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I must offer another data point. I'm British, and often find myself in these threads criticising criticism of China. Not because I'm being paid by the CCP, but

by tombh 5y ago

I must offer another data point. I'm British, and often find myself in these threads criticising criticism of China. Not because I'm being paid by the CCP, but because I believe that mainstream anti-Chinese sentiment tells us more about the West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself.

andrepd 5y ago
What does criticism of authoritarian censorship today have to do with imperialism? Sounds just like an attempt to muddy the waters tbh
- tombh 5y ago
  I believe the psychological process involved is the malignant form of projection[1]. To give a metaphor: when I know myself that I've not been productive enough at work (and I secretly berate myself for it), I mis-perceive perfectly normal gestures of encouragement as personal attacks. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
kmlx 5y ago
> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself. oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right now.
- ahelwer 5y ago
  Those rights are available domestically in the West, yes, at least for the time being. Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. But hey, here in the imperial core we are quite comfortable. So this state of being must represent our ideals!
  - andrepd 5y ago
    >Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. Well yeah, isn't that precisely what's being criticised? Also not all the evil in the world was created by the West.
- tombh 5y ago
  Whilst I readily admit that focussing my attention on the West's criticism of China depletes my limited resources to affect positive change in China, I actually believe I am ultimately having a greater impact. What I'm saying is that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism — its power and influence comes from exploitation of more than half the world. To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties. We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.
  - kmlx 5y ago
    you are cherry-picking history in order to further your narrative about exploitation. in reality, humanity has been at war for millennia. the chinese have been at war with all their neighbours for centuries. slavery has been the status-quo until 200 years ago. you are also assuming just because some politician is immoral than people will also be immoral. this is false. does this have anything to do with how the chinese government treats its citizens in the present? not at all
    - tombh 5y ago
      Just for the record, and to be 100% clear. I hereby explicitly denounce the Chinese government's murder of innocent students at Tiananmen Square, and the genocide of the Uighurs. But I think you are completely missing my point. I don't believe the West actually wants to improve the world. It wants so much power that it can avoid looking at its own past, and present for that matter.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    Your context is where everyone already is as and your example appears to be wholly unrelated to your claim. I don't think you are having a positive influence here.
honkdaddy 5y ago
That's very interesting. So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China are due to the West's psychological struggles (?), and not due to actual suffering caused by the Chinese government? Do you have any Chinese heritage in your family? This reminds me of the perspective most of my half-Chinese friends had from back in college. They always felt as if it was their duty to defend China from the biased Western media, despite all the real world evidence painting a very clear and unbiased picture.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- foverzar 5y ago
  > So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China I think that generally western news have a tendency to misrepresent countries that are culturally different. E.g. as a Russian, reading western news about Russia makes me think that journalist play a broken telephone game, misrepresenting marginal stuff as some kind of insane norm, in a completely unnuanced way, without any context. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was for China. Probably even worse, as verification is even less accessible. Dramatic news get clicks and there is no accountability for spicing them up. I guess, in the age of AI-delivered clickbait media, the old saying "Don't believe everything you read in the papers" was never as true.
  - rocknor 5y ago
    I agree, this rhetoric is true for western news about India as well. The BBC for example known to be awful at times, actively misrepresenting and hiding facts to suit their narrative. I guess they have to cater to their population with colonial mentality which can't bear the fact that some ex-colonies are on track to surpass them in the Asian century.
    - whycombinatore 5y ago
      Surpass in what exactly? Authoritarianism? Idiots spewing nonsense to collect their paychecks.
rosndo 5y ago
Have you ever spent time in China? If you had, I suspect you wouldn’t be writing this comment.
- tombh 5y ago
  I lived there for 18 months
- severino 5y ago
  Most people criticizing China and the CCP in those forums haven't spent time in China either. I suspect many wouldn't even be able to place China on a map.
  - xinniethepooh 5y ago
    I've been to China. The series of high resolution pictures of me throughout the streets, hotels, places I was during my time there - these all appeared on the screens used by the guards as I was being scanned to leave the country. So yes, I have been to China, I can place China on a map, and it is the most terrifying reincarnation of Nazi Germany - being defended by people who will say "we didn't know any better" after the concentration camps are freed.
    - severino 5y ago
      > So yes, I have been to China, I can place China on a map, and it is the most terrifying reincarnation of Nazi Germany - being defended by people who will say "we didn't know any better" after the concentration camps are freed. Oh, good to know that. I didn't know prisoners could left Nazi Germany just like that, only getting a scan. I had a completely different idea of that regime.
      - throw10920 5y ago
