The Chinese Communist Revolution

[Walker]

@sean Chuang is great! Thaaaaaaaank you for reminding me the name of this journal! I read a great article on Xinjiang there this summer, lost the link, and then for the life of me could not remember what the journal was called and couldn't find it on Google. Look forward to reading some more.

[sean]

5 hours ago, Walker said:

@sean Chuang is great! Thaaaaaaaank you for reminding me the name of this journal! I read a great article on Xinjiang there this summer, lost the link, and then for the life of me could not remember what the journal was called and couldn't find it on Google. Look forward to reading some more.

 

❤️ Happy to meet a fellow Chuang reader. I've been really impressed. You might like their recent outline of the Hong Kong uprising. Haven't been able to find much smart, nuanced coverage of that, as it seems more complex to me than typical, Western right/left intuitions.

 

Sean

 

[Walker]

17 hours ago, sean said:

❤️ Happy to meet a fellow Chuang reader. I've been really impressed. You might like their recent outline of the Hong Kong uprising. Haven't been able to find much smart, nuanced coverage of that, as it seems more complex to me than typical, Western right/left intuitions.

 

Didn't know they'd written about HK. I look forward to reading it (with dread ). 

 

Crimethinc has an interesting piece on Hong Kong, too. I always feel like such a brainwashed, unwittingly pro-capitalist rube when I read Crimethinc stuff haha...

[Walker]

Lest illusions about the Chinese Communist Party persist.

 

None of the bad in here surprised me at all, as I've been following this story closely with dismay and anxiety for several years now, especially I have a friend who is likely to be in or have been in the camps. She is one of the most gentle, kind, passionate, and compassionate people I have ever met. I consider myself lucky to have met many people who are worthy of those adjectives, but she stands out. Fluent in multiple languages including English, she traveled to the US to pursue her medical studies, but without ever entertaining the slightest notion of emigrating from China. Her sole wish was to return to Xinjiang province and provide medical services in a place sorely lacking in well-trained, ethical doctors. Tragically, her having studied overseas and being bilingual will have dramatically increased the chances that she has been interred in the Chinese gulag archipelago built for Uighurs, the Chinese "gray wastes." (Her phone number is disconnected and I have no other way to reach her. In the near future, when my affairs in the PRC have concluded and doing so will not result in my own incarceration, I will begin trying to look for her with help from the overseas Uighur community). 

 

However, there was good news to be seen in this piece.

 

1. This information was provided by a PRC whistle blower. Tremendous risk (certain torture and execution + guaranteed obliteration of their familial wealth and opportunities in a country where punishing family members for a relative's political dissidence is the norm) has been taken by one or more individuals to attempt to blow the lid on Xi Jinping's and Chen Quanguo's secretive planning of these crimes against humanity. 

2. There is evidence of CCP officials who attempted to circumvent Xi and Chen's plans and indeed themselves took tremendous risks in order to free thousands of arbitrarily detained Muslims.

3. Some of this information has filtered back into China as evidenced by the "He Refused" hashtag on Sina Weibo, the PRC Twitter knockoff. Hopefully the 骨氣 displayed by the whistle blower(s) and the NYTimes--as well as countless other people and organizations--will become contagious in China. 

Edited November 18, 2019 by Walker

[Walker]

If everything I write in this post and the post above seems ridiculous (or if you're not in the mood for reading all the articles I've linked to), please watch this 30 minute VICE documentary on the cultural genocide being committed in Xinjiang by the CCP. 

 

My last post reminded me to look into something a guy told me while we were sitting on a curb in front of a 7-11 drinking beers the other day. Thanks to this article (with one of the creepiest selfies ever taken) I had known for a year that the CCP has sent over a MILLION low-ranking cadres into Xinjiang to live in the homes of, share beds with, and of course egregiously snitch on Uighur families.

 

However, last week when my friend brought it up he said that recent reporting stated that male cadres were "occupying" the beds of Uighur women whose husbands had been sent to concentration camps. 

