8 ms·

A painful but important reminder about Lu Guang, a photojournalist captured by the goverment for taking photos of the damage suffered by countryman (and nature)

A painful but important reminder about Lu Guang, a photojournalist captured by the goverment for taking photos of the damage suffered by countryman (and nature) due pollution from chinese factories: https://imgur.com/gallery/XwzByK7 https://imgur.com/gallery/XwzByK7 Something needs to be done, I'm not sure what but inaction will only aggravate the situation.

simonh 8y ago
I really do appreciate the sentiment, but with an authoritarian regime like this there's isn't an awful lot other nations can practically do that would actually make a difference. Just look at North Korea, it's under total economic lock-down but still continues along on it's brutally oppressive way. It's not that I'm happy about it, any suggestions welcome.
- megous 8y ago
  We can't possibly know. Different countries have different cultures and histories. It might also be that resulting slump in economic output would incite revolts.
- abc-xyz 8y ago
  At this point I'd say the goal should be to isolate China and make them suffer economically.. We can see what they've done to the people of Tibet, Hong Kong, Xijiang, those practicing Falun Gong and so many more. They're also stepping up their efforts of conquering Taiwan and the South China Sea.. the world can't keep turning a blind eye as their influence continue to grow.
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    Suffering economically will likely lead to far more suffering for various Chinese people, and the end result has a good chance of being a civil war. Is this worth preventing their influence from growing? Who benefits from it?
    - ardy42 8y ago
      > Suffering economically will likely lead to far more suffering for various Chinese people, and the end result has a good chance of being a civil war. Is this worth preventing their influence from growing? Who benefits from it? All the future citizens of the world, but especially those people living in smaller, more liberal, neighboring countries. My biggest worry with authoritarianism is that is seems we may be reaching a technological tipping point that will make these regimes even harder to replace than in the past [1]. Whatever can be done to prevent that is good in my book, especially since I think it's unlikely that these regimes will be content to limit their influence to their borders. [1] Nuclear weapons make them impossible to replace militarily, and digital surveillance + secret police may eventually make it impossible for internal change to replace them.
      - boomboomsubban 8y ago
        >All the future citizens of the world, but especially those people living in smaller, more liberal, neighboring countries. My biggest worry with authoritarianism is that is seems we may be reaching a technological tipping point that will make these regimes even harder to replace than in the past So you're worried they'll use their influence to support authoritarian regimes in other countries? Maybe we should stop doing that ourselves before we start playing with Chinese lives.
      - simonh 8y ago
        I worry about this too. Pervasive surveillance and monitoring of communications could make an authoritarian regime super-stable and impossible to reform from within.
    - BubRoss 8y ago
      That's a bold prediction when they are imprisoning so many people. I'm not sure why a flimsy assumption of the future for something that can't reliably be quantified would be used as a rationalization to do nothing.
      - boomboomsubban 8y ago
  - simonh 8y ago
    Isolation just doesn't work though, as I pointed out it's made zero difference to North Korea's behaviour and China was doing all the same things back when it was isolated. Arguably by making China more prosperous, we are empowering ordinary Chinese economically and eventually this could lead to broad demands for more political and social freedom. So it's quite possible sanctions would make the state more powerful with respect to individual citizens, not less. I'm not saying that's necessarily true, but it's plausible. I can see a case for symbolic sanctions though, something that's eye-catching but not necessarily economically impactful, as a way to draw attention to the issue within China.
    - ardy42 8y ago
      > Isolation just doesn't work though, as I pointed out it's made zero difference to North Korea's behaviour and China was doing all the same things back when it was isolated. > I'm not saying that's necessarily true, but it's plausible. I can see a case for symbolic sanctions though, something that's eye-catching but not necessarily economically impactful, as a way to draw attention to the issue within China. Except my understanding is that the modern PRC regime has staked its legitimacy on increasing living standards and economic development, since they de facto abandoned Communism. The regime itself fears an economic slowdown could loosen its grip on power. So, relatively onerous economy-slowing sanctions tied to demands for liberalization [1] may actually work pretty well, forcing the authoritarians to pick their poison. [1] e.g. make things like opening up the great firewall a condition for lowering tariffs/loosening embargoes.
      - simonh 8y ago
        If there is an economic slowdown and it does lead to challenges to the legitimacy of Communist rule, I think we'll find their source of legitimacy switches to the guns and jackboots variety PDQ. Honestly, is there any example ever where economic sanctions have forced a government to become less authoritarian?
