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China’s 'Thought Transformation' Camps [video]

172 points by HillaryBriss 7y ago

threeisoneis 7y ago
Concentration camps
olliej 7y ago
Call them what they are: Concentration camps.
- umvi 7y ago
  The term "concentration camp" has an extremely negative connotation though due to Nazi Germany. China isn't gassing and cremating people. They are helping minorities integrate into Chinese society via ethically questionable means.
  - maeln 7y ago
    They are not minorities in the region they mostly live.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      It really isn’t that’s simple if we are talking about northern rather than southern xinjiang, where Han is much more common. The history of that area is really complicated (the Manchu brought in the Uighurs to help exterminate the Mongolians...).
      - mc32 7y ago
        This is off topic, but maybe you know: what’s the practical difference between being an autonomous region and being a province?
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Effectively not much. They all have leaders (party secretaries) appointed by Beijing who are almost all Han (only ceremonial heads would be minorities, the autonomy is mostly ceremonial unless we are talking about the SARs).
        mc32 7y ago
        Interesting that it’s mostly political dressing with little impact. Good to know, thanks.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Concentration camps are not necessarily death camps. They are prisons for specific political, social, or ethnic groups--this seems to qualify. Even the phrase "concentration camp" is a bit of a euphemism. A better phrase might be a "political prison". And yes it has a negative connotation, because it is a bad thing.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      The same kind of terminology debate comes up when people use "third world" to mean "developing countries" and, when corrected, they just declare the meaning changed. So if that's how we're supposed to roll then why wouldn't the same logic apply here?
      - kodz4 7y ago
        “Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of process, change, differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths, interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the mismatch of our ever-changing world and our relatively static language forms is part of our problem.” - Wendell Johnson
        mc32 7y ago
        Language isn’t planned and created. It evolves. The problem isn’t language, but how it’s used. A dire statement from a doctor and the same statement from an unsympathetic actor comes across differently. That’s not quite the fault of language.
      - happytoexplain 7y ago
        I thought "third world" was an informal and occasionally derogatory synonym for "developing countries". Is that not the case?
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_... Arguably worse
    - el_benhameen 7y ago
      I'm not sure that it helps anyone's cause to try to rank the awfulness of various fundamentally awful things. Both of these things are unspeakably horrific.
      - komali2 7y ago
        Not unspeakably so - the more we speak about it, the more people aware that China is harvesting the organs of religious groups.
    - sdegutis 7y ago
      It just occurred to me. We're in a very similar situation as Americans were 90-100 years ago when hearing about the extreme atrocities of the Nazis. Many didn't believe it, many believed it but didn't know what we could do about it. I wonder what we can do about these abominable practices we keep hearing about in China. I mean, what can we, individuals, do to help put an end to the constant stream of injustices there? The obvious solution is to boycott Chinese merchandise and vote with our wallets. But will we be able to overcome the inconveniences it would cause us? Could enough of us actually go through with it collectively to make a dent?
      - komali2 7y ago
        North Korea has been mass incarcerating and torturing its people in concentration camps for many decades now and America has done practically nothing about it. I've always wondered the same thing. Why Germany didn't get away with it, but North Korea does? My only guess is because Germany started invading all of Europe and posed a legitimate threat to American interests, whereas North Korea doesn't. Added bonus of defeating the Nazis is we freed everyone in concentration camps, but I guess that wasn't why we mobilized the American war machine. It'll take more than crimes against humanity.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    If you're going to quibble on terminology, you'll probably want to start with not calling this "helping minorities integrate into society".
  - altec3 7y ago
    heres the definition of concentration camp: a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. Seems like we have: - Large numbers of people - Persecuted minorities (Uyghurs) None of the reports seem to indicate forced labor or mass execution, but those seem to be optional requirements for a concentration camp.
  - iamnotacrook 7y ago
    "They are helping minorities integrate into Chinese society " They are already part of Chinese society. And they don't want help. They want to be let out of prison and to return to their families.
    - Ygg2 7y ago
      A more sinister reading could be they are disintegrating the minorities and recycling them (as organs) to be integrated into the Chinese (and Western) society.
    - sct202 7y ago
      The sad part is they probably could have assimilated the Uighers faster if the Han were less racist against them. There were pictures of job agencies that had signs up that said no Uighers.
  - faissaloo 7y ago
    Like how talking about IQ is just 'race realism' right
  - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
    Better then no integration measures like in europe- just have them live in there parallel worlds, speak there own language, have there own justice systems and drag some "model" citizens in front of the camera every month for a rainbow photo. Then watch the social justice warriors return to there gated communitys for another month of ignoring or fights with white "trailer park trash", that is more diverse and in touch with economic reality then the people yelling at them.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    The Nazi extermination camps were just one of the types of concentration camp they ran, and the most notorious for obvious reasons. There were also the labour concentration camps, and the Work Instruction Camps that are most comparable here - they "re-educated" Poles to accept their new life as slavic slaves.
  - gwbas1c 7y ago
    > China isn't gassing and cremating people. Don't conflate concentration camps and death camps. Nazi Germany had both, and they are both different things. Death camps operated very differently than the concentration camps. Specifically, people got off the trains and went into the gas chambers rather quickly. They didn't stay in the death camps for months or years awaiting execution. (This is in contrast to people who stayed in concentration camps.) The death camps were also geographically isolated, so that it was very hard for civilians to learn that mass executions were happening. (The Nazis learned to do this when they performed mass euthanasia in hospitals in cities, because civilians would see people arrive in busses, then smoke come from crematoriums, and then more people arrive. They nearly got voted out of power because the churches started to turn against them.) Honestly, as an adult, it's worth spending some time reading up on the holocaust. It's not that our history classes were wrong, it's just that the depth of understanding that we can get as adults is much more than when we learned about the holocaust in grade school or high school.
  - olliej 7y ago
