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Lest we forget, this is still the same government that mowed down 10,000 innocent lives, that still runs China today. They've gotten better at hiding behind ma

Lest we forget, this is still the same government that mowed down 10,000 innocent lives, that still runs China today. They've gotten better at hiding behind marketing, propaganda, and strong arming other countries, but they're still ruled by a small, powerful group of elders that control every aspects of Chinese people's lives. It's sad that we keep feeding this dangerous psychopath which threatens democracy and freedom worldwide. This psychopath will eventually cause harm to a few countries (Taiwan, South Korea) when said and done, maybe enable North Korea to strike a few nuclear missiles into Los Angeles or Tokyo, who knows.

Dolores12 9y ago
China wouldn't become as what it is today if they didn't do it. There could not be economic growth during political instability. Life of a billion+ people is now better and in hindsight i guess it was worth it.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  This is a point many forget when talking about China. People bring up Tiananmen Square and the one child policy to talk about how evil China is. And don't get me wrong, to a certain extent both actions were wrong. But the U.S. had its own bloody civil war where the country killed hundreds of thousands of it's former citizens, not to mention the ways in which land was stolen from indigenous people. These violent actions the U.S. took are one of the reasons the country (and even the world) are so wealthy today.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    It's not very interesting to compare what the US was doing 160 years ago as justifications for why China still acts the way it does. A civil war is very different than a massacre of innocent protesters.
- mutteraloo 9y ago
  bullshit. or maybe the Chinese communist would have been overthrown, and they would have had a better government. all the progress China's made today is because the communist government took their foot off of the necks of the common citizens, and let the citizens work tears and sweats. Stop using what-ifs to justify monstrocities.
  - jbooth 9y ago
    Easy for you to say. Last time China had a radical change of governments there were a few speed bumps. It's not nearly as cut and dried as you'd make it. How many Chinese deaths would be justified for such a transition, in your opinion?
  - osdiab 9y ago
    They did have many governments and coups in the last 150 years, and they didn’t lead to incrementally better situations, but instead turmoil and foreign exploitation. I’m not Chinese and I can’t speak for their decisions, but it sounds like you don’t know the historical context and assume that Western liberalism always leads to positive ends - which, given our catastrophic interventions around the world, doesn’t seem to be the case. EDIT: to be clear, nobody is saying what they did is moral. But what I am saying is that the results of such an uprising was not guaranteed to be peaceful, orderly, nor lead to better outcomes; and furthermore you can make the argument that the success of modern Chinese governance has been one of the greatest triumphs of poverty alleviation and human development in all of human history. So to claim with such conviction that that branch of history would be the better option smacks of ignorance to me.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    It's always easy for us in the democratic West to say that oppressed people should rise up and claim their democratic rights. Yet, we never think of the cost in human lives this sort of thing always has, and how it often fails anyway. Cases in point: the "Arab Spring" (culminating in the Syrian Easter, if I may be so bold); regime change in Libya; regime change in Afghanistan; regime chnge in Iraq; and so on. This wonderfully altruistic feeling we have, that we want others to enjoy democracy like we do, is always exploited to invade countries "in need of democratic reform". So often, indeed, that I at least wonder if that's the whole point to cultivate this feeling in the hearts and minds of our people.
- bufordsharkley 9y ago
  One can offer stability within a democratic framework. To say that the wholesale slaughter of protesters was necessary to deliver market reform is simply absurd.
  - osdiab 9y ago
    Clearly it wasn’t a moral or just choice, but when China has seen rebellions that lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people in the last century, you can at least see why the incumbent government may have had pause.
tw04 9y ago
I'm not going to stand here and say China doesn't have a TON of human rights issues. But on what planet can you say "this is the same government that mowed down 10,000 people"? You might as well say the current government in the US is the "Same government that mowed down innocent college students at Kent State". It's actually not the same government. Some parts of it are significantly better, some parts of it are significantly worse. Either way, it does the discussion a disservice to call it the same.
- lozenge 9y ago
  It is the same government. Those in power at the time chose who would succeed them, and so on to this day.
  - tw04 9y ago
    Good point, whereas in America the Republican and Democratic parties have since been dismantled and replaced... Yang Shangkun must have had one heck of an influence if he was able to dictate who would be president of the country 15 years after his death... Of course Yang was forced out of the party in 1993 (the last time he had any influence), but don't let history and facts get in your way.
