Earlier quoted context omitted.
if trump ordered someone to be shot for accepting bribes we would find this idea a lot less appealing anyone who spent a lot of time in that part of the world will tell you this stuff can basically be made up the western method to do this is to plant csa material on a person and then publicly announce they've been caught with it. not many people consider that 'possession' can simply be a USB stick found in a tree on…
not many people consider that 'possession' can simply be a USB stick found in a tree on your 2 acre lot, or a usb stick that has been planted in your car That's because that's not how the laws worked in the U.S., nor have the laws ever worked that way. If that was actually how the laws worked, a lot of enemies of each administration would get tarred with this, instead of literally none of them.
China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
421–430 of 523 posts
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. As others have noted, some of the highest civilian and military officials have been removed for it. Some sentenced to death. He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power, which, as you’d expect are the most important things to him; even if you take the most cynical view. Another timely example, because it is the World Cup, is the Chinese foo…
> Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. that's BS cracking down on corruption has been a common tactic for decades to get rid of people who are a threat to the top dog at the CCP, and Xi has employed this perhaps better than anyone since Mao are those people being purged corrupt? probably most are. but plenty of people who are corrupt aren't purged, it's a highly selective process. Xi started th…
>plenty of people who are corrupt aren't purged
This sounds really interesting, do you have any examples?
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brother, I eat at a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan pretty regularly. Nobody destroyed any groups. There was a big overreaction that violated people's rights but the people still exist and are fine. If we contrast with how the West have reacted to terror attacks, its quite rich to see them throwing UN definitions at China.
I really haven’t written anything about Uyghurs specifically. I only corrected your mistaken assumption that genocide must necessarily involve the killing or physical extermination of people. It doesn't even require to be successful at its mission - it's the intent when taking any of the specified actions that counts, such as causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing destructive conditions of life, preventing b…
I'm saying all of the people still exist and their lives were never in danger. There were some dozens executed for actual terror/separatism charges, maybe some of those cases were bad, but it was not a threat to "the people".
The fact that the argument has to lean into technicalities and attributed unspoken intentions rather than actual horrors should say everything.
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
? Everyone in the party is incolved in similar crimes. The only thing they are guilty off in addition is a lack of loyalty to emperor xi. Incompetence and criminal corruption, that you can edit out of history, but intrigue is unforgivable.
Are you sure? Do you have an example of substantial disaster or scandal that resulted in loss of life and loss of face for China, but perpetuators got away? For UK I have: Grenfell tower scandal (over 100 dead, no one in prison), infected blood scandal (thousands dead, no one in prison), postmaster scandal (thousands falsely imprisoned , no perpetrator in prison), etc.
Well but the point was, that these are wiped from the internet. Sure it’s convenient, but I wouldn’t put it past the Chinese government - I’m sure they have erased quite a bit of uncomfortable facts.
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
The smart ones quit while they are ahead and procure citizenship somewhere else (like Canada).
I'm pretty sure the smartest ones just don't do crime.
You’ll have to define “smartest”. Crime and IQ don’t really correlate (negatively or positively) as far as I know.
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
They ran a rolling internment program for a few years, holding people against their will in mandatory patriotism camp for months at a time. That's bad and wrong but you need to be killing people to call it genocide. It's been a master class in propaganda on this topic, look up the name Adrian Zenz and see how often he gets uncritically quoted.
"Killing people" is not required for committing a genocide: Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements: 1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and 2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively: 2.1 Killing memb…
> intent to destroy
Except there was no intent to destroy, literally all other points 2.X that follows is irrelevant. There's reason plurality of UN takes PRC position that they indented to deradicalize / reeducate, aka not genocide. Which is obvious except to useful idiots on Pompeo propaganda because reducing PRC minorities by 1 is bad for Xi's hagiography. Now the gets to bask in the glory of speed running histories most successful war on terror with minimal bloodshed by sinicizing restive frontier region. Basically Obama should hand over his Nobel Peace Prize to Xi.
