Why does the west continue to tolerate China as a trading partner?
China is pretty obviously building their empire. They, as a government, appear to have almost no regard whatsoever for human life. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard whatsoever for national sovereignty. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard for the environment.
It just seems completely inevitable to me that China eventually wants to conquer the world. Why is the west enriching them, and by proxy funding their research into war machines when it seems obvious that these things will eventually be used against us?
These acts are atrocities, no doubt. But these atrocities aren't being committed by some dictator in some small, isolated country. These atrocities are being committed by a regime that has all but said that it intends to conquer the rest of the planet and export these atrocities as the standard operating procedure for the entire planet, and which very probably WILL DO THIS if something doesn't occur to change the course.
People are upset about the "trade war" we are currently in, or about to be in, or were in, or whatever the pundit of the hour says. I can't say I agree that restricting trade with China, and encouraging the infrastructure being built there to be built in the US, or at the very least in a country that respects human rights instead, is a bad thing.
We fund them because it helps the people in charge get rich off the backs of cheap Chinese labor.
We (the U.S) tolerate their disrespect for human rights because we also do not respect human rights, as demonstrated by our relationship with Saudi Arabia, our many horrible wars, etc. We also do not respect national sovereignty, as demonstrated by our covert wars in South America, our firebombing of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and our occupation of the Middle East.
We do business with them because they are like us. Or at least, like our business people. They want to grow their power as our businesses do. Not all business people are like this, but we allow the influential businesses to support these actions and we as a people do not stop it.
>We (the U.S) tolerate their disrespect for human rights because we also do not respect human rights
I'm sorry but this statement is just absolutely and completely ridiculous. I don't know if you've either never been to The United States, or you've never left The United States, but the difference between the respect that we have for human rights, and the respect that much of the rest of the world has, is stark.
It's not ridiculous. It merely conflates (as do most statements in this thread) two orthogonal aspects - how repressive a society happens to be internally and how much of a threat it poses abroad. Historically, there doesn't seem to be any perceptible correlation between those two factors.
The U.S. is indeed by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet in terms of the state repression imposed on the average citizen, certainly far better than China in this regard. At the same time, in foreign policy it behaves exactly the same way any other nation state does - pursuing its perceived interests without consideration for anything else other than objective constraints to its power. Since the U.S. is by far the most powerful nation state in the world, its list of foreign atrocities far exceeds that of anyone else since WW2. However, that's not any different from any other major power in world history and there's absolutely no reason to think China (or anyone else) would behave any better or worse given similar ability to pursue its interests unchecked.
The US has the biggest prison population in the world by a big margin, 655 per 100k people (El Salvador is in second place with 604/100k and China is at 118/100k). I'd call that state repression.
In other measures it does better, like the so-called democracy index, where it ranks #21 (flawed democracy), which is better than China at #139 (authoritarian). In the reporters without borders press freedom index it's at #45, with China at #176 (almost dead last, out of 180).
I would argue that state repression is not only about direct interaction with police and other agents of the government, and that economic inequality and poverty is less direct, but just as real, relevant and serious form of oppression. If you buy into that premise, then the recent UN report is pretty damning.
"About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty."
" Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations in among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world."
"For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best, but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship."
I'd say that compared to China it really is better, in most regards, but "by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet" is a stretch, to say the least.
Within the scope of my comment I was using a far narrower definition of internal repression than you are. That being said, I don't disagree with you to any significant degree, although I would not count obesity or tropical disease. The only aspect in which the U.S. is somewhat exceptional (in the good sense) still is its legal support for free speech, which is still arguably the best in the world.
I would also note that even including all of the damning things you list, the U.S. on average falls behind most rich democracies in the world, but is still far ahead of most other states, except in the incarceration rate [1]. Rich democracies are an outlier.
[1] I'm not sure that's quite true any more if you count in all the Chinese internment camps and other non-disclosed facilities - the U.S. never had secret prisons at scale, other states do.
Sure, rich democracies are outliers, but you did say "one of the freest societies on the planet", which I parsed as somewhat stronger than "one of the rich democracies" or "not third world".
I think you're wrong about the incarceration rate though, by a lot. China has an official prison pop. of about 1.5 million, to have a rate close to what the US does it'd need to have 7.5 million [1] people in the internment camps, which AFAICT is way higher than anyone estimates (I couldn't really find any good estimates, but for scale the total population of Uyghurs in China is 11 - 15 million)
I think it's fairly conservative to estimate the Chinese incarceration rate at twice their official number when you factor in not just the Uyghur internment camps (which account for up to a million people by some estimates, though the true number is probably smaller than that), but also other undeclared internment facilities, political prisoners and a fair number of people who tend to just disappear in corruption purges, etc. You're probably right in saying they haven't reached the U.S. rate quite yet, but they seem to be closing the gap with alarming alacrity.
Note, however, that none of those speculations is in any way meant to excuse the incarceration rate of the U.S., which is an exceptionally outrageous state of affairs. It also goes to show that using incarceration as a tool of social engineering is by no means the sole province of totalitarian systems of governance.
Even if you triple the official Chinese number that only gets you to about 54% of the US rate.
Your speculations about China sound about right to me, but as a European looking in from the outside, any time someone talks about how much freer Americans are it scares the shit out of me. The US might be the domestically freest of the global superpowers, but that doesn't mean it's any good, it just means the bar is set _really_ low.
As a fellow European, I think we'd do well to remember history - the previous global hegemon, the British Empire, was very similar in most regards. Arguably the domestically least repressive major society of its time - albeit also measured against a very low standard - and just as guilty of immense atrocities abroad. In terms of everyday security and freedom for the common citizen, smaller islands of civilization seem to do better on short timescales.
The US talks about respecting human rights, but has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians.
Individual Americans may respect human rights. Just like individual Chinese do as well. But when you challenge them as a nation, well, then the needs of the stong outweigh the needs of the weak.
> has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians
And how many Kurds were killed by Saddam Hussein? How many Shias? I think the Iraq war was a terrible mistake but that doesn't mean that supporting it means you don't care about Iraqis.
We need to grow out of this culture of attributing any value to “caring”. The fact that Americans “care” that 1 million Iraqis died is not only meaningless, but also facetious.
We elected a government and enabled a system that led to this. How can we judge China as worse? More importantly why do these judgements fundamentally even matter?
The real question Americans should ask themselves is : what is our vision for the future? How can we regain our glory?
Anything else assumes authority without investment. A strategy that is destined for failure.
Fine let’s leave Iraq to the side. We funded militants in Syria against Assad and sold weapons to Saudis against Yemen. We looked the other way as Pakistan genocidally raped Bangladesh in the war of independence. How about the United Fruit Company? School of the Americas? Wait how about this list:
>>The US talks about respecting human rights, but has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians.
So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? Let's tone it down, USA did not go there to kill a million people, it happened because of the war, and Saddam might have killed 2 mil if he was alive for Arab Spring. Not saying that Iraq war was justified but there's a huge difference.
> So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care?
Yes, even with the strawman wording you put forth, I suspect that > 50% would come down on the "don't care" side.
If you worded it in a way that was designed to tease out revealed preferences, like: "Have you considered the plight of Iraqis in the last year?" you would get even more dramatic results.