        CharlesColeman 8y ago
        > Honestly, is there any example ever where economic sanctions have forced a government to become less authoritarian? Arguably the Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union. If they had been integrated into the Western economic system on favorable terms [1], material conditions there may not have been as bad and may not have fell in the late 80s/early 90s. [1] Such as being allowed to buy things on credit or buy advanced technology. IIRC, the Soviets were only allowed to trade with hard currency, and they were forbidden from buying most of the things they actually wanted.
  - dang 8y ago
    It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political, national, and ideological battle. That crosses into breaking the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do it, so would you please stop doing it? If you want to understand why we draw the line at "primarily", I've written a lot about it in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
    - abc-xyz 8y ago
      If you feel that way then you better ban me because I know I'll continue to "primarily" advocate digital privacy, and condemn those who seek(/contribute) to turn the world into a surveillance dystopia.
      - dang 8y ago
        Those are fine goals, but fine goals aren't enough to prevent HN from burning itself down. Indeed, they're potent fuel for that, if people don't care about the purpose of this site or take care to protect it from becoming like the rest of the flaming internet. It's my job to prevent the latter from happening, even though I'm sure I agree with your goals. The loss of a community on the internet where people gather for intellectual curiosity would make the world a little more dystopian too. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site to heart?
        abc-xyz 8y ago
        I think you've been doing a great job, the best of any networking site I've ever encountered (only Tildes appear to come even close in terms of purpose and leadership), and I truly wouldn't feel any resentment if you banned me because you felt the community would be better off without my comments. I think the place where we hold strong disagreement is in how to deal with evil. For instance I feel very confident that you (and almost every HN reader) agree that it's wrong and shameful that Apple would make it impossible for Macs brought in China to display Taiwan's national flag. I want to mention it whenever the context allows, even if it means repeating myself a thousand times, whereas you appear to prefer it being mentioned once and then never again. I feel my approach is necessary to achieve what I assume you agree is the morally right thing to do (that Apple will revert its decision and once again display their national flag). I of course also realize that it's you and not me who has to deal with moderating thousands of new comments every day, and that my comments likely make it much more tiresome for you to do your job. I can't stop making these comments, but I can agree to stop using nicknames such as Xitler. As for today's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466), I feel what's happening here is the scariest thing I've read this year, and it deserves much more focus and not to be dismissed as unsubstantial because of guesswork. China does not deserve benefit of the doubt at this point, they've proven over and over again that they have little to no regard for human rights, that they want to censor everything that put them in a bad light, and that they'll take every opportunity to rewrite history for their benefit. This is a fact and only to what degree can be argued. Right now China can make UC Browser default on all Huawei, Lenovo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and many more devices. They've demonstrated countless times that they'll behave like a spoilt child to get it their way (e.g. fire an employee for liking a tweet thanking their company or we'll kick you out of the country).. they've just demonstrated they'll gladly censor a SSL protected page (before today I didn't even consider it was possible, did you?).. how can you not be scared? How can you not feel extremely confident that they'll end up modifying Google search results and abuse this in so many other ways? If they're willing to do it with a GitHub repo, why wouldn't they do the exact same thing with Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, etc? They're already forcing companies to censor and manipulate content, rewrite history.. if they could do it by themselves on a massive scale then why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they sell devices at a loss if it meant they could control these people to influence foreign policies? Honestly, I'd accuse you of being willfully naive if you saw a less evil outcome.
- spork12 8y ago
  Unfortunately, the US is so economically dependent on China that we would just be shooting ourselves in the foot.
- mensetmanusman 8y ago
  Isolation doesn’t work (as you point out with NK). Integration also doesn’t seem to be working (well, not nearly as fast as those in the Nixon era and since then hypothesized). My view is that isolation is a worse route, because mostly the poor suffer from economic isolation. I really like the strategy of targeting the powerful politicians/rich benefactors using tools like the magnitsky act. Those people shouldn’t have the privledge of traveling to western countries.
