(This goes double if you're a paid troll, China is just awful at soft power for structural reasons - a core competence for politicians in a democracy is spin. Trying to astroturf past that is just pissing in the wind.)
I do like how often people seem to think that the only reason someone might contradict Western narratives if they’re getting paid to do so. I’m just a white dude from Ohio who wants an end to endless war and imperialism.
Concede the point that the CCP has motivation to perform these acts, has the capability to hide these acts, and a reason to attempt to deflect any investigation which might reveal the acts. Maybe the CCP has provided free and unguided access of independent western journalists to these supposed camps, where they discovered nothing more than a shoe factory. That’s didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, without the free press investigating, the CCP opens themselves up to criticisms, that, based upon their historical actions, is hard to defend.
So what happens if half of them find a shoe factory and half of them report something else as part of a governmental push for fabrication of ground for war and soft power?
We already see factually incorrect information in Western media, and Western journalists repeatedly lie in similar cases. So knowing that it only takes one story to set a narrative, how is your proposition any more conducive to finding the truth?
When war and empire are the driving concerns, truth is simply impossible. All you can do is reject unfounded information and be skeptical. Yes, that may mean that some atrocities will be successfully hidden. But more lies will not get through, and ultimately those lies can cause way more death.
How many deaths came from the gulf of Tonkin incident, and how many would have died if it is was real but not uncritically believed? How about the Nayiriah testimony?
Besides that, we live in 2021. It's really difficult to hide things. Proof of this was the unauthorized video evidence of a prisoner exchange in Xinjiang done with a drone. It could just as well have been a camp. But in the end it didn't show anything except that prisoner exchanges are done by train.
As for the gulf war justification, I have voted against every politician who ever authorized force based upon that deception. Unfortunately my fellow countrymen are willing to excuse it, and thus the lies will continue.
The only way is to require bulletproof evidence. But we both know that's not the standard that the media are working on.
I'm not saying that western media shouldn't be allowed there, by the way, I'm just saying that if they were or weren't there we would gain precisely zero information, because of a low standard of evidence, because of the certainty of deception, and because of the viral nature of reports.
It's pretty simple to set up such a situation. Instead of a fully accessible factory, you can make up a story of it happening in some sort of controlled, maybe military or otherwise secretive, area. Or you can just claim that they removed whatever you found there. It has been done and will be done again.
So if this openness were to be installed, I don't see how we could gain any information from it.
There is only one thing. Hard data and proof. Not testimonials or qualitative evidence, but hard data. All it takes is for someone to fly a drone in the right place or leak a video. And videos over controlled facilities in Xinjiang have been leaked, they just didn't show anything egregious. So I don't understand why it seems so hard to produce this kind of hard evidence.
What would hard evidence look like to you? How could that evidence be obtained? How could the Chinese facilitate that evidence?
You have to take a risk to obtain the evidence. I don't see any way for it to be facilitated, facilitated evidence is indistinguishable from fabricated evidence. You'd need to fly a drone or wear a bodycam. It would definitely come at a risk, unless you were doing it covertly with enough resources to minimize it.
It is somewhat ironic, given the context, that xtian’s dissent from the popular narrative is so vociferously countered, and without any recourse to facts.
However, at the same time, it could not be more blatant that the Ughyurs face persecution. However sympathetic one is towards China, nobody should forget that it is an authoritarian state, with few political or civil rights, and sometimes that can have serious consequences for groups targeted by the state.
China has historically had a great record in regards to minorities - far better than many countries in the west - but it's obvious that a combination of the war on terror and a rising form of Han nationalism has caused a drastic change in policy, first starting with fairly ordinary persecution (veil bans, etc) then escalating to acts that would be basically illegal in non-authoritarian states.
Denying this neither helps China nor anybody else. It is possible to find western behaviour cynical, and to have serious concerns about the path China is walking.
China does have a reason to want to detain and control the population. Even the US has detained 22 Uyghurs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantana... The Uyghurs have many individuals who have joined terrorist organizations. Maybe we are looking at China’s Guantanamo.
China has the ability to suppress knowledge of any abuse. The United States has Guantanamo, which was the site of many “enhanced interrogation” techniques. That torture took a long time to surface, with years of lawyers involved to get the details out.
China has an interest in covering up any abuses. Of course they would. The US wouldn’t want details about torture in Guantanamo to come out either. It’s a blight which will be used against the US for hundreds of years.
