To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?
I don’t understand what the ‘cancel culture’ comment is supposed to mean.
There are a million tweets condemning China’s behavior... way more than the number of tweets targeting people who are ‘cancelled’
The difference is that tweets can effect a regular person’s life, and they are ‘cancelled’. China doesn’t care. A company will act to fire a single person who behaves badly because of consumer pressure; it doesn’t cost them much and is good PR. Stopping doing business with China is a lot costlier, so they don’t give in to the same consumer pressure that they would for an individual employee.
The different outcome doesn’t mean there is some hypocrisy amongst the people tweeting their support for ‘cancelling’ someone.
It just means that tweets aren’t that powerful for real change.
A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force. Closely related to the notion that the leader is simultaneously both a powerful winner and a powerless victim.
"cancel culture" here is both powerful and dangerous enough to bring down Western civilization, yet so laughably weak it cannot even pretend to solve real problems.
I first heard this idea articulated in Umberto Eco's article on Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism [0,1]. First link is the abridged list. The second is a full feature article.
From Point #8
"by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak"
The part that usually completes this idea is that the person or idea only has power because people give it to them. So the person in itself is not powerful but they are given power.
>A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force.
I've read that somewhere.
By the same "heuristic" anti-Trump talk is "political bullshit", because he is said to be simultanously a buffon/ineffectual loser and a very powerful insidious force.
But of course such heuristics are themselves usually selectively applied to opinions which those applying them already agree are "political bullshit".
this is an obviously bad analogy. trump is clearly a moron, and also holds the most powerful position in the world. those are not contradictory in any way.
Cancel culture means boycotting public figures or companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. You are talking only about tweets but those have little to do with it.
Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Vote with your wallet! If enough people do this then it will definitely have an impact, possibly even enough to bring about some real change.
Maybe if companies in the USA and Europe would stop building stuff in China it would work. Why is the burden on placed on individuals when corporations and governments actually have more power in this process.
I personally blame corporations and governments in Europe and the USA for the issues with China. They put money above everything.
> Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods.
How would you even know which products have raw materials that come from China? You will be hard pressed to find something that doesn’t have parts made in China, and even harder pressed to be able to figure that out.
A 100% boycott of China is difficult, especially if you were to try to boycott things that were made elsewhere but have a lot of Chinese stuff in their supply chain. But even just boycotting what you can is a positive step.
You can also support political action that takes concrete steps against China for these atrocities, rather than supporting them. There are real differences in political stances here.
You don't need to feel utterly powerless because you can't solve the problem 100%. That's always true anyhow, but especially true of something of this magnitude. It's OK; literally nobody expects that. You can take what steps you can. You are being joined by many other people.
I often think about it that way; if I'm moved enough to action because of this particular belief, then the odds are pretty good that many other people are as well. It is the actions of that group that will matter. If that group all individually concludes that their individual actions are meaningless, then the whole group will do nothing. So I choose not to act on the belief that my individual actions are meaningless.
(Essentially an argument based on superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality It is obviously false that the rest of the world is entirely superrational... but it is also false that they are 0% superrational. Often too much time is spent on the irrationality of human beings... a lot of people seem to have a model of them in which they are insane crazies who never make a sane decision, but if you take that model seriously everyone covered by it would just die. Humans are often quite rational. They just really, deeply suck at explaining why they are doing what they are doing, but the actual actions are often quite rational when understood in the correct context.)
I thought cancel culture referred to the practice of reporting someone's postings and getting them taken down or even banned by the platform. It also includes doxxing people and trying to get them fired from their jobs because of their online postings.
>Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods.
You'd find out that 90% of "their goods" are what you consider yours and other third party goods... Even BMW's are largely made there from what I've read.
There's limited set of countermeasures we can impose on China. I joined "Boycott Made in China" initiative, I promote it in my LinkedIn, and I literally check "Made in" tags in the mall during shopping, and I do not buy any Apple products, until I see them implementing their project on moving production from China to India and Vietnam. However, I understand how terribly it is "not enough". Countless politicians and businessmen without moral compass keep dealing with China. Harward President cancelled human rights conference to please Comrade Xi during their meeting. Greed and cowardice rule the world, and nothing drastically changed since pre-WWII times.
What else we, the people, can do to confront the evil, in the world where life of a nation, reputation of the whole country and principles of people who supposed to maintain peace all have a price?
Well, US greed gave China this power. Cancel culture have nothing to do with this.
There were a lot of left leaning voices in the ninetees warning against the trajectory of globalism.
The sell out of US manufacturing was done by people with money, not the people who dislike racism (and show it in a weird and harmful way).
Or just another case of made-up US exceptionalism ("oh, how braver we are than those others for saying no to China now"), after the US corporations/market had profited from cheap Chinese manufacturing and sweat shop labor for years, and takes the high moral ground only now that "coincidentally" has an economic problem and wants to stop all the outsourcing.
Meanwhile, all this talk of "global moral cowardice" was hardly there for hundreds of instances of the US doing all kinds of shit to third countries throughout the 20th and 21st century with bi-partisan agreement and the public hardly caring...
China is shitted upon for those detention camps (and rightly so). Meanwhile, over a million muslim deaths have been directly and indirectly (e.g. pharmaceutical and food shortages) caused by the Iraq embargo/invasion alone [1] (one of several), and people talk about China as if their shit doesn't smell...
For example, Australia won't even withdraw special trade relations with Hong Kong now that the PRC is compromising the whole point of that status, the U.S. went ahead and did so.
Isn't that just because the U.S. has strategic and economic interests to put pressure on China (and otherwise could not give less ducks about democracy, morals, or Hong Kongers for that matter.
