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I'm Chinese. I'm not commenting on Russia but please keep China out of "trivially easy to prove that the West is better for its own citizens". Chinese citizen h

I'm Chinese. I'm not commenting on Russia but please keep China out of "trivially easy to prove that the West is better for its own citizens". Chinese citizen have been found to be far more satisfied with their government and their future prospects than for example the US. This "propaganda"-sounding fact is even something found by western institutions such as Harvard, York University and Democracy Perception Index! Even here in the Netherlands, Chinese diaspora that I know and that have come here in the past 10-15 years are very positive about China. In China, police don't wear guns, and women can safely walk on the streets during the night — something which you can't say about many western countries. Of course China still has many of its own problems. But the cartoonish notion that it's some sort of totalitarian police state dictatorship where everybody wants to flee from is propaganda. China and the west both have their own problems and their own strong points.

dustedcodes 4y ago
Exactly. I am a White European male who grew up in Europe, but I was lucky to travel to many countries across the world and I spent many months in China because I found it very interesting to experience this country myself and make my own opinion and I couldn't agree with you more. Honestly, of course China has many problems, and in many ways China will always have very unique problems which no other country will ever have - which comes as a result of having to find solutions to the world's largest population which nobody else has to deal with - but overall I found Chinese people to have an extraordinary nice life. I visited big multi million cities, way off the tourist route and also small villages and people seemed to live very happy and community driven harmonious lives. I entered the country with a lot of bias and left completely shocked. It definitely opened my eyes and has made me look at many things from a very different perspective today. EDIT: Again, I'm not ignorant to the problems in China, but I don't need to list the because our main stream media makes sure that every person in the West knows about every little problem China has. So instead I focus on highlighting some of the many positives which I've seen and experienced as well, because for some reason the people in the West are (deliberately) not being told about those.
- travem 4y ago
  > which comes as a result of having to find solutions to the world's largest population which nobody else has to deal with The population of China was about 1.412 billion, quite similar to the population of India at 1.408 billion so not really an accurate statement that nobody else has issues of population scale to deal with.
orbital223 4y ago
> keep China out of "trivially easy to prove that the West is better for its own citizens" China has concentration camps.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  That is propaganda: - De Standaard (Belgium newspaper): "Are Uyghur detention camps really 'concentration camps?'" — https://m.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20210210_98292303 https://m.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20210210_98292303 - Italian research paper: https://eurispes.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/rapporto.en-xinjiang_2021.pdf https://eurispes.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/rapporto.en-x... - A legal analysis of ASPI's, Amnesty International's and Uyghur Tribunal's allegations: https://www.cowestpro.co/papers.html https://www.cowestpro.co/papers.html China has prisons (for convicted criminals/terrorists) as well as compulsary rehabilitation and vocational training camps to combat terrorism. Western media puts both of them in the same bucket and calls them "concentration camps". A heavy-handed, quite possibly overload broad, anti-terrorism response where there are two different kinds of facilities is not at all the same as "putting innocent people in concentration camps for no reason" and certainly not "they're only doing it to ethnically cleanse". A heavy-handed anti-terrorism response deserves criticism, but is not at all the same as "genocide". The fact that media does so anyway is disingenuous. Besides, most of the compulsory rehabilitation/training facilities have already been dismantled a couple of years ago when they concluded that the terrorism threat is gone. See this very biased AP article where they try to make you feel like something sinister is going on, but when you read the content then they essentially admit that many security measures are already gone: https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9 https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-ch... Earlier in this thread it is said that China uniquely deserves punishment for its actions in Xinjiang, implying that India doesn't have any problems with minority group abuse, but you really should read into Kashmir and why nobody makes a fuss about that. Even if China's Xinjiang response deserves legit criticism, the fact that Kashmir is given a free pass means that western governments, media and public don't really care about Xinjiang human rights, but merely use Xinjiang as a club to beat China. Not to mention that e.g. France also has an anti-terrorism response on which the Xinjiang response is partially inspired, but nobody talks about that as being some sort of mortal sin. This sort of double standards is a huge abuse of the concept of "human rights". Look, I support genuine efforts to help China improve in the area of human rights. But current efforts are not genuine, they're just geopolitical attacks hidden behind the guise of human rights, and the public even can't see through this bullshit even though it's apparent if you research things up close, so I do not support them.
