The CCP don't have a great track record of giving a shit about people at home. What makes you think they care for anything but the opportunity/ability to project more power abroad?
I will also have to disagree on that one. I was born in China, I now live in Europe, and "CCP doesn't give a shit about people" is a bad western stereotype.
Of course, define "caring". Does any other government, including democratic ones, truly care about people? Debatable. But what I'm saying is that CCP is not the mass-murdering villain that Hacker News makes it out to be.
What about censorship, etc? Yes bad things do happen. Lots of good things also happen. Just like all countries, nothing is perfect. I don't need to remind you of all the human rights violations by the US. The point is: you need to have a more nuanced understanding of the CCP than that of a cartoon villain.
Here are some facts: all coronavirus patients got free treatment, free stays in isolation hotels, all Wuhan residents got free food delivered to their homes. In contrast to what happened here in Europe, the CCP took a strong stance to save as many of their own citizen as they can instead of worrying about economic impact.
Agree but not the good hero you make them out to be either. Does any other nation have Muslim concentration camps. Invasive tracking? And extreme sensorships measures?
> I have no doubt that the Rohingya people have always been one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world, without any recognition of the most basic rights starting by the recognition of the right of citizenship by their own country – Myanmar.
> Secretary-General António Guterres in press remarks on his visit to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – 02 July 2018
> [...] This led to the destruction of villages, numerous dead and wounded, and the internal displacement of up to 140,000 people, mostly confined to IDP camps, which persist to the present (and under the most deplorable conditions). [...]
You could argue that Guantanamo Bay is a Muslim concentration camp, and that the rendition program was (likely is) the most organised torture program since the Nazis.
You could further argue that the overreaching mass surveillance outed by Snowden is invasive tracking.
In a way, you could also argue that all the boogeyman-style news in the west is a form of censorship too - it keeps the masses focused on their hatred of communists, Russians, Chinese, Islam (or whoever), so they don't focus so much on real issues at home.
And all this is just in direct response to your comment - it doesn't even touch on racism (very much alive in the US in particular), wars started on false pretenses and/or for profit, the CIA being able to lie to congress, refusing to not use cluster munitions, etc.
I think sometimes we're so focused on the perceived evils of other nations, that we lose sight of the highly dubious things are own nations are involved in. Perhaps that's the point...
Part of the issue is that we tend to see things that are far away more clearly. It is that much harder to see things clearly up close. Outsider sees most of the game kind of deal. For the record, I am not defending Guantanamo Bay, but even simple things like discussing prison system in US is complicated with anyone, who was born here, because, and it is probably the worst human trait, it has always been this way.
> Does any other nation have Muslim concentration camps
India, according to John Oliver.
Of course, bring up India should not normalize the severity of locking people up in camps in China. This is the point: asking for examples of worse behavior is a moot point because camps are bad even if every nation in the world does it. At the same time, camps in China is not necessarily suitable context in all facets of discussion.
When it comes to topics (like whether supplying masks from China makes it a good actor) with too much subjective variables, I personally like to think about issues as independently as possible. Using this logic, PPE from China, whether purchased or donated, is an act of appreciable good gesture; regardless, hard condemnation is a must regarding their abuses.
I didn't claim they are heroes. I explicitly said that bad things do happen. I just want to stress that that doesn't negate the fact that good things also happen, and that all countries have good and bad things. Pointing out bad things is one thing; stereotyping and overly focusing only on the bad things is another.
As for Muslim camps: forced reeducation and deradicalization, yes; concentration/killing/genocide: no. Try these:
CGTN discussion on Xinjiang situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2yMjbB1q24 (disclaimer: yes this is Chinese state media, believe whatever you want, but I think it's still worth it to have heard this viewpoint)
And then there is also the fact that tens of Muslim countries officially approved of the Xinjiang situation. That's a bit odd, isn't it?
Now let me be clear: I am not claiming it's all roses and sunshine over there. It isn't, there are real problems, and people are indeed forced into things (though not killed), which is not good. But this is a more complex, nuanced situation than "China doesn't like Muslims so they kill them all".
The point is to provide a more balanced and fair view of things. Accusations of whataboutism is disingenuous, especially because I didn't even engage in it: I talked about China only. If anything, the parent I replied to is the one that talked about other nations.
And there you go with the "or death" thing. Forced reeducation and detention, yes. But where is the proof that systematic killing is happening? All the proof of the latter I've seen so far come from US government or US-funded sources with poor research methodology (see for example https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nat...).
And what do you say about the fact that a dozen of Muslim nations officially approve of China's conduct in Xinjiang?
>I don't need to remind you of all the human rights violations by the US.
Whataboutism
>And what do you say about the fact that a dozen of Muslim nations officially approve of China's conduct in Xinjiang?
That's completely irrelevant. Do the people being repressed approve because that's all that matters. And for the record they do not approve of their families being raped and basically held captive by CCP employees despite BS CCP propaganda to the contrary.
Whataboutism is dropping a dead cat on the table in order to steer the conversation towards that cat. I did not steer the conversation to the US, I stayed on the topic of China, therefore it is by definition not whataboutism.
You seem to say that whataboutism is anything that mentions similar crimes committed by another party, implying that the actions of others are completely irrelevant. No. My criticism is not "China does no bad things". It is "China is not represented in a balanced manner and is not held to the same standards as other countries". Since the discussion is about standards, context absolutely matters.
> That's completely irrelevant. Do the people being repressed approve because that's all that matters [...] their families being raped
There you go with the "families being raped" thing. My point with the aprovals of Muslim countries is: maybe those allegations of rape are false?
Like I said: forced reeducation and deradicalization, yes. Rape/killing/concentration/genocide, no. The Gray Zone articles show that claims of the latter rest on shaky sources that are either circular, or funded by US interests and agendas.
We can debate whether forced reeducation and deradicalization is appropriate. But genocide/rape/murder/etc is false.
The CCP are an ideological cult who will stop at nothing until everyone conforms to their ideology. Yes they have created a system, a cold techno-dystopian system that is my worst nightmare. Just because Hitler also built autobahns doesn't mean he was a good guy or his systems were OK.
Yes I did. Not even kidding. You get it when you generally behave like a good student at school. Maybe you associate it with something else (probably Mao mass murdering or w/e) but most Chinese see it as a pretty normal school thing.
I understand the feeling. Unfortunately it's inevitable that stereotypes etc. end up on HN, simply because HN is millions of people. At any moment, some population sample is getting activated by something that appears here and someone will get triggered into commenting. It's important not to generalize from posts like that to the entire community, because if you do it will feel like you're surrounded by enemies, when the opposite is true.
I sometimes find it helpful to replace "HN" with "large statistical distribution" in a sentence. It's usually true and makes things less dismaying.
People have been hounded off this site because of their national origin. I'm sure you'll agree that that's utterly shameful. Unfortunately it's what we end up with when people allow baser instincts to drive their posts.
I am quite surprised to see those stereotypes on hacker news . Looking at all the accounts with names like systemxxx and throwawayxxx, I feel conspiracy theory is no joke
Unfortunately, this kind of thing makes it on to HN. That's inevitable when a forum has millions of users, anonymity is ok, and the topic is divisive. We do what we can to try to convince people to follow the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and we ban accounts that violate them repeatedly.
