5 ms·

It is a genuine human accomplishment that in the west, we hold being left unemployed by a sports league or uncovered by broadcasting networks comparable to stat

It is a genuine human accomplishment that in the west, we hold being left unemployed by a sports league or uncovered by broadcasting networks comparable to state level abuses of human rights. It’s not often I feel “pride” for where I was randomly born, but your comment brought a bit of it out through this shift in perspective, thank you.

minikites 7y ago
Okay, how about these examples? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
- allovernow 7y ago
  Do you feel like you are risking your livelihood, reputation, or personal safety for publically posting comments critical of the U.S. government and/or U.S. culture? Because I guarantee the average Chinese citizen does. That's the critical difference. Corruption exists in the U.S. but thankfully authoritarianism does not (yet).
  - yorwba 7y ago
    > I guarantee the average Chinese citizen does. How do you make this guarantee? The average Chinese citizen I know expects critical comments to be deleted, but getting a visit by the police is rare. I know one person to whom that happened, in the early 2010s. He didn't suffer any major repercussions beyond being told to stop posting like he did.
    - minikites 7y ago
      Decades of red-baiting propaganda warps people's ideas of what these countries are actually like.
      - allovernow 7y ago
        There are millions of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who will tell you exactly what it is like to live under an authoritarian socialist regime. Life in other countries can be very different from what you've experienced in the U.S.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - simonh 7y ago
        My wife is Chinese and I know from her and her family exactly what it was like for them. When my father in law talks about the hardships inflicted on their family he tears up. You clearly have absolutely no idea what it's actually like. Equating arbitrary detention, re-education camps and political executions to being boycotted by some TV stations is a shameful farce. Yes in the west things can go badly wrong, innocent people can get chewed up and hurt much more than a trivial example like the Dixie Chicks. Good grief, that's the best you could come up with? But the Chinese system is based on knowingly trashing people's lives systematically on a massive scale.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      ......you think that's ok? You don't think after being reprimanded he feels that way now? You don't think his social credit score likely took a hit, if it existed back then? Perhaps visits from police are rare because it's enough to be warned with the implicit threat of punishment for future transgressions? That alone, being forced by the government to delete material (i.e. no first amendment right) is what I'm talking about.
      - yorwba 7y ago
        I don't think it's ok in the sense that it's not some kind of acceptable trade-off to make for a society-wide benefit or something like that, but I think it's ok in the sense that it's just a minor annoyance that doesn't make life unlivable. China is not some kind of dystopian hellhole where citizens constantly feel the government's boot on their necks. The government doesn't allow people to express themselves freely, but that doesn't stop many from doing it anyway. There simply aren't enough police officers to react to every violation. It doesn't exactly cow people into submission. My friend obviously wasn't praising the government when he told me how they tried to make him shut up. I think you should be careful not to assume too much about life in a foreign country you haven't experienced for yourself. Case in point, you talk about the social credit system as if it were operational, maybe even back then. In reality, nation-wide rollout is planned for this year, and many details are still up in the air. There are local pilot projects, but all of them are different and many are limited to providing data on companies (often not much, essentially just putting the company register online). Any stories you may have heard about people being punished by the social credit system are actually low-tech solutions without scores that have been rebranded, presumably so someone can claim to be on schedule implementing the master plan.

minikites 7y ago

Okay, how about these examples? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

allovernow 7y ago
Do you feel like you are risking your livelihood, reputation, or personal safety for publically posting comments critical of the U.S. government and/or U.S. culture? Because I guarantee the average Chinese citizen does. That's the critical difference. Corruption exists in the U.S. but thankfully authoritarianism does not (yet).
- yorwba 7y ago
  > I guarantee the average Chinese citizen does. How do you make this guarantee? The average Chinese citizen I know expects critical comments to be deleted, but getting a visit by the police is rare. I know one person to whom that happened, in the early 2010s. He didn't suffer any major repercussions beyond being told to stop posting like he did.
  - minikites 7y ago
    Decades of red-baiting propaganda warps people's ideas of what these countries are actually like.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      There are millions of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who will tell you exactly what it is like to live under an authoritarian socialist regime. Life in other countries can be very different from what you've experienced in the U.S.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - simonh 7y ago
      My wife is Chinese and I know from her and her family exactly what it was like for them. When my father in law talks about the hardships inflicted on their family he tears up. You clearly have absolutely no idea what it's actually like. Equating arbitrary detention, re-education camps and political executions to being boycotted by some TV stations is a shameful farce. Yes in the west things can go badly wrong, innocent people can get chewed up and hurt much more than a trivial example like the Dixie Chicks. Good grief, that's the best you could come up with? But the Chinese system is based on knowingly trashing people's lives systematically on a massive scale.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    ......you think that's ok? You don't think after being reprimanded he feels that way now? You don't think his social credit score likely took a hit, if it existed back then? Perhaps visits from police are rare because it's enough to be warned with the implicit threat of punishment for future transgressions? That alone, being forced by the government to delete material (i.e. no first amendment right) is what I'm talking about.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      I don't think it's ok in the sense that it's not some kind of acceptable trade-off to make for a society-wide benefit or something like that, but I think it's ok in the sense that it's just a minor annoyance that doesn't make life unlivable. China is not some kind of dystopian hellhole where citizens constantly feel the government's boot on their necks. The government doesn't allow people to express themselves freely, but that doesn't stop many from doing it anyway. There simply aren't enough police officers to react to every violation. It doesn't exactly cow people into submission. My friend obviously wasn't praising the government when he told me how they tried to make him shut up. I think you should be careful not to assume too much about life in a foreign country you haven't experienced for yourself. Case in point, you talk about the social credit system as if it were operational, maybe even back then. In reality, nation-wide rollout is planned for this year, and many details are still up in the air. There are local pilot projects, but all of them are different and many are limited to providing data on companies (often not much, essentially just putting the company register online). Any stories you may have heard about people being punished by the social credit system are actually low-tech solutions without scores that have been rebranded, presumably so someone can claim to be on schedule implementing the master plan.