U.S. university reverses decision to remove Olympic protest posters
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Many people, myself included, view them as offensive, crass propaganda that will just further irrational hate against Chinese people.
Since Trump was elected, the US has descended into what I can only describe as hysteria about China, which I think will be viewed in the same way as the McCarthy era is viewed today. The hysteria is fundamentally driven by deep insecurity about the US losing its geopolitical preeminence, which it has enjoyed since the end of WWII, and it is aided by a jingoistic media that uncritically propagates nationalistic narratives.
The hysteria is not driven by anything China itself has specifically done. China hasn't launched any wars in decades, and has essentially just been focusing on its own economic development. Inside China, the view that the American public has of China is incomprehensible: living standards have been getting steadily better, and most people are optimistic about the future. But just the fact that China is growing is viewed as a strategic threat in the US, and since Trump, Bannon et al. came in and initiated a confrontational policy towards China, US public opinion has taken a dramatic turn.
So I don't view this as an episode of the university "kowtowing" to "CCP" demands. It's just another example of grotesque propaganda, which caused a reaction on campus. The university initially decided to take the propaganda down, but now has been cowed by an opposite anti-Chinese reaction in the media and on social media, so the propaganda will stay up. Anyone who thinks the "CCP" controls dialogue in the US hasn't been paying attention over the last 5 years - the anti-Chinese messaging has been intense.
Well, one thing you failed to mention that the CCP has done that the posters do highlight is the genocide being perpetrated on the Uyghur people which seems quite rational for people across the world to be outraged by and want to put pressure on the government to end such practices. Indeed China hasn't launched any kinetic wars, how about trade wars (e.g. WTO ruling against China RE Rare Earths which was used to badger the Japanese over a border dispute), how about intense economic pressure like what is happening with Lithuania right now, how about rampant forced technology transfer across the world.
Let's try to have an evenhanded debate here in good faith. I'm happy to admit there are many things I think America has done and is doing wrong, no country is perfect, but it doesn't serve your cause to pretend that certain events have never happened or to gaslight people.
What western country has an appetite for any more kinetic conflicts? I think this is why Crimea was such a shock to people, because the seizing of territory just seemed so odd in this day and age. Plus, why put people's lives on the line in a war when you could hit their power grid with a cyberattack you can pin on a non-state actor since attribution is so hard or you can use the weight of your economic activity to force other countries to do what you want?
A "genocide" in which nobody is being killed.
The fact that anyone is even using the word "genocide" regarding Xinjiang with a straight face is a perfect example of how extreme the propaganda in the US has become in the last 5 years.
It's also a perfect example of US media not doing its job to hold the US government accountable when it makes absurd claims (à la WMD in Iraq).
UK Tribunal calls it a genocide: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59595952
Forced Sterilization of Uyghur women: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/21/asia/xinjiang-china-response-...
Mass internment camps: https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/exposed-chi...
Survivor Testimony: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/uighur-xinjian...
Multiple governments pass motions declaring it to be genocide or that the serious risk of genocide existed: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/trump-china-x...
Do I need to go on?
This is how the propaganda game is played.
Nobody is being killed, and killing people is pretty much the some qua non of genocide. Anyone can throw around "genocide" as a rhetorical trick. The US killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq - genocide? US sanctions against Afghanistan are causing widespread hunger - genocide? Of course not, because genocide actually means something, and we shouldn't hollow out the word to score geopolitical points.
What's happening in Xinjiang? The Chinese government is using police-state methods to destroy the Uyghur separatist movement and to go after religious extremism that it thinks endangers the state and society. The government is certainly violating a great many people's civil rights and dragging up people with only vague connections to the separatist movement or religious extremism. At the same time, the government is pouring money into the region in order to try to raise living standards, on the theory that that will dry up support for separatism and religious extremism in the Uyghur population. As a result, incomes and life expectancy among Uyghurs are increasing. The Uyghur population is also increasing.
There's a real "there" there, but it has nothing to do with genocide, and calling it "genocide" is frankly just propaganda.