Especially since they don't have and historically didn't also have any problem with all kinds of dictators, right wing governments, etc. (from Suharto and Pinochet to UAE), as long as they were allies.
The thing about the Hong Kong annexation is that the same thing that threatens Americans' moral preferences is also bad for business; it doesn't actually matter why you value Hong Kong's legal sovereignty, because the stakes are the same.
> A 2017 study in the British Medical Journal described "the rigging of the 1999 Unicef survey" as "an especially masterful fraud".[12] The three comprehensive surveys conducted since 2003 all found that the child mortality rate in the period 1995-2000 was approximately 40 per 1000, which means that there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after sanctions were implemented.
You seem to forget that the Iraqis liked Saddam which is the only reason he stayed in power. Did they care about the genocide of the Kurds? I think not.
If you really want someone to blame, blame France, England, and Russia for arbitrarily drawing up countries after WW1 without considering that people in the middle east wouldn't overcome their nationalism and racism which would lead to continuous conflict.
No, I actually didn't fully read the paragraph I linked to, thought it would mention the same numbers I've read before from several sources. I now see that the entry in Wikipedia actually includes some later dispute on those numbers though!
Still, there's a big toll from 4+ invasions, bombings, destabilizing countries stable for decades, etc., even if the 500K number mentioned for Iraq at that period doesn't stand up. For example it's not disputable that we have had millions of regugees from these regions as a result of the invasions...
>If you really want someone to blame, blame France, England, and Russia for arbitrarily drawing up countries after WW1"
Oh, I absolute blame those. But also anyone later who meddled, grabbed resources and exerted influence (strategic, trade, etc.) while paying lip service to "democracy" (the modern "white man's burden").
>without considering that people in the middle east wouldn't overcome their nationalism and racism which would lead to continuous conflict.*
I'd not say it happened "without econsidering". Rather "capitalizing exactly on that this will happen, and making sure with subsequent meddling and stiring that it will". The classic old British Empire "divide and conquer" modus operandi...
As evident from my other comments I don't like CCP one bit. But while we criticize oppression, Muslim extremism which triggered this oopression shouldn't be pushed aside either.
Tibet is equally oppressed under CCP's boots for many decades now but nobody seems to be bothered.
I don't think that is the case. Media is biased but I am not sure why Media wants to exaggarate atrocities on Muslims but convinently skips atrocities on other ethnic group mostly by the Muslim extremists.
I understand all Muslims are not involved but what stops Media from highlighting the atrocities of Muslim extemist group. Plenty of these groups exists but barely reported.
I am not sure if this is because of White guilt or Media houses are scared of Charlie Hebdo like scenario.
I genuinely believe this is getting less publicity because it's impossible to cover in the traditional way: there are very few first person sources and it's impossible to go there and film. Whereas unlimited media from the US domestic conflict is available.
I would be more concerned about challenges like these in my local area, i.e. the west (millions refugees living in tents as a result of western wars, for profit prisons, children refugees in border camps, etc). if we can't solve it in our own countries, what chance is there to solve it in china through twitter.
Some of us don't have much power. I denounced it online several times, that's all I can do.
People like Lebron James, who thinks of himself like a freedom fighter, when he criticized China he ended up saying he was misinformed and he wasn't educated about the issue.
He loves the money coming from China more than anything else. I want him to be reminded by this. He put his millions before human lives, just like some nazi collaborators did.
> I denounced it online several times, that's all I can do.
You can do more. Write your representatives. Call their offices (both Democrat and Republican), and buy fewer Chinese products, even it costs more money.
Please keep in mind I'm not criticizing you here, just saying you could literally do more if you wanted to.
I do get annoyed with people who "complain online'. That's just a waste of time. Call your representatives. They will respond to thousands of phone calls from constituents saying "do X".
For some reason we think Facebook is our democracy, not our elected representatives.
Let me clarify: I believe it's a waste of time if we're also not complaining to our elected representatives.
If 10,000 people read this article and got annoyed, and then we made 10,000 phone calls, things would happen. If 10 people pick up the phone... not so much.
> Call your representatives. They will respond to thousands of phone calls from constituents saying "do X".
What do you say to people who don't really believe this? I don't think I'm the only one who looks at the political scene (and much of "reality" as it is projected into our brains through the media) and thinks it's largely theatre. Kayfabe.
Oh sure, you can surely find discrete examples of where the system worked as advertised, but are these examples actually representative of the overall truth?
I can't shake this feeling that if I (or most any other person from this forum who has worked on large, complicated projects with many interconnected moving parts) was tasked with managing the affairs of this planet, the organization and means of communication/documentation would not look anything at all like what we've seen with our very eyes, for many decades.
How does a person sort out what is actually true anymore?
> What do you say to people who don't really believe this?
Nothing really. They've lost faith in democracy and have given up on the country. What else is there to talk about? If you have no faith in the system and don't want to participate then I'm not sure what you want or you're expecting.
I would add that if voting/protesting isn't enough to feel like it's "doing something" there is always the option of fixing things from within. I know that's a bit of a fairy tale idea for many, and few seem to have the convictions to actually do so once they are in a position to, but that doesn't mean that YOU, dear reader, would fail the same way.
Seriously, run for city council or something. Fix the bugs the same way you would an interconnected system: find where things (money, proposals, solutions) drop out, find where things are miscommunicated, optimize, upgrade, and secure the edge systems that directly interact with the client (the people).
It might take a lot of effort and people doing this, and many many years, but I think it is a more viable long term solution than waiting for things to magically get better enough that you feel like a vote will suffice.
