I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations...
I don't think so. Nothing happened with Tibet, or after the Tiananmen Square event AFAIK.
20 years ago, the people that signed all the trade deals with countries such as China claimed it would lead to improving democracy and human rights there, obviously, it didn't, People's Republic of China has never been more autocratic. Ethical and moral concerns should have been addressed when China joined the WTO in 2001, irregardless China's political structure. China got a very good deal, western industrials as well, but at what human cost?
I wasn't interested in economy at the time, but I still remember clearly debates on talkshows between human rights advocates and people pushing trade deals and their arguments, it was a time where you could still publicly talk about the situation in Tibet. Today? Nobody would even dare.
I think the expectation for many (myself included) was that as living standards rose, the Chinese people would demand democratic reform (rule of law, justice for all, some say in decisions and leadership). China (or rather the ccp) has successfully avoided that so far.
Now its flexing that power and people like me, who expected natural change, are forced to re-evaluate.
mea culpa
Of course it did, in Kishore Mahbuani's words:
>The greatest explosion of personal freedoms that the Chinese people have experienced in the past 4,000 years has taken place in the last 40 years
There's some slide back in some categories from Hu Jintao era, but overall things are progressing. The west fixates on the 1% of extra bad when it's been mostly great.
>what human cost?
800m uplifted from poverty, a few million minorities gets shafted, to be crass: the cost was/is negligible all things considered. Post 90s China bad, but mostly good. Overwhelming good compared to others with similar starting positions and much better development conditions, i.e. China had some of the most onerous WTO accession protocols and sanctions that held back her development.
You would be singing a different tune if you were to come under Chinese rule.
It's only been 30 years, about how long it took Taiwan/Korea to liberalize, except things take longer when you have 1.4B people and antagonism from global superpower. Taiwan/Korean dictatorship got unambiguous and sustained US support. Under Xi, it's 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Realistically it's is 5 steps forward and 1 step back, but west likes to paint that 1 step as a chasm.
That is the difference between a society of freedom and human rights, and mob rule. Someone else's benefits have nothing to do with the horrors suffered by people in Tibet and Xinjiang. Each one of those people is as important as you or me.
Yeah they are.
The reality is also that frontier territories have been historically spared the harsh repressions rest of country / populus went through postwar like cultural revolution, great leap forward, strict family planning etc, simply by virtue of being too far. Enter infrastructure and billions in spent on connectivity. Secessionism had to be reign in eventually, and current systems has as much carrots as sticks. Also carrots that was not available to a much poorer China. There's a reason why disproportionate resources are diverted to Tibet and XJ for development. Carrots that freedom + human rights countries typically do not extend to their own repressed minorities. Indigenous camps in Canada still don't have clean water, because voters in democracies do not want to give carrots when virtue signalling is sufficient. CCP doesn't have to listen to majority Han reee about spending money on minorities. Last time I calculated enough money poured into XJ to cut every Uygure a 200K RMB / 30K USD check.
The fundamental issue is carrots are not enough, you cannot pay people to secularize/sinicize/integrate. You have to indoctrinate, not just future generations, but also current. This is not endorsement of the policies. Merely it is predictable next step with new Chinese capabilities, further made inevitable by salafist terrorism fermented by blowback of foreign policy decisions of USSR/West/ME and other geopolitical factors. Things would be very different in a world without mujahideens inspiring drama in XJ or CIA fucking around with Tibet or general US pivot to Asia or current great powers competition. This is why CCP is obsessed with with foreign meddling. Nevermind that Tibet/XJ is 2/3 of Chinese land and contain vast security benefits. More relevant to "as important as you or me", these minorities are _more_ important than the average Han. Security is paramount state responsibility, more so in an authoritarian one because there is no one else to shift blame. And even then blame is no replacement for overwhelmingly excessive counter-terrorism response where possible. Incidentally why XJ is getting the full measure while Tibet gets half. That's baseline populist expectation, CCP is adding the carrots when the people scream for sticks. A democratic China would just lockup the Uyghurs and Tibetans in perennial prison industrial complexes like US or sequester them away in generation ghettos like France. An imperial China would actually genocide them. Trivially. That's the dynamic of in a capitalist ethnostate with "problematic" minorities. What currently exists is not the best timeline, but it's also not remotely the worst for security logic, which again, trumps all other considerations. Incidentally, this applied to HK, and will apply to Taiwan.
