Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/05/the-chinese-version-of-23andme.html
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Unlike 23andMe, 23Mofang estimated life expectancy and assessed mental illness
I’m sure they’ll be using it to assess propensity toward this “mental illness” very soon (just in case they can’t get you for being too Uighur).
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This surprising result just in from 23Mofang - every single political dissident in China is 100% Uighur. Even more surprising, the pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong are 300% Uighur.
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Ah yes. A test to determine how ethnically cleanseable you are.
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“Thank you for your application. Please come to collect your results at the facility.”
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I know the American century was weird as hell in a lot of ways for the rest of the world, but holy shit the coming Chinese century is going to be fucking bonkers. Cutting-edge super-computers and DNA tests telling you what your chances of ending up in a re-education camp are!
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Keep in mind that a bunch of the bloodiest wars in history have been Chinese civil wars. China may seem an authoritarian dystopia today, but it may not take much for it to fall apart into an anarchistic dystopia instead.
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Right? That was my exact thought.
Especially since most of their civil strife was/is due to their ruling class forgetting exactly how ridiculously outnumbered they are by the peasants ^^’ .
On a serious note, the Chinese state isn’t going to be very worried about Chinese people who have x per cent Uighur ancestry but do not have Uighur names, do not speak the Uighur language, do not self-identify as Uighur and were not brought up as Muslims.
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Eugenics. There’s an app for that now.
I don’t think the rational irrationality of the Chinese state is that rational.
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The important thing to remember is that the Chinese government gives absolutely zero fucks what you think about them.
Uighur ethnic cleansing? Chinese government gives absolutely zero fucks what you think about it.
Hong Kong repression? Chinese government gives absolutely zero fucks what you think about it.
Tibetan repression? Chinese government gives absolutely zero fucks what you think about it.
Slave labor? Chinese government gives absolutely zero fucks what you think about it.
Burning more coal every year? Chinese government gives absolutely zero fucks what you think about it.
Fill in the blanks.
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As with all authoritarian regimes, the only thing they can’t countenance is being mocked.
Xi’s DNA test might reveal some ursine alleles.
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I just wonder about this supposition. How possible is it that China could eat itself from the inside? They probably look at the USA seething in tribalism and think we are about to break into civil war, ourselves. I’m not sure that China is barely under control. When I was there it was way more regimented than the USA. I highly doubt it is on the edge of civil war or mass unrest.
China has had a phenomenal economic growth and people have seen their standard rise year after year. Under those conditions it is easy for any government to get public support. The real test for how stable China is will be when they hit a a recession.
Next month will come the week that hundreds of millions of working-class urban Chinese workers return home to the village to visit the family, dispense gifts and cash, and catch up on the gossip…and the local truths. This information exchange can’t be monitored nor stopped by the Party. This will include many from Hong Kong’s working-class and burgeoning middle-class…both witnesses and participants. Fathers and sons, daughters, nephews and nieces, treasured grandchildren with first-hand accounts uncensored by any Party apparatchik or security functionary. And after they leave the gossip will further spread through village circles.
The Mandate of Heaven can be lost in an afternoon. All the West’s intelligence agencies thought that the Warsaw Pact could not collapse from within. Until it did.
The Berlin Wall fell overnight due to an East German Border Guards lieutenant colonel making a decision in a moment of bureaucratic confusion by his superiors. Not some grand plot or diplomatic legerdemain. It took months for the cracks to start showing, but… It might take a year, it might take ten or more, but there will be talk…and consequences. " Comrade, you look tired. These officers will escort you to your villa for some rest…and see you are not disturbed ", …and a hinge of history swings open or closed.
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I have a feeling that you might be overestimating the number of recent immigrants from mainland China. In any case, people in China have already been told what is happening in Hong Kong: chaos and terror perpetrated by spoiled, naive youth who have been exploited by foreign powers and are ungrateful for everything that the Party has done for them.
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One can hope.