To those claiming that this somehow meets the technical UN definition of "genocide," this is simply untrue: the definition requires a deliberate attempt to physically annihilate (not culturally assimilate) an ethnic group. Historically, this has always been through mass killing. The definition says that attempting to annihilate a population by completely stopping any member of the group from giving birth would be genocide, but nothing of the sort is being alleged. The Chinese government has a 3-child policy, and the Uyghur population continues to grow, in fact.
Genocide is about extinguishing an ethnic, racial, or religious group.
One way is to simply murder everyone that belongs to it. It is effective, but hard to do without consequences.
Another, perhaps more insidious way is to prevent that culture from propagating, thus destroying it in the long run. Tools you can use are involuntary birth control, displacement, and indoctrination. Which is what is happening in Xinjiang.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/09/uyghurs-subjec...
Killing members of a group is not necessary for something to be genocide. I realize the legal meaning of genocide is different than how some people generally use the word, but I don't think your objection holds up to scrutiny.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention#Definition...
That's why, for example, birth control policies are only genocide if they're intended to completely physically annihilate the group. China's 1-child policy severely restricted the growth of the Han population, but it wasn't genocide, because there was no intent to physically annihilate the Han. The 3-child policy that the Uyghurs and the Han are now equally subject to is not genocide: there's no intent to physically annihilate the Uyghurs, and indeed the Uyghur population continues to grow.
> I realize the legal meaning of genocide is different than how some people generally use the word
The legal definition is essentially the same to the colloquial usage of the term. The problem is that people pushing the "Uyghur genocide" narrative almost always leave out the physical annihilation requirement, which is right at the beginning of the official definition (which you linked).
I have to say, though, that it's a slick rhetorical trick:
1. Allege "genocide," which everyone understands as mass murder of an ethnic group.
2. When someone points out there's no mass murder, claim (incorrectly) that the technical definition of "genocide" is completely different from how the public understands the term.
Even if it were true that the technical definition of genocide were completely different from the colloquial definition (it isn't), this would still be a dishonest rhetorical move.
That doesn't seem to be true. Whatever you think about the truth of China's treatment of Uighurs or Tibet, clearly people have strong opinions about what china itself has specifically done. And the government's behavior to its own ostensibly unoppressed citizens seems to me to border on dystopia; that again concerns things that China has or has not done. It feels like a bit of facile stubbornness to claim that no criticism of China is legitimate.
These are the same western countries otherwise which overlooked a genocide in East Pakistan which is now Bangladesh just because they needed a state for their guerilla warfare against Soviets. When India went to stop the genocide and fight for liberation of Bangladesh, it was threatened with US naval might.
Morality is not why they are doing it but that doesn't mean the moral side should not be supported.
The other reason being that CCP now has the economic muscle to influence narrative which was reserved to just West till now.
For others reading, while the parent is entitled to their opinion, that is a very pro-Indian description of events. IIRC, many believe India created the situation in order to split Pakistan in half.
Do you reject what the US ambassador wrote in Blood Telegram itself? As far as I have read, it wasn't that they created the situation, the genocide was already happening; they created a situation for an independent Bangladesh by supporting rebels.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blood_Telegram:_Nixon,_K...
It is a shame that we aren't apologetic for this genocide and haven't given its due and how West had largely ignored it even though Holocaust wasn't even 3 decades back when this happened.
There were students complaining about Tibet when I was a child, 30 years ago. Given the rise of the social justice movement in the US and events in HK I don’t see anything odd about a resurgence of such concerns from the youth of America. It’s not like these students previously thought it wasn’t a problem - they weren’t even born.
While the issues are real, the timing seems very convenient.
It wasn't sudden at all, but a long-discussed, ongoing issue of international relations: What to do if/when China's economy grows to the point of them becoming a major regional or global power (economy being the necessary component of national power, required for financial and military power).
Even 20 years ago, it was a problem for the future. China's GDP was low (but growing), the country was poor (in aggregate, it's still not at all wealthy on an individual level), and as a result, their military and diplomatic power was weak. Still, everyone could see the direction their power was heading. There were two poles of opinions:
1) Embrace China in the international order, share with them its benefits (e.g., the World Trade Organization), accomodate their power, and help them gradually reform and become a democratic country. This idea may seem insane in hindsight but before Xi Jinping, China was opening up. I remember reading (translations) from Chinese internet forums, which had a much richer, sophisticated discussion of democracy and human rights than what I read in the US - democratic reform was a serious topic and many top Chinese leaders supported it to varying degrees. Also, a democratic China would be a lasting foundation for world freedom, peace, and prosperity. Russia would be the only serious outsider.
