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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

These forces are used to spy on, harass, and oppress Chinese dissidents and human rights advocates. You can find many other news sources focused on that:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+police+new+york&iar=news&i...

Including the NY Times:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+police+new+york+site%3Anyt...

Why did the Economist omit that entirely (unless I overlooked something)? Also, why repeat Chinese government claims that these are criminals, using the word 'alleged' only in the first paragraph. Xi's crackdowns on fraud, etc. are at least in part crackdowns on political enemies - it's a basic tactic in the dictator's playbook.

I haven't read The Economist in a long time. Do they look the other way on China?

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No they don't.

I can highly recommend their podcast series on Xi Jinping, The Prince

https://www.economist.com/theprincepod

I think you're overestimating the importance of politics and underestimating the prevalence of people wanting to make a quick buck.

An active warzone like Myanmar is not a good choice when you're a dissident looking for safety, but quite convenient when you're running a highly profitable criminal enterprise and can get an armed gang to give you protection for a cut.

Now, many of the 54,000 that quanfan is claimed to have returned from Myanmar likely weren't there entirely voluntarily (recruiters promise people high wages and generously charter a bus to get them to their new workplace; failing to mention that it's going to be a cross-border trip, they won't be allowed to leave until they've "paid back their debts", and room and board aren't free) and others are only providing ancillary services to the gangs (shops, restaurants, bars...) and didn't commit any crimes beyond crossing the border illegally, but from what I've read about people who were enslaved in Myanmar and managed to escape (e.g. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rA9JHSPQJWjnjgaqC-B76g ) the drain caused by quanfan led to personnel shortages for the gangs, making it easier to get away.

I don’t see how this article can be read as “looking the other way” in any sense.

The alternative of "looking the other way" is "tried to fight it but China won".

One way you can push propaganda as an agent is not to promote something obviously bad, especially if you would never get away with it, but to criticise it less than it deserves.

Not saying it's happening in this case, but suppose you're the Economist and want to win favour with the Chinese. You might consider an article criticising this activity as infringing on the sovereignty of the west and others in the pursuit of justice, rather than in the pursuit of destroying political opposition.

> You might consider an article criticising this activity as infringing on the sovereignty of the west and others in the pursuit of justice

Yes, it reads to me like an implicit justification, an argument that the issues are merely legal, about sovereignty, and not moral and political, an attack on innocent people and on freedom.

Come to think about it. Russia took a page from the NATO supported war or terrorism euth invasion of Ukraine (badly executed as it was). And so did China, Guantanamo Bay is still not closed, prpably all the other black sites neither. And back then e.g. Germany did nothing when people were illegally flown their from German territory. In fact, the foreign minister of Germany at the time (who did exactly nothing about those kidnappings) is now German President and was re-elected for a second term last February.

I don't know about China, but Russia took a page from their own playbook since war with Ukraine is not much different with what happened with Georgia (South Ossetia, Abkhazia), Moldova (Transnistria), Chechnya, many years before the start of the "War on Terror".

The wording “suspect” comes to mind. Are they? If they are in fact dissidents.

> One way you can push propaganda as an agent is not to promote something obviously bad, especially if you would never get away with it, but to criticise it less than it deserves.

Technically yes, but this argument is on its own very dangerous - it's one small step from turning into "by not denouncing this thing strongly and visibly enough, you're actually supporting the enemy, and therefore on their side". This has been a common argument used by all kinds of groups throughout history to stir up conflicts, justify violence and abuse.

It doesn't omit it entirely:

> Operation Fox Hunt is a worldwide effort to repatriate people it describes as corrupt officials (the FBI says many are also wanted for political reasons)

I'd be curious to know the numbers of people being extrajudicially extradited in this way for political reasons vs actual crime, but I can't imagine those numbers are readily available.

It's 100% correlated. Being unaligned with the CCP is "moral" corruption. It's a good old witch hunt. The CCP is obviously super-corrupt itself but it is not self observing.

Thanks, I overlooked that.

Or maybe a newspaper that was known to peddle Iraq War propaganda shouldn't be treated as the source of truth when it comes to known about America's enemies. I'm not saying that it's wrong in this instance, but it's definitely sensational.

The Economist trusts that its readers can come to their own conclusion when it comes to extrajudicial extraditions. Just because they said something positive about China's motivations, doesn't mean they're kowtowing to China.

NYT fired editors and journalists over that

> New York Times: we were wrong on Iraq

2004

https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...

> NYT fired editors and journalists over that

This isn't quite what the article says. It mentions Howell Raines, but he seemed to have been ousted due to staff discontent as well as a plagiarism scandal [1].

The article also mentions Judith Miller, and her case was interesting to say the least. The NYT assigned her to work closely with American intelligence, so of course she's going to report what they have to say, so she was somewhat of a scapegoat. Then, in 2005, she gets arrested at the behest of the CIA for refusing to disclose the leaker in the Plame scandal. Only then, over a year after the NYT apologized about being wrong in Iraq, did they pressure her to resign.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jun-06-na-nyt6-...

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