Is NOT the solution.
13 Likes
It would have had to be extremely strong, and very long-lasting. And it would only have delayed it. But yeah, after doing sod all about Tibet, the rest of the world can go whistle as far as China is concerned - they got their ‘green light’ from the west a very long time ago.
4 Likes
Yeah I know you’re right - exasperation I guess. But how else do we fix? Let it play out, then it becomes a memory, then the latest leader is contrite and we talk about forgiveness, reconciliation and so on? China can do this NOW because of the west’s unlimited thirst for cheap toilets and other bits & bobs.
2 Likes
Given the other post today here on BB regarding China…
3 Likes
waking up every day to new levels of evil like this has left my mind a shattered husk of what it was when I was a child.
At times just comprehending what I read about humanity’s inhumanity on this scale makes me want to black out in rage and fall to the floor with an aneurism to make me stop learning more of this so called reality.
I really hope a meteor resets civilization.
2 Likes
Can we maybe nuance a little and distinguish between the Chinese people and the Chinese government you know, gonna say it, like how someone can dislike religion but like the religious people themselves, or as, i guess, someone once put it, love the sinner hate the sin…
full disclosure you could say i’m biased since my wife moved to the US from China 6 years ago for university, but c’mon(?)
also uh, this is a bunch of crap, Chinese gov’t, don’t like it.
To assert that there is a difference tends to attract Chinese agitprop of a different sort.
1 Like
Not 100% on this, but I think perhaps the point that person was trying to make was not that China shouldn’t do this (they shouldn’t) but that this is yet another reason the US shouldn’t do stuff like this. Because when your government pulls crap, other governments won’t take your government as seriously when it tells them not to (see my profile icon.)
If they were trying to make the point that China can do it because we in the US did, well yeah that’s the whole “two wrongs don’t make a right” thing we all learned in elementary school.
BTW, I’ve found an interesting way to figure out if someone’s a mouthpiece for the Chinese Gov’t, simply ask them to name one mistake their current government has made. I had a live chat with one recently and they literally claimed their leaders never make a mistake, which is of course impossible. “You can’t blame someone for never making a mistake” (their words.) Just to show I pass my own test, this is wrong right here, and also the person I was chatting with got a little tongue tied when I asked how they rationalize disappearing people and making them say they were wrong on national TV (goodness hope that never happens to me knock on wood. In preparation, if I ever say the Chinese gov’t doesn’t make mistakes, it’s cuz they got me just so u all know ahead of time.)
May I also suggest, and I know this is an extremely unpopular opinion, and that people will suggest that I’m telling other people to let the gov’t off easy, that who am I to tell people what methods they should and shouldn’t use, that I’m secretly trying to make lives easier for the powerful by telling people not to fight back, but, I’m just gonna say it anyway because I don’t know why, if violence from the West can’t solve issues in China, as some have said, is (in tiny tiny print) active nonviolent resistance mayhaps an idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolence:_The_History_of_a_Dangerous_Idea
1 Like
Nah, man. That’ll just get you gigadeaths followed by a slow climb back to right where we are now.
The only way out is through.
5 Likes
One of the problems is that far too much authority is abdicated to the American President, and not to other organs of the state with a potentially more democratic character.
To take an especially blatant example, consider the isssue of Donald Trump’s Ukrainian policy. William Barr would have you believe that because Trump was elected to represent all Americans, his flexibility to exploit the foreign policy apparatus to achieve personal or partisan political goals should not be questioned. I find it difficult to believe that voters made an informed political choice that this should be the case.
I suppose that one can thoroughly rationalize this abdication of authority by observing that certain people in the government inform their decisions based on information that the hoi-poloi can never and will never have access to.
In 1979, the Progressive justified it’s decision to publish “The H-Bomb Secret” on the basis that knowing more about hoiw thhe bomb work would better inform far reaching public policy decisions. If, for instance, the manufacture of a new type of weapon would increase shipments of enriched plutonium by rail, that has all sorts of implications on health policy, on transportaion policy, and so on.
The other problem is inertia-- the washington post published an article with a notorious disclaimer.