    Yes, because they are a negative thing. And it’s interesting to use phrase “indefinite detention and torture” as “helping minorities integrate”. The fact that we don’t know how many people are being killed doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Every time some country decides to do this they hide that they’re killing people. China is still actively trying to hide how many people are in these camps, and isn’t allowing anyone else to go in to verify that they aren’t just killing people. Hell we can’t even get the from ICE.
erokar 7y ago
Somehow it's comforting to see how laughably bad China is at propaganda.
- maeln 7y ago
  They probably knew exactly what they were doing. The truth being mostly already out there, they probably wanted to show something like "look, it's not that bad, we are not killing them". Some sort of damage control I guess.
- ra1n85 7y ago
  To you. The truth stops being a tangible concept when it’s suffocated by a cloud of swirling lies.
  - president 7y ago
    > The truth stops being a tangible concept when it’s suffocated by a cloud of swirling lies. American news media came to mind when I read this
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    I think this is the likely explanation, assuming the Chinese propagandists are competent. They need to put disinformation out there to cause people to doubt. The other explanation is that it's a ham-handed attempt by propagandists that are operating outside their element (i.e. they are used to operating in an environment where they literally dictate the narrative to the media (whose surname is "party" and all that)).
- Shivetya 7y ago
  What isn't a laughing matter is how we excuse all our favorite tech companies to continue manufacturing there.
  - ReptileMan 7y ago
    Nobody cares. The international community generally shrugs when something is done orderly and internally. China has too much money and business opportunities to be thrown away.
chrisco255 7y ago
Why does China insist on using 1984 as a playbook, rather than a cautionary tale?
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Aren't we going towards a technological omni-surveillance state? Aren't we going towards ubiquitous screens that monitor us while we get all of our information from them? Haven't we already had "2 minutes hate" with people screaming at the sky? Don't we already have a class of elite technocrats who create media for a proletariat they look down upon, kaleidoscopically recombining and rehashing old stories? Don't we already have Julias and the civic league she belongs to? Why does the world of 2019 keep using 1984 as a playbook?
  - nine_k 7y ago
    Not "1984", of course, but "Brave New World". https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webcomic-2/ https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webc...
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      I agree Huxley was a bit closer (at least with regards to the West), depicting a "soft tyranny" rather than the "harsh tyranny" of 1984.
      - stcredzero 7y ago
        Whether it's soft or harsh depends on your POV. Inner and outer party members might well say "soft." https://www.wired.com/story/how-silicon-valley-fuels-an-informal-caste-system/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-silicon-valley-fuels-an-info... The West is still indeed much better than other parts of the world. However, the West is supposed to be better qualitatively, not just quantitatively.
- southerndrift 7y ago
  Because we have always been at war with Eastasia.
MadWombat 7y ago
I think the better parallel is not with the Nazi concentration camps where the goal was to methodically eradicate people, but rather American conversion therapy camps where they try to "convert" gay kids to straight.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Not all of the Nazi concentration camps served as extermination camps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp
loxs 7y ago
That's where we (the western world) are headed. Expect soon: thought transformation camps for homophobes.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  There's a difference between not wanting a racist or homophobe to use your service or be your friend, and forcibly re-educating them. You have a right to be a moron. Everyone else has a right to dislike you.
  - umvi 7y ago
    > You have a right to be a moron. Everyone else has a right to dislike you. For now. I could see a scenario in the not too distant future where "being a moron" is re-branded as "hate speech" which would be a federally punishable offense
    - komali2 7y ago
      You used the word "federally" so I assume you're talking about the United States, which has no federal laws against hate speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
      - umvi 7y ago
        ...yet. Hence why I said "I could see a scenario in the not too distant future..."
        komali2 7y ago
        I'm interested in why you could see this. My understanding of the cultural leanings of the US is that something like this would be almost impossible to get passed as federal law, or as a constitutional amendment. Congress can't even agree on generic funding bills without a party war over immigration. The last couple congresses have spent most of their time doing everything possible to jam operations of the executive branch. I just don't see a hate speech law ever passing in the USA, not without a dramatic change in the political climate, which I also don't see happening any time soon.
thoughtxformer 7y ago
I think many of us wouldn't mind the capability to Transform the Thoughts of large segments of our society...
- nine_k 7y ago
  Humans are generally prone to this, alas. A great essay on the topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
dustfinger 7y ago
Can powerful nation states that commit atrocities against populations of humans be over thrown peacefully? That is to say, without a war? What will it take to have China removed from the UN? Or, is it better that they are represented so that these issues can be raised and resolved in a peaceful manner?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > Can powerful nation states that commit atrocities against populations of humans be over thrown peacefully? That is to say, without a war? The USSR serves as a pretty good example.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Having learned what happened to Soviets/Russians, one would imagine they'd prefer avoiding a repeat of the consequences...
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      Perhaps (and perhaps not all of them). The fall of the USSR also includes places like Germany, though, where it's been a pretty clear benefit.
  - elsonrodriguez 7y ago
    If we apply the USSR model to China we'll be bombing African countries a few decades after our proxy wars are done.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      We've already been doing that for decades. Libya, Somalia, etc.
- jandrese 7y ago
  How would they be overthrown? Would someone write a letter so harshly worded that the ruling government would decide to step down and allow some presumably better government to take their place? If you're talking about a place with a functioning Democracy then they could be voted out, but virtually every other form of government pretty much requires a coup, disaster, or outstandingly benevolent ruler to step aside. And when a ruler is benevolent nobody is really clamoring to change the government, it's only when total assholes are in charge. Worse, power vacuums tend to attract the most opportunistic and corrupt. Rarely do they have the public interest in mind. Any time you see a leadership ousted by a coup you know it's only going to get worse in that country.
learc83 7y ago
Can we stop arguing on the terminology and whether other countries do bad stuff as well and just agree that this is something we should condemn. It may be difficult or even impossible for the rest of the world to stop it, but it shouldn't be so hard to come to a consensus that this is wrong. Edit: this just dropped off the front page from #4 to #34 in a few minutes while another article about China selling US dollars with far fewer upvotes and comments from around the same time is still at #2. Can we get an explanation for why this happened? Edit: It's now almost off the 2nd page at #52 in under an hour.
