As Beijing Olympics begin, exiled Uyghurs fight for families oppressed in China | Hacker News Reader

As Beijing Olympics begin, exiled Uyghurs fight for families oppressed in China

latimes.com

50 pointstehnub19 comments

The parallels between these Olympics and the 1936 Games are rather remarkable. Yes, the world has improved in many ways during the decades between, but some things, such as preening and willful ignorance for the sake of PR spectacle sponsored by authoritarian regimes seem to remain perfectly acceptable. Underlying that, the fact that there's still no escaping the existence of well-established repressive regimes in major world powers.

So what has changed since 2008 when multiple US presidents attended the Chinese olympics? Were the Uyghurs and Tibetans not oppressed 14 years ago?

As I see it the big thing that has changed is that the American establishment has decided that a rising China is a threat to American global dominance and must be stopped at all cost.

This campaign against the Chinese olympics is just one of many efforts to pursue that goal.

In 2008, China was in a liberalization phase and things, while not great, seemed to be getting better. The backsliding afterwards has popped any optimism about a more open/human rights aware China. China was also ascending in 2008, but looked much more compatible with the west and other countries than it does today. While Hu was surely a weak leader, Xi’s “second coming of Mao aspirations” have largely turned the western world off. It will be interesting to see who will succeed him (except, as if this moment, he is basically president for life).

IMO this timeline places too much emphasis on Xi and his Mao aspirations.

- 2008 PRC puts on successful Olympics.

- Also 2008 PRC disillusioned with US system post GFC.

- 2009 PRC releases Indigenous Innovation Policy - precursor to MIC2025 that seeks to eventually undermine US monopoly on advanced manufacturing.

- ~2010 China dismantles US CIA network and found out full extent of infiltration of US in PRC politics.

Simultaneously ~2010s US think tanks started developing Obamas East Asia Policy, then "official" Pivot to East in 2012, which accounts for trend of PRC becoming competitor. This is all pre-Xi, whose policies were continuation of above:

- further eroded US influence by crushing NGOs, retaliatory kicking out of western press, HK (western influence)

- credibly modernized the military when previous efforts failed, built SCS islands

- was public about MIC2025, Huawei become preview for PRC dominated tech

- increasing development/maturity of PRC R&D and manufacturing

This was until 2018 when US/west options to influence PRC have been thoroughly eroded, while PRC reach spread, and it become more obvious PRC industrial policy and acquisitions abroad was tailored to compete with other advanced economies. Even then it could have gone either way (at least for a little while), XJ was below radar stuff, HK was subject to Trump Trade deal until covid changed US domestic policy sufficiently to hand reigns to Chinahawks. It has nothing to do with Xi having Mao aspirations but Xi doing what others could not, comprehensively undermine US influence within PRC while also picking away at US military and economic primacy. First is just good statecraft, last two inevitable - can't expect world's largest economy by PPP to have weak military or stay down on the value chain forever.

In terms of turning off west, you have PRC daring to directly competing with US turning off immediate US sphere (FVEY, east asia security SKR / JP) first, Then you have PRC wolf warrior asserting privileges of great power that turned off EU (TBD)... sanctioning EU (politicians and now secondary sanctions to Lithuania) for thinking it can sanction or undermine PRC core interests consequence free. PRC would have had to hide and bide in 2000s, but less politically tentable in 2020s. Xi hasn't changed since 2012, the geopolitical balance has. Could it all have been avoided, maybe a few years. But PRC pursuing her interests with her resources was going to butt heads eventually. Xi/Trump dynamic accelerated things. Xi's fault was being competent where it matters to westerns interests, and no doubt his foreseeable tenure will only add to ongoing anxieties.

You can make the story more complex, or you can make it really simple: For the past 2 decades the asumption was that China's outsize growth was just about to stop with an economic crisis and that crisis would be the end of the communist rule. Now that that clearly has not happened, the US has to go war with its upcoming rival.

The first part of the war is non-military: A media campaign, tech sanctions, general sanctions, rallying of allies, destabilization of neighbouring countries etc. China has little way of responding however I predict it won't be enough to stop its growth.

It's a tidy TLDR, but I didn't get sense most of US blob in the last 20 years were Gordon Chang tier collapsists. They just expected PRC to be foreseeably manageable, whether through economics, or influence, or military. Any one of one of the instruments will do to make PRC subservient in existing order, but Xi dismantled most of them in record time while US was distracted in ME. Then panic when PRC wants a stake in the order as equals or at least proportional to her power, but the cake isn't big enough to share with country size of PRC. Queue your list of interventions.

I lived in Beijing in 2007-2016, and as soon as the 2008 Olympics were over, you are exactly right! China was putting on a show for the world, and it turned out to only be until the Olympics over. Shortly after the Olympics, the real blocking started (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc...). They started hardline cracking down on minorities again, riots were harshy suppressed in Tibet and Xinjiang.

