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

HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

jeromecohen.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 118 posts

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#91

Post by sky_nox »

sarcasmOrTears wrote: post #10
DocTomoe wrote: post #5

Meanwhile, there is that Chinese Huawei Executive who is being held hostage in Canada as a trading chip in a trade war, waiting for her extradition to the US on the invented charges of having had traded with Iran (which is completely legal in China). If anything, I'd say it is a wonder that China has not started taking US Americans and Canadians hostage for the crime of being US American and/or Canadian.

They redone a trial for a canadian and gave him the death penalty, I said that's quite the retaliation for the whole huawei thing.

That Canadian man smuggled 200 kilos(440 pounds) of meth into China. If he did that in Singapore or Japan, he would get death penalty too.

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#92

Post by sky_nox »

07d046 wrote: post #30
egao1980 wrote: post #23

How this is worse than US extraditions / kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad? Never mind Assange there are plenty of people arrested outside of US and moved to US prison.

For every thing the American judicial system does wrong, China does a hundred things worse. The conviction rate in China is well over 99% (if they want to find you guilty, they will). You can be detained with no access to a lawyer or family indefinitely. There is no separation of powers (the legal system isn't independent of the political system, and the constitution isn't worth anything). Torture and forced confessi…

It's interesting that Japan also has a conviction rate that exceeds 99%, and Canada has a conviction rate of 97%.

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#93

Post by roywiggins »

close04 wrote: post #90
roywiggins wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may recall the Russian "Illegals." They were exchanged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegals_Program Also the "Cuban Five", who either served a prison sentence or were exchanged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Five You may be surprised to hear it, but the FBI (who runs internal counterespionage in the US) operates rather differently from China. I suppose the FBI could be organizing hits on American citizen…

All sides use some of the captured spies for exchanges, it's good business. And I'm sure all of them also kill some to send a message, also good business sometimes (in this case 18-20 killed or imprisoned). My point wasn't to single out one agency - FBI, CIA, etc. Is your honest belief that no foreign spies were executed on US soil, or no spy networks were dismantled like this? "Combatants" (in quotes because the mea…

China has a whole gulag archipelago for disappearing and executing dissidents and undesirables. The US doesn't have the infrastructure. The CIA had to spin up a whole set of foreign black sites for its rendition/torture program.

I could see Hoover's FBI doing something like this, but it would probably have come out by now if they had.

Killing your own citizens who spy for foreign countries to send a message doesn't work that well unless you're willing to let it get out that you did it. If nobody knows, then it's not a disincentive! And your adversaries will just recruit more- after all, they're not the ones running the risk, it's your citizens, who don't even know about your new targeted murder program. Quietly disposing of the Rosenbergs instead of putting them on trial might have been easier, but unlike in authoritarian regimes the US wouldn't be able to do anything but keep it a deep dark secret, and the propaganda value and deterrent effect would be wasted.

Killing an entire ring of foreign spies who could be swapped is also stupid, since it means your spies won't be held and maybe swapped, they'll be killed.

Have foreign spies ended up dead on American soil due to US government action, sure maybe, but the FBI or whoever deciding to round up and shoot everyone in a spy ring, nah.

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#95

Post by dang »

gruez wrote: post #32
egao1980 wrote: post #23

How this is worse than US extraditions / kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad? Never mind Assange there are plenty of people arrested outside of US and moved to US prison.

[flagged]

Please don't do this tired trope on HN. The threads are bad enough without it.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#96

Post by close04 »

roywiggins wrote: post #93
close04 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All sides use some of the captured spies for exchanges, it's good business. And I'm sure all of them also kill some to send a message, also good business sometimes (in this case 18-20 killed or imprisoned). My point wasn't to single out one agency - FBI, CIA, etc. Is your honest belief that no foreign spies were executed on US soil, or no spy networks were dismantled like this? "Combatants" (in quotes because the mea…

