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Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

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Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the white guy should debate with Jack Ma in Chinese? Ever thought about that?

Or a black guy should have debated with him instead, because apparently skin colour has something to do with language.

You misunderstood the context of what I was trying to say.

What I was trying to say, was that Jack Ma is a native Chinese (Mandarin) speaker. And he’s very good at it.

If the debate was held in Chinese Mandarin, then Jack Ma would’ve probably emerged as the better presenter. But since the debate was held in English, then Jack Ma was at the disadvantage.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#62
post #49

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

I find this sort of flippant posturing and minimization much more disturbing than a higher-profile-than-usual disappearance. Acting as if these horrific, nebulous governing systems can be reduced to the image of a Saturday-morning cartoon villain, an infantile mustache-twirler angrily shaking his fist at the TV screen. It is not “offense”. A system does not get “get mad”. It constantly sniffs for the slightest hint o…

In what world is an attempt to understand the actions of a governing body more disturbing than disappearing someone? The pondering of morality and underlying intentions are what fuel the entire "East vs West" debate.

Chalk it up to systemic casualties all you'd like, but let's not pretend as if that isn't reductive as well. Behind every system, there are decisions being made by human beings and it's not flippant to be cognizant of that.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#63

An analogy for western audiences comes to mind. Imagine if Elon Musk had criticized Trump two months ago and then hadn’t been seen or heard of since then.

Quite an analogy with an assumption that "speech" is the only thing Jack Ma could have done wrong....

If you have an argument to make or information to share, please do.

What do you think he did?

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we hadn’t left behind latin as an international language that everyone has to learn as a second language (to keep things equal). Fairly or not, English is the international language of science, technology, and culture. There are some major benefits of learning a second language, so I wouldn’t say it’s completely ‘fair’ to English speakers who have no incentive at all to learn a second language and receive the…

Latin isn’t some neutral communication protocol the entire would or could easily adopt. Why not Classical Chinese? More people spoke that and it also underpins numerous modern languages.

[deleted]

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#65
post #38

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

If you only knew some Russian. There is a drama now happening on Youtube with former presitator of Kazakhstan, where his past subordinates now surface and dump their personal accounts of him. As could've been imagined, none are positive of his personal ability. But the biggest insecurity of such people is to appear to be useless. He very much understands that he surrounded himself with sharks, and able lieutenants wh…

Are you talking about Nazarbayev? (Not sure about the anglification of that name) Is he not still in a position of power?

I remember some proclaiming that his resignation was nothing but an act...

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#66
post #65
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you only knew some Russian. There is a drama now happening on Youtube with former presitator of Kazakhstan, where his past subordinates now surface and dump their personal accounts of him. As could've been imagined, none are positive of his personal ability. But the biggest insecurity of such people is to appear to be useless. He very much understands that he surrounded himself with sharks, and able lieutenants wh…

Are you talking about Nazarbayev? (Not sure about the anglification of that name) Is he not still in a position of power? I remember some proclaiming that his resignation was nothing but an act...

Lives in a bunker, and all his former leautenants have free reign.

No way to explain all of his personal appointees losing posts one, after another.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#68

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

Because you’ve been looking at China your entire life reading western media and unable to comprehend there may be a different and better ideology

Therefore you reduce this situation to “he said bad thing, therefore he got jailed, therefore whoever jailed him is a bad thing”

Repeat, amplify, and you got yourself a brainwash

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a black guy should have debated with him instead, because apparently skin colour has something to do with language.

You misunderstood the context of what I was trying to say. What I was trying to say, was that Jack Ma is a native Chinese (Mandarin) speaker. And he’s very good at it. If the debate was held in Chinese Mandarin, then Jack Ma would’ve probably emerged as the better presenter. But since the debate was held in English, then Jack Ma was at the disadvantage.

And none of this has anything to do with anyone's skin colour.

Re: Jack Ma has not been seen in public for two months

#70
post #57

It’s hard for me to fathom the mind of an authoritarian. Imagine being so mad at a speech you want to imprison someone. Isn’t this a sign of mental illness? I denigrate myself all the time with humor. This is my strategy to keeping an open mind on self improvement.

This needs to be viewed through the lens of the Communist Party's primary motivation: the persistence of the single-party system. In a single-party system, you can't allow dissent or you will end up with multiple parties, if enough of the dissenters agree with each other. When someone speaks against the government in China, particularly someone with a high profile like Jack Ma, the government is worried that other pe…

This is insightful.

I imagine that the horrors of such violence would weigh heavily on the mindset of scared decision makers.

Maybe it all comes down to fear. Fear of death during an uprising, for one.

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