You can't really trust the Chinese government. They put on a good show for the world, but it is just that.

> ~2010 China dismantles US CIA network and found out full extent of infiltration of US in PRC politics.

AKA, the air quality equipment in the American embassy that was used to tweet "crazy bad" pollution levels about Beijing AQI? That was why they blocked Twitter, because the CIA was undermining China's air quality, which was perfectly harmonious otherwise. China takes a crap in their backyard, and immediately blames the CIA for it, the world doesn't buy it anymore.

Xi is the last vestige of Mao: someone who came of age during the cultural revolution and, for some weird crazy reason, embraces it completely. After Xi, the next Chinese leader will not have remembered Mao at all, it will be interesting to see what happens.

PRC blocked western social media post minority riots when western platforms refused to filter information to prevent ethnic violence. Prescient policy that west is now emulating. Also didn't crack down on minorities "again", they "finally started" since capabilities to project control over restive frontier regions prior was limited. There were debates in 90s of the autonomous oblast models failing to win over minorities. Which is to say half-assing colonialism doesn't work.

>Beijing AQI

TBH that's state department wank about diplomacy hack to engage Chinese civil society to pressure PRC gov to change, +10 for engagement. I was in BJ before the US embassy stunt (90s), people were complaining about AQI loudly long before that. It was already on the CCP radar. My opinion is this anecdote was more for internal US propaganda amongs blobs / engagers who wanted to demonstrate BJ was still shapeable.

>immediately blames the CIA

For actual western influence, aka when CIA exploited weak CCP internal security and pervasive corruption to fund/install officials. We can trust that the CCP does not trust the CIA and associated influence instruments. Useful idiots that buys what the CIA is selling are just as naive.

>some weird crazy reason, embraces it completely

Not insignificant portion of old Chinese folk are nostalgic for pre-60s vs pressure cooker that PRC was becoming in 00s. It's weird how ernest he embraces it, being low key enough to fool everyone into picking him as compromised candidate - he's not charismatic enough to pull off dogmatic Mao cult. But here we are. If that's the kind of cat it takes to do difficult reforms that others couldn't, then so bet it. Post 60s born CCP in line for leadership still still have gone through some tough times.

If anything the oppression of the Uyghurs probably peaked around 2008 with multiple riots, terror attacks and counter-terror attacks occuring at that time. However back then the Chinese effort was alligned with US efforts in Afghanistan and thus did not get much play in western media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Uyghur_unrest

Here's a quote from the first full paragraph of the article

>The boy was only 2 in 2016, when he left Turkey with his mother and grandmother to visit their homeland in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Mass arrests began while the child was there. More than a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mostly Muslim minorities were forced into indoctrination camps.

Looks like things escalated since 2008.

In terms of attacks it definately peeked around then. Of course the claim is that reason the attacks stopped is that China put all the young Uyghur men in internment camps.

There's also the Olympics side of the equation. I think as awareness of all the problems with the Olympics has increased, the threshold for its rejection has lowered.

I love the basic substance of the Olympics, but the infrastructure around it is rotten. We need a more environmentally, financially, and socially principled Olympic games.

Thanks for posting this, it's been an entire hour since a post about Uyghurs got above 15 points (and no, that is not an exaggeration at all).

Incidentally, in the past five years five posts with a phrase like Standing Rock or Dakota Pipeline got over 15 points - Americans like to be sanctimonious about the indigenous in China, not the indigenous in the US who they sic dogs on and pepper spray when they try to stop a pipeline going through their lands that will burn up the atmosphere.

One might argue genocide is worse than peppering.

Where did all the natives between New England and California go?

You can influence things happening now, not those that already happened.

You can also remove the beam in your own eye before ...

How convenient for China if no one can critize them before everything is perfect at home... (PS I am not American, but by looking at my previous comments you can maybe figure out where I am from, and find some issue in my country which should stop also my critisism of China.)

Exactly. Obvious new cold war strategy. News, of course, sets agendas by what it reports on and what it doesn't, and what space is attributed to it. And if the audience is barraged enough, they eat it up, as evidenced by the downvotes and salty comments.

Where are the posts about the US-Saudi genocide in Yemen (you know, the kind that actually kills an entire population and reduces their country to dust - Xinjiang has nice, undestroyed cities without a drone bomber anywhere)? Where are the posts about the US killing Syrians again, including entire families? Where are the posts about Colombian police violence perpetrated with the help of paramilitaries, and the US?

For that matter, where are the posts about the US having the Uyghurs on their terror list (and make no mistake: if the US has someone on their terror list, that makes me wonder what the US might be trying to pull here), and taking them off when it was convenient to use them as a geostrategic pawn to try to destabilize China from within (you know, just the CIA's standard MO for decades)?

No. China bad. Article over.

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