anywhere. I'm sure you'll find plenty of opportunities to discuss the US prison system, but this isn't one. Here we have people who have wronged nothing being labeled as extremists and then put into concentration camps.
But no, you'll choose power and war.
After reading and accepting that thesis, the world has become a much more obvious place for me personally.
In practice, this seems to mean that if you're the wrong religion and so much as breathe funny, off you go to the camps, where you will be basically tortured and brainwashed into adopting Han Chinese culture.
In Korla everyone getting off the train had to submit to a retinal scan, presumably so authorities know all the ingress and egress into town, going to a park involved going through a checkpoint. To get into any train station at all involved 3 levels of checkpoints, the first checkpoint started before you got to the plaza before the train station, so checking in took about 3 hours. In Kashgar the old city had checkpoints at every corner. The entire province only had 3G, the moment you cross over from neighboring Gansu your China Telecom signal dropped from 4G, so sending videos or even pictures is very difficult even on weChat, if you try to do it through a VPN the experience is even slower.
Some checkpoints were vigilant, but in my experience most were just bored. One checkpoint basically forgot to check my ID because I was seated all the at the back of a van. Young Uighur men or woman sometimes with a Han standing around or sitting at a chair with a desk in the middle of the street, writing down the names of everyone who crosses his "stand".
What surprised me the most was that most of the guards manning the checkpoints in towns, highways, at gas stations (which involved a full car search in order to pull into) were Uighurs themselves. I get the impression you basically went to jail or joined the security apparatus, a modern variation on a old Chinese strategem of using barbarian to fight barbarian I guess.
The whole experience changed my perspective on human beings in general. At the end of the day, when I got back home the only conclusion I could come to wasn't even about China or Chinese, if we look at the long span of human history the only thing I can arrive at is human beings in aggregate have a high tendency to do shitty things. Goodness exists in individuals but as soon as we have to appeal to the common denominator of a group or groups more often then not being a piece of shit is the easiest and most expedient.
https://twitter.com/_tchiek/status/1299386623390617601?s=20
Sorry for not getting caught in this anti-China craziness that has gotten Americans into a frenzy very very recently.
Those were just peaceful protests.
A popular song: Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too
The CCP is simply following a core tenant of communism. From the perspective of the ideology, they are freeing people from religion.
A much more important quote, a warning about accepting new ideas that too few heed today as always: “Let us keep our minds open, by all means, as long as that means keeping our sense of perspective and seeking an understanding of the forces which mould the world. But don’t keep your minds so open that your brains fall out! There are still things in this world which are true and things which are false; acts which are right and acts which are wrong, even if there are statesmen who hide their designs under the cloak of high-sounding phrases.”. — Walter Kotschnig November 8, 1939
We have evidence supporting theory of big bang. This theory best conforms with what we can observe.
The moment there is better theory, or new evidence that is contradictory we throw it out of the window.
> "the big bang came out of nothing" makes as much sense as any religious text to be honest.
Statements like this are so improportionally biased, it makes my head hurt.
Religions have solutions/answers so you don't need facts, science is the opposite and never absolute.
That said i don't give a flying f* in what other believe as long as they don't try to push it on me.
What china is doing is beyond despicable. And the comparisons to the holocaust are starting to be more and more apt.
Though it seems that they are more like reeducation (read brainwashing) camps with forced labor.
Correct me if I am wrong please, are there evidence of systematic ethnic cleansing?
I though that the hun chinese are imported from mainland and being used to displace the locals and treating them like 2nd class citizens.
Let me try again:
Idea - Religion is suffering. In a better world religion is unnecessary.
CCP - We are creating a better world by ridding it of religion.
Reality - Organized religion is a major threat to governments and their narrative.
The situation is that the CCP has high sounding ideals from Marx and other communist works. Reality is that religion is a threat to their power. That a narrative that rounding up these troubled people and re-educating them is necessary for the better world to happen.
This outrage is good, but I am simply pointing out that what is happening in China shouldn’t be surprising. The ideas of Karl Marx are only dangerous because people accept ideas without critical thought, and others use his ideas to further their own real agenda under such cover. It’s all straight out of ‘Animal Farm’.
“China has secretly built scores of massive new prison and internment camps in the past three years, dramatically escalating its campaign against Muslim minorities”
On a separate issue, the CCP is also rounding up trouble makers, and people that refuse to follow along and learn Mandarin would definitely qualify.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of Xinjiang is Shohrat Zakir, an Uyghur politician and (of course) Communist Party member. Being non-religious or anti-religious is a good way for Uyghurs to make career in service of the Chinese state.
I also doubt that Uyghurs are somehow more independent from Chinese rule than other people in China, especially with respect to history, considering the supporting role of Uyghur troops in the genocide of Dzungars (who used to live in modern Xinjiang) by the Chinese Qing army.