"Democracy" is a principle - our current implementation of it is but one of many possibilities to go about it.
Democracy (in general, and our rather arbitrary flavor of it) is only one form of governance, is there some reason we're bound to this approach? Nothing else shall be considered?
> and have given up on the country
This is speculation - it is not possible to know the thoughts, dreams, intentions of other people with accuracy.
> If you have no faith in the system and don't want to participate then I'm not sure what you want or you're expecting.
I believe I want something similar to what the BLM protesters believe they want, who are also displeased with the outputs of "the system" as it is. I'm weary of the "my way or the highway, reality is what we say it is" approach to "Democratic" governance theatre.
There's a huge difference. China needs the west to keep buying their stuff. China had a huge economic development thanks to the money from the west. They don't even have to care about their internal economy as long as billions and billions flow in from the west.
Now, if we change that by let's say moving factories back home or to Africa, they'll be in trouble.
If you're a Chinese citizen, first of all you don't have a voice. The CCP owns the country, they make the rules, and economically they don't have the upper hand. That's why the only thing they do is threaten any foreign official who won't submit to them.
> China needs the west to keep buying their stuff. China had a huge economic development thanks to the money from the west. They don't even have to care about their internal economy as long as billions and billions flow in from the west.
This seems... economically confused. Billions flowing in from the West reflect the fact that China's internal economy is strong. If it fell apart, no money would flow in.
It means that the productivity of the Chinese economy, and thus the ability of the CCP to siphon off some of that for things like building mass detention facilities, is dependent upon foreign demand. It is doubtful that China has enough domestic consumption demand to keep everyone gainfully employed if foreign demand dried up. But it’s hard to say what would actually happen.
> and thus the ability of the CCP to siphon off some of that for things like building mass detention facilities, is dependent upon foreign demand
Way off the mark. You could have an economy on par with North Korea and build those facilities. China's economy is 100+ times larger than it needs to be to build the facilities they're building in Xinjiang. If you rolled their economy back to 1990 on a GDP per capita basis, they could still get it done with zero problems. Concrete, barbed wire, guards, guns and slave labor are most of the necessary ingredients. The most primitive of nations have what's necessary to do it.
It depends on a lot of factors such as who and how many see your posts, how much you consume and how much you boycott etc. If you’re alone the impact is small but if others are starting to follow suit the number goes up fast and the voice becomes stronger.
It is easy to think the impact is nill and that’s exactly how the opressor wants you to think, no wonder the divide and conquer is a strategy that works. But every movement starts off with a few who believe they make a difference and eventually it picks up a critical mass
Let me contrast that with something: opening a dialogue outside of an echo chamber.
For example, a woman of Han descent who had her purse snatched by a Uighur kid talked about feeling nervous and clutching her bag when she passed someone on the street. Instead of lecturing her about systemic problems as a first resort, I started by finding common ground: her experiences as a Chinese woman studying abroad in Japan, and the systemic racism she experienced.
The ally training skills I learned in the US were helpful. The more typical high-minded condescension, in contrast, tends to be counterproductive in my experience.
Yeah... I hear you and I think there’s a valid point here, but let’s not draw false equivalencies. Mass forced detention of entire ethnic groups is not comparable to systemic racism. One can argue that the US is systemically racist but we did elect a black president.
==He loves the money coming from China more than anything else. I want him to be reminded by this. He put his millions before human lives, just like some nazi collaborators did.==
All of this could be said about our current President and his family. He has far more power than LeBron James, maybe we should hold him accountable?
Who cares? Lebron James and yourself are both adults capable of taking stances and acting on them regardless the actions and behaviors of the president of the US.
To play devil's advocate: the west is now in a soft Cold War with China. Given China's opaqueness, any media report about China has to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially considering how the media has acted as the mouthpiece of the state in the past (most notably in the entire Iraq WMD fiasco).
So while I certainly don't doubt that China is oppressing its minorities, I'm also loathe to believe every media report about it.
I know this isn't a popular opinion, but very objectively, western media does not have a track record of being truthful when it comes to Cold War opponents.
What a weird take. Every administration before our current one appeased China despite their obvious human rights issues. This is the first admin to challenge the issue.
The weird take is going after LeBron James like it is his job to conduct international diplomacy, while giving Trump a break on his personal Chinese business interests.
If all he did was to not speak up, your argument is totally valid. But the truth is he actively tried to silent others by saying Daryl Morey was "misinformed and not educated on the situation", when nobody asked for his opinion about the matter.
First off, Trump’s foreign policy on China is working as their economy contracts. Or do you want an invasion?
Second, Lebron can do much to educate himself on China, as he’s already an activist in other areas, and he has millions of followers. But it looks like he’s educated himself on who pays his paycheck.
Lebron is free to say and support whatever he pleases. We’re all free to stop listening, stop watching and stop buying what he’s selling.
Actually, in a strange way LeBron James has way more power than Trump in regards to cultural pressure that can result in change. Trump has been using this issue as an excuse to ramp up pressure in the south china sea among other things, but people don’t believe him to actually care.
Hes been quoted, by one of his own hires, as telling the Chinese that they're "doing exactly the right thing" so people are right to think he doesnt care.
Thank you for your whataboutism. OP brought up Lebron James because he likes to publicly moralize about how certain lives matter and ignores an actual genocide in the country keeping him paid.
Should we spend more time on LeBron James' hypocrisy or the President of the United States' hypocrisy? One is the most powerful person in the world, the other is a basketball player. Focusing on LeBron is just another red herring to distract.
