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Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

reuters.com

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Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#281
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that.

Then it shouldn't be that weird, Ma overstepped with his speech and is carefully negotiating the minefield he's currently in. Alibaba stock rebounded ~5% since his showing. He'll slowly work his way back into public life as is customary for nature of his infraction. If CCP wanted to disappear him long term, there'd be predictable and fraud/corruption charges already laid.

The situation is weird regardless of the existence of a charity.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#282
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not proposing a plan to save the world here, what you're proposing is imperialism.

Yup, them saying >2. Culture war. Tell Disney it's time to stop being cozy and make a "Chernobyl" style film about Tiananmen, Uyghurs, Tibetans, et al. That's just straight up propaganda coming from a country that has plenty of bad stuff Disney could make movies from too.

Documenting the atrocities of their government doesn’t necessarily have to be propaganda.

I would want the atrocities of the US documented all the same.

Hold corrupt leadership accountable, always.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately the close-mindedness in HN has become amazing... many here seems to be a China expert, and their expertise says "I know what it is, it's an evil regime!".

Given their treatment of Uighurs, yes - there is an element of evil. It’s not as if the governments of the world are immune to this - the US has been involved in a long history of heinous acts and China is no different.

Yes, they're running terrible concentration camps.. but for some HNer to be able to say "I can see from this video that Jack Ma was imprisoned and is being forced by the CCP to do this"? Great job being an expert!

How about some political nuance? Maybe they wouldn't dare just mess with a billionaire who was well respected just a few months ago? Well, maybe they do dare, I don't know, I'm not an expert in Chinese politics. But some commenters here seem to take one little thing they know and extrapolate it to absolute knowledge of how that government works in all aspects.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#284
post #253

Does anyone have any book recommendations for non-chinese people to understand CCP power structures? I'm completely lost in all of this Jack Ma stuff.

The Chinese government is highly structured and in general features most of the things one might expect in a modern nation-state (an executive, a legislature, a court system, etc.) The exception, and what makes it hard to understand for outsiders, is that one of the political parties (Chinese Communist Party) is also an extra, supervisory, branch of government and sits on-top of and permeates all the regular bureaucr…

>One way of thinking of it is that the government of China is not allowed to have a military, and the ruling political party's own security forces have assumed that role -- with subbranches of that force filling in for traditional military branches such as a Navy and an Air Force - which are all separate "forces" under the Army.

This is very similar in concept to the SA/SS (Nazi Germany) or the Red Army (USSR). All were paramilitary wings of political parties before their rise to power.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is they don't have literal concentration camps. For one, 50+ muslim countries testified this in the UN. An UN counterterrorism expert visited Xinjiang and wrote a favorable report. This video sums up many other analyses and arguments: https://youtu.be/i915eArrego I'm not pro-CCP, I'm just pushing back against people who base their opinions of China on false or misleading information.

You explicitly went to bat for the CCP regarding their treatment of Taiwan some time ago. That you are pro-CCP is fine just be transparent about it. And yes, there are camps and yes, those camps are hurting people psychologically / physically. We’ve had several interviews with refugees who have escaped to date, as well as photos and videos of the conditions.

I don't deny there are camps. I deny there are concentration camps with the intention to murder people. Big difference.

I don't say all camps are good. I don't say nobody is being ill-treated. I'm sure there are incidents. But I deny that it's a mass concentration camp with the intention of murdering 2 million people. Big difference.

All the interviews with people who say there are concentration camps, are with Uyghur separatists who have ties with extremist members. The very same people that just a few years ago the US would have labeled as terrorists. Don't you think their answers would be biased? Look at the track record of North Korean dissidents, it's been proven again and again that they have an incentive to lie and that not everything they say can be 100% trusted. What makes you think Uyghur dissidents are different?

Heck, for years I've heard stories about Falun Gong being painted as wholly-innocent people who are wrongly prosecuted by the CCP. But now, the New York Times exposed them as spreaders of pro-Trump misinformation. This is another example that shows that people who are in conflict with the CCP, are not automatically trustworthy or honest people. Yes maybe the CCP's treatment on them is wrong, but two things can be true at the same time: CCP could be wrong to treat them like that, AND they could be untrustworthy or have a evil agenda of their own.

