15 ms·

I work with a lot of folks from China and they are bending over backwards trying to defend the CCP. Their argument almost always boils down to "I know people wh

I work with a lot of folks from China and they are bending over backwards trying to defend the CCP. Their argument almost always boils down to "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." Equivalent to someone using their one black friend as proof that they can't possibly be racist.

smnrchrds 6y ago
Reminds me of that joke: I asked my friend from North Korea how life is. He said he can't complain.
vivekpandian 6y ago
No use in trying to discuss this anyone from China. They are totally brainwashed. In Spite of, living in USA and enjoying democracy, and free of speech, they think freedom of speech is myth and democracy is not a reliable form of government. They believe that Winnie, the pooh is great and he and CCP is solely responsible for lifting millions of Chinese people from poverty. I really feel pity for the Chinese people.
- almost_usual 6y ago
  There are comments on HN right now where people are questioning whether freedom of speech is good in the US by US citizens. Why would someone from China think it’s working after the shit show of 2020 and our own citizens not having confidence?
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    If you’re referring to comments like mine challenging the idea that private websites banning anyone for any reason has anything to do with free speech, you’re wildly mischaracterizing your US audience.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      > private websites banning anyone for any reason has anything to do with free speech, you’re wildly mischaracterizing your US audience. If US citizens already have a hard time discerning this imagine someone from China. It’s amateur capital driven censorship. It’s inefficient, confusing, and divides a nation. Yes it would be viewed as suboptimal from someone familiar with nationalism and censorship in China.
      - eyelidlessness 6y ago
        Nonsense. In the US you have to just click another link to find viewpoints not represented on the website you’re currently at. In China you have to use a VPN to view blocked content. As an American I’m ashamed of my fellow Americans who don’t understand this.
    - offby37years 6y ago
      "Private websites" are the contemporary public square, especially so when half the world is locked at home and forced to communicate remotely.
      - eyelidlessness 6y ago
        Okay so what’s the “free speech” principle that demands sending in the government to force those websites to publish against their will?
        jedmeyers 6y ago
        > force those websites to publish against their will? I would argue that the will of the websites is to actually allow publishing for the most amount of people. And they censor the opposing political views only because the government-aligned forces make them to. Basically if every corporation needs the government to survive they are going to do everything the government wants, even if they don’t admit to it. They would rather lose half the users than become completely defunct.
  - lookdangerous 6y ago
    There’s a credible case to be made that freedom of speech has allowed the US to prosper.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - jonny_eh 6y ago
      There's a credible case it's just a happy coincidence. The large single economy with, until recently, open immigration policy were possibly bigger factors.
    - andresp 6y ago
      Who cares if it allowed the US to prosper? Freedom of speech is not about economic output but a value system. This utilitarian moral relativism might make sense in China but it is not part of modern Western culture. It was a civilisational conquest and a difficult one to obtain.
      - lookdangerous 6y ago
        Values are useful. I don’t mean economic prosperity, I mean that our value system has largely worked.
        quantum_magpie 6y ago
        What value system? You still have legal slavery!
    - krageon 6y ago
      The US has prospered in war. It is in fact still basically prospering through war.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Yup. Currently live in Asia and many of the less-than-democratic countries are pointing to the US media coverage and saying "see! freedom of speech is dangerous, even the Americans agree. when we restrict your speech we're just trying to keep you safe."
    - steve76 6y ago
      Law goes back to the code of Hammurabi, the start of civilization itself. The sole purpose is to limit the violence and not add to it. If there's anything arbitrary, it's the violence. The Magna Carta showed everyone is restrained by laws, or else there are no laws. We're back to being beasts again living in terror, squandering humanity's elevated position gifted to us, won long ago. You can misspeak. Therefore, it's impossible for you to tell others what is perfect speech. That's all the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech is. It's unavoidable. The best lessen enemies in times of contention, not create them. The USA took the gift of the New World and said if we're going to tell other people what to do, what's the minimum we have to do? We don't need to crush riots or deprogram people. Hundreds of cities burnt down in the USA due really dirty political tricks, and we left it alone. If people want to lead in the USA, they have to find a way themselves to overcome it without relying on tyranny, oligarchy or anarchy.
  - xwolfi 6y ago
    I'll be blunt, I was raised in a european democracy and live in China, I don't think democracy works anymore lol Trump is a big component, but the Brexit or what they do in Hungary, pff it's just disheartening. I don't think China will forever sustain that large a monitoring, it's just inefficient the closer they get from an intellectual super power, but I have 0 respect for the US, or their "freedom of being an idiot" that they pretend is the same as freedom of speech. One thing is sure, with that circus over there, they made us lose 10 years here. Nobody wants to experiment anymore with liberalization.
    - andresp 6y ago
      Please stay in China and be happy there.
    - vixen99 6y ago
