The Big Business of Uyghur Genocide Denial | Hacker News Reader

The Big Business of Uyghur Genocide Denial

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95 pointstheobeers23 comments

Do we have to look so far as to dig up shady organizations that few know about? We have much more obvious ones like Disney or the NBA or the rest of Hollywood playing a clearer role in patronizing and legitimizing the actions of the CCP. This isn’t just executives either - celebrities like LeBron James who claim to be “progressive” are the first to turn a blind eye and follow the CCP PR playbook.

Keep in mind, this story is also about the hypocrisy and deeply compromised status of some activist groups that claim to be on the anti-imperialist left. It's not the same as corporations' cynically doing what they think is necessary to maintain access to the Chinese market.

There's no contradiction here. It's obvious that when the U.S. criticizes Chinese behavior, they do it in furtherance of some goal. Since power is a zero-sum game, assuming that it is happening, it follows then that stopping it would be beneficial to the U.S. and thus harmful for China. (If you're saying it isn't happening, then obviously China can't do anything to stop it, but at that point you're dealing with reverse conspiracy theories)

Now, why should China do such a thing, that will (from first principles) only harm it? It's possible to arrive at such conclusions, but only from the perspective of what is best for the U.S., not China.

The debate over the Uyghurs is actually just one large state trying to get the leg up on the other. People mustn't allow themselves to be used as pawns in a cynical game between others.

Is power really a zero-sum game? Launching the nukes would be bad for whoever they blew up, but bad for whoever launched them, too, particularly if whoever they launched them at launched their own.

If the US were to release all the wrongly-convicted brown-skinned people, would that be good for China and bad for the US? Maybe it would be good for the US not to incarcerate innocent people who could be living productive, meaningful lives. They might even buy more Chinese factory output. And, likewise, if China stopped abusing its Uyghur citizens, that would certainly be good for that segment of Chinese society, and arguably for the rest. There must be plenty of Han who are (or would be if they knew) troubled by China's abuses, and maybe wonder if they're next. But it's hard to see how that would benefit the US.

The fact is, neither China nor the US is monolithic. Anything that changes has winners and losers within each country. Private prisons would hate losing their massively profitable inmates. States would welcome the drop in drain on their budgets (provided their contracts with the private prisons did not mean it would incur penalties and cost them even more).

> Launching the nukes would be bad for whoever they blew up, but bad for whoever launched them, too, particularly if whoever they launched them at launched their own.

Yes, but it wouldn't hurt them in terms of power. Here's Mao:

> I'm not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn't matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left.

> If the US were to release all the wrongly-convicted brown-skinned people, would that be good for China and bad for the US?

It would presumably be neutral; the US either does it for some reason, or for no reason. If they do it for reasons of social stability or keeping crime low, it would hurt them. If they do it out of laziness, corrupt legal systems, etc, it would be to their gain.

> if China stopped abusing its Uyghur citizens, that would ... arguably [be good] for the rest

If so, why keep doing it? And why do they have to be told by the US to do what is good for them? Is the US in the habit of giving countries "helpful hints," like a back-seat driver? When the US encouraged the Soviet Union to abandon its economic system, did they do so out of concern for the well-being and economic standard of ordinary Soviet citizens, or for some other reason?

A dictator of 300M people in a destroyed nation obviously has less power than a dictator of 600M in an undamaged nation.

If you honestly don't know answers to these things, I cannot help you.

Not if their adversary went from 500M to 200M at the same time.

I know the US is wrongly convicting its ethnic minorities. I don't have such proof with China. I live in the country that lied about WMDs and incubator babies in Kuwait. The one that considered bombing civilians in Miami to blame on Castro.

The US was doing counter terrorism in the region with the CPC until a few years ago, when vocational training and community investment were seen as better deradicalization strategies by the Chinese government. I think it's comical that US citizens are taking US state department sides given how our "nation building" panned out in the Middle East.

We have more prisoners overall than China and they make around 50 cents an hour for menial labor. Why aren't there trade sanctions on Idaho golden potatoes, but anything involving Xinjiang? Not one Muslim-majority country has accused China of abusing Uyghur populations, the "international community" here means NATO.

I got called a "genocide denier" too for questioning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the word means nothing at this point. We're aiding and abetting a genocide in Yemen, my taxes go to that, I care about it way more than the US talking about "alleged human rights abuses". Like we haven't heard that one before. At some point it becomes the boy who cried wolf. What, are we going to bring democracy to Uyghurs via a proxy war that creates a new ethnostate through a militant religious zealot minority? And it's going to work this time? At some point I figure people would learn but they seem all too content to repeat the same foreign policies that come back to haunt us

I have studied satellite images of the prison complexes going up all over Xinjiang. The US now keeps many more US citizens in captivity than China does, with an even higher multiplier per-capita, but I don't think we are harvesting them for transplant organs.