2) Oppose China: This one is easy to understand, but don't let the simplicity and certainty draw you in. Opposing them will make them an enemy, no matter the nuances, a major threat and cost for generations. Also, we may not prevail in that confrontation: The concentration of economic activity and population in the world will be in East and South Asia, with China geographically in the center of it; imagine China trying to compete with the US for influence in North America. Also, military power depends mostly on economic capacity, and with 4 times the population of the uS, if China becomes even half as rich per capita then their economy will double the US's. The US has never had a foe anywhere near it in economic capacity. The US would be the underdog in the long term (without lots of allies).
Option #1 was attempted, even exhausted, for obvious reasons. Now China has grown to present an immediate, not a future, threat. And Xi Jinping has strongly embraced aggressive, nationalistic foriegn policy, including militarily threatening almost all their neighbors (Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, India) and Taiwan; seizing territory in the South China Sea; threatening other countries such as Australia and (economically) European countries; censoring any business that criticizes them; and transforming a reforming, opening country into a brutal dictatorship and cult of personality. As one example: Chinese leaders before Xi (and since Mao) served 10 year terms; Xi did away with that and has become a lifelong dictator, like Mao, Stalin, and others before him.
At this point, the options are to oppose them or surrender. The Trump administration certainly didn't help (and was a strategic disaster, because the US's only hope is to balance China's great mass with the alliances that Trump worked to destroy, and which depend on the US's reputation, which Trump also worked to ruin), but by then there was no option but to oppose the Chinese Communist Party.
> a bad awakening
I have not seen people becoming more informed about China. Much the opposite: I have seen the rapid spread of a bizarre image of China that has almost nothing to do with the reality on the ground.
Even the western propoganda will come with its own hyperbole.
But some things are clear cut, like creating artificial islands and claiming rocks near other countries to claim maritime territory like in South China Sea. There are many more examples which are not helping CCP's case at this point.
Criticism of what CCP is doing now is not criticism of Chinese people. Taiwan is a state which is majorly ethnically Han Chinese and it doesn't get the same criticism even though its past is also not all happy.
But an increasing number of people, especially Americans, really think the Chinese government/police really are just openly killing people in the streets with no consequence (lol), they’ve enslaved the entirety of Africa and stolen the land due to the debt of building a few trains, and other bizarre stuff. Any time anyone is like “I’ve been there and it’s not that bad,” people scream that you’re a shill and scream “WINNIE THE POOH” as if that does anything. The level is discourse involving the country is embarrassingly low, and when it reaches that level, it does just two things: breeds absolute hatred (hate crimes involving Asians are up) and pushes people not buying into it the the opposite direction of the propaganda.
There's a set few countries where if you post anything not explicitly negative about them, people come out of the wood works to post a few set phrases.
here's a submission on the frontpage right now https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/snzur..., particularly look at some completely benign comments getting buried with downvotes, you basically have to preface everything with "I hate the chinese government, but" or else you get called a chinese shill and downvoted.
edit: like look at this https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/snzur..., this dude is literally copy and pasting this comment and getting 5000 upvotes and awards for it and all the responses are basically "i haven't watched any of this but all chinese are cheaters by blood so you're definitely right" and all the responses to those are "you will lose social credit" or "winnie the pooh" or talking about chinese shills despite every copy and pasted anti china post having positive votes, its so weird.
it makes me mad that these huge internet communities that are and have always been racist against chinese people (i.e the brainwashed, cheaters, drones rhetoric that has existed since 2013 and almost certainly before) but now they use tragic humanitarian crises as cover to shut down all pushback. reddit discussion on the olympics is literally more racist than what gets posted on /sp/, and is far less self aware.
Are you denying that China has wrongfully imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and begun to deny Hong Kong the autonomy it is promised under the law? Just to pick two of the posters' subject matter.