      What is it that you don't understand about democracy? A referendum was held in the UK in 2016. It was brought about by a Prime Minister who, along with a huge majority of the establishment including the BBC, thought that the result was a foregone conclusion. For sure, they said - most folk will vote to stay in the EU. But the voters decided otherwise. We voted `leave`. Abiding by that decision shows that democracy doesn't work anymore - and Brexit is an example?
      - xwolfi 6y ago
        But that I understand, the problem in democracy is that you can take bad decision that you glorify because it's made by the people. It's fine, people can make collective mistakes, but I think we ignore several facts during a referendum like that: - People misunderstand the question - People understand the question but vote to answer another one - People are divided in groups with very different agenda that sometimes are shorterm good for a majority and long term bad for a minority (the elders might vote against the interest of the youth, then die leaving them with the mess) I vote, and enjoy it, but I also recognize I'm as big an idiot as anyone else, and I don't think this worked in the Brexit instance. The PM proposed the vote for the wrong reason, people voted at a time they were not thinking of the Union long term, people voted massively divided (cities vs country side, England vs the others, old vs young), so what answer did they provide exactly ? That "the people want rid of the EU" or that "British society is so divided it barely even exists" ? I guess at least in a democracy, mistakes can be reversed, but we seem to do so many I wonder if it's not better here where at least we stick to one single side and pursue it to the end rather than girouette around (in the EU, but with not everything, then out, then surely in again because out was stupid, etc).
- Aunche 6y ago
  You're doing yourself a disservice if you think Chinese people are all brainwashed simpletons. The reality is that people will rationalize anything that benefits them, and Xinjiang is an integral part of One Belt One Road.
underseacables 6y ago
You cannot trust anything reported out of China, absolutely nothing. I do not doubt that there are people being slaughtered and massacred as I write, but anything reported out of China must be taken deeply suspicious, especially if it comes from the government. The Chinese government is the single greatest threat to freedom, and human rights this world has ever seen.
- newacct583 6y ago
  The... single greatest? Not the great empire builders? Not the USSR? Modern China, really? Not even, y'know, the ancient chinese empires who subjugated most of asia? The PRC? I mean, just objectively modern chinese citizens, while they certainly don't live under western-level protection for expression, are (owing just to technology and nothing less) vastly more able to share their opinions widely and securely than... pretty much anyone under a totalitarian regime at any other time in history. I mean really: a Xinjiang dissident in the modern world can get messages out reliably and promptly about what is happening, including video documentation even. Even in the 1980's life in, say, Bulgaria or Uzbekistan was completely invisible even to intelligence agencies. I don't doubt that China does some terrible things. But this hyperbole isn't helping anyone.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    I don't think it's hyperbole. The CCP seeks to control social media by threatening to imprison anyone who speaks against it, even while outside China. And this isn't the first Chinese government to be accused of establishing too much state control over businesses [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tientsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tientsin
  - gfodor 6y ago
    Not going to fully defend the OP but the problem is things like the USSR were, in retrospect, unsustainable. The CCP, on the other hand, may have created just the right blend between totalitarianism, communism, and capitalism that is both sustainable and has global reach. We should not want to end up all-consumed by this form of government given how oppressive it is, and only time will tell just how all-consuming it can become.
ahelwer 6y ago
How exactly are you approaching this conversation with your Chinese coworkers?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
duxup 6y ago
There were a whole series of posts on HN, and other sites by folks who talked about people traveling in the area and not seeing anything. I don't know what that is supposed to mean / why we would assume you'd notice it ... On HN and elsewhere people mentioned how they were happy people could travel through the area and not have to worry about "thieves" and they'd make some comparisons to travel in the west, a sort of chilling random concern considering the topic. Often the same link was posted to a western blogger apparently paid to travel to the region. With the link the posts noted that the blogger didn't mention genocide.
- gscott 6y ago
  They build huge compounds (found easily through news websites) where they put everyone behind closed doors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xwolfi 6y ago
I live in Hong Kong and that's exactly how I talk with people abroad totally panicking over the situation here. It's... not THAT bad. Certainly not as bad as portrayed, sometimes, west of the world. Not saying I have any clue about Xinjiang or that the CCP is positive for the country, but I feel uneasy everyone switched from prisoner camps to genocide - it seems to distract away from the actual issue to move into borderline hysteria. A bit like the HK situation moved from an extradition issue over a taiwan murder to a large "save Hong Kong" hysteria... But whatever, you used the racist card, what can we say ...
- woah 6y ago
  Didn’t the situation in Hong Kong escalate from people being concerned about the extradition thing to the Chinese government now suspending elections?
  - ksec 6y ago
    Yes and million things build up over the years.
  - xwolfi 6y ago
