"A crude version of such a system is already in operation in China’s northwestern territory of Xinjiang, where more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been imprisoned, the largest internment of an ethnic-religious minority since the fall of the Third Reich."
There's so much in this article that merits comment / discussion, but this sentence really jumped out at me. I'd been vaguely aware that this kind of thing was happening in the PRC, but not at this historic scale....
Western values matter more than ever. Here's hoping for a sea change this fall.
Pro tip: If you ever find yourself in a semi-professional discussion, I would avoid referring to democracy, human rights, and individual freedoms as "Western values." Attaching a specific cultural and anthropological carte to what I view more as universal values that have yet to take roots universally, is exclusive and counter-productive. For one, China went through a period of Western domination starting in the 19th century, and Chinese people haven't forgotten that. Asking China to follow Western values in this context is about the worst thing you can say. Just because these concepts originated in the Western world should not preclude one from putting them in the context of the larger human enterprise. Do not ask, "Why shall China not walk in the footsteps of the West in giving its people the right to shape their destiny?" Ask, "Why shall the Chinese people not be at liberty of shaping their own destiny?"
Yeah it also invites all sorts of stupidity to paint totalitarianism as "just their culture" which is itself bigotry wearing a mask of anti-colonialism in apologetics to that which should be condemned. It brings to mind dismissing infamous warlord oppression with child soldiers and instituionalized rape as "just their culture".
This should be universally obvious but fundamentally people are people no matter their origin or culture.
Oddly enough, the West conceded this battle against the Muslim world to some degree. We are exhausted from that debate. The Muslim world mostly believes in their own bullshit, thankfully we bowed out from that fight.
We need to bow out in the same manner with the debate against the East. There’s a billion people, if they don’t want free uncensored Internet, who are we to say anything? If they wanted it, they’d have it. They know the ins and outs of the idiosyncrasies of their society, the same way the west does (how the west reconciles virtual slave labor to maintain it’s lifestyle of affordable luxuries (everything from food to clothes to electronics)).
But, there is a new issue. Slavery in America was considered the ‘peculiar’ institution. Surveillance state is something we have to ignore, similar to, I don’t know, making your women wear varieties of face coverings (Islam), we have to accept they are acclimated to the mental gymnastics required to sustain their pride. Whatever. We shouldn’t waste our energy on that, it’s a losing battle.
But, the ‘peculiar’ institutions are the things we need to probe. A repeat of pre-extermination Holocaust in China is a no go. I hope the examination keeps up, and I hope we retroactively apply this new spirit to some of the trespasses that occurred in Palestine as well.
Oddly enough, the West conceded this battle against the Muslim world to some degree. We are exhausted from that debate. The Muslim world mostly believes in their own bullshit, thankfully we bowed out from that fight.
China, though, owns an Islamic region. So they can't run away from it. They could build a wall, as Israel did, but that just contained the problem. Israel was never able to get large numbers of Arabs to abandon Islam. So Israel has an ongoing headache. China is trying to avoid getting stuck in that deadlock.
It's not the surveillance system that's the big problem. It's that they went all the way to concentration and re-education camps. They're trying to break the hold of Islam. In too brutal a way.
It's pretty much an official propaganda policy of CPC to maximally polarise the conversation, and convert it to "US vs them" format, with "our (imagined) values," and "their values"
My understanding is that 'western values' is also a dogwhistle for a particular sort of nationalist authoritarianism that does not represent, for instance, the Allies in WWII.
Rather the other side of that conflict, really. This complicates things. I have to ask, especially seeing the 'cancel culture' and the suggestion that things have been getting worse for years, which definition of 'western values' you mean.
From where I'm standing, there's never been as much ability to advocate for your POV, including from groups that have historically been brutally oppressed. It's messy, but that's democracy for you. I think it's an instructive contrast with what's going on in China.
Western values can be a big pain in the butt, and yet I wouldn't have it any other way. We're living through a spectacular vindication of exactly Western values, compared to some other ideologies/ethos that have gained traction in the past.
I don't know that extremists on both far left and far right yelling over each other to drive public policy is a sign of a healthy democracy.
Neither of those groups naturally represent a majority of people, they're just having an outsized megative impact on society by being loud.
While Soviet Union had centralized unidirectional brainwashing, US now has bipolar, decentralized brainwashing. Not quite the same but also not quite that different.
If anything it's all those "western values" clashing together in a rather unfortunate way, exposing our society's inability to deal with free speech amplified by technology, corrupt politicians, greedy billionaires, and consolidated media empires.
This sucks, and it's not just messy, the whole thing is failing at the seams with no hope in sight.
