Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The Three Body Problem”

I thought "every police is a piano" is clearly wrong, and based on that thought, I further refer to it as the misuse of deductive reasoning -- confusing subsets with supersets.

Take an example -- if we could agree on that -- it is well known that police will kill bad people when the bad people are doing really bad things -- with the precondition that the bad people must be alive to do really bad things, and to be killed. With the same faulty deduction rules, one could say that it is well known that police kill people whenever people are alive.

Sorry if that caused confusion.

> sit down and exchange information

For one.

I am a Chinese citizen. I know many people, including close friends, relatives, studying abroad. I am not aware of any cases that their relatives are held hostage by the government. I am aware that police go after bad people (of course, the definition of "bad people" may vary nation-wise, but please take a little break on that and assume it normal), even if the bad people are relative to one entity studying abroad.

For two, about Cixin Liu's case.

This is the part I genuinely don't understand -- why would he seek asylum outside China? Did he do anything illegal? This whole thread is about an English version of the postscript in his work. I have read both native and translated version, and can confirm that the same postscript is attached in both versions, and the translation is quite precise. And then people start to discuss about "seeking for help abroad", "HK protest" etc. -- do these people think the postscript is so offensive that the government will go after him?

I don't think the text is offensive by any means. I don't think the government will go after him.

If that's not the case, what are they talking about? Am I missing something?

I do call China communist, and so does Chinese Communist party itself. Only you for some reason try to pretend it isn't. And you do it not by addressing my argument but by discussing irrelevant details of my biography. This is textbook personal attack (check out Wikipedia of you're in doubt).

> I think you've redefined 'communist' into some sort of tautological catch-all.

I define "communist", broadly, as a totalitarian state with single-party rule, where the ruling party is the communist party, i.e. a leftist party based on the Marxist social theory, and with state-controlled planned economy, with all economic and political decisions being made and subject to the control of the state and the communist party (which are one and the same in this case). This describes China very well. What would be your definition of a communist country?

Of course, if we instead use strict Marxist definition of "communism", no communist country ever existed and none can exist ever, because marxian communism is anti-scientific fever dream. But if you follow the common use and include socialist countries which are ruled by Marxist parties calling themselves "communists" (e.g. USSR, North Korea, Warsaw Pact countries, China) - even though their countries do not implement marxian communism (because it can not exist) - China fits. Here is Wikipedia:

The economy of the People's Republic of China is a mixed socialist market economy which is composed of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and domestic and foreign private businesses and uses economic planning. Since the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1982, the economy has been described as socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Following the common, colloquial definition of communist country instead of the strict marxian one - and noticing SOEs in fact dominate the economy and even the nominally independent businesses are subject to strict control by the CCP - one can be sure my definition is correct. But if you insist on saying "totalitarian socialist country ruled by Communist party" - ok, you can use that one, it's just saying the same with different words.

That's another common logical fallacy in debates in trying to shut people up. "Stop talking, if you really care about it, go do something." Well, for one, the reason why speech is important and criticism is important, is that it raises awareness. You can't get tell a guy to go toss starfishes back into the sea if the problem is industrial boats polluting the sea, you've got to hopefully get enough people from the bottom up aware of the issue to create the beginnings of a political movement, through boycotts or elections. I think it's perfectly fine for people to talk about, complain about, things in public forums, or at the dinner table. It's step 1 to change.

I can't solve the problems of the Uyghurs anymore than I can solve climate change. But do you think people should have sat quietly by in 1930s while Germany murdered Jews just because they couldn't do anything directly about it? I could choose not to buy Chinese goods the same as I could choose to recycle, but we all know it doesn't do anything. So the real change must occur at higher levels, that is, Western governments and corporations need to stop appeasing China for market access, compromising their art, their IP, just to please the CCP, only to be betrayed later, while at the same time, supporting violations of human rights. Condition your contracts, your trade deals, on transparency, protection for the environment, humane treatment, etc.

Right now Xi Jinping is thinking China can eventually survive on their domestic market only. Welp, that'll be a good experiment to try that Western governments can help with, and if the result is a severe economic recession in China, it may eventually lead to a new Chinese President as other CCP factions takeover, who takes the country in a different direction.

For the first part, I understand now, and I think we are more or less on the same page. Although I think I come from a place of treating that commenter as expressing a valid concern, but making a generalization I wouldn't make. I think you're coming from a place of also disagreeing with that generalization, but using it to push back on the idea that there should be any concern of the kind addressed by the commenter. With that, I couldn't possibly disagree with you more.

As for the second part, there's a lot there. It's good that your personal anecdotes you don't know of anyone held captive, but I don't think that was the question, and again I feel like that's coming from a place of wanting to generally dispute that people should be concerned about the practice of holding relatives captive to punish dissent.

For the rest of it, this is exploring the possibility, illustrated through Cixin Liu in a hypothetical example, of what might happen if he ever hypothetically wanted to extricate himself from China. His international success brings with it questions relating to free expression in China, so I treat these conversations as not terribly surprising, and frankly quite necessary.

And again, I don't think there's a literal case that he wants to do this, but that wasn't the point, and your confusion there again seems like it's coming from a place of generally wanting to deny that there should be any concern with how China could conceivably take family members hostage to pressure expat dissidents. And again, I could not disagree with that more.

I did't want you to stop talking, I wanted to hear your ideas. And thanks for your ideas, and I hope the western leaders could hear them as well.