    Not really, it escalated towards the police being violent then died with a poof when teenagers realized they fucked us all. The Chinese gov doesn't care and doesn't want to care, they are being bamboozled by the true winners of the situation: the DAB party using the communist paranoia to consolidate their local power acting as good little patriots (when every law they passed is anti-communist, really, and pro-status quo). So the DAB suspended the legislative election after they lost the district one, for one year. They can act like that with the blame being directed at China by constantly looking the other way when asked to give an opinion about China and acting as if they were under order. But it serves 0 chinese interest, it makes the entire population hate China and China hate the population, with the DAB cementing itself into the only barrier still there before the army intervenes. It's so obvious yet so missed by everyone that it's painful to watch. I hope there's a masterplan in Beijing, but I doubt they even understand what people think in Beijing, let alone in Hong Kong, so ... And the DAB represents a large class of the population, too: the elders, the rent-owners, the large corporations, the traditional post-colonial Hong Kong. That's the people you see on the sideline shaking their head and taking picture in mass when the kids burn a metro station. The journalists don't film it, but I'm there with everyone just commenting at the monkeys while the western media stream them with a close angle as if they were fighting China or for freedom... While nobody is communist in Hong Kong, not even the metro station they hate so much ! I saw my entire family switch to the DAB during the protests so maybe I'm under bias thinking this produced exactly the opposite effect all sides looked for: Hong Kong is not more independent, Hong Kong is not more Chinese, but the DAB sure is more powerful - we'll see what happens if they restore the election, but at this point they can get away with not doing it and say "oh but without us it's the PLA so calm down"
mannerheim 6y ago
Are their friends who live in Xinjiang Han or Uyghur?
enriquto 6y ago
> I work with a lot of folks from China and they (...) What you say represents about 50% of Chinese researchers in my lab. Those that immediately return to their country after the PhD and you never hear from them again. The other 50% are the complete opposite: they cannot wait to get their family out of the country and never look back, explaining that the country is ruled by a bunch of crazy psycopaths. Curiously enough, there's almost no interaction between both groups, they politely ignore each other (and they are really polite and professional towards everybody also).
- yellowcake0 6y ago
  The question is, are their psychopaths crazier than our psychopaths.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    I politely refuse to partake in this kind of questions :)
  - api 6y ago
    Maybe, maybe not, but our psychopaths are restrained by a government designed to be inefficient and to frustrate tyrants. We just had an attempted fascist coup in the USA and it failed hilariously. The swamp is a good thing. It’s there to bog down tyrants in mud. Efficient government is dangerous.
    - m0rti 6y ago
      Even though I agree with what you said in terms of internal politics, I think when it comes to geopolitics, things start to get much uglier and multiple times more cruel. And since this topic is about foreign politics, I don’t think the US is any better than China. An American might think different, but I’m not one.
      - api 6y ago
        The US is better than China internally, but I mostly agree that China is not substantially worse than the US in terms of foreign policy.
bawolff 6y ago
Im pretty sure that people said the same thing about the jews under hitler. Human beings are very good at denying and rationalizing away unpleasent truths.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bingbong70 6y ago
  The US and UK have a long history of funding terrorists in hopes of regime change too. We spent years treating ISIS and their supporters like they were the victims in Syria...
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
An older family member grew up in WW2 Europe under German occupation. I asked them about general everyday life during the war and the holocaust. Besides getting bombed on en route to school, it "wasn't that bad". I don't know if it's justification or stockholm syndrome. Part of me speculates people in these situations suspend their reality as a survival mechanism.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  This is the key observation of Imre Kertész's book Sorstalanság about his surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a deported Hungarian Jew. He is frustrated by people asking him postwar about how terrible the camps were. His thinking sort of goes like this: the human spirit is strong and can survive anything an oppressor throws at it, but to ask about the horrors of the death camps is to suggest that they were capable of breaking one’s spirit. In the end (I don’t know if this counts as a spoiler or not) Kertész even admits to feeling nostalgia for some of the moments in the camps.
yange 6y ago
I'm Chinese. Many languages and expressions in this thread not only detests me but also represent the very opposite of western critical thinking. I appreciate the western style of logical thinking. You are being taught in schools how to tell the truth and bust lies, to criticize, to doubt, to ask questions no one dares to ask. You are taught definitions of fallacies, the art of debate, the wisdom of introspection. I envy you, having been taught so many ways to learn, to listen, to ask. You know, in China, they don't teach you those. They fill you with hard knowledge, 1+1=2 kind of knowledge. There's always only one correct answer: the answer from the textbook, from the instructor, from the authority. No question is asked unless you forgot what you should have memorized. I envy you, having the freedom to argue 1+1=0 and discover binary. As Chinese, we've been taught to believe, to repeat, to bow down to seniors, teachers, authorities. It's the way of life here. It's also the reason I came to the US. And yet, here we are. "You cannot trust anything reported out of China." "No use in trying to discuss this anyone from China. They are totally brainwashed." Do you hear the racists in these words? Do you feel the rejection of listening, the denial of communication, the blockage of thinking in those expressions? Chinese are liars. -- is what they want to say. Because the west has free speech and free press, so everything the western media report must be the truth. -- is what they believe. Folks, where is your doubt? Where is your wisdom of