    - glenstein 9y ago
      In a meaningful sense, you can say the Republican party is largely the same today as it was during the Contract With America, and the Democratic Party is largely the party of New Deal programs. Sameness here refers to ideological continuity rather than literal individuals being the same.
      - jbooth 9y ago
        That's not what the person was saying, though. They were saying something much more simplistic. To your point, I'd say all 3 parties (D, R and CCP) have had slow and continuous ideological drift. All 3 are unrecognizable compared to 1989.
LV-426 9y ago
Leaving Tiananmen Square aside - since nobody can disagree it was a terrible, indefensible crime - can you explain further how you think China is threatening democracy and freedom "worldwide"? They're certainly a threat in Hong Kong, where they have a degree of control and influence, but how and where else? While they lay claim to Taiwan, what harm do you think they are going to cause to South Korea and why would they even think of something as insane as enabling North Korea to strike Tokyo or Los Angeles (or anywhere else) with nuclear weapons?
- bufordsharkley 9y ago
  I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, but it's pretty clear that China is unwilling to deny trade with North Korea, effectively propping up the Kim regime. Kim is engaging in increasingly dangerous provocations (admittedly provoked by the fact that the United States is still fighting the Korean War).
  - zipwitch 9y ago
    Their trade with North Korea has been cut in half since last year, and they've repeatedly supported increased sanctions, including yesterday. Here in the United States it's popular to isolate nations on the far side of the planet, where we don't have to directly deal with the horrific consequences. But North Korea borders China, and the Chinese will need to deal with the effects of a full or partial North Korean collapse. And I don't think it's actually an effective (or humane) was to try to solve problems like this to begin with.
    - bufordsharkley 9y ago
      This is fair. Anyway, sanctions of this sort are absolutely immoral unless a government is willing to take on all affected refugees, which is very very rarely the case. Human rights abuses are difficult to solve without open borders, but unfortunately open borders are politically infeasible.
  - rqs 9y ago
    Just that? Chinese here. I could say, if our government proves capitalism can be very well integrated and become more productive in an authoritarianism society, then that is a really bad news for democracy. On the other hand though, after watching many Fox News clips on Youtube, I don't think you guys are doing very well on democracy, especially the people in the US. Democracy is much harder to maintain than authoritarianism. It's very easy to get hijacked, especially the world is full of liars now days. I'm not saying you should abort democracy, instead, you guys should be grateful for what you have, and be careful don't lose it, because if you did, you probably won't get another one for free.
glenstein 9y ago
There's a serious problem with our own (US) culture's ability to think clearly about the problem posed by Chinese authoritarianism in the 21st century. I would attribute the problem to our tendency for centrism, both-sideism, and probably to the just-world hypothesis. People are tempted to bury it in a larger narrative of global complexity, thinking that treating it like a trick question is evidence of sophistication. But what if it's not a trick question?
- bufordsharkley 9y ago
  Some things are not cut-and-dry. Some are. Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society. I'm curious how China currently views Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People"[0], one of which is Democracy. Does his philosophy attract any attention today? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People
  - yorwba 9y ago
    China takes Democracy (民主) very seriously. You'll see it on propaganda banners everywhere. You see, the leadership is democratically appointed by the will of the people. The 100% majority of the CCP is completely justified by its benevolent rule. /s There is no need to abandon old principles when you can just use doublethink to make them mean whatever you want them to mean.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    > Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society. If taxation by a non-representative government isn't as much common sense as abolitionism, it's only because of a huge amount of propaganda. It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery.
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      >It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery. Yes it is.
osdiab 9y ago