Perhaps you meant "bizarre image" in a purely aesthetic sense. It does not seem like condemnation of what's treated in the posters is even controversial outside China. It's certainly not unique to the US.
On the other hand, an actual Chinese state official tweeted a photorealistic fake image of an Australian soldier slitting the throat of an Afghan child.
https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1333214766806888448
Which is more graphic, & more likely to engender hate?
Olympic athletes are not committing war crimes or violence as suggested by the agitprop posters.
Perhaps living under a censorious regime creates such gullibility, & obliviousness to metaphor & sarcasm?
(Separately: prosecutions of the Australian soldiers involved in the incidents Mr. Zhao "symbolized" are still possible – but as far as I can tell, none of the incidents involved the slitting of children's throats, as in his graphic photorealistic rendering.)
Such is life here in America...
CCP policy and behaviour towards Xinjiang shows a clear intent to eradicate Uighur culture, possibly the Uighur people, on the part of the CCP state. Simlilarly for Hong Kong, Tibet. A warcrime by an Australian soldier is being dealt with as a matter of military discipline.
There is no equivalency between the two. Pretending that a crime is equivalent to state genocide is classic "wolf warrior" trolling.
A better equivalency would be between what's happening with the Uighurs and what happened to Australia's first nation people in the nineteenth century. Modern China does have more than a little in common with those old European colonial empires.
Can we go there and freely discuss the situation with residents, without minders nearby?
Can they freely practice their relgion? Can they leave? Can they choose not to have regime loyalists stay in their homes? (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/30/uninvited-guests-k...)
Escapees report differently, & fear retaliation against their remaining family: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/04/uy...
Wire me $1000 and I'll produce video testimony of an Asian-looking person alleging literally any atrocity you want by China/Russia/Iran.
Unverifiable testimony not made under oath and grainy Google Earth screenshots are simply not reliable evidence in the current year.
As for actual evidence, PRC publishes their census data online for everyone to see. If you don't believe that, you can look up "Ürümqi street" on YouTube and get a ballpark figure for how many Turkic people and cultures are represented there. If you still think there is Holocaust 2.0 going on in Xinjiang, you are ideologically poisoned beyond reason.
Why is your first thought creating hoaxes for pay rather than collecting honest testimony?
Why is your go-to source “PRC census data” rather than any evidence of actual freedoms to live without minders, travel, speak, practice religion?
But the Irish remained the top ethnicity in Ireland and their population increased fast for most of that period, so I have no clue what the IRA were going on about.
If you're used to a system in which the courts assume the prosecutor is always right and so the judge's only task is to decide the sentence, then a trial with rules of evidence, burden of proof, etc., will seem very slow.
The Chinese Communist Party hasn't had the ability to launch wars for decades, though that has changed. The CCP takes pride in aggression toward other countries; look up 'wolf diplomats', for example. The CCP also censors critical speech in businesses worldwide, including the American film industry. Their military (it's the CCP's military, not the people of China's) regularly threatens India (including occasional shooting conflicts) and Taiwan, with forces sent into their neighbors' territories, and at least in the recent past, Japan. They've also used force to sieze parts of the South China Sea from neighbors such as the Philippines, Vietnam, and from international waters.
Internally, the CCP has used security forces to brutally oppress people in Tibet (including a takeover of the Buddhist religion there), Xinjiang (Uyghurs), and Hong Kong, as well as many other civilians and groups not associated with any nationality or region (e.g., the Falun Gong). They also murdered people in Tiananmen Square, as we know well, on June 4, 1989.
We should be protecting the freedom of Chinese people - from the CCP and from intolerance in our own country - not demonizing them. The problem is an organization that happens to be Chinese, the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, the people of China are their main victims. Americans of Chinese descent have no more to do with the CCP than Americans of Russian descent are responsible for Putin. I hope more Chinese people come to freedom in the US - I was hoping we'd take in a lot from Hong Kong.
(I say with a heavy dose of cynicism)
Also, we didn't make these posters, but that shouldn't detract from the actual genocide that's occurring today.
Also, I didn't make the racist poster so I think it's totally appropriate to leave it up. (Not sure where you were going with this part...)