knowledge? Just because Chinese people were taught to remember the only answer, doesn't mean they can't think critically. Have you ever listened to them? Are you dismissing them just because of where they were born or how they were taught? Just because you have a free press, doesn't mean your media is unbiased. Who are their sponsors? What political spectrum do they stand for? Is it economically or politically beneficial to talk trash about China? Now you have to ask: What's your defense for the CCP? How brainwashed are you? Do you condemn the CCP for what they alleged doing? My answer is simple: I will stay doubtful until I have first-hand contact or undeniable evidence showing one way or the other. Until then, I can't say if those allegations are real or not. If they were real, I (and I believe most Chinese people) would condemn the practice, and would like to demand a change. "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." -- It's a very common argument lot of Chinese people would use. Because it's relatively easy to find people living in Xinjiang or who come from Xinjiang online. Me too, had several conversations with folks from the area, some on Telegram where they were using VPN to connect, and some are friends of friends. Of course, we would talk about the headlines all over the western media. And every time, the answer I got is they are still working, living, studying as normal. There were conflicts in some areas in the southern part, but I haven't got any more detail than that. These conversations are not proof of China not doing what it's been alleged to do. But you have to understand it's much more difficult to prove something you didn't do instead of something you did, and yet these kinds of personal encounters are the closest things we have to give us a perspective of the situation in the area. To think back, what is the closest encounter you had to the situation in Xinjiang? Did you talk to any victim from the area? Of course, you would immediately argue that CCP wiped clean all witness and evidence, so finding a victim is almost impossible, which is another allegation that's almost impossible to prove otherwise --- how convenient of you. But anyway, the closest encounter of yours is almost always the media stories you read, from western media, all over the places. But have you ever doubt that why all stories about China are negative? Why people are saying things to discredit every word comes out Chinese people's mouth? Doesn't it feel strange to you? And it's not easy for someone to speak up for China either. I -- writing these words, am seriously worried about losing my job in the US just because of this. So I'm using an alias account. YouTubers that speaking up for China are constantly being depromoted, demonetized, restricted for sharing, or banned for their words. Is it free speech should look like? Is the west deliberately running some kind of campaign to discredit and disconnect China from the rest of the world? Of course, that's an allegation without concrete proof. But you can find it is logically sound. There are many political movements and campaigns by the US and other five eye countries trying to contain the political and economical development of China - so their countries can continue to sit on top of the world's hegemony. It's not strange that these political and economical campaigns had affected public opinion and implanted negative views of China in its citizens' minds. We can have a lot of allegations back and forth. Maybe they are all wrong - or all true. But the bottom line is, what kind of thinking you want to promote. If you are spreading denial and racism, I would condemn you regardless if your arguments are true or not. Please, don't let a Chinese person point out your fallacies. We were supposed to not learned that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ksec 6y ago
>I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad Because they have a different definition of "bad". If you follow closely, the mainland Chinese or CCP have different definition of the same word for literally everything. Why is it bad to force them learn Mandarin and forget about their old language? Where the job markets are and to help them better integrate into the society. Why is it bad to give them birth control pills? Or reeducating them? etc. They are doing / supporting these regime with a smile on their face as they think they are doing good.
zed88 6y ago
Agree. I got lots of Chinese friends, relatives and in-laws and not one of them are willing to openly criticise CCP about it. On the contrary, they are more on the defensive. Tells you the level of brainwashing going on.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Either that or fear.
Fricken 6y ago
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all we have are unreliable narrators. The only thing more upsetting for some Americans than a genocide in Xinjiang is no genocide in Xinjiang. Americans aren't very interested in defending human rights, but they're deeply invested in defending the lie that they are interested in defending human rights.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
The simple fact is that we don't know what is going on in Xinjiang and most of the reports in the West about what is allegedly going on there are by people who have a vested interest in making it sound as bad as possible or who likely have links with Western governments. On top of that very few people in the West know anything at all about China, its culture, and its history. So, as a matter of intellectual honesty, I don't think it is possible to have strong opinion and to use extremely strong terms to describe the situation there as if that was fact. That's really a common problem when information is withheld. On the one hand it obviously arouses suspicion but on the other hand it also allows over-the-top narratives and rumours to spread, and it is very difficult to separate facts from propaganda, from the other side's propaganda, from fantasy...
bingbong70 6y ago
US/UK were bombing these Uighur extremists/separatists just a few years ago. Now they are seen as useful pawns in the trade/economic war with China, so the genocide narrative gets mainstreamed by the usual suspects (the same ones that tried to hide the fact that we (US/UK) were arming/training/funding ISIS and visiting Uighur/Turk terrorists in Syria).

