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Comment by thesimon | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure what term is apporopiate for the horrific treatment, but I found the Economist's point quite valid.

> By the common understanding of the word, it is not. Just as “homicide” means killing a person and “suicide” means killing yourself, “genocide” means killing a people. China’s persecution of the Uyghurs is horrific: it has locked up perhaps 1m of them in prison camps, which it naturally mislabels “vocational training centres”. It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women. But it is not slaughtering them.

[...]

> By accusing it of genocide instead, in the absence of mass murder, America is diminishing the unique stigma of the term. Genocide should put a government beyond the pale; yet American officials will keep doing business with the regime they have branded genocidal. Future genocidaires will take comfort

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It's worth pointing out the self serving and cynical reason for pursing a "genocide" determination when cultural genocide or crimes against humanity is more appropriate. "Cultural genocide" would equivalate Xinjiang forced integration with Canadian self-professed cultural genocide of indigenous peoples. Which would create the difficult position of questioning disparity in reprisal for one event and not another, both domestically and abroad. Canada literally admitted to cultural genocide - explicitly because it's a consequence free label.

It's the same reason why Pompeo pressed for genocide on his way out, despite his own state department finding there's insufficient evidence for such determination, compared to more appropriate "crimes against humanity" or "cultural genocide". Bluntly because the latter two have no formal conventions, i.e. there is no obligation to punish. The semantic game is significant and self-serving. If punishment for "crimes against humanity" were ever formalized, it would open up US actions to similar scrutiny (i.e. war crimes). Similarly for Canada, labelling XJ "cultural genocide" and setting norms to punish it would open Canada to punishment. Hence elaborate propaganda, exaggerated word games and non-binding resolutions. To be clear, XJ is absolutely "cultural genocide" / "crimes against humanity" - but it's not genocide. If the US state department, under lying Pompeo can't comfortably rationalize the determination, it's because the accusation is flawed. Rather these efforts are specifically designed to target only Chinese human rights violations while insulate against western ones.

A serious campaign actually sympathetic to human rights will attempt to prosecute XJ as "crimes against humanity", for which there is a feasible avenue for prosecution, and start a formalize process for punishing this and future events. But Canada doesn't want to do that, because they will suffer from the fallout. The US doesn't want to do that... because lol, the Hague Invasion Act exists specifically so US can get away with "crimes against humanity". Realistically no country wants to go down that route, not just because no hands are clean, but because no one wants to be punished the next time their hands get dirty. Finally, there's no compelling reason to insist on "genocide" label outside of domestic politics, which will never stick internationally, least of all because China still has plurality international support, from Islamic nations no less, for XJ being a counter insurgency response. TL;DR: it's theatre.

I don't think there is any strict consensus that genocide is only about slaughtering people as in murder/killing. Sterilisation and making their living conditions worse than others in order to kill their culture and ethnicity can also be considered genocide, as the ultimate goal is to erase them. In this case it just happens slowly in training centers, work camps and prisons.

In the larger picture I agree with you however. If you give someone that label there is only one stance that would be acceptable and it would have to be a strong one, otherwise you are diminishing the importance of the word.

Here's the article: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/genocide-is-the...

The labeling is not arbitrary but based in the UN definition:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    - Killing members of the group;
    - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
    ...
    -Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
    ...

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

For which the Economist argues

> But if conventions are worded with unusual broadness, they must also be used with special care. Until now, America’s State Department had applied the “genocide” label only to mass slaughter, and even then it often hesitated, for fear that uttering the term would create an expectation that it would intervene. It did not call Rwanda’s genocide a genocide until it was practically over.

All three definitely apply to Han Chinese:

- The number of executions is treated as a state secret, but most likely a lot of people are killed every year, including for political "crimes".

- Chinese prisons used to be labor camps by default and many continue to operate as such, including torture and rape by prison guards.

- The one-child policy was all about preventing births and involved sterilizing more than half of all women.

Which makes me wonder why the Canadian declaration is limited to Uighurs instead of also applying to persecuted Han Chinese or members of the fifty-odd other recognized ethnic groups in China. Is it just because Uighurs have gotten comparatively more attention recently?

The overlooking of certain behavior never was justification of the the same behavior on other occasions.

The dilemma faced by China and the West, regarding their ways of life, is that they are operating on 2 systems that are different down to a very fundamental level.

In short, China and the West have different values.