  - salawat 8y ago
    Which is completely useless unless you also lock them out of the western financial system. The lack of physical presence isn't that big a showstopper anymore. Throw in an inability to exercise financial clout anymore though, and things will rapidly change. There likely isn't much political will for that though, and I'm fairly certain it could only come after a period of weaning the economy off the luxury of cheap as dirt manufacturing/shipping.
    - tracker1 8y ago
      A lot of the mfg costs have been offset by automation. Where China now has the advantage is vertical markets in close proximity. You have chips, boards, cases, plastics all created in proximity which adds value. Not too dissimilar to Detroit in the 50's and 60's, a lot of vertical and related markets had footholds in the area. I think if you isolated China economically, the US and other markets would be able to build their own competitive versions within a couple years. What is concerning to me is an increasing movement under a different name that would lead to similar policies in the US over time. At least comparing the rhetoric to communist theory in the early 1900's.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Why restrict it to western countries? The UN is made to form a huge bloc of countries that should be aimed at preventing the atrocities seen in WW2 (and before); so far, given what's happening in NK, China and the US it doesn't seem very effective. (I included the US because it has the highest incarceration rate of the world which disproportionately affects a racial minority; if prisons were relabeled as re-education camps and what happens in there is hidden from the world they would be on par with what China is doing atm)
- yumraj 8y ago
  While it is true the economic sanctions didn't work in NK and Iran, similar conditions worked in former-USSR and they can and will work in China for a simple reason: Folks in NK never experienced economic propsperity and were brainwashed from day one, people in China are experiencing economic bounty and as such are at the moment willing to overlook their government. The day this economic progress slows down, the masses will turn and hopefully revolt against the system. The only fear is that China is militarily very strong and I believe that Western nations are probably afraid that this may lead to WW-III, but in the absence of that, in the case of China economic sanctions can indeed lead to internal revolt and collapse of the CCP like that happened in former-USSR.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    China is not military very strong. It has consistently prioritized economic development at the expense of military investment for the past few decades.
  - rohit2412 8y ago
    I keep on seeing this opinion that if China doesn't grow at 8%+ rate, there'll be a revolution. Where does this idea come from? China went through not just minimal growth, but policies that killed tens of millions in the 1950-70s. I think the CCP is going to be very stable, and the current technological surveillance infrastructure has only strengthened it.
  - vfulco2 8y ago
    Based on my macro models, I believe growth has been zero for last 12 months.
- zanny 8y ago
  North Korea persists because China keeps it alive. If China joined the rest of the world in sanctions and a no trade policy NK would fold in a week. The USSR largely collapsed due to its economic isolation. It couldn't keep pace with the wests military industrial machine and because the west predominantly sanctioned the USSR they couldn't grow to compete. Regimes do not last in total economic isolation for long. They require someone to prop them up. Of course, getting the whole world to ban trade with China would be infeasible if for no other reason than China already has enough influence in nations around the world to override the will of Europe and North America. Most of Southeast Asia and Africa would still do business with China even under UN sanctions because they are under the influential heel of the CCP at this point. You can look at Russia today as an example of sanctions somewhat working - continued sanctions by the west against Putins governments atrocities have not overthrown him yet but they certainly sow seeds of discontent against him. Its why Russia is spending so much effort to meddle in western elections, they can see the writing on the wall that a strong and hostile west will eventually erode Putin and the Russian mafias ability to hold dictatorship over the country.
shifto 8y ago
Holy.., for some reason those photo's hit me hard here at work. Especially burying the child.
mjfern 8y ago
These images are haunting. More on Lu Guang: "Lu is based in New York City, the first Chinese photographer to be invited by the U.S. State Department as a visiting scholar, and Beijing. In early November 2018, whilst travelling in Xinjiang, Lu was taken away by state security agents and has not been heard from since." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Guang_(photographer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Guang_(photographer)
wallace_f 8y ago
Yea but China has big government, authoritarian command and control, extreme gun control and the kinds of reductions in civil rights and individual liberty that we are marching towards in America. It's time to stop fearing the consequences and just embracing it.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  I should have clarified, this was an entirely sarcastic comment.