"dogwhistle for a particular sort of nationalist authoritarianism"
No such dogwhistle signal was intended here, at all. "Western values" was meant as shorthand for democracy and democratic ideals. Related tangent: it bothers me that the far right attempts to conflate patriotism with nationalism.
Nobody's willing to defend them? I think you mean you can't be bothered. Some years ago I raised an abuse of power by the british government with the EU and wheels started to move. I'm not giving details and it was nothing too major but it's surprising what one letter to the right official did (ok, I imagine there were others also complaining so not just me).
With a number of people here for whom failure is not an option, it's a bloody destination, undermining anyone who tries, you will get the society you deserve.
Nobody's willing to defend them? I think you mean you can't be bothered.
I mean, I do also write to MPs and various offices. What I mean to say is it's very difficult to build a grassroots movement that opposes the establishment, Brexit being the big exception to the rule.
Anyone campaigning for say, digital rights against government surveillance could get cancelled by the media very quickly.
Trouble is there are too many who won't try. And brexit was anything but grass roots, it was led by the top. There was also a lot of passion there to be led, for better or worse.
Anyone campaigning for say, digital rights against government surveillance could get cancelled by the media very quickly.
Oh come on, get cancelled by the media? They might be lazy at times but the media doesn't 'cancel' stuff.
Eh?? Brexit was fiercely decried by the ruling class. The only reason the vote happened was because it threatened to break up the conservative party. Nobody expected the result we got.
The media doesn't cancel people directly but they do amplify minor Twitter outrage to a global audience and as such, part of the problem. The canonical example is entire articles being written on 1-2 tweets supporting a particular opinion, but ignores thousands of tweets with a different opinions.
It doesn't benefit the rich and powerful to bring attention to what is going on in Xinjiang and to Uighurs. Just like IBM, Hugo Boss, Coca-Cola, etc. made money in Nazi Germany, the likes of Volkswagen, Nike, etc. are making money today by turning a blind eye to forced re-education camps, forced labor, etc.
The average man always wants cheaper goods and services, even if that is the result of misery/suffering of some people, few of which will be known to him.
In a resource-constrained, cut-throat competetive economy where everything is seen as a zero-sum deal, the average man will never hesitate to root for less-for-others if it guarantees more-for-me.
Where people's measure of worth is what one owns rather than what one does or how one lives, such a decadence is but a mere natural happenstance.
The eastern scriptures depict this in an allegorical way - a time in the world where there's no evil (satya yuga, pure and natural), followed by a time where the world is deviating towards order (treta yuga), followed by a time in the world where the balance of dharma (righteousness) tilts slightly towards adharma (wickedness or everything opposite of righteous) which was Dwaparayuga, followed by the age where righteousness is nowhere to be found (Kali yuga which is where we are now) This being a cycle and the cycle continues forever and ever. A refresh will happen - how soon or later, nobody seems to know!
As much as I hate Trump, I must admit that the alternative at the time involved continuing to pretend China is an ally.
HRC was a principal driver of the Trans Pacific Partnership. I've heard claims that it was about containing China but they've always come with no citations. My general understanding was that the TPP would have made it easier to outsource to China even more, harmonizing (at least on paper) IP law to allow more outsourcing of things like programming, radiology, CAD, IT, accounting, paralegal, etc., which could have been a final nail in the coffin of the US middle class. These are among the last upwardly mobile middle class jobs that remain in the United States. While it's true that US manufacturing remains a large component of GDP, automation and efficiency gains have made it a declining contributor to employment.
I categorically cannot vote for Trump because he is a racist and is associated with fascists (categorical blacklist in my mind) and is personally constitutionally unfit to be president, but I fear that Biden will return us to a course of pretending China is a friendly nation. Like the last election where I unhappily voted against Trump (not "for" HRC), there is no good choice.
The motive for our China policy is of course the same as the motive for looking the other way at Saudi human rights abuses and their role in 9/11: money. Had Hitler found a way to line American pockets, I wonder if that holocaust thing would have mattered.
International Trade Treaties were meant to do so earlier but wound up botched by including too many outright special interests forcing deal breakers. Beyond even state level interests into irrelevant "noisy minority" ones like trying to enforce location name branding onto new world which used it for centuries as implicitly "in the style of Parma".
The IP strategy ones often missed that it wasn't stealing - they sent the plans over themselves to save money. Even without illicit third shifts or counterfitting per se they would fundamentally learn enough to compete on knock offs. If the IP was actually precious to them they would have never sent it abroad to manufacture as the percentage saved wouldn't be worth it.