The sad thing is that outside of China and the West, there are actually more people being entirely left out of the discussion. And neither have the universal systems and resources to bring these people out of their suffering.

Til this day, China's treatment on Uighurs are still highly secretive. That leads to the claim of internment of 1 million Uighurs become a superficial paly thing by both sides:

* China certainly are very content that no domestic instability because that 1 million figure is obviously not trustworthy to Chinese people. (Note that there is no way to verify the truth, as that's CCP's tactic all along; there is always the national security card prevent any forceful international investigation).

* The West are also very comfortable because they can outrageously condemn CCP for various political objectives. Do they really care about the 1 Million Uighurs? Obviously yes, but probably is behind a long list other concerns.

This dilemma (or pleasant situation if we think about it as a whole) is a reflection of the incompatibility of 2 systems. It is a clash of civilizations. And that clash is not movable by the seemingly good will of the people: if you ask the people in China and the West they would universally say that they like the people from the other side, and they just dont like their government. But they are merely unconscious of the fact that the clash is happening not because of the government, but really was by the people's will, through the thousands of channels of influences that the puny Human brain will never fully grasp.

I am not so convinced by this "clash of civilizations" or "different values" rhetoric. I know this is the standard party response to many foreign criticisms of Chinese politics, but to me it comes across as a bit like the Chinese version of American exceptionalism. The recent effort to push a Chinese view of human rights[0][1] into the UN, I find to be cynical and politically motivated.

The idea that Chinese people and "Western" people are fundamentally different seems to deny the fact that humans as whole share common needs and common motivations. If China and the West have incompatible values, where does that leave other countries of the East? Does India count as the West? What about Japan or South Korea or Taiwan? What about countries in the Global South, are their values incompatible with both the West and China? Plenty of those countries have ratified ICCPR[2].

[0] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-02/22/c_139758736.htm

[1] https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/can-china-change-the-definit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civi...

> I know this is the standard party response to many foreign criticisms of Chinese politics

This is not true.

This was even rejected by Mr. Xi himself, quote [1]:

""" The world must "oppose politicization and stigmatization" over Covid-19, Xi said in the pre-recorded address, urging world leaders to embrace the "concept of a big family... and avoid falling into the trap of a clash of civilizations." """

One could interpret this as Xi actually agree with this view point, and simply try to avoid fall into the trap. Then we can reasonably conclude that Xi and CCP do not want to follow this line of thinking. Here I am assuming Xi is so powerful that he can largely shape CCP thought, which was widely agreed upon as a truthful statement.

> deny the fact that humans as whole share common needs and common motivations

This is quite a bland statement. And itself bears little factual support.

Political values, as we are here discussing, seldom agree. CCP in its face adopts socialism and intends to move towards communism. That's 180 degree opposite of US domestic political theoretic.

The so-called common value is quickly turning into a lie when it goes beyond typical bodily needs. Even that is a problem, like many Western media would state Chinese need to consume less pork, because of the climate change concerns. Since when the West believe one should be subject to the whole's needs?

[1] https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/09/23/20/xi-defends-chinas...

It is useful for people like Wang Yi and Xi Jinping to pin the "clash of civilizations" terminology on American hawks and seemingly wash their hands of it, but the party media outlets still persist in implying that Chinese people and Americans (or is it "Western people"?) have fundamentally different values, and this is what I dispute.

I really think it's disingenuous to imply that in a country of over a billion people, with countless regional traditions, where many different languages are spoken, there is a singular unified set of values that is somehow unique to within the political borders, as compared to people who live just across the mountain, just across the river, or just across the strait.

It is a misunderstanding of American politics to imply that adopting socialism and intending to move toward communism is 180 degrees to their opposite. There are plenty of American politicians who admire socialism, and who call themselves socialists, and who would like to implement socialist policies - if not taking it all the way to communism. There are lots of grassroots communist publications in the US. Communism is discussed in school and universities, and it has champions in members of the public.

In any case, your claim was that the West as a whole had different values to China, not just the US. There is explicit Communist Party representation in the EU and other Western governments, so even if it were true that all Chinese have exactly the same political values as defined by the CCP, it is not true that no people in the West share those.

To get back on the actual topic, which is human rights, the UN has discussed human rights since the very beginning, and plenty of people from all around the world have agreed on some basic fundamentals, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and so on. Personally, I find it hard to believe that one country's citizens are so unique that a definition of human rights coincidentally matching their current authoritarian government's ideology is merely a difference of opinion that should be immune to foreign criticism.