- xbeta 7y ago
  Upvote this! Just because other regimes had done something bad, it does not remove the fact that this is also bad. 2 wrongs don't make it a right.
- pulse7 7y ago
  "other countries do bad stuff as well" is just the excuse you have, when you would like to support your country doing the bad stuff... Everybody has a free will and can decide what to believe and what not. Forcing other people to believe in something is making robots out of humans. But robots can't express love... Love can be expressed only out of a completely free will, where no force is present...
- avanti 7y ago
  Well, please define what is "wrong".
  - xbeta 7y ago
    "Transformation camps" on your thoughts and how you think. Hmm.. That sounds wrong to me.
    - avanti 7y ago
      Education is a transformation of your thoughts and how you think. So does education sound wrong to you?
wefarrell 7y ago
"Our goal is to take a person who's on the edge of committing a crime and return them to normal society as a law abiding citizen" Even the official party line is horrifying. Shows just how out of touch they are with the Western world if they think this message will be well interpreted.
- komali2 7y ago
  > Shows just how out of touch they are with the Western world if they think this message will be well interpreted. They aren't interested in being aligned with Western values - why would they be? Freedom and democracy run perfectly contrary to their goals. I've had very in depth philosophical debates with Party members. Democracy - why would we leave the decisions to the people? The people don't know what's best for them, and they make bad decisions that lead to things like Brexit. Democracy is inefficient. FEMA can't adequately respond to disasters like the strong-arm of the Party can. Freedom of Information - this is too scary for the people. The people shouldn't have to deal with so much confusing information. Look at Fake News and how scary the media is. It creates confusion and mistrust in the government. That isn't good. The people don't want freedom of information. I unequivocally disagree with these arguments but these are the beliefs of the Party.
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    My take on it: Democracy is necessary and good. It can be inefficient when times are good, but it is the most efficient way to right the ship when things are bad...also unilateral actions may appear efficient, but there will be lots of stakeholders that get hurt by those unilateral actions. Consensus takes time, and is susceptible to all sorts of poor arguments and one-liners, but when the people are suffering, I can think of no better way to peacefully overthrow the ruling body than by democratic elections.
    - zjaffee 7y ago
      I'd argue that democracy doesn't matter nearly as much as constitutional freedoms of assembly, speech (to a certain degree), independent press, ect. China still fears protest/revolution and will work in such a way that benefits their population in order to prevent uprisings and civil unrest. Add on the fact that the vast majority of issues that we view as democratic victories in the US, were more than anything, driven by direct action or initial change at the local level (a level which is democratic in china). Where in the cases where major change happened in a different way, it happened through the Judiciary which is also not democratic. Add on the fact that many of the direct democratic measures in the US tend to be destructive (prop 13, voting against any tax increase even if necessary over the long term), and there becomes a reason why a political system with a single party, namely a party with a largely unified political goal, is preferable. I'd also question when in US history (or elsewhere) has there ever been a time where democratic elections peacefully overthrew the ruling body. Usually there is significant continuity from administration to administration, where any serious political change happens due to outside direct action.
low_poly_shiba 7y ago
It's wild to me that americans point at China for this when they: 1) routinely bomb muslims to death, destroying entire nations, I guess gesturing towards vague notions that being murdered is better than being brainwashed 2) have their own immigrant concentration camps, going as far as to reuse the same infrastructure for japanese internment camps (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/migrant-children-internment-camp-fort-sill-847183/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/migrant-...) the main difference is that the victims of abuse in China are Chinese citizens, whereas americans draw their borders in such a way that their victims live in their "backyard" and not america proper. American exceptionalism is alive and well! edit: lol I'm a lily-white Canadian, for all of those claiming China is somehow "my side". also, the completely reflexive, kneejerk way in which posters deploy accusations of "whataboutism" to avoid any critical assessment of what they're witnessing, is truly spectacular.
- nine_k 7y ago
  Re (2), there's a tiny detail: these are illegal immigrants, who often take great pains to get to the US territory, fully aware of their future illegal status. I wonder why these people make a choice like that?
- maxton 7y ago
  This piece isn't about Americans or their reactions to this horrible situation.
  - low_poly_shiba 7y ago
    so? I find it interesting to point out the double standard I'm hardly the first Canadian to notice the insane ramp-up in anti-China sentiment from our American neighbours, especially given the stark contrast with the royal treatment given to the genocidal regime in Saudi Arabia. Dismembered journalists, decapitated feminists and democratic activist teenagers, famine in Yemen, Senate voted to stop the war and Trump vetoed it... and yet HN is all China every day. China isn't the only country that looks a lot like 1984 from the outside peering in.
avanti 7y ago
How about Guantanamo? Is that a concentration camp? And what about those border facilities detaining immigrants? What's happening inside there? Why eliminating terrorism justifies bombarding a country most of innocent civilians? Our views are always biased by what we think is right. However there's no absolute right or wrong, only stories planted in our minds.
- ng12 7y ago
  I don't think you'll find many on HN supporting Guantanamo so the point is kind of moot.
  - xmly 7y ago
    Then do something. Fight with the evil which is so close.
- fourier_mode 7y ago
  Although I don't support the existence of a detention camp controlled by any nation, the detention camps meant for terrorists are at way higher moral grounds, than someone adhering to a particular ideology.
- ryanmarsh 7y ago
  People at the border facilities are encouraged to leave back to their home country and to use the US Immigration system properly. I don't know much about Guantanamo. Who is currently held there? I've read they recently expanded the facilities but I'm not aware of new arrivals.
  - xmly 7y ago
    Guantanamo will be used as the detention facility for illegal immigrants pretty soon based on the news.
    - fourier_mode 7y ago
      Reference?
hart_russell 7y ago
They're also harvesting their organs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
- low_poly_shiba 7y ago