oblio 4y ago
> Chinese citizen have been found to be far more satisfied with their government and their future prospects than for example the US. How could you possibly know this? I'm from an Eastern European country that was under dictatorship (partially inspired by North Korea and PRC). There's a deep culture of duplicity in such authoritarian regimes. You'd be a fool to say stuff that puts a bullseye on your head. Saying that stuff is not working correctly and the future isn't bright is an implicit criticism of the authorities and I'm sure the very politically astute and smart Chinese citizens are super aware of this.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  > How could you possibly know this? Research by Harvard, York University, Democracy Perception Index, more. Or you could... go visit China, talk to Chinese people. The majority of them support the government. And I haven't even brought up my own friends and family as anecdotal evidence. But let me turn this around. If you're so convinced that all satisfaction is fake and a result of coercion, then how do you possibly prove that western European countries are not dictatorships? You could always argue that elections are fake, and that all their citizen who says that their country is a democracy only say so under coercion. One can always rationalize this to the point where the notion becomes unfalsifiable. You should check out the talks of Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat. He has seen the Soviet Union, he has seen what a dictatorship looks like, and what's going on in China looks nothing like that. The past 40 years, the freedom of the Chinese people have exploded. 40 years ago you couldn't choose what clothes to wear, what to study, where to live, where to work. All of that has changed. Millions of Chinese travel abroad every year, and they all return to China. Why would they do that if China is such a miserable place? Why would a "dictatorship" allow its citizen to travel abroad where they are exposed to democracy? The answer is twofold: China isn't a dictatorship, and you can't reason about all countries using this dictatorship-vs-democracy dichotomy. These are the best 30 years out of 3000 years for Chinese people, Chinese people have been freer than they have ever been in Chinese history. Western analysis projects a Stalinist communism dictatorship on China but this projection is wrong and doesn't fit. China has authoritarian elements, yes, but it is still very far removed from the typical dictatorship that people imagine. Case in point: the recent Covid protests. Western media has been writing for several years now about how "all-powerful dictator-for-life Xi Jingping" made up an anti-Covid apparatus merely for his own entertainment and to show off power and to control people. Then suddenly there were protests. Did they sent in the tanks? No, they... lifted the 0-covid measures! Seriously, does this sound like what a power-hungry dictator would do? Maybe, just maybe, everything you think you know about China is wrong, and all the shallow China analyses you have read in the news are all wrong. In this "dictatorship" there are 15000 (!) protests a year, and often the protesters get what they want.
vain 4y ago
@FooBarWidget, I take it you're not uighur?
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  I'm not, but I'm in contact with a Uyhur as well as a non-Uyghur Xinjiang resident, and I've researched this topic for a long time. See also my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789836 TLDR: heavy-handed anti-terrorism response, even if it deserves criticism, is not at all the same as "millions in concentration camps", "forced labor" or even "genocide". Many allegations you read in the media are grave distortions of reality for the purpose of geopolitical attacks and fostering consent for a war against China.
  - vain 4y ago
    Modi apologists seem to make similar attacks on the media and the west. They claim that the media is biased and out to get him, any criticism of him is anti-national and so on. You're claiming that the Uighur women that got forcibly sterilized are terrorists? Modi similarly uses the terrorism bogeyman to suppress criticism. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/10/how-terrorism-law-india-used-to-silence-modis-critics https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/10/how-terrorism-...) And why isn't it easy for western journalists to report from Xinjiang, if it is as you describe it, a benign situation?
    - FooBarWidget 4y ago
      No that isn't what I said at all. I never said that Xinjiang is a "benign" situation, I said that Xinjiang's reality is very different from media reporting. Big difference. It's entirely possible for reality to be not benign, but also very far removed from the hellhole that's painted by media. Reality can be complex. And no, I'm not claiming that Uyghur women who got sterilized are terrorists. I'm claiming that the entire story of there being widespread, systematic, forced sterilization for the purpose of genociding a people, is a false. The source for the forced sterilization claim is Adrien Zenz, who in his "research paper" said that IUD usage in Xinjing accounted for 80% of the country. But when you go to his cited source for that 80% figure, you see that the source actually said 8%. Then when some people made a fuss about that, he... wait for it... changed the 80% into 8% but did not change the paper's conclusion, and tried covering up the fact that he changed the paper at all! Meanwhile, no media is interested in reporting this. "Modi apologists" have got absolutely nothing with me, but by citing them you're making the claim that everybody who claims that the media is biased is nuts. Then pray tell, what do you call media who looks the other way while a "researcher" fudges his numbers like that? What part of me pointing out shoddy research is "nationalism"? I dare you to read Adrien Zenz's paper and tell me that it's reliable.