In my opinion what is spoken about IP in general and trade with China beyond "it is cheap/has high industrial concentration advantages" are comfortable lies to ease anxiety of the status quo as opposed to recognizing a nuanced and messy strategic situation of many actors which doesn't fit into a TED talk let alone a sound bite.
I don't think it was missed, in whole or in nuance, by anyone paying attention, but bringing attention to it was met with accusations of racism, and those were partisan.
Not that I'm chill with the Right, either: the "markets can do no wrong" philosophy leads to an enormous blind spot. Greedy optimizers fall apart when sub-components need to coordinate. When an adversary realizes they can just pay the hand to shoot the foot, suddenly the system finds itself with a destroyed industrial base but can't understand what just happened because the explanation lies in the blind spot. That's an even bigger problem than easily co-opted social justice causes.
Seems to hinge on the definition/degree of imprisonment. From what I have read they aren't really in the same ballpark. What's going on in Gaza does seem unethical.
Let us presuppose that Palestine is a country. Having a small territory, angry neighbors and a blockade at your border doesn’t make you a prisoner. It simply means that you are at war and losing, or have been conquered and are now occupied territory until you submit to your new overlords.
To become prisoners, one would have to consider Palestinians to not be members of a separate country to Israel, but rather 2nd class citizens forced into a sort of apartheid.
Yes I read the quote, but my understanding of the Palestinians in Gaza is based on reality and not ideology. Gaza is a separate territority. The Palestinians there are more of less free to leave, especially if they want to go somewhere other than Israel. The plight of an impoverished people held hostage by a terrorist government does not a concentration camp make.
The Chinese government is literally putting Uighurs in box cars and shipping them to camps.
So the takeaway is that the poster has to be a renowed (within this thread) expert or what, the ostensible point is lost? The derail (whataboutism) is not constructive. The Palestinian/Israeli dispute/occupation is not in the same realm as Chinas historic actions.
Comments
"A crude version of such a system is already in operation in China’s northwestern territory of Xinjiang, where more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been imprisoned, the largest internment of an ethnic-religious minority since the fall of the Third Reich."
There's so much in this article that merits comment / discussion, but this sentence really jumped out at me. I'd been vaguely aware that this kind of thing was happening in the PRC, but not at this historic scale....
Western values matter more than ever. Here's hoping for a sea change this fall.
Pro tip: If you ever find yourself in a semi-professional discussion, I would avoid referring to democracy, human rights, and individual freedoms as "Western values." Attaching a specific cultural and anthropological carte to what I view more as universal values that have yet to take roots universally, is exclusive and counter-productive. For one, China went through a period of Western domination starting in the 19th century, and Chinese people haven't forgotten that. Asking China to follow Western values in this context is about the worst thing you can say. Just because these concepts originated in the Western world should not preclude one from putting them in the context of the larger human enterprise. Do not ask, "Why shall China not walk in the footsteps of the West in giving its people the right to shape their destiny?" Ask, "Why shall the Chinese people not be at liberty of shaping their own destiny?"
Yeah it also invites all sorts of stupidity to paint totalitarianism as "just their culture" which is itself bigotry wearing a mask of anti-colonialism in apologetics to that which should be condemned. It brings to mind dismissing infamous warlord oppression with child soldiers and instituionalized rape as "just their culture".
This should be universally obvious but fundamentally people are people no matter their origin or culture.
Oddly enough, the West conceded this battle against the Muslim world to some degree. We are exhausted from that debate. The Muslim world mostly believes in their own bullshit, thankfully we bowed out from that fight.
We need to bow out in the same manner with the debate against the East. There’s a billion people, if they don’t want free uncensored Internet, who are we to say anything? If they wanted it, they’d have it. They know the ins and outs of the idiosyncrasies of their society, the same way the west does (how the west reconciles virtual slave labor to maintain it’s lifestyle of affordable luxuries (everything from food to clothes to electronics)).
But, there is a new issue. Slavery in America was considered the ‘peculiar’ institution. Surveillance state is something we have to ignore, similar to, I don’t know, making your women wear varieties of face coverings (Islam), we have to accept they are acclimated to the mental gymnastics required to sustain their pride. Whatever. We shouldn’t waste our energy on that, it’s a losing battle.
But, the ‘peculiar’ institutions are the things we need to probe. A repeat of pre-extermination Holocaust in China is a no go. I hope the examination keeps up, and I hope we retroactively apply this new spirit to some of the trespasses that occurred in Palestine as well.
Oddly enough, the West conceded this battle against the Muslim world to some degree. We are exhausted from that debate. The Muslim world mostly believes in their own bullshit, thankfully we bowed out from that fight.