  big if true! unfortunately the Falun Gong is an insane cult and not a very reliable source of information RationalWiki has a big citations-packed section on their claims of organ harvesting in China: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Victims_of_Organ_Harvesting https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Victims_of_Organ_Ha... I hope after the Iraq "incubator smashing" fiasco, and "WMD"s, Americans apply some skepticism towards claims that their geopolitical adversaries act like fantastical TV show villains. --- edit, bc can't reply because I'm massively getting flagged and downvoted across all my posts here's me addressing claims that nobody has challenged the Matas report: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour–Matas_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour–Matas_report > The report, based on circumstantial evidence, concluded that "there has been, and continues today to be, large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners."[2] China has consistently denied the allegations.[3][4] then > The initial report received a mixed reception. In the US, a Congressional Research Service report by Thomas Lum stated that the Kilgour–Matas report relied largely on logical inference, without bringing forth new or independently obtained testimony; the credibility of much of the key evidence was said to be questionable.[5]
  - antidesitter 7y ago
    RationalWiki is not a credible source.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    Falun Gong being a weird culty organization (they absolutely are) doesn't mean China isn't abusing them, which they are, or that they're not harvesting their organs, which they may well be. "China is harvesting organs from detainees, tribunal concludes. Victims include imprisoned followers of Falun Gong movement, China Tribunal says" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harve... > An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement. > The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong as a source - probably the principal source - of organs for forced organ harvesting”.
SubiculumCode 7y ago
These camps are clear evidence that the Honk Kong Democracy Protesters, inheritors of the Umbrella protests, need our whole hearted support.
salawat 7y ago
Enumerating candidate PR spin Camps that were likely rejected: (Just add camps for full effect) >Cultural Enrichment >Sensibility Rectification >Behavior Rectification >Sentiment Realignment >Sentiment Engineering >Fundamental reconstruction of basic societal interaction loop by way of teaching subordinazation of individual sentiment to collective will/norms >Happy >Reeducation >Sequestration >Organ Donor >U.N. Tribunal No-go >What >People Tranformation >Cultural Isolation >Cultural Indoctrination >Cultural Reorientation >Internment >Help, I'm trapped in a CCP PR Dept Feel free to add your own.
chocolatefor3 7y ago
I am an American, here is what I am going to do. There's currently an USTR tariff review session happening right now in Washington. A bunch of companies are protesting against tariffs on China, saying they can't live without China. Some of these companies are: - Best buy - American Apparel - Kenneth Col - iRobot - Roku - Element Electronics - Hallmark Cards I will not buy from these companies for the rest of my life, as well as any other companies that have products that are 'made in China'. These companies must have heard about the concentration camps, and possible organ harvesting/slave labor in those camps, and choose not to divest away. These companies are horrendous actors who choose freely to prop up a regime like his.
- charliesharding 7y ago
  > American Apparel Wow, they've come a long way from how they were founded. Sad to see
- driverdan 7y ago
  > I will not buy from these companies for the rest of my life, as well as any other companies that have products that are 'made in China'. Good luck with that. I hope you don't need any technology in your life since nearly all modern computing components are made in China. The only way to avoid Chinese imports is to live on a homestead and make everything yourself.
  - komali2 7y ago
    Good point. I'd like to find an article on phones with the least amount of, or no, Chinese parts. Anybody have anything like this on hand? Otherwise, I'll start researching and put an article together. Similarly, I'd like to do the same for Laptops. Toshiba, Fujitsu, Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp may not come with "made in China" labels, but components will be Chinese. I've been googling a bit and surprisingly am not coming up with pure non-Chinese machines. Given that some people believe China puts spyware on devices at the hardware level this surprises me - surely there's hyper-paranoid out there, or people selling to the hyper-paranoid market?
- Leary 7y ago
novok 7y ago
My metaphor for China is in this timeline, the Chinese Nazis won and now you see the results of a stable Chinese-Nazi dictatorship.
xmly 7y ago
Where is terrorism coming from? Why they attack USA? What about domestic terrorism? What are the USA's solutions?
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  > What are the USA's solutions? Definitely not concentration camps. Not since WW2 anyways.
  - xmly 7y ago
    Not on American soil, I believe more accurately.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      Prisons are a bit different from concentration camps. One has people accused of doing the deed, the other has people who are friends, family or somewhat remotely connected with those doing the deed. As a mainly British invention (rounding up the Boers during wars in colonial South Africa), the past time America bothered with something like that was the Japanese internment camps during WW2.
      - xmly 7y ago
        So what are the USA's solutions anyway?
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Policing the populous? It isn’t rocket science, something like the kunming train station knife stabbing would have been seen as a heinous criminal act rather than a reason to intern many people of a particular ethnicity.
majia 7y ago
If you visit some real high schools in China, you’d find they are not very different from these camps. Curfews, political classes, and compulsory attendance are commonplace. These facilities are not built to treat ethnic minorities in the most brutal way, but reflections of an authoritarian society.
- elAhmo 7y ago
  Compulsory attendance to political classes or high-school in general? Second one doesn't seem that bad.
MrZongle2 7y ago
"What will it take to have China removed from the UN?" Until Taiwan can be reinstated at the UN, I don't think your question will have a satisfactory answer.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bArray 7y ago
This is a concentration camp - they are collecting millions of specific groups of people and concentrating them. From the little information available: They are initially tortured and then brainwashed for several years, until possibly being released. The reason for doing this is for a crime they are supposed to commit in the future. Add this to: the removal of religious symbols replaced with pictures of their president, the forced ownership of Hong Kong (who have a false democracy) and Taiwan, the debt traps in African nations, the artificial islands in the South China Sea (where they regularly threaten to blow US ships and planes up in international waters), the large amount of debt bought by China after the 2008 financial crisis, the monitoring and/or controlling of University students whilst overseas, meddling in foreign politics (e.g. NZ and Australia), cyber attacks (>80% of attacks on my servers come from China), ignoring international trade sanctions against North Korea (whose state backed hackers it trains) and Iran - the list goes on. China also has the largest active military. Is this where we're heading?
rdtsc 7y ago
> "The sound of thoughts being transformed echos late into the night" Kind of a haunting last line from the video. They make them repeat the same formulas, presumably praises to the party, over and over, endlessly. I have always wondered how effective that is and if some end up internalizing it and are actually brainwashed. I have recited many of those in the Soviet Union. Learned poems praising Lenin and the workers and whatnot but never believed a bit of it. How do officials test that their methods are working? "Will you follow the party's commandments?". How many would say "no" knowing they are buying themselves another yeah in the camps.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