Even Islamic countries that should traditionally be sympathetic to the cause of Uighurs turn a blind eye to it e.g. even Pakistan does not mention it because of their close relationship to China. If Nations are scared you can imagine how difficult it will be for individuals, even if you may think they have a lot of power.
> I denounced it online several times, that's all I can do.
You can talk to your representatives about it. You can start actively boycotting Chinese-made products (not so easy, I know). You can donate to NGOs such as the UHRP (Uyghur Human Rights Project). You can follow them on Twitter.
It's not like Lebron James will solve this either, so don't blame it on him.
A positive view would be that you could say that even the NBA needs to "pick it's battles" and can't do all of BLM, HK, Uyghurs, etc.
A more grim view would be that in the end companies will do what's best for them. Currently It's in the NBA's best interest to support BLM since it affects their base. HK, Uyghurs, etc. doesn't really affect them and fighting a battle for it doesn't help them in anyway.
It sounds like you may not be aware that the NBA has been actively and specifically blocking criticism of China. It sounds like currently they've reversed that policy on at least what custom jerseys they'll print, but only after a lot of pressure. The NBA is not neutrally "permitting" their players to protest things if they happen to want to, they have taken an extremely active role in what political actions are and are not allowed, and anti-China protests have consistently been on the "not allowed" side, by the league. The NBA, as an organization, is not a neutral; they have chosen sides.
I am well aware of the NBA's actions. The specific question was about an NBA player, which would be the NBA Players Association, not the league itself. They work for the league, in the same way many of the companies HN Readers work for do business in China.
I’m voting and campaigning for politicians that I might disagree with on 99% of all issues for the sole reason that they’re willing and capable of standing up to China.
For reference, my views are aligned with Sanders but I’d vote for Trump solely based on his actions towards China.
I’d also say boycotting Made in China and companies kowtowing to China isn’t as difficult as people say. You might not be able to boycott it 100%, but it’s not that hard to find alternatives to 90+% of the products.
I am! It was a horrible mistake and I'm glad he's gone now. But to be clear, Bolton did the vast majority of his damage during the Bush administration.
His trade war is hurting China a lot - companies are being forced to leave due to the high tariffs, Chinese companies are suffering (for instance, Huawei not being allowed to use Android, banned from using chips with US tech, etc.), TAIPEI Act and Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was also signed under his administration. He’s the first US President to speak directly with Taiwan’s President since 1979, he made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past few decades, China Mobile were blocked from offering services in US, Huawei is being blocked from building 5G networks (even paying other nations to block them as well), TikTok and WeChat likely to be banned from the App Stores as well (hopefully worldwide), he keep reminding people that the Wuhan Virus originated in China and that they’re responsible for the pandemic, China about to lose the developing country WTO status, HK special status revoked, etc.
There’s really not a single person who’s done more to stand up to China than Trump has. Just look at China’s reputation today compared to 4 years ago.. the world is finally starting to wake up to the dangers of the CCP. And I really don’t care what his motives are.. I know he probably couldn’t care less about the Uyghurs, but his actions towards China are helping the hundreds of millions of people currently and about to suffer from the CCP.
I wouldn’t assume he doesn’t care. He is human don’t forget. I do wonder how much the tougher stance towards China is specific to this administration. Can we know that a different administration would not have acted similarly. Maybe not the willingness to increase taxes on trade quite so aggressively, which is odd coming from a republican but the results have been encouraging with the American economy hitting record highs despite his much vilified trade war.
CCP’s atrocities are nothing new.. the only thing that’s new is that we finally have a couple of leaders that are beginning to stand up to China (such as USA and India), and Trump’s actions are forcing other nations hands.. for instance, Canada got dragged into it when Meng Wanzhou was rightfully arrested, to which the CCP responded with arbitrary arrests of Canadians in China.
Biden went on record saying he would end Trump’s China tariffs, and we can also see how little the EU and other western countries are doing to stand up to China (and how little Biden did during his 8 years’ vice presidency)..
Having to fall back into unsubstantiated hyperbole like "worst president in history" and "screwing the country" probably doesn't help to win anyone over.
Trump's character flaws, faux status as a successful business mogul, a conservative, a champion of the Republican party, a racist, ... is left to the reader. (A hilariously easy task with some time and Google.)
What I wanted to address was the single issue of China garnering votes for Trump's second term. JFK is famously quoted for this: "...Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,..."[1] America didn't become the world's top economy by being anti-globalist. We manufactered things, we exported things, we embraced international trade. We pioneered the transistor, created silicon valley, and created an environment where enterprising foreign nationals could come with their ambitions and build companies that ultimately would employ Americans, enrich stock holders, and create jobs. But ... now Trump and his administration is slowly closing the US off from immigration of persons and businesses and ideas. How many of the worlds future Fortune 100 companies are in the minds of PHd students or researchers that given this new visa situation will think twice about incorporating in the USA? Just look at the businesses created in the first and second tech booms and ask how many founders were foreigners.
Regarding the foreign reserve currency and Chinese military might. I guess I am more bullish on that not changing anytime soon. The US spends far too much in propping up the military industrial complex that it would take generations of incompetent presidents to ruin that lead. That being said it's very disconerting for Trump to be so cozy with our enemies, to openly praise North Korea (could be a policy of appeasement or just keeping one's enemies closer than his freinds... i dunno) and to give exuberant praise to Putin, etc., and to disregard intel from his own agencies, to badmouth the FBI and the CIA, to bilk the government into paying himself by staying at his own properties, golfing practically his whole presidency, praising white supremacists, ... all of this is forgiven because he's "hard on China". HAH!
To think that President Xi isn't 10 moves ahead is to be truly ignorant.
>Most job losses ever? Or highest deficits ever? Or highest unemployment rate ever?
