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Same is true of US, Germany, Britain, etc


The US had open markets and low tariffs for a long time; China's automotive tariffs were amongst the strongest in the entire world.


And in the 19th century when US industry was developing?


China and Vietnam are the only countries worldwide which have executed bankers for corruption in recent decades. No ahem necessary.


It's striking that they recently arrested one of the richest men in the country, the Evergrande founder, for fraud. Seems unthinkable in the US/Europe right now.


Some of Evergrande's financial practices were somewhat ponzi-scheme-ish (new sales funded construction of previous buyers), and the US has imprisoned a few such schemers too.


Were they guilty?


The people in China that made the decision on that antifreeze in toothpaste, and the 300 pigs in the river or that graffiti tower in Los Angeles across from the Staples Center. I don’t think those people walked.

That is not to say that in time they’ll start to do many of things that happens in the west where those at the 1% or 2% walk away, in time China may drop down to that level, on the other hand, I would like to believe the United States will start to have the same reaction that the country had when Sputnik went around the Earth and change course and I don’t mean sanctions, tariffs, wars, and threatening neighbors to the north and to the south.


Do you find that far-fetched?


Communists have been executing bankers since day one so not just recent decades, if anyone finds that impressive.


Until proven guilty, yes they are always innocent.


That is true for all people. Not just Americans. It’s just disgusting to say that all Americans are innocent but we can assume others are guilty. As far as I know Bin Laden was killed without ever being tried in a criminal court.

Are school shooters in America innocent if they are killed before getting a trial?


I’m speaking with regards to the American legal system. Yes the endless foreign wars are also unconstitutional.


But do you think it was wrong to kill Bin Ladin since you see him as innocent since he didn’t have his day in court?


Bin Laden was indicted in a court of law multiple times for multiple crimes over a decade. The evidence presented was clear. https://www.internationalcrimesdatabase.org/Case/947/Bin-Lad... None of these disposition matrix assassinations ever had evidence against them presented in court. The terrorists in the executive branch and their terrorist enforcers in the military just assassinated them without trial.


Yes. Why should I believe he was guilty of anything? The fair and balanced media said so?


It's a joke that you're missing.


Absurd statement. If you omit surface-level syntax, there's very little that's "in the style of Ruby" in terms of actual semantics.


From "An Evaluation of the Program for Reducing the Workweek in the USSR"

> There is considerable evidence that the reduction in hours of work is a basic goal and commitment of the Communist movement and the Soviet state.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP64B00346R0001002...


Can you address any of the points the commenter made instead of retreating into an ideological non sequitur?



Nice you can also spam links without making an argument, some of which 404. Can you help me reverse a linked list in Python?


Weird, they all worked for me when I loaded them from Zotero.

I'd have to review how to code linked lists and not just use them. But I could probably share a delicious cookie recipe.


UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Michelle Bachelet actually visited Xinjiang and made no such assertions. Whoever did release the report you're referencing, they waited until immediately after her term ended to release it (within hours). Pretty conspicuous.


No it was actually released hours before her term ended not after. And the reason she held off releasing until the last minute is because of pressure from China to refrain from releasing it.

In addition to releasing the report she released a 131 page Chinese rebuttal simultaneously. Not the actions one would expect of a shadowy group at the UN out to get China.


No it was released Sept 1 Geneva time, and her term ended Aug 31.


“Bachelet’s damning report was published with only 11 minutes to go before her term came to an end at midnight Geneva time. Publication was delayed by the eleventh-hour delivery of an official Chinese response that contained names and pictures of individuals that had to be blacked out by the UN commissioner’s office for privacy and safety reasons.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/31/china-uyghur-m...

The organization’s human rights office delivered its much-delayed report minutes before Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, was to leave office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/world/asia/un-china-xinji...


I agree it was reported this way, but do we have evidence it was actually prepared and published by her at that time? The report conspicuously does not mention the viewpoint and concerns of the High Commissioner as other OHCHR reports do nor does it reference Bachelet's findings from her May 2021 visit to Xinjiang.


So you don't have any evidence it was published the next day? You just made that up out of whole cloth?