Citing Shohrat Zakir is disingenuous. In the Soviet Union it was common for people to point to members of the ethnic minorities placed in official roles and say "See, there is no discrimination or oppression”, and the exact same phenomenon holds for contemporary China though it is much less talked about. But those ethnic-minority bureaucrats or politicians invariably made compromises: they did not particularly insist on using their own language in officialdom or defending the rights of their ethnic kin to do the same, and when they did publicly use their native language it was merely in the service of propaganda initiatives directed by the central government. But those Communist Party members who have insisted on the dignity of China’s minority languages and called for resisting Han assimilation have, as I said, suffered persecution for it.
The Uighur definitely have been independent-minded. Regardless of military collaboration with the Qing, the average Uighur would not have had so much exposure to Han culture and language until recent decades.
https://bitterwinter.org/chinas-new-measures-for-religious-g...
See, easy, kept my mind open, and my mind didn't fall out.
Yes, that is why Lennin and especially Stalin were made into godlike figures. Mao is a prophet/father of the china also painted as infallible. And lets not forget about North Korea... ummm Peoples Republic that is Celestial Dictatorship.
Marx was rolling in his grave when 'communism' was implemented across the world's nations.
Some people are just more equal than others.
- Animal Farm“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Funnily that line was cut out of american version... go figure.
It kinda matches the "everything I don't like is communism" of the most extreme right.
The "everything I don't like is communism" isn't even extreme right, it's the entire right. It has nothing to do with beliefs, it's a pretense to use violence to suppress political disagreement. It's akin to the "everything I don't like is fascism" of the woke liberal.
In a world of global competition singling out Xinjiang as a colony while ignoring how China's biggest military threat is literally built on top of colonial conquests isn't a fair comparison. Where is the line that makes Xinjiang a "colony" while New York isn't? Is the US going to magically move its navy back to its side of the Pacific and stop waving it menacingly around China's oil shipping routes if China carves out Xinjiang and Tibet?
The colony-empire relationship is a just a node along the gradient of territory and domination. The relevant thing here is the continued persecution of the Uyghur minority and the annexation of territory, and continued resistance. It's similar to Kashmir under India, Palestine under Israel, and East Timor under Indonesia.
My wife is from Xin Jiang. She is not Uighurs. I have been to Xin Jiang. I don't think non-Uighurs in Xin Jiang knows the details about these.
They are like secrets. You know something is happening. But you don't know what exactly is happening.
People like Lebron James, who thinks of himself like a freedom fighter, when he criticized China he ended up saying he was misinformed and he wasn't educated about the issue.
He loves the money coming from China more than anything else. I want him to be reminded by this. He put his millions before human lives, just like some nazi collaborators did.
Can you roughly estimate the impact of your forum posts, boycotts, and all that on US government policy?
It is easy to think the impact is nill and that’s exactly how the opressor wants you to think, no wonder the divide and conquer is a strategy that works. But every movement starts off with a few who believe they make a difference and eventually it picks up a critical mass
For example, a woman of Han descent who had her purse snatched by a Uighur kid talked about feeling nervous and clutching her bag when she passed someone on the street. Instead of lecturing her about systemic problems as a first resort, I started by finding common ground: her experiences as a Chinese woman studying abroad in Japan, and the systemic racism she experienced.
The ally training skills I learned in the US were helpful. The more typical high-minded condescension, in contrast, tends to be counterproductive in my experience.
https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-systemic-racis...
Now, if we change that by let's say moving factories back home or to Africa, they'll be in trouble.
If you're a Chinese citizen, first of all you don't have a voice. The CCP owns the country, they make the rules, and economically they don't have the upper hand. That's why the only thing they do is threaten any foreign official who won't submit to them.
... and if that fails, take citizens of countries they're at cold war with as hostages: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/19/china-charges-two-detained-c...
This seems... economically confused. Billions flowing in from the West reflect the fact that China's internal economy is strong. If it fell apart, no money would flow in.
Way off the mark. You could have an economy on par with North Korea and build those facilities. China's economy is 100+ times larger than it needs to be to build the facilities they're building in Xinjiang. If you rolled their economy back to 1990 on a GDP per capita basis, they could still get it done with zero problems. Concrete, barbed wire, guards, guns and slave labor are most of the necessary ingredients. The most primitive of nations have what's necessary to do it.
You can talk to your representatives about it. You can start actively boycotting Chinese-made products (not so easy, I know). You can donate to NGOs such as the UHRP (Uyghur Human Rights Project). You can follow them on Twitter.
It's not like Lebron James will solve this either, so don't blame it on him.
Lebron can't solve this but what he can do is at least talk about it. One word and millions of people would know about it.
