5 ms·

What China has done to Tibet is horrible. One thing that is missing from this article is how they are doing this? How are they coercing people? Are they litera

What China has done to Tibet is horrible. One thing that is missing from this article is how they are doing this? How are they coercing people? Are they literally dragging them out of their homes? Threatening them? Or are they just offering them opportunities that are actually preferable to their current conditions, and the people are accepting them?

paganel 6y ago
Is this a genuine question? I don’t want to be snarky, but you are aware of the fact that government-imposed “mass labour” has almost always meant “forced labor” (I’m sure there might be some punctual exceptions, but the conclusion is the same), no?
- Aperocky 6y ago
  Is Roosevelts New Deal 'forced labor'?
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    > The government documents reviewed by Reuters put a strong emphasis on ideological education to correct the “thinking concepts” of laborers. “There is the assertion that minorities are low in discipline, that their minds must be changed, that they must be convinced to participate,” said Zenz, the Tibet-Xinjiang researcher based in Minnesota. > One policy document, posted on the website of the Nagqu City government in Tibet’s east in December 2018, reveals early goals for the plan and sheds light on the approach. It describes how officials visited villages to collect data on 57,800 laborers. Their aim was to tackle “can’t do, don’t want to do and don’t dare to do” attitudes toward work, the document says. It calls for unspecified measures to “effectively eliminate ‘lazy people.’” I don't remember the bit in history class where Roosevelt discussed forceful re-education.
    - newen 6y ago
      I don't think you'd want to whitewash Zenz as a Tibet-Xinjiang researcher when he is known to have said that he is on a religious mission against China. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/ https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-...
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
        Ok, so maybe the Zenz quote is out of place - I don't know his history, but I don't know think you can disregard the government documents by discrediting Zenz, especially as Reuters explicitly says it's investigated and corroborated some of those claims. > Reuters corroborated Zenz’s findings and found additional policy documents, company reports, procurement filings and state media reports that describe the program.
        blkmm 6y ago
        > I don't know his history Many redditors have revealed Zenz's background. Please see the second half of the comments (top ones are the typical "China Bad" ones) https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixjuq2/china_forces_500000_tibetans_into_labour_camps/ https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixjuq2/china_for... What's interesting is that there is censorship in r/worldnews. After many people exposed Adrian Zenz's background and history, this post with 4k+ comments and nearly 50k upvotes got removed from r/worldnews front page and replaced by a new one with <200 comments and 1k upvotes which nobody got a chance to mention Adrian Zenz yet. The new one: https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixhd7x/china_sharply_expands_mass_labor_program_in_tibet/ https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixhd7x/china_sha...
      - aww_dang 6y ago
        Attacking the bias and faith of Zenz instead of his argument is poor form. Doing so while linking to "The Gray Zone" is ironic.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    No, Roosevelt's New Deal was not forced labor. This is a false equivalence and whataboutism.
de_watcher 6y ago
Oh, remember the "great opportunities in Siberia"?
dx87 6y ago
The article says they are pushing them off the land and into factory jobs, so that implies to me that they don't want to leave, otherwise they wouldn't have to "push" them.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  Why would the author use the word "pushing" if they don't know how this is actually happening? And if they know how it is actually happening, why leave it out of the article?
  - tomp 6y ago
    To stir more controversy and sell more pageviews? It's literally the definition of "clickbait".
- d33lio 6y ago
  In short "push" means to use violence to force the will of otherwise non-compliant "dissenting" citizens. It's disgusting and a stunning violation of human rights.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
iliveinchina 6y ago
I've hiked through regions of Tibet and talked to villagers in relatively remote areas. One thing I saw hiking in the mountains and valleys was abandoned nomad lodges and pastures. My Tibetan guide sadly explained to me that the local officials found the nomads too hard to manage when they were living independently and so used a system of sticks and carrots (fines and subsidies) to move them into villages that were created from scratch and comprised of cookie-cutter cement houses. One effective incentive to get the nomads to settle down is to threaten their family members with fines or removal of subsidies unless they move into town. I visited some of those made-ex-nihilo villages and talked to the people there. One immediately obvious thing is there are Chinese national flags flying on almost every single household and big posters of Xi in the households. I asked about those and the residents explained they get fined if they don't fly the flag or hang Xi's photo. They were definitely not acting out of patriotism. The scenes reminded me of a wartime occupation. Military recruitment posters were also plastered everywhere, as it is a form of employment in a region with relatively few alternatives. This is the first time I've heard of migration ratios as bureaucratic targets, but it's not surprising at all as it is typical for the government to set clear KPIs for their policies.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  This is the information I was looking for, thank you.