There is nothing racist about what you said in what you somehow think is a counter point. The CCP are engaged in human rights abuses and some of us think that we have a moral obligation to call that out. What is your game here?
Someone will always be there to argue your criticism is invalid because the soil you're standing on is soaked in blood, racism, whatever. It would paralyze you to accept any criticism at the cost of having no voice (because you can never prove you aren't the embodiment of said criticism - your standard). We lack a neutral and omniscient arbiter to make the decision that you are or aren't, on balance and otherwise, a bastard or a descendent of bastards.
It's still important to be a critic of the/a state. The fact that most nations on the planet are strongly associated with an ethnicity makes the field a little more tricky, but not that much. Part of success here is convincing a vocal segment of liberal society to focus on actual content of criticism and stop second-guessing/worrying about what other dumber elements of society might think if criticism were viewed the wrong way. That's such a tenuous conditional lever to pull on to justify censorship.
If you're even mildly "in" the Asian community in the US, you know that "Asian Hate" is sadly not a new phenomenon, just one that has received more attention and reporting lately (and arguably quickly set aside once current events failed to substantiate a white supremist angle that could be milked); it's been a tragic staple of the Asian experience for a long, long time.
There are many valid reasons for the Chinese to dismiss criticism (starting with "mind your own business as we develop" to moral equivalency arguments to reparations arguments - I've heard many of them). We also don't have to treat that dismissal as a valid reason to ignore inhumanity. It may even be acceptable to acknowledge grey areas and nuance, but even that doesn't close the door to good faith criticism about castration, sex-trafficking, enabling DPRK, destabilizing territorial grabs, etc.
I've got strong feelings about China's leadership, it has almost nothing to do with the locals.
Funny how the downvotes keep on coming in but nobody is shameless enough to defend it.
2. This isn't going to be popular, but a lot of anti-Prussian propaganda was racist. (And if you're about to say "ackshully, Prussian isn't a race" please consider that the colloquial usage of "racism" encompasses a number of other prejudices and those prejudices aren't suddenly excusable because they aren't technically based on your definition of "race.")
What does that mean?
And at least generally just being a party member of a party anywhere doesn't mean any individual always agrees with every policy, and I certainly don't assume they get to make policy.
I don't think I've met a single american who seems happy with their government, no matter which way they lean or which colour tie the president has. But I've still met a lot of proud Americans.
Which nation do you think this sort of distinction might be better sold in?
Oppression is like domestic abuse: being the victim of it makes you more likely to perpetrate it yourself, not less.
I don't know how, but it's a common theme in the US (and probably elsewhere but I don't have as much context outside the US). From Japanese internment, to 9/11, to COVID, to China and their [gestures vaguely], we can't see to get it right.
The Covid + China example is very real, though.
Granted, a shocking half of the 2021 victims were apparently from one man. No idea how that happens. Regardless, still up a bunch.
* Where is Xinjiang?
* Can you name any famous Uyghur people?
* Have you been to Xinjiang?
* What is the origin of the conflict in Xinjiang?
One, and perhaps most effective, way would be for the Chinese student groups to support these protests to show that they are indeed distinct from the CCP government, instead of using the language of social justice to silence criticism of the Chinese government's human rights record
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/07/chinas-long-arm-reaches...
"But Southwest CSSA’s ties to the consulate are far closer than those of the individual groups at universities. Its bylaws state that all presidential candidates must first receive approval from the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles before the election can take place. Southwest CSSA sometimes holds events inside the consulate itself."
Most people in China have a fairly positive view of their country, which is not surprising, given how massively life has improved over the course of just one generation.
A lot of students go abroad, and then are shocked at the sheer amount of hatred towards China and demonization of the country. It's not that the students are brainwashed to like China. It's just that they have an entirely different perspective.
But look at the facts. The communist party has driven China to become a massive success economically and this is an objective fact no one is arguing against. Do you really think the Chinese people are aligned with Western first world concerns when their pockets are lined so thickly by the CCP over the last forty years? And if they are indeed aligned with their government, then being anti government is the same as being anti-Chinese constituency. Describing it in any other way is just manufactured-justification.