He got re-elected on a bigger margin, if just a few thousand people had said "this war is wrong and we shouldn't massacre Iraqis" he would have been voted out.
If they had issues bigger than killing hundreds of thousands of people then...
And I'm saying this as an Australian, we weren't much better.
Please don't post ideological or nationalistic flamebait to HN. It's not what this site is for, and this sort of outraged atrocity contest is just what we don't need—regardless of how valid your underlying points are.
Could we all just calm down a little bit with the rhetoric?
The United States has serious and growing problems around its global support for human rights. The domestic policies it exhibits mirror that; there are clearly long-term problems that are deeply worrying.
But support for human rights is not a binary state. The United States has the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, a functioning judicial system, and an army of human rights specialists who operate freely. It supports many of these initiatives in other countries, both as a society and a government. The fact that the country does many awful things does not mean that other countries should have a free pass to implement arbitrary policies free of criticism.
No country in the world has a perfect record of protecting human rights, but that should not prevent them calling for change elsewhere. I hope deeply that the US fixes its problems soon, but that does not stop me from being aware that organ harvesting and political assassinations are also bad.
On the scale of human rights, having your rights restricted in planning children (ie, restricting abortion) and having your organs removed are very far apart.
First, I think the US sterilized munorities was over 50 years ago [0]. Quite horrible, but not recent like the alleged harvesting. But even so, being sterilized is substantially better than being murdered for your organs.
The US has some sordid history, but not organ harvesting last week sordid.
The immigration separations are timely, but have some due process with an intention reuniting families (ie, the design is not to separate families more than necessary) and also better than being murdered.
> Having a policy of actively kidnapping children from immigrants and then selling them in auctions while dumping the parents on a different continent?
I'll bite, although I have a feeling I'm about to be screamed at for being an ignorant bigot for lacking this specific piece of knowledge: what on earth this comment referring to? The claim is that the present-day US is selling children in auctions who were taken from their parents by force? What?
OP might be referring to recent news about current administration separating children from illegal immigrants and having them (the children) defend themselves in immigration courts. Not sure about auction part.
Abortion is itself a breach of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including articles 3 (right to life), 6 (recognition as a person before the law), 7 (equality before the law).
USA has one of the highest incarceration rates due to the stupid war on drugs. It has enabled drug gangs - no less scary than ISIS yet ignored by our media and populace - to take over large swaths of central America. And so on.
All we care about is blocking refugees from getting in.
HOWEVER!!!! That is external.
Internally, the USA has some of the most respect for human rights and freedoms of any country.
This would never happen on any significant scale in the USA:
...except for those insane incarceration rates, which disproportionately target specific ethnicities. And then torture them with extended solitary confinement, or sometimes murder them. Internally.
It just seems completely inevitable to me that China eventually wants to conquer the world. Why is the west enriching them
Up to the 20th century, the west had a surefire meta-strategy for dealing with world-conquering former empires like China. You bring them into modern industrial economics while exporting western culture. The massive changes would destabilize the old regime and turn it into another trading partner.
In 2018, media and economics have changed to the point where everything's now mediated by computers and networks. Things have changed so much, all we can be sure of is that meta-strategy no longer works in quite the same way.
These atrocities are being committed by a regime that has all but said that it intends to conquer the rest of the planet and export these atrocities as the standard operating procedure for the entire planet
You can say this for just about everyone on the world stage. Spain, France, Britain, and the US have all taken their turns as the lead player on that stage, and the quoted sentence could be applied to them all, just with different levels of severity for the atrocities. The long arc of history is really just about asymptotically reducing the level of atrocities to zero. The question of Chinese ascendancy is just a matter of when and how large the local spike in atrocity might be.
(EDIT: To clarify, the local spike in atrocity for Britain and the US were smaller than what came before, and the affect of their hegemony has been net positive.)
> You can say this for just about everyone on the world stage. Spain, France, Britain...
True, but you could argue that these countries had excuses. At the time of the worst crimes (colonialism, slavery, etc) there were no examples of benign, free trading partners, abiding by international law - all this had to be designed, philosophized, created - and the modern western countries did all this because they saw how bad those atrocities were. I'm not saying all western countries are benevolent or don't commit atrocities now, but certainly most try to uphold international laws and human rights and their populations have a very big democratic voice that is constantly fighting towards these ends, despite what political leaders and power elites want.
Compare that to China, which is not even attempting to abide by any of these standards - despite the fact that these laws, ideas, and rules have been around and well established in the entire rest of the world for at least the past 50 years.
At some point, you'd think the west would wake up, China is super nationalistic, powerful and has no regard for human rights.
China is a major and valuable contributor to the global economy, and instrumental in providing the first world citizens with cheap consumer goods.
Voters value bread and circuses above ethics or human rights of faraway people. In a democratic country, if a politician would implement impactful policies aimed to improve human rights elsewhere at the cost of local economic harm and inflation hitting their workers, then that politician would get voted out of office and these policies reversed - so they don't do that.
If some politician genuinely desire to help human rights elsewhere, then they'd still not implement such overt policies (since they'd get reversed and help no one) but implement subtle diplomatic pressure.
The same logic, by the way, explains the current situation with climate change.
Other nation-states in the Asia Pacific would be perfectly willing to start taking our orders for commercial goods. No doubt the trade war with China has been, or will be, good for their industrial economies.
It is not ethics however that is driving a wedge between the United States and China. It is China's efforts to solidify its power over the Asian Pacific seas (in)conveniently named the China Sea and their trade routes, their One Road foreign policy efforts, and China's efforts to remain outside of the international order while also participating in it (e.g. IP theft, etc).
"Other nation-states in the Asia Pacific would be perfectly willing to start taking our orders for commercial goods."
They would if they could. Most other nations are nowhere near the level of sophistication of China on 'making stuff'. It's not just cheap labour, it's a myriad of other things related to it that China specializes in.
China is not trying to take over the world, they just want to be the 'superpower' in their sphere, and to be the centre of their Universe.
Which is fine in some ways, problematic in others.
Agreed. But I suspect that their sophistication is not so exclusive or far ahead that other countries could not move into their place over the course of a decade.
You need tons of people with tons of little bits of specialization, tons of factories run by experienced people, tons of workers for those factories willing to put up with rubbish, you need all the support: capitol, financial systems, export sophistication etc..
Surely, any group of people well enough organized could build maybe one such city of a few million people in ten years, but that's small.
In the meantime, in India, they can't get the electricity grid to work. Factories? No way.
Which is why we see a lot of software outsourcing in India, factories in China.
For assembling Nike shoes or something, other parts of Asia might already start to make sense. But for real manufacturing of most things ... it's China for the foreseeable future.
South Korea is a good example maybe of a country that was happy to become technologically advanced and wealthy without trying to dominate its neighbors, and who was willing to buy into international systems of rule and trade.
Almost any major Asian economy you can name, including SK relies on China for key parts of the supply chain or owns factories in China... Or does that not count as "doing business with China"?
Also...SK was for a long time a authoritarian American client state and being a neighbor of China and Japan was in no position to "dominate it's neighbours" even if it wanted to
It seems that an ever-increasing number of basic behavioral decisions facing western populations have large abstract consequences and can be described by the basic shape:
A) Option that marginally (and in some cases significantly) increases personal convenience while incrementally undermining the long-term probability of western moral aspirations maturing to their full promise and forming the basis of a more human-centric global future.
or
B) Option that rejects the temptation of new gadgetry / marginal personal convenience improvements but that withholds some small amount of fuel from the growing moral conflagration. This option is increasingly associated with social circle friction.