smnrchrds 6y ago

Reminds me of that joke: I asked my friend from North Korea how life is. He said he can't complain.

vivekpandian 6y ago

No use in trying to discuss this anyone from China. They are totally brainwashed. In Spite of, living in USA and enjoying democracy, and free of speech, they think freedom of speech is myth and democracy is not a reliable form of government. They believe that Winnie, the pooh is great and he and CCP is solely responsible for lifting millions of Chinese people from poverty. I really feel pity for the Chinese people.

almost_usual 6y ago
There are comments on HN right now where people are questioning whether freedom of speech is good in the US by US citizens. Why would someone from China think it’s working after the shit show of 2020 and our own citizens not having confidence?
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  If you’re referring to comments like mine challenging the idea that private websites banning anyone for any reason has anything to do with free speech, you’re wildly mischaracterizing your US audience.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    > private websites banning anyone for any reason has anything to do with free speech, you’re wildly mischaracterizing your US audience. If US citizens already have a hard time discerning this imagine someone from China. It’s amateur capital driven censorship. It’s inefficient, confusing, and divides a nation. Yes it would be viewed as suboptimal from someone familiar with nationalism and censorship in China.
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      Nonsense. In the US you have to just click another link to find viewpoints not represented on the website you’re currently at. In China you have to use a VPN to view blocked content. As an American I’m ashamed of my fellow Americans who don’t understand this.
  - offby37years 6y ago
    "Private websites" are the contemporary public square, especially so when half the world is locked at home and forced to communicate remotely.
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      Okay so what’s the “free speech” principle that demands sending in the government to force those websites to publish against their will?
      - jedmeyers 6y ago
        > force those websites to publish against their will? I would argue that the will of the websites is to actually allow publishing for the most amount of people. And they censor the opposing political views only because the government-aligned forces make them to. Basically if every corporation needs the government to survive they are going to do everything the government wants, even if they don’t admit to it. They would rather lose half the users than become completely defunct.
- lookdangerous 6y ago
  There’s a credible case to be made that freedom of speech has allowed the US to prosper.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    There's a credible case it's just a happy coincidence. The large single economy with, until recently, open immigration policy were possibly bigger factors.
  - andresp 6y ago
    Who cares if it allowed the US to prosper? Freedom of speech is not about economic output but a value system. This utilitarian moral relativism might make sense in China but it is not part of modern Western culture. It was a civilisational conquest and a difficult one to obtain.
    - lookdangerous 6y ago
      Values are useful. I don’t mean economic prosperity, I mean that our value system has largely worked.
      - quantum_magpie 6y ago
        What value system? You still have legal slavery!
  - krageon 6y ago
    The US has prospered in war. It is in fact still basically prospering through war.
- refurb 6y ago
  Yup. Currently live in Asia and many of the less-than-democratic countries are pointing to the US media coverage and saying "see! freedom of speech is dangerous, even the Americans agree. when we restrict your speech we're just trying to keep you safe."
  - steve76 6y ago
    Law goes back to the code of Hammurabi, the start of civilization itself. The sole purpose is to limit the violence and not add to it. If there's anything arbitrary, it's the violence. The Magna Carta showed everyone is restrained by laws, or else there are no laws. We're back to being beasts again living in terror, squandering humanity's elevated position gifted to us, won long ago. You can misspeak. Therefore, it's impossible for you to tell others what is perfect speech. That's all the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech is. It's unavoidable. The best lessen enemies in times of contention, not create them. The USA took the gift of the New World and said if we're going to tell other people what to do, what's the minimum we have to do? We don't need to crush riots or deprogram people. Hundreds of cities burnt down in the USA due really dirty political tricks, and we left it alone. If people want to lead in the USA, they have to find a way themselves to overcome it without relying on tyranny, oligarchy or anarchy.
- xwolfi 6y ago
  I'll be blunt, I was raised in a european democracy and live in China, I don't think democracy works anymore lol Trump is a big component, but the Brexit or what they do in Hungary, pff it's just disheartening. I don't think China will forever sustain that large a monitoring, it's just inefficient the closer they get from an intellectual super power, but I have 0 respect for the US, or their "freedom of being an idiot" that they pretend is the same as freedom of speech. One thing is sure, with that circus over there, they made us lose 10 years here. Nobody wants to experiment anymore with liberalization.
  - andresp 6y ago
    Please stay in China and be happy there.
  - vixen99 6y ago
    What is it that you don't understand about democracy? A referendum was held in the UK in 2016. It was brought about by a Prime Minister who, along with a huge majority of the establishment including the BBC, thought that the result was a foregone conclusion. For sure, they said - most folk will vote to stay in the EU. But the voters decided otherwise. We voted `leave`. Abiding by that decision shows that democracy doesn't work anymore - and Brexit is an example?
    - xwolfi 6y ago
      But that I understand, the problem in democracy is that you can take bad decision that you glorify because it's made by the people. It's fine, people can make collective mistakes, but I think we ignore several facts during a referendum like that: - People misunderstand the question - People understand the question but vote to answer another one - People are divided in groups with very different agenda that sometimes are shorterm good for a majority and long term bad for a minority (the elders might vote against the interest of the youth, then die leaving them with the mess) I vote, and enjoy it, but I also recognize I'm as big an idiot as anyone else, and I don't think this worked in the Brexit instance. The PM proposed the vote for the wrong reason, people voted at a time they were not thinking of the Union long term, people voted massively divided (cities vs country side, England vs the others, old vs young), so what answer did they provide exactly ? That "the people want rid of the EU" or that "British society is so divided it barely even exists" ? I guess at least in a democracy, mistakes can be reversed, but we seem to do so many I wonder if it's not better here where at least we stick to one single side and pursue it to the end rather than girouette around (in the EU, but with not everything, then out, then surely in again because out was stupid, etc).
Aunche 6y ago
You're doing yourself a disservice if you think Chinese people are all brainwashed simpletons. The reality is that people will rationalize anything that benefits them, and Xinjiang is an integral part of One Belt One Road.

