And remember - it’s never “just business”, not unless you’re a completely corrupt psychopath.
There is no single nation that can stand on a pedestal and declare that they never work with a corrupt politician, nation or corporation. Not one. If they do, they're lying.
> Good, fuck China and everything about it.
That's pretty much racism and/or xenophobia.
Here is my perspective as a Chinese national. I agree the peng shuai case is terrible and I support WTA actions. But I also realize how much Chinese government's actions have transformed people's lives in the country for much much better.
I wonder if you have knowledge of the culture, history and the perspectives from the Chinese side. Have you ever seen a video of Chinese people 1930s, learn about what the society was like back then? For the average Chinese, you are a peasant, you slave at the fields for the rest of your life. You will not learn to read, only the elites learn how to read. If you are a women, your best bet is to arrange marry to a rich family, your foot is most likely bounded, you will be a housewife, you will give birth to kids, and you will give birth to boys, if you can't, you will be seen as a failure by the family you marry into. Did I mention the rich and elite men will have multiple wives and mistresses? Women going out to work? Having money? No way. Parents want boys not girls. But you can't blame them, there is no social status for women back then.
My grandma was a typical women from the 1930s, farmer, arrange marriage, never taught in reading and writing because there was no need, foot bound. After the ccp and PRC was formed, the local party branch gathered all the women in her village and taught them how to read, how to farm like men, how to work in factories like men, how to tell their husband to fuck off and how to fight them if they beat them. The ccp propaganda that people outside of the country are "disgusted" by were telling people women can hold half the sky, women can do anything men can do. Women are equal to men. Marriage require consent of two the man and the woman, and only themselves have the right to make the decision. And men having multiple wives were made illegal, and under ground practice were heavily sanctioned.
Women's social status today in China is massively different. Some guys I know say girls are so lucky, because guys are suppose to serve the girl, guys should earn most of the money in the home, husband should hand all the money to the wife, should never pick a quarrel with wife, etc.
SCMP reported that China has two-thirds of top women billionaires. Chinese females also do very well in sports. In Tokyo Olympics 38 golden were won by women vs 13 by men.
And of course I know the difficulty still facing women today. Sexual assaults, verbal harassments, discrimination in some work places, domestic harassments and violence. The good thing is these issues are being talked about in the media and on the internet. Very frequently you hear about court cases involving women and justice being served. I do believe they are getting better.
I think one of the biggest reason for the change in women's status is Chinese government's education system requires boys and girls to attend 9 years of education. And in school, the vast majority of girls are taught to be the same as guys (sure, I know some teachers do discriminate against girls, but on average). At least in my up bring in China, girls generally do better than guys in school, and my teachers taught to us to respect each other. Almost all girls I grew up with are now working as professionals, none had to drop out of school, or married off and became housewives, all very independent. Most of my guy friends are very respectful of women, I believe owning to correct values and world view established when one is young.
And there are so much more about china. It's complex and multi-faceted
China has a different political system. The political system has done bad things, but also a lot of good things. Poverty alleviation, my dad side came from a poor village, for the past 20 years, I witnessed how much that village transformed. Ability for people to feed themselves, housing, jobs, education, healthcare, safety. A lot of Chinese people won't say this, but it is true that they are direct results of government's actions. People say China has no democracy, but the government is acting on people's demands and giving them their demands.
I want to make a plea with you, forget about political systems for a second, on a personal level, I believe people are more alike than they are different. Chinese people believe in freedom, justice, fairness, rights and the power to make demands and have them be acted upon and becoming the reality. I and many others believe in value of work, creation, and personal effort. I believe there is no free lunch. I believe socialism is not about a disrespect of personal property, it is about the society offering or making an effort in offering equal opportunities to everyone, and attempt to make an leveled playing field.
I also believe in freedom and freedom of expression. Although I have to say I believe freedom is not without limits. Conflict arise when one's freedom conflict with the freedom and wellbeing of the others. In these scenarios, I generally support sacrificing some personal freedom if it means there will be clear benefit for a collective wellbeing. You could have a different ideals, but I am happy to talk about why I think this way and listen to your perspective.
I also want to say the vast majority of news about China is extremely biased and a lot of them are absolutely false. They are about making people hate China, destroy relationships and make people going to war with China. By the looks of it they are doing an excellent job.
One last plea, Japanese in North America were targeted during ww2 due to the war. Nowadays, it feels like Chinese nationals are being treated the same. The issue is not about standing up to particular issue. The issue is about labeling an entire group of people and saying they are evil or against my way of life and my ideals, and thus they should be eliminated, without realizing it's people, humans, on the receiving end of punishment, attacks and destruction. And I think the vast majority of Chinese people and also Chinese government has said this, we don't want to export our ideology, our model. And we want to respect the ideals and values of every other country. We believe its fine for different countries to have different approaches and different takes on various ideals, and they should be able to coexist. We never wanted to replace or change western beliefs.
What's true is that the government claims is to be. But there's very much a case to be made that China caught up in spite of the government rather than thanks to it.
