Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

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Here's the realpolitik deal, as I understand it.

China doesn't really care about terrorism.

What they do care for is a separatism movement. Not because they can't afford to give some land to those to make their own country, but because they fear that that country (or the population within China's borders if no country is created) will be used against them from foreign powers as a pressure point against China. Which is probably justified, as such a thing has happened time and again.

The West on the other hand, could not care less about the "plight og Uighurs" either. I mean the politicians and policy makers who use the Uighur plighy against China, not because they give a duck, but because it's convenient. They themselves have no qualms with fucking over other countries, or supporting other repressive regimes. As for the people in the West, we have the memory span of a goldfish, and just eat up sob stories presented concerning the "enemy of the day". Cut the prominent stories from the media, and they'd forget Uighurs in a second, like they don't give a duck for other peoples plights.

This leaves Uighurs in a hard spot, which is a crying shame, because short of genocide, what China wants to achieve is impossible. The best thing they should do, and the more humane, to don't hurt Uighurs and to get them on their side (to stop any seperatism ideas), is a friendliness war -- shove them with money, support, etc.

But there's bad blood and BS decisions already, so can this still happen? The Han Chinese need to overcome their distrust of non-Han for this to be a possibility.

I say "the Han Chinese" at large, because the party is hardly the issue here. China would do quite the same thing even if they had a democracy. Those things have happened time and again without communist parties in charge - see the re-education camps for Native Americans, Aboriginals, European camps for regufees like Moria and so on.

China's "Three Evils", terrorism, separatism, religious extremism.

Uyghurs tick all three, tibet only two. There's a reason Uyghurs are being interned en masse, where Tibet only gets heavy grid surveillance and policing. There were hundreds of terrorist attacks over the years causing thousands of death by Uyghur extremist in China, including one TianAnMen. Terrorism is by far the largest factor because the baseline guarantee by the state should be safety, so Beijing grossly overreacts, with full support of the masses. Not just the Han mind you, no one likes their planes hijacked or train stations knived.

>Money

The issue is you can't pay people to secularize. You have to brainwash. XJ is just repeat classic CCP political work + indoctorination + work camps. The dirty secret being that on balance, they work. Last I read China sunk 2.1 Trillion RMB / 300 Billion USD for the entire "security apparatus" in the region over the last few years. I mean I guess they could just cut every Uyghur a 200,000RMB / 30,000USD check and tell them to renounce Islam. Maybe you'll get some takers, but not the extremist, the primary group of concern, at the cost of pissing off 99.2% of the country. So we have education and vocational training and a little gitmo for recalcitrants.

Wonder what your perspective is around countries which are closer culturally to Uighurs? Like i keep hearing they are from Turkish decent - would Turkey have any interest or stake in this?

Turkey's interest in Uighurs is far smaller than Turkey's interest in its own economy, and China is spending a lot of money to prop Turkey up - they're buying influence. Needless to say that making an enemy of a security council veto power while you're allied with the remnants of ISIS, annexing parts of neighboring countries etc isn't a wise choice.

Erdogan may seem unhinged at times, but he's not, his steps are quite rational from an empire-policy perspective.

I'm not sure about Turkey's interest regarding Uighurs at the moment.

I think Turkey has too many open fronts (with US, Syria, Armenia, Greece, Libya, Israel, Iran, etc) to have a concrete idea about how to get into the Uighur thing.

But they will raise the issue from time to time, if not for anything else, to have a pressure point on China themselves, they can use to get some shush money or favorable deals.

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