Now that a baseline is established, why would the “West” want to use this situation against China? Political points at home? Taiwanese separatists trying to make China look bad? Trade disputes.
Sure those are all possibilities. Unfortunately, those motivations can exist, and China could still be doing something other than making shoes in those camps. They weren’t making Nikes in Gitmo either.
But we aren’t talking about 22 people in a Chinese terrorist prison. The accusation is millions. And yes, maybe 22 are being tortured, and the other million are making shoes. Allow hundreds of reporters loose, and one of them is going to find the Chinese Guantanamo, and suggest that all million are subject to that level of detention.
But how else do you assure the west that China is just making shoes around a tiny Chinese version of Guantanamo.
That’s really the argument.
Denying that China has the motivation, the means, and the ability to cover it up - those are all weak arguments.
And I really am trying to help you with your arguments. If the end game is war, it’s my children who will be fighting. Your arguments need to be stronger.
How would anyone know this?
There is no counter to this false claim online which is why it is unfortunately effective in shutting down discourse.
I guess we are stupid enough to walk into a potential war the same way we were scammed into one not too long ago. We already forgot the lessons as a population.
I don’t see anyone saying anything about skepticism or ‘everyone’. I see pasabagi criticizing xtian’s specific comments and approach.
> I guess we are stupid enough to walk into a potential war the same way we were scammed into one not too long ago. We already forgot the lessons as a population.
Yes, getting scammed into a war with China would be bad. Assuming any negative comment about China to be an attempt to scam us into a war also seems like a mistake.
I see him implying that the comments/observations are not in good faith and that he might be paid for taking the positions he takes. This seems completely unnecessary and quite rude.
>Assuming any negative comment about China to be an attempt to scam us into a war also seems like a mistake.
You may not recognize the increased sinophobia in the west but it is part of a well funded centralized effort to demonize and increase the potential for kinetic warfare between western countries and China. The fact that HN acts like an echo chamber for state approved anti-Chinese perspectives doesn't help matters.
A close reading of sino-western historic/economic relations results in a very different perspective than the one which is promoted in western MSM by corrupted organizations.
Is it? It’s clearly geopolitical, but the claim that it’s intended to lead to kinetic warfare seems like something you don’t have evidence for.
Or maybe the massive buildup of missiles and warplanes around China could be a clues? We are now at a stage where geopolitical hostility with China has a good chance of turning kinetic if exacerbated, and there is funding from exactly the parties that would stand to benefit from that, so I don't see how this lacks evidence.
If there is such a buildup (evidence?), it seems like a natural response to check China’s increasing overtures towards Taiwan, a key strategic ally.
There is no evidence that anyone wants a kinetic war for its own sake or that any development in that direction is ‘just’ a product of the defense industry.
China is involved in geopolitics and just as much as the US.
What’s curious here is not the invocation of well known bad acts by the US.
It’s the presentation of China as a benign victim who has no geopolitical ambitions, oppressive behavior, or political repression.
If you're worried about abuse, the guidelines ask you to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
I was just kind of taken aback by the nature of their comment history and reacted emotionally, in part because of the radical defense of what I see as the Chinese government's inhumane and genocidal policy towards Uighurs. And as I wrote, if it were extremely jingoistic support of the US government and intelligence community, or QAnon narratives or something, I think I would view it similarly; though I probably wouldn't have reacted as emotionally, since my impetus was the response to the treatment of that group.
I disagree that I haven't represented their commenting history accurately. The majority of their posts appear to be either of that nature or about Bitcoin, with the plurality being of that nature. I also included a link to their comments for anyone else to verify, and I quoted each of their posts in full to ensure no context was missing. (However, I should've qualified "almost every comment" as "almost every political comment".)
I understand it violates the rules and is nasty and tedious, though. I apologize and will refrain in the future.
The users foolishly accusing you of being a communist agent are also breaking the rules. That's not relevant to the fact that you're abusing HN.