        > I didn't know prisoners could left Nazi Germany just like that, only getting a scan. The prisoners in the Xinjiang labor camps sure can't leave. You're making a false comparison, intentionally or not.
mgsk 5y ago
> Not because I'm being paid by the CCP But you _are_ being paid by the CCP?
- tombh 5y ago
  Doxxing myself, check my comment history and website https://tombh.co.uk https://tombh.co.uk
  - throw10920 5y ago
    I would humbly suggest that you don't post personal information just because someone on the internet is making a comment in extremely poor form - you don't have anything to prove to them. Flag their comment (it's a pretty egregious violation of the HN guidelines) and attend to the people who are making good points. HN may be one of the best places for discussion on the internet, with some of the best moderators, but even here, you get people who aren't interested in having civil discussions.
rndgermandude 5y ago
Not being OK with the myriad of human rights abuses the Chinese government commits - sometimes "silently" and sometimes very opening and outright proudly - is just because I struggle with my own regions history? What the actual fuck... I have to call your "theory" what it is: stupid and dangerous - and whataboutism on top.
- tombh 5y ago
  To give a metaphor, I think it is perfectly reasonable to criticise my project lead when she criticises me for not meeting my targets but turns up hungover and spends the whole day on Facebook. I am criticising her because I want her to be effective at her job. Not because I disagree with her about our team's laziness.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    We are not equating missed targets with atrocity... A terrorist attack does not miss the target of benevolence. It is something that should never, ever happen but this planet is such a soul-crushing clusterfuck that it is like water under a bridge. Human life has value. It's not effective value or an estimate of value. It is absolute.
    - tombh 5y ago
      My metaphor is not to pointing to project management as an analogy, it's pointing to how criticism of one side does not automatically mean support for the other side. Unless I've misunderstood your point?
      - ganzuul 5y ago
        I'm suggesting that we do comparison with things conductive to the act of comparison. With the atrocities we are discussing there is nothing to be gained from comparison because things are already maximum bad: The numbers just vary. Comparison can take away the weight of that, which in our fuzzy wetware translates to dissipating motivating energy that could have gone into action. I do agree with your point and I am not a believer in the law of the excluded middle.
robbedpeter 5y ago
Neville Chamberlain had similar thoughts about Germany. Perhaps when dictators start doing things like rounding up undesirables into camps and pushing ideological uniformity at the point of a gun the reasonable response is to condemn the behavior? It doesn't matter who's wearing the jackboots, it's despicable to appease, condone, or enable the ones stepping on the throats of human beings.
- tombh 5y ago
  In Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust[1] it is argued that the Holocaust was not merely a tragic aberration of the ideals of modern Western civilisation but rather a logical realisation of it. Hitler himself, in both Mein Kampf, and Zweites Buch, wrote of how he was inspired by British concentration camps in South Africa. Maybe I haven't studied history enough, but I simply do not understand how dismissing the terrors of WW2 as merely a German problem is not also appeasing, condoning and enabling the terrors of the British. The Holocaust lies at the feet of Europeans, not merely the Nazis. The problem isn't about who did what, the problem is the idea that horrors can only possibly happen outside the borders of the nation to which I belong.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    > The Holocaust lies at the feet of Europeans, not merely the Nazis. Why stop abstraction there? You should continue on with all humans, then all life... that would be logical; this isn't.
    - tombh 5y ago
      I'm British. I was specifically taught the gruesome details of the Holocaust in school. But I only learnt about the horrors of British colonialism much later in life, and through my own efforts. British genocides are conspicuous by their absence from both our education system and our political discourse.
      - ganzuul 5y ago
        I don't think this makes it truly an European issue... In general history as it is taught is almost a total loss for how biased it is, meaning that since we dropped the ball on writing it down we are doomed to repeat it until we do. So far we have only been playing at historical account, because the truth undermines national borders. But this is a global issue.
LAC-Tech 5y ago
unprecedented? The PRC is still pursuing Imperial Qing claims to this day.
xinniethepooh 5y ago
It's curious that you say 'historically unprecedented imperial past' - imperialism typically has to do with having a ruler, and exerting diplomatic or military force to influence other nations. Why do you say this is historically unprecedented? China has been imperialist since its beginning, and continues its imperialism with Hong Kong, South china sea, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Myanmar ... What 'historically unprecedented imperial past' are you referring to that isn't preceded by China's?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > imperialism typically has to do with having a ruler No, it doesn't, unless by “ruler” you mean the metropolitan state.
- tombh 5y ago
  Just one example: the entirety of the American continents are culturally European. Imagine if North America was North Chinese speaking Mandarin and South America was South Chinese speaking Cantonese. Not to mention the entire concept of a nation state is a European invention. That Europe drew the borders in Africa, the Middle East, India. Then there's Australia and New Zealand. It's unprecedented. Yes China have/are imperial to an extent, but it seems like apples and oranges to me. BTW, not to dismiss the other countries from your list, but you should really understand the history of Hong Kong, specifically the Opium Wars. The British took it when the Chinese refused to continue buying their opium.

