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China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

economist.com

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Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#221

Post by maxerickson »

kinsomo wrote: post #163
madengr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems many Americans are willing to crap all over the 2nd Amendment, which is specifically in place to prevent totalitarian government.

> Seems many Americans are willing to crap all over the 2nd Amendment, which is specifically in place to prevent totalitarian government. Exactly. If America has learned anything from the past half century of foreign military adventures, it should be that a big modern Army can't easily defeat a motivated insurgency that has the support and sympathy in the local population. The 2nd Amendment may have a lot of costs, b…

I wonder if the winning side of a US military civil war would capture territory "nation building" style or if they would just use asymmetric reprisals. If it's the latter, civilian gun ownership is just going to get neighbors of insurgents blown up.

I'm also pretty sure that Iraqi civilians didn't have much access to small arms prior to the destabilization of the country. Didn't slow down the insurgency any.

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#222

Post by true_religion »

Laforet wrote: post #199
cabalamat wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I very much doubt it is sustainable Autocratic regimes have lasted for as long as 3000 years (pharonic Egypt). I'm sure lots of people want to believe the Chinese system won't work; but that doesn't make it true.

Ancient Egypt seems to be the exception in history. Such reliable agriculture and continued population concentration around the Nile are very peculiar situations that have no parallels elsewhere. If Egypt was truly superior, it really should not have been so easily conquered by Ptolemy and then Rome which both had a much less authoritarian society.

The arguement was that it was sustainable, not that it made Egypt superior to all less authoritarian countries everywhere, for all time.

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#223

Post by woodandsteel »

Perhaps the most important reason authoritarian regimes fail in the modern world has to do with decision making. In order to make good decisions, you need accurate information and a good discussion of alternatives and their likely outcomes.

The modern world is so complex and changes so much that the only way to get this is a free flow of information in which everyone can honestly say what is happening in their particular part of the society, and everyone can make suggestions and offer evaluations.

Authoritarian regimes shut all of this off, such as through turning the press into a governmental propaganda machine, and dictating what university professors can research.

The consequence is the top decision makers live in an epistemic bubble and become increasingly out of touch with reality, and increasingly subject to group-think. And that in turn leads to poorer and poorer decisions, and eventually the system comes to an end. I think it is quite predictable that this is where Xi's regime is heading over the long term.

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#224

Post by LearnerHerzog »

Barrin92 wrote: post #18
purple-again wrote: post #10

This paywall is defeating all my usual tricks, can someone help me out? On an iPhone and the web link didn’t work, nor did going through twitter or Facebook. Thanks in advance for any help.

>This paywall is defeating all my usual tricks, can someone help me out? Paying for the content ought to do the trick.

What an ignorant and patronizing thing to say. Does your daddy have enough money for us too?

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#225

Post by Barrin92 »

LearnerHerzog wrote: post #224
Barrin92 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This paywall is defeating all my usual tricks, can someone help me out? Paying for the content ought to do the trick.

What an ignorant and patronizing thing to say. Does your daddy have enough money for us too?

I don't really see the point of the excursion into my private life but I pay for my newspaper subscriptions myself, and I'm not really sure that being unable to pay for content somehow justifies stealing it.

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#226

Post by mr_toad »

kinsomo wrote: post #163
madengr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems many Americans are willing to crap all over the 2nd Amendment, which is specifically in place to prevent totalitarian government.

> Seems many Americans are willing to crap all over the 2nd Amendment, which is specifically in place to prevent totalitarian government. Exactly. If America has learned anything from the past half century of foreign military adventures, it should be that a big modern Army can't easily defeat a motivated insurgency that has the support and sympathy in the local population. The 2nd Amendment may have a lot of costs, b…

Successful insurgencies these days are supplied with heavy weapons and training by outside powers. You’re not going to do anything against armour and air power with small arms.

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#228

Post by 323454 »

s2g wrote: post #205
adventured wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situations don't compare well, even though the US too often uses terrorism as a guise to pursue global political goals. Domestically there are 3.3 million Muslims in the US. There are ~50 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with most of the former detainees having been released without charge. Some of them were charged as enemy combatants and or terrorists. And Guantanamo is widely considered a black mark on the US repu…

No, the US just goes and bombs their homes instead. and at home the US strips away freedoms from their own people with the justification of "national security".

If you're a US Muslim then your home is probably the US.

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#229

Post by emptybits »

ihsw2 wrote: post #209
emptybits wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treatment identical to Han Chinese would be a great start.

They do get treatment identical -- any Han committing the same crimes would be exposed to the full force of the law.

You refer to a very qualified and narrow "identical". In the general sense, before an Uighur commits a crime, are they treated in an equal manner to a Han Chinese before they commit a crime? In all manners of expression, association, travel and employment, for example?

Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other

#230

Post by kinsomo »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #190
kinsomo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other news, the US, NATO and friends in this century alone destroyed Iraq, Libya, almost destroyed Syria and Yemen and did a few other nasty things that resulted in at least a million dead. Do you have a big enough item 5 for that? Destroyed? You'll need to provide some pretty strong proof to convince me those countries aren't there anymore. Also the Syria and Yemen are civil wars. Don't know how you think it's…

Proof? Libya has currently been broken into four or more warring states, each controlling some part of Libya. >Also the Syria and Yemen are civil wars. Don't know how you think it's reasonable to pin that on the "US, NATO and friends". By providing the various sides with arms and support. Though I think you can put much of the blame of the civil wars staring on the US, even if you disagree the wars are still dramatic…

>> Also the Syria and Yemen are civil wars. Don't know how you think it's reasonable to pin that on the "US, NATO and friends".

> Though I think you can put much of the blame of the civil wars staring on the US, even if you disagree the wars are still dramatically different than it would be without US support.

I think that's profoundly ignorant and belies lazy thinking, especially in relation to Syria.

The precise cause of the civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime [1] [2] [3] [4].

As for "providing the various sides with arms and support," I would be gobsmacked if you could show the US provided arms to Assad, especially in significant numbers. I recall significant dithering by the Obama administration over the level of support to give the rebels, and the fact that the US withheld arms to the rebels (over fears of inadvertently supporting Islamic extremists) is what allowed ISIS to grow so strong and eclipse the more liberal rebel groups.

> the wars are still dramatically different than it would be without US support.

If only because the support of other nations would have had a relatively greater effect [5].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_events_of_the_Syrian...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/world/middleeast/26syria....

[4] https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/11/22/syria-s-path-from-c...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...

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