underseacables 6y ago

You cannot trust anything reported out of China, absolutely nothing. I do not doubt that there are people being slaughtered and massacred as I write, but anything reported out of China must be taken deeply suspicious, especially if it comes from the government. The Chinese government is the single greatest threat to freedom, and human rights this world has ever seen.

newacct583 6y ago
The... single greatest? Not the great empire builders? Not the USSR? Modern China, really? Not even, y'know, the ancient chinese empires who subjugated most of asia? The PRC? I mean, just objectively modern chinese citizens, while they certainly don't live under western-level protection for expression, are (owing just to technology and nothing less) vastly more able to share their opinions widely and securely than... pretty much anyone under a totalitarian regime at any other time in history. I mean really: a Xinjiang dissident in the modern world can get messages out reliably and promptly about what is happening, including video documentation even. Even in the 1980's life in, say, Bulgaria or Uzbekistan was completely invisible even to intelligence agencies. I don't doubt that China does some terrible things. But this hyperbole isn't helping anyone.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  I don't think it's hyperbole. The CCP seeks to control social media by threatening to imprison anyone who speaks against it, even while outside China. And this isn't the first Chinese government to be accused of establishing too much state control over businesses [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tientsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tientsin
- gfodor 6y ago
  Not going to fully defend the OP but the problem is things like the USSR were, in retrospect, unsustainable. The CCP, on the other hand, may have created just the right blend between totalitarianism, communism, and capitalism that is both sustainable and has global reach. We should not want to end up all-consumed by this form of government given how oppressive it is, and only time will tell just how all-consuming it can become.

ahelwer 6y ago

How exactly are you approaching this conversation with your Chinese coworkers?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

duxup 6y ago

There were a whole series of posts on HN, and other sites by folks who talked about people traveling in the area and not seeing anything. I don't know what that is supposed to mean / why we would assume you'd notice it ... On HN and elsewhere people mentioned how they were happy people could travel through the area and not have to worry about "thieves" and they'd make some comparisons to travel in the west, a sort of chilling random concern considering the topic. Often the same link was posted to a western blogger apparently paid to travel to the region. With the link the posts noted that the blogger didn't mention genocide.

gscott 6y ago
They build huge compounds (found easily through news websites) where they put everyone behind closed doors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

xwolfi 6y ago

I live in Hong Kong and that's exactly how I talk with people abroad totally panicking over the situation here. It's... not THAT bad. Certainly not as bad as portrayed, sometimes, west of the world. Not saying I have any clue about Xinjiang or that the CCP is positive for the country, but I feel uneasy everyone switched from prisoner camps to genocide - it seems to distract away from the actual issue to move into borderline hysteria. A bit like the HK situation moved from an extradition issue over a taiwan murder to a large "save Hong Kong" hysteria... But whatever, you used the racist card, what can we say ...

