I work with a lot of folks from China and they are bending over backwards trying to defend the CCP. Their argument almost always boils down to "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." Equivalent to someone using their one black friend as proof that they can't possibly be racist.
> I work with a lot of folks from China and they (...)
What you say represents about 50% of Chinese researchers in my lab. Those that immediately return to their country after the PhD and you never hear from them again. The other 50% are the complete opposite: they cannot wait to get their family out of the country and never look back, explaining that the country is ruled by a bunch of crazy psycopaths. Curiously enough, there's almost no interaction between both groups, they politely ignore each other (and they are really polite and professional towards everybody also).
"After the end of the second world war, the British view was grim. It was that the balance of power in the pacific had been totally shattered in favor of the United States. One response by London, was to support Mao Tse-tung's communist insurrection, against the pro-American, Kuomintang government of generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in China. FDR's personal representative in China, general Patrick J. Hurley, saw as a post-war goal, a strong unified China under Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. The British backed Mao, with the idea that the communists could become the warlords of Bejing and northern China, while the KMT might hang on in the south, below the Yangtze river. Stalin was going to be encouraged by the British to detach Manchuria, Mongolia, and Chinese Turkestan, sometimes known as Xinjiang. The British especially hated Chiang and the KMT, who were the heirs to Sun Yat-sen's opposition to colonialism, and his support for modern economic development. The British by themselves would not have been able to consolidate Mao's regime. They were aided by the pro-British Harriman faction in the United States, including Dean Acheson and general George C. Marshall, who effectively made president Harry Truman their puppet in foreign affairs. The turning point came in 1945 and 1946, when Marshall was sent on a mission to China, which resulted in a half-year cutoff of US military aid to Chiang Kai-shek at a critical turning point in the Chinese civil war. After that, Mao made the long march to sieze most of China by the end of 1949. The British were among the first to recognize Mao's government, and supply him was strategic goods through Hong-Kong. After Mao's victory, the British oligarchs were looking for wars to cut the US down to size in the far east, and restore the balance of power. The result was the Korean war. Korea had been divided north and south between the Soviets and the US, although by early 1950, both had gone home. Harriman's friend Acheson declared that the US had no interest in South Korea, then Kim Il-sung of North Korea attacked. Suddenly Harriman and Acheson discovered that the fate of the free world depended on Korea, and they convinced Truman to fight. Truman ordered MacArthur to do the impossible, to save Korea with inferior forces. MacArthur's defense of Pusan, and then the Inchon invasion defeated North Korea and stunned the British plotters. Their gambit had backfired, and US supremacy was greater than ever. So the British turned once again to their favorite device; treachery. There was in those years a stable of triple agents based in London, especially in the foreign office. These included Kim Philby, the first secretary of the British embassy in Washington. Then there was Guy Burgess, the second secretary at that same embassy. Donald Maclean was the head of the American desk in Whitehall. Other associates of this group included sir Anthony Blunt, of Buckingham Palace, and Lord Victor Rothschild, of British intelligence. There was also Lester B. Pearson, the Canadian foreign minister. These men were triples. On the surface they were British agents. Scratch deeper and they were working for the KGB, which had recruited them at Cambridge in the 1930's, but at the deepest level, they were loyal to the British monarchy. It was British policy to stab the US in the back, so as to restore the balance of power. Having some triple agents around meant that the British could do this and get away with it, with plausible deniability. If the spies should be blown, the British could claim that it had been the KGB all along. The Philby-Rothschild group of triple agents were decisive in the Korean war. Phibly and Maclean were able to send Moscow, Bejing and Pyongyang, all of MacArthurs orders from President Truman. These included restrictions against carrying the war to China, with bombing, blockade, or hard pursuit. When Mao was sure that MacArthur's hands would be tied, he commited massive Chinese forces to Korea in November of 1951. Philby and Maclean obligingly saw to it, that Mao got all of MacArthurs military dispatches. So the communists knew exactly where and when to strike."