Same thing happens with the NBA. They're very vocal about BLM but when it comes to HK...you can't even buy a t-shirt with "Free Honk Kong" on it.
A more grim view would be that in the end companies will do what's best for them. Currently It's in the NBA's best interest to support BLM since it affects their base. HK, Uyghurs, etc. doesn't really affect them and fighting a battle for it doesn't help them in anyway.
You won't see me saying "black lives don't matter" only to earn some money.
For reference, my views are aligned with Sanders but I’d vote for Trump solely based on his actions towards China.
I’d also say boycotting Made in China and companies kowtowing to China isn’t as difficult as people say. You might not be able to boycott it 100%, but it’s not that hard to find alternatives to 90+% of the products.
What is Trump doing about the concentration camps this article is about?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/politics/p...
There’s really not a single person who’s done more to stand up to China than Trump has. Just look at China’s reputation today compared to 4 years ago.. the world is finally starting to wake up to the dangers of the CCP. And I really don’t care what his motives are.. I know he probably couldn’t care less about the Uyghurs, but his actions towards China are helping the hundreds of millions of people currently and about to suffer from the CCP.
Biden went on record saying he would end Trump’s China tariffs, and we can also see how little the EU and other western countries are doing to stand up to China (and how little Biden did during his 8 years’ vice presidency)..
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/25/trump-administratio...
I don't boycott Apple just because the country they are based in (according to the note in the box) has committed some crimes over the years.
And in the US people at least ostensibly have the right to choose their own government, AND there's a culture for large corporations to lobby government directly.
You'll find the same people who want to boycott Chinese products are ironically also quite good at keeping us aware that people in China can't really speak their own minds.
Also, at what level should the boycott happen? Should I just boycott Californian luxury electronics manufacturers? All Californian firms? All US? The world is a tangled web, why is the political map the one whose lines you use?
Because that billion people there is the only one who can change the government.
You're asking people who understand very well that standing up for a new government is going to be extremely costly.
In the meantime, you want to deprive them of work.
Ever wonder how those two things are connected?
US calls itself a "Democracy", so you're supposed to be more empowered to make a change than an average Chinese citizen.
There are only 3 countries with the potential to become superpowers in the modern age -- USA, Russia, and China. Hegemony by one of the three is inevitable.
It is up to YOU to provide proof that Russia or China would be better choices.
President Roosevelt said "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." The US foreign policy has gone very far with that idea. A large military then economic pressure is what led to the collapse of the USSR. The same tactic has kept North Korea, Iran, and other despotic countries at bay for decades.
Today, Trump and Biden both have endorsed a similar approach to China. Build up the military presence around China and pile on economic pressure until they collapse (trying to walk the fine line to avoid war).
Unlike the US, China and Russia/USSR have killed tens to hundreds of millions of their own people. Do you really think there would be fewer deaths if China or Russia were the dominant power? If they're willing to kill their own so casually, they're going to be even more barbaric with foreigners.
I'd ask again, do you have any proof that the alternatives are better?
We're not talking about bombing them. We're talking about economic boycott and economic sanctions.
What else do you have in mind? How do we act against countries that commit crimes against humanity? Do we just stand and watch because they have millions of good citizens?
I guess it may have effect if you tell your favorite seller on Aliexpress, that sorry, I will not be buying anymore stuff from you, because XYZ. But just stopping, means nothing. Sends no discernible signal to the other side, and just increases economic suffering, which while it can lead to revolutions, only probably when it hits some extreme level. Just look at Syria, massive sanctions, people can barely eat, currency is spiraling to hyperinflation, and they still have not toppled the corrupt asshole in charge. And I doubt having to spend half a day just figuring out how to get something to eat helps in any way. In fact corrupt asshole in charge is using the sanctions, to rally his supporters.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/syria-s-assad-say...
And that's the ideal case of a country west doesn't really need anything from and can boycott/sanction at will.
And besides that, we're in an economic against them. Actually, they are in an economic war against us. We can't do business in their country freely but they can make their own companies here or buy the ones we already have with the money they are making from manufacturing our stuff. Nope.
Clearly government is involved. When did a government of somewhere last express their displeasure at China's government for this? If they've done it, they must have buried the news. If you don't think a public rebuke will help anything, what do you propose?
If you don't think that it will help, don't do the wrong thing for the right reason. That will only clear your own conscience.
Let's not do things that harm the wrong people. Is not buying a toy from China really going to help anything? You'll put some toy guy out of business, but is he gonna lobby government to stop the prison camps?
You can do more. Write your representatives. Call their offices (both Democrat and Republican), and buy fewer Chinese products, even it costs more money.
Please keep in mind I'm not criticizing you here, just saying you could literally do more if you wanted to.