>Does that win anyone over?
How can you blame Trump for that when the unemployment rate was the lowest in over a decade before 2020, and the job losses / fall in unemployment was due to lockdowns he didn't support? Overall the unemployment rate is much better in Red states, which have weaker or no lockdowns: https://www.aier.org/article/unemployment-far-worse-in-lockd...
Getting the blame is part of being the country’s chief executive. There are two main categories here, economy and health. We are performing worse than Europe on both accounts (higher death toll and higher unemployment rate). Does that tell you we are doing something wrong as a country?
I think it's a bit unfair to blame him for the unemployment rate having gotten so high, but it is fair to blame him for how long it has lasted. If he'd shown the tiniest bit of competent leadership through the pandemic, we could have locked down for 2 months, suffered the high unemployment, and then largely gotten back to normalcy(+masks) by now. Most jobs could have come back, especially if we had done something like furloughs like the UK did. Instead, it got completely out of control entirely due to his incompetence.
Unemployment being higher in locked down states makes sense. But the flipside of that statistic is that daily deaths in red states are reaching new peaks now while they've flatlined to lows in blue states.
>If he'd shown the tiniest bit of competent leadership through the pandemic, we could have locked down for 2 months, suffered the high unemployment, and then largely gotten back to normalcy(+masks) by now.
Then why haven't the Blue states that have been locked down for months gotten back to normalcy? Like California and New York? Why hasn't Melbourne gotten back to normalcy? Almost nowhere that prevented a first wave by shutting down has managed to avoid a second wave.
A single percentage point difference in unemployment data versus versus thousands of deaths. And comparing dense European countries to rural red states. Your data is devastating to your point.
Blue states can't go back to normalcy since diseased red staters can still travel freely within the country and ruin it all over again. Also because Americans are too stubborn to mask up for the privilege of normalcy.
Places like Australia have gone back to normalcy(+masks) now. Japan can pack a train full of people(+masks).
Yeah, I’m afraid so. I wish liberal politicians were willing to stand up to China, and I try to encourage them to do so. But at the moment I’m unfortunately stuck supporting people like Trump.
At the end of the day it boils down to how much damage is Trump and other conservatives able to inflict compared to the CCP. I’m pro immigration, privacy, eu, choice, police-reforms, etc. my views are very much aligned with what you see in Scandinavia.. but at the end of the day, I see CCP as the greatest threat that the world is facing, and I feel voting against all my beliefs to help stop them is a necessary sacrifice.
Technically, having started no new wars, makes him one of the best presidents in history (as a non-American, that's the most important dimension of any US presidency.)
(Caveat: I think US entering WWII was justified so I don't blame FDR, and also given that Bush & Obama attacked so many countries, it's hard to find another country to invade, so arguably Trump had an easier job... but still. Good job!)
I'm a lowercase independent—for the life of me, why did the Democrat party choose the worst candidate of the lot two campaigns in a row?
Biden has tons of baggage. If he had an (R) next to his name and nothing else in life different he’d be getting creamed for all his previous policies, stances and quotes. In addition, mentally he’s not lasting four years of intense presidential demands.
In 2016 Clinton was Bush heavy (or comparatively Bush would be Clinton lite)
There’s something terrible about the primary system and it’s not obvious how to fix it. It is ostensibly more representative than the system which came before it, but honestly it seems in the past 20 years to have delivered extraordinarily low quality candidates for both parties more often than not. It’s not clear what the solution is though.
Counterintuitively primaries are more democratic now compared to before when backroom dealing often had more sway.
Maybe what's happening now is that early on in primaries enthusiastic voters vote for fresh kids, then as things progress more seasoned voters vote for more established candidates but by then most good established candidates have dropped off and we’re left with the second bests and hangers on.
Kind of a paradox of choice in the political arena.
>>>So China’s so big of an existential threat that you’ll let one of the worst presidents in history have another 4 years to continue screwing the country?
How screwed do you think the entire country will be if the Chinese continue their naval expansion unchecked[1][2], defeat us in a conflict, and de-throne the USD as the primary unit of exchange for energy resources?[3] What do you think happens to the US economy if we can't print the world's reserve currency like Monopoly money anymore?[4] Those are all far bigger, long-term strategic problems than the executive overreach we might experience with a President who's a rude narcissistic strongman....and almost no-one else who has campaigned for President or VP has even paid The CCP Problem lip-service (Biden started barking as if he was anti-China only in mimicry of Trump, arguably).
Why have you decided to boycott Chinese products? There's a billion people there, and most of them have nothing to do with the government. They just want to sell toys or computers or whatever it is, in order to be able to eat.
I don't boycott Apple just because the country they are based in (according to the note in the box) has committed some crimes over the years.
And in the US people at least ostensibly have the right to choose their own government, AND there's a culture for large corporations to lobby government directly.
You'll find the same people who want to boycott Chinese products are ironically also quite good at keeping us aware that people in China can't really speak their own minds.
Also, at what level should the boycott happen? Should I just boycott Californian luxury electronics manufacturers? All Californian firms? All US? The world is a tangled web, why is the political map the one whose lines you use?
The nazi Germany had millions of citizens too, just like you and me. People who wanted to live a happy and fulfilling life.
We're not talking about bombing them. We're talking about economic boycott and economic sanctions.
What else do you have in mind? How do we act against countries that commit crimes against humanity? Do we just stand and watch because they have millions of good citizens?
Economic sanctions should be directed at leaders. I don't see much use in random people boycotting random things from China, having much effect on the leaders.
