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China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

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Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#141

Post by DblPlusUngood »

munin wrote: post #137
adventured wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do those examples have to do with the parent not understanding the Chinese Government's cowardice and fear? I don't regard it as insulated thinking at all. It makes perfect sense to be bewildered by such a disgusting display of cowardice and irrational fear by China. Someone on a public forum says: X nation is doing a bad thing; one of the responses inevitably is: yeah but the US did a bad thing. There should be…

> There should be a 'law' named for that attempted topic distraction in public forums. there kind of is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Here are even more names for this fallacy: tu quoque and whataboutism.

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#142

Post by godzillabrennus »

bhouston wrote: post #20
mhuffman wrote: post #4

Wow! It is amazing that we do not consider this a human rights violation. Oh well, gotta keep them prices low at Walmart!

China : Tibet :: Israel : Palestine, they are analogous in many ways. The human rights groups talk about the problems, we recognize it is bad, the weaker ethnic community suffers and is oppressed, the more powerful ethnic group makes slow but steady progress in exerting its wishes, and no real changes are effected by the international community.

Israel and Palestine seems a bit more complex to me. They are trying to find a solution for two groups of people with very different cultural standards for how to live life to cohabit a small bit of land. Tibet is a pimple on a pimple in size compared to the rest of China.

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#143

Post by jsnk »

andy_ppp wrote: post #128

I do not understand the cowardice and fear the Chinese government seem to have of a small buddhist settlement in the middle of nowhere high up in the mountains of Tibet... It looks like they feel the opposite of a superpower and that a few buddhist monks might threaten them so much they have to destroy them. It's very easy to forget how free we are by comparison to those persecuted in occupied territories.

Chinese government is attuned to history. Chinese history is a constant cycle of disintegration and reunification and the current government knows it is not special. At some point, it too will disintegrate into 100 pieces. It's just that they don't plan on making that any time soon. Anything they can do to delay the inevitable, they will do so.

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#144

Post by anexprogrammer »

adventured wrote: post #138
anexprogrammer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cut off trade with China Why not? Prices would rise marginally if at all. There'd be some supply issues for a while. It was ok to sanction Iran, Iraq and South Africa and so on but not now in this globalised world? We put up with any old abuse from Israel and China because they're approved in some way? I'm no diplomat, but there should be some consequences of significance.

Prices would rise significantly and it would create a very large black market. There would be supply issues for more than a decade. The US does half a trillion dollars worth of importing from China. Every major US retailer is designed around imports from China. Most of that is relatively low priced consumer goods. Where do you plan to buy decently priced microwaves, by the millions, that aren't made in China? That do…

I don't see the ramifications playing out remotely like that.

There'd be a diplomatic tit-for-tat leading up to sanctions, they wouldn't just be turned on at 00:00 tomorrow. So there'd be perhaps a year. Sanctions tend to start with specific items and scale up. So it's a process, with a timeline, over perhaps 2 - 10 years.

Plenty of time for significnt amounts of trade to move to india, Vietnam and the other developing economies.

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#145

Post by jacobush »

chii wrote: post #120
deepfriedbits wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's China, so it falls under the authority of the CPC first, then any legal considerations second. We marvel at how quickly they built up high speed rail, but when you can just seize land without regard to imminent domain, associated lawsuits and the like, things tend to get expedited.

Indeed every great human achievement had been accomplished with great human suffering and injustice. But perhaps that's the reality of the human condition, and nothing is ever going to change that.

But what constitutes a great achievement?

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#146

Post by pgrote »

kweks wrote: post #29

I was there literally three days ago. The place is nothing short of breathtaking. Nestled at 4200km, it was a three day motorbike ride from Chengdu. Even at its foothills, you have no concept of the scale of the town hiding in the hills. This will truly be a tragic loss - the town is much more than the 'slum' it is represented as - it's arguably the most important Buddhist learning institution in the world.. Photos f…

Thanks for sharing the photos. There is one showing a metal rooftop with logs and rocks on top. Why are the logs and rocks on top of the roof?

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#147

Post by bahador »

pgrote wrote: post #146
kweks wrote: post #29

I was there literally three days ago. The place is nothing short of breathtaking. Nestled at 4200km, it was a three day motorbike ride from Chengdu. Even at its foothills, you have no concept of the scale of the town hiding in the hills. This will truly be a tragic loss - the town is much more than the 'slum' it is represented as - it's arguably the most important Buddhist learning institution in the world.. Photos f…

Thanks for sharing the photos. There is one showing a metal rooftop with logs and rocks on top. Why are the logs and rocks on top of the roof?

It's probably a temperature thing? A metal roof probably gets really hot. I have no idea what the temperatures there are though...

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#148

Post by davesque »

coldtea wrote: post #77
tim333 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>iPhone 6s It's a funny thing with monks. Quite a few are former businessman who want to try something more spiritual for a change but still are wealthy. I walked a bit with a young monk on the way to Tengboche Monastery and his main interest as we talked seemed to be designer sunglasses and which brand would be good to get.

> It's a funny thing with monks. Quite a few are former businessman who want to try something more spiritual for a change but still are wealthy. So mostly phonies being tourists in spiritual-land?

Perhaps, but based on a similar experience I had with a Tibetan monk, I'd say there's actually quite a lot of room for flexibility. Just because someone has a handful of materialistic interests doesn't mean they're incapable of being a good person or teacher. That was probably the main lesson I learned from the monk I knew. As outsiders, we often have a very romanticized, storybook view of monkhood that doesn't line up with reality.

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#149

Post by justicezyx »

tremon wrote: post #16
reustle wrote: post #7

Not saying this is right, but it sounds like the city exceeded their legal cap of 5k people? So it doesn't sound like it's a total surprise to them. Am I reading it wrong?

That's just rationalization. Had the city population been 4200, the cap would have been set at 4k.

I agree with you that this is a fair speculation, but nonetheless a speculation. There is no evidence before that Chinese government, despite being fairly un democratic, arbitrarily change how official rules are interpreted, AFAIK. I don't think HN welcomes such style of posting.

Re: China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet

#150

Post by hyuen »

kweks wrote: post #29

I was there literally three days ago. The place is nothing short of breathtaking. Nestled at 4200km, it was a three day motorbike ride from Chengdu. Even at its foothills, you have no concept of the scale of the town hiding in the hills. This will truly be a tragic loss - the town is much more than the 'slum' it is represented as - it's arguably the most important Buddhist learning institution in the world.. Photos f…

hey, what camera settings did you use for those pictures? they are amazing
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