 

I mean, nothing should surprise me about a 70-million-strong mafia that sells organs carved directly out of living, conscious humans' bodies (1, 2, 3), but then again...

 

This surprised me. 

 

The claim seems to have arisen from this Radio Free Asia article. There has been wide reporting on the million+ spies sent to live in Uighur homes since last year, with the Associate Press also reporting on the topic.

 

Upon reflection, I should not have been surprised. It would be incredibly naive to expect that 1,000,000+ government spies could be sent to invade the homes of families where one or both parents are prisoners of conscience without sexual crimes being committed. 

 

There is little we can do, perhaps, but not nothing. The subtitle of this article speaks volumes: The Case for Boycotting Beijing 2022 The mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang merits a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

[Earl Grey]

39 minutes ago, Walker said:

If everything I write in this post and the post above seems ridiculous (or if you're not in the mood for reading all the articles I've linked to), please watch this 30 minute VICE documentary on the cultural genocide being committed in Xinjiang by the CCP. 

 

My last post reminded me to look into something a guy told me while we were sitting on a curb in front of a 7-11 drinking beers the other day. Thanks to this article (with one of the creepiest selfies ever taken) I had known for a year that the CCP has sent over a MILLION low-ranking cadres into Xinjiang to live in the homes of, share beds with, and of course egregiously snitch on Uighur families.

 

However, last week when my friend brought it up he said that recent reporting stated that male cadres were "occupying" the beds of Uighur women whose husbands had been sent to concentration camps. 

 

I mean, nothing should surprise me about a 70-million-strong mafia that sells organs carved directly out of living, conscious humans' bodies (1, 2, 3), but then again...

 

This surprised me. 

 

The claim seems to have arisen from this Radio Free Asia article. There has been wide reporting on the million+ spies sent to live in Uighur homes since last year, with the Associate Press also reporting on the topic.

 

Upon reflection, I should not have been surprised. It would be incredibly naive to expect that 1,000,000+ government spies could be sent to invade the homes of families where one or both parents are prisoners of conscience without sexual crimes being committed. 

 

There is little we can do, perhaps, but not nothing. The subtitle of this article speaks volumes: The Case for Boycotting Beijing 2022 The mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang merits a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

We need a disgust or vomit emoji for this. Good luck finding your friend.

[Walker]

12 hours ago, Earl Grey said:

We need a disgust or vomit emoji for this. Good luck finding your friend.

 

_/\_ Thank you. The scary thing is, made very clear in the VICE documentary, that trying to help anybody there may very well make their lives worse. Even sending a damn "Thinking of You" Hallmark card from the US would be dangerous. And yet. Keeping people convinced that the best course of action is to throw one's hands in the air in resignation and walk away from responsibility for our shared humanity is the grand project of CCP brainwashing in a single sentence. Probably better to enter the fray and risk making grievous mistakes than to consign ourselves to guaranteed failure for lack of even trying. 

[Earl Grey]

6 minutes ago, Walker said:

 

_/\_ Thank you. The scary thing is, made very clear in the VICE documentary, that trying to help anybody there may very well make their lives worse. Even sending a damn "Thinking of You" Hallmark card from the US would be dangerous. And yet. Keeping people convinced that the best course of action is to throw one's hands in the air in resignation and walk away from responsibility for our shared humanity is the grand project of CCP brainwashing in a single sentence. Probably better to enter the fray and risk making grievous mistakes than to consign ourselves to guaranteed failure for lack of even trying. 

 

See, back in the day, we made our presence known through Amnesty International--we helped free Rebiyah Kadeer (spelling?) through a vigorous letter-writing campaign, and at the time, it worked because the pressure of the world knowing seemed to be enough. Nowadays, with the surveillance state, naming any individual as you said is a death sentence for them and their loved ones. 

 

A kind of world like this makes me go between the hopeless despair of Creed's "What's this life for?" and the righteous anger of "One". 