I guess it may have effect if you tell your favorite seller on Aliexpress, that sorry, I will not be buying anymore stuff from you, because XYZ. But just stopping, means nothing. Sends no discernible signal to the other side, and just increases economic suffering, which while it can lead to revolutions, only probably when it hits some extreme level. Just look at Syria, massive sanctions, people can barely eat, currency is spiraling to hyperinflation, and they still have not toppled the corrupt asshole in charge. And I doubt having to spend half a day just figuring out how to get something to eat helps in any way. In fact corrupt asshole in charge is using the sanctions, to rally his supporters.
Sanctions against leaders don't work if they don't have their assets in the west. Chinese officials wouldn't give a fuck about it.
And besides that, we're in an economic against them. Actually, they are in an economic war against us. We can't do business in their country freely but they can make their own companies here or buy the ones we already have with the money they are making from manufacturing our stuff. Nope.
Clearly government is involved. When did a government of somewhere last express their displeasure at China's government for this? If they've done it, they must have buried the news. If you don't think a public rebuke will help anything, what do you propose?
If you don't think that it will help, don't do the wrong thing for the right reason. That will only clear your own conscience.
Let's not do things that harm the wrong people. Is not buying a toy from China really going to help anything? You'll put some toy guy out of business, but is he gonna lobby government to stop the prison camps?
Are you quite aware of how much blood is spilled when China goes through political turmoil? Aside from the world wars, a huge chunk of the top 10 bloodiest conflicts in history are Chinese internal conflicts.
You're asking people who understand very well that standing up for a new government is going to be extremely costly.
In the meantime, you want to deprive them of work.
Do you have a source for the ten bloodiest conflicts? Not saying you’re wrong just curious. Tiananmen Square and maybe some cultural revolution moments come to mind. But I also haven’t studied much Chinese history, which is why I’m curious.
Why won't 350 million American citizens do something about their own government first, before engaging in moral grandstanding in respect to other countries? No, this doesn't mean just getting rid of Trump - the entire political spectrum is complicit in millions of deaths every decade.
US calls itself a "Democracy", so you're supposed to be more empowered to make a change than an average Chinese citizen.
You're asking a very tricky "what if" question and implying a better result without evidence.
There are only 3 countries with the potential to become superpowers in the modern age -- USA, Russia, and China. Hegemony by one of the three is inevitable.
It is up to YOU to provide proof that Russia or China would be better choices.
President Roosevelt said "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." The US foreign policy has gone very far with that idea. A large military then economic pressure is what led to the collapse of the USSR. The same tactic has kept North Korea, Iran, and other despotic countries at bay for decades.
Today, Trump and Biden both have endorsed a similar approach to China. Build up the military presence around China and pile on economic pressure until they collapse (trying to walk the fine line to avoid war).
Unlike the US, China and Russia/USSR have killed tens to hundreds of millions of their own people. Do you really think there would be fewer deaths if China or Russia were the dominant power? If they're willing to kill their own so casually, they're going to be even more barbaric with foreigners.
I'd ask again, do you have any proof that the alternatives are better?
I don’t know if that’s fair to Lebron. The man does a ton of good off the court that I think he’s a good enough guy to not value money as much as you paint him for it. I mean why would he be so willing to give of his own wealth if he was so driven by money? What is more likely is that the NBA pressured its biggest star because they have ambitions in China bigger than Lebron.
How is that comparable to Jews? jews were tortured killed and their personal properties were robbed. Do you see anyone in this article got the same result? Where does you sense of self righteous coming from?
We invaded Nazi Germany in response to their own invasion. Nobody is willing spend their effort to stop genocide unless they have another motive. For example, I only hear about the Rohingya genocide when people use it as an argument to break up Facebook.
> To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?
I agree 100% with what you say. But if you are from the USA, you may better not say it.
It is just impossible for a person from the USA not to sound ridiculously hypocritical when criticizing China. You are the greatest war-mongering country in the last few generations! If you are from the U.S.A., it is more realistic and effective to work on stopping your country killing people abroad.
Not that anything that you say or suggest about China is wrong. But this century will not be remembered only by the Chinese genocide of the Uighurs, but also by the north-american aggressive and murderous imperialism.
Yes, if there's one thing the Uighur people desperately need right now is people outside China cynically exploiting their suffering for petty axe grinding about young people ("current generation") and "cancel culture".