I’m not validating all the actions of the Chinese government. In fact they are actually severely bureaucratic, undeveloped, of course committing many moral sins. But if I take a stance against China I’m not deluding myself into believing I’m somehow the savior of Chinese people from their own government. They know which side they are on and what they are supporting.
I like the US. But from 2016-2020 I had almost nothing positive to say about the government. And when asked about Trump by foreigners (usually while I was traveling abroad) I didn’t feel compelled to defend him just because he’s the current president.
You'll find this sort of silly perspective among some people in Europe, but it's far from being a majority view. Most people have a healthy understanding that the US is a complicated place.
Now imagine if this sort of infantile anti-Americanism were the dominant view throughout Europe, and if it was relentlessly pushed in the media. Imagine if everywhere you went, people who knew nothing about America, who couldn't speak English, and who had never visited the country wanted to lecture you on how evil the US was. And imagine if every time you opened your mouth to tell them that things were a bit more complicated than they were saying, they called you brainwashed or a US bot.
If that were the case, you might get a lot more defensive, or even just avoid talking about America with Europeans altogether. That's what the situation is with anti-Chinese sentiment in the West.
I don't think they should be compelled to support protests, especially not ones deploying racist imagery, simply due to their nationality.
> and were in fact created by an Chinese Australian artist.
This is gonna blow your mind, but I have seen an absurd amount of racism from the Chinese diaspora. Things like Taiwanese people calling Andrew Yang (who is himself descended from people from Taiwan) a CCP agent for having a completely milquetoast position on Taiwan for an American politican.
How is calling Andrew Yang a CCP agent racist? What does it have to due with race at all?
How is that not a racist dog whistle?
Words aren’t observers. It’s you who doesn’t observe the distinction.
The artist could have used a less subtle design choice like a panda in a tracksuit (similar to how the US can be represented by Uncle Sam), but it would make the posters comical and it would detract from the chosen art style and references to the historic style of poster design these hint at as well as the message behind the posters.
I.E, are you against all caricatures whereby a 'segment of the population' non-existent person was used, in which case you'd be equally appalled at say a caricature of a trump supporter? But you'd be OK of it was Xi Jinping throwing the virus?
Yes, I think it would be bigoted to depict a random rural American putting a Mexican child into a cage. Is that what you meant by "trump supporter"? Because athletes are also just ordinary citizens unlike, for example, a border patrol agent which is a representative of the state.
> But you'd be OK of it was Xi Jinping throwing the virus?
Yes, of course people in positions of great power are fair game. Though I think it's a bit of a boring criticism compared to something he's more directly responsible for.
I'd argue Xi is pretty responsible for the Covid outbreak, given the initial cover up (mirroring the SARS cover up - ie it's long-running state policy).
China immediately announced the outbreak, on 30 December 2019. The first patients were only discovered on 27 December.
The Chinese government briefed the US government on 3 January about the outbreak, and it publicly announced that the outbreak was caused by the novel coronavirus just days later.
This idea that the outbreak was covered up its just a massive rewrite of history. The US government had months to act, but didn't until it was too late. If we're going to compare the reactions of different governments, China had one of the fastest, most dramatic reactions. It locked down a region containing 60 million people less than a month after the first patients were discovered, and completely eliminated the virus by April 2020.
Nobody in "polite countries" wants these events anymore. Norway or Switzerland don't need more tourists and white elephants. Organising the Olympics hasn't been worth it for a long time.
The games are great but the process is not. They need to moved to a fixed site for both winter and summer. Then countries can just take turns each year setting the theme, ceremonies, decorations, etc. and handling the logistics of it.
It would be cool to have Mt. Olympus literally on the horizon when competing.
The UK could agree because they have a historically good relationship with Greece.
Russia could agree because Greece is Orthodox and culturally important for Russian Orthodoxy.
China could agree if they got the job to reconstruct the old Olympic venue. They already own a port in Greece (and an important one, Piraeus).
Israel and the oil sheikhdoms could agree because it is in their neighbourhood and a major source of harmless fun.
