10 ms·

The current state of human rights in China, and its utter, utter lack of admonition by world leaders due to their dependence on their economy is to me one of th

by phreack 10y ago

The current state of human rights in China, and its utter, utter lack of admonition by world leaders due to their dependence on their economy is to me one of the greatest tragedies of today. I truly don't know what could be done to help free speech prosper there as it should.

chrischen 10y ago
To admonish, you'd have to 1) Stop buying Chinese made products 2) Stop US violations of human rights (gitmo) Frankly, without doing this, you'd never be able to admonish and have it carry any real weight with Chinese policy makers. They'd just see a black pot calling out the kettle.
- krona 10y ago
  > 2) Stop US violations of human rights (gitmo) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  - idra 10y ago
    Is invoked in EVERY China-related thread on HN pretty much without exceptions.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - coldtea 10y ago
      And Russia, and right vs left, etc. Invocation of whataboutism is a mind bug and a lazy excuse to be one-sided that has to die. And it's not just a "let's focus on X FOR NOW" issue (which would still be wrong, as issues should be judged relatively to gauge their importance). It's mainly invoked by people who never bother to point fingers on the non-X sides, so the "let's focus on X FOR NOW" is more like "let's focus on X permanently".
      - megous 10y ago
        Invocation of whataboutism is not a mind bug. It's the problem of never acknowledging your own issues and deflecting the criticism/concerns. The hypothetical interaction that would go "US: Hey China, we worry about your policy X. China: Hey US, we sort of understand where you're coming from, given your history. We also see similar issue with some of your policies..." would be perfectly fine.
  - vetinari 10y ago
    In other words, do as I say, not as I do, otherwise I will call you names. You aren't going to push debate forward with this.
    - krona 10y ago
      It's like you're assuming I'm American.
      - vetinari 10y ago
        It's not important, whether you are American or not. See coldtea's reasoning bellow. BBC, The Economist or Edward Lucas are not Americans either.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      Yes he is. I wonder if they teach whataboutism as a core argumentation technique in Chinese schools. No one is perfect, if perfection is necessary to criticise or even just report news, then nothing will be criticised or reported.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    There's a good Chomsky quote about this: "Actually, the principle that I think we ought to follow is the principle we rightly expected Soviet dissidents to follow. So what principle did we expect Sakharov [a Soviet scientist punished for his criticism of the U.S.S.R.] to follow? Why did people here decide that Sakharov was a moral person? I think he was. Sakharov did not treat every atrocity as identical-he had nothing to say about American atrocities. When he was asked about them, he said, "I don't know anything about them, I don't care about them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities." And that was right-because those were the ones that he was responsible for, and that he might have been able to influence. Again, it's a very simple ethical point: you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, you're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions."
  - coldtea 10y ago
    So, my sins don't matter, let's ALWAYS focus on the other side's sins. AKA my country, right or wrong. AKA, refusal to accept that value judgements are relative, not god given absolutes. AKA, priority (let's focus on X and only X now) without actually prioritizing (let's compare to see if X is actually the major offender we should be focusing on)
    - laurent123456 10y ago
      There's 41 people in Guatanamo, but there's 1.3 billion people in China. Sure there might be human right issues in the US and in other Western democracies but not at the same scale as China.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        Who said this should be limited to Guatanamo? E.g. there are 1.5 million people in US prisons, the 25% of the world's prison population for a country with a mere 4% of the world's people. Predominantly black too. How's that not a huge human rights issue? Or the police abuse/innocent shootings, in numbers unheard of even in developing backwater countries? But even more so, who said the 1.3 billion people in China are "victims" needing our compassion? Have you asked them whether they like their government and how their country is going? And don't just ask some group back in the 90s in Tiananmen square -- because we could always ask the Kent State students in 1970, the blacks in Selma, the OWS, the Tea Party, the ones protesting against Bush/Obama/Trump etc and get a picture that wouldn't necessarily be what most of American's feel too. There surely are human right abuses in China. But it's the Chinese (the people, not the government) that should define what they are, through their own values and preferences, not some finger pointing foreigners. Especially from countries with a large history of plundering, which also involves China (opium wars, etc) and most of the Pacific.
        PJDK 10y ago
        > But even more so, who said the 1.3 billion people in China are "victims" needing our compassion? Have you asked them whether they like their government and how their country is going? From the article "We'd arranged to meet a woman in her village in China's central Hunan Province and to then travel with her by train to Beijing, filming as we went. But we never did get to meet our interviewee. The story we ended up with, however, reveals more about the exercise of power in China than any interview ever could. It is one that involves violence, intimidation and a forced confession - my first in my long reporting experience in China - in which I found myself apologising for "behaviour causing a bad impact" and for trying to conduct an "illegal interview"." So, yes, this exact story is about asking Chinese people about their government and having their equipment smashed and being forced to sign confessions for their efforts. It should certainly be for the Chinese to define these things, the fact they can't is rather the point.
  - k-mcgrady 10y ago
    The OP is not invoking whataboutism. It's actually an important point. If the US (or any other western country) tries to admonish China there are plenty of human rights violations in our own countries which China will come back with. The point is that they will be able to engage in whataboutism. In global politics hypocrisy (why do we need to call it whataboutism?) is going to come back to bite you.
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      A century of examples from Russia and American history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
    - seppin 10y ago
      No, it's textbook false equivalency. When Gitmo was called "the gulag of our time", the UN failed to mention that while Gitmo had about 150 prisoners at it's peak, Sibera had tens of millions. It's not an appropriate comparison.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      > In global politics hypocrisy (why do we need to call it whataboutism?) is going to come back to bite you. No, that is exactly the very definition of a whataboutism! Many Chinese feel like they always need the high ground, and if their criticiser is not "perfect", whatever they say is null and void. This is just nuts, because no one is perfect.