 

Let us know how and if we can help you in any way. 

[thelerner]

It's interesting.  An old neighbor of mine, grew up in China.  Attached herself to a Christian group who sponsored her, leaving in her early teens to the US.  Married a man of similar background, did well, had 2 kids.  Then surprisingly, 20 years later, they moved back to China.  Said there was opportunity there.  Maybe your homeland is in your blood. 

 

I suppose if you keep your head down, go with the government flow, live in the right region you don't get by so affected by, not a nanny state, but the bully state; our way or well you're f*cked.   

[silent thunder]

I have for some decades now, been wondering when the Chinese oppressed would awaken enmasse and how intense the resulting backlash would be against the machine...  i shudder in empathy... it's utterly horrifying, the implications of it.

 

And as my experience of our politics elucidate and reveal our spiritual inclinations as nations and tribes... I have mulled rather sincerely, and increasingly over the last 23 years, the notion of relocating my family out of the US and back to Norway.  With each story I read of their lifestyle, I find it resonates with my own sense of life.  Perhaps @thelerner is correct and the blood calls us home.

 

So far, it's an amorphous visage... yet it is ever present... and grows in clarity with each perusal of what passes for 'news' these days.

 

 

[dawei]

On 11/19/2019 at 11:16 AM, thelerner said:

It's interesting.  An old neighbor of mine, grew up in China.  Attached herself to a Christian group who sponsored her, leaving in her early teens to the US.  Married a man of similar background, did well, had 2 kids.  Then surprisingly, 20 years later, they moved back to China.  Said there was opportunity there.  Maybe your homeland is in your blood. 

 

I suppose if you keep your head down, go with the government flow, live in the right region you don't get by so affected by, not a nanny state, but the bully state; our way or well you're f*cked.   

 

It is much more complicated than blood... and you're f*cked...  'Opportunity' is  very close.   

[Walker]

 

This is now.

 

NYTimes:

 

Quote

Most of what is known about what goes on inside the camp system comes from former detainees who have fled China, mostly to Kazakhstan. Very few of them have spoken publicly. In Almaty, I interviewed seven former detainees, who told similar stories. One man was caged underground in a police station, beaten until he lost the hearing in one ear; I heard about others who were shackled and strung up as if crucified. People were interrogated in “tiger chairs” — metal chairs with shackles, handcuffs and leg irons attached to the frame — and deprived of sleep. They were moved between facilities in black hoods and chains. I spoke to people who saw other detainees compelled to renounce religion and give self-criticism in “struggle sessions.” One was forced to thank Xi every night for the opportunity to be so enlightened. There have been media reports of sexual violence and family separations. When parents are detained, their children are often sent to state-run institutions and taught Mandarin — another attempt to “sinocize” the population.

 

In classrooms, scores of detainees were forced to undergo two or three hours of Mandarin lessons each morning and more in the afternoon. Some were told they had to memo­rize 3,000 characters to be allowed to leave, while others were told nothing at all. Before the students stood a metal gate, on the other side of which there was the teacher, flanked by two guards with electric batons. When they weren’t in class, the detainees were confined to their dorm rooms, where they were not allowed to speak. The doors to the dorm rooms resembled those of a maximum-security prison, with multiple locks and a slot for food. There were cameras inside the cells, detainees believed.

 

They had virtually no personal belongings, a man told me. The men passed around one electric razor every two days, and sometimes were given a nail-clipper, though it was quickly taken back after use. Women combed their hair with their fingers and were given one pad per day of their periods, and one more at night. One woman told me she was given only two minutes to use the toilet. If she took longer, she was hit with an electric baton. They showered once a week. Each inmate was issued a toothbrush without a handle. Sometimes they were forced to stand still or sit in their rooms; other times they were supposed to do calisthenics in close quarters. Some told me of being forced to memo­rize and recite rules. Some described abysmal sleeping conditions — packed 50 people to a room or forced to sleep in shifts. Outside in the hall, auxiliary guards paced. They were Uighurs and Kazakhs, ordered to patrol and discipline their own people.