Egypt could agree just to piss Erdogan off.
would it though? seems like a different vanity project would be found instead rather than what you would wish it be used. if the people financially supporting these types of boondoggles wanted to be doing citizens work, they would be doing it already and not be no Olympics to support. also to not be overlooked, some of these might be doing both already.
Edit: Whooboy, the grammar in this one ;-)
Isn't that the entire point to show off a country's wealth: look how much money we can afford to waste, because we're so well-off? That would explain why China has hosted Olympics twice in the last few years.
That's what killed the Olympics for Amsterdam. If you can't prove something is going to make money Dutch people aren't going to do it. Investment implies a return or at least break even.
On the parent’s point, it’s not about a nation showing off wealth, it’s about showing off might. Wealth is one form of might, but so is spreading your culture, showing your ability to build colossal stadiums and public works, and of course the superiority of your disciplined physiques (imagine our athletes as soldiers!). Nation states exist largely in interstate anarchy, and displaying a nation’s might through the Olympics can increase its power and prestige in other international disputes.
When the USOC and IOC selected Boston as the host of the 2024 Olympics, enough citizens of Boston opposed the selection that they moved the games to Los Angeles.
The 2024 Olympics will be held in Paris. The 2028 Olympics will be held in Los Angeles. The USOC originally selected Boston for its bid (for the 2028 Olympics) in 2015. The selection was changed half a year later, two years before the IOC selected the host.
This has nothing to do with sports.
but yeah I do think it's ironic and sad that the ultra conservative school boards and q people who push that junk simultaneously hate CCP for doing the same thing.
Though the aforementioned school board idiots probably don't even understand (or if they do, gross) that they are in fact perpetrating the same 'racism' they are standing up against.
Noone banned discussing race, they banned a political marxist agenda.
This article goes into the history of it: https://www.newsweek.com/critical-race-theory-repackaged-mar...
What did they say that was inaccurate about the origin of it?
Simply insulting the person is not a debate.
critical theory was intellectually thought about before marxist thought leaders with hegel & rousseau
it's just simply a heuristic in which to theorize about structures of society, critique, and kind of more HN relevant thinking about not just a simple single priori -> action but a more broad connected sociological look at society & consequences. at least that's what I understand.
it does not force some political agenda on anyone, it's relegated to academia, and it's not some forceful communist crusade; that's just laughable.
most important it's not something even remotely related to k-12 learning lol.
the actual politicking is coming from those whipping up crazy delusional emotions and passing laws that have nothing to do with reality just because 'commies' is a hot topic to get certain segments of people riled up and voting/supporting their social agendas. and they often are actual campaigns of repression, doing exactly what they critique in others
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1754029100364753....
I can respect the attempt that people have made to force compliance where the law does not help, all of those current attempts can be co-opted easily. I just watched people say it was inclusive to remove someone from a position for a view expressed outside of work beforehand that has never impacted their work, when the opposite could equally be argued under the exact same idea. You can basically morph any social justice idea from Twitter Spaces and Instagram stories to serve your idea and I'm not sure people realize that yet, or if they are intentionally doing it themselves.
For the record, I would also like to see a world where hatred was not incited. People uncomfortable with an organization still have the choice of disassociating from the organization, no matter how much energy they put into enrollment or money they put into an investment there. Thats what freedom of speech and association means even in the philosophical private sector fan-rendition of the first amendment.
Really? Was it the "Chinese Race" that force sterilized young Uyghur women? Was it the "Chinese Ethnicity" which tried to cover up the Covid outbreak?
The irony of this line of propaganda is that they are weaponizing the empathy of the dwindling population of Americans who are most inclined to be allies of peace. That kind of clumsy manipulation is going to bite back hard.
Unless of course the whole point is to further divide, polarize, and destabilize. In which case - well done.
The Chinese government's standard modus operandi in cases like this is to make them an offer they can't refuse: Commit suicide, come to China to be jailed, or your family members will suffer in your place [1].
China is an evil empire and standing up to them is important. Bravo for this university for making the right decision.
I just hope the US media is willing to call China out, and US politicians are willing to inflict painful consequences on China, when those students' and administrators' families "disappear." Or better yet, US intelligence manages to successfully bug one of those family members before they get "disappeared", and get clear video evidence of exactly what happens during such "disappearances." (My personal guess is that it's a sick, sadistic slow murder with lots of screaming and blood, followed by secret burial in an unmarked shallow grave.)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/07/china-christ...