- cwwc 6y ago
  This is a great point. An additional aspect to this is developers - while living in China, I spoke with a number of officials who essentially admitted that a major aspect of "relocation" was driven by developers who purchased land from the local governments and then were lent money by the local government. When those buildings weren't filled, and with the pressure to pay back loans mounting, the developers and local officials would conspire to force people from outlying regions to relocate in the town developments. The developers would then receive central/local $$ for "helping" low income citizens "move up." And then the cycle would repeat. This leaves out other aspects - but it certainly plays a role.
  - 6y ago
dirtyid 6y ago
>missing from this article These things are always conveniently missing or deliberately misreported for manufactured consent. TL;DR: there's no clear evidence of coercion, also no evidence of no coercion, but China bad so ergo it's coercive. Western media: it's forced labour despite forced labour not being mentioned at all. But that's expected with another Zenz media push: https://jamestown.org/program/jamestown-early-warning-brief-xinjiangs-system-of-militarized-vocational-training-comes-to-tibet/ https://jamestown.org/program/jamestown-early-warning-brief-... Conclusion: In both Xinjiang and Tibet, state-mandated poverty alleviation consists of a top-down scheme that extends the government’s social control deep into family units. The state’s preferred method to increase the disposable incomes of rural surplus laborers in these restive minority regions is through vocational training and labor transfer. Both regions have by now implemented a comprehensive scheme that relies heavily on centralized administrative mechanisms; quota fulfilment; job matching prior to training; and a militarized training process that involves thought transformation, patriotic and legal education, and Chinese language teaching. Important differences remain between Beijing’s approaches in Xinjiang and Tibet. Presently, there is no evidence that the TAR’s scheme is linked to extrajudicial internment, and aspects of its labor transfer mechanisms are potentially less coercive. However, in a system where the transition between securitization and poverty alleviation is seamless, there is no telling where coercion stops and where genuinely voluntary local agency begins. While some Tibetans may voluntarily participate in some or all aspects of the scheme, and while their incomes may indeed increase as a result, the systemic presence of clear indicators of coercion and indoctrination, coupled with profound and potentially permanent change in modes of livelihood, is highly problematic. In the context of Beijing’s increasingly assimilatory ethnic minority policy, it is likely that these policies will promote a long-term loss of linguistic, cultural and spiritual heritage.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  It's not very hard to imagine someplace like India getting praise for a nearly identical program. "Country offers job placement training to poorest rural workers" sounds like it would be popular everywhere. It also reminds me that the US still has internment schools, where poor Native American children "voluntarily" live in Catholic foster homes and attend US public school.
bserge 6y ago
The how part doesn't seem that difficult to me. It's like military conscription. They offer you 'stable pay' and a 'chance to learn some useful skills' and a 'pension' if you accept and fines or jailtime for your whole family if you refuse. Basically, it's work in a factory as an "employee" or work in a factory as an inmate. People really have no other option than to accept.
coldcode 6y ago
Slavery is what it is, and it's good for business (in a 18th/19th century sort of way). If you can enslave people and force them to create wealth for you, you can spend the money on other things such as enslaving more people or convincing the rest of your population this is a good thing they should support. Chinese history however is riddled with empires who eventually overreached their attempts to control everything and failed. All it takes is to mess up the economy so bad that most people suddenly are poorer, and some internal/external entity offers a better deal. A billion starving people can overcome any obstacle if necessary. Thus enslaving people to create wealth for you is another hedge to failure if you are a government.

paganel 6y ago

Is this a genuine question? I don’t want to be snarky, but you are aware of the fact that government-imposed “mass labour” has almost always meant “forced labor” (I’m sure there might be some punctual exceptions, but the conclusion is the same), no?