      - srssays 10y ago
        There's a slight difference between being "not perfect" and having a torture camp and a president who says the US doesn't torture enough people (!). When the US preaches about human rights it devalues the concept. That makes it harder to hold countries like China to account.
        seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        What do US torture camps have anything to do with BBC journalists? Really, what? And anyways, how do US torture camps compare to Chinese torture camps? Its not like China is a paragon of virtue here, torture by the police is a huge problem that even the gov admits to (hey, police shouldn't torture people, please don't, it makes us look bad). > When the US preaches about human rights it devalues the concept. And who is the "US"? It is like some unified person that speaks with one voice? Is the NyTimes the US? Is the BBC the US? When I speak out on China, am I the US? > That makes it harder to hold countries like China to account. That is a straw man. We can't hold China to account for their human rights behavior, we have no right to do that. But we can damn be sure that everyone knows about it. I would expect the same for other countries with respect to the US.
  - taneq 10y ago
    Actually it's more about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
    - seppin 10y ago
      Hypocrisy isn't a crime, and it doesn't erase crimes either.
- Drakim 10y ago
  What if I don't live in the US?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Then you still need to have a perspective (which includes seeing what all players are doing) instead of merely choosing one side. Especially since lots of those not living in the US, e.g. in large parts of Europe still take a lot of US-based worldviews and US-influenced news in (the "Americanization of Europe").
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      we're trying our best not to...
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  Making trade agreements contingent on human rights would help.
  - sgift 10y ago
    The EU tried this with Africa, doesn't work so great as long as there are countries which don't do it. That's one of the reasons China is successful in Africa, they don't care what the countries do as long as China gets what it wants.
    - fjdlwlv 10y ago
      If only there were a mulitlateral trade agreement that could unite all the western and Pacific nations in a Partnership against Chinese abuses.
      - crdoconnor 10y ago
        The TPP actually had a rider on it preventing the deal from going through with countries that practice slavery. This effectively ruled out Malaysia. In what is probably the lowest point in his career Obama objected and effectively said that slightly lower trade barriers mattered more than slavery.
      - jza00425 10y ago
        How honorable! Try to force Chinese to bend their knees.
- PakG1 10y ago
  They'd just see a black pot calling out the kettle. Not they would. They DO. But honestly, despite its evident corruption that even their own leader admits is the biggest threat to the viability of their government, their government still strikes me as more competent in a gets-shit-done way than most other countries I see these days (considering only G20 countries, the smaller your country is, the less complex your problems are, and consider that China's problems are MASSIVE). Canadian living in China, amazed by how well things get done here, despite the massive problems they have. Albeit they aren't a democracy, so they don't need to care as much about doing what people want. On the flip side, the government is focusing mostly on what people want anyway, so it mostly works out. People who are ignorant about China are significantly ignorant about how well-run their government is. It's much more of a meritocracy than other countries' governments are, despite the evident corruption. I'm not justifying abusing human rights. I am torn in that I don't know how they keep a handle on their country if they don't have an iron fist. I find that most people who say otherwise are ignorant about the complex reality in China. It's not a simple situation.
  - muglug 10y ago
    The problem highlighted here is that a lack of free press in China means you will never know the scale of corruption, especially at a provincial level. Unless you have access to a vast underground network of informers, I don't much trust your view that the government is 'well-run'.
    - PakG1 10y ago
      I'd say the question is what does "well-run" mean? Does it mean infrastructure is getting built at a high-quality level, GDP per capita is rising, life expectancy is increasing, quality of life is increasing, and so on? All of that stuff is happening in China, and the world doesn't require a free press to confirm that. Again, people who don't know much about China don't know about the details of what's happening on the ground. They just see all this fear-mongering in the press about how horrible and evil China and its government is. The truth is always much more nuanced. Everyone lives in their own echo chamber. Just some people aren't aware that they do. If Clinton supporters didn't live in such an echo chamber, they wouldn't have realized how out of touch they were with all the people who voted for Trump, and how angry all those Trump supporters were at the establishment. If the Trump supporters didn't live in such an echo chamber, they wouldn't have elected someone who looks like he doesn't know what he's doing. Again, Xi Jiping is on record saying that corruption is the biggest risk being faced by the Chinese government. He is on record saying that the Communist Party's future depends on stamping out corruption. Their methods for identifying and stamping out corruption may or may not work. But it is disingenuous for anyone to suggest that their government is either ignorant of the level of corruption or actively trying to hide it. You didn't say that. But constantly focusing on corruption is preaching to the choir. Would a free press help? It may, it may not. It may not because a free press is also a blunt instrument. You have a large percentage of the population that's uneducated and easily manipulated. Think fake news and alternative facts are a problem in the US? China does not want to open that Pandora's Box. Seeing what's happening in the US, I don't blame them. A lot of China's problems require finesse in terms of sound long-term policy and policy execution, and I am sad to say that after living here for a while, I agree that a free press could whip uneducated masses into an unproductive frenzy. This situation is very dissimilar to how Wycliffe, Huss, and Luther translated the Bible to English to free them from control of the Catholic Church. These people are often literate already, thank you very much.
- simonh 10y ago
  Stopping buying Chinese products isn't going to help anyone in China and isn't going to hurt the Chinese government even slightly. In fact arguably supporting the growth of the economy outside the government sector in the long term could be the single most important factor in opening the country up by lkeading ona path from expectations of property rights to expectations of civil rights. Frankly there is very little we as individuals outside China can directly do about the situation over there. Maybe contribute to some charities or such that operate in China? They have to be very careful not to be seen as interfering politically, but just the fact of them existing and doing good work can help establish a culture of civic engagement and responsibility. Your second point is bang on. Restrictions on free speech and rights, intrusions into private life and communications over here, all of that is hugely harmful not just to ourselves but also to our moral authority and expectations of civil liberties across the world.
