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China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

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

#221

Post by naiveai »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #108
pentae wrote: post #99

So can anyone tell me why we should support what China is doing? Why should any entrepreneur or tech worker go there and support this government? How come China seems to get a free pass on human rights issues like this by western society?

Because keeping a large diverse country stable and safe is very difficult, and a failure causes enormous tragedy. The approach that works to keep the US stable does not always work well in other countries. To keep the billion people who live in China safe from civil war and rampant terrorism is already a great achievement -- even it comes at the expense of some nice things such as human rights. In fact, China manages…

> To keep the billion people who live in China safe from civil war and rampant terrorism is already a great achievement -- even it comes at the expense of some nice things such as human rights.

Some nice things? Nice things??? What the actual lord upon almighty.

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

#222

Post by sonnhy »

They talk about China yet still a few realize that we are as well going into that direction. CCTV are everywhere, Facebook and Google have our identities, what we like, what we look for, what will be our probable next move (also in terms of real world position) and our routines. If ever a Chinese that feel safe in his home comes to the outer world (to us) he would say "how could this nation is so undeveloped to not already have a better security likes us" and we would be amazed and reply how he does not, instead, feel so stalked in his state. But still, if we were to go on a third world nation we would ask the same and the local people would reply at us the same way as we did to the chinese.

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

#223

Post by nickik »

woodandsteel wrote: post #133
Barrin92 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably safe to assume that China wants to increase its influence, but accusing any country of plans of 'absolute domination' based on domestic surveillance probably says more about the psyche of the accuser than anyone else

Where would you say China is trying to go in the long-term, internationally? I get the impression it wants to be the global hegemon, but perhaps I am wrong.

Based on what? What has China done in the last 40 years that would even close to imply that?

There is still a part of China that is not even controlled by China (Taiwan). They are surrounded by lots of other powerful countries, Russia, India, Japan and so on. The US military is driving around right in front of them.

They are getting accused of wanting global hegemony based on thing like building bases in the South China Sea. Something that other countries have done before China.

Seems to me if anything China has behaved incredibly passive. Maybe in the back of their minds they have the idea that this strategy will lead to some kind of soft hegemony but that is just speculation based on nothing.

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

#224

Post by zachguo »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #219
zachguo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in China. When I was little, there was a time that if a Uyghurs person get on the bus, everybody else on the bus would get off. Even nowadays people tend to get nervous when they see Uyghurs wandering on street.

Replace "when I was little" with "1930s Germany" and "Uyghurs" with "Jews". A seed of distrust and paranoia was sown and was allowed to grow. That does not mean it has any basis in fact. You should also look at how the Chinese government has oppressed the Uyghurs (and Tibetans and Taiwanese, to name a few).

I know biased stereotype is bad, and I totally agree not all Uyghurs are bad. I went to Uyghurs restaurant regularly and had Uyghurs classmates in college too.

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

#225

Post by devwinportable »

yusuke10 wrote: post #102
pentae wrote: post #99

So can anyone tell me why we should support what China is doing? Why should any entrepreneur or tech worker go there and support this government? How come China seems to get a free pass on human rights issues like this by western society?

So the short answer is, don't support China. Long answer is - reduce buying stuff from China. - reduce buying stuff on aliexpress or alibaba or even amazon. try buying local - call out leaders and entrepreneurs on social media when they are acquiescing/favorable to China (Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, etc) - try to start up manufacturing of hardwares in your city/state/country - call out China's…

+1 especially with China backing North Korean regime publicly/privately

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #155
librexpr wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the families of the 120 000 people in the re-education camp? Or the families of the people who's organs are harvested, or who are imprisoned for being mildly critical of the government? Are they safe? It's easy to excuse horrible acts by saying it's for the greater good, but it's rarely actually the case. Chinese civilization won't collapse if they stop harvesting organs and imprisoning people who are even…

About re-education camps and imprisonment for being critical of the government. Horrible acts are occasionally better than the alternative, if you think of the number of lives lost compared to the number of lives saved. I am not sure that these actions by the Chinese government are perfectly justified by this argument. But I think it's possible . Often, governments fall and civil wars start from a tiny spark of seemi…

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by fdsak »

sonnhy wrote: post #222

They talk about China yet still a few realize that we are as well going into that direction. CCTV are everywhere, Facebook and Google have our identities, what we like, what we look for, what will be our probable next move (also in terms of real world position) and our routines. If ever a Chinese that feel safe in his home comes to the outer world (to us) he would say "how could this nation is so undeveloped to not a…

I think Chinese are not that smart to use some fancy words like "freedom of speech" "democracy" "individual liberty" but still doing same things as all other is doing. The problem here is how some country builds narrative and justification around her actions.

Digital age is double edge sword and everyone is going to bleed under the pretext of security.

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

#228

Post by lorenzhs »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #64
analyst74 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The risk of Kessler Syndrome is being exaggerated a lot on HN. These new, very large satellite constellations aren't in stable orbits, they only last for a few years before decaying naturally. So even if every satellite there were to be destroyed by some magical event, the debris would re-enter the atmosphere within at most a couple of years. It would be quite bad if geostationary orbits became unusable, but there are way fewer satellites there, and GEO is becoming less important for many of its traditional applications (e.g. communication, see for example the spacex starlink project which just had its first two test satellites launched, or planet labs' constellation of small and cheap imaging satellites). Much of this is due to a reduction in launch prices and a focus on many small and cheap satellites, instead of few large and expensive ones.

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

#229

Post by dandare »

westiseast wrote: post #220
dandare wrote: post #201

Without pointing a finger, I will say I would be really surprised if this discussion - and HN in general - was not subject to a discourse control by paid state agents (sophisticated trolls) from China and elsewhere. Assuming that it is, what can we learn or do to miting such influences? Asking for independent source to all claims is obviously the first step.

So I've been in trouble on HN (probably rightly so) once before for pointing the finger. With that in mind... The problem is that 'their' only objective is to undermine 'our' goal of having a balanced, honest discussion that arrives at some kind of valid, valuable truth. If a troll or discourse control agent can undermine that process, then they've 'won'. And it's pretty easy to do. Actually, demanding sources is a g…

I myself am not aware of all such patterns. Where can I learn more?

Now that I think of it, an anonymous discussion is probably not protectable from well sponsored discourse control attempts.

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

#230

Post by [deleted] »

ghostcluster wrote: post #115
kashprime wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is not whether China will eventually devolve more political power to the populace——that is almost a given This idea was popular in 2013 when this article was written, but Xi's regime has indeed shown that greater prosperity can be had with increased repression. Turmoil in America only underlines this.

> greater prosperity can be had with increased repressio for now, anyway. plenty of looming societal issues remain uncertain until we see how they unfold: their aging population, lack of social safety net, mounting domestic unrest, increasing lack of labor cost competitiveness, etc.

[deleted]
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