Aperocky 6y ago
Is Roosevelts New Deal 'forced labor'?
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  > The government documents reviewed by Reuters put a strong emphasis on ideological education to correct the “thinking concepts” of laborers. “There is the assertion that minorities are low in discipline, that their minds must be changed, that they must be convinced to participate,” said Zenz, the Tibet-Xinjiang researcher based in Minnesota. > One policy document, posted on the website of the Nagqu City government in Tibet’s east in December 2018, reveals early goals for the plan and sheds light on the approach. It describes how officials visited villages to collect data on 57,800 laborers. Their aim was to tackle “can’t do, don’t want to do and don’t dare to do” attitudes toward work, the document says. It calls for unspecified measures to “effectively eliminate ‘lazy people.’” I don't remember the bit in history class where Roosevelt discussed forceful re-education.
  - newen 6y ago
    I don't think you'd want to whitewash Zenz as a Tibet-Xinjiang researcher when he is known to have said that he is on a religious mission against China. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/ https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      Ok, so maybe the Zenz quote is out of place - I don't know his history, but I don't know think you can disregard the government documents by discrediting Zenz, especially as Reuters explicitly says it's investigated and corroborated some of those claims. > Reuters corroborated Zenz’s findings and found additional policy documents, company reports, procurement filings and state media reports that describe the program.
      - blkmm 6y ago
        > I don't know his history Many redditors have revealed Zenz's background. Please see the second half of the comments (top ones are the typical "China Bad" ones) https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixjuq2/china_forces_500000_tibetans_into_labour_camps/ https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixjuq2/china_for... What's interesting is that there is censorship in r/worldnews. After many people exposed Adrian Zenz's background and history, this post with 4k+ comments and nearly 50k upvotes got removed from r/worldnews front page and replaced by a new one with <200 comments and 1k upvotes which nobody got a chance to mention Adrian Zenz yet. The new one: https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixhd7x/china_sharply_expands_mass_labor_program_in_tibet/ https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ixhd7x/china_sha...
    - aww_dang 6y ago
      Attacking the bias and faith of Zenz instead of his argument is poor form. Doing so while linking to "The Gray Zone" is ironic.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- aww_dang 6y ago
  No, Roosevelt's New Deal was not forced labor. This is a false equivalence and whataboutism.

de_watcher 6y ago

Oh, remember the "great opportunities in Siberia"?

dx87 6y ago

The article says they are pushing them off the land and into factory jobs, so that implies to me that they don't want to leave, otherwise they wouldn't have to "push" them.

Miner49er 6y ago
Why would the author use the word "pushing" if they don't know how this is actually happening? And if they know how it is actually happening, why leave it out of the article?
- tomp 6y ago
  To stir more controversy and sell more pageviews? It's literally the definition of "clickbait".
d33lio 6y ago
In short "push" means to use violence to force the will of otherwise non-compliant "dissenting" citizens. It's disgusting and a stunning violation of human rights.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

iliveinchina 6y ago

I've hiked through regions of Tibet and talked to villagers in relatively remote areas. One thing I saw hiking in the mountains and valleys was abandoned nomad lodges and pastures. My Tibetan guide sadly explained to me that the local officials found the nomads too hard to manage when they were living independently and so used a system of sticks and carrots (fines and subsidies) to move them into villages that were created from scratch and comprised of cookie-cutter cement houses. One effective incentive to get the nomads to settle down is to threaten their family members with fines or removal of subsidies unless they move into town. I visited some of those made-ex-nihilo villages and talked to the people there. One immediately obvious thing is there are Chinese national flags flying on almost every single household and big posters of Xi in the households. I asked about those and the residents explained they get fined if they don't fly the flag or hang Xi's photo. They were definitely not acting out of patriotism. The scenes reminded me of a wartime occupation. Military recruitment posters were also plastered everywhere, as it is a form of employment in a region with relatively few alternatives. This is the first time I've heard of migration ratios as bureaucratic targets, but it's not surprising at all as it is typical for the government to set clear KPIs for their policies.