China, though, owns an Islamic region. So they can't run away from it. They could build a wall, as Israel did, but that just contained the problem. Israel was never able to get large numbers of Arabs to abandon Islam. So Israel has an ongoing headache. China is trying to avoid getting stuck in that deadlock.
It's not the surveillance system that's the big problem. It's that they went all the way to concentration and re-education camps. They're trying to break the hold of Islam. In too brutal a way.
You quite get the tone of the conversation.
It's pretty much an official propaganda policy of CPC to maximally polarise the conversation, and convert it to "US vs them" format, with "our (imagined) values," and "their values"
These values matter, but nobody is willing to defend them. In fact, things have been getting worse for years now (e.g. cancel culture)
My understanding is that 'western values' is also a dogwhistle for a particular sort of nationalist authoritarianism that does not represent, for instance, the Allies in WWII.
Rather the other side of that conflict, really. This complicates things. I have to ask, especially seeing the 'cancel culture' and the suggestion that things have been getting worse for years, which definition of 'western values' you mean.
From where I'm standing, there's never been as much ability to advocate for your POV, including from groups that have historically been brutally oppressed. It's messy, but that's democracy for you. I think it's an instructive contrast with what's going on in China.
Western values can be a big pain in the butt, and yet I wouldn't have it any other way. We're living through a spectacular vindication of exactly Western values, compared to some other ideologies/ethos that have gained traction in the past.
I don't know that extremists on both far left and far right yelling over each other to drive public policy is a sign of a healthy democracy.
Neither of those groups naturally represent a majority of people, they're just having an outsized megative impact on society by being loud.
While Soviet Union had centralized unidirectional brainwashing, US now has bipolar, decentralized brainwashing. Not quite the same but also not quite that different.
If anything it's all those "western values" clashing together in a rather unfortunate way, exposing our society's inability to deal with free speech amplified by technology, corrupt politicians, greedy billionaires, and consolidated media empires.
This sucks, and it's not just messy, the whole thing is failing at the seams with no hope in sight.
"dogwhistle for a particular sort of nationalist authoritarianism"
No such dogwhistle signal was intended here, at all. "Western values" was meant as shorthand for democracy and democratic ideals. Related tangent: it bothers me that the far right attempts to conflate patriotism with nationalism.
Nobody's willing to defend them? I think you mean you can't be bothered. Some years ago I raised an abuse of power by the british government with the EU and wheels started to move. I'm not giving details and it was nothing too major but it's surprising what one letter to the right official did (ok, I imagine there were others also complaining so not just me).
With a number of people here for whom failure is not an option, it's a bloody destination, undermining anyone who tries, you will get the society you deserve.
I mean, I do also write to MPs and various offices. What I mean to say is it's very difficult to build a grassroots movement that opposes the establishment, Brexit being the big exception to the rule.
Anyone campaigning for say, digital rights against government surveillance could get cancelled by the media very quickly.
Trouble is there are too many who won't try. And brexit was anything but grass roots, it was led by the top. There was also a lot of passion there to be led, for better or worse.
Oh come on, get cancelled by the media? They might be lazy at times but the media doesn't 'cancel' stuff.
Eh?? Brexit was fiercely decried by the ruling class. The only reason the vote happened was because it threatened to break up the conservative party. Nobody expected the result we got.
The media doesn't cancel people directly but they do amplify minor Twitter outrage to a global audience and as such, part of the problem. The canonical example is entire articles being written on 1-2 tweets supporting a particular opinion, but ignores thousands of tweets with a different opinions.
They memory hole lots of stuff though.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?gbv=1&tbm=nws&q=%22governmen...
Seems like it's there.
Not sure I understand what you're getting at??
You are asking people to be bothered, when their own Western governments were asking them not to for the last 20 years.
These people got very well habituated to the injustice their own countries perpetuate.
It doesn't benefit the rich and powerful to bring attention to what is going on in Xinjiang and to Uighurs. Just like IBM, Hugo Boss, Coca-Cola, etc. made money in Nazi Germany, the likes of Volkswagen, Nike, etc. are making money today by turning a blind eye to forced re-education camps, forced labor, etc.
The average man always wants cheaper goods and services, even if that is the result of misery/suffering of some people, few of which will be known to him.
In a resource-constrained, cut-throat competetive economy where everything is seen as a zero-sum deal, the average man will never hesitate to root for less-for-others if it guarantees more-for-me.
Where people's measure of worth is what one owns rather than what one does or how one lives, such a decadence is but a mere natural happenstance.