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. As others have noted, some of the highest civilian and military officials have been removed for it. Some sentenced to death. He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power, which, as you’d expect are the most important things to him; even if you take the most cynical view. Another timely example, because it is the World Cup, is the Chinese foo…
> Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. that's BS cracking down on corruption has been a common tactic for decades to get rid of people who are a threat to the top dog at the CCP, and Xi has employed this perhaps better than anyone since Mao are those people being purged corrupt? probably most are. but plenty of people who are corrupt aren't purged, it's a highly selective process. Xi started th…
CCDI hit like 7m+ people by now, that's hardly selective. You can say it was intelligently staged for power consolidation component, purging corrupt rival/cliques (who should be purged) first before cleaning own house, i.e. Xi's faction wasn't spared, it just happened later, because that's smart sequencing. Beijing educated class from 2012s aren't as baizuo shitlibs as Shanghai but their opinions are comparably useless, and it's been 10+ years, we now know scale + duration of anticorruption program. Like you don't discipline millions of flies, and 1000s of tigers because they're all rivals, you do it because you want to reduce corruption. Ask what kind of people had $ to immigrate in 2010s and buy up those million dollar mansions when PRC per capita GDP was was like $7000, hint the corrupt, which frequently overlaps with the educated.
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#428I sometimes see people "celebrate" this, with the rationale that China is cracking down on white-collar crimes and handing out sentences unheard of in the west. But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
Xi Jinping rose to power on a message of anti-corruption, and part of the reason he remains in power on an indefinite term is by presenting himself as the "only trusted" person to maintain anti-corruption amongst all the factions. While I'm sure he doesn't catch all corruption and the CCP overall has selective enforcement, the reason they do have measures like this is in large part because of Xi Jinping's specific re…
> Xi Jinping rose to power on a message of anti-corruption
Just like Trump and Modi
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well it isn't much contortionism when you look at the big picture you'll find that corruption is an institution in some countries. For example, you're making an effort to try legitimize the regime by framing a factual gross illegal conduct as a overarching policy. But is it like that when you observe the whole structure? How wealthy are the ruling elites? Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed? Or we can ref…
I like how you are unable to separate actual crimes from government policies you disagree with. >> corruption is an institution >> Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed? Another country may decide to have no IP protections, that’s not a crime. Furthermore Intellectual property is legal fiction, some people and countries don’t believe in it. Apparently Anthropic don’t believe in IP either, they are stealing…
I'm not being unable to separate crime from policy, you're the one trying to dilute both as showing a signal to policy change.
If this was just a political action to take down just another corrupt official enabled by the government, how is this a good thing?
Well for a lot of countries protecting inventions with patents was a major trigger for development, so much so it became a cornerstone and you can even say an institution. So of course it would be viewed as corruption by any country with such institutions.
And it's not like China says it would never abide by IP, else they would have never got the investment that made them into what they are today.
But look further from IP theft, what about seizing assets from companies, or whole companies?
Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you get caught in China, Vietnam, or Singapore the penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance. LOL. Bribery is basically required in China for anyone with a medium sized business. Otherwise, you'll be indefinitely blocked by a bureaucrat who has no incentive to help you. Departments in municipal governments are often underfunded and bribery makes up for a significant portion of their effective payrol…
Facilitation payment are usually considered the less egregious kinds of bribery, some may be considered acceptable in a culture, and there can be a whole etiquette to it. In some countries, doctors or surgeons are severely underpaid and it would be customary for a well off citizen to bring them a gift or a cash summ before an important surgery. That’s quite different from Kickbacks (rampant in UK leaseholds by the wa…
Just because it's considered acceptable doesn't mean that you can't get in trouble for it down the line if you get the wrong people upset. "Acceptable" bribery goes far beyond giving a gift to your underpaid doctor. What I meant by funding payroll is that it's pretty common to basically "donate" to a hospital and then afterwards your kid magically has a job there.
What those who fetishize China's punishment of billionaires need to understand that what allows for this punishment is also what allows for even more blatant corruption. Rule of law is just something that doesn't exist. You may think that the US no longer has rule of law under Trump, and while that's true to a certain extent, for the most part people act with a rule of law mindset because that's what they are familiar with.