This article informs us that
Half of all Americans have a family member either currently or formerly incarcerated
making the disclaimer less a “badge of shame”, and a declaration that the reporter is essentially “normal.”
The penal system in this country is something far more amenable to democratic debate. But I can’t help feeling that it it too is the product not of a choice made by us, but as the accretion of many choices, some made by us, and some made for us. And with some luck, and perseverance, perhaps we will choose to end it.
On the other hand, the US media have reported extensively on human rights crisis that is immigration policy, and, yet there are still millions of voters who would choose to channel their inner nazis.
I more and more get the sense that China is run like a giant company where the bottom line is more power/wealth instead of the welfare of all its people.
Come to think of it, most western democracies are heading this way for quite a few years now as well.
1 Like
Seeing as you took the trouble to reply to me specifically rather than make a general point of your own, I must point out that I said ‘fuck China’ (the state) not ‘fuck the Chinese’ (the people). That obvious difference means I already DID ‘nuance’ (not a verb) perfectly well.
Here is your answer about China and organ harvesting. They never stopped doing it, just change the word “harvesting” by “donation”
2 Likes
I don’t believe the person I was engaging with yesterday was apologizing for the ethnic cleaning in China at all.
I think it goes a little further than that. They seemed to have an issue with the hypocrisy of the US government, which I totally agree with, but also implied that therefore the US shouldn’t do anything about it, which I don’t agree, though a unilateral response would be a mistake. Sadly, for now it’s all fairly moot since the current US administration is openly hostile to human rights, supportive of autocrats and unwilling to cooperate with the international community on multilateral responses.
That’s an entirely valid point and again, one I agree with.
American military interventionism should be opposed at every turn. Boycott, divesting and sanctions of other countries that commit human rights abuses however is still the right thing to do. If party A commits human rights abuses, that’s not any kind of argument for party A not helping party B also commit human rights abuses. And if you’re wondering, yes, I think other countries would be entirely justified in BDS against the US for its crimes against migrants and refugees.
As for fighting back, absolutely. Everyone deserves to be able to fight their oppressors. War with China OTOH wouldn’t help anyone and it would quite possibly be the final nail in humanity’s coffin given that we’re pretty on the ropes already.
TL;DR - I agree with most of what @Bernel was saying. I disagree only on that one important point.
2 Likes
I think it is more that USA can’t do anything about it. Sanctions will only be seen as part of the ongoing trade war, a way to push down a rising power, rather than any humanitarian concern given the blatant hypocricy involved. If anything it will make China more stubborn to show it won’t back down for foreign threats.
And then you sanction Russia for the invasion of Crimea, Israel for its treatment of Palestinians, Morocco for the occupation of West Sahara, India and Myanmar for treatment of their Muslims and so on. The world sucks, and in the end everyone can’t put sanctions on everyone else.
1 Like
The international community absolutely could reliably sanction countries for human rights violations. They just refuse to most of the time.
I constantly dream of a Chinese Democratic revolution where the first statement from the victorious rebels is “Fuck you, white people, make your own cat toys and shit.”
China suffers because we’re cheap. That’s it. And we allow corporations to outsource manufacturing there.
If you put a tarrif on all Chinese goods that raised the price as if it was made in America, by Americans, that’s a start. Also no longer letting them buy American debt (and paying off the debt we sold them) as well. Finally, Don’t buy anything Chinese, if you can; no, you won’t change much, but you can tell yourself you’re not playing along.
Because, of course, it would be.
Another important factor to keep in mind when evaluating Western responses to the Uyghur situation:
-
China’s primary strategic vulnerability is that it is a net energy importer.
-
Xinjiang contains 25% of China’s oil and gas reserves.
Is there much to object to in China’s treatment of their Uyghur population? Yes.
Do Pompeo et al actually give a fuck about the Uyghurs? Of course not. They’re just leverage in the Great Game.
I thought of the idea of a human-life tax much like a carbon tax. If you want to import goods from a country where the statistical value of human life is less than the statistical value of life in this country, then you have to pay a tax based on the number of human work-lives that went into making that product to make up the difference. No more discounts based on the dead bodies of foreigners!
1 Like
I’d love to see an exploitation-and-misery tax added to goods and services.