 

Even after the detainees were released, surveillance was everywhere. People were afraid of one another. It splintered the order of things. Some “graduated” into forced-labor programs working for factories — another kind of sentence without end. Across the board, everyone’s crime seemed to be his or her ethnicity.

 

Quote

I did get a refracted glimpse of the terror Zohre and Isaq must feel when I was in Kazakhstan. I met a pair of retired civil servants in their 60s who were so afraid to talk to me about their experiences in a camp that they asked me to turn over my phone to a family member. The couple checked that it was turned off and stored it outside the room where we spoke. They told me that the Chinese government had recorded their voices, and they were afraid the authorities would somehow find their story stored in my phone.

 

It wasn’t just former detainees. In Almaty, I met a young man who had recently fled Xinjiang. He had never been through the camps, but all of Xinjiang felt like one gigantic detention center. There were cameras everywhere: in front of houses, on the corners, down the block. They were said to have 360-degree vision; people believed they could map even the scars of teenage acne, perhaps plugging images into a vast facial-recognition-and-analytics database — though it is unclear just how functional the system is. He said the newly recruited auxili­ary police were either undereducated, drunk on power or worried about being found wanting in their duties and being sent to the camps themselves. Society had fallen apart.

 

“Everybody is really terrified,” the man said. “Sometimes when you wake up in the morning, you are afraid, like, O.K., so what kind of thing is waiting for me today?” People had to evaluate every movement they made: Some stopped praying, others stopped performing Islamic charity. He told me people were so scared they started burning their own religious books at home. Those who didn’t drink started drinking. Those who grew beards shaved them off. “Personally, I prefer to stay at home, because you can actually feel a little freedom,” he said. “Because if you go outside of your home, then it starts.”

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by Walker

[SirPalomides]

^ I won't dispute the central account in that article, but their historical framing replicates a number of errors common in Western accounts of Xinjiang. There is especially this claim that Han are being settled in Xinjiang to overwhelm the Uighur population.

 

Xinjiang consists of two main regions, roughly divided north/ south. The south is the Tarim basin, the historic homeland of Uighurs since they migrated there in the 9th century. The north is usually just called Northern Xinjiang but has also been known as Dzungaria- that's because it was once the land of the Dzungars, a branch of the Mongols, who dominated the area and conquered the Uighurs in th 17th century. The Uighurs then allied with the Qing dynasty who after a protracted campaign destroyed the Dzungar khaganate and carried out a campaign of genocide against the Dzungars- with the willing assistance of the Uighurs. The Qing then repopulated Dzungaria with various peoples, including Uighurs, Kazakhs, etc but the majority were Han. Dzungaria and the Tarim basin together were made into the new province Xinjiang.  

 

The vast majority of Han in Xinjiang are in the north which was never a majority Uighur region, and mostly descended from those Qing era settlers. In the Tarim basin area, the vast majority of the population remains Uighur and that shows no sign of changing. Xinjiang in general is not a place most Han have any interest in living in. Han that move there are usually doing so to make their money and go elsewhere. Han officials posted there are typically hoping to get promoted as soon as possible to somewhere else.

 

The narrative, promoted by the above NYT article and many others, implies that the Han living in northern Xinjiang are invaders who don't belong there.

 

The article also downplays the issue of terrorism. To be fair, this is partly Beijing's fault, since they were characteristically opaque about many of these events for years until recently. But that there is no mention, e.g. of the thousands of Uighur jihadists in Syria, is inexcusable in my view. I think there is also cause for skepticism regarding testimonies reporters are hearing in Sweden. There was a Kazakh-Chinese woman, Sairagul Sauytbay, who left Xinjiang and gave a testimony in Kazakhstan. She told a Canadian reporter that

 

Quote

She did not personally see violence, although she did see hunger. Detainees had only three kinds of food: rice soup, vegetable soup and nan bread. “There was no meat. There was never enough to eat. People were malnourished,” Ms. Sauytbay said.