I’m not Chinese, but I did live there for a bit. If you haven’t already I suggest you take the time to get acquainted with Chinese culture, modern history, and modern Chinese lifestyle. In recent times there have been significant human tragedies there for sure, but given the historical context they feared to relive, and the incredible gains they’ve made in recent years, you can think of their actions as real large scale cases of “the ends justify the means” and “putting the greater good ahead of the individual.” Still lots of morally reprehensible stuff that cannot be excused, and its a pity they rely on rewriting history and suppressing subversive thought to preserve the government’s legitimacy, but to assume that China is some kind of giant hellish labor camp, and that our frankly ineffective and destructive forms of Western democracy are the only true answers to the world’s problems, is short sighted, blindly dogmatic and ignorant of the way the world works these days.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  but to assume that China is some kind of giant hellish labor camp, and that our frankly ineffective and destructive forms of Western democracy are the only true answers to the world’s problems, is short sighted That dichotomy was never made. The answer isn't today's ineffective democracies, but it is much closer to those than it is to governments which kill their own citizens to maintain power. It always reads like whataboutism to say "but what about their mistakes"? In the 1930s there were plenty of cheerleaders for the USSR who made just as much progress at great human cost. You're aware of the sins of the West because a free press broadcasts them. What is it that the Chinese government won't let the world know about?
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    >> That dichotomy was never made. And yet, t is always at the forefront of the subtext of any discussion of China- the communist regime that's so unlike our Western democracies because it's communist and we're democratic. As to governments killing their own citizens- the US, the leader of the free world, is one of the few nations besides China that still regularly uses the death penalty. And they consider it perfectly legal to assassinate their own citizens without anything like a trial (as in remotely, with drones, when said citizens are involved in terrorist acts). It's impossible to make a comment about the politics of China, without implicitly comparing them to the politics of the West; and vice-versa.
hungerstrike 9y ago
Yale helped Mao Zedong into power. The truth about who really controls China is obscured. Just a century ago, China was a backwater nation that got conquered by Great Britain. Within 60-80 years, they got nukes and became a super-power. Within 30 years, every nation sold out to China by giving them all the manufacturing technology. Bill Clinton sold them nuclear secrets. Israel regularly funnels intelligence and technological secrets to China. What do you think is going on? Does anyone think the Brits who worked very hard to rule the world 200 years ago and had an advanced intelligence network just gave up and walked away? I don't.
igravious 9y ago
You have a new account. You use inflammatory language: 'mowed down', 'strong arming', 'dangerous psychopath', 'nuclear missiles'. We try not to do that here. That 10,000 number is contested, you do the truth a disservice by assuming it to be true. We hold ourselves to higher standards here. Other sources assert the figure was in the hundreds, still a lot but two orders of magnitude different.
narrator 9y ago
The Chinese haven't attacked anyone in a long time. Seriously. I think they are pioneering new forms of social organization that are different than the western system and might even be better on the whole for the average individual who ignores historical events that took place more than 25 years ago. How many times has the economist predicted a economic crisis in China since 1990 and they just keep on growing?
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Have a read about organ harvesting. They have been forcibly harvested from prisoners and in large numbers. China has pledged to stop doing it as of this year. I guess we will see. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/asia_pacific/in-the-face-of-criticism-china-has-been-cleaning-up-its-organ-transplant-industry/2017/09/14/d689444e-e1a2-11e6-a419-eefe8eff0835_story.html https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtm...
yongjik 9y ago
I object to this line of thoughts. I hope I don't sound like a China apologist: the Chinese government has done a terrible crime, and it's a shame that not enough Chinese people are demanding justice, and sooner or later they will have to look back and recognize what happened, hopefully sooner rather than later. However, packaging that as "the threat of China" is a self-serving narrative that will harm people. I guess you mean well, but in the end that justifies America interfering with other small countries and supporting their dictators, because, hey, otherwise China will be doing the same and at least "our guys" won't be as bad as "their guys". (Just don't look too closely at what our guys are doing.) More personally, as a South Korean, America having such an opinion basically means my country is forced to "choose side", hurting our economy and destabilizing military balance in East Asia. The only benefactors are military complexes of China and the US.
- mutteraloo 9y ago
  you do realize that China is the only reason North Korea is still operating, right? The North Korea that threatens your home country and brutalizes many of your relatives in North Korea?
  - yongjik 9y ago
    You do realize North Korea "not operating" means either a civil war between military factions with access to nuclear weapons, or South Korean/American forces dragged into a military operation right up the nose of China? So you would rather prefer that my relatives die in fire? See, this is what I mean when I say I object to such reasoning. People are so bold, they're always willing to sacrifice other people's lives to defend freedom.
    - mutteraloo 9y ago
      You do realize that there are other scenarios, such as North Korea launching nuclear strike into Silicon Valley or New York? Would you prefer that? or North Korea failing quietly like the collapse of USSR?