- ajross 10y ago
  Your point is that the 41 people held at Guantanamo Bay invalidate every human rights criticism made by an American? I don't follow. You don't need to think the Gitmo nether void is a good or just thing to realize that there are staggeringly larger human rights violations in the world...
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    Ad hominem appeal to hypocrisy (tu quoque) is not a valid argument. The pot can call the kettle black, and be objectively correct. The kettle can then call the pot black, and be objectively correct. It makes no difference if neither one subsequently goes over to the kitchen sink to take a bath in the dishwater.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
trome 10y ago
The BBC should be much more careful with their operational security, especially in volatile situations like this. Why weren't they establishing a secure communication channel with the person they were meeting with beforehand, livestreaming their trip back to BBC HQ (documentation), and having an agent buy their tickets/hotels so it looked like a local was going instead of the BBC?
- pjc50 10y ago
  > establishing a secure communication channel with the person they were meeting with beforehand How? Would that be illegal in itself in China? > livestreaming their trip back to BBC HQ Maybe doable if the local phone reception is good enough and not blocked (remember, the great firewall throttles VPNs) > having an agent buy their tickets/hotels so it looked like a local was going instead of the BBC? Is this in and of itself legal in China? Or is it one of those places where you have to register your passport number at the hotel? Part of travelling as a journalist is doing so openly as much as possible - covert journalism runs the risk of being deemed espionage, which can result in a death sentence.
  - mediumdeviation 10y ago
    >> having an agent buy their tickets/hotels so it looked like a local was going instead of the BBC? It is not legal, no. Travel on railway and plane and booking hotels all require you to present your ID, as is signing up for a mobile phone.
- westiseast 10y ago
  Good point - first things that come to mind: They interview lots of people with no problems, and they don't know which ones will kick off. They are reporters and their visas are journalist visas. There's no quicker way for them to get kicked out of the country than doing clandestine reporting that embarrasses the government and breaks the law. Lastly, this is the story. In all honesty, people will probably care more about 'BBC journalists attacked' than they would the original 'Chinese citizens human rights abuses'.
- mikeash 10y ago
kybernetikos 10y ago
As you can see from the other comments, 'human rights' has become a bit of a loaded term. Perhaps it's better to try to be a bit more explicit. States worldwide should not be destroying journalists equipment nor threatening them with violence. Surely this is something that most people can agree on, no matter your opinion on Guantanamo, the US government, hypocrisy, foreign wars, the east, the west, etc. Personally, I find it unacceptable when the USA does it, and I find it unacceptable when China does it.
- randcraw 10y ago
  Really? Where in the US are reporters attacked and forced by authorities to film confessions for attempting to interview citizens who are appealing legal cases? No comparison. Moral relativism run amok.
  - joe_g_young 10y ago
    I heard we have a really stringent TSA agents who are questioning why our reporters are flying outside of the US and are with holding the reporter's cameras.
    - John23832 10y ago
      Having "heard" is different than having actual facts to back that up. As we see from the article, there is factual reporting being done on the issues in China. While I agree that some people have it harder than others while traveling in the US (muslims), they generally have freedom of movement within the United States.
  - princekolt 10y ago
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/journalists-attacked-police-ferguson_n_5677098.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/journalists-attacke...
  - kybernetikos 10y ago
    The whole point I'm making is that we don't need to pull in comparisons. We can make statements about behavior that we find unacceptable, and try to build consensus that we don't want to see those behaviors anywhere in the world. If you point me to an instance of the US doing those things I will condemn it. If you point me to an instance of China doing those things, I will condemn it. And I hope that this is true of most people across the world, and if it isn't then that is where the interesting conversations are to be had, not in which of two world powers is the most detrimental. Given the difficulties of talking about human rights and the natural tribalism of people on all sides, let's talk about specific behaviors most of us can agree are bad, regardless of who does them, and join together in condemning specific instances of those behaviors wherever they take place in the world.
return0 10y ago
Human rights are like technology: they usually increase monotonically and irreversibly. It's the responsibility of the entire society to create consensus on increased freedom, and they are unlikely to be imposed externally without creating conflict and civil war. One could say that the economic progress that the west has brought to china will be more successful in overtaking authoritarianism than the usual military 'democratization' campaigns.
- lazylizard 10y ago
  what if its not linear but cyclical , only the cycle is around 1000 yrs long?
- cletus 10y ago
  I think this is a narrow view based on very recent history. What about the rise of Communism in the 20th century? Or Nazi Germany for that matter? Or slavery? I guess you could argue all of these were transitory (albeit devastating) but isn't everything? Probably one of the more modern notions is that the current state of world affairs is somehow permanent. This complacency is both naiv and dangerous.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jordanb 10y ago
When Clinton advocated PNTR with China he promised us that a close trading relationship would cause them to adopt our values. How'd that work out for ya?
- urbanj 10y ago
  Working out pretty well. We're hearing about this incident, we're seeing footage of this incident. Was there some other point you were trying to make?
dominotw 10y ago
>due to their dependence on their economy An economy which has lifted millions out of poverty in the last decade. Chinese tolerate ( even admire) communists because they have delivered economic success, they surely have made a hard trade in terms of issues like free speech.
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  Just like how Americans tolerated, even admired, their government because it delivered economic success, surely they made a hard trade in terms of issues like Black slavery. Has China's economy delivered success in excess of its democratic neighbors?
balabaster 10y ago
