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China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

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Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#371

Post by franga2000 »

bhaskara2 wrote: post #317
maxwell wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This. Thank you, we underestimate what we can do with our money. We can collectively bring an expansionist power China to a halt if we systematically boycott them.

No, we can't. Rather amusingly: if you stop buying Chinese electronics, how will you convince others to do the same? Ham radio? Even Fairphone weren't able to avoid China and their entire goal is to reduce human rights violations im their supply chain.

We need to start forcing companies to move production back home and we need to pay the 3x increase in prices that comes with that without as much as a single complaint. As long as our main concern is price, companies will outsource to poorer countries, which inevitably leads to exploitation.

We need governments to require full supply chain tracing, outlaw doing business with human rights violators and actually enforce all of that through regular inspections. If they find a single child worker in your supply chain, you have a month to stop doing business with them or pay 5% last year's revenue in fines.

This is what we have politics for. If you live in a democratic country, that's something you can actually do! Your money, however, is meaningless.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#372

Post by maxwell »

franga2000 wrote: post #371
bhaskara2 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Thank you, we underestimate what we can do with our money. We can collectively bring an expansionist power China to a halt if we systematically boycott them.

No, we can't. Rather amusingly: if you stop buying Chinese electronics, how will you convince others to do the same? Ham radio? Even Fairphone weren't able to avoid China and their entire goal is to reduce human rights violations im their supply chain. We need to start forcing companies to move production back home and we need to pay the 3x increase in prices that comes with that without as much as a single complaint…

Raspberry Pi: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/made-in-the-uk

Librem 5 USA: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa

5G Blackberry, with no CCP components: https://www.engadget.com/5g-blackberry-keyboard-global-flags...

Apple, Samsung, and Sony are pulling manufacturing out of Communist China.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#373

Post by franga2000 »

fsflover wrote: post #262
MichaelApproved wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it’s in there, it won’t be enforced. Manufacturing is entrenched in China. Before you can threaten China, you need to have a backup plan. Otherwise, it’ll call your bluff, like it’s doing already.

> Even if it’s in there, it won’t be enforced. Please stop spreading learned helplessness. Problems are solved in baby steps. You start with legislation. Without it, nothing will proceed.

I don't see their comment as hopeless, but more as a necessary shift of target. We can demand all we want, but as long as we can't survive without them, we have no leverage. Punish businesses for violations in their supply chain and make them move production back home. Only then can you start demanding.

Orange Man tried to skip the first step and you see how well that worked...

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#374

Post by hajile »

pototo666 wrote: post #94

I am a Chinese. I don't think anyone outside Xin Jiang knows any details about these. My wife is from Xin Jiang. She is not Uighurs. I have been to Xin Jiang. I don't think non-Uighurs in Xin Jiang knows the details about these. They are like secrets. You know something is happening. But you don't know what exactly is happening.

It's almost like their second part to this story interviewed people who had been there and been in those camps...

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#375

Post by elmo2you »

sol_invictus wrote: post #188
elmo2you wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be true. But please, do know that there are many individuals outside the USA, who regularly roll their eyes and feel triggered when yet another article accuses China or Russia of yet another "anything". Don't get me wrong, some of the accusations sure are very valid ones. But the political bias and (more often than not) cultural blindness/hypocrisy is usually rather obvious. At least for many, like me, fro…

I agree with you to the most part. > which should not be a forum for international politics (outside tech topic) in the first place Which is why I'm highlighting the account for pushing a 100% political agenda.

> Which is why I'm highlighting the account for pushing a 100% political agenda.

Fair enough, as far as I'm concerned.

My main purpose was to (hopefully) give some context and explanation of why some people might write responses like that.

I'm not sure though, if the intent of that account is to push a political agenda, rather than just feeling compelled to counter what appears (to this person) to be another political agenda.

If you'd read my responses, you will find that many of them are political in nature as well. However, that is not because I like to campaign for politics. Almost always it is because I notice a glaring (implied) political bias in something and feel a strong need to point out what is missing there.

Personally, I would rather discus technical aspects. But for many topics, it's usually other people who are far more qualified to do that. So I often stay silent on those.

Consequently, it can easily be construed that I have to be some political agent (or worse). But in actuality it's mostly the nature of the content here on HN (and how it changed over time) that has leads to these results.

That said, of course that account could have been made for purely political purposes. I really would not know.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#376

Post by propagandist »

actuator wrote: post #267
mcji wrote: post #150

It all started with the "July 2009 Ürümqi riots" and then escalated after the "2014 Kunming attack".

Can't really collectively punish a community for crimes of few, that's no justice.

