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China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

washingtonpost.com

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Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#171

Post by siidooloo »

bauhw wrote: post #68
CydeWeys wrote: post #4

At this point I think I'm too afraid to ever go to China. You can't get justice there, and you can be swept up into some stupid diplomatic spat. Don't they realize how short-sighted this is? This is incredibly harmful to tourism.

99% of the tourism in China is domestic. Foreigner shouldn't have white cards on the law because of tourism, that's arrogant and unhealthy. I was afraid of China because of these random news. But when I finally went there in September, I was surprised as all the internet fear mongering was wrong. When you read your local newspaper and see a murder, are you afraid to go out ? No because it's an outlier, as is the case…

Why should you have to avoid political talk? Why shouldn’t you be allowed to talk about whatever you want?

Also, your grammar errors arn’t those typically made by a Francophone. This is a tell.

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#172

Post by gpm »

chillacy wrote: post #140
adventured wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Properly governments operate by the consent of those they govern. Gangs rule territory and the people within it almost strictly by violence. The closest similar in governments is a dictatorship, which must rule by the constant arbitrary application of violence to keep people terrified. A proper government operates by the peaceful consent - representative government, democratic systems, constitutional rights protectio…

Historically governments absolutely did need to kill people abroad to exist. The US has fought wars of independence and territory, it's had a war with britain, canada, and the mexico (spain). It's just that now we have agreed upon turf lines. In other places of the world where no such agreement exists, governments are still killing people.

Strictly speaking the US never had a war with Canada, it had a second war with Britain (Canada wasn't a thing yet).

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#173

Post by magduf »

3pt14159 wrote: post #71
mikeash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was already a convicted drug trafficker. I don’t see any indication that his original 15-year sentence was improper. It is possible that he was falsely convicted, of course, but I don’t know that this is more likely in China than elsewhere. Suddenly changing his sentence to death is rather suspicious, but at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. Random anecdote: I just got…

Either China is doing this so they can have something to retreat on that seems gracious and careful (i.e., it's a complete ploy) or they're completely misreading Canadian sentiment. Canadians tend to give and give and bend and bend, but it really comes to it they snap in a way that I don't think the Chinese understand. We have way more leverage over China than they have over us. We sell them commodities. They sell us…

>If we start banning Chinese phones we'll buy American ones come in instead.

Huh? America doesn't make any phones, and worse, simply does not even have the technology to make phones if they wanted to. America does not have the technology needed to make the screens for them, most notably: the screen technology is all in Asia.

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#174

Post by seanmcdirmid »

foldr wrote: post #105
3pt14159 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either China is doing this so they can have something to retreat on that seems gracious and careful (i.e., it's a complete ploy) or they're completely misreading Canadian sentiment. Canadians tend to give and give and bend and bend, but it really comes to it they snap in a way that I don't think the Chinese understand. We have way more leverage over China than they have over us. We sell them commodities. They sell us…

>If we start banning Chinese phones we'll buy American ones come in instead. Which American phones are these? The iPhone isn't made in the US, it's made by Foxconn.

Most of the IP/software and profit in an iPhone comes from and goes to a US company. Most of the components in an iPhone aren’t from China (nor the USA). Yes, it is assembled in China, but it isn’t accurate to say it is a Chinese product.

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#175

Post by askmike »

Insanity wrote: post #107
maccio92 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a US citizen _look_? Last I checked we were an incredibly diverse nation.

Well, I meant what they think a US citizen would look like. For example, if you look Asian, you might still be a US citizen but more likely they'd treat you differently. I'm saying this as someone who is married to a Mexican and crosses the US border by car. In general the experiences have been good by the way - just not all the time. I'm just saying that it could be influenced by the way you look.

(not big in American ethnicity but)

I think his point is that "looking like a US citizen" is basically either being European, native American or African American. Which I guess is kind of like everyone except for people who look like Asian, South American or from the Middle East.

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#176

Post by magduf »

fermienrico wrote: post #77
Insanity wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is different when you don't _look_ like you're a US citizen.

