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What about the Uyghurs? Disgusting Economist just a vehicle for CCP propaganda.

by jimt222 6y ago

LatteLazy 6y ago
Agreed. China is going backwards socially for all its economic progress...
- cambalache 6y ago
  The Chinese seem to disagree with you (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...).
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    ? “ At the township level, the lowest level of government surveyed, only 11.3 percent of respondents reported that they were “very satisfied.” “ Also, they note they don’t poll migrant workers, those citizens with the worst lives.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Nice juice you are going to do with all those cherries you picked. > We tend to forget that for many in China, and in their lived experience of the past four decades, each day was better than the next,” Saich added. “Our surveys show that many in China therefore seem to be much more satisfied with government performance over time, despite rising inequality, corruption, and a range of other pressures that are the result of the reform era.”
      - mensetmanusman 6y ago
        I thought it was relevant because I can imagine a situation where you would never criticize an entity that can imprison you (99% approval for Beijing), but you then would vent your true frustration on local government.
    - dempseye 6y ago
      I worked with a Chinese lady whose parents were extremely poor, but who herself had been well educated and was successful in a professional job in Western Europe. I asked her, "are you happy with the CCP government?" She said that people in China simply do not think of it in those terms. Being "happy with the government" struck her as a particularly Western way of framing the question. I pressed her further and asked if she thought that they governed in a way that improved people's lives or made them worse. She said that she thought they improved people's lives, and that a country like China needs a strong government to hold it together, and that the CCP is succeeding in that respect. I don't know if this is a representative view, but take it for what it is: an account of what a single Chinese lady told a random person on HN.
      - soupson 6y ago
        I can attest to a similar experience asking someone from China. The idea of being "happy with the government" implies there is something to do about being not happy with the government. It's a little like asking someone if they're happy with the position of the continents on the planet. Sure, you can wish that Australia were in the northern hemisphere, but that's sort of "besides the point." There is not a sense, in China, that any individual or group is in a position to seriously change how the government runs the country.
        NeutronStar 6y ago
        Asking someone who can be imprisoned for disagreeing with the government if they are happy with the government is a joke. Do you go around telling people to put you inside a prison with no recourse?
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    I'm not even sure where to start with this. It's a complex issue and I appreciate the source. China is putting people into forced labour (or concentration) camps en-mass. Its arrested or exiled thousands of HK democracy protestors. Its going backwards on democracy and rule of law. Not to mention causing the largest pandemic of the 21st century (so far). Its support for North Korea is another whole mess. Oh, and it almost started a war with the neighbouring nuclear power. If people are satisfied with that, they're pretty socially bankrupt imho. What's more likely is that with absolute control of the media, the vast majority have no idea what's really going on. They're just reassured about how awful every other country is. In fairness, the camps and the plague weren't a thing till after the 2016 end of the survey. Xi Jinping only really ramped up his authoritarian storm in the last few years. I wonder how the average citizen there would react after an hour of straight forwards factual updates on the domestic situation. All this aside, I am glad they have eliminated extreme poverty. That is progress, socially as well as economically.
    - Bakary 6y ago
      This sort of stems from a vision of China that is based on the aspects most relevant to Westerners as relayed by the media. Of all the things you cited, the vast majority of Chinese were not impacted and will therefore view the government in light of all the boring and complex policy changes that did in fact affect them. Note that I am not so much criticizing the way the media frames China as much as simply pointing out the parts that aren't discussed but that are germane to the evaluation of the country. The notion that Chinese people aren't perceptive and that they would adopt Western ideals if only we could reach out to them is pretty much orientalism 101 mixed with the End of History. There is a wealth of diversity in terms of opinions at all echelons of Chinese society, including inside the Party structure. This diversity will tend to touch on ideas orthogonal to the Western equivalent. Similar or identical in parts, but very different in others. Picture someone whose only understanding of America would be specific events like Guantanamo Bay or a smattering of memes relating to Trump. You'd want to tell this person about the complex interplay of history and culture that shaped America into what it is today, and that they are missing out on 99% of it since they are so zoomed out. What I have described here is in fact the equivalent of what the typical person commenting on China thinks and knows about the country. I myself absolutely do not claim to be an expert, just that I got a taste of how much I don't know about the topic. All of this matters greatly since it has an effect on how the West will conduct its strategy going forward.
heraclius 6y ago
As much as it’s important to remember the plight of the Uyghurs especially in formulating a broad strategy towards China, it seems odd to extend this to ‘nobody may discuss any aspect of China without mentioning the camps’. Would you do this to, e.g., some intellectually interesting but (at the moment) otherwise entirely useless pure maths paper posted on HN written by a Chinese researcher? Of course, the level at which it’s appropriate to omit to mention an ongoing atrocity is difficult to determine. Clearly it’s somewhere above a sentence, and clearly it’s beneath the question of broad strategy. But I would suggest that understanding China’s broad strategy for poverty alleviation (in the Han heartland) is a discrete topic that can quite reasonably be discussed without inviting this sort of response. In fact, if you don’t understand topics like this, it’s likely that your response to China is going to be handicapped.
- dayjobpork 6y ago
  So you want people to discuss the economy without mentioning the genocide camps of forced labour that underpin manufacturing?
  - heraclius 6y ago
    Uyghurs are important to a large part of the economy, but it’s presumably possible to discuss parts of it without discussing Uyghurs at every stage. Uyghur forced labour is certainly widespread and bad. I am not sure that it’s fundamental to the Chinese economy though. If we say that there are 20 million Uyghurs (which is a very large overestimate), out of 1.3 billion that’s not very much. Moreover the current strategy of forced labour mostly began in the 2010s, so all of China’s previous economic strategies managed to proceed without the use of forced labour. And sterilisation means that they’re unlikely to be relied upon economically in the long term—elimination and economic exploitation are very difficult to reconcile, as indeed the Nazis found. If you’re discussing some market in a small village far from Xinjiang—of course forced Uyghur labour in some way impinges on it, but, well, it would be odd to discuss the camps as the most important determinant of what’s going on in those camps at all times. You can’t develop an understanding of the whole without understanding the component parts, and that involves occasionally e.g. reading articles that don’t mention the Uyghurs. The obvious analogy is the Holocaust. Nobody complains about books about the Nazis that contain e.g. chapters mostly concerning matters other than the Holocaust. That’s for good reason: you have to pay attention to the other components too, even though the aim of extermination is an important overall reason to understand the Nazis. In the frame of my original comment, i.e., ‘at what level should one focus on specific individual parts even at the expense of overall important atrocities?’, I agree that discussing the economy writ large whilst ignoring the Uyghurs would neither lead to a good factual understanding of the economy nor be appropriate morally. But the question of poverty alleviation in the Han heartlands to me is a discrete one that (a) is important to broadly understanding the economy and (b) is a sufficiently narrow topic to be discussed without necessarily focusing on the Uyghurs.
Bakary 6y ago
Why would they vehiculate that when they have their own ideological line to attend to? The article reads like a classic Economist piece with the usual tropes

