One by One, My Friends Were Sent to the Camps
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
> ...
> My wife, who had been going through these procedures immediately after me, struggled when she came to the facial scan. The sequences for men and women differed in only one way: While men were required to open their mouths wide at the end, women had to close their mouths tightly and puff out their cheeks. I wondered what the reason was for this difference.
Does anyone know the reason for the difference?
In this concrete situation: Are they convinced of the party line that this is “combatting terrorism”, is it a civic duty, simply out of fear, or is this just me being ignorant about Chinese society?
Given the near complete absence of terror in the region over the last few years, I'd say it worked to some end.
I have learned about it, from multiple sources.
> They basically erred on the side of "too much surveillance, but alive" over "bomb them all 'til they're dead."
So literally a false dichotomy…?
> Given the near complete absence of terror in the region over the last few years, I'd say it worked to some end.
Compared to when?
“How could they do this?”, People asked.
“That would never happen today” people murmured.
Yet, here we are. Reading the 15th article about it, while the White House deletes tweets that likely anger the CCP
They should be removed from most favored nation status.
Governments could do a lot more but don’t
I haven't heard about this. Could you elaborate?
[1]https://taibbi.substack.com/p/a-case-of-intellectual-capture...
You either interfere (on a global scale) in the sovereignty of other nations, or you don't. Hitler was only stopped after a very costly war.
How would any alliance have the disproportionate resources to police the globe, while allowing free trade and the distributed opportunity that allows any nations to get rich enough to challenge them?
You talk of a unified humanity that doesn't exist. China is a superpower - the only solution to policing their actions would be ensuring no other superpowers can rise: neo-colonialism.
How hard would it be to ban trade with China?
I know automotive tooling is inside china and impossible to get out, but if it costs 4 trillion dollars, it's still less expensive than coronavirus.
I say all of that, then get embarrassed at the evils my government committed over the years.
It depends. A lot of why China is such a manufacturing powerhouse right now is not only do they have the factories and machines, they have people trained to do that kind of work. They also have lots of factories working near each other with shipping and energy infrastructure to support them, none of which is easy to do quickly. A lack of OSHA and EPA protections certainly helps things move quickly and cheaply in ways our current automation doesn't...yet.
Some industries can switch to different countries much more readily than others (injection molding is easy, rare earth production and silicon foundries much less so), so I wouldn't expect to see trade banned over night, but we have been seeing some manufacturing moving away from China for some time now.
Very easy. That doesn't mean the rest of the world will play ball.
I think what a lot of the non-West feels is that the West has done horrible things, benefited from it, and continues to commit modern colonialism and direct/indirect exploitation of developing countries to continually benefit from them.
The dissonance is in thinking that the West is no longer doing these things and only the Enemy (China/Russia/whoever) is.
Thus, taking an (invalid) higher moral ground is what probably turns your friends away.
Sure, there is plenty of room for improvement. I wish more people cared about social and economic issues, and I wish those who did care were more willing to act. But at least in America it's part of the conversation.
I imagine that you probably care more than the average American. But saying there’s room for improvement, while the USA has the largest military presence in the world, and uses it to bully everyone else, is quite frightening for the non-West.
> Vietnam and Iraq wars
It’s exactly these (older) examples which I am talking about. The West continues to fuel atrocities in the Middle East on literally a daily basis:
- Syria: “CIA sold arms to Syrian rebel groups” - https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/onli...
- Afghanistan: “UN says more civilians killed by allies than insurgents” - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49165676
You're right, it's harder to remain actively informed about the day-to-day military action that accumulates into something awful. Even when we know about it, our political system doesn't give enough opportunities to give fine-grained feedback about specific issues. Usually the national conversation is dominated by culture war issues, and I can't help but feel that it's an intentional distraction so the public will forget that we're plundering the middle east etc..
But at least I am free to voice my opinion, and to bother all my friends and family about geopolitics when given the opportunity.
> our political system doesn't give enough opportunities to give fine-grained feedback about specific issues
IMO, this is a universal problem. Sadly, while freedom of speech is useful, it is overrated relative to actionability on governance.