jk2323 9y ago
"down 10,000 innocent lives" I doubt this number. And let's not forget that they let them protesting for some time. An highly unusual event in China. Problems occurred when protests did not stop. "threatens democracy and freedom worldwide." China is not totally undemocratic and I doubt that democracy is necessarily the best solution at all times and for all states. "This psychopath will eventually cause harm to a few countries (Taiwan, South Korea)" South Korea? On the other hand I am sure the people in Syria, Libya and Iraq were happy about the US bombings. Remember "highway of death" in Iraq? "when said and done, maybe enable North Korea to strike a few nuclear missiles into Los Angeles or Tokyo, who knows." North Korea is a buffer sate for both, China and Russia. China has NO interest in a war in North Korea. By the way, North Korea. The Soviet Union fought an existential war against Germany and lost 10% of their population. This war DEFINED the Soviet Union. In Europe the second world war was basically a Soviet-German war (9 out of 10 German soldiers that died, died on the Eastern Frontier). This being said, this is NOTHING compared to the war that North Korea fought: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/11/state-fear-how-history-deadliest-bombing-campaign-created-today-crisis-korea.html https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/11/state-fear... Yes, North Koreans are paranoid. They may have reasons to be.
fsloth 9y ago
That's how china has been ruled for thousands of years. You can't directly implant process X from culture A to culture B. The checks and balances and social norms between different cultures are different. You can implant an industrial process, if you educate a workforce, i.e. transform culture B to A onsite. Changing the culture of an entire civilization is considerably more difficult. That's not to say I don't like democracy or markets. But a country does not become a western democracy by having an election an privatizing everything. Labeling china as bad guys trivializes several aspects of differences between cultures. I'm not sure there are any good guys in global politics, so I'm not sure how the labels good or bad should be applied.
- deleted 9y ago
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- cgmg 9y ago
  I think the point about 'culture' is over-stated. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have a similar culture yet became liberal democracies.
FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
Let me try: there has been no acknowledgment, moral reckoning, mea culpa, apology, investigation or national discussion about the devastation and atrocities committed during the Korean War. "We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea. Over a period of 3 years, we killed off - what - 20% of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war." - General Curtis Lemay, Commander of the US Strategic Air Command 1948-1957 The US destroyed literally every single town. A State Department official in charge of Far Eastern affairs during the Korean War, would admit that the United States bombed “every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.” American pilots, he noted, “were just bombing the heck out of North Korea.” For a point of comparison, the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population and the Khmer Rouge killed ~21% of Cambodia's population during Pol Pots reign of terror. Western media fails to ever mention this grievance when trying to give a reason for the state of NK's behavior, instead painting a picture of a zany regime that operates without rhyme or reason. For them, it is still the 1950s … and the conflict with South Korea and the United States is still going on. People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened and have not forgotten the devastation. That's just one example. I could substitute in the US's use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and Cambodia (who we were not at war with), the 1953 coup in Iran that deposed a democratically elected leader, the 1973 coup in Chile that put Pinochet in power, or the shooting down Iran Air Flight 655. To be clear, I'm not excusing China's behavior at all. I think it's sad that Americans forget the atrocities it committed. I don't think there can be a peaceful way forward if we are on a high horse, believing that we possess some moral superiority. Although we are correct to criticize the Burmese treatment of their minority Rohingya, the US is still a country that had race riots in the 21st century and a violent Neo Nazi rally in 2017. P.S. The US is the unchallenged global leader at hiding messaging behind marketing, propaganda, consumerism and strong arming other countries, and we are ruled by a powerful group of multi-national corporations. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind." -Edward Bernays (often considered the father of PR), from his seminal work, Propaganda. Bernays’ publicity campaigns were the stuff of legend. To overcome “sales resistance” to cigarette smoking among women, Bernays staged a demonstration at the 1929 Easter parade, having fashionable young women flaunt their “torches of freedom.” He promoted Lucky Strikes by convincing women that the forest green hue of the cigarette pack was among the most fashionable of colors. The success of this effort was manifested in innumerable window displays and fashion shows. And yes, he was aware of some of the early studies linking smoking to cancer.