This is perfectly exemplified, on a much less serious level than human organ harvesting and trade policy, by the Chrome vs. FireFox situation, or by the choice to use FaceBook.
There needs to be a realization that the current version of extreme economic policies governing large multi-national corporations like Google, FaceBook, Exxon, etc., are diametrically opposed to western moral aspirations w.r.t human rights, and are in fact fueling the demise of said aspirations. These corporations are not "American" or "Chinese" or "Other Nationality" in any way that matters for actual human beings, but exist as increasingly-autonomous global entities that are radically reshaping the geopolitical landscape and diverting increasing amounts of power to actors that have an open disdain for the human condition. People who oppose the current trends of inequality growth, corruption normalization, environmental exploitation, human rights abuses, and other deleterious effects of extreme capitalism don't seem to have an option other than to reject the consumerist culture / mindset that it's all built upon.
Unfortunately (for our cognitive load and moral comfort) the situation is much more complex:
* It's hindsight to say China' embrace of authoritarianism, nationalism, and expansionism was inevitable. Even around ten years ago it was a much different place, with much more freedom of expression (you could find fascinating discussions of democracy by leading figures on Weibo, for example) [0] and a slow process of liberalization. And if it was an error of foresight at the time to assume that the then-current trend of liberalization would continue, it's an equal error to assume the trend of today will continue. By far the best outcome for the people of China, the region, and the world is for China to liberalize; a global contest would be very damaging and expensive; a war could destroy several civilizations, including the U.S. While it would be foolish to ignore current trends, it has proven equally foolish to accept them as an inevitable future and to let the bad guys dictate your values and the future.
* The people of China are not the government of China; it's difficult to oppose the latter without hurting the former. The people deserve freedom, human rights, food, shelter, and prosperity and the things that go with it. China's economic growth arguably has lifted more people from perilous levels of poverty than any event in human history, and they still have a ways to go. If the West didn't trade with China, that never would have happened.
* Of course, the West has profited immensely from China joining the global economy.
[0] China Digital Times (CDT) used to carry many of them, possibly still available in their history/archives. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/
> Even around ten years ago it was a much different place, with much more freedom of expression (you could find fascinating discussions of democracy by leading figures on Weibo, for example) [0] and a slow process of liberalization.
And ten years before that, it was using deadly military force to subdue similar democratic thoughts in Tiananmen Square.
The fear over Chinese taking over the world is overblown. They don’t have colonist tendencies, esp on non Asian people. Why would they want the burden of having to subjugate blacks, whites, and everyone else??
The fear of China is a reflection of white colonist mentality. When viewing the world they see it in terms of what they would do, not as what other cultures realistically would do.
"It just seems completely inevitable to me that China eventually wants to conquer the world. Why is the west enriching them, and by proxy funding their research into war machines when it seems obvious that these things will eventually be used against us?"
I think the threat angle is questionable, even if China perfects altering human genetics to create a superior breed of humans, the theory of mutually assured destruction + our arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear payloads + the concept of a deadman's switch is still pretty solid insurance against anything they can do on a macro level along with any other major world power like Russia.
Any war/history buffs out there care to chime in and change or reinforce my opinion on the topic with some concrete facts and data?
> even if China perfects altering human genetics to create a superior breed of humans, the theory of mutually assured destruction + our arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear payloads + the concept of a deadman's switch is still pretty solid insurance against anything they can do on a macro level and any other major world power like Russia.
Altering human genetics might lead to a creation of radiation-resistant human. If such mutation gets to a significant percentage of country population, such country might actually welcome an unfolding MAD scenario. (Subject to radiation-resistant food and energy supplies etc)
I think it is ultimately possible - elephants have large bodies but less cancer, cockroaches posses high resistance to radiation, etc. Would this be called "human" is another question...
This doesn't really matter since not only humans are affected. The most obvious example is the destruction of any semiconductors, which along with the destruction of the environment, will send the remaining humans into the bronze age at best.
It's the same reason why everyone wants everyone else to fix climate change: The negative effects from supporting China won't affect the people who actually make the decision to support China.
No, that's rank whataboutism, and all it does is serve to cut off discussion about important issues, even the ones you personally care about.
It's possible to oppose organ harvesting in China and actions by the US. But you have to do them independently (i.e. not whining about the US in a post about China) and specifically (i.e. "organ harvesting, here's the cite" vs. your rather generic complaint above).
It's not as atrocious as you think. The united states has its' own fair share of heinous crimes as well.
I feel a lot of people have this perception of China as a Technologically powerful North Korea... Nothing can be further from the truth.
China is like an asian tiger... Japan, Singapore or Taiwan.. or maybe not exactly an asian tiger, but somewhere in-between North Korea and an Asian Tiger but leaning much more closer to an Asian Tiger than it does its' historical regime based roots.
You guys need to visit China to get a more realistic perspective. I recommend Shenzhen.
No, but oddly, you can do almost anything else. Most activity in China does not feel as though it's too intruded upon by the gov.. If you don't run afoul of the party apparatus, it's not unlike many other places. I'm not justifying anything other than to say it's not a dystopia for most.
This is exactly what I'm saying. It's like when you walk into your work office. Not smart to talk shit about your job in the office. China is not America, but it's not dystopia either.
That's what classifying documents is for - to keep them secret. He didn't get in trouble for "denouncing the government", he got in trouble for publishing classified documents.
I agree with what Snowden did, and respect him for having the courage to do so, but I'm not sure if you're trying to demonise the US government or legitimise the Chinese one by claiming the prosecuting someone for publishing classified documents is equivalent to prosecuting someone for disagreeing with the ruling party.
When I was younger, maybe five years ago or so, I was living in Boston and I'd consistently see a pack of Chinese protestors outside the public library at Copley (very popular area) holding up signs, looking to gain attention for this very issue. They spoke to me as best as they could, handed me a pamphlet with hard-to-parse English but nonetheless gruesome descriptions, and asked for my signature along with any other help I could offer.
I was pretty skeptical that this story was as one-sided as they (along with any other protestor/activist) would represent it to be. I remember wondering what I was really signing a petition for, and hesitation in doing so.
This report fills me with regret for not feeling more empathy, as I must imagine they knew people or knew of people who this had happened to, in order to sit out there all day, so consistently. I haven't seen any of the protestors in years, despite their previous frequency-- I hope they're all well, as are their families.
Has anyone else seen this in other cities, or had other experiences with these folks in Boston?
I regularly go to a restaurant run by some Falun Gong refugees, and I've spent a fair bit of time, while waiting, perusing their pamphlets and books. To be honest, my feeling has been exactly the same as yours - while, from my very first interaction, I was aware that Falun Gong were persecuted in China, and while I don't really have a rosy picture of what that entails, their political writing and pampletting is just really awfully put together, especially for a western audience. They're full of gruesome paintings of torture that, you know, are paintings, so come across as melodramatic - even when you're pretty sure that torture is part and parcel of persecution, and you find it hard to imagine the chinese state _not_ torturing at least some Falun Gong. That's kind of what happens with all their material. You start looking at the people handing it out, and it's pretty obvious they've had a very hard time at the hands of the Chinese state, but then after reading it, you feel less convinced than if they'd handed you nothing at all.