I do get annoyed with people who "complain online'. That's just a waste of time. Call your representatives. They will respond to thousands of phone calls from constituents saying "do X".
For some reason we think Facebook is our democracy, not our elected representatives.
It's really not. I learned about this situation by reading complaints and passive comments online.
If 10,000 people read this article and got annoyed, and then we made 10,000 phone calls, things would happen. If 10 people pick up the phone... not so much.
I still disagree with your clarification. Even ten phone calls are better than zero.
What do you say to people who don't really believe this? I don't think I'm the only one who looks at the political scene (and much of "reality" as it is projected into our brains through the media) and thinks it's largely theatre. Kayfabe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfMe0dsxk_Q Kanye and The End of Reality – Wisecrack Edition
Oh sure, you can surely find discrete examples of where the system worked as advertised, but are these examples actually representative of the overall truth?
I can't shake this feeling that if I (or most any other person from this forum who has worked on large, complicated projects with many interconnected moving parts) was tasked with managing the affairs of this planet, the organization and means of communication/documentation would not look anything at all like what we've seen with our very eyes, for many decades.
How does a person sort out what is actually true anymore?
Nothing really. They've lost faith in democracy and have given up on the country. What else is there to talk about? If you have no faith in the system and don't want to participate then I'm not sure what you want or you're expecting.
Seriously, run for city council or something. Fix the bugs the same way you would an interconnected system: find where things (money, proposals, solutions) drop out, find where things are miscommunicated, optimize, upgrade, and secure the edge systems that directly interact with the client (the people).
It might take a lot of effort and people doing this, and many many years, but I think it is a more viable long term solution than waiting for things to magically get better enough that you feel like a vote will suffice.
"Democracy" is a principle - our current implementation of it is but one of many possibilities to go about it.
Democracy (in general, and our rather arbitrary flavor of it) is only one form of governance, is there some reason we're bound to this approach? Nothing else shall be considered?
> and have given up on the country
This is speculation - it is not possible to know the thoughts, dreams, intentions of other people with accuracy.
> If you have no faith in the system and don't want to participate then I'm not sure what you want or you're expecting.
I believe I want something similar to what the BLM protesters believe they want, who are also displeased with the outputs of "the system" as it is. I'm weary of the "my way or the highway, reality is what we say it is" approach to "Democratic" governance theatre.
All of this could be said about our current President and his family. He has far more power than LeBron James, maybe we should hold him accountable?
So while I certainly don't doubt that China is oppressing its minorities, I'm also loathe to believe every media report about it.
I know this isn't a popular opinion, but very objectively, western media does not have a track record of being truthful when it comes to Cold War opponents.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/trump-signs-sanctions-bill-ove...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_Human_Rights_Policy_Act
I don't know what else Trump can do. Invading China is a bad idea.
Congress passed the sanctions bill. It passed the House 413-1 and the Senate vote was unanimous, according to your link.
Second, Lebron can do much to educate himself on China, as he’s already an activist in other areas, and he has millions of followers. But it looks like he’s educated himself on who pays his paycheck.
Lebron is free to say and support whatever he pleases. We’re all free to stop listening, stop watching and stop buying what he’s selling.
They are making choice between getting new "millions" vs "losing all previous contracts" and going back to zero or negative.
At least on a personal level, you can start looking at the place of origin of products and be ready to pay more for an alternative.
There is a subreddit where people will help you out with recommendations as well.
Or China is more powerful than you - or he - thought.
Fact of the matter is that China is in an extremely powerful position over the world due to its position in the manufacturing chain. The world would fall apart overnight if China stopped manufacturing things - parts of it did already when Covid-19 caused lockdowns. There isn't the manufacturing ability elsewhere to scale up to what China provides.
The only way we're getting there is actual organisation and uprising to overthrow the capitalism which requires that we make those sacrifices, and frankly... it's not going to happen any time soon. People broadly agreed to the National Guard being sent in to handle some people who were mostly demanding that the police stop killing them, can you imagine what would happen if those people were actually calling to overthrow the state?
The sell out of US manufacturing was done by people with money, not the people who dislike racism (and show it in a weird and harmful way).
Maybe from the U.S. perspective, but at this point there are heaps of countries around the world who at least claim to be dependent on China.
This is a matter of global moral cowardice; at least today, the U.S. is more ready to say no to it.
Meanwhile, all this talk of "global moral cowardice" was hardly there for hundreds of instances of the US doing all kinds of shit to third countries throughout the 20th and 21st century with bi-partisan agreement and the public hardly caring...
China is shitted upon for those detention camps (and rightly so). Meanwhile, over a million muslim deaths have been directly and indirectly (e.g. pharmaceutical and food shortages) caused by the Iraq embargo/invasion alone [1] (one of several), and people talk about China as if their shit doesn't smell...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimat...