The problem with this statement is the lack of admission of human nature. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those in power in China have total control and aren't willing to secede from power at any cost. Journalists are a threat to the order they've very carefully built to ensure they stay in power. While we may not agree with the manner in which they maintain power, you have to understand their motivations for treating journalists and freedom of speech the way they do. They cannot allow freedom of speech or such journalism at any cost. For if they do the country would realize the extent of corruption and violation of human rights and they would rise up in revolution and overthrow the government - an outcome which those in control will do everything in their power to prevent.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Agreed, and this is why our politics (worldwide, everywhere, not just in China) are fundamentally flawed -- because it inevitably leads to corruption. It's just human nature. We must collectively all admit this and devise a system where people in power have no chance at all to become corrupt because they won't be having tight grip on anything. Maybe a long-term strategy which is continually worked on by people who stay in power no longer than a year? Don't know, people much better informed than me have tried and failed in this regard, many times. But it's very clear that our current ruling systems don't work.
seppin 10y ago
Once you rely on someone economically, you must turn a blind eye to their bad behavior. And the bad behavior never gets checked. Reminds me of the Netflix doc "queen of versailles"
narrator 10y ago
For decades now we've been hearing that China will change and become more democratic as its economy grows. It's one of those issues like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that you'll read an update on every week in the NYC or The Economist for 20 years straight. China got things to work though. It did it without a free press. It did it without an independent central bank. It did it without elections. It did it without Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter. What did China get to work though? Nobody knows. That's because the western press ignores the inner working of the structure of their society. They only focus on what they do and how it is largely bad and can be remedied only by adopting our systems. There isn't any attempt at understanding or self-criticism. I just find it annoying when there is ideological and cultural conflict that continues in an endless stalemate and every week it's groundhog day.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  > Nobody knows. That's because the western press ignores the inner working of the structure of their society. This is BS, even most Chinese don't know, that's because the Chinese government is pretty opaque and the media is state controlled. All decisions are well vetted before the public ever knows about them. Do you know who chose Xi Jinping to be president? Who were the other candidates? Why was he chosen and not anyone else? It was all done in a smoked filled room. > They only focus on what they do and how it is largely bad and can be remedied only by adopting our systems. There isn't any attempt at understanding or self-criticism. No, they actually report "news", the Chinese are shocked because, if you read the Chinese press, the media is simply a tool of public control. E.g. a WSJ financial article that merely reports facts about the Chinese economy is labelled as "biased" because it didn't try to inject an editorial into a news article on how great the future must be, so don't worry.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    > the Chinese are shocked Um, every Chinese person I've ever talked to is well aware of the propaganda status of government news, and know that if you want a 3rd-party (not necessarily 'unbiased') opinion you can load up a VPN and go read some non-domestic sources, whether in English or Chinese. > even most Chinese don't know Yes, Xi Jinping's primary rival for top posts was Li Keqiang. The Chinese press regularly leaks juicy tidbits regarding political rivalries, because different factions of the CCP control different media outlets. Sometimes that rivalry breaks out so far that even Western outlets pick up on it [1]. What you have to understand is that many traditional societies (and most Asian societies) do not like to bring conflicts into public and into the open. Disputes are best resolved behind closed doors via negotiation. This isn't just how things are done in politics, but this ethic permeates every level of Chinese society. Japan is very similar in this regard, and even though Japan nominally has voting, good luck being able to tell apart their two parties in policy terms or figuring out how policies were devised. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/07/24/chinas-xi-li-grudge-match-paralyzing-economy/#4517c1926a15 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/07/24/chinas-x...
smallnamespace 10y ago
> I truly don't know what could be done to help free speech prosper there as it should I think there's literally nothing the West should do directly, and active pressure will actually be counterproductive. I don't know if it's true about Europeans, but it's sad how Americans have a tendency to give strong opinions about topics without understanding the history, even when it's very relevant. China endured constant humiliation and near-colonization by Western powers for a period of 300 years, including a series of unequal treaties and giving up Hong Kong, forced importation of opium, and military occupation of Beijing and the surrounding countryside. Americans may not have ever learned about this history, but this is drilled into every single Chinese student from a young age. In that context, America or any other power telling China that it should 'learn from the West' and should adopt Western values, perhaps under the threat of sanctions or other consequences, will be automatically rejected not just by the Chinese government but also the Chinese people as a repeat of colonialism and Western 'arrogance'. Better to let the people ask pointed questions of its own government. But if the West gets involved directly, then it becomes very easy for the government to tar domestic proponents of human rights as stooges of Western imperialists and then lock them all up, with the full support of the populace.
dlwdlw 10y ago
This is just myopic and naive. The complexity of the problems in China as well as the solutions can't just be summed up as good or bad. Based on population alone, governance needs to be different. Tech workers especially should know that a change in order of magnitide often requires a fundamentally different approach. Democracy failed even in ancient greece with a much smaller population. That's not to say that democratic principles aren't effective, but pure democracy often creates mob rule unless the population is equally homogenous and educated. With 4-5 times the amount of people, even if China has triple the amount of shit happening as the US, it's still doing well. And that's just population. Add in the fact that China is so large that it can basically be thought of as multiple countries and territories in various stages of development and it's no small wonder the whole thing doesnt collapse. Nevermind lifting millions out of poverty. You know what happened last time in China the power was given to the people? The cultural revolution happened. Educated people like prodessor and writers were beaten up every day by their fellow citizens until they committed suicide. Everyone was equal, and if you were smarter or richer then you were torn down. tldr; it's more complex than you think.