 

She then ended up in Sweden, where she told Haaretz something completely different, how she witnessed prisoners being force-fed pork, tortured, gang-raped, etc., sometimes under her supervision.

 

NB: None of what I say above in any way mitigates or excuses real abuses committed by the PRC authorities in Xinjiang, which I do not doubt are ongoing.

[Walker]

19 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

^ I won't dispute the central account in that article, but their historical framing replicates a number of errors common in Western accounts of Xinjiang. There is especially this claim that Han are being settled in Xinjiang to overwhelm the Uighur population.

 

Xinjiang consists of two main regions, roughly divided north/ south. The south is the Tarim basin, the historic homeland of Uighurs since they migrated there in the 9th century. The north is usually just called Northern Xinjiang but has also been known as Dzungaria- that's because it was once the land of the Dzungars, a branch of the Mongols, who dominated the area and conquered the Uighurs in th 17th century. The Uighurs then allied with the Qing dynasty who after a protracted campaign destroyed the Dzungar khaganate and carried out a campaign of genocide against the Dzungars- with the willing assistance of the Uighurs. The Qing then repopulated Dzungaria with various peoples, including Uighurs, Kazakhs, etc but the majority were Han. Dzungaria and the Tarim basin together were made into the new province Xinjiang.  

 

The vast majority of Han in Xinjiang are in the north which was never a majority Uighur region, and mostly descended from those Qing era settlers. In the Tarim basin area, the vast majority of the population remains Uighur and that shows no sign of changing. Xinjiang in general is not a place most Han have any interest in living in. Han that move there are usually doing so to make their money and go elsewhere. Han officials posted there are typically hoping to get promoted as soon as possible to somewhere else.

 

The narrative, promoted by the above NYT article and many others, implies that the Han living in northern Xinjiang are invaders who don't belong there.

 

I can see what you mean, and I thank you for providing more historical background. I did some reading today and I can see what you mean. I was not aware of the historical north-south Han-Uighur population disparities in Xinjiang.

 

It would be worrisome if the Han in Xinjiang became perceived as invaders, because this would pave the way for racist blame being thrown at people who are simply migrants, which is a most fundamentally human thing to be. However, while I cannot know what (if any) hidden agenda the reporter might have had, the article did not leave me with the impression that the Han who have moved in since the founding of the PRC are invaders. I am aware that most move there only out of desperation or because they were sent there by the government, often after being disenfranchised and removed from their own homes. They often (maybe even usually) have little choice and I know that many Han do not want to be there, and move away when they can for various reasons. 

 

Nevertheless, it is well-established (and recognized by PRC denizens themselves, with whom I have spoken about these things many times) that the government does intentionally mobilize vast numbers of Han migrants to move into places like Xinjiang and Tibet in order to alter the ethnic composition of these areas. That is part-and-parcel of outlawing the teaching of their languages in school and giving most government posts and lucrative government contracts to ethnically Han officials.

 

I do not think it is a stretch to say that the CCP is involved in a form of cultural genocide, and that Han chauvinism is a major motivator and tool in these efforts. That said, most Han who take part in these things are themselves powerless pawns, and ironically (given how much jingoistic nationalism and we-5,000-year-old-Han-are-the-greatest-ethnicity-that-ever-lived nonsense there is flying around these days... it has really ticked up since 2013) they themselves were dragged through a terribly destructive round of CCP-inflicted cultural genocide not long ago. 

 

In other words, I do not lay the blame for suppressing the Uighurs at the feet of rank-and-file Han Chinese PRC citizens. They have little to no say in these matters, just as the unfortunate Uighurs who have been pressed into becoming snitches, concentration camp guards, and secret police also have little to no say. 

 

Quote

The article also downplays the issue of terrorism. To be fair, this is partly Beijing's fault, since they were characteristically opaque about many of these events for years until recently. But that there is no mention, e.g. of the thousands of Uighur jihadists in Syria, is inexcusable in my view.