What about the Uyghurs? Disgusting Economist just a vehicle for CCP propaganda.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Agreed. China is going backwards socially for all its economic progress...

cambalache 6y ago
The Chinese seem to disagree with you (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...).
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  ? “ At the township level, the lowest level of government surveyed, only 11.3 percent of respondents reported that they were “very satisfied.” “ Also, they note they don’t poll migrant workers, those citizens with the worst lives.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Nice juice you are going to do with all those cherries you picked. > We tend to forget that for many in China, and in their lived experience of the past four decades, each day was better than the next,” Saich added. “Our surveys show that many in China therefore seem to be much more satisfied with government performance over time, despite rising inequality, corruption, and a range of other pressures that are the result of the reform era.”
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      I thought it was relevant because I can imagine a situation where you would never criticize an entity that can imprison you (99% approval for Beijing), but you then would vent your true frustration on local government.
  - dempseye 6y ago
    I worked with a Chinese lady whose parents were extremely poor, but who herself had been well educated and was successful in a professional job in Western Europe. I asked her, "are you happy with the CCP government?" She said that people in China simply do not think of it in those terms. Being "happy with the government" struck her as a particularly Western way of framing the question. I pressed her further and asked if she thought that they governed in a way that improved people's lives or made them worse. She said that she thought they improved people's lives, and that a country like China needs a strong government to hold it together, and that the CCP is succeeding in that respect. I don't know if this is a representative view, but take it for what it is: an account of what a single Chinese lady told a random person on HN.
    - soupson 6y ago
      I can attest to a similar experience asking someone from China. The idea of being "happy with the government" implies there is something to do about being not happy with the government. It's a little like asking someone if they're happy with the position of the continents on the planet. Sure, you can wish that Australia were in the northern hemisphere, but that's sort of "besides the point." There is not a sense, in China, that any individual or group is in a position to seriously change how the government runs the country.
      - NeutronStar 6y ago
        Asking someone who can be imprisoned for disagreeing with the government if they are happy with the government is a joke. Do you go around telling people to put you inside a prison with no recourse?
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  I'm not even sure where to start with this. It's a complex issue and I appreciate the source. China is putting people into forced labour (or concentration) camps en-mass. Its arrested or exiled thousands of HK democracy protestors. Its going backwards on democracy and rule of law. Not to mention causing the largest pandemic of the 21st century (so far). Its support for North Korea is another whole mess. Oh, and it almost started a war with the neighbouring nuclear power. If people are satisfied with that, they're pretty socially bankrupt imho. What's more likely is that with absolute control of the media, the vast majority have no idea what's really going on. They're just reassured about how awful every other country is. In fairness, the camps and the plague weren't a thing till after the 2016 end of the survey. Xi Jinping only really ramped up his authoritarian storm in the last few years. I wonder how the average citizen there would react after an hour of straight forwards factual updates on the domestic situation. All this aside, I am glad they have eliminated extreme poverty. That is progress, socially as well as economically.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    This sort of stems from a vision of China that is based on the aspects most relevant to Westerners as relayed by the media. Of all the things you cited, the vast majority of Chinese were not impacted and will therefore view the government in light of all the boring and complex policy changes that did in fact affect them. Note that I am not so much criticizing the way the media frames China as much as simply pointing out the parts that aren't discussed but that are germane to the evaluation of the country. The notion that Chinese people aren't perceptive and that they would adopt Western ideals if only we could reach out to them is pretty much orientalism 101 mixed with the End of History. There is a wealth of diversity in terms of opinions at all echelons of Chinese society, including inside the Party structure. This diversity will tend to touch on ideas orthogonal to the Western equivalent. Similar or identical in parts, but very different in others. Picture someone whose only understanding of America would be specific events like Guantanamo Bay or a smattering of memes relating to Trump. You'd want to tell this person about the complex interplay of history and culture that shaped America into what it is today, and that they are missing out on 99% of it since they are so zoomed out. What I have described here is in fact the equivalent of what the typical person commenting on China thinks and knows about the country. I myself absolutely do not claim to be an expert, just that I got a taste of how much I don't know about the topic. All of this matters greatly since it has an effect on how the West will conduct its strategy going forward.