The internet archive lists the first time they archived the document as August 31 22:23 GMT, which was August 31 23:23 in Geneva. That matches the reporting from NYT and Guardian from the next morning. Both of those reports are also available on the internet archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220701000000*/https://www.ohch...


Geneva was in UTC+2 (CEST) on August 31. So will you admit I am correct and you got sanctimonious for no reason?


Yep missed that. The internet archive did indeed fist scrape that document 23 minutes after midnight Geneva time.

However it is unlikely that the internet archive web scraper would have picked up a relatively obscure document within 23 minutes of its release.

The NYT and Gaurdian articles published that morning (verified by the internet archive) said that the article was published 11 minutes before midnight Geneva time. That lines up with the internet archive scraping it about 30 minutes later.

So unless they were both wrong or in on it, it was released before midnight Geneva time.

What evidence do you have to support that the UN was lying, and that the NYT and the Guardian were wrong about the time?


The Internet Archive recorded an error page for that URL just four minutes prior. So we know that the document was not available before September 1, after Bachelet's term had ended.


Why would the internet archive even be aware of the existence of that url unless someone had already added it to the sitemap?


Someone could have manually tried to archive it on September 1.


I also would like to know where the confusion came from the publication date. What is that based on?


The fact that Geneva was in UTC+2 (CEST) at the time the report was published. So what I said was correct.


So your evidence is that the internet archive didn’t scrape the document until 23 minutes after midnight? And the most likely explanation isn’t that it took the IA scraper a few minutes to pick it up? The most likely explanation is that the NYT and the Guardian were wrong or lying and that the UN was lying?

Did you even know about the time on the internet archive before I brought it up? You said “within hours” so I assume you didn’t? Where did you hear that it as published on September 1st?


You chose the Internet Archive as authoritative evidence, not me. Your back-pedaling "most likely explanation" is again disproven by your own source as the Internet Archive recorded an error page for that URL just four minutes prior. So we know that the document was not available before September 1, after Bachelet's term had ended.

Where has the UN asserted that Bachelet prepared this report? Please share if you are aware of any such assertion.

Again, the report does not make any reference to the High Commissioner's inquiries as other reports do. Your "most likely explanation" fails to account for this.

Yes, media outlets lie and make errors all the time. Sorry to be the one to break this to you.


Bachelet made numerous public statements in the weeks leading up to the release that she was gonna to release a report before she left.

A report from as released.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/08/un-human-rig...

The UN press release is dated 8/31 Geneva time. The document is as well.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/outgoing-un-human-rights...

Numerous newspapers and NGOs who received the press release have stated that it was released on her last day in office. Many of them complained that by doing this she was attempting to avoid the fallout.

Bachelet made no statements even hinting that it wasn’t the report she prepared.

If she was worried that someone would release a report once she left, she could have released her version before she left to prevent that.

Reuters quotes the Chinese Ambassador thusly “If I read her mind correctly, I don't think she's on board with the report and that's why it was released in the last minute,"

Notice he made no mention of “the report was backdated”. He says “last minute”.

I can find no evidence of any official Chinese position that the report was backdated. Surely the Chinese government would have complained if this had taken place.

This whole thing is just some nonsense internet speculation with zero evidence that proposes a version of the facts that not even the Chinese government agrees with.


Her statements reflect uncertainty on whether the report would be published as there was intense political pressure in both directions.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/25/un-rights-chief-und...


If you didn't have British Crown state media wrapping a narrative around these images you wouldn't think anything of them.


Would you take a group of Swiss journalists?

https://gijn.org/stories/interview-uyghur-victims-xinjiang-p...

How about the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights?


Why should I take the claims of journalists without evidence?


So here’s some of the evidence that we have

The Xinjiang Police Files: A 2022 leak of over 5,000 police photos, internal documents, and spreadsheets revealing the scale of detention, with images showing prisoners shackled, hooded, and under guard in 2018.

The China Cables (2019): Leaked, classified instructions on how to run the camps, including directives to ensure "no escapes" promote "repentance" and use full video surveillance.

Satellite Imagery Analysis: Researchers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) identified over 380 suspected detention sites, including new construction and expansion, often featuring guard towers and razor wire.