Actually, I would have a lot more sympathy if you did have a personal connection to China. HN's Chinese users (and those with other connections, such as their family background or couple relationship or work history) are under extreme pressure in these threads, because the forum is majority Western, aligned with Western media and geopolitical views, and a subset of the majority users have the kind of adamancy (and even aggression) that can only come from ignorance. That's a serious problem—users of Chinese background have even been hounded off this site, just for sincerely trying to represent their own viewpoint. I've even been personally accused of being Chinese (as if that were somehow an insult) just for trying to bring more respect into these threads. If you or anyone is interested, you can see some of that moderation history at these links:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
None of that applies to your case, though, if I'm reading your comments correctly, because you seem to be posting strictly out of ideological battle. That's, unfortunately, much cheaper and more destructive behavior. We don't allow it here, because the purpose of the site is curious conversation in which people relate to and learn from each other. Smiting enemies is precisely the opposite spirit of that.
I know what it feels like to hold a minority ideological viewpoint too (having been in that situation many times)—it comes with a feeling of righteousness and resentment that causes one to lash out and feel justified in treating others disrespectfully because, after all, one's cause is right and the truth is more important. Unfortunately this syndrome is poison to the sort of internet forum we're trying for here. Regardless of how right you are (or feel you are), or how important the truths you bring are (or you feel they are), we're going to ban you if you continue this way. We have no choice but to do that, in order to try to preserve HN for its intended purpose. Moreover, it makes little difference how right you are or what truths you're bringing, if this is the way you're going about it, because people don't listen when they're being blasted.
> I asked this extremely aggressive zepto person
I’m curious if you can quote anything in support of your description of me as ‘aggressive’.
Also, you have made it clear that you are an activist who is against many US actions, but what makes you think anyone here is “anti-China?’”.
Most people in the thread seem to regard both the criticisms of the US and, the China’s oppression of the Uighurs as credible.
The kinds of claims you consider normal about China are in fact anti-China to anyone who’s bothered to learn a little bit about their system and how people there feel about it.
Can you quote something I have written with an aggressive tone?
>> I’m curious if you can quote anywhere where I’ve made it clear I’m an activist.
Here’s a quote:
“Why do I need to say something bad about China? I’m a US citizen. That’s the only country I have any chance of impacting through criticism.”
And another:
“My only aim is to dissent against the manufacturing of consent for another bloody US war. What’s yours?”
You have an acknowledged political agenda behind your comments here.
What has this got to do with whether what is reported about Xinjiang is true or not?
1- All reporting on Xinjiang is rooted in content from organizations linked one way or another to American/Western defence industry (ASPI, Zenz, BBC, etc... )
2. These groups have, as their modus operandi, used seemingly neutral and informative outlets over which they have influence in order to shape public opinion to manufacture consent.
From then on its pretty easy to come to those conclusions. It's empirically true that quite a bit of reporting on Xinjiang is false, and it's also true that the US uses the issue of Xinjiang to back actions that have a 0% chance of helping victims of human rights abuses there but that materially improve the American geopolitical solution.
Wether your want to take it as far as xtian did is something that can be disputed. But it's definitely valid to connect the veracity of western claims on geopolitical enemies to US/NATO warmongering.
Starting from those two premises is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
If you disagree, we can discuss where. But there is no fallacy here.
Are you claiming the reports are lies?
Obviously the CCP and anyone they have influence over will want to play the reports down.
What do you make of these two pieces of CCP propaganda?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AaitXSdjFP8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=4N385vKhXYQ
You talk as if only one side of this is politically motivated. Is that what you really think?
Where have I said that only one side has political interests?
You haven’t, but you have repeatedly cited only one side’s political interests to further your argument that that side is lying.
This explains the black and white narrative of the US as aggressor and China as victim that you tell.
Does that mean it is the ‘aggressor’ in a given situation? Clearly not. There are many instances of countries active aggressively against their neighbors. If the US gets involved, the presence of its bases doesn’t suddenly make it ‘the aggressor’.
It doesn’t seem credible to suggest that if the US just closed its bases, China and others wouldn’t try to expand their own spheres of military influence.
I’m not suggesting that the US is a benign power. Only that it is not ‘the aggressor’ in a world full of innocent victims who just want to be left alone. There are multiple aggressive powers all acting in their own interests, and China and the US are the most powerful of them.
This setup has never resulted in a good outcome long term. Ever. Let's not be naive, but instead reflect on the preconditions necessary for the abuse of power and recognize the CCP has met all of them in this situation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I realize that strong feelings are usually what drives grandiose rhetoric but that's not enough.
Let's not pretend that it's because people have said similar things before as part of a push for war. It's because the same people, and literal defence contractors, are behind much of this information, coinciding exactly with a push for war.