Especially since they don't have and historically didn't also have any problem with all kinds of dictators, right wing governments, etc. (from Suharto and Pinochet to UAE), as long as they were allies.
> A 2017 study in the British Medical Journal described "the rigging of the 1999 Unicef survey" as "an especially masterful fraud".[12] The three comprehensive surveys conducted since 2003 all found that the child mortality rate in the period 1995-2000 was approximately 40 per 1000, which means that there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after sanctions were implemented.
You seem to forget that the Iraqis liked Saddam which is the only reason he stayed in power. Did they care about the genocide of the Kurds? I think not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfal_genocide
Want more proof? 15 years after Saddam was executed, they were still proceeding with their ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Iraqi%E2%80%93Kurdish_con...
If you really want someone to blame, blame France, England, and Russia for arbitrarily drawing up countries after WW1 without considering that people in the middle east wouldn't overcome their nationalism and racism which would lead to continuous conflict.
As for Germans knowing, they were subject to Nazi censorship. Some of them had their suspicions for sure. I saw a quote once from a woman who said of course they knew about the camps. When asked how she knew, her reply was: because that's exactly the sort of thing Hitler would have done. So she didn't really know, just suspected based on past behaviour, which is different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Vrba
So definitely were known before liberation. As for the date, could be that I was wrong and it was 1943, and not 1941 (However, as soon as 1941-2 some 1.5 million Russian jews were shot to death, was there zero evidence of that?)
It's also possible some governments had evidence but refused to believe such monstrosity could take place, or were just helpless / reluctant to do anything. Hell even these days some people refuse to accept what happened there.
Obviously the Germans didn't know who knew what and tried to conceal. And obviously American / Russian soldiers who liberated the camps were surprised. Does that mean Churchill / Roosevelt were surprised? Also - was it really such a shocker? Jews were starving to death for years in Ghettoes prior to extermination - surely the local population had an idea the jews fate wasn't great.
The page does say that there were previous reports, but one was only in Polish. The other apparently did end up with the British and American governments, but that's a long way from most governments knowing. And even when the allies started discovering camps it was censored for a while, supposedly to avoid upsetting people with missing relatives. So I guess the information hardly travelled far, and not outside US/UK war offices.
The Independent article seems to be conflating different things. Jews started fleeing the Nazis even before they fully assumed power. The comments about the Empire being full are presumably related to that. Wanting to indict Hitler for war crimes hardly required knowledge of concentration camps, so I'm not sure it provides so much evidence.
I guess there's surprise, and then there's formally knowing. I referenced a German woman who said she "knew" but what she meant was she wasn't surprised when she learned. I guess that was how a lot of people reacted.
Interesting links though, thanks. I learned some new things about WW2 today.
Prison labor camps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor The worse version of the previos ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laogai
> she was detained a third time and spent three months in a cramped prison cell with 60 other women
> She said nine women from her cell died during her three months there.
Of course that's only one sample. But if that is near the true death rate being applied to 1 million people (and soon more) then it's clear that this is genocide.
Yet, companies continue doing business and in some cases abetting the policy.
Some of these companies will be the IBMs and Fords as well as the Wolksvagens and Thiessens but it’s pernicious and people don’t notice. But in retrospect years hence it will be stark.
If WW3 starts and Chinese internment camps start popping up you'll find out that what people say in peacetime and what they actually think are two very different things.
There are a million tweets condemning China’s behavior... way more than the number of tweets targeting people who are ‘cancelled’
The difference is that tweets can effect a regular person’s life, and they are ‘cancelled’. China doesn’t care. A company will act to fire a single person who behaves badly because of consumer pressure; it doesn’t cost them much and is good PR. Stopping doing business with China is a lot costlier, so they don’t give in to the same consumer pressure that they would for an individual employee.
The different outcome doesn’t mean there is some hypocrisy amongst the people tweeting their support for ‘cancelling’ someone.
It just means that tweets aren’t that powerful for real change.
Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Vote with your wallet! If enough people do this then it will definitely have an impact, possibly even enough to bring about some real change.
Cancel culture can hit non-famous/significant people as you describe. To me it's all about shutting down debate, and reducing free-speech.
Is it possible though? I’m really not so sure.
You can also support political action that takes concrete steps against China for these atrocities, rather than supporting them. There are real differences in political stances here.
You don't need to feel utterly powerless because you can't solve the problem 100%. That's always true anyhow, but especially true of something of this magnitude. It's OK; literally nobody expects that. You can take what steps you can. You are being joined by many other people.
I often think about it that way; if I'm moved enough to action because of this particular belief, then the odds are pretty good that many other people are as well. It is the actions of that group that will matter. If that group all individually concludes that their individual actions are meaningless, then the whole group will do nothing. So I choose not to act on the belief that my individual actions are meaningless.