by phreack 10y ago

chrischen 10y ago

To admonish, you'd have to 1) Stop buying Chinese made products 2) Stop US violations of human rights (gitmo) Frankly, without doing this, you'd never be able to admonish and have it carry any real weight with Chinese policy makers. They'd just see a black pot calling out the kettle.

krona 10y ago
> 2) Stop US violations of human rights (gitmo) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- idra 10y ago
  Is invoked in EVERY China-related thread on HN pretty much without exceptions.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 10y ago
    And Russia, and right vs left, etc. Invocation of whataboutism is a mind bug and a lazy excuse to be one-sided that has to die. And it's not just a "let's focus on X FOR NOW" issue (which would still be wrong, as issues should be judged relatively to gauge their importance). It's mainly invoked by people who never bother to point fingers on the non-X sides, so the "let's focus on X FOR NOW" is more like "let's focus on X permanently".
    - megous 10y ago
      Invocation of whataboutism is not a mind bug. It's the problem of never acknowledging your own issues and deflecting the criticism/concerns. The hypothetical interaction that would go "US: Hey China, we worry about your policy X. China: Hey US, we sort of understand where you're coming from, given your history. We also see similar issue with some of your policies..." would be perfectly fine.
- vetinari 10y ago
  In other words, do as I say, not as I do, otherwise I will call you names. You aren't going to push debate forward with this.
  - krona 10y ago
    It's like you're assuming I'm American.
    - vetinari 10y ago
      It's not important, whether you are American or not. See coldtea's reasoning bellow. BBC, The Economist or Edward Lucas are not Americans either.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    Yes he is. I wonder if they teach whataboutism as a core argumentation technique in Chinese schools. No one is perfect, if perfection is necessary to criticise or even just report news, then nothing will be criticised or reported.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  There's a good Chomsky quote about this: "Actually, the principle that I think we ought to follow is the principle we rightly expected Soviet dissidents to follow. So what principle did we expect Sakharov [a Soviet scientist punished for his criticism of the U.S.S.R.] to follow? Why did people here decide that Sakharov was a moral person? I think he was. Sakharov did not treat every atrocity as identical-he had nothing to say about American atrocities. When he was asked about them, he said, "I don't know anything about them, I don't care about them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities." And that was right-because those were the ones that he was responsible for, and that he might have been able to influence. Again, it's a very simple ethical point: you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, you're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions."
- coldtea 10y ago
  So, my sins don't matter, let's ALWAYS focus on the other side's sins. AKA my country, right or wrong. AKA, refusal to accept that value judgements are relative, not god given absolutes. AKA, priority (let's focus on X and only X now) without actually prioritizing (let's compare to see if X is actually the major offender we should be focusing on)
  - laurent123456 10y ago
    There's 41 people in Guatanamo, but there's 1.3 billion people in China. Sure there might be human right issues in the US and in other Western democracies but not at the same scale as China.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Who said this should be limited to Guatanamo? E.g. there are 1.5 million people in US prisons, the 25% of the world's prison population for a country with a mere 4% of the world's people. Predominantly black too. How's that not a huge human rights issue? Or the police abuse/innocent shootings, in numbers unheard of even in developing backwater countries? But even more so, who said the 1.3 billion people in China are "victims" needing our compassion? Have you asked them whether they like their government and how their country is going? And don't just ask some group back in the 90s in Tiananmen square -- because we could always ask the Kent State students in 1970, the blacks in Selma, the OWS, the Tea Party, the ones protesting against Bush/Obama/Trump etc and get a picture that wouldn't necessarily be what most of American's feel too. There surely are human right abuses in China. But it's the Chinese (the people, not the government) that should define what they are, through their own values and preferences, not some finger pointing foreigners. Especially from countries with a large history of plundering, which also involves China (opium wars, etc) and most of the Pacific.
      - PJDK 10y ago
        > But even more so, who said the 1.3 billion people in China are "victims" needing our compassion? Have you asked them whether they like their government and how their country is going? From the article "We'd arranged to meet a woman in her village in China's central Hunan Province and to then travel with her by train to Beijing, filming as we went. But we never did get to meet our interviewee. The story we ended up with, however, reveals more about the exercise of power in China than any interview ever could. It is one that involves violence, intimidation and a forced confession - my first in my long reporting experience in China - in which I found myself apologising for "behaviour causing a bad impact" and for trying to conduct an "illegal interview"." So, yes, this exact story is about asking Chinese people about their government and having their equipment smashed and being forced to sign confessions for their efforts. It should certainly be for the Chinese to define these things, the fact they can't is rather the point.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  The OP is not invoking whataboutism. It's actually an important point. If the US (or any other western country) tries to admonish China there are plenty of human rights violations in our own countries which China will come back with. The point is that they will be able to engage in whataboutism. In global politics hypocrisy (why do we need to call it whataboutism?) is going to come back to bite you.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    A century of examples from Russia and American history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
  - seppin 10y ago
    No, it's textbook false equivalency. When Gitmo was called "the gulag of our time", the UN failed to mention that while Gitmo had about 150 prisoners at it's peak, Sibera had tens of millions. It's not an appropriate comparison.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    > In global politics hypocrisy (why do we need to call it whataboutism?) is going to come back to bite you. No, that is exactly the very definition of a whataboutism! Many Chinese feel like they always need the high ground, and if their criticiser is not "perfect", whatever they say is null and void. This is just nuts, because no one is perfect.
    - srssays 10y ago
      There's a slight difference between being "not perfect" and having a torture camp and a president who says the US doesn't torture enough people (!). When the US preaches about human rights it devalues the concept. That makes it harder to hold countries like China to account.
      - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        What do US torture camps have anything to do with BBC journalists? Really, what? And anyways, how do US torture camps compare to Chinese torture camps? Its not like China is a paragon of virtue here, torture by the police is a huge problem that even the gov admits to (hey, police shouldn't torture people, please don't, it makes us look bad). > When the US preaches about human rights it devalues the concept. And who is the "US"? It is like some unified person that speaks with one voice? Is the NyTimes the US? Is the BBC the US? When I speak out on China, am I the US? > That makes it harder to hold countries like China to account. That is a straw man. We can't hold China to account for their human rights behavior, we have no right to do that. But we can damn be sure that everyone knows about it. I would expect the same for other countries with respect to the US.
- taneq 10y ago
  Actually it's more about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
  - seppin 10y ago
    Hypocrisy isn't a crime, and it doesn't erase crimes either.
Drakim 10y ago
What if I don't live in the US?
- coldtea 10y ago
  Then you still need to have a perspective (which includes seeing what all players are doing) instead of merely choosing one side. Especially since lots of those not living in the US, e.g. in large parts of Europe still take a lot of US-based worldviews and US-influenced news in (the "Americanization of Europe").
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    we're trying our best not to...
crdoconnor 10y ago
Making trade agreements contingent on human rights would help.
- sgift 10y ago
  The EU tried this with Africa, doesn't work so great as long as there are countries which don't do it. That's one of the reasons China is successful in Africa, they don't care what the countries do as long as China gets what it wants.
  - fjdlwlv 10y ago
    If only there were a mulitlateral trade agreement that could unite all the western and Pacific nations in a Partnership against Chinese abuses.
    - crdoconnor 10y ago
      The TPP actually had a rider on it preventing the deal from going through with countries that practice slavery. This effectively ruled out Malaysia. In what is probably the lowest point in his career Obama objected and effectively said that slightly lower trade barriers mattered more than slavery.
    - jza00425 10y ago
      How honorable! Try to force Chinese to bend their knees.
PakG1 10y ago
They'd just see a black pot calling out the kettle. Not they would. They DO. But honestly, despite its evident corruption that even their own leader admits is the biggest threat to the viability of their government, their government still strikes me as more competent in a gets-shit-done way than most other countries I see these days (considering only G20 countries, the smaller your country is, the less complex your problems are, and consider that China's problems are MASSIVE). Canadian living in China, amazed by how well things get done here, despite the massive problems they have. Albeit they aren't a democracy, so they don't need to care as much about doing what people want. On the flip side, the government is focusing mostly on what people want anyway, so it mostly works out. People who are ignorant about China are significantly ignorant about how well-run their government is. It's much more of a meritocracy than other countries' governments are, despite the evident corruption. I'm not justifying abusing human rights. I am torn in that I don't know how they keep a handle on their country if they don't have an iron fist. I find that most people who say otherwise are ignorant about the complex reality in China. It's not a simple situation.
- muglug 10y ago
  The problem highlighted here is that a lack of free press in China means you will never know the scale of corruption, especially at a provincial level. Unless you have access to a vast underground network of informers, I don't much trust your view that the government is 'well-run'.
  - PakG1 10y ago
    I'd say the question is what does "well-run" mean? Does it mean infrastructure is getting built at a high-quality level, GDP per capita is rising, life expectancy is increasing, quality of life is increasing, and so on? All of that stuff is happening in China, and the world doesn't require a free press to confirm that. Again, people who don't know much about China don't know about the details of what's happening on the ground. They just see all this fear-mongering in the press about how horrible and evil China and its government is. The truth is always much more nuanced. Everyone lives in their own echo chamber. Just some people aren't aware that they do. If Clinton supporters didn't live in such an echo chamber, they wouldn't have realized how out of touch they were with all the people who voted for Trump, and how angry all those Trump supporters were at the establishment. If the Trump supporters didn't live in such an echo chamber, they wouldn't have elected someone who looks like he doesn't know what he's doing. Again, Xi Jiping is on record saying that corruption is the biggest risk being faced by the Chinese government. He is on record saying that the Communist Party's future depends on stamping out corruption. Their methods for identifying and stamping out corruption may or may not work. But it is disingenuous for anyone to suggest that their government is either ignorant of the level of corruption or actively trying to hide it. You didn't say that. But constantly focusing on corruption is preaching to the choir. Would a free press help? It may, it may not. It may not because a free press is also a blunt instrument. You have a large percentage of the population that's uneducated and easily manipulated. Think fake news and alternative facts are a problem in the US? China does not want to open that Pandora's Box. Seeing what's happening in the US, I don't blame them. A lot of China's problems require finesse in terms of sound long-term policy and policy execution, and I am sad to say that after living here for a while, I agree that a free press could whip uneducated masses into an unproductive frenzy. This situation is very dissimilar to how Wycliffe, Huss, and Luther translated the Bible to English to free them from control of the Catholic Church. These people are often literate already, thank you very much.
simonh 10y ago
Stopping buying Chinese products isn't going to help anyone in China and isn't going to hurt the Chinese government even slightly. In fact arguably supporting the growth of the economy outside the government sector in the long term could be the single most important factor in opening the country up by lkeading ona path from expectations of property rights to expectations of civil rights. Frankly there is very little we as individuals outside China can directly do about the situation over there. Maybe contribute to some charities or such that operate in China? They have to be very careful not to be seen as interfering politically, but just the fact of them existing and doing good work can help establish a culture of civic engagement and responsibility. Your second point is bang on. Restrictions on free speech and rights, intrusions into private life and communications over here, all of that is hugely harmful not just to ourselves but also to our moral authority and expectations of civil liberties across the world.
ajross 10y ago
Your point is that the 41 people held at Guantanamo Bay invalidate every human rights criticism made by an American? I don't follow. You don't need to think the Gitmo nether void is a good or just thing to realize that there are staggeringly larger human rights violations in the world...
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Ad hominem appeal to hypocrisy (tu quoque) is not a valid argument. The pot can call the kettle black, and be objectively correct. The kettle can then call the pot black, and be objectively correct. It makes no difference if neither one subsequently goes over to the kitchen sink to take a bath in the dishwater.