I'm also always struck by the culture gap when Falun Gong tries to communicate to western audiences. The main slogan that I've seen on banners at their protests: "Falun Dafa Is Good".
This made me think of nothing so much as the "Log Song" from Ren and Stimpy:
In my city in NZ, they like to do their tai-chi looking stuff in a park beside the main avenue of travel from the airport, with big banners about the Falun Dafa and Friends Association, but most of the banners are filled with hanzi - which makes me wonder who they're preaching to - Kiwis, or Chinese migrants?
FLG runs a propaganda machine in English, you’d have to read their Chinese pamphlets to see the crazy stuff. If you do more research, it’s the scientology of China, not exactly the stuff of credibility. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falun_Gong
I lived down the road from the Chinese consulate in Houston, it being along my walk from home to the grocery story. I would see a decent-sized protest once or twice a month. One was always Tibet-related, the other would vary, but at recall least once seeing something along the lines of what you describe.
Had this experience while growing in NYC, near chinatown and the flushing area. It's not that I didn't believe them, I simply found their information to be ridiculous and theres no way the chinese government actually engages in that kind of behavior. Oh boy, was I wrong.
The behaviour of these guys you observed is already implying something: They are a little bit special. If you have a few Chinese friends, ask them if they know about "独运轮". Ask a few, preferablly with no strong political opinions. The guys you met belong to "轮", the last group of the 3.
Together with other 2 groups, "轮" unintentionally built support to current Chinese govenment among oversea Chinese especially young students. If you happened to have chance to meet many oversea Chinese, you can test if it's valid.
This sounds interesting, but doesn't help understand what you're trying to explain. At least not right now, at my computer. Are there any written explanations you could point us to?
edit: Google translates those three characters as "exclusive wheel"... the mystery continues
So basically, the major movements and organizations that the Chinese government opposes. China attempts to quell independence efforts in these three regions, puts down and censors information about democracy (see e.g. Tiananmen, 1989), and suppresses the Falun Gong cult/movement.
I can guarantee you many Chinese protestors you can see in US are protesting for political asylum. For them, protesting for is only a way to green card. Almost every Chinese Uber driver I met in SF are under political asylum
I recently read a non-fiction book, Patriot Number One about this. The main subject of the story pretty clearly deserved asylum but it goes into detail about how people who weren't really persecuted go about getting asylum as well. Really interesting story about small-town Chinese politics and different ways people immigrate.
That makes a lot of sense. I always wondered what they considered the point of it to be, given that China doesn't care much about the West's opinion of them anyway.
The book "God Is Red" by Liao Yiwu is a great book that deals with religious persecution in China.
Edited to add: By a man that is better known for his writing on political persecution, IIRC. However, this is the only book I've read and can personally recommend.
Buenos Aires is packed with these protests. I had the same skepticism you had, but my main obstacle is that its such a distant reality that is hardly meaningful to act on.
With that in mind, what do you think is their end goal? Is it just out of desperation they create petitions and such? It seems clear that China doesn't care much about the West's disapproval.
> "According to the reports, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, are being executed "on demand" in order to provide organs to recipients."
Wild... I had no idea this was going on. There are a lot of things about China that I disagree with, but this might be the worst thing I've heard so far.
I guess it wouldn't be HN if we didn't tie every story back to our own issues.
In this case, if Google ever does return to China I doubt the authorities would find it more useful for such purposes than existing sources such as iCloud, Bing, and Baidu already are.
The point is more that the parent comment raises a different issue that doesn't really address the topic at hand. Even if another search engine did appear, it wouldn't allow the authorities to target dissidents more effectively than existing services already do.
If we want to actually make a difference, we might consider calling for those existing services to change their ways. Harder to pressure the domestic Chinese companies, of course, but it's surprising how little attention is paid to Western companies who are actually in China and benefitting from it.
My imagination fails here - the government administers mandatory physicals to the citizens and holds any other medical data, how a search engine will help it to be more efficient at finding matching donors? Am I missing something obvious here?
Google's mission statement is "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful".
I'm sure we can all be happy if, with the help of Google, China becomes a more harmonious society, without any pesky troublemakers, and that hard-working Chinese Communist Party officials get the transplants they so deserve.
China, like Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia - any nation that is a totalitarian state - will commit endless atrocities so long as those in power believe they can get away with it. Be it their own people or other nations.
And they do get away with it. All so I can buy a phone for 20% less that it would cost to manufacture in my own country. A few million dead, disfigured, tortured, scarred, raped. Billions living under thought control. Chump change to keep my clothes dirt cheap so the Walton family can buy a few more islands in the Caribbean while Jeff Bezos accumulates enough money to buy the moon.
>And they do get away with it. All so I can buy a phone for 20% less that it would cost to manufacture in my own country. A few million dead, disfigured, tortured, scarred, raped. Billions living under thought control. Chump change to keep my clothes dirt cheap so the Walton family can buy a few more islands in the Caribbean while Jeff Bezos accumulates enough money to buy the moon.
Are you really saying that if US President had balls to push China on human rights then China would retaliate by refusing to produce cheap phones and clothes for US? Or say Russia would stop selling the oil?
> Until now the totalitarian belief that everything is possible seems to have proved only that everything can be destroyed. Yet, in their effort to prove that everything is possible, totalitarian regimes have discovered without knowing it that there are crimes which men can neither punish nor forgive. [..] we actually have nothing to fall back on in order to understand a phenomenon that nevertheless confronts us with its overpowering reality and breaks down all the standards we know. There is only one thing that seems to be discernible: we may say that radical evil has emerged in connection with a system in which all men have become equally superfluous.
-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
These are people who are already subject to execution. They get to stay alive a bit longer in order to preserve the organs. So rather than causing death, the possibility of organ transplants is what keeps these people alive.
Supposedly the prisoners were alive and conscious while they were cut open and their organs removed (no anesthesic). If I’m going to die, I think I’d rather face the firing squad and get it over with.
And then there’s the extraordinarily perverse profit motive to arrest more dissidents for organ harvesting.
So how many victims are there? CNN said in 2016 that there were 10k legal transplants and 60-100k actual transplants based on looking at actual volume of transplants at the largest hospitals and supposes that executed minorities compose the difference. Keep in mind that one victim could be sufficient to provide fodder for a number of operations.
> Because China lacks an organized organ matching and allocation system, and in order to satisfy expectations for very short wait times, it is rare that multiple organs are harvested from the same donor.
So 1 illicit transplants is actually 1 murder that is absolutely horrifying. If this has been going on since 2006 we could be looking at mass extermination hundreds of thousands.
> Keep in mind that one victim could be sufficient to provide fodder for a number of operations.
Not if you want the organ recipients to survive, which presumably is the point of the whole exercise. The odds of them matching with one recipient are tiny, the odds of them matching with 2 are tiny squared.
I remember first hearing about this in the context of the Bodies exhibit[0] and concern from some people not to accept "donations" from China, as they might've come involuntarily from political prisoners.