I look very close to an Arab person than I look like a typical US Citizen. My friends joke if I should get rid of my facial hair for the expediency of immigration. I’ve always been treated well and this goes for vast number of Americans and Foreigners that enter US.

Arab people look very close to "white" people, and even more so these days since almost all American men have decided to wear giant, fuzzy beards.

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#177

Post by echevil »

mikeash wrote: post #28
CydeWeys wrote: post #4

At this point I think I'm too afraid to ever go to China. You can't get justice there, and you can be swept up into some stupid diplomatic spat. Don't they realize how short-sighted this is? This is incredibly harmful to tourism.

He was already a convicted drug trafficker. I don’t see any indication that his original 15-year sentence was improper. It is possible that he was falsely convicted, of course, but I don’t know that this is more likely in China than elsewhere. Suddenly changing his sentence to death is rather suspicious, but at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. Random anecdote: I just got…

There are precedents that drug trafficker got death sentences, so there’s nothing surprising at all. I guess he got 15 years sentence originally probably because the government didn’t want to hurt their relationship with Canada at their time. Many Chinese find that sentence improper. Chinese laws and the laws in many Asian country regarding drugs are much stricter than those in US

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#178

Post by magduf »

adventured wrote: post #97
mikeash wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really? It seems pretty widely accepted that the death penalty doesn’t deter crime, for example, which indicates that people (well, potential criminals, anyway) don’t see it as substantially worse than a lengthy prison term.

It's a fascinating point that the pro death penalty crowd universally ignores. US violent crime has plunged over the last 40 years, and the murder rate has been chopped in half since 1980, all the while death sentences have declined to ~45-50 year lows (there has been roughly a 90% reduction in new death sentences since 1999). The dramatic plunge in new death sentences over two decades hasn't coincided with any uptic…

The people who commit heinous crimes usually have psychological problems that cause them to have very low impulse control. They don't think their actions through very well, which is why they're in their position instead of some better and more legal lifestyle/career. So harsher punishments really don't deter them; they don't expect to get caught and aren't thinking about that when they commit the crime.

There's a theory that violent crime has plunged over the last 40 years because of leaded gasoline being phased out: the lead was in the air and environment and giving everyone low-level lead poisoning.

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#179

Post by scj »

yukonbound wrote: post #145
dpratt wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your account is three minutes old and this is your first (and only) comment. Additionally, your grammar indicates that you’re not a native English speaker. I’m not typically a tinfoil hat type of person, but I, at least, have a heavy amount of skepticism towards your comment. Bluntly, it reads like it was taken directly from some pre-approved list of PRC propaganda.

I don’t know. His english mistakes are very plausible just typical French grammar mistakes and his viewpoint is not incorrect and in fact most likely true for the overwhelming majority of visitors. Perhaps the tin foil is sitting a bit tightly...

The use of the phrase "white card" (carte blanche) is telling.

However, we don't need to resort to tinfoil to point out that their anecdote misses the point. "Don't be political" is poor advice when Canadian citizenship is perceived through a political lens.

Re: China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

#180

Post by scrumper »

mikeash wrote: post #59
scrumper wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little glib. They're not going to scoop out your brain in prison and you have _a_ future, even if it's not the one you were planning for. Invert it: if faced with the death penalty, how much effort would you expend to get it commuted to 15 years?

I don’t think the inversion is a useful way to look at it. Here’s the right way to look at it: what do you consider to be the acceptable odds of being imprisoned for 15 years while traveling to a foreign country? And what are the acceptable odds for being killed? I don’t have a concrete number for either one, but they wouldn’t be much different. Consider also that your odds of dying in a traffic accident are much hig…

I'm not rational enough to really get behind your "right way" to look at it - it's a bit too homo economicus for me!

Sure, the acceptable odds for both are similar and very low, but the outcomes are vastly different. Once my dice roll has bought me into contact either one of those possibilities, I am passionately invested in making sure it's 15 years in prison.

(Edit: such thinking is of course why plea bargains work and are used so often by prosecutors in the US.)

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