I am of Indian origin but grew up in China. If you want to know how its got to this state I can tell you my point of view. Back in ~2007 I saw the first brush of Uighur Han tensions. My family and I were stuck in a traffic jam in a very crowded market place. We were in car with a driver. At some point my mom, who used to be a journalist, spotted a pickpocket. This pickpocket was armed with a knife and was going about pick pocketing people. There was a police patrol around, however it was clear that he was trying to steer clear of trouble with the pickpocket. When my mom saw this her inner indian-journalist/activist was immediately re-awakened. She was about to open the door and take on the negligent police and pickpocket. At this point our driver immediately locked the door and told her to stop. He explained that the man was an Uighur and the police just did not want to run in to his gang. Later on we learnt that many Uighurs would leave their home towns for second and first tier cities in China in the hope of finding work. However due to linguistic and cultural barriers they would inevitably be unable to find work and hence fall to other ways to make money. Unfortunately when you are a minority if one person of you're kind does something wrong, your entire minority comes under scrutiny. There was a point in time when news of mass stabbings by Uighurs was becoming a weekly phenomenon. The one sited on Wikipedia is a stabbing at train stations, but I remember some which even involved children in kindergartens and pre-schools. Naturally, the local population will expect something. China may not be a democracy but their government has a social contract with the han majority to make sure they deliver. All of this was happening around the time that Xi was slowly taking the reigns from the then president Hu Jin Tao. Xi's rise was not particularly clean and his establishment of "anti-corruption" bureaus was most certainly a good way of him to get rid of opposing politicians. To prove his metal he needed to act. One of the things that was evident was the Uighurs needed "education" so they could work. For all purposes, the average Chinese would back this (heck even I would think that it'd be a good thing to help disadvantaged people come out of poverty). The only problem with "education" in China is that its not always what the rest of the world would consider humane. As a child, I had a piano teacher would beat me if I played the wrong notes. When my parents found out they of course flipped shit and immediately fired her, but I'm pretty sure other children were subjected to similar treatment and their parents would support such treatment. It is only very recently that the average Chinese parent actually started to consider child abuse by teachers as wrong. Hence it was not difficult for the CCP to recruit a group of people who sincerely believe they are doing social work to design, build and run these camps. To add to the fire you of course had western media which would report terrorism acts that were predominantly muslim (seems like american media thinks white shooters are not terrorists but anyone muslim is, and yes, Chinese do read western media its not North Korea). Hence the local Chinese also would be lead to believe that stamping out Islam is what the rest of the world supports. Towards the end of the stay there were a few times that the police stopped myself and my dad because we looked Uighur, but once we told them we were foreigners they became very jovial and let us carry on with our work. I don't know how cancel culture will solve this. In fact I don't how the world will solve this without causing more divides and hurt to an already very polarized world. But I do know one thing, it is important that we remain kind to one another irregardless of race, language or religion.
It’s almost like more than one country can do horrible things. Who’d have thought? It doesn’t make the situation in China any better to point out that other countries have also done bad things.
Ehh, don't you think that actually makes it worse?
I don't know about you, but even if the government does not have a legitimate democratic mandate, it still has a larger say than a foreign country. Especially if you consider that the USA isn't exactly a shining example of a functioning democracy.
Even the "million people" detained statistic is incredibly misleading. When you look at the original actual paper that conducted the investigation, it's about the total people who were ever detained, most of which are released after their mandatory reeducation is complete. However, western journalists intentionally make it sound like 1 million people are currently being detained.
Whenever BuzzFeed or any news company talks about ICE detention or US prisons, they make it very obvious when they talk about current people being detained and the total population that had been detained.
First of all, China didn't kill a million muslims.
Second, discrimination or racism is never right, but the arguments related to Xinjiang prisons are being used to drum up popular support for a [cold] war against China. We have a duty to speak out against our leaders, so that we can prevent tragic mistakes being made.
How many Muslims did China actually kill? I mean, what's happening in Xinjiang is obviously very concerning, however I don't think anyone has ever produced any evidence that a literal genocide is happening. Mass incarceration? Perhaps. Brainwashing? Maybe. Genocide? Highly dubious.
> How many Muslims did China actually kill? [...] I don't think anyone has ever produced any evidence that a literal genocide is happening. Mass incarceration? Perhaps. Brainwashing? Maybe. Genocide? Highly dubious.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II:
“genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
“Mass incarceration” with children forcibly transferred to boarding schools run by people outside of the group and “brainwashing”, together, seem to qualify for (b), (c), (d), (e), even if (a) is missing.
Just to address the comment above (it has been flagged and I can no longer reply directly). This is not a debate of America vs China. This is a debate of morality. We should not reserve judgement only for "bad guys". The reason China gets a free pass on this is because they are economically valuable to other countries. Chaining up pregnant women is bad, by all nations at all times.
I think that regarding free pass the US get it all the time. Look at the Iraq war, I think that only western country that had to suffer consequences was France with the Freedom Fry silliness. Moreover in the US almost everybody is proud to have fight this war...
We in Europe should be more vocal about what US and China think they can do to the rest of the world without consequences. China is an awful country, we just have to look at what they did in Tibet, for the last 40 years... there is nothing new.
European country are currently doing nothing and this is despicable, my country being the worst, we just discovered that Chinese police officer are invited here to identify potential Chinese to send back to China... the moral standpoint is very weak, and only facts matter.
> European country are currently doing nothing and this is despicable, my country being the worst, we just discovered that Chinese police officer are invited here to identify potential Chinese to send back to China... the moral standpoint is very weak, and only facts matter.
I spot this demagogic argument from pro-Chinese position all the time: "they committed some crimes, so we have a right to do the same". Following that logic, they easily can justify their genocide with providing Holocaust as an example: "we just imprison and torture people, we do not burn them".
Yes, also impoverished and displaced several million people.
Consider the impact of all the regime change operations undertaken under the patronage of the United States in countries like Iraq, Lybia, Syria and Yemen, as well as devastating effects of economic sanctions on Iran, Syria and other nations.
What's happening there is despicable. But to the best of my knowledge there's no extermination. There aren't hundreds of thousands being shot or gassed.
It looks more like a "cultural genocide", the kind we saw exercised against the Tibetans.
I understand the emotions over this issue, and I don't think the holocaust is beyond comparison, but in this instance the comparison falls short.
Re-education camps with high death rates are very common in the CCP's brief history, so it seems like they're just rehashing what they've done before but this time on the Uighers.
From what I know most Germans weren't aware of what was happening in the camps until after the war. They would have known there were people being taken away. Most genocidal governments don't publicize it as that. There is almost always a cover story. When there is a systematic removal of people from there homes, we mus assume the worst. Because a government with such widespread and systematic oppression, unrestrained, rarely restrains themselves.
I doubt it. Even in the 40s, with no internet or cell phone cameras, even back then most governments knew about the holocaust as early as 41-42. There were evidence from concentration camp prisoners who escaped, and probably other kinds of evidence...I mean it's kinda hard to hide exterminating millions of people even if you're super efficient and organised.