China has a whole gulag archipelago for disappearing and executing dissidents and undesirables. The US doesn't have the infrastructure. The CIA had to spin up a whole set of foreign black sites for its rendition/torture program. I could see Hoover's FBI doing something like this, but it would probably have come out by now if they had. Killing your own citizens who spy for foreign countries to send a message doesn't w…

> And your adversaries will just recruit more

That's the whole "game", isn't it? Police catching criminals or soldiers killing soldiers, you can't say "why bother, there will just be more". And they don't have to be "your own citizens", plenty of Chinese nationals (or naturalized) were caught spying in the US. Why do you think sending embassy staff home would ever be considered retaliation? They are the real control center for intelligence efforts and if you can disrupt such a network even temporarily it's a net win.

> The US doesn't have the infrastructure

Not sure if you're being serious about this. A country that manages to maintain a global military presence including permanent bases, anti-missile shields, ability to execute drone strikes, and ability to kidnap suspects [0] and detain them at black sites [1] spread all over the world doesn't have the infrastructure to what? Identify a spy in their own backyard and "eliminate" them?

> the FBI or whoever deciding to round up and shoot everyone in a spy ring, nah.

Of course, compromising a whole network involves some massive failures so it might be a once in a generation thing. So I'm guessing they just have to deal with spies one by one, as they're caught and according to the needs, instead of "rounding up and shooting everyone". And in the case of the spy ring compromised in China you'll notice that all sources mention it as "18-20 killed or imprisoned". Pretty sure we will never find out how many of each. Quite possibly the ones that were not executed will be traded.

I'm sorry to say it but all this sounds willfully ignorant. You don't become and remain a superpower by playing fair and being soft, it can be expected that all of them fight fire with a bigger fire. The bottom line is that singling out China as the only ones with blood on their hands is terribly idealistic. And unrealistic.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/black-site-in-li...

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#97

Post by contempt »

egao1980 wrote: post #39
naringas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the USA ("Western") system has to at least fabricate some charges or destroy the target's reputation. the PRC doesn't seem to have such 'cumbersome' restrictions.

Tell that to the guys in Gitmo. Though they might be not nice and totally guilty nobody bothered to formally charge them.

it is my understanding that those who ended up in gitmo are typically associated with, and placed there under the understanding that they are suspected to be associated with actively violent "terrorist" organizations (the actively violent rogue groups is the point here, not the terrorist label, whatever that means lmao). It's not just people expressing dissenting opinions disappearing. This seems very very very different to me. Look up the communist student group at peking university in china (who are criticizing the capitalist tendencies and corruption of China) who are __currently__ disappearing. Edit: Not excusing gitmo on moral grounds, just pointing out it's pretty different than a country making its own dissenting citizens 'disappear'

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#98

Post by [deleted] »

egao1980 wrote: post #38
iamdelirium wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't talk about the US or Assange at all. Why are you even bringing it up?

Why moving criminals from one part of China to the other part of China becomes bigger issue than US kidnapping people all over the world?

[deleted]

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#99

Post by yellowapple »

dang wrote: post #95
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't do this tired trope on HN. The threads are bad enough without it. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

I appreciate that you're trying to maintain HN as a place for civil intellectual discourse, but I'd argue that people in these threads constantly implying China to be beyond criticism because "well the US does bad things too" is the actual "tired trope" here, not the people rightly calling out that fallacious logic and labeling it as what it is.

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#100

Post by gruez »

188201 wrote: post #60
hyperpallium wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does China still have enough to gain, to make it worthwhile to destroy such an incredibly valuable asset?

I can't really rationalize why China would throw stone on its own feet, but there are two reasons I could think of. One reason could be president Xi just can't back off because Xi is like Kim Jong-un in China. Xi has killed some of his political enemies and throw many of them to jail. If Xi shows any weakness to his internal enemies, he could not live long because he is playing too tough. It's like how a mafia boss w…

>Basically there are some list of merchant in the hand of China who leaves China due to business disputed, bankrupt or any economic related prosecution

With so much news around this bill, surely they would have fled before this bill was passed?

Post reply on HN