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China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

foreignpolicy.com

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Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#101

Post by yourbandsucks »

geoalchimista wrote: post #64
yourbandsucks wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"communist dictatorship" is inexact enough to be outright dishonest. Their economy is obviously capitalist. And although Xi has been leaning towards more dictator-like behavior, they haven't been a dictatorship since Mao. It's more like a giant bureaucracy. They have a process, they have regular handovers of power. It's not "I am the law".

Then you don't know the difference between Maoism and Leninism. Basically, Maoists can live with any compromise in order to bring forth their communist ideals, even if the compromise is to backstab Soviet Union and open the door to the US (which they did in 1970s).

Leninism and maoism both died the instant their namesakes died. I don't care about the difference. They were both tools to control populaces, not straightjackets restraining leaders.

Both strongmen did whatever they could and wanted to do. Don't buy the bullshit.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#102

Post by hprotagonist »

Razengan wrote: post #96
hprotagonist wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2007 or so, I was having a conversation in a bar with a bunch of student friends, one of whom was newly arrived from Beijing to start her graduate studies in the US. For reasons I don't recall, someone made a Tienanmen Square joke. She flat out didn't get it. Had _no_ idea what we were talking about. This was mostly pre-smartphone, so one of us dug out a laptop and showed her the wikipedia page. The look of utter…

My very limited experience with Chinese "commoners" outside China is that they view Xi Jinping as an adored celebrity, if not a god figure. "Very very great man!" Same with some Filipinos' opinions of Rodrigo Duterte, who said all the bad news being posted about him were "American propaganda." Have other people here asked a Chinese expat what they thought about their government back home? What kind of answers did the…

the only expats i know got the bum’s rush in the 70s, and are unsurprisingly sharply critical of the state.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#103

Post by Will_Do »

dang wrote: post #58
seibelj wrote: post #2

China is a communist dictatorship where you can be arrested and possibly murdered for saying the wrong thing. So this is not very surprising.

Please don't post grandiose national or ideological rhetoric to HN. It's at best flamebait and at worse trolling. Substantive discussion needs more thought than this.

Have we already forgotten about the ink girl who was disappeared[0] barely a month ago? All she did was say things and now she's gone. Probably forever. This is absolutely not disputable.

[0]: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3478513

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#104

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

baybal2 wrote: post #75
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Certainly all the ones they've put in concentration camps are never going to love China after what's happened. If they let them out, their stories will only spread discontent among the rest of the population. China might be looking at how this played out in Russia in the Soviet era. In the 1930s and 1940s, loads of indigenous minority cultural figures within Russia were either shot or sent to the GULAG. While certa…

A very simple explanation: Soviets worked out ways to find those who would. And after they did so, they killed them. Because everybody who was capable of putting up a riot was killed, nobody put up a riot.

That explanation doesn’t fly, because most of these figures were imprisoned on completely trumped up charges, for example, they were accused of being members of counterrevolutionary organizations that did not even exist. The state arrested them for their cultural prominence, not because they had any inclinations towards active separatism that the Soviet Union could have known of.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#105

Post by dang »

angersock wrote: post #92
dang wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People apply the word 'fact' loosely when it comes to topics they feel strongly about. The point is contentious and disputable in a bunch of ways. That's not necessarily bad, but it is when combined with a declamatory style. Just to be clear though: I'm not making a point about China. I'm making a point about how terrible Hacker News threads become when people allow themselves to post this way. This problem is gettin…

You're doing a lot of damage control on China stuff since that partnership thing was announced.

That's quite an insinuation. Fortunately I have a long history of posts to HN, and anyone bored enough to search through them will easily see that it's not true. To me the weird thing is running across a smear like this at all; it's surreal when someone is sure they know what you're thinking.

YC doesn't cross my mind while posting these. What has changed on HN over the last year or two is an uptick in nationalistic flamewar. That's happening because of larger social conditions we're all familiar with, but it has never been welcome on HN, and won't be as long as I'm moderating. That, btw, has nothing to do with which countries people are flaming about. It has to do with the purpose of this site—intellectual curiosity—being incompatible with tribalism.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#106

Post by herojian »

clamprecht wrote: post #90
Razengan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think China will look back at this in a generation and think, we did the right thing. Honest question: How many people in China currently know, care and/or feel regret about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...

My question (as an American) is: what ugly thing happened in the US that most of us don't know about?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/national-prison-...

Mind your business and we'll mind ours, smug hypocrites

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#107

Post by furgooswft13 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #80
Razengan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think China will look back at this in a generation and think, we did the right thing. Honest question: How many people in China currently know, care and/or feel regret about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...

You mean TS 1989? Taylor Swift’s most recent album right? Suffice it to say, those T-shirts did not go down well in China. People know it happened, the government says the west overblew the casualty figure, but they otherwise don’t want it talked about publicly at all. For them, bringing in PLA to kill Chinese (again) was pretty traumatic, especially since many of the soldiers actually said no. So they think it was “…

As a dedicated Swiftie, I feel obliged to point out that 1989 is not her most recent album, that would be Reputation, which she is performing on tour currently.

Interestingly, she performed (4 I think) concerts in China for 1989, but none are scheduled in the country this time around.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#108

Post by herojian »

philwelch wrote: post #76
pnathan wrote: post #60

This is extremely wrong. The official mood in China seems to be swinging ethno-nationalist, which is a recipe for human rights violations in any country, let alone one with limited juridical recourse and free speech. I don't think China will look back at this in a generation and think, we did the right thing .

I'm not sure I'd attribute it to ethno-nationalism, in that I don't know for sure that China is applying a policy of Han supremacism. It seems to be more of a particular concern with the Uighurs in particular. We've seen similar instances before, with Tibet and the Falun Gong. China probably decided that traditional, conservative Islamic religious practices were incompatible with the modern, developed country they ar…

There are "human rights" and Chinese rights, which do you think will be enforced in not even 10 years?

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#109

Post by seanmcdirmid »

furgooswft13 wrote: post #107
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean TS 1989? Taylor Swift’s most recent album right? Suffice it to say, those T-shirts did not go down well in China. People know it happened, the government says the west overblew the casualty figure, but they otherwise don’t want it talked about publicly at all. For them, bringing in PLA to kill Chinese (again) was pretty traumatic, especially since many of the soldiers actually said no. So they think it was “…

As a dedicated Swiftie, I feel obliged to point out that 1989 is not her most recent album, that would be Reputation, which she is performing on tour currently. Interestingly, she performed (4 I think) concerts in China for 1989, but none are scheduled in the country this time around.

Thanks. As an aging techie, I have trouble keeping up on the music scene.

Re: China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight

#110

Post by herojian »

trhway wrote: post #26
Leary wrote: post #10

Where are the responses from Muslim countries?

In you put yourself into CCP mindset the support from an outside Muslim power may possibly fuel the perception of support for possible separatism and that perception may escalate the situation. A wide international, non-exclusively-Muslim, based response, on pure human rights grounds would possibly be a good thing. Unfortunately nobody in the world right now is interested/capable/etc. to respond to religious/ethnic/e…

human rights + freedom + democracy = pornography + homosexuality + heroin overdoses

The rest of the world is sick of your filth! You couldn't do anything even if you tried! WE ARE THE FUTURE AND WE STOMP ON YOUR DEAD NATION

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