172 points by HillaryBriss 7y ago

threeisoneis 7y ago

Concentration camps

olliej 7y ago

Call them what they are: Concentration camps.

umvi 7y ago
The term "concentration camp" has an extremely negative connotation though due to Nazi Germany. China isn't gassing and cremating people. They are helping minorities integrate into Chinese society via ethically questionable means.
- maeln 7y ago
  They are not minorities in the region they mostly live.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    It really isn’t that’s simple if we are talking about northern rather than southern xinjiang, where Han is much more common. The history of that area is really complicated (the Manchu brought in the Uighurs to help exterminate the Mongolians...).
    - mc32 7y ago
      This is off topic, but maybe you know: what’s the practical difference between being an autonomous region and being a province?
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Effectively not much. They all have leaders (party secretaries) appointed by Beijing who are almost all Han (only ceremonial heads would be minorities, the autonomy is mostly ceremonial unless we are talking about the SARs).
        mc32 7y ago
        Interesting that it’s mostly political dressing with little impact. Good to know, thanks.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Concentration camps are not necessarily death camps. They are prisons for specific political, social, or ethnic groups--this seems to qualify. Even the phrase "concentration camp" is a bit of a euphemism. A better phrase might be a "political prison". And yes it has a negative connotation, because it is a bad thing.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    The same kind of terminology debate comes up when people use "third world" to mean "developing countries" and, when corrected, they just declare the meaning changed. So if that's how we're supposed to roll then why wouldn't the same logic apply here?
    - kodz4 7y ago
      “Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of process, change, differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths, interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the mismatch of our ever-changing world and our relatively static language forms is part of our problem.” - Wendell Johnson
      - mc32 7y ago
        Language isn’t planned and created. It evolves. The problem isn’t language, but how it’s used. A dire statement from a doctor and the same statement from an unsympathetic actor comes across differently. That’s not quite the fault of language.
    - happytoexplain 7y ago
      I thought "third world" was an informal and occasionally derogatory synonym for "developing countries". Is that not the case?
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_... Arguably worse
  - el_benhameen 7y ago
    I'm not sure that it helps anyone's cause to try to rank the awfulness of various fundamentally awful things. Both of these things are unspeakably horrific.
    - komali2 7y ago
      Not unspeakably so - the more we speak about it, the more people aware that China is harvesting the organs of religious groups.
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    It just occurred to me. We're in a very similar situation as Americans were 90-100 years ago when hearing about the extreme atrocities of the Nazis. Many didn't believe it, many believed it but didn't know what we could do about it. I wonder what we can do about these abominable practices we keep hearing about in China. I mean, what can we, individuals, do to help put an end to the constant stream of injustices there? The obvious solution is to boycott Chinese merchandise and vote with our wallets. But will we be able to overcome the inconveniences it would cause us? Could enough of us actually go through with it collectively to make a dent?
    - komali2 7y ago
      North Korea has been mass incarcerating and torturing its people in concentration camps for many decades now and America has done practically nothing about it. I've always wondered the same thing. Why Germany didn't get away with it, but North Korea does? My only guess is because Germany started invading all of Europe and posed a legitimate threat to American interests, whereas North Korea doesn't. Added bonus of defeating the Nazis is we freed everyone in concentration camps, but I guess that wasn't why we mobilized the American war machine. It'll take more than crimes against humanity.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  If you're going to quibble on terminology, you'll probably want to start with not calling this "helping minorities integrate into society".
- altec3 7y ago
  heres the definition of concentration camp: a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. Seems like we have: - Large numbers of people - Persecuted minorities (Uyghurs) None of the reports seem to indicate forced labor or mass execution, but those seem to be optional requirements for a concentration camp.
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  "They are helping minorities integrate into Chinese society " They are already part of Chinese society. And they don't want help. They want to be let out of prison and to return to their families.
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    A more sinister reading could be they are disintegrating the minorities and recycling them (as organs) to be integrated into the Chinese (and Western) society.
  - sct202 7y ago
    The sad part is they probably could have assimilated the Uighers faster if the Han were less racist against them. There were pictures of job agencies that had signs up that said no Uighers.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  Like how talking about IQ is just 'race realism' right
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  Better then no integration measures like in europe- just have them live in there parallel worlds, speak there own language, have there own justice systems and drag some "model" citizens in front of the camera every month for a rainbow photo. Then watch the social justice warriors return to there gated communitys for another month of ignoring or fights with white "trailer park trash", that is more diverse and in touch with economic reality then the people yelling at them.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  The Nazi extermination camps were just one of the types of concentration camp they ran, and the most notorious for obvious reasons. There were also the labour concentration camps, and the Work Instruction Camps that are most comparable here - they "re-educated" Poles to accept their new life as slavic slaves.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  > China isn't gassing and cremating people. Don't conflate concentration camps and death camps. Nazi Germany had both, and they are both different things. Death camps operated very differently than the concentration camps. Specifically, people got off the trains and went into the gas chambers rather quickly. They didn't stay in the death camps for months or years awaiting execution. (This is in contrast to people who stayed in concentration camps.) The death camps were also geographically isolated, so that it was very hard for civilians to learn that mass executions were happening. (The Nazis learned to do this when they performed mass euthanasia in hospitals in cities, because civilians would see people arrive in busses, then smoke come from crematoriums, and then more people arrive. They nearly got voted out of power because the churches started to turn against them.) Honestly, as an adult, it's worth spending some time reading up on the holocaust. It's not that our history classes were wrong, it's just that the depth of understanding that we can get as adults is much more than when we learned about the holocaust in grade school or high school.
- olliej 7y ago
  Yes, because they are a negative thing. And it’s interesting to use phrase “indefinite detention and torture” as “helping minorities integrate”. The fact that we don’t know how many people are being killed doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Every time some country decides to do this they hide that they’re killing people. China is still actively trying to hide how many people are in these camps, and isn’t allowing anyone else to go in to verify that they aren’t just killing people. Hell we can’t even get the from ICE.