I work with a lot of folks from China and they are bending over backwards trying to defend the CCP. Their argument almost always boils down to "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." Equivalent to someone using their one black friend as proof that they can't possibly be racist.
Im pretty sure that people said the same thing about the jews under hitler. Human beings are very good at denying and rationalizing away unpleasent truths.
The... single greatest? Not the great empire builders? Not the USSR? Modern China, really? Not even, y'know, the ancient chinese empires who subjugated most of asia? The PRC? I mean, just objectively modern chinese citizens, while they certainly don't live under western-level protection for expression, are (owing just to technology and nothing less) vastly more able to share their opinions widely and securely than...…
> Not the great empire builders? They haven't been a threat for centuries. > Not the USSR? The USSR's been dead for 3 decades now. > Not even, y'know, the ancient chinese empires who subjugated most of asia? They don't exist anymore, either.
I think you whooshed on the point. Indeed, all those other guys were worse. And they're not here, and we are. China isn't the threat they're being presented as, they're just a convenient point of outrage for a demographic that craves outrage.
In fact, if the upthread point had labelled the PRC the greatest threat to global freedom of the past three decades, then I'd be inclined to agree! But that's not what it said. And we made it through the cold war just fine.
I work with a lot of folks from China and they are bending over backwards trying to defend the CCP. Their argument almost always boils down to "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." Equivalent to someone using their one black friend as proof that they can't possibly be racist.
An older family member grew up in WW2 Europe under German occupation. I asked them about general everyday life during the war and the holocaust. Besides getting bombed on en route to school, it "wasn't that bad". I don't know if it's justification or stockholm syndrome. Part of me speculates people in these situations suspend their reality as a survival mechanism.
If you’re referring to comments like mine challenging the idea that private websites banning anyone for any reason has anything to do with free speech, you’re wildly mischaracterizing your US audience.
"Private websites" are the contemporary public square, especially so when half the world is locked at home and forced to communicate remotely.
This is the fulcrum point of this debate - right here.
I work with a lot of folks from China and they are bending over backwards trying to defend the CCP. Their argument almost always boils down to "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." Equivalent to someone using their one black friend as proof that they can't possibly be racist.
I live in Hong Kong and that's exactly how I talk with people abroad totally panicking over the situation here. It's... not THAT bad. Certainly not as bad as portrayed, sometimes, west of the world. Not saying I have any clue about Xinjiang or that the CCP is positive for the country, but I feel uneasy everyone switched from prisoner camps to genocide - it seems to distract away from the actual issue to move into bor…
Didn’t the situation in Hong Kong escalate from people being concerned about the extradition thing to the Chinese government now suspending elections?
I think the most shocking part of that article was the Chinese response. I can imagine a similar response from Nazi Germany. -- "Some anti-China forces in the West have concocted and disseminated plenty of false information about Xinjiang and fabricated "lies of the century" in various forms," the embassy said. "They have smeared China's image and slandered its policies on Xinjiang." It added: "Anyone who is fair-min…
It reads like a caricature of authoritarian propaganda. They're not even trying to be subtle.
> State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China > The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump an…
Hence why the original Genocide accusation had to be laundered first through Zenz / Victims of Communism, why this "opinion" was commissioned by NED funded Uighur organizations. Why lying Pompeo only backed the genocide label at the end of his term despite your linked assessment by his own state department. It's delusional to think commissioned legal opinions still funded by US interests is going to make genocide stick when state department legal minds could not. Articles like this are, and have always been used for purpose of political theatre.
I agree with you. I think the Chinese government is totalitarian and aggressive, and the standard of due process and human rights is very different of what we consider acceptable in the "west". I also wouldnt be surprised if things like widespread facial recognition and other types of intrusive vigilance is present (something very bad),I also would not be surprised if the area has received a large Han migration (some…
The standard of evidence for a country with free press cannot and should not be compared to the standard of evidence for a country with no press freedom. China controls flow of information so tightly, that even rumours should be considered credible unless proven otherwise.
>even rumours should be considered credible unless proven otherwise.
That's rather convenient. Wonder if any global powers with a vested interest could take advantage of this mindset...