But also, personally, I do not think there is enough evidence to definitively call what is happening in Xinjiang "genocide". However, I also think that the words do not matter so much. The basic point is that it seems to be a universal human rights violation to imprison people solely because of their religious or cultural beliefs.

> There is explicit Communist Party representation in the EU and other Western governments, so even if it were true that all Chinese have exactly the same political values as defined by the CCP, it is not true that no people in the West share those.

The post-Maoist CCP has very different ideology from Western Communist parties (heck, even the original Maoist CCP had a distinct ideology from the contemporary Stalinist Soviet Communist Party.)

But even if ignoring that, it's the fallacy of composition to conflate “some people in the West have the same ideology as the dominant ideology of the PRC” with a contradiction to “the West as a whole has a different ideology than the PRC”.

People are OK to throw radicals into internment camp, just because they showed signs of radical religious behavior.

Are you OK with that?

You did not seem to get the idea of clash of civilizations. That framing is about the civilization as a whole. In that scale, you cannot apply your concept of people individuals etc.

Personally, I am not okay with that. But also, I have lived in several countries (China included) where the government did exactly this, and I did not object, because I had no power, and anyway it did not much impact my life directly.

When people have no power, it does not really matter whether they object or not. This is why you see Canadian politicians making bold statements about "genocide", but the vast majority of Canadians you meet on the street do not even know what a Uighur is, and even if they condemn the idea of internment of suspected terrorists in theory, they do not feel the need to make some statement on the record about the livelihood of people imprisoned 10,000km away. Many do not even care about people imprisoned in their own country.

This, in fact, is very similar to how most people in China view things, and most people in the US, and many other countries too. Their immediate personal and household concerns outweigh their greater ideological beliefs. This is why I think it is misleading to imply that "China" and "the West" have diametrically opposed value systems.

What might be true is that the political party currently governing China has a different ideology to many of the political parties currently governing other countries around the world. But that's just politics. The special situation in China is "party, government, military, civilian, and academic, north, south, east, west, and center, the party leads everything". So, in China, the average citizen will never have any power, not unless they filter through the party framework. This makes the party ideology a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In my opinion this is why people both inside China and outside China get the impression that there is such a thing as "Chinese values". In reality, I think ordinary people in China have just as much diversity of opinion and diversity of values as any other country, they just have less power to express it politically, so it seems more like a monolithic culture than it actually is. Of course, in any case, many people do not much care about political ideology anyway.

The problem with that article is that it focuses on parsing language in the context of similar words; genocide as a word was coined in 1944 with a focus on framing the Holocaust in the context of other historical attempts to wipe out a people.

It's explicitly important that genocide can't only be focused on murdering living people, because for the most part, you don't wipe out a race or group of people just by killing them.

Trying to scope genocide down to the simple act of murdering people is a bloody-minded case of exceptionalism that overlooks the ongoing attempts to commit genocide around the world by actively destroying cultures, their history, and severing the ties that future generations have to both of those.

It's also very easy to understand why folks have a hard time closing the gap; virtually every country in the world has some history of tribalism and violence that falls into the broad strokes of genocide, and several countries are still actively engaged in it; it's worth noting that taken in the context of Central and South American immigrants to the United States, a case could be made that the child separation policy is a genocidal act.

There is a reason why the definition of genocide in legal terms steps away from the dictionary definition of the word, and it's documented here -> https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

I would suggest that anyone that doesn't find each of the items of the formal definition of genocide from the U.N. listed below as horrifying as the first line, it's probably worthwhile to spend some time evaluating and learning about the impact policies and governments that have done this in recent history (post World War II) to understand why the scope of genocide can't be limited to murder.

Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The prime minister of canada declared that canada had conducted a genocide against the pre-european inhabitants of the continent. It looks like Louis Riel's Metis revolt in 1885 was the last [0] real battle or war. The genocide Canada has declared they conducted was also not a violent slaughtering of people. So I guess they are in good company with the Chinese as soft-genocidaires?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_North_Ame...

Yup, what China is doing isn't so different to what Canada has admitted it has done to its indigenous population, and is attempting to make amends for.

Part of making amends must be ensuring that vigilance is taken to prevent it from happening again.

Yes, we are. It is generally acknowledged by our various Governments at every level that Canada has a history of committing and supporting genocidal acts against indigenous peoples. It's not about the wars either; our residential school systems, ongoing issues with child separation policies across the country contribute to our ongoing complicity with this.