I believe that since Apple is claiming moral imperative every day in their ads and interviews, and because they have material relationships with China (which governments merely facilitiate) - and that Apple & co are the primary beneficiaries of 'global China' (not for example, Justin Trudeau) ... then they have the first move.
World leaders behind the scenes are very wary of China, they're a) afraid of speaking out and b) have to be diplomatic on some level.
The rubber hits the road (i.e. the 'money') is Apple.
And yes - of course world leaders should be far more aggressive about this.
Sadly, as aggressive as Trump can be, I'll bet he turns a blind eye if he gets a good trade deal.
Though I'm no fan of his, I'll bet he could garner an instant 10% boost in global approval by requiring the closure of those camps as part of any future trade deal. And the thing is - he actually does have enough leverage to get away with it. It would be a major, major international coup of the humanitarian kind ... something so many of his more social/lefty peers could only dream of doing. It'd be nice to seem him try, but I'm not holding my breath.
I think it is done for the first time in human history, unless you are thinking about Nazi's children camps in Belarus where they were drawing blood from children to be used for their soldiers (Krasny Bereg- http://mynativebelarus.blogspot.com/2012/04/krasny-bereg-chi...). I'm afraid the dystopian future is here, not in a sense of using certain groups of people for organ harvesting but as in growing humans in labs for that purpose. The Chinese government will most likely prefer the "cleaner" option.
So it's worth noting that allegations about organ harvesting have been circulating since at least the 2000s. There is likely (almost certainly) credibility in the claims that political prisoners (mostly Falun Gong practitioners) were harvested for organs in the early 2000s. From what I can tell, the tribunal is validating that these abuses occurred.
However, there is not any hard evidence (that I know of - I'd be happy to be corrected) of recent harvesting or coerced organ donation from recent years - in particular, in 2015 China agreed to stop using prisoners as organ sources (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/04/china-stop-usi...).
So I'll be curious to hear the final report - whether it mentions recent abuses or not.
China agreed to stop using prisoners as forced organ donors many times before 2015. They didn't even say "we really mean it this time", so I'm not sure how much credibility you can take from their statement.
The big problem is that the provinces and local governments aren't really that great at following the central government's direction unless the latter is really serious (who can't focus their attention on some many things).
China has mass surveillance. The amount of money that would change hands for organs would raise red flags, as well as the likelihood of using a known broker.
Just because China has mass surveillance and is partially a police state, it still is a chaotic place where you can mostly jay walk with impunity. State organs are poorly organized and integrated, and there is no easy way to verify the implementation of whatever edicts come from the top.
The central government also don't care if some local politicians are involved in the prison organ trade for a few extra rambos, as long as they keep it under the radar....
Uyghurs are more or less half East Asian, half West Eurasian though ethnogenesis is long enough ago that they’re fairly thoroughly mixed. Naively you might expect they’d be half as likely to match Han. It’s probably lower than half but I’d be very surprised if it was less than a quarter. There are six loci that are important for transplant rejection or acceptance though there are hundreds of alleles for those loci[1]. And there are almost certainly more Uyghurs in “re-education camps” than any other group at the moment. If there are ten times as many Uyghurs imprisoned as everyone else combined but they’re 1/4 as likely to be a good transplant match there’ll be 2.5 times as many Uyghurs harvested.
Why do people fall for this sort of stuff so easily? There is a pattern of western governments regularly organizing subversive, extremist, headline grabbing testimonies to further foreign policy objectives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
I don't think the Chinese government is great either, but I'm pretty cognizant that the level of anti-China FUD is directly proportional to the accelerating economic growth and foreign influence of the nation. China is causing very positive economic development in Africa, Pakistan and other regions that are more than happy to partner with it.
I for one am not so worried about a Chinese Surveillance state being thrust upon Europe or the US.
This probably isn't even organized by Western governments - most likely this is meant to support the Falun Gong. I've seen a noticeable uptick in Falun Gong's efforts to highlight the organ harvesting issue over the last few months.
I find this is an area where a "moral decision" is rather clear-cut.
And it highlights the... "amorality", at best, of much of our relationship (whether speaking at the personal level or the state/economy level) with contemporary China.
With our technology, we've enabled and empowered a political and economic structure that has not... "sorted its shit" as part of achieving same. Simultaneously, we've hollowed out our own system -- the checks and balances, as well as raw job counts.
The U.S. is far from perfect. Nonetheless, literally, physically "ripping the life" from one person, as a judgement, to benefit another. That is some symbolism. And a hallmark of what our own society has at least publicly considered to be "dystopia".
----
P.S. I responded to a reply with the following, but the child comment was deleted before I finished. It was a more than fair point about what happens (over here), and the opportunity for response allowed me to better qualify the... "us versus them" -- or perhaps lack of a "versus" -- present in my original comment. So, copy/pasta of that reply of mine:
My "the U.S. is far from perfect" is an understatement -- one I worried about. I agree with your point, and I find the behaviors you point out abhorrent. Prison for profit; Econ. 101 teaches you what you're going to get from that.
The U.S. has, however, been pretty aggressive in regulating organ transplants. When they happen. How limited, hopefully ethical, supplies are distributed.
Of course, over this hangs the spectre of economic disparity, corresponding health insurance disparity and health care access...
Yes, the U.S. is making plenty of life-altering, life-destroying decisions. The "death panels" that actually exist but don't make it into the political discussion (i.e. not the ginned up political phantoms).
And, some of those disparities seem to have been severely exacerbated, domestically -- progress actively reversed -- through off-shoring, outsourcing, and the winner-take-all, short-term reward.
As I grow more depressed writing this, well, at least we aren't ripping out "prisoners'" organs -- yet.
(We go overseas and buy nice foreigners' kidneys, for that.)
At first look, from a Western perspective, this is 100% clear-cut morally bad.
But I've also learned a limited amount about the Chinese moral perspective in college, and it can be a useful exercise to examine how someone who doesn't have a Judeo-Christian/Locke moral framework may view this practice.
In some ways, the harvesting of organs from political prisoners can be viewed as the trolley problem. Killing one political prisoner (an 'undesirable' in Chinese society) could save a number of lives of upstanding citizens.
The practice disgusts me personally, but I can see a reasonable argument in support of it.
You could take almost anyone, really. Just measure every citizen according to their contributions to society, and when four productive and useful citizens have need of a heart, a liver, two kidneys and a pancreas between them, just harvest a citizen that's not as productive as all of these four combined.
Of course, you maximize utility by choosing someone who does not contribute a lot to society, and _ideally_ someone who is a net negative. That's a win-win situation. The West is incredibly wasteful with our pie-in-the-sky dreamy research on artificial organs, when such a net positive solution is readily available.
It's frightening that a moral argument can be made along these lines. Does anyone really subscribe to this view? I am unfamiliar with Eastern philosophy, but this seems ludicrous.
>
You could take almost anyone, really. Just measure every citizen according to their contributions to society, and when four productive and useful citizens have need of a heart, a liver, two kidneys and a pancreas between them, just harvest a citizen that's not as productive as all of these four combined.
On what basis do we determine who gets life-critical medical care?
Of course its "reasonable" to argue when you are on the receiving end of the organ donations and not the end being put to slaughter for parts.
This is just the extreme end of it though. All states ruled by those who don't believe in the value of human life irrespective of what value that life is to them is at least capable of such atrocity and at worst presently committing it.