 

I don't know if that is inexcusable. Perhaps. The article did, in fact, mention the deadly knife/sword attack in Kunming as well as the terrorist vehicular homicide on Tiananmen Square in 2013 (a day I remember well, as I was in Beijing). 

 

Given that there apparently being Uighur terrorists in Syria does no justify throwing law-abiding Uighurs in China into concentration camps and erasing their culture, I am not sure that failing to mention this point constitutes a great bias or oversight. After all, nobody I see eye-to-eye with thinks that the war in the Pacific Theater justified the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps. 

 

Quote

I think there is also cause for skepticism regarding testimonies reporters are hearing in Sweden. There was a Kazakh-Chinese woman, Sairagul Sauytbay, who left Xinjiang and gave a testimony in Kazakhstan. She told a Canadian reporter that

She then ended up in Sweden, where she told Haaretz something completely different, how she witnessed prisoners being force-fed pork, tortured, gang-raped, etc., sometimes under her supervision.

 

Actually, I feel quite strongly that you are wrong about this one, for three reasons:

 

First of all, it is well known that the long arm of PRC "law" reaches deep into Kazakhstan, which may lack the power (or will, you might say, given the way in which the leadership in both countries have leaped into bed together to keep the One Belt One Road renminbi flowing) even to prevent its own nationals from being rounded up and interned in the Xinjiang concentration camps, and I am not sure how much it is cooperating with the PRC by acceding to deportation requests (1, 2, 3). As we have seen in Asia in recent years, CCP secret police have renditioned dissident targets from both Hong Kong and Thailand back onto Chinese soil. Thus, a recently-released Kazakh-Chinese woman on Kazakh soil could very feasibly worry that being too outspoken could bring a direct threat upon her person. I would if I was her. 

 

Secondly, I do not know how much reading you have done about PTSD and trauma-recovery in general, but it is absolutely par for the course that people who have been afflicted by violent trauma may not be ready to speak about it for months, years, and decades after the act. Trauma is an issue of great interest to me and I read quite a bit about it--I think a couple of weeks ago I read an article stating that the average timeframe it takes for male rape victims to talk about their assaults is around three decades. Leaving aside what I just mentioned in point one, I would consider it totally normal for a woman who witnessed everything you described above to be truly incapable of speaking about it for quite some time. PTSD is some real shit. And I don't mean "real" like "real-fake;" I mean "real" like "that shit fucks people the fuck up." She has the benefit of my doubt. 

 

Thirdly, given how thoroughly documented it is that the PRC government conducts widespread torture for years. In a land building concentration camps for at least a million people that compels Uighurs to eat pork outside of the concentration camps, I do not find it hard to believe that they would do so inside. As for the torture, alas... I don't know if I wrote about this here or not but I know a PRC government official who was once a cop who narrated to me in detail how his education in torturing inmates began on the second night of his career, when he was 18. I know people who've been through PRC torture and, well, my opinion is that there are many in that system who understand the science of PTSD as well as if not better than many of the best shrinks in the world, except they view it not as a disease to be cured, but a weapon to be used to subjugate entire populations. That is not uniquely Chinese or even CCP thing--US police in ghettos do this stuff, too. But that is a sad topic for a separate thread.  

 

Quote

NB: None of what I say above in any way mitigates or excuses real abuses committed by the PRC authorities in Xinjiang, which I do not doubt are ongoing.

 

Amen. 

Edited January 31, 2020 by Walker

[Walker]

 

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[Walker]

Chenjian Li

(Dr. Chenjian Li is the University Professor at Peking University.  He is on the Advisory Board for China of Cornell University, and the Advisory Committee for China related work for Eli Lilly and Company.)