by tombh 5y ago

andrepd 5y ago

What does criticism of authoritarian censorship today have to do with imperialism? Sounds just like an attempt to muddy the waters tbh

tombh 5y ago
I believe the psychological process involved is the malignant form of projection[1]. To give a metaphor: when I know myself that I've not been productive enough at work (and I secretly berate myself for it), I mis-perceive perfectly normal gestures of encouragement as personal attacks. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

kmlx 5y ago

> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself. oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right now.

ahelwer 5y ago
Those rights are available domestically in the West, yes, at least for the time being. Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. But hey, here in the imperial core we are quite comfortable. So this state of being must represent our ideals!
- andrepd 5y ago
  >Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. Well yeah, isn't that precisely what's being criticised? Also not all the evil in the world was created by the West.
tombh 5y ago
Whilst I readily admit that focussing my attention on the West's criticism of China depletes my limited resources to affect positive change in China, I actually believe I am ultimately having a greater impact. What I'm saying is that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism — its power and influence comes from exploitation of more than half the world. To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties. We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.
- kmlx 5y ago
  you are cherry-picking history in order to further your narrative about exploitation. in reality, humanity has been at war for millennia. the chinese have been at war with all their neighbours for centuries. slavery has been the status-quo until 200 years ago. you are also assuming just because some politician is immoral than people will also be immoral. this is false. does this have anything to do with how the chinese government treats its citizens in the present? not at all
  - tombh 5y ago
    Just for the record, and to be 100% clear. I hereby explicitly denounce the Chinese government's murder of innocent students at Tiananmen Square, and the genocide of the Uighurs. But I think you are completely missing my point. I don't believe the West actually wants to improve the world. It wants so much power that it can avoid looking at its own past, and present for that matter.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Your context is where everyone already is as and your example appears to be wholly unrelated to your claim. I don't think you are having a positive influence here.

honkdaddy 5y ago

That's very interesting. So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China are due to the West's psychological struggles (?), and not due to actual suffering caused by the Chinese government? Do you have any Chinese heritage in your family? This reminds me of the perspective most of my half-Chinese friends had from back in college. They always felt as if it was their duty to defend China from the biased Western media, despite all the real world evidence painting a very clear and unbiased picture.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
foverzar 5y ago
> So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China I think that generally western news have a tendency to misrepresent countries that are culturally different. E.g. as a Russian, reading western news about Russia makes me think that journalist play a broken telephone game, misrepresenting marginal stuff as some kind of insane norm, in a completely unnuanced way, without any context. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was for China. Probably even worse, as verification is even less accessible. Dramatic news get clicks and there is no accountability for spicing them up. I guess, in the age of AI-delivered clickbait media, the old saying "Don't believe everything you read in the papers" was never as true.
- rocknor 5y ago
  I agree, this rhetoric is true for western news about India as well. The BBC for example known to be awful at times, actively misrepresenting and hiding facts to suit their narrative. I guess they have to cater to their population with colonial mentality which can't bear the fact that some ex-colonies are on track to surpass them in the Asian century.
  - whycombinatore 5y ago
    Surpass in what exactly? Authoritarianism? Idiots spewing nonsense to collect their paychecks.

rosndo 5y ago

Have you ever spent time in China? If you had, I suspect you wouldn’t be writing this comment.

tombh 5y ago
I lived there for 18 months
severino 5y ago
Most people criticizing China and the CCP in those forums haven't spent time in China either. I suspect many wouldn't even be able to place China on a map.
- xinniethepooh 5y ago
  I've been to China. The series of high resolution pictures of me throughout the streets, hotels, places I was during my time there - these all appeared on the screens used by the guards as I was being scanned to leave the country. So yes, I have been to China, I can place China on a map, and it is the most terrifying reincarnation of Nazi Germany - being defended by people who will say "we didn't know any better" after the concentration camps are freed.
  - severino 5y ago
    > So yes, I have been to China, I can place China on a map, and it is the most terrifying reincarnation of Nazi Germany - being defended by people who will say "we didn't know any better" after the concentration camps are freed. Oh, good to know that. I didn't know prisoners could left Nazi Germany just like that, only getting a scan. I had a completely different idea of that regime.
    - throw10920 5y ago
      > I didn't know prisoners could left Nazi Germany just like that, only getting a scan. The prisoners in the Xinjiang labor camps sure can't leave. You're making a false comparison, intentionally or not.

mgsk 5y ago

> Not because I'm being paid by the CCP But you _are_ being paid by the CCP?

