Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 280 posts

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#61

Post by [deleted] »

bilbo0s wrote: post #24
justicezyx wrote: post #10

A side note: The terrorist attacks (what the CCP states) in Xinjiang was rampant. Every years hundreds of innocent people were killed. And due to media control, those reports seldom see publicity outside of small forums in the first a few months following the events. ps1: Whether or not those attacks are done by terrorists, or oppressed minorities, I have no comments. ps2: This not a defend. Merely suggest one of the…

"...Whether or not those attacks are done by terrorists, or oppressed minorities, I have no comments...." ??? If "...oppressed minorities..." commit acts wherein "...hundreds of innocent people were killed..." aren't they "terrorists"? Or am I thinking about this whole thing wrong?

[deleted]

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#62

Post by seanmcdirmid »

stevenjohns wrote: post #20
monocasa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uighers may be the first population to sign up for satellite subscriptions If they can at all. Uighers can't even buy a knife without it being engraved with a QR code of their national ID number.

I recently traveled to China and went to a fairly remote area dominated by Uyghurs and didn't see anything that would indicate that level of oppression. They seemed quite free to do what they wanted to between themselves (such as buying a knife) although I imagine their political rights wouldn't be very strong.

I've been to Xinjiang also (Urumuqi and other parts of Beijiang). I didn't see a Uyghur get beat up or anything, but this was (a) way back in 2006 before the riots of 2009 and (b) I don't think we would notice much as tourists even IF there was something going on.

Beijing used to have a lot of Uyghurs before the 2008 Olympics, but they were mostly all driven out and not allowed to return after the event.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#63

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nerfhammer wrote: post #50
thinkpad20 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xian at least has thousands of years of history. On the bullet train in China you’ll often pass by cities of millions of people which might have been mere hamlets a generation or two ago. The size of China, its economic renaissance and the fact that good jobs in China are almost exclusively found in urban areas has led to a vast migration towards city centers which is pretty much unprecedented in human history.

It's almost as if growing cities are economic growth multipliers and perhaps even a key part of that whole civilization thing. Meanwhile over here it's taken as assumed that cities cannot and/or should not grow ever again.

America's and Europe's urbanization rates have basically stabilized. I'm not sure where growth would come from, except via immigration and from other less prosperous cities (e.g. moving from Detroit to Seattle).

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#64

Post by toomanybeersies »

analyst74 wrote: post #6
otoburb wrote: post #3

>> For the next 10 months, web access would be almost nonexistent in Xinjiang, a vast region larger than Texas with a population of more than 20 million. It was one of the most widespread, longest internet shutdowns ever. SpaceX's plans to launch their first set of satellites for their Starlink broadband constellation[1]. Uighers may be the first population to sign up for satellite subscriptions, although the Chinese…

This is exciting news! I wonder if this will trigger space warfare, which might push nations to invest more into space, and maybe we'll finally become space-faring species in my lifetime!

Or alternatively space warfare will trigger Kessler Syndrome, and we'll be trapped on this planet until we find a way to clean up all the debris.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#65

Post by girzel »

stevenjohns wrote: post #20
monocasa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uighers may be the first population to sign up for satellite subscriptions If they can at all. Uighers can't even buy a knife without it being engraved with a QR code of their national ID number.

I recently traveled to China and went to a fairly remote area dominated by Uyghurs and didn't see anything that would indicate that level of oppression. They seemed quite free to do what they wanted to between themselves (such as buying a knife) although I imagine their political rights wouldn't be very strong.

Repression in Urumqi will likely be an order of magnitude more intense than in smaller municipalities around the province. The CCP is still working off their own revolutionary playbook from the 30s and 40s, when they effected change through organization. The "right to assemble" is one of the most feared rights in China.

Enforcing QR codes on knives is one thing. The real weapon is forbidding all social media apps except for (the thoroughly government monitored) WeChat.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#66

Post by knowaveragejoe »

PricelessValue wrote: post #37
ng12 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? Not sure about you but I don't have to put my government issued ID on my kitchen knives.

> Did you read the article? Yes. > Not sure about you but I don't have to put my government issued ID on my kitchen knives. Neither do I. But that's because I love freedom. What's the difference between ids on or for knives and ids on or for guns? It sounds ridiculous to us because our murders are by guns. But in china people kill each other with knives. https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-atta...…

If we had as few deaths from knives as China has head from knife attacks as we in the US have die from firearms in a single month, maybe even weeks, it'd be historically significant.

Add to that the social utility aspect that someone else mentioned. Firearms are explicitly designed to make it easy to hit a target with lead from far away, which just so happens to coincide with killing people in perhaps the most efficient way possible(barring weapons of mass destruction).

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#67

Post by smallnamespace »

ghostcluster wrote: post #13
vondur wrote: post #4

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the Chinese authorities want. What everyone else wants isn't their concern.

they actually have a very tense, tenuous relationship with their citeznry and its propensity for public demonstrations that keep the government in line. there is a breaking point they know they have to avoid. > The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8700 “mass group incidents” in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005.[2] In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences esti…

At least a few years ago, de Toqueville's 'On the Old Regime and the Revolution' was on the Communist Party's reading list [1].

The Chinese Civil War of '49 and then the Cultural Revolution (where most of the then-current Party leadership suffered) is still within living memory of the ruling class. Of course they understand that there is an implicit contract between themselves and the rest of society, even if it the terms of the deal are not arrived at in a democratic fashion.

The question is not whether China will eventually devolve more political power to the populace——that is almost a given, considering the growing economic and cultural power of the middle class; it's whether this will happen suddenly and violently via another revolution, or gradually by the Party bringing dissenting voices into the fold widening the circle of acceptable, public political discourse.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2013/01/15/chinese-societ...

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#68

Post by gugudollz »

There has never been internet shutdown in Kenya. TV stations were switched off but never internet.

If China establishes autocratic regimes in the global South it will seize those governments and leverage that to gain power over the West. It's myopic to think their goal is anything less than absolute domination of the world.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#69

Post by namelost »

chaostheory wrote: post #30
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The leading surveillance systems in the world aren't in china. It's in britain. It's in the US How do you even measure that? I have no idea what you're are saying means?

With the UK, this is already well known. They have about a camera per 14 people give or take. Post 9-11, in the US it's also spread. Typically it's in really crime-ridden areas where law and order is barely sustainable (yes these exist). The only one I can't comment much on is Russia. Given that they essentially have a dictatorship, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a big program as well. imo the state of the art s…

On the plus side, there is no law against face coverings in the UK. You can legally walk along the street wearing a guy falkes mask, motorcycle helmet or niqab. Nor is there any requirement to carry ID.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#70

Post by toomanybeersies »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #27

How much do you want to bet that a lot of these technologies are built on open source software? If it was a company that was licensing software to them, there would be someone to hold accountable, but with open source, you just make and release something and it is not your problem who uses it for what.

This is the most bizarre argument against OSS that I've ever read.
Post reply on HN