The CCP's massive project to keep mention of Xinjiang out of popular media speaks volumes. They know what they are hiding.

US is not going to sponsor guerrillas in Xinjiang, under any circumstances. It would suffice for CCP to lay off them, which it could do with no repercussions. Now that we can implant de-antigenized pigs' organs, their market will dry up soon anyway.

> I don't think we are harvesting them for transplant organs.

The organ harvesting stuff is not exactly proven:

> According to a unanimous determination by the China Tribunal in May 2020, China has persecuted and medically tested Uyghurs. Its report expressed concerns that Uyghurs were vulnerable to being subject to organ harvesting but did not yet have evidence of its occurrence.[240][241][242][243]

Grant that they're putting them into labor camps and re-educating them, but harvesting their organs? This is some comic-book villain type stuff. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

> massive project

What project? Do you mean how it reacts against sanctions that try to divide the country, in much the same way as Israel does, or for that matter the U.S. would, if someone were trying to put sanctions on prison labor?

> US is not going to sponsor guerrillas in Xinjiang, under any circumstances.

...because? Because the US loves and values the territorial integrity of China, or what?

> with no repercussions

If so, why are they doing it? For the sake of being evil?

You do understand that China is a dictatorship? They are even less constrained to reason than democracies are. Why did the US institute a torture regime in Afghanistan and invade Iraq? Ultimately, because Dick Cheney wanted to, and no one who could say "no" and make it stick did, though various generals were fired.

The US will not be sponsoring guerrillas in China because even the US is not stupid enough.

In other words, then, China is doing this for no discernible reason, and the US is just being kind in pointing out how they are harming themselves?

Why would the US not sponsor terrorists in China? Some separatism would do good to distract them, like the US wasted trillions on Afghans.

The Big Business of Iraq WMD denial...it seems 20 years is long enough to forget a lesson about the US & European defense industry and the "human rights" research they fund.

And more recently Chamath Palihapitiya.

I've not yet heard this allegation, do you have a relevant link?

Edit: found it, never mind.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/01/chamath-palihapitiya...

Honestly, that quote just sounds like Chamath being Chamath.

Google, don't forget they make an entirely separate chrome fork that adheres to the CCP's wishes and serve a completely different Google to Chinese citizens.

I wonder if video games will be more free to tell complementary "anti-CCP" stories now that games are mostly banned in mainland China anyway so the CCP has less leverage?

How many of these video games companies are independent?

Most have been, and are being, snapped up by other companies. Microsoft's XBox division may not be allowed to sell games in China, but Microsoft Corp is still making money there.

And then what about the truly independent games that do tell anti-CCP stories. What if the CCP demands that Microsoft and Sony not allow those games on their platform globally if they want to remain in China. Suddenly even independence is no protection. The CCP has taken down Github because of it hosting a single repo the CCP did not like, so this is hardly a stretch of the imagination for an industry that is run on walled gardens.

Like HRW_14’s comment [1] and yours it’s quite staggering all the investments China-based gaming companies own or own stakes in such as Tencent [2], let alone your GitHub example. What also concerns me is a similar relationship playing out in Hollywood with China-based corporates buying stakes in American film studios and movie theaters in the US [3]. Even before this large amount of Chinese money flowing into the industry, there was still a competition among studios to insure no content could accurately portray news in China such as the Uyghur Genocide or even portray China or a Chinese company as a villain [4]. Fortunately some filmmakers have fought back against calls to censor or change their films to appease the CCP or Chinese audiences [5] [6] but as you stated I imagine it would be near impossible for an indie filmmaker to distribute through a major studio or theater chain without making such changes without a lot of clout. Scary times for free expression or even reporting news and the truth about ongoing genocides accurately.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29984784 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent#Foreign_gaming_investm... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/how-holl... [4] https://pen.org/report/made-in-hollywood-censored-by-beijing... [5] https://www.indiewire.com/2020/01/sony-tarantino-edit-hollyw... [6] https://deadline.com/video/judd-apatow-hollywood-censorship-...

I doubt the CCP has less leverage. Tencent owns a chunk of a lot of gaming companies (not just Epic, but they've been aggressive at buying a percentage of a lot of midsized companies.) Heck, selling a chunk of your gaming company to a Chinese company as a condition to get access to the Chinese market has been a standard practice. For larger companies, gaming is a division of a much larger company that still has business son China or relies on partners who do.

I'd like to imagine their influence will wane, but China has been excellent at getting long term influence with a lot of dollars and euros.

Relevance to HN: this article is the product of an investigation into a network of organizations involved in Uyghur genocide denial, at the center of which sits Neville Roy Singham, founder of Thoughtworks.

edit: I should note that I find some of the evidence presented in this article thin, and some of the connections that it draws less direct than one might expect. But I think there's enough to the story that it merits greater scrutiny.

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