woah 6y ago
Didn’t the situation in Hong Kong escalate from people being concerned about the extradition thing to the Chinese government now suspending elections?
- ksec 6y ago
  Yes and million things build up over the years.
- xwolfi 6y ago
  Not really, it escalated towards the police being violent then died with a poof when teenagers realized they fucked us all. The Chinese gov doesn't care and doesn't want to care, they are being bamboozled by the true winners of the situation: the DAB party using the communist paranoia to consolidate their local power acting as good little patriots (when every law they passed is anti-communist, really, and pro-status quo). So the DAB suspended the legislative election after they lost the district one, for one year. They can act like that with the blame being directed at China by constantly looking the other way when asked to give an opinion about China and acting as if they were under order. But it serves 0 chinese interest, it makes the entire population hate China and China hate the population, with the DAB cementing itself into the only barrier still there before the army intervenes. It's so obvious yet so missed by everyone that it's painful to watch. I hope there's a masterplan in Beijing, but I doubt they even understand what people think in Beijing, let alone in Hong Kong, so ... And the DAB represents a large class of the population, too: the elders, the rent-owners, the large corporations, the traditional post-colonial Hong Kong. That's the people you see on the sideline shaking their head and taking picture in mass when the kids burn a metro station. The journalists don't film it, but I'm there with everyone just commenting at the monkeys while the western media stream them with a close angle as if they were fighting China or for freedom... While nobody is communist in Hong Kong, not even the metro station they hate so much ! I saw my entire family switch to the DAB during the protests so maybe I'm under bias thinking this produced exactly the opposite effect all sides looked for: Hong Kong is not more independent, Hong Kong is not more Chinese, but the DAB sure is more powerful - we'll see what happens if they restore the election, but at this point they can get away with not doing it and say "oh but without us it's the PLA so calm down"

mannerheim 6y ago

Are their friends who live in Xinjiang Han or Uyghur?

enriquto 6y ago

> I work with a lot of folks from China and they (...) What you say represents about 50% of Chinese researchers in my lab. Those that immediately return to their country after the PhD and you never hear from them again. The other 50% are the complete opposite: they cannot wait to get their family out of the country and never look back, explaining that the country is ruled by a bunch of crazy psycopaths. Curiously enough, there's almost no interaction between both groups, they politely ignore each other (and they are really polite and professional towards everybody also).

yellowcake0 6y ago
The question is, are their psychopaths crazier than our psychopaths.
- enriquto 6y ago
  I politely refuse to partake in this kind of questions :)
- api 6y ago
  Maybe, maybe not, but our psychopaths are restrained by a government designed to be inefficient and to frustrate tyrants. We just had an attempted fascist coup in the USA and it failed hilariously. The swamp is a good thing. It’s there to bog down tyrants in mud. Efficient government is dangerous.
  - m0rti 6y ago
    Even though I agree with what you said in terms of internal politics, I think when it comes to geopolitics, things start to get much uglier and multiple times more cruel. And since this topic is about foreign politics, I don’t think the US is any better than China. An American might think different, but I’m not one.
    - api 6y ago
      The US is better than China internally, but I mostly agree that China is not substantially worse than the US in terms of foreign policy.

bawolff 6y ago

Im pretty sure that people said the same thing about the jews under hitler. Human beings are very good at denying and rationalizing away unpleasent truths.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bingbong70 6y ago
The US and UK have a long history of funding terrorists in hopes of regime change too. We spent years treating ISIS and their supporters like they were the victims in Syria...

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

An older family member grew up in WW2 Europe under German occupation. I asked them about general everyday life during the war and the holocaust. Besides getting bombed on en route to school, it "wasn't that bad". I don't know if it's justification or stockholm syndrome. Part of me speculates people in these situations suspend their reality as a survival mechanism.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
This is the key observation of Imre Kertész's book Sorstalanság about his surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a deported Hungarian Jew. He is frustrated by people asking him postwar about how terrible the camps were. His thinking sort of goes like this: the human spirit is strong and can survive anything an oppressor throws at it, but to ask about the horrors of the death camps is to suggest that they were capable of breaking one’s spirit. In the end (I don’t know if this counts as a spoiler or not) Kertész even admits to feeling nostalgia for some of the moments in the camps.