tombh 5y ago
Doxxing myself, check my comment history and website https://tombh.co.uk https://tombh.co.uk
- throw10920 5y ago
  I would humbly suggest that you don't post personal information just because someone on the internet is making a comment in extremely poor form - you don't have anything to prove to them. Flag their comment (it's a pretty egregious violation of the HN guidelines) and attend to the people who are making good points. HN may be one of the best places for discussion on the internet, with some of the best moderators, but even here, you get people who aren't interested in having civil discussions.

rndgermandude 5y ago

Not being OK with the myriad of human rights abuses the Chinese government commits - sometimes "silently" and sometimes very opening and outright proudly - is just because I struggle with my own regions history? What the actual fuck... I have to call your "theory" what it is: stupid and dangerous - and whataboutism on top.

tombh 5y ago
To give a metaphor, I think it is perfectly reasonable to criticise my project lead when she criticises me for not meeting my targets but turns up hungover and spends the whole day on Facebook. I am criticising her because I want her to be effective at her job. Not because I disagree with her about our team's laziness.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  We are not equating missed targets with atrocity... A terrorist attack does not miss the target of benevolence. It is something that should never, ever happen but this planet is such a soul-crushing clusterfuck that it is like water under a bridge. Human life has value. It's not effective value or an estimate of value. It is absolute.
  - tombh 5y ago
    My metaphor is not to pointing to project management as an analogy, it's pointing to how criticism of one side does not automatically mean support for the other side. Unless I've misunderstood your point?
    - ganzuul 5y ago
      I'm suggesting that we do comparison with things conductive to the act of comparison. With the atrocities we are discussing there is nothing to be gained from comparison because things are already maximum bad: The numbers just vary. Comparison can take away the weight of that, which in our fuzzy wetware translates to dissipating motivating energy that could have gone into action. I do agree with your point and I am not a believer in the law of the excluded middle.

robbedpeter 5y ago

Neville Chamberlain had similar thoughts about Germany. Perhaps when dictators start doing things like rounding up undesirables into camps and pushing ideological uniformity at the point of a gun the reasonable response is to condemn the behavior? It doesn't matter who's wearing the jackboots, it's despicable to appease, condone, or enable the ones stepping on the throats of human beings.

tombh 5y ago
In Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust[1] it is argued that the Holocaust was not merely a tragic aberration of the ideals of modern Western civilisation but rather a logical realisation of it. Hitler himself, in both Mein Kampf, and Zweites Buch, wrote of how he was inspired by British concentration camps in South Africa. Maybe I haven't studied history enough, but I simply do not understand how dismissing the terrors of WW2 as merely a German problem is not also appeasing, condoning and enabling the terrors of the British. The Holocaust lies at the feet of Europeans, not merely the Nazis. The problem isn't about who did what, the problem is the idea that horrors can only possibly happen outside the borders of the nation to which I belong.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  > The Holocaust lies at the feet of Europeans, not merely the Nazis. Why stop abstraction there? You should continue on with all humans, then all life... that would be logical; this isn't.
  - tombh 5y ago
    I'm British. I was specifically taught the gruesome details of the Holocaust in school. But I only learnt about the horrors of British colonialism much later in life, and through my own efforts. British genocides are conspicuous by their absence from both our education system and our political discourse.
    - ganzuul 5y ago
      I don't think this makes it truly an European issue... In general history as it is taught is almost a total loss for how biased it is, meaning that since we dropped the ball on writing it down we are doomed to repeat it until we do. So far we have only been playing at historical account, because the truth undermines national borders. But this is a global issue.

LAC-Tech 5y ago

unprecedented? The PRC is still pursuing Imperial Qing claims to this day.

xinniethepooh 5y ago

It's curious that you say 'historically unprecedented imperial past' - imperialism typically has to do with having a ruler, and exerting diplomatic or military force to influence other nations. Why do you say this is historically unprecedented? China has been imperialist since its beginning, and continues its imperialism with Hong Kong, South china sea, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Myanmar ... What 'historically unprecedented imperial past' are you referring to that isn't preceded by China's?

dragonwriter 5y ago
> imperialism typically has to do with having a ruler No, it doesn't, unless by “ruler” you mean the metropolitan state.
tombh 5y ago
Just one example: the entirety of the American continents are culturally European. Imagine if North America was North Chinese speaking Mandarin and South America was South Chinese speaking Cantonese. Not to mention the entire concept of a nation state is a European invention. That Europe drew the borders in Africa, the Middle East, India. Then there's Australia and New Zealand. It's unprecedented. Yes China have/are imperial to an extent, but it seems like apples and oranges to me. BTW, not to dismiss the other countries from your list, but you should really understand the history of Hong Kong, specifically the Opium Wars. The British took it when the Chinese refused to continue buying their opium.