dustedcodes 4y ago

Exactly. I am a White European male who grew up in Europe, but I was lucky to travel to many countries across the world and I spent many months in China because I found it very interesting to experience this country myself and make my own opinion and I couldn't agree with you more. Honestly, of course China has many problems, and in many ways China will always have very unique problems which no other country will ever have - which comes as a result of having to find solutions to the world's largest population which nobody else has to deal with - but overall I found Chinese people to have an extraordinary nice life. I visited big multi million cities, way off the tourist route and also small villages and people seemed to live very happy and community driven harmonious lives. I entered the country with a lot of bias and left completely shocked. It definitely opened my eyes and has made me look at many things from a very different perspective today. EDIT: Again, I'm not ignorant to the problems in China, but I don't need to list the because our main stream media makes sure that every person in the West knows about every little problem China has. So instead I focus on highlighting some of the many positives which I've seen and experienced as well, because for some reason the people in the West are (deliberately) not being told about those.

travem 4y ago
> which comes as a result of having to find solutions to the world's largest population which nobody else has to deal with The population of China was about 1.412 billion, quite similar to the population of India at 1.408 billion so not really an accurate statement that nobody else has issues of population scale to deal with.

orbital223 4y ago

> keep China out of "trivially easy to prove that the West is better for its own citizens" China has concentration camps.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
That is propaganda: - De Standaard (Belgium newspaper): "Are Uyghur detention camps really 'concentration camps?'" — https://m.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20210210_98292303 https://m.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20210210_98292303 - Italian research paper: https://eurispes.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/rapporto.en-xinjiang_2021.pdf https://eurispes.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/rapporto.en-x... - A legal analysis of ASPI's, Amnesty International's and Uyghur Tribunal's allegations: https://www.cowestpro.co/papers.html https://www.cowestpro.co/papers.html China has prisons (for convicted criminals/terrorists) as well as compulsary rehabilitation and vocational training camps to combat terrorism. Western media puts both of them in the same bucket and calls them "concentration camps". A heavy-handed, quite possibly overload broad, anti-terrorism response where there are two different kinds of facilities is not at all the same as "putting innocent people in concentration camps for no reason" and certainly not "they're only doing it to ethnically cleanse". A heavy-handed anti-terrorism response deserves criticism, but is not at all the same as "genocide". The fact that media does so anyway is disingenuous. Besides, most of the compulsory rehabilitation/training facilities have already been dismantled a couple of years ago when they concluded that the terrorism threat is gone. See this very biased AP article where they try to make you feel like something sinister is going on, but when you read the content then they essentially admit that many security measures are already gone: https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9 https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-ch... Earlier in this thread it is said that China uniquely deserves punishment for its actions in Xinjiang, implying that India doesn't have any problems with minority group abuse, but you really should read into Kashmir and why nobody makes a fuss about that. Even if China's Xinjiang response deserves legit criticism, the fact that Kashmir is given a free pass means that western governments, media and public don't really care about Xinjiang human rights, but merely use Xinjiang as a club to beat China. Not to mention that e.g. France also has an anti-terrorism response on which the Xinjiang response is partially inspired, but nobody talks about that as being some sort of mortal sin. This sort of double standards is a huge abuse of the concept of "human rights". Look, I support genuine efforts to help China improve in the area of human rights. But current efforts are not genuine, they're just geopolitical attacks hidden behind the guise of human rights, and the public even can't see through this bullshit even though it's apparent if you research things up close, so I do not support them.