Dolores12 9y ago

China wouldn't become as what it is today if they didn't do it. There could not be economic growth during political instability. Life of a billion+ people is now better and in hindsight i guess it was worth it.

jdavis703 9y ago
This is a point many forget when talking about China. People bring up Tiananmen Square and the one child policy to talk about how evil China is. And don't get me wrong, to a certain extent both actions were wrong. But the U.S. had its own bloody civil war where the country killed hundreds of thousands of it's former citizens, not to mention the ways in which land was stolen from indigenous people. These violent actions the U.S. took are one of the reasons the country (and even the world) are so wealthy today.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  It's not very interesting to compare what the US was doing 160 years ago as justifications for why China still acts the way it does. A civil war is very different than a massacre of innocent protesters.
mutteraloo 9y ago
bullshit. or maybe the Chinese communist would have been overthrown, and they would have had a better government. all the progress China's made today is because the communist government took their foot off of the necks of the common citizens, and let the citizens work tears and sweats. Stop using what-ifs to justify monstrocities.
- jbooth 9y ago
  Easy for you to say. Last time China had a radical change of governments there were a few speed bumps. It's not nearly as cut and dried as you'd make it. How many Chinese deaths would be justified for such a transition, in your opinion?
- osdiab 9y ago
  They did have many governments and coups in the last 150 years, and they didn’t lead to incrementally better situations, but instead turmoil and foreign exploitation. I’m not Chinese and I can’t speak for their decisions, but it sounds like you don’t know the historical context and assume that Western liberalism always leads to positive ends - which, given our catastrophic interventions around the world, doesn’t seem to be the case. EDIT: to be clear, nobody is saying what they did is moral. But what I am saying is that the results of such an uprising was not guaranteed to be peaceful, orderly, nor lead to better outcomes; and furthermore you can make the argument that the success of modern Chinese governance has been one of the greatest triumphs of poverty alleviation and human development in all of human history. So to claim with such conviction that that branch of history would be the better option smacks of ignorance to me.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  It's always easy for us in the democratic West to say that oppressed people should rise up and claim their democratic rights. Yet, we never think of the cost in human lives this sort of thing always has, and how it often fails anyway. Cases in point: the "Arab Spring" (culminating in the Syrian Easter, if I may be so bold); regime change in Libya; regime change in Afghanistan; regime chnge in Iraq; and so on. This wonderfully altruistic feeling we have, that we want others to enjoy democracy like we do, is always exploited to invade countries "in need of democratic reform". So often, indeed, that I at least wonder if that's the whole point to cultivate this feeling in the hearts and minds of our people.
bufordsharkley 9y ago
One can offer stability within a democratic framework. To say that the wholesale slaughter of protesters was necessary to deliver market reform is simply absurd.
- osdiab 9y ago
  Clearly it wasn’t a moral or just choice, but when China has seen rebellions that lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people in the last century, you can at least see why the incumbent government may have had pause.

tw04 9y ago

I'm not going to stand here and say China doesn't have a TON of human rights issues. But on what planet can you say "this is the same government that mowed down 10,000 people"? You might as well say the current government in the US is the "Same government that mowed down innocent college students at Kent State". It's actually not the same government. Some parts of it are significantly better, some parts of it are significantly worse. Either way, it does the discussion a disservice to call it the same.

lozenge 9y ago
It is the same government. Those in power at the time chose who would succeed them, and so on to this day.
- tw04 9y ago
  Good point, whereas in America the Republican and Democratic parties have since been dismantled and replaced... Yang Shangkun must have had one heck of an influence if he was able to dictate who would be president of the country 15 years after his death... Of course Yang was forced out of the party in 1993 (the last time he had any influence), but don't let history and facts get in your way.
  - glenstein 9y ago
    In a meaningful sense, you can say the Republican party is largely the same today as it was during the Contract With America, and the Democratic Party is largely the party of New Deal programs. Sameness here refers to ideological continuity rather than literal individuals being the same.
    - jbooth 9y ago
      That's not what the person was saying, though. They were saying something much more simplistic. To your point, I'd say all 3 parties (D, R and CCP) have had slow and continuous ideological drift. All 3 are unrecognizable compared to 1989.

