Where Is Xu Zhiyong?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
So when I asked him if, since he did business in China, he supported lifting the US embargo against Cuba, he emphatically said "no, that's completely different." I asked how, but he couldn't come up with a single thing and became pretty annoyed with me.
Whenever I hear stories of these kinds of abuses in China I can't help but to think of the utter hipocrisy of the USA's policy towards Cuba.
Refusing to admit mistakes, assuming that power is right, paying lip service to high-sounding ideals while indiscriminately abrogating freedoms - in this, as in so many other aspects of pride and capitalism, China has learned well from us.
Of course, they have much work to do in strengthening their social institution. But to stand aghast and sling mud at the audacious oppressors across the Pacific - it's a bit rich.
Name one suspected communist, please, who was detained by an authority in the U.S, who was denied a public hearing before a magistrate to challenge the legitimacy of the grounds for the detention or was denied a procedural right customary under English common law, such as the right to a trial by jury.
Palmer and his assistant, John Edgar Hoover, found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number of these suspects were held without trial for a long time. The vast majority were eventually released but Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Mollie Steimer, and 245 other people, were deported to Russia.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcommunist.htm
Like someone in another comment mentioned, there's the modern day issues (Guantanamo), but I don't think it should matter much which country it happens in - the point is, our government isn't a white knight either. In the declaration of independence the words read that all men have such unalienable rights by God (not because of where they are born), and so it is hypocritical for the same political justification and claim of truth to alienate these rights when it is elsewhere.
That said, I am arguing for things that I don't think matter - I do this for clarity. I guess there's also no reason to go into why it doesn't matter here.
These states might each do bad things but we should be exact when speaking about what they do.
Arar was not suspected of communism, but it's a fine example of the US disappearing someone just like China has done to Xu Zhiyong.
To be clear, I think the US is miles (km) ahead of China in regard to human rights. But, both countries need to do better, and as a US citizen, I think I bear more responsibility for the crimes committed by my government than for those committed by China.
I'm sure others can name more people (US citizens too) for whom our country has forgotten about Habeus Corpus
Of course communism had the appeal of being a non-racist ideology, so a lot more innocent (but extreme naive) people got tangled up when HUAC went after the communists. That being said, they're both totalitarian ideologies: I wouldn't want either Nazis or Communists holding public office in the United States, nor do I have any issues with private employers firing either (at least in employment-at-will states).
At that time China was going through Great Leap Forward (mass artificial starvation, with millions dying) and (in the 60s/70s, after HUAC has died down) cultural revolution. Again, a very blood period.
As for illegal detention, I am pretty squarely against it: either these people should be held as POWs or be tried as criminal defendants. Yet illegal detention that happens on the battlefield is much different from illegal detention of a political activist working within the system. If you want to compare apples to apples, I'd look at China's treatment of US prisoners during the Korean war or their treatment of their own Islamic extremists in Xianjing province (yes-- there are real Islamic extremists targeting civilians in China and no, they're not "freedom fighters").
That being said, it's a silly comparison to do irrespective: provided US was as flagrant about human rights as China, that doesn't justify China treating their citizens in the same fashion. Nor does China treating their citizens horribly justify human rights violations by the US. The original article did not claim anything along those lines. Arguing that "two wrongs make a right" is logically fallacious and morally bankrupt.
That's only a matter of degree if you declare the battlefield to be whatever suits you.
(Admittedly, most terrorists don't meet this criteria, and are therefore spies/saboteurs with none of the rights of POWs.)
I just find it hilarious that US journalists would focus their attention on China's political infractions when some really bad #$&%! is still going on in our country. After Obama got elected he still hasn't restored the rights that Bush took away from us. Mainstream US media should spend more time on that. I don't know what's so interesting about this article; it's not like Communist China turned into a totalitarian gov yesterday.
However, this man is very important to China, even though the dunderheads who have stitched him up don't seem to realise that. His detention is a blow to China's credibility and a vast embarrasment to those in the government who are genuine about the rule of law. It is also very bad for Chinese business! His group's penetration of the poisoned milk scandal saved lives, and brought callous criminals to justice.
Hardworking, independent public defenders like Xu Zhiyong are going to be an ever more essential part of the Chinese economy in the future, and to imprison him for imagined crimes against the state is not simply unjust, it is self-defeating!
Vicious, cruel and arbitrary anti-crime photo-ops that ruined peoples and even destroyed people's minds. But still, nearly devoid of political content, except perhaps to reinforce a certain racism.
So, let's be accurate about this guys...
As for massive social revolution, what do you think is happening in China right now? The better part of a billion people are moving out of rural poverty and into the cities in about as big a social revolution as there has ever been.
As for lifting fingers (Man the Mice! Man the Keys!), our intense scrutiny may be all that's required to catalyze the reaction.
Most of the "strife" in China nowadays is ethnic I think.
(Disclaimer time: I'm Taiwanese, not Chinese. My view of China is a bit skewed.)
