Huawei patent mentions use of Uighur-spotting tech
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-isra...
The fact that opposing views could be brought into public discourse, not silenced or censored in QQ or Weibo, makes a huge difference.
It is not just marketing or PR. It is allowing the civil society to take part in public discourse, much like the recent debate on censoring Donald Trump.
> if you speak against this in the US, you’ll commit suicide
Not to the same extent in China, far from it.
...and the progressive integration of tech with government means that government will have increasingly more access to data on individuals.
In my opinion, we need more decentralized tech.
My Hammer never try'd to obfuscate anything nor did my milling machine or my C64. You are too much into today's Orwell-ism to even imagine that technology was once for you without exploitation from a third party.
What an absolute joke, literally every government on the planet is chomping at the bit for this stuff and already openly does it apart from the race stuff which most certainly happens behind the scenes. What we need is better governments not better companies allowed to do such things.
This looks like a failed attempt at whataboutism: What does Microsoft’s product have to do with racial and/or ethnic spotting?
May I suggest a search engine here?
1.These kinds of systems have been used by the Chinese government for many years. Being tracked is not even a big deal in our lives. The big deal is that the communication applications(QQ, Wechat) are dominated by one company(Tencent) and I can calculate it out with my toe that they share every word I said, every picture I posted with the government. They work with the government and the government promises Tencent is the only one allowed to provide communication applications in China. I have been kicked out of chat groups many times since I said something inappropriate. My friends and family also warned me not to talk about those topics. Many people have been put in jail because of this. Tencent also invested companies outside China, like Reddit, Epic Games.
2. I saw Falun Gong mentioned in this thread. From what I know and experienced, Falun Gong is a dangerous cult. When I was in high school, one time I broke my leg and I had to go to see a doctor. On the road a woman approached me and tried to convince me that doctor is not helpful, Falun Gong would be better. They printed many pamphlets, throw them into your home at night, sometimes there would even be a disk. They print their slogan on cash. That was about ten years ago when I was in a small town. And they mostly activate in those small towns and try to recruit middle-aged women. I also noticed them running many websites and newsagents now in foreign countries, from what I see, most contents on their websites are much worse than FOX news. IMO, the gov have done some things wrong or even terrible when to expel it, but to expel it is not wrong. They are dangerous, you are warned.
3. People in Xinjiang are under suppression, but that is far from Fascism. There are movements pushed by the government to incorporate minorities. These movements are stronger than previous years recently, and sometimes they might even be forced. These movements, from different perspectives, would seem different. But to summarize, it's like that the government says: just give up your religion and don't fight against us, and we will make sure you have a comfortable life. What is included in this comfortable life is a small amount of subsidy every month, a job if you want, a small house, free college for the next generation. The minorities are at advantage points in society from my view, if they are willing to give up religious belief and obey(actually most minorities born after 90s do not hold religious beliefs anymore since these movements have been undertaken for many years). One of my roommates back in university is a minority, when the university calculates his score in GaoKao(SAT in the USA?), they have to add 20 to it. The total score is 750. Minorities in this society also have another advantage, from what I know, local governments do not have jurisdiction over minorities, which means, say, if I fight with one guy from Xinjiang, I would get in jail and he would be sent back to Xinjiang. Some guys from Xinjiang used to take advantage of this, they would put up a small stall to sell dessert, if you get close and ask them how much, they would cut a piece off and ask you to buy it, if you don't buy, several other guys would approach and threaten you. Well, you can't fight as I said, you have to pay some money. In recent years I heard fewer stories like this. Most guys from Xinjiang are OK, one restaurant nearby run by several people from Xinjiang have the best Kebab I have ever known.
links:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B3%95%E8%BD%AE%E5%8A%9F#%E...
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%87%E7%B3%95%E5%85%9A
http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_zt/moe_357/jyzt_2020n/2020...
First of all, it’s never as simple as “giving up your beliefs” — for certain religious folk, giving up a belief is akin to eternal damnation; regardless of whether you believe in the religion or not, do /you/ have the right to force them to contravene the beliefs without an /extremely/ good justification?
Secondly, your point about “advantage” is a difference between ideology between meritocracy and fairness — a poor child from a village in Dong Bei is much more unlikely to get into Tsinghua or Beijing university, than a rich child from Shanghai because they have less resources; is it /fair/ for the child? If I open a programme which only tutors poor children, would it be justified for the child in Shanghai to point a finger at the poor child and say that it’s /unfair/ that he isn’t allowed to be admitted?
Good luck with the visa — I hope you get the chance to go to graduate school. Thank you for taking the time to explain your thoughts.
Also, why should they give up their religion?
I think it is nowhere near zero evidence.
[1]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alison_killing/xinjiang...
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/uighur-xinjian...
[3]: https://qz.com/1599393/how-researchers-estimate-1-million-uy...
It might be possible that they are all empty, but that seems unlikely given the other reporting on the topic from various sources.