(Essentially an argument based on superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality It is obviously false that the rest of the world is entirely superrational... but it is also false that they are 0% superrational. Often too much time is spent on the irrationality of human beings... a lot of people seem to have a model of them in which they are insane crazies who never make a sane decision, but if you take that model seriously everyone covered by it would just die. Humans are often quite rational. They just really, deeply suck at explaining why they are doing what they are doing, but the actual actions are often quite rational when understood in the correct context.)
You'd find out that 90% of "their goods" are what you consider yours and other third party goods... Even BMW's are largely made there from what I've read.
How would you even know which products have raw materials that come from China? You will be hard pressed to find something that doesn’t have parts made in China, and even harder pressed to be able to figure that out.
I personally blame corporations and governments in Europe and the USA for the issues with China. They put money above everything.
"cancel culture" here is both powerful and dangerous enough to bring down Western civilization, yet so laughably weak it cannot even pretend to solve real problems.
I've read that somewhere.
By the same "heuristic" anti-Trump talk is "political bullshit", because he is said to be simultanously a buffon/ineffectual loser and a very powerful insidious force.
But of course such heuristics are themselves usually selectively applied to opinions which those applying them already agree are "political bullshit".
From Point #8
"by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak"
[0] http://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fasci... [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Any strength misdirected is simultaneously “too strong” and “too weak”.
Tibet is equally oppressed under CCP's boots for many decades now but nobody seems to be bothered.
I don't like this selective outrage of west.
Maybe it’s inadvertently selective?
I understand all Muslims are not involved but what stops Media from highlighting the atrocities of Muslim extemist group. Plenty of these groups exists but barely reported.
I am not sure if this is because of White guilt or Media houses are scared of Charlie Hebdo like scenario.
I agree 100% with what you say. But if you are from the USA, you may better not say it.
It is just impossible for a person from the USA not to sound ridiculously hypocritical when criticizing China. You are the greatest war-mongering country in the last few generations! If you are from the U.S.A., it is more realistic and effective to work on stopping your country killing people abroad.
Not that anything that you say or suggest about China is wrong. But this century will not be remembered only by the Chinese genocide of the Uighurs, but also by the north-american aggressive and murderous imperialism.
Establishment media partisans aren't shy about using Nazi comparisons. Over the past year you would have been more likely to hear criticisms of US immigration policies painted in this light.
Friendly reminder that The Epoch Times is not a reliable news source, it promotes far-right politics in Germany, usually publishes conspiracy theories including QAnon, and was deprecated as a source by Wikipedia in 2019 [1], which means all edits containing links to The Epoch Times will be automatically reverted.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#C...
Of course. So I also mentioned the decision of Wikipedia community, at least they find the signal-to-noise ratio of The Epoch Times is low enough to be banned on their platform.
> Most people in China would consider concentration camps in Xinjiang to be a conspiracy theory.
Maybe. But as someone who fits your "people in China" criteria, I can add a data point: I myself and most of my friends actually don't consider the existence of these camps (or even forced labor) a conspiracy theory. We believe it. However we consider claims like "organ harvesting" a conspiracy theory. I'm unable to provide further insight on why we would think so though, so I guess you can claim I'm brainwashed, but I can say it would be much more complicated than that :-)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-qanon-impending...
I didn't find any actual support for QANON in the article linked. After skimming it, it was simply a series of quotes from interviews with Q supporters.
Wikipedia has become politically charged. If you know of any other sources covering breaking news about the CCP's abuses and intrigues, I would be happy to hear about them.
Everyone has a bias. Adults should be capable of consuming information without gatekeepers deciding what is acceptable.
> One such show is "Edge of Wonder," a verified YouTube channel that releases new NTD-produced videos twice every week and now has more than 33 million views. In addition to claims that alien abductions are real and the drug epidemic was engineered by the “deep state,” the channel pushes the QAnon conspiracy theory, which falsely posits that the same “Spygate” cabal is a front for a global pedophile ring being taken down by Trump.
> One QAnon video, titled “#QANON - 7 facts the MEDIA (MSM) Won’t Admit” has almost 1 million views on YouTube. Other videos in the channel’s QAnon playlist, which include videos about 9/11 conspiracy theories and one titled “13 BLOODLINES & their Diabolical End Game,” gained hundreds of thousands of views each.
> Travis View, a researcher and podcaster who studies the QAnon movement, said The Epoch Times has sanitized the conspiracy theory by pushing Spygate, which drops the wildest and more prurient details of QAnon while retaining its conspiratorial elements.
Note that links between this Youtube channel and The Epoch Times is not obvious, but the article you linked already covered that.
I've tried to verify the video [1], it seems to be taken down, but searching the link on Google resulted in various cross references on the Internet.