It turns out that when a country is built on genocide and disenfranchisement it's kind of hard to stop.

What about the Acadian peoples? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians

EDIT: You can downvote all you want, it won't change what happened.

Personally i don’t think what happened in Canada is anywhere near on the same level of “genocide” as what is going on in China, but it is impossible to truly know. I Was hoping to get some discussion on the comparison between the two situations, but I got two apologetic Canadians who agree with the prime minister and the upvote/downvote roller coaster.

It is a difficult topic to discuss without aquiring a label, and obviously very few are willing to wade in to those treacherous waters.

I agree. Not only does it exaggerate the offense and water down a specific term, it also allows for the predictable digression: "it's not genocide, look at the US/Canada/etc trying to lie and vilify China!". That said, I'm not sure what alternative appropriately weighty term exists. Moreover, the US also does this internally all the time, with various political groups claiming genocide against various minority groups or else "concentration camps".

> ...“genocide” means killing a people

Killing a people doesn't necessarily mean killing individual people. Sterilization is killing a people.

That's not valid; genocide is not simply death camps, it can be the purposeful and systematic erasure of a culture.

I took a course on this, and part of it was just arriving at a definition. One way to think about it is literally the name - genocide is anything that prevents future generations of that culture or population

> It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women.

I think the Economist is being pedantic. The above, applied broadly, would "kill a people" within one generation.

It's not being pedantic; it's moving the goalposts. The UN's definition of genocide does not require death camps.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

> It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women

Forced sterilisation is a form of genocide [0]

[0] https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/Publications/Compen...

It is neither necessary nor sufficient to meet the definition of genocide.

Forced sterilization with the intent of destroying a people, in whole or in part is a form of genocide, but that second part is required.

I think there is substantial evidence that organs are being removed from Uighurs while they are alive or are being killed for organ harvest. Depending on how much business the media organization does in China, it gets reported or not. I don't think China should get a pass because they only kill of the very annoying people or those with blood type matches.

https://www.ibanet.org/Article/NewDetail.aspx?ArticleUid=0D8...

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-u...

That still doesn't make it genocide. To be clear, it makes it sickeningly evil, but insofar as distinctions matter, it isn't genocide.

Genocide implies the intent of erasing a people from existence. Simply detaining them and subjecting them to torture -- however horrible that may be -- is insufficient to meet the definition. A better argument would be that of forced sterilization, but then you'd have to show that this is both systematic and done with the intent of erasing an ethnic group.

To be clear: we must take a stand against China's behavior, but we should also label it correctly.

You are incorrect. The legal definition of genocide under the UN, and recognized as international law by ratified signatories is discussed here. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

The reality is that child separation, sterilization, and the acts taken by the Chinese government to destroy Uigher connections to their cultural history meet the definition. Genocide isn't just about killing people, it's about obliterating a people and their culture, and you can't stop the definition at mass murder.

You are mistaken. In fact, your link quite clearly supports my position (namely: that intent is key):

>In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: [...]

(Emphasis mine)

I don't know what point you are trying to make; the intent is key, but the intent is clear. The Chinese government is targetting the Uigher people and their supporters with the intention of destroying the Uigher cultural identity.

The Chinese government is doing all of these things to the Uigher people, and I am not going to replicate the exhaustively cited information that is summarized in the article[1] below to support each individual claim. I recognize that Wikipedia articles may have bias, but the bulk of the citations in that article are from recognized news sources.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

>The Chinese government is targetting the Uigher people and their supporters with the intention of destroying the Uigher cultural identity.

This is begging the question -- what are those things that reveal the intent to eradicate?

We both agree that Uighur's are being specifically targeted, of course, but the Wikipedia article is weaseling in the "cultural" qualifier, i.e. "cultural genocidie". That's a comparison to genocide. I still don't see clear and compelling evidence of intent to eradicate.

Evidence of intent to torture? Yes.

Evidence of intent to marginalize? Yes.

Evidence of intent to harvest organs for the benefit of others? Yes.

Evidence that Chinese policy wishes to remove the people from existence? I could be convinced, and it wouldn't surprise me very much, but the evidence is unclear.

What am I overlooking?

You are overlooking the policies of child separation and forced sterilization. Read the sources in the article I linked to.

You're overlooking that these were addressed in the parent comment...

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