Testimonies and Research: Former detainees have reported torture, rape, forced sterilization, and intense indoctrination to abandon their religious and cultural practices.

Government Documentation: The Karakax list, a leaked document, provided detailed, case-by-case justifications for detention, such as having too many children or wearing a veil.

Are you this incredulous when someone reports that the US locks up more Black people capita than White? Someone defending the US could make the same claims you are that everyone is out to make the US look bad. That multiple independent groups are fabricating evidence etc…


I would suggest:

1. give links or one link to the collection of above "evidence" to let others to get conclusion by their own. BTW, I've seen some ("Leaked, classified instructions...) but easily get different interpretation.

2. Also using "I" is better than "We". That means you get your conclusion, not representing others.


1. I've provided a half dozen links in this thread. Feel free to google for more if you want them. Most of the people I'm replying to will respond with some variation of "funded by nefarious group x" regardless of what links are posted.

2. Lecturing random people you meet like they're a freshman English student is patronizing.


Because it's their job? Because it's corroborated by multiple other journalists and even a UN report?

Why should I take the denials of a pseudnonymous online account without evidence?


Can you imagine a journalist who would lie for any possible reason?


Can you imagine hundreds of journalists who would lie to promote a false story that hasn't really been all that effective and harming China (the only possible motivation for such a campaign). And not a single one of the journalists approached by the creators of this campaign leaked anything. If this really was a massive conspiracy theory, that itself is a much much bigger story than the Chinese rounding up people that most of the world don't seem to care about. One of those hundreds of journalists wouldn't have been able to resist such a scoop.

I'm guessing the next part of your conspiracy theory is that the conspiracy group is so powerful that everyone is scared to come forward. But if they are that powerful, why construct such an ineffective anti-china story? Surely such a powerful group could construct something more damaging.


That's a very outdated model for how conspiracies work. Why would it be necessary to bribe and threaten journalists working at these organizations? They genuinely believe in the project of the US financial, military, and cultural empire. They went to the same schools and were socialized with the same core beliefs as the people in US government and high finance or those running the intelligence agencies and military-industrial complex. They wouldn't have the opportunity to work at these 'news' organizations if they had worldviews that were radically incompatible.

Likewise, I don't believe anyone is coercing you to push these ideas online. I believe I could drill down on every single source and claim, and your fundamental beliefs about this question would remain the same.

Proximity to and dependence upon established institutions exerts an inexorable gravity on worldview. It determines one's social circle and path to advancement in every area of life. Those inside the bubble feel themselves to be 'free thinkers', but one who strays outside the acceptable range of beliefs and ideas will immediately experience a sharp discontinuity in this 'freedom'.


You have a group of Swiss journalists who regularly publish critical stories about war crimes in Gaza, the US detaining immigrants, the Trump administration, and waning influence.

And your first thought is that these people have such a hard on for the American Cultural Empire that they are willing to fabricate massive amounts of evidence of Chinese wrongdoing with no coercion required?

They’re just all sitting around writing stories about how fucked up the Trump administration is and how America is over and how the next century belongs to China, and then they think “hey we should probably all work together to make China look bad because America Fuck Yeah! Am I right!?!?”


Please calm down. They might not like Trump — that would be a given for many in these elite circles — but are they really opposed to the prevailing world order? In what material way?

How does being Swiss contradict anything I said? Switzerland is deeply integrated into this prevailing order. It is home to the Bank of International Settlements, the supra-national central bank of central banks whose charter grants it immunity from any national subpoena or inquest.


I understand that being victimized makes you prone to paranoia. Paranoia can be an effective defense mechanism against future trauma.

But in this case it’s just you and me alone in an elevator and you farted. There’s no one else here.


Sure. I can also much more easily imagine pseudnonymous accounts making material misrepresentations for politically motivated reasons, spreading FUD about journalists making things up.


Great. So we can agree we shouldn't take anything at face value.


Ironic phrasing used here. China is the only country that actually has the capacity to deeply integrate AI into industrial manufacturing in a way that will reduce costs of goods. They already have lights-off autonomous factories without AI.


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