>People say China has no democracy, but the government is acting on people's demands and giving them their demands.
They give just enough to quite people down and keep stealing in peace. The Chinese government structure, especially at the provincial and county level, is by all accounts corrupt as shit.
The majority of news from China about the west is biased and absolutely false. More often than not the west gives China the benefit of the doubt.
Look at the seasonal flu, we know China does not report deaths as 'died of X bought on by Influenza', they are 'died of X'. As a result China's seasonal flu statistics are crazy low. In 2016 it was reported they had 56 deaths, 2017 had 41 deaths, and 144 in 2018. In comparison the US had 23,000, 38,000, and 52,000.
Knowing that they report COVID the same way we know that China's numbers for COVID are more or less a lie.
> Poverty alleviation
Local governments and village leaders have a system to seek money from the central government to be distributed. However there's been reports over the years of families being allocated a fraction of the money and forced to sign the forms declaring they recieved the money, while the money is kept by the distributor.
So alot of rural area's people still live in poverty, but on paper they aren't. So you have to take the governments word with a grain of salt.
> The issue is about labeling an entire group of people and saying they are evil or against my way of life and my ideals
Most people who say they hate China, don't hate china, they hate the CCP.
For the rest of your argument, I can say you read too smart to not see the gaps in there. “Bread and circuses” as the Romans said. And I am even someone who appreciates socialist ideals, but maybe that’s why I am also not impressed by the story. You went way back in 30s when many western countries’ populations were not that different to what you described.
This was at the same time that Trump switched from praising China's CoVID-19 response to bashing the country and blaming it for the uncontrolled outbreak in the US.
It was also around the same time that China reopened, after having virtually eliminated viral transmission, just to give some perspective.
> What that has to do with reopening or Trump’s positions is not clear
Australia is a US ally, and has increasingly aligned itself with the US' more aggressive position towards China over the last few years. It's not a coincidence that Trump and Morrison began attacking China over coronavirus at the same time.
> Apparently inspectors did eventually go with a lighter treatment and rights and they did not end up with any results.
The WHO team put together one of the most informative reports yet on the origins on SARS-CoV-2. The actual contents of their report were almost completely ignored in US media, though, which was intensely focused on pushing the lab-leak theory and disappointed that the WHO report found it extremely unlikely. If you watch the press conference announcing the results, it's almost comical how the US journalists were completely uninterested in anything the researchers were saying and kept asking about the lab.
I think there's a clear aggressor in this situation. The US believes that China is a threat to the unipolar order that has prevailed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and has embarked on a confrontational policy towards China. Australia, caught between its military ally and its top economic partner, has decided to throw itself entirely behind its military ally.
"Ideals" are not a constant, and each and everyone has their own. There are values we should strive to protect, but disenfranchising whole nation for the minority (not that long ago, USA had a minority government when it comes to popular vote) is exactly the wrong thing to do. There were plenty of businesses that didn't want to work with Trump-supporting companies throughout the world, but none of them went and said we shouldn't work with anyone from the USA.
In fact, people in China will likely reach the boiling point sooner if their economic "advantage" of lower salaries and cheaper production are brought to a level of their Western counterparts faster (which means, doing business with Chinese people).
Boycotting will do nothing to help them. Accepting them and letting them experience the benefits of a freer society will introduce more dissenting voices.
As for what world we live in, it's pretty much like that even in modern democracies (other than disappearing people, but they usually end up self-censoring or committing suicide themselves when the pressure from media is too high).
My point is that everything the West accuses of China, has had a mirror event in the West already.
"People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."
One of the top American experts on Chinese law, at Yale university, calls most Western reporting on the subject "social credit fan fiction."
There are various"social credit" systems in China, but the average person does not interact with them. They mostly exist to regulate businesses.
Individuals in China do not have a social credit score, and basically the only way to actually fall afoul of any social credit system is to break an existing law, and then fail to comply with a court order. Then, you might end up being barred from flying or buying a train ticket. But the idea that there's a number attached to every Chinese person that is constantly going up or down based on how they post online is just complete fiction.
As for "moral relativism," we really should not get into a petty, nationalist match about which country is worse than the other. The US has its own fair share of (arguably way worse) atrocities to answer for (see the entire Middle East over the last 20 years).
I see. So essentially like an international terrorist on the US no fly list, just for regular people. Like maybe exposing a government official for sexual harassement, getting charged with spreading rumors and failing to comply with being dissapeared?
No, for people who, for example, are convicted of a crime by a court of law and ordered to pay a fine, but refuse to do so. The system is actually much more mundane than people in the West imagine, and it affects a tiny sliver of the population (many times smaller than the fraction of people in the US who are in prison, for example).
And again, the social credit systems in China are mainly about business regulation. If a business fails one type of inspection with one government agency, that information will be shared with other government agencies, which will then scrutinize that business more carefully. The idea was to focus regulatory scrutiny on companies that have a pattern of violations, and to lessen the regulatory burden on other companies.
Instead, to me it sounds like a fugitive from law that now can't travel easily.