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China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

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Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#101

Post by yorwba »

throw2016 wrote: post #90
apo wrote: post #40

The Chinese are innovating totalitarianism faster than any other country. Take this, for example: > ... When undergraduate students at Peking University, which was at the center of the incident, were shown copies of the iconic photograph [of Tank Man] 16 years afterwards, they were "genuinely mystified." One of the students said that the image was "artwork." It is noted in the documentary Frontline: The Tank Man that…

China is a totalitarian country. Its not a democracy so there is no point criticizing them for the lack of democracy but its democracies that must be held accountable, yet we do not see that right from Snowden, Assange and Manning to a culture of surveillance, torture, war crimes, secret courts and processes and border agents demanding to go through your personal papers. You can't claim to be a democracy and do these…

China does claim to be a democracy in its constitution, though:

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China [...] the Chinese people of all nationalities will continue [...] to turn China into a socialist country that is prosperous, powerful, democratic and culturally advanced.

http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/15/con...

Of course the literal text of the constitution is completely ignored in practice, but criticizing that doesn't automatically lack credibility.

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#102

Post by tedunangst »

nitrogen wrote: post #83
jccalhoun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the few times I've tried to bring it up with Chinese students at USA universities they have all been blasé about it. They have all been, "that's just the way it is." That could be because they just don't want to talk about it. Or because they are mostly from rich families and so they really don't care. Or only kids from loyal families are allowed to go to school overseas.

I wonder if a comparison to how US students would react to mentions of Kent State or Rodney King or OWS would be enlightening. There's obviously a big difference in severity, but given student opposition to some of the fubdamentals of freedom of speech in recent years, maybe we can learn what cultural differences and commonalities drive state- and self-censorship and thus better address the root problems.

What would you expect an overseas US college student to say or not say about Rodney King?

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#103

Post by PavlovsCat »

0815test wrote: post #66
apo wrote: post #40

The Chinese are innovating totalitarianism faster than any other country. Take this, for example: > ... When undergraduate students at Peking University, which was at the center of the incident, were shown copies of the iconic photograph [of Tank Man] 16 years afterwards, they were "genuinely mystified." One of the students said that the image was "artwork." It is noted in the documentary Frontline: The Tank Man that…

> "genuinely mystified." ... "artwork." It's all about plausible deniability. Funnily enough, that's exactly why censorship doesn't actually work - these things are precisely what people would say if they knew about the picture and its significance, but wanted to make an outer impression that they don't. I think it's quite possible that the Chinese nationalists "protesting" Leica's shameful, anti-Chinese campaign are…

Oh, it works. The objective is to dissolve the bonds between people is dissolved that would allow them to collectively organize and resist. If everybody pretends they don't know, even if everybody else knows they do know, for all practical purposes, the objective of censorship is accomplished.

https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-Censorship-China-...

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#104

Post by throw2016 »

devoply wrote: post #3

Would it not be better for these idiots to simply apologize for Tienanmen Square and promise not to do it again? And also stop all their asshole human right violations?

Tienanmen happened in 1989. Would it not be better to apologize to Iraq, Libya and Syria and promise the world not to destroy entire countries, kill hundreds of thousands of people and put millions of families in disarray for those who genuinely care about human rights and lives?

Instead millions more are threatened in Venezeula and Iran with the exact same warmongering playbook and propaganda while 'human rights lovers' are apparently more concerned about a protest that happened in China in 1989. This simply stretches credulity.

At this very moment exactly zero people have been held to account for the totalitarian surveillance, torture and war crimes exposed by Snowden, Manning and Assange. How so? If you are concerned about human rights surely war crimes and torture by your own country would have blown your top and brought the guilty to account asap? And yet not only has no one been held to account but its those who exposed these crimes who are being persecuted in so called 'democracies'? This is a sham.