All the atrocities we discussed have occurred and continue to be fueled regardless of ever-present outspoken individuals.
I think mainland Chinese people have a hard time separating the US government from the US population because of the forced conformity that the CCP demands of them, or they would realize that a large contingent of the US population on both political spectrums has wanted to pull back our military presence for a long time now. The US population and the US government are a lot less aligned than you think.
For the record, I’m a Chinese American so I’m not ignorant of what’s going on in mainland China.
Hancock: Mr. Franklin, where do you stand on the war issue?
Franklin: I believe that if we are to form a new country, we cannot be a country that appears war-hungry and violent to the rest of the world. However, we also cannot be a country that appears weak and unwilling to fight to the rest of the world. So, what if we form a country that appears to want both?
Jefferson: Yes. Yes of course. We go to war, and protest going to war at the same time.
Dickinson: Right. If the people of our new country are allowed to do whatever they wish, then some will support the war and some will protest it.
Franklin: And that means that as a nation, we could go to war with whomever we wished, but at the same time, act like we didn't want to. If we allow the people to protest what the government does, then the country will be forever blameless.
Adams: [holding a slice of chocolate cake] It's like having your cake, and eating it, too.
Congressman 2: Think of it: an entire nation founded on saying one thing and doing another.
Hancock: And we will call that country the United States of America.
While I agree with this, the OP was commenting about how their friends turn away when the issue is brought up, and comparing how OP reacts to similar crimes about their own country. So, that’s a point I felt warranted to discuss.
More generally, historically, colonization has always been about “taming the savages” and “teaching them (Western) morality”. Slavery and exploitation went hand in hand with this mindset.
Maybe in 100 years with benefit of hindsight, even then for performative reconciliation, such are nature of these things. A Chinese person with connection to east&west understands five years of XJ securitization that affects less than 1% of population eliminated previously regular extremist terrorist attacks with heavy sticks like internment / reducation but also carrots like development and vocational training. It's the best of a terrible situation. Meanwhile, US+coalition just exited one ME forever war, with others ongoing, many indigenous communities in west don't have running water and US for profit industrial complex jails more blacks as proportion of their population than the wildest wested funded thinktank extrapolations for XJ internmen. All without meaningful reconciliation in sight, and to the relative indifference of the "global community" that's strangely engaged in how PRC mistreats a domestic muslim minority.
The TL;DR: is Chinese with dual perspective of how US/west and PRC prosecuted their war on terror hold their opinions after considered evaluation, they're silent because it's un/counter-productive to discuss with their western friends whose heads are in sand due to western propaganda. Most are tired of such westerners, majority of whom only get exposed to narrative from one side keeps asserting they wish their Chinese peers knew better. What the last few years of US manufactured consent campaigns about XJ/HK etc. has taught most Chinese (a lesson previously learned by diasphora of many global south previously targetted by US) is that free fifth estate and disucssion creates more dangerous brainwashed individuals that are both self-righteous and oblivious to their ignorance. There's no point in engaging.
In XJ, trillions of RMB spread over large per capita cost is being poured into of securitization with combination of carrots and sticks. Sharp sticks because fundamentally, many people cannot be bribed to secularize/sinicize/integrate. Condensing multigeneration cultural wars via mass social engineering and indoctrination is something PRC has done, bloodily, but successfully, several times before. And there's also simple fact that CCP cracking down on less than 1% of population on backwater province to eliminate terrorist attacks is no shit political decision that's worth some over reaction just to be thorough. Public sentiment does not forgive being soft on terrorists anywhere. The carrots is vocational training and development, regional GDP increasing, Ürümqi is well on it's way to becoming modern city. None of this restorative, slow wheel of justice, reconciliation platitude designed to drawn out social friction in the west where 20 years from now, I wager many indigenous reserves still won't have plumbing while minorities still going to be disproportionately interned. By all reports the mass arbitrary, internment step in XJ is over, the most problematic cohorts have been identified and being transferred to penal system, prosecuted under convenient charges designed to removed their influence from society undergoing Sinicization. It's a relatively peaceful colonization, roughly the "best" of a terrible situation. If this process started 10 years earlier when west was busy maximum pressure bombing middle east while sino-US geopolitical climate was still cooperative, PRC would have gotten away with an aggressive colonization under guise to destroying ETIM without the PR hit. Keep in mind not colonizing is not an option - excess autonomy is what caused this shit show in first place.
