Hacker News Reader

Comment by whoevercares | Hacker News Reader

While this is an excellent article (admittedly I stopped around half its too long) that refreshes most of my obsolete memory of China, I do think the author is a bit too optimistic. From what I heard from my startup founder friends, it’s becoming increasingly hard to innovate without government relationships (many founders do though, some from family some from bribery). The “national team” is coming to many consumer segment as well so the space is squeezing.

Let’s see where this trend goes, I think the golden age of entrepreneurs are ticking

View on HN

Anybody living and working in China and writing about it has to conform to certain viewpoints, or they'll be unable to continue as they are. This letter is interesting in several ways, but you'd be wise to approach it from the angle of it having been approved by the government. Anything remotely negative has to be balanced by big positives (or negatives about Hong Kong).

I am sure that the author, given that he is living in China, has to be careful about what he says. But there's a lot of criticism of the Chinese government in this piece, more than I was expecting, particularly about the negative effects of the ideological crackdown, along with the praise for things that are going well.

Perhaps he knows that to get away with it, he has to include lots of praise. But both the praise and the criticism seem authentic. It's a valuable piece, I learned a good deal from it.

Exactly. Any Chinese citizen writing on the same topics would need a high degree of formal education outside of China, English proficiency, and the ability to publish anonymously on the real Internet. It's a high bar.

> This letter is interesting in several ways, but you'd be wise to approach it from the angle of it having been approved by the government.

Which government? Beijing would absolutely not allow the publication of a piece that uncritically regurgitates Washington's narrative about "mass detention of minorities". It's Saddam-has-WMDs-and-is-allied-with-al-Qaeda all over again. Fool me once.

It's best read as a letter for Western/liberal audiences. That is clearly the intended audience.

>"mass detention of minorities". It's Saddam-has-WMDs-and-is-allied-with-al-Qaeda

These aren't equivalent. We have plenty of evidence of the Uyghur genocide from 3rd party journalists and satellite imagery. The only evidence for WMDs came directly from a new government agency (named "Office of Special Plans") created by Dick Cheney and not independently verified by any 3rd parties.

> We have plenty of evidence of the Uyghur genocide from 3rd party journalists and satellite imagery.

No, we don't. The vast majority of primary "evidence" comes out of the ETIM lobby (WUC, Adrian Zenz, et al.) and war lobby (ASPI, etc). All of it massively signal-boosted by the mainstream corporate media. Both sources have a very, very clear (conflict of) interest in manufacturing anti-China sentiment.

Grainy satellite imagery of ordinary schools and prisons is only admissible as "concentration camps" if you're a shameless propagandist.

It's quite literally the same playbook as "Saddam's WMDs", with similarly cynical goals. Because it worked. And it's been similarly effective at duping the average media consumer.

Not to throw the book at you but here is a pretty hugely detailed article with near 500 sources from very diverse media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

Linking a heavily manipulated Wikipedia article is the definition of fallacious book-throwing.

Do you have any primary evidence that isn't blatant hearsay, Google Earth speculation, or bad-faith mistranslations? In my extensive research, virtually 100% of "the evidence" falls into these 3 easily manipulated categories.

The year is 2022. There should be convincing photo and video evidence of the supposed atrocities. Western intelligence community has high-resolution aerial cameras. China has a billion people on social media, some using VPNs. There would certainly be whistleblowers. Smoking guns of this alleged Holocaust should be everywhere, on a daily basis. But they're suspiciously absent.

WMDs all over again.

I mean no, I don't have a list with more than 500 sources for you, so if this one is insufficiently exhaustive then I guess we are at an impasse

If you are acting in good faith, it should be easy for you to produce an example of primary evidence I requested from your Wikipedia page.

If you are genuinely interested you can look through that page yourself to see if you can find evidence matching your stringent criteria :) I am not able to read your mind to guess what you’ll find convincing and am sure you can do your own research provided the starting point.

In any case, have a wonderful day!

Nice deflection. Let me know when those WMDs show up.

I can't believe I'm replying to you it's so pointless but I can't help myself.

There are tons of sources showing that the facilities you can see plainly in satellites are internment centers. And schools which you can see barbed wire etc.

BUT how about looking at the opposite. What you can see erased.

One can view a cultural genocide from the air plain as day. The erasure of Uighyer cultural and religious spaces. Just a couple sources below.

Let me save you your reply, that's fake or some US government plot planted BS, that's not a primary source (even though the articles give the primary), etc.

I read through your profile and I'm pretty surprised by the huge volume of consistent comments so I guess good for you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/07/revealed-new-e... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/25/world/asia/xi... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/07/revealed-new-e...

I specifically asked you to not rely on grainy satellite image speculation, yet you proceed to rely on grainy satellite image speculation.