erokar 7y ago

Somehow it's comforting to see how laughably bad China is at propaganda.

maeln 7y ago
They probably knew exactly what they were doing. The truth being mostly already out there, they probably wanted to show something like "look, it's not that bad, we are not killing them". Some sort of damage control I guess.
ra1n85 7y ago
To you. The truth stops being a tangible concept when it’s suffocated by a cloud of swirling lies.
- president 7y ago
  > The truth stops being a tangible concept when it’s suffocated by a cloud of swirling lies. American news media came to mind when I read this
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  I think this is the likely explanation, assuming the Chinese propagandists are competent. They need to put disinformation out there to cause people to doubt. The other explanation is that it's a ham-handed attempt by propagandists that are operating outside their element (i.e. they are used to operating in an environment where they literally dictate the narrative to the media (whose surname is "party" and all that)).
Shivetya 7y ago
What isn't a laughing matter is how we excuse all our favorite tech companies to continue manufacturing there.
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  Nobody cares. The international community generally shrugs when something is done orderly and internally. China has too much money and business opportunities to be thrown away.

chrisco255 7y ago

Why does China insist on using 1984 as a playbook, rather than a cautionary tale?

stcredzero 7y ago
Aren't we going towards a technological omni-surveillance state? Aren't we going towards ubiquitous screens that monitor us while we get all of our information from them? Haven't we already had "2 minutes hate" with people screaming at the sky? Don't we already have a class of elite technocrats who create media for a proletariat they look down upon, kaleidoscopically recombining and rehashing old stories? Don't we already have Julias and the civic league she belongs to? Why does the world of 2019 keep using 1984 as a playbook?
- nine_k 7y ago
  Not "1984", of course, but "Brave New World". https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webcomic-2/ https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webc...
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    I agree Huxley was a bit closer (at least with regards to the West), depicting a "soft tyranny" rather than the "harsh tyranny" of 1984.
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      Whether it's soft or harsh depends on your POV. Inner and outer party members might well say "soft." https://www.wired.com/story/how-silicon-valley-fuels-an-informal-caste-system/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-silicon-valley-fuels-an-info... The West is still indeed much better than other parts of the world. However, the West is supposed to be better qualitatively, not just quantitatively.
southerndrift 7y ago
Because we have always been at war with Eastasia.

MadWombat 7y ago

I think the better parallel is not with the Nazi concentration camps where the goal was to methodically eradicate people, but rather American conversion therapy camps where they try to "convert" gay kids to straight.

ceejayoz 7y ago
Not all of the Nazi concentration camps served as extermination camps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp

loxs 7y ago

That's where we (the western world) are headed. Expect soon: thought transformation camps for homophobes.

vorpalhex 7y ago
There's a difference between not wanting a racist or homophobe to use your service or be your friend, and forcibly re-educating them. You have a right to be a moron. Everyone else has a right to dislike you.
- umvi 7y ago
  > You have a right to be a moron. Everyone else has a right to dislike you. For now. I could see a scenario in the not too distant future where "being a moron" is re-branded as "hate speech" which would be a federally punishable offense
  - komali2 7y ago
    You used the word "federally" so I assume you're talking about the United States, which has no federal laws against hate speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
    - umvi 7y ago
      ...yet. Hence why I said "I could see a scenario in the not too distant future..."
      - komali2 7y ago
        I'm interested in why you could see this. My understanding of the cultural leanings of the US is that something like this would be almost impossible to get passed as federal law, or as a constitutional amendment. Congress can't even agree on generic funding bills without a party war over immigration. The last couple congresses have spent most of their time doing everything possible to jam operations of the executive branch. I just don't see a hate speech law ever passing in the USA, not without a dramatic change in the political climate, which I also don't see happening any time soon.

thoughtxformer 7y ago

I think many of us wouldn't mind the capability to Transform the Thoughts of large segments of our society...

nine_k 7y ago
Humans are generally prone to this, alas. A great essay on the topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

dustfinger 7y ago

Can powerful nation states that commit atrocities against populations of humans be over thrown peacefully? That is to say, without a war? What will it take to have China removed from the UN? Or, is it better that they are represented so that these issues can be raised and resolved in a peaceful manner?

ceejayoz 7y ago
> Can powerful nation states that commit atrocities against populations of humans be over thrown peacefully? That is to say, without a war? The USSR serves as a pretty good example.
- mc32 7y ago
  Having learned what happened to Soviets/Russians, one would imagine they'd prefer avoiding a repeat of the consequences...
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Perhaps (and perhaps not all of them). The fall of the USSR also includes places like Germany, though, where it's been a pretty clear benefit.
- elsonrodriguez 7y ago
  If we apply the USSR model to China we'll be bombing African countries a few decades after our proxy wars are done.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    We've already been doing that for decades. Libya, Somalia, etc.
jandrese 7y ago
How would they be overthrown? Would someone write a letter so harshly worded that the ruling government would decide to step down and allow some presumably better government to take their place? If you're talking about a place with a functioning Democracy then they could be voted out, but virtually every other form of government pretty much requires a coup, disaster, or outstandingly benevolent ruler to step aside. And when a ruler is benevolent nobody is really clamoring to change the government, it's only when total assholes are in charge. Worse, power vacuums tend to attract the most opportunistic and corrupt. Rarely do they have the public interest in mind. Any time you see a leadership ousted by a coup you know it's only going to get worse in that country.

learc83 7y ago

Can we stop arguing on the terminology and whether other countries do bad stuff as well and just agree that this is something we should condemn. It may be difficult or even impossible for the rest of the world to stop it, but it shouldn't be so hard to come to a consensus that this is wrong. Edit: this just dropped off the front page from #4 to #34 in a few minutes while another article about China selling US dollars with far fewer upvotes and comments from around the same time is still at #2. Can we get an explanation for why this happened? Edit: It's now almost off the 2nd page at #52 in under an hour.