oblio 4y ago

> Chinese citizen have been found to be far more satisfied with their government and their future prospects than for example the US. How could you possibly know this? I'm from an Eastern European country that was under dictatorship (partially inspired by North Korea and PRC). There's a deep culture of duplicity in such authoritarian regimes. You'd be a fool to say stuff that puts a bullseye on your head. Saying that stuff is not working correctly and the future isn't bright is an implicit criticism of the authorities and I'm sure the very politically astute and smart Chinese citizens are super aware of this.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
> How could you possibly know this? Research by Harvard, York University, Democracy Perception Index, more. Or you could... go visit China, talk to Chinese people. The majority of them support the government. And I haven't even brought up my own friends and family as anecdotal evidence. But let me turn this around. If you're so convinced that all satisfaction is fake and a result of coercion, then how do you possibly prove that western European countries are not dictatorships? You could always argue that elections are fake, and that all their citizen who says that their country is a democracy only say so under coercion. One can always rationalize this to the point where the notion becomes unfalsifiable. You should check out the talks of Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat. He has seen the Soviet Union, he has seen what a dictatorship looks like, and what's going on in China looks nothing like that. The past 40 years, the freedom of the Chinese people have exploded. 40 years ago you couldn't choose what clothes to wear, what to study, where to live, where to work. All of that has changed. Millions of Chinese travel abroad every year, and they all return to China. Why would they do that if China is such a miserable place? Why would a "dictatorship" allow its citizen to travel abroad where they are exposed to democracy? The answer is twofold: China isn't a dictatorship, and you can't reason about all countries using this dictatorship-vs-democracy dichotomy. These are the best 30 years out of 3000 years for Chinese people, Chinese people have been freer than they have ever been in Chinese history. Western analysis projects a Stalinist communism dictatorship on China but this projection is wrong and doesn't fit. China has authoritarian elements, yes, but it is still very far removed from the typical dictatorship that people imagine. Case in point: the recent Covid protests. Western media has been writing for several years now about how "all-powerful dictator-for-life Xi Jingping" made up an anti-Covid apparatus merely for his own entertainment and to show off power and to control people. Then suddenly there were protests. Did they sent in the tanks? No, they... lifted the 0-covid measures! Seriously, does this sound like what a power-hungry dictator would do? Maybe, just maybe, everything you think you know about China is wrong, and all the shallow China analyses you have read in the news are all wrong. In this "dictatorship" there are 15000 (!) protests a year, and often the protesters get what they want.

vain 4y ago

@FooBarWidget, I take it you're not uighur?

FooBarWidget 4y ago
I'm not, but I'm in contact with a Uyhur as well as a non-Uyghur Xinjiang resident, and I've researched this topic for a long time. See also my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789836 TLDR: heavy-handed anti-terrorism response, even if it deserves criticism, is not at all the same as "millions in concentration camps", "forced labor" or even "genocide". Many allegations you read in the media are grave distortions of reality for the purpose of geopolitical attacks and fostering consent for a war against China.
- vain 4y ago
  Modi apologists seem to make similar attacks on the media and the west. They claim that the media is biased and out to get him, any criticism of him is anti-national and so on. You're claiming that the Uighur women that got forcibly sterilized are terrorists? Modi similarly uses the terrorism bogeyman to suppress criticism. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/10/how-terrorism-law-india-used-to-silence-modis-critics https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/10/how-terrorism-...) And why isn't it easy for western journalists to report from Xinjiang, if it is as you describe it, a benign situation?
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    No that isn't what I said at all. I never said that Xinjiang is a "benign" situation, I said that Xinjiang's reality is very different from media reporting. Big difference. It's entirely possible for reality to be not benign, but also very far removed from the hellhole that's painted by media. Reality can be complex. And no, I'm not claiming that Uyghur women who got sterilized are terrorists. I'm claiming that the entire story of there being widespread, systematic, forced sterilization for the purpose of genociding a people, is a false. The source for the forced sterilization claim is Adrien Zenz, who in his "research paper" said that IUD usage in Xinjing accounted for 80% of the country. But when you go to his cited source for that 80% figure, you see that the source actually said 8%. Then when some people made a fuss about that, he... wait for it... changed the 80% into 8% but did not change the paper's conclusion, and tried covering up the fact that he changed the paper at all! Meanwhile, no media is interested in reporting this. "Modi apologists" have got absolutely nothing with me, but by citing them you're making the claim that everybody who claims that the media is biased is nuts. Then pray tell, what do you call media who looks the other way while a "researcher" fudges his numbers like that? What part of me pointing out shoddy research is "nationalism"? I dare you to read Adrien Zenz's paper and tell me that it's reliable.