Even this point is discussed extensively in the video.

If you're gonna argue whether China's anti-terrorism efforts use too broad sweeps and is heavy-handed, fine, I don't disagree with that. What I do disagree with, is that it's a genocide/enslavement of 2+ M people or whatever the made-up count is today.

You mentioned Taiwan. Whatever I spoke about here on HN about Taiwan is neither in support of the mainland position on Taiwan, nor against it. I was just providing perspective so that people gain a more accurate understanding of the issue. Perhaps you think CCP is "the enemy" and their perspective is automatically invalid. No I don't agree with that.

I don't consider myself pro-CCP. You're not gonna find me in agreement with the great firewall policy for example. But that doesn't mean I need to be necessarily against everything they say/do either. No, people who don't oppose CCP at every turn, are not pro-CCP. As I said: I'm pushing back against people who are against China for the wrong reasons.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#286
post #6

If Ma wanted to reappear and reassure people, not sure this would be his first choice, method, etc. It seems weirder to just pop up like this like nothing has been going on.

This how politics work in China. When the government is unhappy with someone, they go away for a while and often reappear at a completely unrelated event they had schedule long before and don't acknowledge their disappearance. Everything happens behind the scenes and never officially.

If they ever acknowledge it, it will be as a public apology for their past conduct. This is what Ma's protege Justin Sun did after he got into hot water with the Chinese government for promoting his crypto currency project too loudly:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tron-crypto-founder-justin-su...

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#287

In the last Hacker News thread, people were so sure that the government jailed him for criticizing the party. Even though there was no evidence of such, people just assumed it MUST be true because the CCP MUST be evil. And before Jack Ma "disappeared", people were worried about Jack Ma and Ant Group being a national security threat, because of his ties with CCP. Because "CCP evil". No matter the facts, people just co…

This comment is doing exactly the thing it accuses others of doing: not understanding and painting with too wide a brush. Of course on a forum you are simultaneously going to find large swathes of people that take on seemingly contradicting viewpoints. Interpreting that to mean that all participants in these discussions are hypocrites or anti-China is either an emotional reaction or a failure to consider the truth of…

> Look at what happened to Canada after they arrested Meng Wanzhou for the rationale behind these views.

The Chinese government treated the arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a political issue because it was clearly tied to the US trade war, and more generally to the US government's attempts to undermine the Chinese tech sector (which we see from the ever-widening US sanctions against Chinese tech companies). Donald Trump himself even suggested that the US might drop the prosecution of Meng Wanzhou in exchange for Chinese concessions on trade.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You explicitly went to bat for the CCP regarding their treatment of Taiwan some time ago. That you are pro-CCP is fine just be transparent about it. And yes, there are camps and yes, those camps are hurting people psychologically / physically. We’ve had several interviews with refugees who have escaped to date, as well as photos and videos of the conditions.

I don't deny there are camps. I deny there are concentration camps with the intention to murder people. Big difference. I don't say all camps are good. I don't say nobody is being ill-treated. I'm sure there are incidents. But I deny that it's a mass concentration camp with the intention of murdering 2 million people . Big difference. All the interviews with people who say there are concentration camps, are with Uygh…

I suggest you look up the definition of a concentration camp. Slaughter need not be part of the intention. Nor was it a claim I made.

Nor does it make it any less heinous.

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if, or how, one should engage with an apologist for a tiranical, genocidal, dictatorial regime.

I'll tell you how: by being open to the notion that maybe "tiranical, genocidal and dictatorial" are false. And that Chinese people have different values, which are equally valid, but that are nevertheless not forced upon you. If you actually want to discuss this, I'd be happy to. But I need to know whether you are genuine, or whether you merely mean to diss me.

[deleted]

Re: Jack Ma makes first live appearance in three months in online meet

#290
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it shouldn't be that weird, Ma overstepped with his speech and is carefully negotiating the minefield he's currently in. Alibaba stock rebounded ~5% since his showing. He'll slowly work his way back into public life as is customary for nature of his infraction. If CCP wanted to disappear him long term, there'd be predictable and fraud/corruption charges already laid.

The situation is weird regardless of the existence of a charity.

The situation is normal for totalitarianism.
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