I feel much the same way about forced labour in prisons, but, unfortunately, our courts have made numerous arguments (That they feel are quite reasonable) to support it.
"They shouldn't have become criminals." "They cost us money, make them earn their keep." "The constitution permits this." are examples of how we justify that bit of inhuman utilitarianism.
> At first look, from a Western perspective, this is 100% clear-cut morally bad.
There is no such thing as a western perspective or morals. Just like there is no such thing as an asian perspective or morals. The western, just like the asian or even chinese, perspective is so vast and disparate and diverse that it is futile to pigeonhole one region into a single perspective.
Case in point, the "west" encompasses everything from christian charity to nazism to black enslavement to native genocide. We aren't a monolith with one set of values. Never have been, never will be.
And if you think western perspective views this as 100% morally bad, then you haven't researched the history of western medicine.
> But I've also learned a limited amount about the Chinese moral perspective in college, and it can be a useful exercise to examine how someone who doesn't have a Judeo-Christian/Locke moral framework may view this practice.
There is no such thing as judeo-christian anything. The judeo and christian are morally antithetical. The basis of christ and christianity is the fundamental shift from judeo values and morals to christian ones. I grew up christian but am an atheist, but I cringe whenever people use "judeo-christian". Also, "judeo-christian" has nothing to do with Locke's philosophy.
> In some ways, the harvesting of organs from political prisoners can be viewed as the trolley problem. Killing one political prisoner (an 'undesirable' in Chinese society) could save a number of lives of upstanding citizens.
In the west, we call this utilitarianism. It isn't anything special to china. One of the most important thinkers in the past few hundred years ( john stuart mills) formulated the philosophy.
The problems with china isn't a "chinese" problem. It is a human problem. Whatever china is guilty of is what we all are or have been guilty of.
>The judeo and christian are morally antithetical. The basis of christ and christianity is the fundamental shift from judeo values and morals to christian ones.
I have Jewish friends, they are not morally antiethical to Christian values, they are moral people who I love.
Everything I know about Judaism informs me that its practioners share my morals.
Please state specifically where you believe the gap between Judaic morality and Christian morality lies?
Can you say why you cringe at the term Judaeo-Christian?
> term “Judeo-Christian” was coherent, useful, and defensible. In general, I take a very skeptical view of the term, because I think it misleads the public as to the nature of some important facts and dynamics in the history of the West.
Not the OP. The term Judaeo-Christian is dumb because it implies some kind of equality in the contribution of Jewish and Christian thought on morality and law in shaping the modern world and the world views of those living in Western society. It’s an American idea, a product of the post WWII consensus where the major religious traditions in the US had been operationally been Pritestantised[1]. In reality the contribution of specifically Jewish law or philosophy on the West rounds to zero. It’s certainly no more important than the Muslim contribution and few people talk about Abrahamic morality. Maimonides and Ibn Sina both made contributions to philosophy that are foundational, and situated from their culture. While many, many Jews have contributed to Western culture the fact that they are Jewish has no real impact on that influence. Spinoza’s philosophy shows vast intellect and voracious reading but Jewishness? Not so much.
I have jewish, atheist, christian, muslim, buddhist, hindu, etc friends also. They are all moral people. So is it judeo-atheist-muslim-christian-buddhist-etc values?
There is no such thing as a judeo-christian morality or value. It is a political term invented a few decades ago for political reasons.
I don't want to get into a religious debate. Those never end well and there can never be a conclusion because they all hinge on interpreting text hundreds of pages long full of contradictory statements. And never mind there are different flavors of judaism and christianity.
But if judaism and christianity had same values then one is obviously redundant. But obviously that isn't true. There isn't even "judeo" values or christian values. The term "judeo-christian" is meaningless. There is no value, morality or anything underpinning it expect for political expediency.
One could say that the texts of a religion, such as the Bible in Christianity, do provide a general "moral framework" expected of its adherents. Many religions prescribe some sort of framework like this, as vague or as contradictory as it may be.
The idea of "sin" is huge in Abrahamic religion, so the fact that their texts particularly describe what is "sinful and not" I think is a clear-cut sign there is some sort of set of "values" that religious adherents are expected to have.
Not that I agree with said frameworks or give any authority to the texts- and also understand that many forms of these religions interpret the texts different ways, which cause various splits in what is considered moral or not. Additionally, I understand that it is mostly futile to expect most religious people to follow the prescribed morals of their religion or denomination, as it always seems to end up that people have their own specific personal set of morals, and then they just try to rationalize or stretch it to fit whatever religion or worldview they adhere to
Or is your point more that while religions DO have expectations like this- the moral "rules" of these religions don't originate from the religion itself, but instead are general moral values adopted, altered, or shared by many religions? If so, then maybe we are in agreement and I am talking past you.
Indeed. What is the solution? Economic sanctions (I'd argue yes)? UN resolutions? (Useless) Boots on the ground? (Physical force, while preferably a last resort, is always an option).
I'm starting to warm to the idea of using tariffs and other punitive measures to drag manufacturing back to US shores.
Economic Sanctions- possible, but only effective with Allies and a clear set of demands on what it takes to lift the sanctions
UN Resolution- China is a veto holding member of the security council, not happening
Boots on the ground- not worth it, even morally. A ground war with China will kill hundreds of thousands at a minimum.
"China is estimated by the Federation of American Scientists to have an arsenal of about 260 total warheads as of 2015, which would make it the second smallest nuclear arsenal amongst the five nuclear weapon states acknowledged by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."
"As of 2017, the U.S. has an inventory of 6,800 nuclear warheads; of these, 2,800 are retired and awaiting dismantlement and 4,018 are part of the U.S. stockpile. Of the stockpiled warheads, the U.S. stated in its April 2017 New START declaration that 1,411 are deployed on 673 ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers."
EDIT: No one wins, it's who loses the least. The whole point of having them is so the other person doesn't use theirs.
Which is also no one. Whether or not humanity is completely wiped out, this is an extinction-level event, and the entire nation-state system that spawned it becomes meaningless in the aftermath.
Obviously assuming an avoidance of nuclear escalation, which it is very much in China’s interest to avoid- best estimates say China has less than 300 weapons, not all of which have delivery systems capable of reaching the US and many are potentially targetable by for counterforce strikes. Still an absolutely horrendous toll to pay for an escalation.
The US in contrast has 4000 active warheads, with at least 1300 on capable ballistic misfile delivery vehicles. If used in a countervalue attack, the Chinese would cease to exist as a relevant people.
Which as a long way of saying the US can escalate more than the Chinese, but actually getting into an open and direct conflict is a morally horrific idea.
That’s like saying Arnold and Carl are standing waist deep in a pool of gasoline. Arnold has 4000 matches, Carl has 300. Who’s going to survive the fire?
These things only work when there's a large asymmetry in power, otherwise the cost is too high. US >> N.Korea, US >> Iran. China's too powerful and important to do anything serious, we will have to likely deal with this on a case-by-case basis like we do Saudi Arabia, hopefully generating enough soft pressure and potential inflammation that they become fearful of creating a Khashoggi incident.
The US would break its sanctioning tools if it took on China unilaterally with sanctions, but if they managed a coalition that included the EU and a few others it could work.
It would also include the EU showing a lot more backbone than they usually do. Just look at the Russian sanctions and how natural gas is pitches from Russia by the EU.