>Tahir Izgil ... >why not let them simply leave
From memory accused by state of transporting sensitive documents relating to separatist attacks in the 90s. Though like many Uyghur intelligentsia, probably use their influence to undermine PRC Sinicization campaigns. Why not let them leave? Because exiled Tibetans, Uyghurs, democracy dissidents, FLG practitioners, HKers etc. get recruited and weaponized by western NED funded organizations to spearhead campaigns against PRC interest. See the crazy groups anti-PRC activists align themselves with and kind of misinformation they're comfortable peddling. One lesson CCP has learned well in last 20 years is how US peddles influence either domestically in PRC via NGOs (which subsequently got crushed) and internationally via state funded but reportedly "independent" organizations, as seen in last few years. Another ugly scenario is something like FLG developing a well resourced empire... imagine Uyghur diaspora beyond PRC scrutiny with a powerful media wing that could properly fund ETIM. There's less blowback of just keeping dissidents in country or harassing them into silence if they make it abroad.
And even fewer things they could do that don't ultimately culminate in massive bloodshed.
Trade embargo is a possibility, and the US has done it before. But only to smaller countries; it's a strongarm tactic, and the US's trade arm is not strong enough to do more damage to China's economy than the US would suffer cutting those ties.
When an opposed nation is weaker than one's own, one can use sanctions and trade embargoes. When they're the same strength or larger? Trade embargoes cut one's own nation out of the international community. China has India and Russia right next door; they don't need the US's trade.
It's definitely an option. I don't think Americans have the stomach for it. The government that tries it will be voted out and replaced by a trade-friendly one.
Every single item stamped "Made in China" gets more expensive if the scale of embargo or sanctions were attempted that would have political impact on China. It's easier to count the shelves in Walmart that aren't full of those products than the shelves that are. Wall street would feel it, but the impact on "main street" would also be immediate and painful.
And it's not hard for a politician to sell "Every week just got more expensive for you" as ammunition against their opponent. It's a consistent talking point regarding gas prices, and gas prices fluctuate for reasons well outside the control of any single politician. When the price spikes actually are directly the result of political policy? Easy sell to replace those politicians.
Unfortunately, this is the United States we're talking about. Not to be unnecessarily morbid, but I think if one is waiting for the United States to decide the atrocities of an economic partner justify ending the economic partnership at major domestic economic cost, one will be waiting for a long time. The last time the US did something internationally that caused major domestic pain was the Vietnam War. The lesson the country seems to have learned was that it was not worth it. All subsequent international interventions have either been massively asymmetrical power situations or low-domestic-cost affairs.
But culturally we can do a lot more. Western filmmakers, actors, and athletes should not censor themselves (or allow themselves to be censored) to avoid irritating China. There could be a BDS-like movement against China. The media and activists could spend some cycles focusing on the genocide occurring in China in between much lower stakes issues that get disproportionate attention.
But it's tricky, because (a) it's mutually exclusive with trade limitations (one only gets cultural product in front of another nation if trade is maintained) and (b) the CCP is well aware of culture as a weapon and uniquely sensitive to its use and prepared to defend against it.
The big questions are is this just a new Cold War since everyone has nukes, or will it transform into a hot one? Will Russia participate and if so which side will it take? Who will make the first strike? I have a feeling that it won’t be hard to trick Beijing into striking first. All the US needs to do is give the Taiwanese government the freedom to say whatever they want.
Historically, how this was achieved was through interracial marriages with Chinese men. The end result produced children who both acted and looked Chinese so they were more or less accepted as Chinese; this doesn’t fly for Nazi ideologies. This strategy did not work in Xinjiang and to a lesser degree Tibet.
> When Kamil had left for the U.S., though, the Chinese government had required that two of his friends serve as guarantors. If he did not return, they would be punished.