LV-426 9y ago

Leaving Tiananmen Square aside - since nobody can disagree it was a terrible, indefensible crime - can you explain further how you think China is threatening democracy and freedom "worldwide"? They're certainly a threat in Hong Kong, where they have a degree of control and influence, but how and where else? While they lay claim to Taiwan, what harm do you think they are going to cause to South Korea and why would they even think of something as insane as enabling North Korea to strike Tokyo or Los Angeles (or anywhere else) with nuclear weapons?

bufordsharkley 9y ago
I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, but it's pretty clear that China is unwilling to deny trade with North Korea, effectively propping up the Kim regime. Kim is engaging in increasingly dangerous provocations (admittedly provoked by the fact that the United States is still fighting the Korean War).
- zipwitch 9y ago
  Their trade with North Korea has been cut in half since last year, and they've repeatedly supported increased sanctions, including yesterday. Here in the United States it's popular to isolate nations on the far side of the planet, where we don't have to directly deal with the horrific consequences. But North Korea borders China, and the Chinese will need to deal with the effects of a full or partial North Korean collapse. And I don't think it's actually an effective (or humane) was to try to solve problems like this to begin with.
  - bufordsharkley 9y ago
    This is fair. Anyway, sanctions of this sort are absolutely immoral unless a government is willing to take on all affected refugees, which is very very rarely the case. Human rights abuses are difficult to solve without open borders, but unfortunately open borders are politically infeasible.
- rqs 9y ago
  Just that? Chinese here. I could say, if our government proves capitalism can be very well integrated and become more productive in an authoritarianism society, then that is a really bad news for democracy. On the other hand though, after watching many Fox News clips on Youtube, I don't think you guys are doing very well on democracy, especially the people in the US. Democracy is much harder to maintain than authoritarianism. It's very easy to get hijacked, especially the world is full of liars now days. I'm not saying you should abort democracy, instead, you guys should be grateful for what you have, and be careful don't lose it, because if you did, you probably won't get another one for free.

glenstein 9y ago

There's a serious problem with our own (US) culture's ability to think clearly about the problem posed by Chinese authoritarianism in the 21st century. I would attribute the problem to our tendency for centrism, both-sideism, and probably to the just-world hypothesis. People are tempted to bury it in a larger narrative of global complexity, thinking that treating it like a trick question is evidence of sophistication. But what if it's not a trick question?

bufordsharkley 9y ago
Some things are not cut-and-dry. Some are. Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society. I'm curious how China currently views Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People"[0], one of which is Democracy. Does his philosophy attract any attention today? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People
- yorwba 9y ago
  China takes Democracy (民主) very seriously. You'll see it on propaganda banners everywhere. You see, the leadership is democratically appointed by the will of the people. The 100% majority of the CCP is completely justified by its benevolent rule. /s There is no need to abandon old principles when you can just use doublethink to make them mean whatever you want them to mean.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  > Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society. If taxation by a non-representative government isn't as much common sense as abolitionism, it's only because of a huge amount of propaganda. It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    >It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery. Yes it is.