Considering the "millions" estimate was extrapolated from Zenz unsubstantiated feeling of ~1200 camps existing in 2017. These recent and relatively comprehensive GIS studies have conclusively proven that ~400 camps has existed _ever_, in varying states of construction and decommission in the past 3 years, i.e not all were operating concurrently. It's always interesting that Zenz estimates gets repeated in the same studies that simultaneously debunk them. I'm sure being funded by parties with anti-China interests has nothing to do with the manufacturing narrative process. For example Zenz was alleging up to 1M was interned in 2018. Choice quote from latest Buzzfeed piece by Killing regarding situation in 2018:
>"The business owner had heard rumors that the internment camps were not for education, as the government claimed, but mass detention. “We had heard that mass detention had occurred, that people were disappearing into these schools. We didn’t know much but we knew that it wasn’t a good place,” she said."
So 1/12th of an ethnicity is being rounded up and somehow it's still relegated to "rumor". Zenz claim around this time is 1/6th. That's about incarceration rate of black youth in US. 1/6 of your social circle gets round up, and it is not rumor territory. The entire allegation chain has been a coordinated clowns show. At the end of the day, XJ is less a human rights issue than a matter of manufactured consent for anti-China foreign policy. The latter would be less effective if XJ internment doesn't even eclipse US prison industrial complex. CCP is capable of interning millions, but so far the evidence points to the contrary.
https://qz.com/1599393/how-researchers-estimate-1-million-uy...
https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/features/where-d...
They admit the number may not be precise (because China wouldn’t allow direct access of evidence), but it is “credible”.
This number agrees with the “detention targets” (of 10 percent of the population) shared by local officials, and the average estimates by local people.
Detention targets of local officials and estimates by local people are evidence. Not air-tight, but are reasonable when China forbids independent verification.
The second article also mentions indirect evidence, other than local reports or satellite images. All very conservative estimates give about 200,000. But these are very conservative estimates. The actual number is likely much higher, and suggests that “a million” isn’t too far off.
What makes most countries in the world different from China is that the people have less faith that the government will do the right thing. It might be because freedom of speech and freedom of press allows other countries to better learn from their mistakes.
Just as in China, countries around the rest of the world have a history of allowing the government control over some form of social organization, and then the government creates a very shocking outcome.
For example, in Canada, for decades the government took indigenous children away from their native homes and families, and sent them to residential school. The idea was very similar to the idea today's China government has about how to manage Uighur population in Xinjiang - to educate them in the correct way to live, to help them become better citizens, and not live as some kind of savage. Nowadays, this is considered one of the most shameful parts of Canadian history, because we know that this destroyed people's families, it ruined the native culture, and these schools were places where a lot of abuse occurred. Fundamentally, it came from a mindset of "government knows better for you than you know yourself"... But government was wrong!
There are also many embarrassing histories of this in other countries, a recent example is perhaps how America's strict criminal justice system and "war on drugs" resulted in million or more non-violent people in prison.
These policies might come from a noble idea. The government always says it is trying to engineer a better society, but is it really better when so many people have their rights taken away?
Of course, for the people who are in the majority, it might seem that life got better. But from the perspective of the people who are targeted by the program, it often seem like life got worse.
Even if China minorities get some extra bonus on gaokao, or some extra money, this does not always balance out the other struggles they have in life. For example perhaps they do not want to go to work camp. They do not want to learn Mandarin. They do not want to install tracking app on the phone. Maybe they want to teach their children in local language, they want to keep their local religion, they want to be free to go out in the park for walk and not carry phone with them for checkpoint. For them, that life, that freedom is more important than harmonious society.
If it is hard for you to imagine this is the case for Uighur people, or Tibet people, then even just think Guangdong people. Not minority group, no gaokao bonus, they are probably more rich than people from Gansu or Hunan, but still it is some kind of cultural loss for them to not be able to use local language in the school. Should the government make these decisions, or should each community be allowed to decide for itself how it want to live?
This is one of the fundamental differences between very strong central government and ideological single party system like China, and countries which allow more debate and more autonomy in different regions. Does it make sense?
2. Falun Gong is indeed a cult, but dangerous compared to the CCP? I don't think so.
3. The Chinese government is not a traditional fascist state in that they more or less allow capitalism on the small to medium scale to thrive as long as it doesn't stir the pot. However it is a totalitarian state where it is not okay to think freely or express your thoughts unless you like dark rooms and beatings.
it's a 26 page with (almost) all words, and it mentions uighur (as well as han) once in one place and used as example, and at the same example it mentions gender and age as factors. Yet BBC is "creating" a horrible headline. By this definitation all patents used by car auto pilot feature that could enhance people (in particular colored people) detection, is a human right voilation
It's been established that China is a key stakeholder in the economy of many nations, and it would be foolish to mismanage that relationship imo.
The same technology could be used to check if corporations have enough POC or women in boards etc. And it would be applauded.
Why get surprised when it's used for nefarious stuff?
joke aside, yes, I think the downside is massive (any kind of facial recognition). I believe this is inline with the development of transportation technologies. We would never need things like this when people are not moving so fast. We have had the ability to track people in the past.
Not at all about race.