In fairness, Spygate is currently being investigated by the DOJ.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/politics/kevin-clinesm...
Attributing Spygate to Q is a convenient way to discredit it. Regardless, coverage of Spygate is not equivalent to propagating Q theories.
The entire discussion digresses from the topic at hand.
I perfectly understand why people aren’t rallying: it’s happening on the other side of the planet. What are we supposed to do?
If so, I kindly encourage you to consider a new username. It is sad to see people slurred just based on who they are.
Apple has shifted some manufacturing/assembly of iPhones to India, seemingly mostly for the local market [3] and perhaps EU [4], and AirPods to Vietnam [5].
1. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/e-commerce-sites-must...
2. https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/e-commerce-rules-cou...
3. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/24/iphone-se-assembled-in-...
4. https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/11/apple-exporting-iphone-...
5. https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/07/22/new-2021-airpods-...
It's the same reason a lot of right wing people who wouldn't be in favour of police brutalizing don't speak up - we become cynical and come to be believe we're being manipulated by selective reporting so when we should stand up for our values we don't because it looks like ceding ground to the enemy.
Now my account will probably shadowbanned because of emotional HN users but I don't think I'm mistaken about why there is apathy.
It is difficult for anybody to stand for their values in these conditions. China does not pretend to be a politically free society - but I believe I'd have a better shot freely talking about Western politics on a Chinese service than an American internet service today.
People with my opinions are not a threat to the CCP - so I would be left alone. The number of times I've been banned for speaking simple opinions that just don't conform to the consensus of the hour is more than I can count. All from American web services. Even Sam Altman - who owns some of those services has said the same. It's the synchronization that is causing all the overreactions and underreactions to events.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
Ignoring governments - who can have valid political and strategic reasons to be censors - the social media censorship is more serious because it is operating at the social layer - all those capillaries. Social consensus enforcement touches more people in everyday life.
I guess everything's fine now.
1) Communism and Islam can by no means be considered "friends", reason being the antireligious policies that are inherent in Communism. You should read less Breitbart.
2) China can hardly be considered a communist country, it has been turning rapidly more capitalist ever since the official introduction of the 中国特色社会主义 theory in 1987.
What does that mean? I had guessed you were referring to special economic zones, but that predates 1987. Thanks in advance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact...
Hmmm
> The Open Technology Fund was created in 2012 as a pilot program within Radio Free Asia.
Okay
> Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia was established in the 1990s with the stated aim of promoting democratic values and human rights, and diminishing the Communist Party of China.
> Radio Free Asia was founded and funded in the 1950s by an organization called "Committee for Free Asia" as an anti-communist propaganda operation, broadcasting from RCA facilities in Manila, Philippines.
So an article funded by a clearly biased anti-China propaganda organization that uses flimsy satellite imagery evidence to accuse a country of massive human rights abuses in order to rile up their population for another cold war that will feed their military industrial complex for many more decades. Great.
Here is a site for resources and actions you can take [0].
But does anyone have sources on _how_ China got into this situation? They wouldn't be detaining Uighurs at this scale for no reason. So what's the history behind this?
I left a separate comment here of someone else who commented on the article with a potential background reason (terrorism?). Although I'm not sure if can rely on just that one comment, and would love to hear what HN thought.
A part of a civil discussion requires that we understand and seek out the argument from all parties. As a society, we need to evolve from one-sided arguments.
1. Anti-terrorism / Religious Extremist Activities 2. Poverty alleviation
We have certainly seen similar situations play out in the past (e.g. US & Middle East), with different approaches. China's approach is to eliminate "ethnic separatism" through these "re-education camps". Not ideal, for sure. But what would be a better solution?
If we had terrorism in the US -- in fact, an entire state of people subscribed to that mindset -- what's the best way to deal with that?
(This is, ofc, assuming China's terrorism claims are real)
The Black population in the US is disproportionately impoverished. Should we round them up into re-education camps?
It's policy based entirely in ethno-nationalism (racism).
The US had a Civil War over separation and slavery, but we didn't establish re-education camps for all the people who were on the losing side. You didn't see Germans forced into re-education camps after WW1 or WW2 (at least on the non-USSR side).
I don't know of ANY instances of this kind of re-education thinking in first-world countries. Even third-world countries don't usually consider this moral. It's basically limited to second-world (communist) despotic countries. In recent times, I've heard people talk about re-education camps in the US, but (big surprise), they're always alt-left (communists, antifa, whatever).
------------------------------------------------------
Godfree Roberts:
We created terrorists in Xinjiang, just as we did in Afghanistan. They murdered thousands of Chinese and, now that China has them under control, we make up stories about them.