I agree wholeheartedly. Let’s discuss this along with lifting collective sanctions imposed on Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. That is a form of collective punishments that starves civilians. I’m very cynical about the outrage re: those “re-education” sites. Not because they’re benign but because nobody bats an eye when America commits similarly heinous acts. It seems like a convenient deflection tactic.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#377

Post by pierrebai »

publicola1990 wrote: post #333

The thing is, there is a definite anti China sentiment within the present US government and many western media sources, in the sense that they seem to have a definite desire to villify China in recent times. So the claims presented by them are suspect in intent, since it seems so evidently to suit their own world view. While Chinese propaganda is suspect as is any propaganda, much western reporting is also politicall…

These article have been decried as being staged by the chinese government. Here are other articles, from the BCC, about Uighurs:

   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-53657604
   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszl3q
   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172x2ys9gxqv4g
   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08lf6zk
   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-50166713

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#378

Post by hajile »

coldtea wrote: post #185
microcolonel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US greed gave China this power Maybe from the U.S. perspective, but at this point there are heaps of countries around the world who at least claim to be dependent on China. This is a matter of global moral cowardice; at least today, the U.S. is more ready to say no to it.

Or just another case of made-up US exceptionalism ("oh, how braver we are than those others for saying no to China now"), after the US corporations/market had profited from cheap Chinese manufacturing and sweat shop labor for years, and takes the high moral ground only now that "coincidentally" has an economic problem and wants to stop all the outsourcing. Meanwhile, all this talk of "global moral cowardice" was hard…

Did we read the same article?

> A 2017 study in the British Medical Journal described "the rigging of the 1999 Unicef survey" as "an especially masterful fraud".[12] The three comprehensive surveys conducted since 2003 all found that the child mortality rate in the period 1995-2000 was approximately 40 per 1000, which means that there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after sanctions were implemented.

You seem to forget that the Iraqis liked Saddam which is the only reason he stayed in power. Did they care about the genocide of the Kurds? I think not.

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

Want more proof? 15 years after Saddam was executed, they were still proceeding with their ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Iraqi%E2%80%93Kurdish_con...

If you really want someone to blame, blame France, England, and Russia for arbitrarily drawing up countries after WW1 without considering that people in the middle east wouldn't overcome their nationalism and racism which would lead to continuous conflict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#379

Post by franga2000 »

maxwell wrote: post #372
franga2000 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we can't. Rather amusingly: if you stop buying Chinese electronics, how will you convince others to do the same? Ham radio? Even Fairphone weren't able to avoid China and their entire goal is to reduce human rights violations im their supply chain. We need to start forcing companies to move production back home and we need to pay the 3x increase in prices that comes with that without as much as a single complaint…

Raspberry Pi: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/made-in-the-uk Librem 5 USA: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa 5G Blackberry, with no CCP components: https://www.engadget.com/5g-blackberry-keyboard-global-flags... Apple, Samsung, and Sony are pulling manufacturing out of Communist China.

All of these are doing that because of either ethical (first 2) or political (the rest) reasons. They were not moved by people "voting with their wallet", nor could they be, as their products are not usable for the general public.

(I say this with nothing but respect for Librem and the Pi foundation. I'd get a Librem 5 if it didn't cost 5x as much as my car )

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#380

Post by elmo2you »

aww_dang wrote: post #227
elmo2you wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be true. But please, do know that there are many individuals outside the USA, who regularly roll their eyes and feel triggered when yet another article accuses China or Russia of yet another "anything". Don't get me wrong, some of the accusations sure are very valid ones. But the political bias and (more often than not) cultural blindness/hypocrisy is usually rather obvious. At least for many, like me, fro…

There's a wide swath of the US that feels the same way in regards to foreign policy. From reading your comment, I'm not sure if that is clear to outsiders? https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/new-poll-shows-pub... https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/248354/measu... https://reason.com/2014/04/30/poll-shows-strong-non-interven...

> I'm not sure if that is clear to outsiders

Depends a bit on the outsider, I think. Also to which extend they might be a product of their own country's propaganda.

To me it certainly is clear, even from people I personally know. However, I do think that it might be only of limited relevance. That is, if these reasonable people have virtually no chance to bring about any substantial change in whatever system or collective actually governs/controls the USA, then how much does it really matter?

That said, I do not want to sound too harsh on the USA, especially its individual citizens. The country is no doubt going through a rather precarious development. It essentially shows all the hallmarks of almost every empire before it, right when those were on the brink of their collapse.

While social media tycoons, and a host of even far more shady companies and agencies, certainly make the radicalization and politicization of practically everything far worse than necessary, with mostly cynical/selfish goals, it might be that they are mostly just riding an already unstoppable wave, that would be there with or without them stirring things up even more.

To me, they are no doubt criminal enterprises either way, but the USA might soon have far more pressing problems on their hands than going after such companies. Which might be what some of these companies actually count on. Let's hope it turns out to be misguided arrogance, cynicism and hubris on their part.

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