Coming from a Middle Eastern country, I understand very well what low respect for life could look like. It runs through all layers of the society/culture, and probably takes generations to fix.
For a better depiction of how low the respect of life could be, I suggest (at risk of psychological trauma) reading or viewing videos about how some drivers in China would rather run over an injured pedestrian (in some cases small children) a few times to ensure they're dead. Apparently a dead victim costs less than ongoing medical bills.
I was trying to understand what the Chinese perspective is on this. What do people who live in China or who were born there think about whether or not people in China have harvested organs from political prisoners and/or continue to do so?
She writes that organ harvesting is illegal, that nearly everyone in China opposes it, and that if someone were caught doing it, they would go to jail.
I'm not sure how to square that with a finding from a tribunal in Britain that "state organised or approved organisations or individuals" engaged in "forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practised for a substantial period of time, involving a very substantial number of victims".
I guess she would probably respond by saying that the source is dubious and it cannot be true because the state wouldn't break the law like that?
Includes a segment about a Chinese dissident being eaten. Boggles the mind how the guy apparently thinks this is real human flesh and not only that, it's from a prisoner.
I quietly wondered, some weeks ago, when China’s “Khashoggi moment” might occur. This probably isn’t it, unless an individual story can emerge that can capture the public’s revulsion in a way that, for some reason, only an individual story can.
It took one journalist’s murder and dismemberment to finally make Mohammed Bin-Salman politically radioactive in a way that thousands of dead and starving Yemenis could not. As we continue to ignore the Uighur internment camps, and probably this as well, what will it take for Xi?
China took and kidnapped their own international official personified in the head of the Interpol. Not much more than a squeak. So, I don't think you're going to hear about "unknowns" much.
The Saudi journalist is an odd exception. Any other journalist (remember the Russian journalist assassinated, or the Maltese journalist). Like there is a squeak but not much else --which tells me there is something about the Saudi case.
True, but a person of great stature and responsibility, Not the UN sec general, but imagine the UN sec general gets kidnapped by Portugal and.... crickets...
i remember reading another report by washington post on this issue a year ago...i am posting the report link here and perhaps it could provide us with a bit more details regarding the problem...
news title: China used to harvest organs from prisoners.
Under pressure, that practice is
finally ending.
date: 2017/09/14
China's arresting Canadians in revenge for the Huawei executive's arrest. Are those Canadians going to be murdered for their organs if the Huawei executive is extradited?
As an aside, Jimmy Carr mentioned in a TV show a few weeks back that his friend had liver disease, and couldn't get a liver transplant on the NHS, so went to China and bought a liver off a man on death row.
Reminds me of the organ banks in Niven's Known Space, Series. Governments made being sent to the "organ banks" the favored punishment for crimes. Also gave way to OrganLegging:
I recall a horrifying story Niven wrote about a man running from the police to escape his death sentance. At the end of the story, he is caught and brought to justice for running a red light.
Not sure how people can sit outside China for 3 days and gather enough evidence to believe "beyond doubt" that the organ harvesting thing is true.
Also, if you look at what Falun Gong teaches, the credibility of the believers should be at question. Per Wikipedia, the grandmaster of the cult believes that homosexuality is a sin, democracy and science are both bad things, and aliens are constantly interfering with Earth affairs.[1] If Falun Gong is not against China, but against, say Thailand, how many of you will blindly believe their accusations? What about Canada?
Google "Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China" and it should turn up the website of the panel itself, and a few sites that covered the release of the interim report. The BMJ article is a news article covering that release, not a research article, so the BMJ article has nothing that isn't readily in the other coverage.
If you find this report interesting, this Wikipedia article would probably also be interesting [1].
“During the 2000s, analysis of various sources of emerging
evidence led to the conclusion that people who practised Falun
Gong were being killed to provide the organs fuelling China’s
transplant boom.
“It is common for Chinese transplant professionals to parrot the
Communist Party line saying that those who have been speaking
out . . . have a ‘political agenda.’”
In 2006 a whistleblower claimed that more than 4000 Falun
Gong practitioners had been killed for their organs at the hospital
in China where she worked. Subsequent independent
investigators, including David Kilgour, former Canadian
secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific, David Matas, an
international human rights lawyer, and the investigative
journalist Ethan Gutmann, have concluded that such practices
occurred
The false dichotomy of comparing the “evils” of USA whenever horrifying news comes out of China is worrying. Stretched to the extreme it’s the equivalent of bringing up Obama droning killing innocents when comparing The Nazis and Hitler. Our minds conflate the 2 things as bad and we compartmentalize them as such together.
There is a world of difference between the 2. Imagine if the world order was not created by US and instead China, things would be 10000x worse. When you are the sole superpower, other countries would abuse that privilege to benefit themselves a thousand fold more than the US does. We didn’t think about China as a serious threat 10 years ago because they were poor and not powerful yet the barbarity was worse then. It’s just more pronounced now because they have more power.
The same is true for all countries going to the world stage. Nigeria doesn’t seem like a threat now but in 50 years when it’s more population than the US the racism and backwards beliefs will result in terrible world crimes. The same can be said of Vietnam, and India too. (I am Indian). If these countries get as powerful as China you’ll see them expanding military, bullying neighbors, petty tribalism stuff.
It seems nationalist but I agree with trump to bring our economic industries home. Improve quality of life in these countries and improve human rights, wealth etc. but not to the degree where they are untouchable militarily and economically. Because China is not the worst to come, they are not even close. We don’t think of Vietnam and others as a threat but their tribalism runs deep as well. It takes 1 nationalist leader to increase the pace but when they have power like China almost everyone will abuse it.
Very seriously, if you make a list of why you hate the Nazis, and then ask how many of those things apply to the current Chinese government, and carefully research the matter rather than just consulting what you may happen to think you know about the current Chinese goverment (i.e. not falling prey to "if I haven't heard of it in my newsfeeds, it doesn't exist")... well... actually it's pretty hard to tell them apart.
I think you are being downvoted for being off-topic.
>It seems nationalist but I agree with trump to bring our economic industries home.
It's worth a try although the chance of it happening given the complexity of modern industrial good is near zero. I don't think Trump actually wants this and if he does his actions are having the opposite effect. To seriously grow an industrial base in the US would require very open borders, a massive federal investment + subsidy and a complete elimination of tariffs.
The US had plenty of its own Nazi Germany moments, and - unlike Nazi Germany - which was completely dismantled by the Allies - the repercussions of them are still being felt today across its native and black populations.
In more recent history - of the 21st century, at least, China hasn't started any conflicts in the Middle East, that have killed hundreds of thousands of people, and turned millions more into refugees. On the scale of 'how much harm has each empire done', it is not three orders of magnitude away from the competition.
China's repression is targeted internally, for reasons of internal security. The Department of State targets it externally, for reasons of national interests. Comparing the two, or trying to argue which is worse, is apples and oranges. Both groups, here, justify their behavior, by claiming that if they didn't take action, something worse would happen.
Your comment is exactly the false comparisons I was talking about. Get the emotions out of the way and rationally evaluate what you just wrote.