People act like there's a Demon Portal in Zhongnanhai where CCP Officials emerge from a different plane to subjugate the Real Chinese People.
In reality, the government of China is made of... normal Chinese people with leadership/bureaucracy skills. You can't "separate" these two.
At least, I am not aware of a single government that allows such speech. Are you?
His point was if it was the people's will, you wouldn't need authoritarianism.
1) you might not need government at all
and
2) you are living in a fantasy world
The choices of the CCP are their choices by your own admission it can't be all the people.
The people defending the CCP are either:
1) delusional
2) 50 cent shills
Push too far and your "free speech" gets reclassified as something illegal.
See: Jan 6 dissidents, Julian Assange, Aaron Swartz, et al.
Put it more bluntly: it's fine to hold up a sign saying "meat is murder" and protest. It's not okay to break into abattoirs and trash them. Speech is legal, breaking and entering is not.
Drawing any sort of equivalency between these two events strikes me as extremely far fetched.
Trespassing and trashing the Capitol Building is what got people in trouble. The people peacefully protesting faced no legal repercussions.
> Julian Assange,
Leaking classified documents isn't the same as political messaging.
> Aaron Swartz, et al.
Knowingly and deliberately violating copyright laws.
These instances definitely had political motivation, but the crimes in question were not because of speech itself.
The charges were for hacking.
But that's not an act of speech, that's an act of violence.
Anyways, sure, you will find exceptions to any rule if you look hard enough or strain the definition hard enough. Not really particularly interesting though.
Where does the idea that "criticism of a government is criticism of its people because a government is made up of its people" logically follow? Is criticism of the American government (which I do regularly) criticism of my own American people? What about North Korea?
This is very abstract. Can you give a real world example of what you mean? What country should China closer resemble in your ideal world?
I would agree you if you argue it would be condescending to claim for any given issue that while the CCP argues X, people in China disagree and want Y. However, I think it's equally as condescending to claim that the opinions, behaviors, and ideologies of the CCP are fully condoned and endorsed by all of the Chinese people (and THEREFORE, criticism of one is criticism of the other). Conflating a government and its people in this way is specious for any country, but especially problematic for those where public criticism of government is unequivocally risky.
You can empirically test this. Harvard University did, and found that upwards of 90% of the Chinese people support their government. And why wouldn't they? QoL has skyrocketed for hundreds of millions of Chinese over the last 40 years.
10% of the Chinese populace is still over a hundred million people, am I to judge each of them as people according to the actions of their government (since apparently the two cannot be separated)?
of course? how does this _not_ logically follow? if you're going to extol the virtues of being able to select your own leaders you damn well ought to feel responsible for inflicting bad leaders on the world. you literally mentioned this yourself. civilians of authoritarian countries have far more claim to a pass than Americans.
Let's say you have a valid, blistering disagreement with an element of American foreign policy. Do I view this as criticism of my government? Yes. Might I disagree? Sure.
What I don't do is claim that criticism of my government's decisions and myself personally cannot be separated (as the original poster argues) or claim that others are "inciting inter-cultural contempt" as the article cites.
What does that even mean? The Ohio State Penitentiary is made up of... normal American people. You can't "separate" these two. So I guess I shouldn't criticize murderers either, lest I criticize all US citizens!
(If you respond that murderers aren't normal citizens, then you're at least partway to understanding why it's possible to "separate" the Chinese government from its citizens.)
If imprisoned murderers are like empowered politicians, then toppling the government is like freeing the murderers. A revolution of the status quo.
That's an obviously ridiculous claim to make; Chinese people do not want the dangerous murderers freed.
In parts of China that do and did have free expression, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the people strongly support democracy and freedom and strongly oppose the CCP.
It is the oppression of the CCP that I oppose. I wish the people of China were free and could choose their government - that would be - will be - a great moment in history.
> In reality, the government of China is made of... normal Chinese people with leadership/bureaucracy skills.
And an absolute dictator who will remain in office for life.