How evil and disgusting. But a reminder that the people who escape and tell us their story have paid a huge price to do so. And so have their families and friends.
The whole situation is appalling, in both countries, though it has not yet reached the extremes of GULAG, the US Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, the Taiping Rebellion, the Holocaust, the Congo Free State, or the Killing Fields of Kampuchea. What can we do to make this kind of abuse impossible? It seems to me that only state power can create such horrors; how can we prevent it from becoming so unrestrained?
I'm not clear on how similar the genocide in Xinjiang is to the process of colonization I'm more familiar with; it clearly has some elements in common, like the Indian Schools, forced relocations, and the mass destruction of religious artifacts and languages, and (in the US) the obligatory United Line of Defense/Pledge of Allegiance. The Stasi-like culture of informers and the hierarchical neighborhood committee structure, however, seems like a significant difference. And the levels of brutality are still, fortunately, comparatively low, compared to those historical atrocities—though still intolerably high in absolute terms.
The historical background is quite different; there have been mosques throughout China since at least the Song and probably the Tang, and many of the greatest Chinese in history have been Muslims (郑和 is perhaps the most famous), and the Uighur settlement of much of what is now Xinjiang dates to the late 18th century, after the Qing committed genocide against the Dzungar Mongols.
This article provides a very useful anatomy of the forms state oppression can take in today's world. Studying it will probably serve anyone well, because these same practices are likely in the future of many peoples, at the hands of many different governments—at least those that prove effective at establishing social control. Tahir Hamut Izgil's present is many, many people's future.
How can we prevent the heavily-stratified societies that generate such profound oppression from overpowering people and territory in this way? Having a culture that doesn't generate that kind of stratification is surely necessary, but it wasn't enough for the Lakota, the San, or the Bayaka.
As you say, the descendants of the enslaved Africans are more persecuted and incarcerated in raw numbers than the Uighur. The US News media blasts any mischief in George Floyd's youth over the airwaves endlessly, before turning to reports of the Chinese dealing with their internal terrorism problems (critical of the Chinese).
We are far from perfect, but unlike the CCP, we have the courage to address our shortcomings directly. We even record them in our history books for future generations to learn. Things have gotten better over time because of it. We don’t suffer from cowardice nor do we hide from our mistakes.
Keep in mind, The Atlantic is a lifestyle magazine.
I would be happy to see more opposition from Islamic countries though.
I am gonna make some sweeping generalization (how could you not when speaking about 1.5 billion people) but here goes:
Not really, the Islamic world didn't care much about ISIS and the Syrian civil war, both of which killed and displaced millions of people. The only place where Muslims pay attention to regularly and express outrage is Palestine as far as I know. I mean yes some Arab newspaper may talk about Syria or ISIS now and then, even talk badly about it, but nothing that will make people go out to the streets like Israel/Palestine does. Muslims are much more sensitive to killings of Muslims by the West than by other empires (e.g Russia or China) since the West is perceived as a threat to their way of life and other empires aren't. Israel is part of the West in their eyes. I am quite confident that if it were Israel or the U.S running these camps we would've heard much more about it in the Muslim world.
Just your common or garden religious zealots then.
They're farther down the hierarchy of nation state needs than where you need to be to be in order to call out someone like China.
So they all shit on Israel because it's the only "local enough we could conceivably do something about it" problem they can all agree on.
The geography is also not a good explanation. The Mohammed Cartoons, which happened in Denmark, made Muslims go out to the streets all throughout the world.
My explanation for "why Israel" is another comment on this thread.
1) One thing to keep in mind is that religion is usually only the backdrop for some geopolitical issues. Yes, ISIS was an Islamist movement, but it was first and foremost opportunists seizing a vacuum of power in Iraq, and the instability in Syria, to put themselves into power. When looked at through that lens, why would a Muslim in Morocco or Algeria or Indonesia care that much about ISIS? Does a Catholic in Rome feel intimately connected to violence in Mexico? Most of them thought ISIS were a bunch of assholes, but it wasn't happening in their backyard.