simonh 8y ago

I really do appreciate the sentiment, but with an authoritarian regime like this there's isn't an awful lot other nations can practically do that would actually make a difference. Just look at North Korea, it's under total economic lock-down but still continues along on it's brutally oppressive way. It's not that I'm happy about it, any suggestions welcome.

megous 8y ago
We can't possibly know. Different countries have different cultures and histories. It might also be that resulting slump in economic output would incite revolts.
abc-xyz 8y ago
At this point I'd say the goal should be to isolate China and make them suffer economically.. We can see what they've done to the people of Tibet, Hong Kong, Xijiang, those practicing Falun Gong and so many more. They're also stepping up their efforts of conquering Taiwan and the South China Sea.. the world can't keep turning a blind eye as their influence continue to grow.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  Suffering economically will likely lead to far more suffering for various Chinese people, and the end result has a good chance of being a civil war. Is this worth preventing their influence from growing? Who benefits from it?
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > Suffering economically will likely lead to far more suffering for various Chinese people, and the end result has a good chance of being a civil war. Is this worth preventing their influence from growing? Who benefits from it? All the future citizens of the world, but especially those people living in smaller, more liberal, neighboring countries. My biggest worry with authoritarianism is that is seems we may be reaching a technological tipping point that will make these regimes even harder to replace than in the past [1]. Whatever can be done to prevent that is good in my book, especially since I think it's unlikely that these regimes will be content to limit their influence to their borders. [1] Nuclear weapons make them impossible to replace militarily, and digital surveillance + secret police may eventually make it impossible for internal change to replace them.
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
      >All the future citizens of the world, but especially those people living in smaller, more liberal, neighboring countries. My biggest worry with authoritarianism is that is seems we may be reaching a technological tipping point that will make these regimes even harder to replace than in the past So you're worried they'll use their influence to support authoritarian regimes in other countries? Maybe we should stop doing that ourselves before we start playing with Chinese lives.
    - simonh 8y ago
      I worry about this too. Pervasive surveillance and monitoring of communications could make an authoritarian regime super-stable and impossible to reform from within.
  - BubRoss 8y ago
    That's a bold prediction when they are imprisoning so many people. I'm not sure why a flimsy assumption of the future for something that can't reliably be quantified would be used as a rationalization to do nothing.
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
- simonh 8y ago
  Isolation just doesn't work though, as I pointed out it's made zero difference to North Korea's behaviour and China was doing all the same things back when it was isolated. Arguably by making China more prosperous, we are empowering ordinary Chinese economically and eventually this could lead to broad demands for more political and social freedom. So it's quite possible sanctions would make the state more powerful with respect to individual citizens, not less. I'm not saying that's necessarily true, but it's plausible. I can see a case for symbolic sanctions though, something that's eye-catching but not necessarily economically impactful, as a way to draw attention to the issue within China.
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > Isolation just doesn't work though, as I pointed out it's made zero difference to North Korea's behaviour and China was doing all the same things back when it was isolated. > I'm not saying that's necessarily true, but it's plausible. I can see a case for symbolic sanctions though, something that's eye-catching but not necessarily economically impactful, as a way to draw attention to the issue within China. Except my understanding is that the modern PRC regime has staked its legitimacy on increasing living standards and economic development, since they de facto abandoned Communism. The regime itself fears an economic slowdown could loosen its grip on power. So, relatively onerous economy-slowing sanctions tied to demands for liberalization [1] may actually work pretty well, forcing the authoritarians to pick their poison. [1] e.g. make things like opening up the great firewall a condition for lowering tariffs/loosening embargoes.
    - simonh 8y ago
      If there is an economic slowdown and it does lead to challenges to the legitimacy of Communist rule, I think we'll find their source of legitimacy switches to the guns and jackboots variety PDQ. Honestly, is there any example ever where economic sanctions have forced a government to become less authoritarian?
      - CharlesColeman 8y ago
