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Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

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Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#61

Post by heavyset_go »

Cookingboy wrote: post #49
larnmar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should read “Chinese Government”, not China, too. The Chinese government was not elected by the Chinese, is not in any sense a legitimate representative of the Chinese, and has no more right to rule over China than I do. Conflating criticism of the CCP with criticism of the country that they illegitimately rule is CCP propaganda techniques 101.

What is legitimacy? A government's job is to serve as many of its people as much as possible for as long as possible, so playing devil's advocate, why isn't the legitimacy of a government judged by how good it's doing its job vs. how it came into power? Historically speaking there have been plenty of prosperous societies that was ruled by "illegitimate" governments (and I'm not even saying China is one), and plenty o…

Please, save the "deriving democratic legitimacy from first principles" for a country that doesn't ban elections, have a dictator-for-life like Xi Jinping or put millions of people into concentration camps.

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#62

Post by helen___keller »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #10
nailer wrote: post #3

> complaints of anti-China bias Zuckerberg is quite clearly being critical of the Chinese Communist Party, who by nature of being authoritarian, have no mandate from the people of the PRC. There is no bias against China as a country, or Chinese people. Zuck is merely judging an authoritarian government for it's own actions. Shame on those who would wish to conflate the two.

In order to understand why this conflation is occurring, you need to understand chinese culture. Chinese culture is very different in some fundamental ways that's hard for western countries to understand. First of all, the people in China are trained from a very early age to think of themselves as indistinguishable from their country and their government. There literally is no concept of self in China. People are tau…

> First of all, the people in China are trained from a very early age to think of themselves as indistinguishable from their country and their government. There literally is no concept of self in China. People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their government. this is a fundamental viewpoint of how the chinese see themselves

Do people actually believe this? How could you possibly hope to put a billion people in such a tiny box?

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#63

Post by Cookingboy »

harimau777 wrote: post #58
Cookingboy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is legitimacy? A government's job is to serve as many of its people as much as possible for as long as possible, so playing devil's advocate, why isn't the legitimacy of a government judged by how good it's doing its job vs. how it came into power? Historically speaking there have been plenty of prosperous societies that was ruled by "illegitimate" governments (and I'm not even saying China is one), and plenty o…

Are there examples of prosperous societies ruled by "illegitimate" governments that didn't have an equivalent of peasants/serfs?

Yes, quite a few dynasties in Chinese history for example. At a few points China had higher GDP than the rest of the world combined with much better average standard of living for its people. The early Tang dynasty comes into mind.

There were no serf class, but of course there were peasants/farmers of course since someone had to grow food.

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#64

Post by Cookingboy »

idoh wrote: post #55
Cookingboy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is legitimacy? A government's job is to serve as many of its people as much as possible for as long as possible, so playing devil's advocate, why isn't the legitimacy of a government judged by how good it's doing its job vs. how it came into power? Historically speaking there have been plenty of prosperous societies that was ruled by "illegitimate" governments (and I'm not even saying China is one), and plenty o…

Fair point, it is hard to draw an exact line. But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right?

>But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right?

Absolutely. But if you are referring to what's happening in HK, debate on evidence of concentration camp aside, lately many of the protestors have been anything but "peaceful".

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#65

Post by rolltiide »

Culturally, should a suicide of an employee that comes from a culture that doesn't put weight on suicide really draw more attention to an issue than before?

Beijing's state policy is freedom from religion and that removes most of the mental failsafes preventing suicide.

My anti-suicide talk with some Chinese people has often been prefaced with "oh yeah our culture typically focuses on self preservation and avoidance of suicide, hope that clears things up for you" before explaining how that person's failure has other options. I wouldn't consider myself anti-suicide when it comes to other people's options, I would consider myself to have just strong self preservation skills and can perceive options for myself and other people that are considering an escape hatch.

So I think there is a cultural component to consider here, for western media wanting to cover this.

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#66

Post by mywittyname »

pertymcpert wrote: post #60
mywittyname wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this when people from other nations unfairly criticize the USA, even when I agree with what they are saying. So as a word of advice, when this happens... > defend the PRC under any condition[...] even if they agree with what your saying. Then your argument likely heavy-handed or misses the nuance of the situation. Using the USA as an example, the impression a foreigner gets from looking at gun statistics is comp…

Why? Why would you get defensive? It’s nothing personal against you. Argue the facts, don’t get emotional.

As I pointed out, the know a bunch of facts, but they don't understand the reality between those facts. Which is to say they really don't know what they are talking about.

It's like hearing a person complain about a movie they've never seen, but they read the Wikipedia entry on it. They may understand the major plot lines, but you're not going to have an engaging discussion with them about the acting or cinematics.

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#67

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

hangonhn wrote: post #20
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to understand why this conflation is occurring, you need to understand chinese culture. Chinese culture is very different in some fundamental ways that's hard for western countries to understand. First of all, the people in China are trained from a very early age to think of themselves as indistinguishable from their country and their government. There literally is no concept of self in China. People are tau…

Come on. That's patently not true. Seriously. I'm born Chinese and my family is Chinese. We were never "trained". I'm highly critical of the Chinese government (though I left fairly young) as are some members of my family. Some of them were born and raised there. Come on. Stop it with the stereotypes. People are complicated and have multitudes. "People are tauhgt to think of themselves as completely the same as their…

I've always noticed: Even if a chinese person is critical of the chinese gov they will never say that when speaking to a non-chinese (unless it's your husband/close friend), nor speak of it out loud.

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#68

Post by prewett »

larnmar wrote: post #27
umvi wrote: post #7

Title should read: "Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils (Chinese) Facebook Employees" At any rate, I applaud Zuckerberg for actually having a spine when it comes to China, unlike Tim Cook.

It should read “Chinese Government”, not China, too. The Chinese government was not elected by the Chinese, is not in any sense a legitimate representative of the Chinese, and has no more right to rule over China than I do. Conflating criticism of the CCP with criticism of the country that they illegitimately rule is CCP propaganda techniques 101.

Mao Zedong was widely liked, and the Communists were seen as much better than the corrupt Guomindang [0]. They also defeated the Guomindang militarily. I think the CCP are actually the legitimate rulers of mainland China, both by peoples' choice and military conquest.

You may think the Chinese people chose poorly, but I think it is clear that they definitely chose.

And to put this in some context, China has had an authoritarian government for the past 2000 years, so it's not like choosing an authoritarian regime is that much of a change. You might as well pick the authoritarians who are less corrupt. And post-Mao the CCP has been pretty effective in building the country.

[0] traditionally spelled "Kuomintang" but Wade-Giles is a horrible romanization. You think you know how to pronounce it after looking at it, but you're wrong; it's actually worse than just having a bunch of characters, because at least you know you don't know how to pronounce them.

Re: Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook's Chinese Employees

#69

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

Cookingboy wrote: post #64
idoh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, it is hard to draw an exact line. But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right?

>But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right? Absolutely. But if you are referring to what's happening in HK, debate on evidence of concentration camp aside, lately many of the protestors have been anything but "peaceful".

> lately many of the protestors have been anything but "peaceful".

That does tend to happen when peaceful protests get violently suppressed. It's extremely difficult to not defend yourself against violence.

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