10 ms·
China is a horrific, authoritarian monster. I hope this century sees their vision checked and reduced back to the edges of humanity.
by aswanson 6y ago
China is a horrific, authoritarian monster. I hope this century sees their vision checked and reduced back to the edges of humanity.
- door99 6y agoIn the last 40 years, while China lifted a billion people out of poverty, what evil did they commit that is even remotely comparable to what the US did in, say, Iraq?
- rayiner 6y agoThey lifted people out of poverty by ditching an economic system that kept those people in poverty for decades.
- mcswell 6y agoI assume you're referring to ditching the communist system, right? which under Mao was responsible for 20-46 million deaths from starvation (that # is from wikipedia). Unfortunately, while they've ditched the economic part of communism, they've retained the dictatorial part, while moving towards the vision in 1984--a vision that seemed absurdly impractical when I read the book back in the 60s. But AI is now making it possible for the Chinese overloads to implement. Yeah, Xi double-plus good. And I'm sure Winnie will increase the chocolate ration next week.
- AngryData 6y agoI fail to see how the "dictatorial part" by itself is communist. If you aren't economically communist, how can you be communist when communism is an economic system? It would be like claiming a country that got rid of investments and capital gains and private ownership of industry is still capitalist because it is a political republic, despite the fact that you can be capitalist under any political system.
- AlgorithmicTime 6y agoMan, good thing you limited it to the last 40 years and not the last 60, where they killed tens of millions due to both insane incompetence and malice.
- door99 6y agoThe current leadership in the CCP basically agrees with your analysis, so what’s your point?
- tim58 6y agoThe point is you are starting the comparison at the most convenient point for your argument. 75 years ago the United States was part of the allied powers that helped put an end to a genocidal dictator with world domination plans. 200 years ago the United States was a major participator in the global slave trade and actively waging war and committing genocide against the ingenious people of North America. No ethnic or national group of people have been virtuous throughout history. No ethnic or national group of people have been evil throughout history. Trying to cut history into a small slice in order to draw a moral contrast is misleading and ignorant at best.
- save_ferris 6y agoSuppressing the Tianenmen Square uprising. From a UK diplomatic cable describing the scene: > STUDENTS LINKED ARMS BUT WERE MOWN DOWN INCLUDING SOLDIERS. APCS THEN RAN OVER BODIES TIME AND TIME AGAIN TO MAKE QUOTE PIE UNQUOTE AND REMAINS COLLECTED BY BULLDOZER. REMAINS INCINERATED AND THEN HOSED DOWN DRAINS. Say what you will about the US, we still haven’t run citizens over with tanks and hosed them down drains. Source: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/UK_cable_on_Tiananmen_Square_Massacre https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/UK_cable_on_Tiananmen_Squar...
- door99 6y ago> Say what you will about the US, we still haven’t run citizens over with tanks and hosed them down drains. do you know what happened in iraq?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoTo our own citizens? Not that, not even in Iraq.
- entropea 6y agoBecause it's better if USA kills innocent foreigners?
- esyir 6y agoHonestly? Yes. I judge a country first and foremost by How it treats its own citizens.
- OpieCunningham 6y agoThat’s an odd distinction. Perhaps you judge your country firstly by how it treats its citizens, because you want to be treated well. But if it’s not your country, what’s the difference? Perhaps you live in a country that provides for your well-being by slaughtering and plundering all around the world. In that case your country is rather horrible. Objectively, the US actions in Iraq were far worse than China in Tianamen Square. In any case, China is obviously a horrible country (Uyghur treatment is just one example).
- redis_mlc 6y ago1) whataboutism is a poor argument 2) it's debatable whether "1 billion were lifted out of poverty", and if it was, the US financed that 3) the US was asked by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to defend their countries. Iraq was told in advance what would happen if they used aggression (European diplomats said the opposite in order to make future arms sales) 4) China deliberately infected the world with corona, as reported.
- aswanson 6y agoProbably many undocumented due to the secretive nature of their government. The threat China poses far outweighs any good they've accomplished recently. Old, unaccountable men with absolute power and surveillance of over 20 percent of the human species is not a good predicate for the 21st century.
- door99 6y ago> Probably many undocumented due to the secretive nature of their government. Are you saying the Chinese government could occupy a foreign country, commit war crimes against them, and kill over a million people without anyone knowing?
- aswanson 6y agoYeah. They're genociding Uiguhr muslims as we speak.
- frequentnapper 6y agoAmericans didn't kill those Iraqis. Please stop spreading lies. China, on the other hand has no qualms about committing a large scale genocide against not just non-hans, but hans as well.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoXinjiang? And it's not "in the last 40 years", it's right now. It's not just the Uighurs in Xinjiang, either. It's the Christians. It's Hong Kong. It's trying to shut down anybody, planet wide, who speaks anything negative about China or Xi.
- buryat 6y agoit's not about comparing who did more evil in the world, it's about not doing evil.
- refurb 6y agoYou realize that as long as there are humans there will always be evil. I can't think of a single society in history that hasn't committed some form of evil.
- Fnords 6y agoBlack jails everywhere where dissidents are tortured. Religious prisoners harvested alive. Repeated invasions of Vietnam. Tienanmen Square massacre and the subsequent rounding up of a generation in concentration camps. Ethnic cleaning of the Uyghurs. Stamping out of Tibet's culture and media blackout of the mass self-immolation epidemic. Imposition of the worlds worst surveillance-state. The CCP is not China.