yange 6y ago

I'm Chinese. Many languages and expressions in this thread not only detests me but also represent the very opposite of western critical thinking. I appreciate the western style of logical thinking. You are being taught in schools how to tell the truth and bust lies, to criticize, to doubt, to ask questions no one dares to ask. You are taught definitions of fallacies, the art of debate, the wisdom of introspection. I envy you, having been taught so many ways to learn, to listen, to ask. You know, in China, they don't teach you those. They fill you with hard knowledge, 1+1=2 kind of knowledge. There's always only one correct answer: the answer from the textbook, from the instructor, from the authority. No question is asked unless you forgot what you should have memorized. I envy you, having the freedom to argue 1+1=0 and discover binary. As Chinese, we've been taught to believe, to repeat, to bow down to seniors, teachers, authorities. It's the way of life here. It's also the reason I came to the US. And yet, here we are. "You cannot trust anything reported out of China." "No use in trying to discuss this anyone from China. They are totally brainwashed." Do you hear the racists in these words? Do you feel the rejection of listening, the denial of communication, the blockage of thinking in those expressions? Chinese are liars. -- is what they want to say. Because the west has free speech and free press, so everything the western media report must be the truth. -- is what they believe. Folks, where is your doubt? Where is your wisdom of knowledge? Just because Chinese people were taught to remember the only answer, doesn't mean they can't think critically. Have you ever listened to them? Are you dismissing them just because of where they were born or how they were taught? Just because you have a free press, doesn't mean your media is unbiased. Who are their sponsors? What political spectrum do they stand for? Is it economically or politically beneficial to talk trash about China? Now you have to ask: What's your defense for the CCP? How brainwashed are you? Do you condemn the CCP for what they alleged doing? My answer is simple: I will stay doubtful until I have first-hand contact or undeniable evidence showing one way or the other. Until then, I can't say if those allegations are real or not. If they were real, I (and I believe most Chinese people) would condemn the practice, and would like to demand a change. "I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad." -- It's a very common argument lot of Chinese people would use. Because it's relatively easy to find people living in Xinjiang or who come from Xinjiang online. Me too, had several conversations with folks from the area, some on Telegram where they were using VPN to connect, and some are friends of friends. Of course, we would talk about the headlines all over the western media. And every time, the answer I got is they are still working, living, studying as normal. There were conflicts in some areas in the southern part, but I haven't got any more detail than that. These conversations are not proof of China not doing what it's been alleged to do. But you have to understand it's much more difficult to prove something you didn't do instead of something you did, and yet these kinds of personal encounters are the closest things we have to give us a perspective of the situation in the area. To think back, what is the closest encounter you had to the situation in Xinjiang? Did you talk to any victim from the area? Of course, you would immediately argue that CCP wiped clean all witness and evidence, so finding a victim is almost impossible, which is another allegation that's almost impossible to prove otherwise --- how convenient of you. But anyway, the closest encounter of yours is almost always the media stories you read, from western media, all over the places. But have you ever doubt that why all stories about China are negative? Why people are saying things to discredit every word comes out Chinese people's mouth? Doesn't it feel strange to you? And it's not easy for someone to speak up for China either. I -- writing these words, am seriously worried about losing my job in the US just because of this. So I'm using an alias account. YouTubers that speaking up for China are constantly being depromoted, demonetized, restricted for sharing, or banned for their words. Is it free speech should look like? Is the west deliberately running some kind of campaign to discredit and disconnect China from the rest of the world? Of course, that's an allegation without concrete proof. But you can find it is logically sound. There are many political movements and campaigns by the US and other five eye countries trying to contain the political and economical development of China - so their countries can continue to sit on top of the world's hegemony. It's not strange that these political and economical campaigns had affected public opinion and implanted negative views of China in its citizens' minds. We can have a lot of allegations back and forth. Maybe they are all wrong - or all true. But the bottom line is, what kind of thinking you want to promote. If you are spreading denial and racism, I would condemn you regardless if your arguments are true or not. Please, don't let a Chinese person point out your fallacies. We were supposed to not learned that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ksec 6y ago

>I know people who live in Xinjiang and they say it's not that bad Because they have a different definition of "bad". If you follow closely, the mainland Chinese or CCP have different definition of the same word for literally everything. Why is it bad to force them learn Mandarin and forget about their old language? Where the job markets are and to help them better integrate into the society. Why is it bad to give them birth control pills? Or reeducating them? etc. They are doing / supporting these regime with a smile on their face as they think they are doing good.

zed88 6y ago

Agree. I got lots of Chinese friends, relatives and in-laws and not one of them are willing to openly criticise CCP about it. On the contrary, they are more on the defensive. Tells you the level of brainwashing going on.

koonsolo 6y ago
Either that or fear.

Fricken 6y ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all we have are unreliable narrators. The only thing more upsetting for some Americans than a genocide in Xinjiang is no genocide in Xinjiang. Americans aren't very interested in defending human rights, but they're deeply invested in defending the lie that they are interested in defending human rights.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

The simple fact is that we don't know what is going on in Xinjiang and most of the reports in the West about what is allegedly going on there are by people who have a vested interest in making it sound as bad as possible or who likely have links with Western governments. On top of that very few people in the West know anything at all about China, its culture, and its history. So, as a matter of intellectual honesty, I don't think it is possible to have strong opinion and to use extremely strong terms to describe the situation there as if that was fact. That's really a common problem when information is withheld. On the one hand it obviously arouses suspicion but on the other hand it also allows over-the-top narratives and rumours to spread, and it is very difficult to separate facts from propaganda, from the other side's propaganda, from fantasy...

bingbong70 6y ago

US/UK were bombing these Uighur extremists/separatists just a few years ago. Now they are seen as useful pawns in the trade/economic war with China, so the genocide narrative gets mainstreamed by the usual suspects (the same ones that tried to hide the fact that we (US/UK) were arming/training/funding ISIS and visiting Uighur/Turk terrorists in Syria).