The stories we hear from China are despicable, but again - they suggest cultural genocide, not actual genocide.
Can you cite that? My understanding is that the concentration camps weren't known to exist until the Allies stumbled onto them whilst advancing across Europe. In many camps the Germans had attempted to destroy them just hours before allied troops arrived, in an attempt to conceal what had been happening, but were interrupted by the high speed of the advance after D-Day. If everyone knew they wouldn't have put these camps far into the wilderness and forests, they wouldn't have tried to destroy them as they fled, and the allies wouldn't have been surprised by what they found.
As for Germans knowing, they were subject to Nazi censorship. Some of them had their suspicions for sure. I saw a quote once from a woman who said of course they knew about the camps. When asked how she knew, her reply was: because that's exactly the sort of thing Hitler would have done. So she didn't really know, just suspected based on past behaviour, which is different.
So definitely were known before liberation. As for the date, could be that I was wrong and it was 1943, and not 1941 (However, as soon as 1941-2 some 1.5 million Russian jews were shot to death, was there zero evidence of that?)
It's also possible some governments had evidence but refused to believe such monstrosity could take place, or were just helpless / reluctant to do anything. Hell even these days some people refuse to accept what happened there.
Obviously the Germans didn't know who knew what and tried to conceal. And obviously American / Russian soldiers who liberated the camps were surprised. Does that mean Churchill / Roosevelt were surprised? Also - was it really such a shocker? Jews were starving to death for years in Ghettoes prior to extermination - surely the local population had an idea the jews fate wasn't great.
Hmm, the article about Vrba says he escaped in April 1944 but it took months for his report to be published. Meanwhile the Soviets encountered their first concentration camp around July 1944 time as well. So it sounds like his report came out more or less concurrently with the Soviets discovering Madjanek.
The page does say that there were previous reports, but one was only in Polish. The other apparently did end up with the British and American governments, but that's a long way from most governments knowing. And even when the allies started discovering camps it was censored for a while, supposedly to avoid upsetting people with missing relatives. So I guess the information hardly travelled far, and not outside US/UK war offices.
The Independent article seems to be conflating different things. Jews started fleeing the Nazis even before they fully assumed power. The comments about the Empire being full are presumably related to that. Wanting to indict Hitler for war crimes hardly required knowledge of concentration camps, so I'm not sure it provides so much evidence.
I guess there's surprise, and then there's formally knowing. I referenced a German woman who said she "knew" but what she meant was she wasn't surprised when she learned. I guess that was how a lot of people reacted.
Interesting links though, thanks. I learned some new things about WW2 today.
This piece is also interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_bombing_debate
So there were definitely evidence of what was going on.
The allies were getting their asses kicked till U.S joined the war so I'm not sure there was much that could have been done...
> she was detained a third time and spent three months in a cramped prison cell with 60 other women
> She said nine women from her cell died during her three months there.
Of course that's only one sample. But if that is near the true death rate being applied to 1 million people (and soon more) then it's clear that this is genocide.
As mentioned elsewhere what’s happening here is not extermination like the Holocaust but it’s also worse than Japanese internment that everyone denounces as having been a very bad thing...
Yet, companies continue doing business and in some cases abetting the policy.
Some of these companies will be the IBMs and Fords as well as the Wolksvagens and Thiessens but it’s pernicious and people don’t notice. But in retrospect years hence it will be stark.
"Japanese internment that everyone denounces as having been a very bad thing"
If WW3 starts and Chinese internment camps start popping up you'll find out that what people say in peacetime and what they actually think are two very different things.
Cancel culture never had any attention of pushing forward any reasonable change. It was mostly a tool for people to pretend that they somehow had an lasting positive impact on the world in the most convenient way. Boycotting goods made in China and substituting them with those made elsewhere is not as convenient. So cancel culture people and pretty much everyone else will pretend and argue such a measure will have no impact on the political situation. Maybe we should point out that apartheid in South Africa wasnt solved by good intentioned dialogue but through economic embargoes. But that argument will be ignored because its so inconvenient to not use goods made in China. You know its so easy to donate a paltry sum of money while looking at the photo of a poor African/Indian/Bangladeshi/Mexican kid and then feel great about ones magnanimity than to take the hard steps to curb an actual menace and human rights violation.
I mean, for most of us on here, it's either use goods made at least partially in China or switch career - you're never going to get a computer with no Chinese-made components, especially not at a price which I can afford. Good luck doing that without years of planning, and managing to continue to feed yourself.
Fact of the matter is that China is in an extremely powerful position over the world due to its position in the manufacturing chain. The world would fall apart overnight if China stopped manufacturing things - parts of it did already when Covid-19 caused lockdowns. There isn't the manufacturing ability elsewhere to scale up to what China provides.
I really do not understand the downvoting here. The one reply on this comment says that we are not that powerful. Greta Thrunberg literally wrote a book saying this is not the case.
I must admit that I have not read Greta Thunberg's book, but if it has a solution to capitalism's demand that we make sacrifices to our personal morals or starve in the specific instance of the tooling we need to perform our work, I'd love to hear it. You don't get to say "I am not using computers any more as they contain components made in China" and keep your job as a software developer, and you'd be very unlikely to receive unemployment benefits.
The only way we're getting there is actual organisation and uprising to overthrow the capitalism which requires that we make those sacrifices, and frankly... it's not going to happen any time soon. People broadly agreed to the National Guard being sent in to handle some people who were mostly demanding that the police stop killing them, can you imagine what would happen if those people were actually calling to overthrow the state?
