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Comment by animal_spirits | Hacker News Reader

I have yet to see any actual evidence of forced labor in China. Only claims, nothing more. Americans have been fed false propaganda against communist USSR for decades, and I have a gut feeling the same is happening against communist China. Maybe it has to do with China's plan to collapse the US petrodollar global monetary system [0] and the US is trying to rouse a new Red Scare and push us into a second Cold War.

EDIT: Okay I've found 1 source of evidence from the comments in this thread [1]. I wish clickbait headlines would point to these claims instead of claims from other journalist making claims based on other journalists claims.

[0] https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570485

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While there probably is an element of that, hard evidence that might paint the Chinese government negatively in general is much more difficult to obtain because of information and communications controls.

Agreed, I am just wary of journalist referencing other journalists as "evidence". But I have since found some very damning evidence here: https://shahit.biz/eng/ This is very sad to read and understand. I hope this site gets more attention than these articles

Some level coerced labour is inevitable, the entire "vocational" training is part of broader labour/rural transfer programs across many provinces affecting millions of individuals every year, with associate recruitment pressures and quotas. The question has always been scale and severity and every piece of solid data (i.e. GIS analysis) is demonstrating the scale and severity is much smaller than previous claims by western analysis funded by parties subservient to foreign policy. Which is exactly why database like shahbits won't get any attention when they "only" catalogue 12,000 victims, it was 6,000 at the beginning of the year. Granted this is just a subset of total interned - the real number is greater than China will admit and less than western manufactured consent is trying to sell, but 10s of thousands is not a remotely actionable amount of victims for geopolitics. Hence fabricated narratives by interest funded NGOs of millions of victim to rationalize sanctions, cherry picked data points and uncorroborated atrocity propaganda. XJ is horrible, but not horrible enough.

Not sure why you find that piece of "evidence" particularly damning. Do you know anything about the author? Do you know his methodology? His sources? What makes him credible?

From the database author himself [0]:

> "we have over 10000+ documented people" was the initial comment. Neither boasting nor saying 100% are credible.

I honestly find it both hilarious and disappointing that HN users are skeptical and contrarian about absolutely everything, except when it comes to what the US government and its proxies have to say about China.

[0] https://twitter.com/shahitbiz/status/1306554296088096769?s=2...

[1] https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/130801041951298764...

I looked into the Uighur detention story a couple weeks ago and found very little in terms of substance. Most sources either traced back to the US State Department, which obviously shouldn't be trusted, or Adrian Zenz, a weirdo with a religious (literally) obsession with destroying China. It comes across very much like propaganda to decrease China's world standing and justify increased aggression economically and politically.

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