Miner49er 6y ago
This is the information I was looking for, thank you.
cwwc 6y ago
This is a great point. An additional aspect to this is developers - while living in China, I spoke with a number of officials who essentially admitted that a major aspect of "relocation" was driven by developers who purchased land from the local governments and then were lent money by the local government. When those buildings weren't filled, and with the pressure to pay back loans mounting, the developers and local officials would conspire to force people from outlying regions to relocate in the town developments. The developers would then receive central/local $$ for "helping" low income citizens "move up." And then the cycle would repeat. This leaves out other aspects - but it certainly plays a role.
- 6y ago

dirtyid 6y ago

>missing from this article These things are always conveniently missing or deliberately misreported for manufactured consent. TL;DR: there's no clear evidence of coercion, also no evidence of no coercion, but China bad so ergo it's coercive. Western media: it's forced labour despite forced labour not being mentioned at all. But that's expected with another Zenz media push: https://jamestown.org/program/jamestown-early-warning-brief-xinjiangs-system-of-militarized-vocational-training-comes-to-tibet/ https://jamestown.org/program/jamestown-early-warning-brief-... Conclusion: In both Xinjiang and Tibet, state-mandated poverty alleviation consists of a top-down scheme that extends the government’s social control deep into family units. The state’s preferred method to increase the disposable incomes of rural surplus laborers in these restive minority regions is through vocational training and labor transfer. Both regions have by now implemented a comprehensive scheme that relies heavily on centralized administrative mechanisms; quota fulfilment; job matching prior to training; and a militarized training process that involves thought transformation, patriotic and legal education, and Chinese language teaching. Important differences remain between Beijing’s approaches in Xinjiang and Tibet. Presently, there is no evidence that the TAR’s scheme is linked to extrajudicial internment, and aspects of its labor transfer mechanisms are potentially less coercive. However, in a system where the transition between securitization and poverty alleviation is seamless, there is no telling where coercion stops and where genuinely voluntary local agency begins. While some Tibetans may voluntarily participate in some or all aspects of the scheme, and while their incomes may indeed increase as a result, the systemic presence of clear indicators of coercion and indoctrination, coupled with profound and potentially permanent change in modes of livelihood, is highly problematic. In the context of Beijing’s increasingly assimilatory ethnic minority policy, it is likely that these policies will promote a long-term loss of linguistic, cultural and spiritual heritage.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
It's not very hard to imagine someplace like India getting praise for a nearly identical program. "Country offers job placement training to poorest rural workers" sounds like it would be popular everywhere. It also reminds me that the US still has internment schools, where poor Native American children "voluntarily" live in Catholic foster homes and attend US public school.

bserge 6y ago

The how part doesn't seem that difficult to me. It's like military conscription. They offer you 'stable pay' and a 'chance to learn some useful skills' and a 'pension' if you accept and fines or jailtime for your whole family if you refuse. Basically, it's work in a factory as an "employee" or work in a factory as an inmate. People really have no other option than to accept.

coldcode 6y ago

Slavery is what it is, and it's good for business (in a 18th/19th century sort of way). If you can enslave people and force them to create wealth for you, you can spend the money on other things such as enslaving more people or convincing the rest of your population this is a good thing they should support. Chinese history however is riddled with empires who eventually overreached their attempts to control everything and failed. All it takes is to mess up the economy so bad that most people suddenly are poorer, and some internal/external entity offers a better deal. A billion starving people can overcome any obstacle if necessary. Thus enslaving people to create wealth for you is another hedge to failure if you are a government.