osdiab 9y ago

I’m not Chinese, but I did live there for a bit. If you haven’t already I suggest you take the time to get acquainted with Chinese culture, modern history, and modern Chinese lifestyle. In recent times there have been significant human tragedies there for sure, but given the historical context they feared to relive, and the incredible gains they’ve made in recent years, you can think of their actions as real large scale cases of “the ends justify the means” and “putting the greater good ahead of the individual.” Still lots of morally reprehensible stuff that cannot be excused, and its a pity they rely on rewriting history and suppressing subversive thought to preserve the government’s legitimacy, but to assume that China is some kind of giant hellish labor camp, and that our frankly ineffective and destructive forms of Western democracy are the only true answers to the world’s problems, is short sighted, blindly dogmatic and ignorant of the way the world works these days.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
but to assume that China is some kind of giant hellish labor camp, and that our frankly ineffective and destructive forms of Western democracy are the only true answers to the world’s problems, is short sighted That dichotomy was never made. The answer isn't today's ineffective democracies, but it is much closer to those than it is to governments which kill their own citizens to maintain power. It always reads like whataboutism to say "but what about their mistakes"? In the 1930s there were plenty of cheerleaders for the USSR who made just as much progress at great human cost. You're aware of the sins of the West because a free press broadcasts them. What is it that the Chinese government won't let the world know about?
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> That dichotomy was never made. And yet, t is always at the forefront of the subtext of any discussion of China- the communist regime that's so unlike our Western democracies because it's communist and we're democratic. As to governments killing their own citizens- the US, the leader of the free world, is one of the few nations besides China that still regularly uses the death penalty. And they consider it perfectly legal to assassinate their own citizens without anything like a trial (as in remotely, with drones, when said citizens are involved in terrorist acts). It's impossible to make a comment about the politics of China, without implicitly comparing them to the politics of the West; and vice-versa.

hungerstrike 9y ago

Yale helped Mao Zedong into power. The truth about who really controls China is obscured. Just a century ago, China was a backwater nation that got conquered by Great Britain. Within 60-80 years, they got nukes and became a super-power. Within 30 years, every nation sold out to China by giving them all the manufacturing technology. Bill Clinton sold them nuclear secrets. Israel regularly funnels intelligence and technological secrets to China. What do you think is going on? Does anyone think the Brits who worked very hard to rule the world 200 years ago and had an advanced intelligence network just gave up and walked away? I don't.

igravious 9y ago

You have a new account. You use inflammatory language: 'mowed down', 'strong arming', 'dangerous psychopath', 'nuclear missiles'. We try not to do that here. That 10,000 number is contested, you do the truth a disservice by assuming it to be true. We hold ourselves to higher standards here. Other sources assert the figure was in the hundreds, still a lot but two orders of magnitude different.

narrator 9y ago

The Chinese haven't attacked anyone in a long time. Seriously. I think they are pioneering new forms of social organization that are different than the western system and might even be better on the whole for the average individual who ignores historical events that took place more than 25 years ago. How many times has the economist predicted a economic crisis in China since 1990 and they just keep on growing?

lostlogin 9y ago
Have a read about organ harvesting. They have been forcibly harvested from prisoners and in large numbers. China has pledged to stop doing it as of this year. I guess we will see. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/asia_pacific/in-the-face-of-criticism-china-has-been-cleaning-up-its-organ-transplant-industry/2017/09/14/d689444e-e1a2-11e6-a419-eefe8eff0835_story.html https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtm...

yongjik 9y ago

I object to this line of thoughts. I hope I don't sound like a China apologist: the Chinese government has done a terrible crime, and it's a shame that not enough Chinese people are demanding justice, and sooner or later they will have to look back and recognize what happened, hopefully sooner rather than later. However, packaging that as "the threat of China" is a self-serving narrative that will harm people. I guess you mean well, but in the end that justifies America interfering with other small countries and supporting their dictators, because, hey, otherwise China will be doing the same and at least "our guys" won't be as bad as "their guys". (Just don't look too closely at what our guys are doing.) More personally, as a South Korean, America having such an opinion basically means my country is forced to "choose side", hurting our economy and destabilizing military balance in East Asia. The only benefactors are military complexes of China and the US.

mutteraloo 9y ago
you do realize that China is the only reason North Korea is still operating, right? The North Korea that threatens your home country and brutalizes many of your relatives in North Korea?
- yongjik 9y ago
  You do realize North Korea "not operating" means either a civil war between military factions with access to nuclear weapons, or South Korean/American forces dragged into a military operation right up the nose of China? So you would rather prefer that my relatives die in fire? See, this is what I mean when I say I object to such reasoning. People are so bold, they're always willing to sacrifice other people's lives to defend freedom.
  - mutteraloo 9y ago
    You do realize that there are other scenarios, such as North Korea launching nuclear strike into Silicon Valley or New York? Would you prefer that? or North Korea failing quietly like the collapse of USSR?