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trome 10y ago

The BBC should be much more careful with their operational security, especially in volatile situations like this. Why weren't they establishing a secure communication channel with the person they were meeting with beforehand, livestreaming their trip back to BBC HQ (documentation), and having an agent buy their tickets/hotels so it looked like a local was going instead of the BBC?

pjc50 10y ago
> establishing a secure communication channel with the person they were meeting with beforehand How? Would that be illegal in itself in China? > livestreaming their trip back to BBC HQ Maybe doable if the local phone reception is good enough and not blocked (remember, the great firewall throttles VPNs) > having an agent buy their tickets/hotels so it looked like a local was going instead of the BBC? Is this in and of itself legal in China? Or is it one of those places where you have to register your passport number at the hotel? Part of travelling as a journalist is doing so openly as much as possible - covert journalism runs the risk of being deemed espionage, which can result in a death sentence.
- mediumdeviation 10y ago
  >> having an agent buy their tickets/hotels so it looked like a local was going instead of the BBC? It is not legal, no. Travel on railway and plane and booking hotels all require you to present your ID, as is signing up for a mobile phone.
westiseast 10y ago
Good point - first things that come to mind: They interview lots of people with no problems, and they don't know which ones will kick off. They are reporters and their visas are journalist visas. There's no quicker way for them to get kicked out of the country than doing clandestine reporting that embarrasses the government and breaks the law. Lastly, this is the story. In all honesty, people will probably care more about 'BBC journalists attacked' than they would the original 'Chinese citizens human rights abuses'.
mikeash 10y ago

kybernetikos 10y ago

As you can see from the other comments, 'human rights' has become a bit of a loaded term. Perhaps it's better to try to be a bit more explicit. States worldwide should not be destroying journalists equipment nor threatening them with violence. Surely this is something that most people can agree on, no matter your opinion on Guantanamo, the US government, hypocrisy, foreign wars, the east, the west, etc. Personally, I find it unacceptable when the USA does it, and I find it unacceptable when China does it.

randcraw 10y ago
Really? Where in the US are reporters attacked and forced by authorities to film confessions for attempting to interview citizens who are appealing legal cases? No comparison. Moral relativism run amok.
- joe_g_young 10y ago
  I heard we have a really stringent TSA agents who are questioning why our reporters are flying outside of the US and are with holding the reporter's cameras.
  - John23832 10y ago
    Having "heard" is different than having actual facts to back that up. As we see from the article, there is factual reporting being done on the issues in China. While I agree that some people have it harder than others while traveling in the US (muslims), they generally have freedom of movement within the United States.
- princekolt 10y ago
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/journalists-attacked-police-ferguson_n_5677098.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/journalists-attacke...
- kybernetikos 10y ago
  The whole point I'm making is that we don't need to pull in comparisons. We can make statements about behavior that we find unacceptable, and try to build consensus that we don't want to see those behaviors anywhere in the world. If you point me to an instance of the US doing those things I will condemn it. If you point me to an instance of China doing those things, I will condemn it. And I hope that this is true of most people across the world, and if it isn't then that is where the interesting conversations are to be had, not in which of two world powers is the most detrimental. Given the difficulties of talking about human rights and the natural tribalism of people on all sides, let's talk about specific behaviors most of us can agree are bad, regardless of who does them, and join together in condemning specific instances of those behaviors wherever they take place in the world.

return0 10y ago

Human rights are like technology: they usually increase monotonically and irreversibly. It's the responsibility of the entire society to create consensus on increased freedom, and they are unlikely to be imposed externally without creating conflict and civil war. One could say that the economic progress that the west has brought to china will be more successful in overtaking authoritarianism than the usual military 'democratization' campaigns.

lazylizard 10y ago
what if its not linear but cyclical , only the cycle is around 1000 yrs long?
cletus 10y ago
I think this is a narrow view based on very recent history. What about the rise of Communism in the 20th century? Or Nazi Germany for that matter? Or slavery? I guess you could argue all of these were transitory (albeit devastating) but isn't everything? Probably one of the more modern notions is that the current state of world affairs is somehow permanent. This complacency is both naiv and dangerous.
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jordanb 10y ago

When Clinton advocated PNTR with China he promised us that a close trading relationship would cause them to adopt our values. How'd that work out for ya?

urbanj 10y ago
Working out pretty well. We're hearing about this incident, we're seeing footage of this incident. Was there some other point you were trying to make?

dominotw 10y ago

>due to their dependence on their economy An economy which has lifted millions out of poverty in the last decade. Chinese tolerate ( even admire) communists because they have delivered economic success, they surely have made a hard trade in terms of issues like free speech.

fjdlwlv 10y ago
Just like how Americans tolerated, even admired, their government because it delivered economic success, surely they made a hard trade in terms of issues like Black slavery. Has China's economy delivered success in excess of its democratic neighbors?