        > Honestly, is there any example ever where economic sanctions have forced a government to become less authoritarian? Arguably the Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union. If they had been integrated into the Western economic system on favorable terms [1], material conditions there may not have been as bad and may not have fell in the late 80s/early 90s. [1] Such as being allowed to buy things on credit or buy advanced technology. IIRC, the Soviets were only allowed to trade with hard currency, and they were forbidden from buying most of the things they actually wanted.
- dang 8y ago
  It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political, national, and ideological battle. That crosses into breaking the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do it, so would you please stop doing it? If you want to understand why we draw the line at "primarily", I've written a lot about it in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
  - abc-xyz 8y ago
    If you feel that way then you better ban me because I know I'll continue to "primarily" advocate digital privacy, and condemn those who seek(/contribute) to turn the world into a surveillance dystopia.
    - dang 8y ago
      Those are fine goals, but fine goals aren't enough to prevent HN from burning itself down. Indeed, they're potent fuel for that, if people don't care about the purpose of this site or take care to protect it from becoming like the rest of the flaming internet. It's my job to prevent the latter from happening, even though I'm sure I agree with your goals. The loss of a community on the internet where people gather for intellectual curiosity would make the world a little more dystopian too. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site to heart?
      - abc-xyz 8y ago
        I think you've been doing a great job, the best of any networking site I've ever encountered (only Tildes appear to come even close in terms of purpose and leadership), and I truly wouldn't feel any resentment if you banned me because you felt the community would be better off without my comments. I think the place where we hold strong disagreement is in how to deal with evil. For instance I feel very confident that you (and almost every HN reader) agree that it's wrong and shameful that Apple would make it impossible for Macs brought in China to display Taiwan's national flag. I want to mention it whenever the context allows, even if it means repeating myself a thousand times, whereas you appear to prefer it being mentioned once and then never again. I feel my approach is necessary to achieve what I assume you agree is the morally right thing to do (that Apple will revert its decision and once again display their national flag). I of course also realize that it's you and not me who has to deal with moderating thousands of new comments every day, and that my comments likely make it much more tiresome for you to do your job. I can't stop making these comments, but I can agree to stop using nicknames such as Xitler. As for today's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466), I feel what's happening here is the scariest thing I've read this year, and it deserves much more focus and not to be dismissed as unsubstantial because of guesswork. China does not deserve benefit of the doubt at this point, they've proven over and over again that they have little to no regard for human rights, that they want to censor everything that put them in a bad light, and that they'll take every opportunity to rewrite history for their benefit. This is a fact and only to what degree can be argued. Right now China can make UC Browser default on all Huawei, Lenovo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and many more devices. They've demonstrated countless times that they'll behave like a spoilt child to get it their way (e.g. fire an employee for liking a tweet thanking their company or we'll kick you out of the country).. they've just demonstrated they'll gladly censor a SSL protected page (before today I didn't even consider it was possible, did you?).. how can you not be scared? How can you not feel extremely confident that they'll end up modifying Google search results and abuse this in so many other ways? If they're willing to do it with a GitHub repo, why wouldn't they do the exact same thing with Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, etc? They're already forcing companies to censor and manipulate content, rewrite history.. if they could do it by themselves on a massive scale then why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they sell devices at a loss if it meant they could control these people to influence foreign policies? Honestly, I'd accuse you of being willfully naive if you saw a less evil outcome.
spork12 8y ago
Unfortunately, the US is so economically dependent on China that we would just be shooting ourselves in the foot.
mensetmanusman 8y ago
Isolation doesn’t work (as you point out with NK). Integration also doesn’t seem to be working (well, not nearly as fast as those in the Nixon era and since then hypothesized). My view is that isolation is a worse route, because mostly the poor suffer from economic isolation. I really like the strategy of targeting the powerful politicians/rich benefactors using tools like the magnitsky act. Those people shouldn’t have the privledge of traveling to western countries.
- salawat 8y ago