The eastern scriptures depict this in an allegorical way - a time in the world where there's no evil (satya yuga, pure and natural), followed by a time where the world is deviating towards order (treta yuga), followed by a time in the world where the balance of dharma (righteousness) tilts slightly towards adharma (wickedness or everything opposite of righteous) which was Dwaparayuga, followed by the age where righteousness is nowhere to be found (Kali yuga which is where we are now) This being a cycle and the cycle continues forever and ever. A refresh will happen - how soon or later, nobody seems to know!
As much as I hate Trump, I must admit that the alternative at the time involved continuing to pretend China is an ally.
HRC was a principal driver of the Trans Pacific Partnership. I've heard claims that it was about containing China but they've always come with no citations. My general understanding was that the TPP would have made it easier to outsource to China even more, harmonizing (at least on paper) IP law to allow more outsourcing of things like programming, radiology, CAD, IT, accounting, paralegal, etc., which could have been a final nail in the coffin of the US middle class. These are among the last upwardly mobile middle class jobs that remain in the United States. While it's true that US manufacturing remains a large component of GDP, automation and efficiency gains have made it a declining contributor to employment.
I categorically cannot vote for Trump because he is a racist and is associated with fascists (categorical blacklist in my mind) and is personally constitutionally unfit to be president, but I fear that Biden will return us to a course of pretending China is a friendly nation. Like the last election where I unhappily voted against Trump (not "for" HRC), there is no good choice.
The motive for our China policy is of course the same as the motive for looking the other way at Saudi human rights abuses and their role in 9/11: money. Had Hitler found a way to line American pockets, I wonder if that holocaust thing would have mattered.
I too remember getting called "racist" and "[economically] dumb" for suggesting that we shouldn't ignore China's IP strategy.
I've seen hopeful signs that standing up to China is now a bipartisan position, but 5 years ago it certainly wasn't.
It was bipartisan then but in different terms.
International Trade Treaties were meant to do so earlier but wound up botched by including too many outright special interests forcing deal breakers. Beyond even state level interests into irrelevant "noisy minority" ones like trying to enforce location name branding onto new world which used it for centuries as implicitly "in the style of Parma".
The IP strategy ones often missed that it wasn't stealing - they sent the plans over themselves to save money. Even without illicit third shifts or counterfitting per se they would fundamentally learn enough to compete on knock offs. If the IP was actually precious to them they would have never sent it abroad to manufacture as the percentage saved wouldn't be worth it.
In my opinion what is spoken about IP in general and trade with China beyond "it is cheap/has high industrial concentration advantages" are comfortable lies to ease anxiety of the status quo as opposed to recognizing a nuanced and messy strategic situation of many actors which doesn't fit into a TED talk let alone a sound bite.
I don't think it was missed, in whole or in nuance, by anyone paying attention, but bringing attention to it was met with accusations of racism, and those were partisan.
Not that I'm chill with the Right, either: the "markets can do no wrong" philosophy leads to an enormous blind spot. Greedy optimizers fall apart when sub-components need to coordinate. When an adversary realizes they can just pay the hand to shoot the foot, suddenly the system finds itself with a destroyed industrial base but can't understand what just happened because the explanation lies in the blind spot. That's an even bigger problem than easily co-opted social justice causes.
”more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been imprisoned, the largest internment of an ethnic-religious minority since the fall of the Third Reich."
There are 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Seems to hinge on the definition/degree of imprisonment. From what I have read they aren't really in the same ballpark. What's going on in Gaza does seem unethical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang#Human_rights
There are 8 million Uighurs in Xinjiang
Is the whataboutism necessary? What does Gaza have to do with China?
Did you actually read the quote? It said the largest internment of a religious minority since the third reich.
OP was just pointing out that Palestinians are also imprisoned and in fact are a larger group.
Let us presuppose that Palestine is a country. Having a small territory, angry neighbors and a blockade at your border doesn’t make you a prisoner. It simply means that you are at war and losing, or have been conquered and are now occupied territory until you submit to your new overlords.
To become prisoners, one would have to consider Palestinians to not be members of a separate country to Israel, but rather 2nd class citizens forced into a sort of apartheid.
Yes I read the quote, but my understanding of the Palestinians in Gaza is based on reality and not ideology. Gaza is a separate territority. The Palestinians there are more of less free to leave, especially if they want to go somewhere other than Israel. The plight of an impoverished people held hostage by a terrorist government does not a concentration camp make.
The Chinese government is literally putting Uighurs in box cars and shipping them to camps.
So the takeaway is that the poster has to be a renowed (within this thread) expert or what, the ostensible point is lost? The derail (whataboutism) is not constructive. The Palestinian/Israeli dispute/occupation is not in the same realm as Chinas historic actions.