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#105

Post by Veen »

spectramax wrote: post #20

Powerful ad. My gut feeling is that there will be a day in the future where everything in China is going to boil-over just like any other totalitarian regimes in the past. It could be 20 years from now when Xi dies or some type of student uprising again, or could be from the HK/Taiwan situation. The behavior of the Chinese government and as they call it "the hand of Beijing" has a self-propelling streisand effect, th…

The West is the outlier here. Most of the world has lived under dictatorships for most of history. China is a millenia-old civilization that has never been a democracy. The current regime may fall, but it is not written in the universe that it will progress towards anything resembling a Western democracy.

If I were playing the odds, I'd put money on democracy failing in the west rather than it rising in China in the next century.

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#106

Post by PavlovsCat »

apo wrote: post #40

The Chinese are innovating totalitarianism faster than any other country. Take this, for example: > ... When undergraduate students at Peking University, which was at the center of the incident, were shown copies of the iconic photograph [of Tank Man] 16 years afterwards, they were "genuinely mystified." One of the students said that the image was "artwork." It is noted in the documentary Frontline: The Tank Man that…

> Leica, a foreign company, is now apologizing about the ad (and has deleted it from their YouTube account)

Joining Mercedes Benz in that particular hall of shame:

https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/07/technology/mercedes-benz-ti...

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#107

Post by arcticbull »

dontbenebby wrote: post #32
spectramax wrote: post #20

Powerful ad. My gut feeling is that there will be a day in the future where everything in China is going to boil-over just like any other totalitarian regimes in the past. It could be 20 years from now when Xi dies or some type of student uprising again, or could be from the HK/Taiwan situation. The behavior of the Chinese government and as they call it "the hand of Beijing" has a self-propelling streisand effect, th…

>My gut feeling is that there will be a day in the future where everything in China is going to boil-over just like any other totalitarian regimes in the past. Isn't that what happened in the referenced photo? And the regime murdered the protesters and put in place a draconian censorship system to avoid it happening again.

Yes, although, the thing about failure and success is that you can have an unbounded number of failures but you only need one success.

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#108

Post by viraptor »

ufmace wrote: post #62
maehwasu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analyzing widely differing cultures and peoples under the unitary framework of “totalitarianism” isn’t terribly compelling either. The Chinese government has shown remarkable staying power, and it’s important to analyze the ways/reasons it might continue to hold power, since that seems to be a quite likely outcome. The intuition that western liberal democracy is some sort of inevitable wave is very possibly just an a…

It seems like an ironic blind spot to me. Western liberals claim to be all about tolerance and diversity and multiculturalism, yet seem to have difficulty conceiving of the idea that maybe some other cultures genuinely don't want to turn into Western Liberal Democracies.

Tolerance and diversity normally stops at "it's cool we're doing things differently, as long as nobody gets hurt". Why would you be tolerant of people being abused?

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#109

Post by whoevercares »

jccalhoun wrote: post #51
spectramax wrote: post #20

Powerful ad. My gut feeling is that there will be a day in the future where everything in China is going to boil-over just like any other totalitarian regimes in the past. It could be 20 years from now when Xi dies or some type of student uprising again, or could be from the HK/Taiwan situation. The behavior of the Chinese government and as they call it "the hand of Beijing" has a self-propelling streisand effect, th…

Honestly, the few times I've tried to bring it up with Chinese students at USA universities they have all been blasé about it. They have all been, "that's just the way it is." That could be because they just don't want to talk about it. Or because they are mostly from rich families and so they really don't care. Or only kids from loyal families are allowed to go to school overseas.

TIP: find a student born and raised in Beijing/Tianjing, they are much more likely to talk about politics. My father’s favorite story was about drinking with the student leader at the night before 89’s event happened.

Re: China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

#110

Post by ufmace »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #76
ufmace wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like an ironic blind spot to me. Western liberals claim to be all about tolerance and diversity and multiculturalism, yet seem to have difficulty conceiving of the idea that maybe some other cultures genuinely don't want to turn into Western Liberal Democracies.

Google "The Paradox of Tolerance," if you're allowed to. Some truths really are self-evident.

I have read it. If you have a point you want to make, you're welcome to make it.
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