2) Another thing is again politics. It's good for Arab leaders to criticize Israel and blame it for their problems. (Most of them) don't need Israel for anything. They rely more in China. That's the same reason most Western countries are falling short of accusing China of genocide.
3) From a purely religious point of view, Jerusalem/Al-Quds is a very important religious site Islam. It's the direction they originally faced when they prayed (Mohammed moved it to Mecca later), and is the location from which Mohammed ascended to heaven in one of his visions. China has no religious value.
Realistically they are much better off being China's friend which in China's view means not criticizing China for anything.
Pakistani PM said it best last month about Xinjiang:
"Because of our extreme proximity and relationship with China, we actually accept the Chinese version."
It's pretty sad, but you can't really blame him either, they can't really afford to lose all the deals and propping up they get from China.
Have you ever read The Atlantic?
Quite a few of its writers have either been nominated for or outright won Pulitzers, with one winner this year [1]. Even beyond awards, it has published important reporting [2] and very influential commentary [3].
[1] - https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/ed-yong-atlantic
[2] - https://pulitzercenter.org/publications/atlantic
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Reparations
If Trump wins again in 2024, he'll have won mostly because left-leaning rags learned nothing from 2016 by constantly giving him free press.
Have you somehow failed to notice that the former guy is both legitimately significant in the news (legal troubles, ongoing "fraudit" movements) and the defacto leader of US Republicans?
Joe Biden originally said it to highlight that Trump is the former President, at a time when Trump and his supporters were insisting that Biden's victory was fraudulent and Trump is actually still president. I imagine people are still saying this because Trump and his supporters continue to insist the election was stolen, and Trump is the rightful occupant of the White House.
“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump. I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” Biden said Tuesday night during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“For four years, all that’s been in the news is Trump,” Biden said at another point. “For the next four years, I wanna make sure the news is the American people.”
“You had the former guy saying that, ‘Well, you know, we’re just going to open things up and that’s all we need to do.’ We said no, you’ve got to deal with the disease before you deal with getting the economy going,” Biden said.
I actually almost never use it because it's pretty rare for me to need to refer to the former president, but there's a definite element of response to the reality-detached individuals[0] who've somehow been convinced that he's still president and is simply laying low until somehow he magically resumes office through some as-yet-unexplained mechanism.
I remain quite relieved that I no longer need to be concerned on a day-to-day basis which individuals, countries, ethnicities, companies, planets or star systems our president has insulted, mocked or outright attacked in word or deed.
[0] originally "wackjobs"
Imagine the reaction if they had done this with their COVID collection.
But what a silly way to look at it. "The Times and Post are publishing this Watergate thing, and they expect me to pay for a paper??? They're only publishing it to sell more copies."
does nothing.
> and take action.
How? Suit up and form an A*Team to infiltrate? Cyberattacks? Pool funds to bribe politicians?
But this could of course trigger massive international pushback in the forms of sanctions and boycotts etc, and those will unfortunately trigger even more nationalism and tension, which could eventually lead to war. In the end, there is just no way any regime treats people like the Chinese treat Uighurs without consequences.
Americans and their allies are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Middle East alone in the last twenty years or so, not counting their military orgies since the end of the II. world war. However China bad, Russia bad. Israel kills 66 children in just 4 days. No problem for the US and its allies. China bad. Russia bad.
This sort of media brainwashing will continue until there's nobody sane left to oppose the establishment in their military action against China in the distant future. No proof, no common sense, just..."news". From us, for us. Because nobody else matters. Vietnam fiasco can't happen again.
I don’t know what it will take for Americans not to be mislead once again by evidence as flimsy as satellite images and vials of washing powder.
Radio Free Asia weaponized the story of a young boy drowning [2]. They pushed the claims of Sayragul Sauytbay who says she was for forced to work in a camp... which again was shown to be a lie. Her family members explain how she was never in a camp and how she fled to Kazakhstan because of defrauding a rural credit co-op. [3]
There's an active propaganda campaign going on right now. In my opinion, this is the biggest lie since the Nayirah testimony or the WMD lie.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsQxjFCh5zU