- aswanson 6y agoMy father was a veteran of the vietnam war, an immoral war the US fought against the people of vietnam. I pray the Vietnamese nation can hold the line against China.
- refurb 6y agoHmmm.. immoral? That's debatable when you condemn China but the Republic of Vietnam committed many of the same atrocities.
- rayiner 6y agoMaybe, immoral, but it’s more complicated than that. The US lost the war, but half a century later 95% of Vietnamese believe that “people are better off under a free market” and three quarters have a positive view of the US. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/30/vietnamese-see-u-s-as-key-ally/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/30/vietnamese-...
- stale2002 6y agoThis conversation is about Hong Kong. Not sure why you are trying to deflect from the things that are going on there.
- indemnity 6y agoBecause this happens in every thread about China, hordes of whataboutists show up to try and derail the conversation.
- bmitc 6y agoThe grandparent comment extended the conversation to all of China's actions. I think it's relevant to discuss the horrors the U.S. has enacted upon the world, if only for a practical reason. That reason is that to understand how to solve problems elsewhere, you first need to understand how to solve the same type of problems in your neck of the woods. The U.S. spent the latter half of the 20th century and has continued since then exporting its way of doing things through military action. For example, I recently learned of Salvador Allende. He was a president of Chile that won a democratic election based upon his socialist campaign. He said what he was going to do and was elected by the people. The U.S. tried for years to thwart his election, and when he won, the U.S. directly supported, if not organized and enacted, a coup that ended in success, for the coup, and Allende taking his own life upon being surrounded. This is sickening. How can the U.S. and its people in good conscience decry other countries' actions when we do the same thing to other countries beyond our own borders? The U.S. still holds prisons that imprisons foreigners without charge and without cause. How can the U.S. decry China for imprisoning its own citizens? I am not supporting anything here. I am merely trying to explain that things matter and are connected, and you cannot view things with tunnel vision. The other reason is one of perception. If the U.S. wants change in China and elsewhere, one needs to understand the political and social repercussions of one's own actions. This is called if you want to talk the talk, you must walk the walk. The U.S. primarily talks the talk while the rest of the world sees how the U.S. does not walk the walk. The U.S. does the very things it decries in another countries. This is very harmful.
- stale2002 6y ago> That reason is that to understand how to solve problems elsewhere, you first need to understand how to solve the same type of problems in your neck of the woods. No, not really. It is perfectly possible to discuss many different issues without having to think of an answer for numerous X, Y, or Z issues that someone else brings up in order to distract you from the point. The issue is that whenever people do this, they almost always aren't interested in solving the issue. Instead they are looking to dismiss the problem that you brought up, by using whataboutism. This is the most common way for someone to try and get you to stop caring about an issue. There will always be an excuse that someone can throw at you, so that they can dismiss the problem that you brought up. > This is very harmful. The harmful thing is instead the people who are trying to prevent the problems from being solved, by distracting people from the things that they bring up. > How can the U.S. and its people in good conscience decry other countries' actions If bad things are happening, I want those bad thing to stop. And I am never going to accept someone pointing to a different bad thing, in order to defend against some other bad thing from happening. Less bad things should be the goal. And this strategy of whataboutism just distracts from that.
- garmaine 6y agoA million muslims in concentration camps, for a start. Go away, propagandist troll.
- dang 6y agoPosting like this will get you banned here regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
- Renaud 6y agoChina lifted a billion people out of poverty after putting them there in the first place. The various incarnations of the dictature that is the CCP have killed millions of its own people through labour camps and unchallenged economic policies that literally resulted in famines and poverty. But that's not the point. Comparing the evils that each country has done is a distraction from the current topic. It's not the US giving lessons here, it's people like you and me saying that the very present behaviour of China in Hong Kong is unacceptable.
- AngryData 6y agoDid it really put them there in the first place? China was pretty dirt fucking poor beforehand, consisting mainly of subsidence farmers. Yeah their government was certainly a bunch of bastards, but they were already poor as fuck.
- rayiner 6y agoIn the last 40 years more than 2 million Chinese have moved to the US. As of 2018, China is the biggest source of immigrants into the US.
- monkeycantype 6y agoThe increase in quality of life of millions of people in China is probably civilizations greatest recent achievement, and something makes many many people far from China happy and optimistic for the future. You are correct in pointing out that there are many powerful people in the big democracies, who crave authoritarian power and wield it brutally when they can, but they are resisted, though by fewer people than we would like to admit. It is starting to seem that in many places authoritarians are consolidating power, in democracies and in China. Some people are concerned by this because they see it encroaching on their power and privilege. Others fear first for the people of China, and then for all of us, that a rise in authoritarian power in China will fuel its rise everywhere. Seeing all this happen, you have to ask - how much were the people lifted out of poverty, and how much did they climb out when Deng Xiaopeng took a little of the pressure off their necks
- dang 6y agoPlease do not take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. If you hadn't posted this, this might have died out, as it should have. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Chiba-City 6y agoNonsense babble.
- dang 6y agoNationalistic flamewar is not ok here, let alone drive-by flamebait like this that is as grandiose as it is cheap. We ban accounts that post like this. No, that's not because we're defending China or are secret communist agents. We're defending HN against vandalism. Not to mention arson. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807418.