 

Li Wenliang’s death plunged all of China into deep sorrow. A storm of outrage has gathered around the ruling regime for its mistreatment of Dr. Li and other people who dare to speak the truth and for its iron-fisted suppression of information for the sake of “stability,” which contributed to the global scale of this crisis in a major way. People are asking what we can learn from this tragedy, and what we should do so that Dr. Li will not have died in vain.

The first painful realization is that the self-acclaimed superior Chinese system has failed the public trust yet again, miserably. Government officials from the municipal to the highest levels were ignorant and arrogant, placing their self-interest and loyalty to their superiors above their responsibility to the people they ought to serve. The policy that stability and loyalty to the party and its leader outweighs everything corrupts China’s whole bureaucratic system.

 

The second lesson is that when truth is forbidden and lies flourish, citizens pay the ultimate price.  Chinese people have suffered repeatedly from incredible lies—falsified information on harvests led to tens of millions of deaths during the Great Leap Famine from 1959 to 1961. It is a cancer on Chinese society that lies are so readily acceptable. Moral degeneration permeates everything, from politics, the environment for workers, finance and business to academia, even in the hard sciences.  Presidents and deans of China’s most prestigious universities and medical schools published scores of high profile papers with fabricated data and went without reprimand of any kind, even after the misconduct was exposed and confirmed.

 

Perhaps the most important revelation is that freedom of expression is the first cornerstone of a modern society. Heirs to 2000 years of authoritarian rule, Chinese people have been told that individual rights, including freedom of expression are merely Western concepts espoused by a few heads-in-the-clouds elites and not suitable for China. Even though the Articles 35 and 41 of China’s Constitution read almost like the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, violation of basic rights is a daily norm. People have been convinced or forced to trade rights for fast economic development, based under the rubric of what is called “performance legitimacy.” But now, the general public is suffering an agonizing tragedy because critical information was suppressed and because Li and his colleagues were silenced. People learn through blood and lost lives that freedom is never free, and that rights have to be fought for.

 

The outbreak will eventually be brought under control, although it is uncertain how many will lose their lives before it ends. The regime’s propaganda machine has been ruthless. It will continue to toot its horns and twist facts until it can claim that a great battle has been won by China’s authoritarian system and its supreme leader’s wisdom, further resounding proof of its justified legitimacy and superiority. It will mercilessly crush any dissent.

Today, citizens across China are taking to social media, posting the anthem from Les Miserables. “Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men?” the posts demand. For the sake of China and the Chinese people, I hope that everyone is really listening.

[Taomeow]

On 2/3/2020 at 10:37 PM, Walker said:

 

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Madrid, Spain

 

[gendao]

^ Well, it's always different (BAD) when China does the same thing that Europeans do (GOOD)!

Quote

Bias virus hits New York Times as double standards infect coverage of Covid-19 lockdown measures in China and Italy

National responses to tackling the coronavirus pandemic in China and Italy have given rise to jaw-dropping double standards at The New York Times.

For it seems that locking down around 60 million people in China is tantamount to a gross human rights violation, while doing the same to 60 million Italians is a bold step forward showing an enhanced sense of community that should be universally applauded.

The West = good. China = bad.

This rank hypocrisy, borne of a desperate liberal need to unnecessarily politicize everything, including the Covid-19 outbreak, has revealed an unflattering truth about ‘The Gray Lady,’ its sobriquet that once conveyed the impression the paper possessed of high virtue. No longer.

“China May Be Beating the Coronavirus But At a Painful Cost,” the NYT tweeted one day last week, flagging up its report that the Chinese lockdown and quarantine, which covered 60 million people, coincidentally the same as Italy’s entire population, “has come at great cost to people’s livelihoods and personal liberties.”

Then just 20 minutes later, up popped the same publication’s tweet on the European situation, announcing “Italy Locks Down Much of the Country’s North Over the Coronavirus.” So, did the Times condemn this as an attack on civil liberties by a nasty totalitarian regime?

Not quite. Because while at the time of the report, last Saturday, when only the north of Italy was affected (since expanded to include the entire country), there was a clear change of tone. 