The unfortunate part is that it's a whole lot of apathy. I'm sure it's not easy, even for a foreigner, to find the heart of some people willing to speak or move against the Chinese government, but so many who I ran in to were casually trying to remain in their own world disjoint from the government. They feel a little rebellious just to support the stores that sell ironic Mao Zeodong merchandise and love to mildly mention that the government is really not that great here. That's about the depth of what I actively observed.
I'll disclaim that I didnt' spend much time talking to those in what would have been the most charged fields (politics or philosophy, perhaps), but the general apathy was sort of disheartening.
It's not all negative though. The educated Chinese are largely embracing the internet and desire to involve themselves more. For many, they give you a surprised look when you ask them about bypassing the firewall: you mean you don't have access to a proxy? Really? I thought everyone did. If this is the face of the new Tank Man, it's definitely going to be a different ride, but the transformative power of an enormous information pipeline plugged into the future leaders of your country still seems pretty portent.
And ethnic strife would need to be the topic of a whole essay. China has cultural problems there, too.
As far as references to a 'Chinese psyche' go, that's skating awfully close to 'the Oriental mind'. You really want to generalize over a billion people?
As for the Tank Man bit, would it change your mind if I told you I was half Chinese (I'm not, but still)? It's like saying "there's a revolutionary streak in the American mindset" -- totally innocuous.
Damn, talk about miscommunication ...
Separately, the size of the country may make a revolution difficult though because of the amount of coordination (explicit or not). The government can probably stop any small revolution but its (more) doubtful they could stop a large one. I guess this means that the more pleasant sort of revolution is more likely to be successful (if a revolution is going to happen at all).
The large number of unattached young men with little to no prospect of getting married provides a volatile substrate for almost any social movement that promises to upset the current order and bring it's supporters to prominence and power.
The traditional solution to the problem of excess males is war. But the manifestation of male frustration can take many forms. Art movements, religious or political devotion, founding startups. Given the size and spectrum of China's population I would expect to see all of these and more to be tried by young men who know that they have few if any prospects of marriage without some great success in hand.
I'm not so sure about that. I think in most dictatorships most people already know that something is not quite right. Spreading that knowledge further is good - but the other guys still have the guns...
This move in China involves putting an end to the most mild appearance of opposition - it's a bad move for any efforts at mild change - which the protests in Iran began as.
Of course, since despite it's democratic form, Iran is also very repressive, the protests which began as efforts at mild change often veered towards more extreme efforts.
Indeed, I suspect that every time another repressive regime feels some heat, the Chinese communist party gets a little more nervous. But naturally neither I nor anyone else is able to read the leaderships' mind...
But, we've also got the huge difference that China, and Chinese people, are simply different. I don't even know where to begin in describing how different Chinese people in China fundamentally are from Americans in America. It's like when I see comments made by people such as "I wonder how the Chinese people can stand <insert thing here>", I immediately think to myself that it's a complete non-issue, just an accepted fact of life, for all of my Chinese relatives living in China. Also, things such as the one child act don't help - you've literally got an entire generation of spoiled only childs, and let me tell you, many of them are remarkably spoiled in the cities. You've got this feeling of collectivism which still very much exists, the "we" taking precedence over the "I", not in the oversimplified hive-mind way that most Westerners perceive it as, but rather something more inbetween. It always amazes me that people in China can feel such a sense of duty to their country (such as a student feeling it's his/her duty to the country to do well in school, something that pretty much never happens in the USA), but yet also feel such apathy for other people around them (to a degree that also doesn't happen in the USA ... not saying we're saints here who never pass by homeless people on the streets without even looking at them by any means, but the degree is still different).
And the list goes on and on, I still don't know where to begin or where to end. I know I'm not comparing China to Yugoslavia or Hungary here, but the perception gap even to this day between China and the USA is so great (and more importantly, so much greater than what most people think it is) that I can't imagine it being much less for China and other situations. Point being, a revolution might be peaceful, or it might be violent, or it might be somewhere inbetween, but none of these outcomes would have anything to do with the situations that led to Hungary's outcome being the way it was, or Yugoslavia's being the way it was.
As another participant point out in another recent HN thread, China has a long historical experience with regional splits and loss of authority by the central government. To speak of China as having a 3,000 year history (as one entity) is hardly more accurate than to speak of Rome (the empire) as having a 2,500 year history. There is some cultural continuity from the very beginning in both cases, but twentieth century Chinese history was full of years of regional warlords and a very prolonged major civil war (which arguably hasn't ended yet).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Security_Act_%28Malays...
For example, the recent "Teoh Beng Hock" case happened in Malaysia. This guy was found death "at the premises of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission headquarters" after he had been taken there for questioning the same day.
Malaysian police classified his death as "sudden death". Committing suicide? He supposed to marry his fiancee who has a 3 month-old prenancy on this coming September. Can you imagine a guy like this would commit suicide?
I am Malaysian myself(currently in US). I usually do not care anything happening in Malaysia. But, I really think that this incident is just too suspicious for me to believe in the government anymore.