There are countless reasons why a building might be there one day and look differently a while later. Renovation, relocation, temporary decoration, disaster, weather, different time of day/year, different camera, different postprocessing, etc. Maybe a mosque even was used as a training site for violent extremists and was transformed/demolished for that reason. Maybe one photo is doctored. Maybe PRC is populated and ruled by comic book villains that do Wicked Evil Stuff for no discernable reason.

Scrutiny is required.

Yet ideologues act as if "genocide" is the only possible answer. Unspeakably deranged.

Ironically, this propaganda campaign makes it easy to understand how Nazi Germany could get to the point of industrial genocide. Because it turns out the people are eager to believe deranged, racist, hateful conspiracy theories about the "enemy", in this case the Chinese Communists, as long as the mass media plays along.

On an unrelated note, anti-Asian hate crimes are way up in America.

Little Eichmanns.

if you clicked the links there are also on the ground photos.

i believe scrutiny is required when reading anything you write on this site, based on this and past comments.

You don't have an argument, so you resort to ad hominem (which is against HN rules). Incredible. Happy new year.

Yeah dude some of the linked satellite photos are pretty clear even for a layperson and as OP says there are direct on the ground photos as well. The investigative group Bellingcat also has a pretty good history of journalism, I'd suggest you check out their background and works.

For additional info, there are multiple books written on the topic as well, ex:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5968247-dragon-fighter

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8137115-the-uyghurs

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57894290-menace

You can find many more if you do a Google search

I am intimately familiar with Bellingcat's history of being funded by Western governments, laundering Western intelligence and outright fabricating "evidence" like the OPCW draft letter or the Navalny phone call. They are the furthest thing from a reliable, trustworthy source on geopolitical matters concerning Washington's opponents.

For the last time, if a literal genocide of millions of people is happening in 2022, and perpetrated by the public enemy #1 of the only media superpower on the planet, there would be primary evidence everywhere. Yet all you guys can do is point to a mountain of bullshit and say "go find the needle".

Cowardly and disrespectful.

I did link to several books which provide primary accounts. But that aside, could you cite any of the info you quoted on Bellingcat, specifically its fabrication of evidence? I recently picked up a book on them, but have not read it yet, so would be curious to read your perspective as well.

Thanks!

"Primary accounts" or primary evidence? Give me $1,000 and I'll produce a video of an Asian-looking person alleging any atrocity you want.

Aaron Maté has done a lot of thorough investigative journalism into Bellingcat's lies and shady affiliations with Western intelligence.

You can't compare the two.

There is tons of irrefutable evidence of an ethnic genocide and internment of minimally thousands and thousands, likely millions over the course of time.

There is indeed lots of "evidence" -- extremely dubious or easily refutable "evidence" that was clearly manufactured or mispresented.

There is also irrefutable evidence of a propaganda campaign orchestrated by Washington and various SIGs that have a vested interest in destroying the PRC. For example, the Countering Chinese Influence Fund signed into law which provides $300,000,000 per annum exclusively for the production of anti-China propaganda.

Connect the dots. Use your brain. Stop regurgitating headlines.

You’re clearly not arguing in good faith. The US government is full of snakes, but the media brought this issue to bear whereas with Iraq the government was running the narrative. But I’ll only point this out once as I can see your agenda plainly.

Believe the massively consolidated corporate media to be free of "snakes" at your own peril.

>The “national team” is coming to many consumer segment as well so the space is squeezing.

Can you expand on this? Are you talking about consumers wanting to buy chinese brands (eg. huawei instead of apple), or some sort of officially state sanctioned brand?

More on the to-C technical startup founded by overseas Chinese who returns to the country. The national team now is disguised as private owned companies and have unfair advantage to supply chains, even better pricing with cloud providers

No, he wont provide much concrete evidences.

This so called national team, is a myth. It never manifests itself. Apparently, national team backed national captical, executed by nationally-owned enterprises, are not agile and innovative enough when competing with private businesses. That's simply a human nature-driven market econmomy law. Chinese people are not living in an alternative universe where economy laws do not apply.

Meh not so fast.. it’s China, it has plenty of talents and execution is not a concern. Take ride sharing as an example, those stated owned enterprises CAN do tech!

> Other major state-owned automakers have rolled out their own ride-hailing brands: FAW Group established Yiqi Chuxing in 2019; Hong Kong-listed Dongfeng Motor launched Dongfeng Chuxing in 2018;

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.kr-asia.com/chinese-automak...

I don’t have data to prove they competed unfairly to DiDi though but we know didi has been punished to death now

I didn’t read all the way through but what I got out of it is that socialism is destroying the traditional Chinese character of Beijing. Not exactly a glowing portrait of the central government!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com