China can not start the conflicts because the world will sanction them. Yet they did exactly that to Tibet. They killed so many, took it over and have brainwashed or arrested everyone who clings to Tibetan culture. They invaded India, did you know that? And would have killed or enslaved all of it until the US stopped it (or was it Russia). China if sole superpower would have concquered Japan, Vietnam, South Korea no doubt in my mind and likely attempted the rest of the world as well.
It is not a false comparison just because you say it is.
I also disagree that China would try to conquer the world.
Sure, they invaded India. So did the British. Are you saying if the UK became a superpower again, they would try to conquer the world like they did before?
China harvested organs from political prisoners on substantial scale, says tribunal
Richard Hurley
The BMJ
Forced harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience in China has been “substantial,” says an interim judgment of an independent “people’s tribunal” set up to determine whether the country’s transplantation practices breached international criminal law.
The former English judge Geoffrey Nice QC, the tribunal’s chair, said after a three day evidence gathering session, “We, the tribunal members, are all certain, unanimously, beyond reasonable doubt, that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practised for a substantial period of time, involving a very substantial number of victims
. . . by state organised or approved organisations or individuals.”
The tribunal found that the practices breached the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including articles 3 (right to life), 6 (recognition as a person before the law), 7 (equality before the law), 9 (not to be subject to arbitrary arrest), 10 (full equality to a fair and public hearing in determination of rights), 11 (presumption of innocence), and 5 (torture).
The Chinese government and the Transplantation Society, which has “official relations” with the World Health Organization and offers “global leadership in transplantation . . . and guidance on ethical practice,” had not submitted evidence.
The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China heard evidence in public in London on 8-10 December. A seven strong panel questioned 30 witnesses, including refugees from China, doctors, and investigators.
Its full judgment, due early next year, could have major implications for doctors and institutions worldwide that collaborate with China on transplantation related activities.
The Chinese ambassador to the UK and prominent doctors in China involved in transplantation were invited repeatedly to give evidence but had not responded, said Nice. The tribunal invited evidence from the current and former presidents of TTS. Three said that they would not attend the hearings, he said.
Nice emphasised that the tribunal remains open to receiving evidence through its website (https://chinatribunal.com/call-for- evidence).
Jean-Pierre Mongeau, executive director of the Transplantation Society, told The BMJ, “While TTS will not be providing a testimony at this time, we have been a firm supporter of the reform in China, and we applaud the laws that have been enacted.” In 2007 China banned commercial organ trading,1 and a 2011 law insisted on consent.2 In 2015 China vowed to halt
the harvesting of organs from death row prisoners (not prisoners of conscience).3 4
The tribunal was convened by the non-profit International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), which includes lawyers, academics, ethicists, doctors, researchers, and human rights advocates. However, the tribunal is independent from the coalition, and the tribunal’s panel is working “pro bono,” Nice said.
Susie Hughes, executive director of ETAC, said, “From 2000, there was a rapid increase in the number of transplants [in China]. The source of the organs underpinning this high level of activity has never been explained in a credible way by the Chinese government.
“During the 2000s, analysis of various sources of emerging evidence led to the conclusion that people who practised Falun Gong were being killed to provide the organs fuelling China’s transplant boom.
“It is common for Chinese transplant professionals to parrot the Communist Party line saying that those who have been speaking out . . . have a ‘political agenda.’”
In 2006 a whistleblower claimed that more than 4000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed for their organs at the hospital in China where she worked. Subsequent independent investigators, including David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific, David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, and the investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann, have concluded that such practices occurred
Sitting on the panel alongside Nice are Martin Elliott, professor of cardiothoracic surgery at University College London, Andrew Khoo, who has a private law practice in Malaysia, Regina Paulose, a US attorney who focuses on international criminal law and human rights, Shadi Sadr, an Iranian human rights lawyer, Nicholas Vetch, a UK businessman, and Arthur Waldron, a US historian and professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nice said, “It was decided not to have a panel of people already knowledgeable about, or particularly concerned about, allegations of forced organ harvesting that have already been made”
Informal people’s tribunals fill a gap, he said, when formal national and international bodies failed to deal with allegations of serious crimes by states or state supported bodies. One
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example was Bertrand Russell’s 1967 tribunal that investigated US policy in the Vietnam war.
And nothing will change, as usually. Russia attacked Ukraine - lots of countries said how unhappy they were and that's all - nothing happened.
China is too strong, so companies will still make deals, will still buy and sell there, will just do whatever the China government wants. The same with the politicians bought by the companies.
Any tribunal will not change anything. Even UN is paralyzed as the all sanctions against China will get China's veto and there won't be any decision.
Even when Mr. Trump made concentration camps for children (just like Germans did during the WW2) did anything change after publishing the information about that?
So my final thought is quite sad: nothing will change, live on, be happy that you live in such a country which respects some other values (e.g. exploits work of children in Asia but not your children, so you can think that nothing happens).
The word "substantial" is very vague and a bad sign for any scientific and evidence-based publication.
Then, when such news show up while Trump is trying to make his deal with the Chinese and (it seems) even got a hostage recently, this makes me feel a bit suspicious of this article, especially since its content is pay-walled.
(I'm not defending organ-harvesting, which was already reported in the past, but the article must be specific about what has or has not happened, and should not use such vague statements.)
Tbh you can see a conpiracy everywhere, even with your comment for example: you could be geniunely suspicious.
Or you could be a die hard trump supporter who prefer to say its suspicious because you don't like that attacking china whill lead in the future to attacking trump policy.
Well, if Trump say something about this topic on TV in the next couple of days, then I'm right. In any case, they promise to deliver a full report on that investigation in early 2019, hopefully it will be more informative. (My main point is not that the article might be politically motivated, but that its main statement is very imprecise and allows interpretations.)
From the article, "The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China heard evidence in public in London on 8-10 December. A seven strong panel questioned 30 witnesses, including refugees from China, doctors, and investigators.". Clearly, solid and irrefutable conclusions on such a serious matter only need 3 days of hearing from 30 witnesses.
> a serious matter only need 3 days of hearing from 30 witnesses.
Making statements about immoral acts by the Chinese government is probably something that takes a little bit of secrecy, security and assurances in the modern era. I have to wonder if you understand the situation.
That seems plausible to me. They had evidence and witnesses, and don't seem to claim exhaustive knowledge of scope or every detail of implementation. Did it happen? Y/N ... three days, 30 witnesses, and evidence, to determine 1 bit of information. Y or N. We got Y. That does not seem far-fetched or necessarily slipshod.
China is pretty obviously building their empire. They, as a government, appear to have almost no regard whatsoever for human life. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard whatsoever for national sovereignty. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard for the environment.
It just seems completely inevitable to me that China eventually wants to conquer the world. Why is the west enriching them, and by proxy funding their research into war machines when it seems obvious that these things will eventually be used against us?
These acts are atrocities, no doubt. But these atrocities aren't being committed by some dictator in some small, isolated country. These atrocities are being committed by a regime that has all but said that it intends to conquer the rest of the planet and export these atrocities as the standard operating procedure for the entire planet, and which very probably WILL DO THIS if something doesn't occur to change the course.
People are upset about the "trade war" we are currently in, or about to be in, or were in, or whatever the pundit of the hour says. I can't say I agree that restricting trade with China, and encouraging the infrastructure being built there to be built in the US, or at the very least in a country that respects human rights instead, is a bad thing.