  Which is completely useless unless you also lock them out of the western financial system. The lack of physical presence isn't that big a showstopper anymore. Throw in an inability to exercise financial clout anymore though, and things will rapidly change. There likely isn't much political will for that though, and I'm fairly certain it could only come after a period of weaning the economy off the luxury of cheap as dirt manufacturing/shipping.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    A lot of the mfg costs have been offset by automation. Where China now has the advantage is vertical markets in close proximity. You have chips, boards, cases, plastics all created in proximity which adds value. Not too dissimilar to Detroit in the 50's and 60's, a lot of vertical and related markets had footholds in the area. I think if you isolated China economically, the US and other markets would be able to build their own competitive versions within a couple years. What is concerning to me is an increasing movement under a different name that would lead to similar policies in the US over time. At least comparing the rhetoric to communist theory in the early 1900's.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Why restrict it to western countries? The UN is made to form a huge bloc of countries that should be aimed at preventing the atrocities seen in WW2 (and before); so far, given what's happening in NK, China and the US it doesn't seem very effective. (I included the US because it has the highest incarceration rate of the world which disproportionately affects a racial minority; if prisons were relabeled as re-education camps and what happens in there is hidden from the world they would be on par with what China is doing atm)
yumraj 8y ago
While it is true the economic sanctions didn't work in NK and Iran, similar conditions worked in former-USSR and they can and will work in China for a simple reason: Folks in NK never experienced economic propsperity and were brainwashed from day one, people in China are experiencing economic bounty and as such are at the moment willing to overlook their government. The day this economic progress slows down, the masses will turn and hopefully revolt against the system. The only fear is that China is militarily very strong and I believe that Western nations are probably afraid that this may lead to WW-III, but in the absence of that, in the case of China economic sanctions can indeed lead to internal revolt and collapse of the CCP like that happened in former-USSR.
- ummonk 8y ago
  China is not military very strong. It has consistently prioritized economic development at the expense of military investment for the past few decades.
- rohit2412 8y ago
  I keep on seeing this opinion that if China doesn't grow at 8%+ rate, there'll be a revolution. Where does this idea come from? China went through not just minimal growth, but policies that killed tens of millions in the 1950-70s. I think the CCP is going to be very stable, and the current technological surveillance infrastructure has only strengthened it.
- vfulco2 8y ago
  Based on my macro models, I believe growth has been zero for last 12 months.
zanny 8y ago
North Korea persists because China keeps it alive. If China joined the rest of the world in sanctions and a no trade policy NK would fold in a week. The USSR largely collapsed due to its economic isolation. It couldn't keep pace with the wests military industrial machine and because the west predominantly sanctioned the USSR they couldn't grow to compete. Regimes do not last in total economic isolation for long. They require someone to prop them up. Of course, getting the whole world to ban trade with China would be infeasible if for no other reason than China already has enough influence in nations around the world to override the will of Europe and North America. Most of Southeast Asia and Africa would still do business with China even under UN sanctions because they are under the influential heel of the CCP at this point. You can look at Russia today as an example of sanctions somewhat working - continued sanctions by the west against Putins governments atrocities have not overthrown him yet but they certainly sow seeds of discontent against him. Its why Russia is spending so much effort to meddle in western elections, they can see the writing on the wall that a strong and hostile west will eventually erode Putin and the Russian mafias ability to hold dictatorship over the country.

shifto 8y ago

Holy.., for some reason those photo's hit me hard here at work. Especially burying the child.

mjfern 8y ago

These images are haunting. More on Lu Guang: "Lu is based in New York City, the first Chinese photographer to be invited by the U.S. State Department as a visiting scholar, and Beijing. In early November 2018, whilst travelling in Xinjiang, Lu was taken away by state security agents and has not been heard from since." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Guang_(photographer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Guang_(photographer)

wallace_f 8y ago

Yea but China has big government, authoritarian command and control, extreme gun control and the kinds of reductions in civil rights and individual liberty that we are marching towards in America. It's time to stop fearing the consequences and just embracing it.

wallace_f 8y ago
I should have clarified, this was an entirely sarcastic comment.