xbeta 7y ago
Upvote this! Just because other regimes had done something bad, it does not remove the fact that this is also bad. 2 wrongs don't make it a right.
pulse7 7y ago
"other countries do bad stuff as well" is just the excuse you have, when you would like to support your country doing the bad stuff... Everybody has a free will and can decide what to believe and what not. Forcing other people to believe in something is making robots out of humans. But robots can't express love... Love can be expressed only out of a completely free will, where no force is present...
avanti 7y ago
Well, please define what is "wrong".
- xbeta 7y ago
  "Transformation camps" on your thoughts and how you think. Hmm.. That sounds wrong to me.
  - avanti 7y ago
    Education is a transformation of your thoughts and how you think. So does education sound wrong to you?

wefarrell 7y ago

"Our goal is to take a person who's on the edge of committing a crime and return them to normal society as a law abiding citizen" Even the official party line is horrifying. Shows just how out of touch they are with the Western world if they think this message will be well interpreted.

komali2 7y ago
> Shows just how out of touch they are with the Western world if they think this message will be well interpreted. They aren't interested in being aligned with Western values - why would they be? Freedom and democracy run perfectly contrary to their goals. I've had very in depth philosophical debates with Party members. Democracy - why would we leave the decisions to the people? The people don't know what's best for them, and they make bad decisions that lead to things like Brexit. Democracy is inefficient. FEMA can't adequately respond to disasters like the strong-arm of the Party can. Freedom of Information - this is too scary for the people. The people shouldn't have to deal with so much confusing information. Look at Fake News and how scary the media is. It creates confusion and mistrust in the government. That isn't good. The people don't want freedom of information. I unequivocally disagree with these arguments but these are the beliefs of the Party.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  My take on it: Democracy is necessary and good. It can be inefficient when times are good, but it is the most efficient way to right the ship when things are bad...also unilateral actions may appear efficient, but there will be lots of stakeholders that get hurt by those unilateral actions. Consensus takes time, and is susceptible to all sorts of poor arguments and one-liners, but when the people are suffering, I can think of no better way to peacefully overthrow the ruling body than by democratic elections.
  - zjaffee 7y ago
    I'd argue that democracy doesn't matter nearly as much as constitutional freedoms of assembly, speech (to a certain degree), independent press, ect. China still fears protest/revolution and will work in such a way that benefits their population in order to prevent uprisings and civil unrest. Add on the fact that the vast majority of issues that we view as democratic victories in the US, were more than anything, driven by direct action or initial change at the local level (a level which is democratic in china). Where in the cases where major change happened in a different way, it happened through the Judiciary which is also not democratic. Add on the fact that many of the direct democratic measures in the US tend to be destructive (prop 13, voting against any tax increase even if necessary over the long term), and there becomes a reason why a political system with a single party, namely a party with a largely unified political goal, is preferable. I'd also question when in US history (or elsewhere) has there ever been a time where democratic elections peacefully overthrew the ruling body. Usually there is significant continuity from administration to administration, where any serious political change happens due to outside direct action.

low_poly_shiba 7y ago

It's wild to me that americans point at China for this when they: 1) routinely bomb muslims to death, destroying entire nations, I guess gesturing towards vague notions that being murdered is better than being brainwashed 2) have their own immigrant concentration camps, going as far as to reuse the same infrastructure for japanese internment camps (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/migrant-children-internment-camp-fort-sill-847183/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/migrant-...) the main difference is that the victims of abuse in China are Chinese citizens, whereas americans draw their borders in such a way that their victims live in their "backyard" and not america proper. American exceptionalism is alive and well! edit: lol I'm a lily-white Canadian, for all of those claiming China is somehow "my side". also, the completely reflexive, kneejerk way in which posters deploy accusations of "whataboutism" to avoid any critical assessment of what they're witnessing, is truly spectacular.

nine_k 7y ago
Re (2), there's a tiny detail: these are illegal immigrants, who often take great pains to get to the US territory, fully aware of their future illegal status. I wonder why these people make a choice like that?
maxton 7y ago
This piece isn't about Americans or their reactions to this horrible situation.
- low_poly_shiba 7y ago
  so? I find it interesting to point out the double standard I'm hardly the first Canadian to notice the insane ramp-up in anti-China sentiment from our American neighbours, especially given the stark contrast with the royal treatment given to the genocidal regime in Saudi Arabia. Dismembered journalists, decapitated feminists and democratic activist teenagers, famine in Yemen, Senate voted to stop the war and Trump vetoed it... and yet HN is all China every day. China isn't the only country that looks a lot like 1984 from the outside peering in.

avanti 7y ago

How about Guantanamo? Is that a concentration camp? And what about those border facilities detaining immigrants? What's happening inside there? Why eliminating terrorism justifies bombarding a country most of innocent civilians? Our views are always biased by what we think is right. However there's no absolute right or wrong, only stories planted in our minds.

ng12 7y ago
I don't think you'll find many on HN supporting Guantanamo so the point is kind of moot.
- xmly 7y ago
  Then do something. Fight with the evil which is so close.
fourier_mode 7y ago
Although I don't support the existence of a detention camp controlled by any nation, the detention camps meant for terrorists are at way higher moral grounds, than someone adhering to a particular ideology.
ryanmarsh 7y ago
People at the border facilities are encouraged to leave back to their home country and to use the US Immigration system properly. I don't know much about Guantanamo. Who is currently held there? I've read they recently expanded the facilities but I'm not aware of new arrivals.
- xmly 7y ago
  Guantanamo will be used as the detention facility for illegal immigrants pretty soon based on the news.
  - fourier_mode 7y ago
    Reference?

hart_russell 7y ago

They're also harvesting their organs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...

low_poly_shiba 7y ago
big if true! unfortunately the Falun Gong is an insane cult and not a very reliable source of information RationalWiki has a big citations-packed section on their claims of organ harvesting in China: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Victims_of_Organ_Harvesting https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Victims_of_Organ_Ha... I hope after the Iraq "incubator smashing" fiasco, and "WMD"s, Americans apply some skepticism towards claims that their geopolitical adversaries act like fantastical TV show villains. --- edit, bc can't reply because I'm massively getting flagged and downvoted across all my posts here's me addressing claims that nobody has challenged the Matas report: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour–Matas_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour–Matas_report > The report, based on circumstantial evidence, concluded that "there has been, and continues today to be, large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners."[2] China has consistently denied the allegations.[3][4] then > The initial report received a mixed reception. In the US, a Congressional Research Service report by Thomas Lum stated that the Kilgour–Matas report relied largely on logical inference, without bringing forth new or independently obtained testimony; the credibility of much of the key evidence was said to be questionable.[5]
- antidesitter 7y ago
  RationalWiki is not a credible source.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Falun Gong being a weird culty organization (they absolutely are) doesn't mean China isn't abusing them, which they are, or that they're not harvesting their organs, which they may well be. "China is harvesting organs from detainees, tribunal concludes. Victims include imprisoned followers of Falun Gong movement, China Tribunal says" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harve... > An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement. > The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong as a source - probably the principal source - of organs for forced organ harvesting”.