heraclius 6y ago

As much as it’s important to remember the plight of the Uyghurs especially in formulating a broad strategy towards China, it seems odd to extend this to ‘nobody may discuss any aspect of China without mentioning the camps’. Would you do this to, e.g., some intellectually interesting but (at the moment) otherwise entirely useless pure maths paper posted on HN written by a Chinese researcher? Of course, the level at which it’s appropriate to omit to mention an ongoing atrocity is difficult to determine. Clearly it’s somewhere above a sentence, and clearly it’s beneath the question of broad strategy. But I would suggest that understanding China’s broad strategy for poverty alleviation (in the Han heartland) is a discrete topic that can quite reasonably be discussed without inviting this sort of response. In fact, if you don’t understand topics like this, it’s likely that your response to China is going to be handicapped.

dayjobpork 6y ago
So you want people to discuss the economy without mentioning the genocide camps of forced labour that underpin manufacturing?
- heraclius 6y ago
  Uyghurs are important to a large part of the economy, but it’s presumably possible to discuss parts of it without discussing Uyghurs at every stage. Uyghur forced labour is certainly widespread and bad. I am not sure that it’s fundamental to the Chinese economy though. If we say that there are 20 million Uyghurs (which is a very large overestimate), out of 1.3 billion that’s not very much. Moreover the current strategy of forced labour mostly began in the 2010s, so all of China’s previous economic strategies managed to proceed without the use of forced labour. And sterilisation means that they’re unlikely to be relied upon economically in the long term—elimination and economic exploitation are very difficult to reconcile, as indeed the Nazis found. If you’re discussing some market in a small village far from Xinjiang—of course forced Uyghur labour in some way impinges on it, but, well, it would be odd to discuss the camps as the most important determinant of what’s going on in those camps at all times. You can’t develop an understanding of the whole without understanding the component parts, and that involves occasionally e.g. reading articles that don’t mention the Uyghurs. The obvious analogy is the Holocaust. Nobody complains about books about the Nazis that contain e.g. chapters mostly concerning matters other than the Holocaust. That’s for good reason: you have to pay attention to the other components too, even though the aim of extermination is an important overall reason to understand the Nazis. In the frame of my original comment, i.e., ‘at what level should one focus on specific individual parts even at the expense of overall important atrocities?’, I agree that discussing the economy writ large whilst ignoring the Uyghurs would neither lead to a good factual understanding of the economy nor be appropriate morally. But the question of poverty alleviation in the Han heartlands to me is a discrete one that (a) is important to broadly understanding the economy and (b) is a sufficiently narrow topic to be discussed without necessarily focusing on the Uyghurs.

Bakary 6y ago

Why would they vehiculate that when they have their own ideological line to attend to? The article reads like a classic Economist piece with the usual tropes