balabaster 10y ago

The problem with this statement is the lack of admission of human nature. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those in power in China have total control and aren't willing to secede from power at any cost. Journalists are a threat to the order they've very carefully built to ensure they stay in power. While we may not agree with the manner in which they maintain power, you have to understand their motivations for treating journalists and freedom of speech the way they do. They cannot allow freedom of speech or such journalism at any cost. For if they do the country would realize the extent of corruption and violation of human rights and they would rise up in revolution and overthrow the government - an outcome which those in control will do everything in their power to prevent.

pdimitar 10y ago
Agreed, and this is why our politics (worldwide, everywhere, not just in China) are fundamentally flawed -- because it inevitably leads to corruption. It's just human nature. We must collectively all admit this and devise a system where people in power have no chance at all to become corrupt because they won't be having tight grip on anything. Maybe a long-term strategy which is continually worked on by people who stay in power no longer than a year? Don't know, people much better informed than me have tried and failed in this regard, many times. But it's very clear that our current ruling systems don't work.

seppin 10y ago

Once you rely on someone economically, you must turn a blind eye to their bad behavior. And the bad behavior never gets checked. Reminds me of the Netflix doc "queen of versailles"

narrator 10y ago

For decades now we've been hearing that China will change and become more democratic as its economy grows. It's one of those issues like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that you'll read an update on every week in the NYC or The Economist for 20 years straight. China got things to work though. It did it without a free press. It did it without an independent central bank. It did it without elections. It did it without Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter. What did China get to work though? Nobody knows. That's because the western press ignores the inner working of the structure of their society. They only focus on what they do and how it is largely bad and can be remedied only by adopting our systems. There isn't any attempt at understanding or self-criticism. I just find it annoying when there is ideological and cultural conflict that continues in an endless stalemate and every week it's groundhog day.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
> Nobody knows. That's because the western press ignores the inner working of the structure of their society. This is BS, even most Chinese don't know, that's because the Chinese government is pretty opaque and the media is state controlled. All decisions are well vetted before the public ever knows about them. Do you know who chose Xi Jinping to be president? Who were the other candidates? Why was he chosen and not anyone else? It was all done in a smoked filled room. > They only focus on what they do and how it is largely bad and can be remedied only by adopting our systems. There isn't any attempt at understanding or self-criticism. No, they actually report "news", the Chinese are shocked because, if you read the Chinese press, the media is simply a tool of public control. E.g. a WSJ financial article that merely reports facts about the Chinese economy is labelled as "biased" because it didn't try to inject an editorial into a news article on how great the future must be, so don't worry.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > the Chinese are shocked Um, every Chinese person I've ever talked to is well aware of the propaganda status of government news, and know that if you want a 3rd-party (not necessarily 'unbiased') opinion you can load up a VPN and go read some non-domestic sources, whether in English or Chinese. > even most Chinese don't know Yes, Xi Jinping's primary rival for top posts was Li Keqiang. The Chinese press regularly leaks juicy tidbits regarding political rivalries, because different factions of the CCP control different media outlets. Sometimes that rivalry breaks out so far that even Western outlets pick up on it [1]. What you have to understand is that many traditional societies (and most Asian societies) do not like to bring conflicts into public and into the open. Disputes are best resolved behind closed doors via negotiation. This isn't just how things are done in politics, but this ethic permeates every level of Chinese society. Japan is very similar in this regard, and even though Japan nominally has voting, good luck being able to tell apart their two parties in policy terms or figuring out how policies were devised. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/07/24/chinas-xi-li-grudge-match-paralyzing-economy/#4517c1926a15 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/07/24/chinas-x...

smallnamespace 10y ago

> I truly don't know what could be done to help free speech prosper there as it should I think there's literally nothing the West should do directly, and active pressure will actually be counterproductive. I don't know if it's true about Europeans, but it's sad how Americans have a tendency to give strong opinions about topics without understanding the history, even when it's very relevant. China endured constant humiliation and near-colonization by Western powers for a period of 300 years, including a series of unequal treaties and giving up Hong Kong, forced importation of opium, and military occupation of Beijing and the surrounding countryside. Americans may not have ever learned about this history, but this is drilled into every single Chinese student from a young age. In that context, America or any other power telling China that it should 'learn from the West' and should adopt Western values, perhaps under the threat of sanctions or other consequences, will be automatically rejected not just by the Chinese government but also the Chinese people as a repeat of colonialism and Western 'arrogance'. Better to let the people ask pointed questions of its own government. But if the West gets involved directly, then it becomes very easy for the government to tar domestic proponents of human rights as stooges of Western imperialists and then lock them all up, with the full support of the populace.

dlwdlw 10y ago

This is just myopic and naive. The complexity of the problems in China as well as the solutions can't just be summed up as good or bad. Based on population alone, governance needs to be different. Tech workers especially should know that a change in order of magnitide often requires a fundamentally different approach. Democracy failed even in ancient greece with a much smaller population. That's not to say that democratic principles aren't effective, but pure democracy often creates mob rule unless the population is equally homogenous and educated. With 4-5 times the amount of people, even if China has triple the amount of shit happening as the US, it's still doing well. And that's just population. Add in the fact that China is so large that it can basically be thought of as multiple countries and territories in various stages of development and it's no small wonder the whole thing doesnt collapse. Nevermind lifting millions out of poverty. You know what happened last time in China the power was given to the people? The cultural revolution happened. Educated people like prodessor and writers were beaten up every day by their fellow citizens until they committed suicide. Everyone was equal, and if you were smarter or richer then you were torn down. tldr; it's more complex than you think.