jk2323 9y ago

"down 10,000 innocent lives" I doubt this number. And let's not forget that they let them protesting for some time. An highly unusual event in China. Problems occurred when protests did not stop. "threatens democracy and freedom worldwide." China is not totally undemocratic and I doubt that democracy is necessarily the best solution at all times and for all states. "This psychopath will eventually cause harm to a few countries (Taiwan, South Korea)" South Korea? On the other hand I am sure the people in Syria, Libya and Iraq were happy about the US bombings. Remember "highway of death" in Iraq? "when said and done, maybe enable North Korea to strike a few nuclear missiles into Los Angeles or Tokyo, who knows." North Korea is a buffer sate for both, China and Russia. China has NO interest in a war in North Korea. By the way, North Korea. The Soviet Union fought an existential war against Germany and lost 10% of their population. This war DEFINED the Soviet Union. In Europe the second world war was basically a Soviet-German war (9 out of 10 German soldiers that died, died on the Eastern Frontier). This being said, this is NOTHING compared to the war that North Korea fought: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/11/state-fear-how-history-deadliest-bombing-campaign-created-today-crisis-korea.html https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/11/state-fear... Yes, North Koreans are paranoid. They may have reasons to be.

fsloth 9y ago

That's how china has been ruled for thousands of years. You can't directly implant process X from culture A to culture B. The checks and balances and social norms between different cultures are different. You can implant an industrial process, if you educate a workforce, i.e. transform culture B to A onsite. Changing the culture of an entire civilization is considerably more difficult. That's not to say I don't like democracy or markets. But a country does not become a western democracy by having an election an privatizing everything. Labeling china as bad guys trivializes several aspects of differences between cultures. I'm not sure there are any good guys in global politics, so I'm not sure how the labels good or bad should be applied.

deleted 9y ago
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cgmg 9y ago
I think the point about 'culture' is over-stated. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have a similar culture yet became liberal democracies.

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago

Let me try: there has been no acknowledgment, moral reckoning, mea culpa, apology, investigation or national discussion about the devastation and atrocities committed during the Korean War. "We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea. Over a period of 3 years, we killed off - what - 20% of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war." - General Curtis Lemay, Commander of the US Strategic Air Command 1948-1957 The US destroyed literally every single town. A State Department official in charge of Far Eastern affairs during the Korean War, would admit that the United States bombed “every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.” American pilots, he noted, “were just bombing the heck out of North Korea.” For a point of comparison, the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population and the Khmer Rouge killed ~21% of Cambodia's population during Pol Pots reign of terror. Western media fails to ever mention this grievance when trying to give a reason for the state of NK's behavior, instead painting a picture of a zany regime that operates without rhyme or reason. For them, it is still the 1950s … and the conflict with South Korea and the United States is still going on. People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened and have not forgotten the devastation. That's just one example. I could substitute in the US's use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and Cambodia (who we were not at war with), the 1953 coup in Iran that deposed a democratically elected leader, the 1973 coup in Chile that put Pinochet in power, or the shooting down Iran Air Flight 655. To be clear, I'm not excusing China's behavior at all. I think it's sad that Americans forget the atrocities it committed. I don't think there can be a peaceful way forward if we are on a high horse, believing that we possess some moral superiority. Although we are correct to criticize the Burmese treatment of their minority Rohingya, the US is still a country that had race riots in the 21st century and a violent Neo Nazi rally in 2017. P.S. The US is the unchallenged global leader at hiding messaging behind marketing, propaganda, consumerism and strong arming other countries, and we are ruled by a powerful group of multi-national corporations. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind." -Edward Bernays (often considered the father of PR), from his seminal work, Propaganda. Bernays’ publicity campaigns were the stuff of legend. To overcome “sales resistance” to cigarette smoking among women, Bernays staged a demonstration at the 1929 Easter parade, having fashionable young women flaunt their “torches of freedom.” He promoted Lucky Strikes by convincing women that the forest green hue of the cigarette pack was among the most fashionable of colors. The success of this effort was manifested in innumerable window displays and fashion shows. And yes, he was aware of some of the early studies linking smoking to cancer.