SubiculumCode 7y ago

These camps are clear evidence that the Honk Kong Democracy Protesters, inheritors of the Umbrella protests, need our whole hearted support.

salawat 7y ago

Enumerating candidate PR spin Camps that were likely rejected: (Just add camps for full effect) >Cultural Enrichment >Sensibility Rectification >Behavior Rectification >Sentiment Realignment >Sentiment Engineering >Fundamental reconstruction of basic societal interaction loop by way of teaching subordinazation of individual sentiment to collective will/norms >Happy >Reeducation >Sequestration >Organ Donor >U.N. Tribunal No-go >What >People Tranformation >Cultural Isolation >Cultural Indoctrination >Cultural Reorientation >Internment >Help, I'm trapped in a CCP PR Dept Feel free to add your own.

chocolatefor3 7y ago

I am an American, here is what I am going to do. There's currently an USTR tariff review session happening right now in Washington. A bunch of companies are protesting against tariffs on China, saying they can't live without China. Some of these companies are: - Best buy - American Apparel - Kenneth Col - iRobot - Roku - Element Electronics - Hallmark Cards I will not buy from these companies for the rest of my life, as well as any other companies that have products that are 'made in China'. These companies must have heard about the concentration camps, and possible organ harvesting/slave labor in those camps, and choose not to divest away. These companies are horrendous actors who choose freely to prop up a regime like his.

charliesharding 7y ago
> American Apparel Wow, they've come a long way from how they were founded. Sad to see
driverdan 7y ago
> I will not buy from these companies for the rest of my life, as well as any other companies that have products that are 'made in China'. Good luck with that. I hope you don't need any technology in your life since nearly all modern computing components are made in China. The only way to avoid Chinese imports is to live on a homestead and make everything yourself.
- komali2 7y ago
  Good point. I'd like to find an article on phones with the least amount of, or no, Chinese parts. Anybody have anything like this on hand? Otherwise, I'll start researching and put an article together. Similarly, I'd like to do the same for Laptops. Toshiba, Fujitsu, Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp may not come with "made in China" labels, but components will be Chinese. I've been googling a bit and surprisingly am not coming up with pure non-Chinese machines. Given that some people believe China puts spyware on devices at the hardware level this surprises me - surely there's hyper-paranoid out there, or people selling to the hyper-paranoid market?
Leary 7y ago

novok 7y ago

My metaphor for China is in this timeline, the Chinese Nazis won and now you see the results of a stable Chinese-Nazi dictatorship.

xmly 7y ago

Where is terrorism coming from? Why they attack USA? What about domestic terrorism? What are the USA's solutions?

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
> What are the USA's solutions? Definitely not concentration camps. Not since WW2 anyways.
- xmly 7y ago
  Not on American soil, I believe more accurately.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Prisons are a bit different from concentration camps. One has people accused of doing the deed, the other has people who are friends, family or somewhat remotely connected with those doing the deed. As a mainly British invention (rounding up the Boers during wars in colonial South Africa), the past time America bothered with something like that was the Japanese internment camps during WW2.
    - xmly 7y ago
      So what are the USA's solutions anyway?
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Policing the populous? It isn’t rocket science, something like the kunming train station knife stabbing would have been seen as a heinous criminal act rather than a reason to intern many people of a particular ethnicity.

majia 7y ago

If you visit some real high schools in China, you’d find they are not very different from these camps. Curfews, political classes, and compulsory attendance are commonplace. These facilities are not built to treat ethnic minorities in the most brutal way, but reflections of an authoritarian society.

elAhmo 7y ago
Compulsory attendance to political classes or high-school in general? Second one doesn't seem that bad.

MrZongle2 7y ago

"What will it take to have China removed from the UN?" Until Taiwan can be reinstated at the UN, I don't think your question will have a satisfactory answer.

deleted 7y ago

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bArray 7y ago

This is a concentration camp - they are collecting millions of specific groups of people and concentrating them. From the little information available: They are initially tortured and then brainwashed for several years, until possibly being released. The reason for doing this is for a crime they are supposed to commit in the future. Add this to: the removal of religious symbols replaced with pictures of their president, the forced ownership of Hong Kong (who have a false democracy) and Taiwan, the debt traps in African nations, the artificial islands in the South China Sea (where they regularly threaten to blow US ships and planes up in international waters), the large amount of debt bought by China after the 2008 financial crisis, the monitoring and/or controlling of University students whilst overseas, meddling in foreign politics (e.g. NZ and Australia), cyber attacks (>80% of attacks on my servers come from China), ignoring international trade sanctions against North Korea (whose state backed hackers it trains) and Iran - the list goes on. China also has the largest active military. Is this where we're heading?

rdtsc 7y ago

> "The sound of thoughts being transformed echos late into the night" Kind of a haunting last line from the video. They make them repeat the same formulas, presumably praises to the party, over and over, endlessly. I have always wondered how effective that is and if some end up internalizing it and are actually brainwashed. I have recited many of those in the Soviet Union. Learned poems praising Lenin and the workers and whatnot but never believed a bit of it. How do officials test that their methods are working? "Will you follow the party's commandments?". How many would say "no" knowing they are buying themselves another yeah in the camps.

deleted 7y ago

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