Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 280 posts

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#151

Post by fdsak »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #108
pentae wrote: post #99

So can anyone tell me why we should support what China is doing? Why should any entrepreneur or tech worker go there and support this government? How come China seems to get a free pass on human rights issues like this by western society?

Because keeping a large diverse country stable and safe is very difficult, and a failure causes enormous tragedy. The approach that works to keep the US stable does not always work well in other countries. To keep the billion people who live in China safe from civil war and rampant terrorism is already a great achievement -- even it comes at the expense of some nice things such as human rights. In fact, China manages…

Well said. West always sees or interferes into other countries without knowing any cultural, religious or political background. And on another level that is not also different from dictatorship. I live on the other side of the China (Pakistan) and too my observation Uighers are little bit or angry (not finding good word). Few years back it was not safe to roam freely in Urumqi and everyone used to hang daggers of all king around their waist. Sometime fierce fighting might erupt on small pity things and people get slaughtered more like the situation American are having with GUNS right now.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#152

Post by whisk »

I have read some stories during the year without Internet in Xinjiang.

In fact people can still connect to local network then, they just disconnected the link from province level ISP to Internet.

Some young mans built local websites provides movie, softwares downloads, news and bbs inside the LAN. They travels to nearest town outside Xinjiang every week by train, download new resources in net bar, bring them back in hard disk and update their websites. Nobody knows how long will the disconnection last and somebody prepared to maintain the LAN from long years. It makes me recall 20 years ago I access contents on Internet through CD-ROM in magazines.

In the end, the Internet recovered and these websites soon disappeared.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#153

Post by ChoGGi »

If an oppressive government can shut down internet access whenever they want, then it seems the real problem is losing paper news to digital.

I'd say a decentralized mesh network is a step in the right direction, but if there's spyware on all the phones; that doesn't help as much.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#154

Post by fdsak »

"Western viewpoint" is creating more problems than solutions and behind that there is fear of capitalist losing business and control over world affairs. Its not human rights in China or anything else, if that was the case the recent wars in Middle East might not have erupted and have been diffused with much sense of urgency and political acumen than supplying arms to rebels and wipe-out humanity on their way of interests. Democracy, human rights and all these terms are just fancy words to get financial and political advantage over weaker countries or adversaries. We do not need to be all democratic nations or republics to prosper intellectually and spiritually or in any other domain.West and Western people should stop now teaching other countries about human rights and democracy after what we have seen on global stage.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#155

Post by _cs2017_ »

librexpr wrote: post #143
_cs2017_ wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because keeping a large diverse country stable and safe is very difficult, and a failure causes enormous tragedy. The approach that works to keep the US stable does not always work well in other countries. To keep the billion people who live in China safe from civil war and rampant terrorism is already a great achievement -- even it comes at the expense of some nice things such as human rights. In fact, China manages…

What about the families of the 120 000 people in the re-education camp? Or the families of the people who's organs are harvested, or who are imprisoned for being mildly critical of the government? Are they safe? It's easy to excuse horrible acts by saying it's for the greater good, but it's rarely actually the case. Chinese civilization won't collapse if they stop harvesting organs and imprisoning people who are even…

About re-education camps and imprisonment for being critical of the government.

Horrible acts are occasionally better than the alternative, if you think of the number of lives lost compared to the number of lives saved.

I am not sure that these actions by the Chinese government are perfectly justified by this argument. But I think it's possible. Often, governments fall and civil wars start from a tiny spark of seemingly innocuous political dissent that grows out of control. I am sure you'll find many examples of that in history.

The stability of Chinese society, just like the stability of any modern society, is always hanging on a thread. You may just not realize it because you (I hope) live in a country that is not drowned in blood. A small problem can easily grow into a disaster, and then no one can stop it -- look at Yugoslavia, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Sudan, Congo, Liberia, Georgia (ex-USSR). And these are just the ones I remember watching live, in disbelief.

About organ harvesting.

From what little I read about it, prisoners may be executed, and their organs given to people who need them for medical reasons. I assume you're not against organ transplantation, since that saves lives at no cost to their original (dead) owner. So I assume you're only against the execution of prisoners.

Opinions on capital punishment vary, even in the US. What's viewed as fair and just penalty in California or Florida, has been viewed as unreasonable cruelty and violation of human rights in Maine for well over a century. Of course you're right that in the US, most people would not be ok with executing people for political views (except state treason), and even less so if the execution is timed to make their organs available to others. However, I think you could allow a larger difference of accepted practices between two completely different countries than between states of the US.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#156

Post by SN76477 »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #107
SN76477 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking lately about the purpose of crime. Obviously people get robbed and bad things happen, but what would happen in a society without crime? is it possible that crime has a larger purpose?

stagnation. without risk there is no progress.

would you say that without crime humans would be complacent?

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#157

Post by [deleted] »

fdsak wrote: post #154

"Western viewpoint" is creating more problems than solutions and behind that there is fear of capitalist losing business and control over world affairs. Its not human rights in China or anything else, if that was the case the recent wars in Middle East might not have erupted and have been diffused with much sense of urgency and political acumen than supplying arms to rebels and wipe-out humanity on their way of inter…

[deleted]

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#158

Post by drb91 »

fdsak wrote: post #154

"Western viewpoint" is creating more problems than solutions and behind that there is fear of capitalist losing business and control over world affairs. Its not human rights in China or anything else, if that was the case the recent wars in Middle East might not have erupted and have been diffused with much sense of urgency and political acumen than supplying arms to rebels and wipe-out humanity on their way of inter…

Conflating democracy and capitalism certainly is terrible.

Capitalism is also terrible & responsible for recent wars, since the opium wars to my tally.

Maybe earlier? The french-indian war?

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#159

Post by fdsak »

drb91 wrote: post #158
fdsak wrote: post #154

"Western viewpoint" is creating more problems than solutions and behind that there is fear of capitalist losing business and control over world affairs. Its not human rights in China or anything else, if that was the case the recent wars in Middle East might not have erupted and have been diffused with much sense of urgency and political acumen than supplying arms to rebels and wipe-out humanity on their way of inter…

Conflating democracy and capitalism certainly is terrible. Capitalism is also terrible & responsible for recent wars, since the opium wars to my tally. Maybe earlier? The french-indian war?

Are they different now ? and to worst of our dreams they are now evolved to "imperialist" monster. They might look good in books only. I do not see any of them, see UN for example, the center for 21th century's humanity.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#160

Post by thaumasiotes »

yusuke10 wrote: post #116
_cs2017_ wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because keeping a large diverse country stable and safe is very difficult, and a failure causes enormous tragedy. The approach that works to keep the US stable does not always work well in other countries. To keep the billion people who live in China safe from civil war and rampant terrorism is already a great achievement -- even it comes at the expense of some nice things such as human rights. In fact, China manages…

1.) Chinese government did this to itself, with the 1.3B population. China only had 500M in 1950, but the communist government condemned birth control and banned imports of contraceptives. 2.) At some point, you can't keep using the excuse "but 1 Billion people" for doing disgusting things. When you harvest prisoners' organs. When you imprison 120,000 minorities in camps. When you build an artificial island to the ho…

What's so wrong with building an artificial island?
Post reply on HN