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China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

foreignpolicy.com

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Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#121

Post by angersock »

dang wrote: post #105
angersock wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing a lot of damage control on China stuff since that partnership thing was announced.

That's quite an insinuation. Fortunately I have a long history of posts to HN, and anyone bored enough to search through them will easily see that it's not true. To me the weird thing is running across a smear like this at all; it's surreal when someone is sure they know what you're thinking. YC doesn't cross my mind while posting these. What has changed on HN over the last year or two is an uptick in nationalistic f…

> It has to do with the purpose of this site—intellectual curiosity—being incompatible with tribalism.

"You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you."

More seriously, though, the highbrow dismissal of very real problems as tribalism on the same site that frequently has slapfights over technology and news/advertising spam of various forms seems a little much.

Like, if the answer is just "Hey, knock it off we don't want flamewars" that's totally respectable...but the other arguments you've used come off as really smug and out-of-touch.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#122

Post by sitkack »

clamprecht wrote: post #90
Razengan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think China will look back at this in a generation and think, we did the right thing. Honest question: How many people in China currently know, care and/or feel regret about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...

My question (as an American) is: what ugly thing happened in the US that most of us don't know about?

"Buying" human experimentation data from Japan in exchange for amnesty for prosecution of war crimes (Patton).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

https://warpardons.wordpress.com/unit-731/

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#123

Post by mhh__ »

clamprecht wrote: post #90
Razengan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think China will look back at this in a generation and think, we did the right thing. Honest question: How many people in China currently know, care and/or feel regret about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...

My question (as an American) is: what ugly thing happened in the US that most of us don't know about?

MKULTRA? Difficult to guess how many americans/Chinese know about a topic, however.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#124

Post by retrogradeorbit »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #11
seibelj wrote: post #2

China is a communist dictatorship where you can be arrested and possibly murdered for saying the wrong thing. So this is not very surprising.

"communist dictatorship" is inexact enough to be outright dishonest. Their economy is obviously capitalist. And although Xi has been leaning towards more dictator-like behavior, they haven't been a dictatorship since Mao. It's more like a giant bureaucracy. They have a process, they have regular handovers of power. It's not "I am the law".

"obviously capitalist"? It may be a market economy, but it's certainly not capitalist. Proceeds of the investment of capital are not free to be distributed amongst the investors. Formation of enterprise is not free and voluntary. Exchange rates are not set by the market. Money transactions are strictly controlled. Businesses are not allowed to hold funds in forex. The list goes on and on. I'm not sure you are aware of how business is done in China, you may just be seeing lots of business and then be assuming it must be capitalism.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#125

Post by jamiepenney »

mhh__ wrote: post #123
clamprecht wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question (as an American) is: what ugly thing happened in the US that most of us don't know about?

MKULTRA? Difficult to guess how many americans/Chinese know about a topic, however.

MKULTRA is my go to, because it sounds just like a crazy conspiracy theory (down to the wacky name), but it actually happened.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#126

Post by tptacek »

angersock wrote: post #92
dang wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People apply the word 'fact' loosely when it comes to topics they feel strongly about. The point is contentious and disputable in a bunch of ways. That's not necessarily bad, but it is when combined with a declamatory style. Just to be clear though: I'm not making a point about China. I'm making a point about how terrible Hacker News threads become when people allow themselves to post this way. This problem is gettin…

You're doing a lot of damage control on China stuff since that partnership thing was announced.

What a gross thing to say about Dan.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#127

Post by thatjsguy »

ptenk wrote: post #82

The sinophobia in these comments always makes me uncomfortable because it’s usually underlied with overall anti-Asian sentiment. It reminds me that I don’t belong in America, we still live in a white world.

Internment camps are a very real and valid reason to be afraid of China...

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#128

Post by dang »

angersock wrote: post #121
dang wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite an insinuation. Fortunately I have a long history of posts to HN, and anyone bored enough to search through them will easily see that it's not true. To me the weird thing is running across a smear like this at all; it's surreal when someone is sure they know what you're thinking. YC doesn't cross my mind while posting these. What has changed on HN over the last year or two is an uptick in nationalistic f…

> It has to do with the purpose of this site—intellectual curiosity—being incompatible with tribalism. "You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you." More seriously, though, the highbrow dismissal of very real problems as tribalism on the same site that frequently has slapfights over technology and news/advertising spam of various forms seems a little much. Like, if the answer is just "…

People are welcome to post on "very real problems" if they do so thoughtfully and substantively.

The moderation issue is garden-variety internet flamewar and requiring people to adhere to the site guidelines. That is mundane stuff, regardless of how much rhetoric people pour out on the internet.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#129

Post by dang »

seibelj wrote: post #120
dang wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite an insinuation. Fortunately I have a long history of posts to HN, and anyone bored enough to search through them will easily see that it's not true. To me the weird thing is running across a smear like this at all; it's surreal when someone is sure they know what you're thinking. YC doesn't cross my mind while posting these. What has changed on HN over the last year or two is an uptick in nationalistic f…

I have personal and philosophical reasons for being anti socialist and anti communist. I have family that has been killed because of people supporting government actions, like China in the linked article, where they imprison and murder innocent people. I will try to be less inflammatory in the future, but I believe in western ideals. I think watering down criticism of authoritian regimes is a bit rich coming from a w…

I respect your story, as well as those of the many other people on this site whose families have been through unspeakable trauma. Nobody's asking you to "water down" criticism. On the contrary, we're asking people to make more informative comments, instead of just posting empty rhetoric.

Generic ideological comments and denunciations of entire countries are examples of empty, fiery rhetoric that we don't want on HN. Why? Because their information content is low, they provoke others into posting worse, and they lead to extremely predictable discussion. The main thing a site dedicated to intellectual curiosity needs to do is not be predictable, so HN is a bad place to fight the same fights over and over.

In case it helps, I've been asking people for years on this site not to bash each other's countries, and the countries that have come up would make a long list. There's no national bias in it.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#130

Post by everybodyknows »

jorblumesea wrote: post #67
pnathan wrote: post #60

This is extremely wrong. The official mood in China seems to be swinging ethno-nationalist, which is a recipe for human rights violations in any country, let alone one with limited juridical recourse and free speech. I don't think China will look back at this in a generation and think, we did the right thing .

Hah, you think the country that ground their own citizens up with tank treads and washed them down the drain cares?

Missing context here being that this specific allegation was made, within the past few months, by a British foreign service official who was posted to Beijing at the time.
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