Freedom has expanded dramatically in the U.S. too. Minorities such as Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Irish, Italians, Germans (once reviled!) and more are now unquestioned members of society. Women went from an oppressed majority to full members of the workplace, expanding participation in government, etc. Few would dream now of suggesting women shouldn't work - something that was a norm a couple of generations ago. LGTBQ+ people's rights have expanded: They can marry, they don't lose their jobs over it, they can serve openly in the military and in government.
African-Americans enjoy far more rights: Obama was elected, as was Kamala Harris. Education has expanded; discrimination is socially unacceptable - no politician would survive using certain language. Law enforcement abuse of African-Americans is widely seen as a problem. Even Republicans voted to remove Confederate names from military bases.
We still have a long way to go, including for African-Americans, women in the workplace, LGBTQ+, Muslims, and more. But to suggest oppression is inevitable is just ignorant; it denies the facts. One wonders why some people seem to want it to be true?
This is a more nuanced issue than it might seem in some ways though. I have some first hand experience since many of my coworkers are native Chinese living in different parts of China.
Trade has enabled the growth of a previously non-existent middle class in China and they have started to assert political power in ways not immediately apparent to Westerners.
One example is the "Beijing smog" that everyone knows about. The Chinese middle class are becoming unwilling to tolerate the total environmental devastation that was the norm two decades ago. They have put a lot of pressure on the CCP to keep the air cleaner and as a result many dirty industries like iron casting have had a huge number of restrictions put on them in the last 5 years. I would consider this a direct result of the political willpower of the Chinese people.
In my experience though, the reason things like the treatment of the Uyghurs or Tibetans have not changed is simply because the average Chinese person does not care or wish to rock the boat.
Before you finger wag about that, consider the American treatment of South American migrants that has come into the spotlight in the last 4 years. I would say that the reason it has not changed has the same root cause. The average American does not care, or silently approves and thus there is not enough pressure on the ruling party to produce change.
South American migrants are treat fine, just not those who break in illegally (we can agree to differ if that's fair or not). I'm sorry but this is just not comparable to a possible genocide of the Uyghurs.
or a time where you would see Winnie the Pooh movies being made.
little by little...
Why would world politicians take any actions against China when so many of them do have a finger in the honeypot themselves?
Invalidate stock shares* of all companies who made untold billions on China, and you will see that a huge double digit of Western politicians will go broke overnight.
The one sole reason the West was so eager to jump on the China train unlike any other broke harebrained communist country was because China went from the start to openly bribing Western elites.
The reason why China is not Iraq now is that.
And nuclear weapons. Don't forget the elephant in the room. China has nukes, which severely limits the pressure the West can put on it.
Or does it mean the company should cease to exist, and all employees should be fired immediately? We should deny honest people from getting their salaries?
No change in company ownership.
Business carries on in country A. People can get new jobs.
Why would the price be different from current stock price?
In real life, bankruptcy usually ends up essentially invalidating the shares of a company. Depending on the method of bankruptcy, the company continues to exist, but the owners of the existing shares loose any claim to anything. If "invalidate stock shares" of a public company became some kind of sanction for improper behavior, it would probably be coupled with some kind of process to transfer ownership?
Invalidating all shares in a company without further process to reallocate ownership is an interesting hypothetical. I suppose the organization would become something like abandoned property and escheat to the government.
They will think twice before bidding on something this underhanded again.
This is very accurate. Recent example is the implied Biden family in CCP's pocket [1][2].
[1] Prof. Di Dongsheng's national televised speech that has since been taken down: https://youtu.be/aeegrkPx0xE [2] https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/6/16084...
It seems unlikely that the US or the EU will want to pay the cost in the short term.
If China becomes militarily stronger and Xi's domestic position weakens, war will be his first resort. If Taiwan had to be defended, there will be very little help coming from Europe.
Only way to get china to change is have people vote with their wallets and refuse to buy Chinese made stuff but at the end of the day people just don't care and just want cheap stuff.
If you gave someone a choice between $100 IPhone made by slave child labor and $1000 IPhone that was made humane conditions at fair wages, i am willing to bet more than 75% of people take the $100 IPhone.
There are alternatives outside of so called "western-like democracy with liberal ideals".
China uses threats and censorship to get its way, post Covid or as Trump puts it China virus.
No investigation or inspections have happened the whole year.