US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981: "The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any state. I do believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones applies here. I am part American Indian and those people are not here (in the US) in the numbers they once were because of severe genocidal policies on the part of the European majority”. 8/31/19
This argument is made in bad faith given the author's statements below. In any case, the Xinjiang had attempted to get out from under China's thumb for centuries. Does that "murdered thousands" suddenly give moral permission to imprison, torture, and sell the organs of millions -- especially millions who's only "crime" in this argument is having the wrong ethnicity. Finally, the red revolution in China killed millions and then famine killed millions more.
> I do believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones applies here. I am part American Indian and those people are not here (in the US) in the numbers they once were because of severe genocidal policies on the part of the European majority
Nobody alive today is rounding up American Indians (instead SCOTUS is giving back half of Oklahoma). Can someone's children be held accountable for their parent's actions?
That said, if the Chinese gave the Xinjiang and Tibet the same level of autonomy that the US gives reservations today, I doubt anyone anywhere would be complaining about anything. Once again, this is a bad faith argument.
> US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981: "The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any state.
The whole point of a banner is to serve as a rallying point for like-minded people. If some random person on the street starts waving a nazi flag, does that suddenly mean everyone turns into nazis?
A banner can only rally people who think they hold the position that banner represents. The US could wave a religious banner, but unless the people already agreed, it wouldn't build up support (it's not possible to parse whether Xinjiang didn't rally because they didn't want to join or the rallying cry was not heard).
If anything, the fact that the US tried to empower people to fight for their independence from a despotic, racist regime who hated them should at least be neutral if not morally just.
https://factcheck.afp.com/no-not-video-chinese-soldier-beati...
Also, when are people going to stop using satellite imaging as a proof of evidence? I mean, let's not forget the whole casus belli for the last Iraq war, where there was clear evidence of WMDs from all those satellite images right? I mean, what's so different from the satellite image there and also a random business park in the UK (besides the labels and tags of course, and I used to be imprisoned in one of those blocks for most of my day that some people would like to call an 'office'):
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6220549,-1.2900712,1099m/dat...
There's quite a few good answers here on Quora which I reckon are worth a read about the situation:
https://www.quora.com/What-are-Uyghurs-doing-to-fight-back-a...
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-milli...
It's my understanding that Mao is held in good regard by his people for the communist revolution, which liberated China from colonial powers, their colonization by the West and the Japanese occupation being a deeply disturbing part of their history.
It is also my understanding that Mao is also considered by most to have been misguided, senile, and/or perhaps usurped by others (like the gang of four) for things like the great leap forward and the cultural revolution which happened later. He is not admired for these events.
A new account means you could be hiding a post history that is pro-China, or comments you've made on another account alluding to living in China. You could be coming in here entirely to deflect arguments away from the real thread of discussion and attempting to turn it into an anti-U.S. one. It means I at least take what you say with much more skepticism because there is no record of your thoughts on other subjects to get a more complete picture of who you are.
Being ESL means you could potentially be Chinese, living in China, and very much in support of pro-Han activities such as annexing Tibet and burning down historic monasteries, or committing genocide against ethnic minorities. Which means your opinion is one of the ones that we don't need to open our arms to.
China’s soft power will ensure that most countries won’t go beyond the usual virtue signaling.
Also keep in mind that the USA still has the most imprisoned people in the world by a large margin:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...
https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/...
People lives are worthing much more than their organs when they are used for labor so I don't see any reasonable benefit from doing that. Plus, Falun Gong has a long history of fighting this, still without any evidences brought to the table, so I have some doubts about their assumptions.
The issue in Xinjiang is already serious enough, no need to add some unconfirmed facts which may just make us lose credibility if they're proved fake.
I absolutely disagree with this claim. Forced labor is inherently inefficient and barely cost-effective, especially in the modern age of mechanisation and the lessons of soviet GULAGs proved just as much. Especially so in China, which in no way suffers from a shortage of labor force.
The party goal is not to be highly profitable (they are already), it's to stay in power as long as they can. Of course money can help in that goal, but such practices, if they leak and are confirmed, would just erode the stability of the state. I feel the cons are too high and pros too low, politically, to do such atrocities on a country scale.
There is a lot of evidence. In isolation, any one claim might not be very convincing, but taken as a whole, it's pretty damning.
So the claims presented by them are suspect in intent, since it seems so evidently to suit their own world view.
While Chinese propaganda is suspect as is any propaganda, much western reporting is also politically informed and therefore suspect.
Most reports on this topic going around are not from people on ground, whereas western media including Reuters and BBC surely have people on ground in China, what have we heard from them in actuality?
Recently BBC had people sent to such a camp and even filmed it. Surely there is some political indoctrination going on, but nothing like the 'Concentration Camps' as is being claimed in this article.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-53657604
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszl3q
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172x2ys9gxqv4g
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08lf6zk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-50166713