According to The Times: “By taking such tough measures, Italy, which is suffering the worst outbreak in Europe, sent a signal that restrictive clampdowns at odds with some of the core values of Western democracies may be necessary to contain and defeat the virus.”

So, lemme get this right. Restrictive clampdown in Italy? Necessary. Restrictive clampdown in China? A cure worse than the disease.

The Times had earlier, just 20 minutes earlier in fact, gone to some pains to list the key problems China had caused by the measures it chose to protect the spread of what was then just a good ol’ epidemic, rather than full-blown pandemic.

“The economy has ground to a near standstill, and many small businesses say they may soon run out of cash. Patients with critical illnesses are struggling to find timely care, and some have died,” the newspaper reported online. 

But in Italy, it told readers in a new report three days days later, officials had, “pleaded for still stronger measures that would essentially shut down all commercial activity and public transportation in an effort to suffocate the contagion.” No mention of this being a bad thing.

So while the Italians shut up shop (literally), the anticipated effects were not unique to China and to suggest that economic woes and a public health crisis were somehow unusual given the circumstances is simply taking all the bad things that have happened and saying they’re all specifically Chinese problems caused by its handling of the virus outbreak.

Sorry, I don’t buy it.

 

[Walker]

5 hours ago, gendao said:

^ Well, it's always different (BAD) when China does the same thing that Europeans do (GOOD)!

 

 

Bullshit. I do not want to see drones patrolling ANY country.

[SirPalomides]

Quote

The Oxford Political Review is conducting a series of contributions from field experts and academics studying China. We are looking to platform a diversity of voices and opinions. This piece is written by Prof. Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute.

 

Over the last quarter of a century or more of thinking about, living in and engaging with China, it is a line I have often heard. The problem of the contemporary People’s Republic, it goes, is not with the country, or the people – it is with the ruling party. We love Chinese people, the holder of this line says, we have no truck with them. It is with the force governing them that we take issue.

This then goes in a number of different ways. The Communist Party is evil. Chinese people are good. They are oppressed, downtrodden. It is easy to progress beyond this to the heroic statement that we, outside of China, with our enlightened ways are those who will be key in delivering this salvation. We are on our way. Freedom is nigh.

 

The neatness of this approach is attractive. Binary, black and white systems are always easy to engage with. It also evades some of the pointier, more complex issues. We have located the single source of the problem – the evil Communist Party. Once that is out of the way, everything will be plain sailing.

 

Hermann Melville in his great novel `Moby Dick’ stated that the key point was not so much to think extensively, but with subtlety. When one sees such neat divisions between good and bad it should always arouse questions.  How comes things are so straightforward? The idea that the Communist Party of China is the source of all bad, that it’s removal would be the solution to all our problems, inside and outside China, belongs to this category of thinking.

 

Firstly, let’s start with what the Communist Party actually is. We may as well be clear about that before we condemn it. It is currently a membership organisation of 90 million people. It has existed since 1921. Over that period it has varied from a revolutionary party before 1949 to a governing once after that date, when the People’s Republic was founded. Even since 1949 it has changed. From a predominantly quasi-military group whose members were mostly from the countryside, it is now made up more of urban, and college educated people. That is not surprising. This is the general story of Chinese social development over the last seven decades. The Communist Party has simply reflected the society it is in.

 

Alas, for the great supporters of a neat division between Party and population, the thorny issue is that the Party is part of society, and its members are, unsurprisingly, more often than not typical Chinese people. The elite of 3000 or so powerful central and provincial leaders are a tiny, tiny minority. The rest of the membership are broadly representative of Chinese society. Many more people want to joint than get accepted – perhaps ten times more. That shows that a neat division between people and ruling party is not an easy one to impose. The lines are very blurred.

 

For sure, there are people in the Party who join for its network. Others may even have been coerced. But out of 90 million people, the safest thing to say is that broad generalisations about why people are in it have to be treated with great caution. There are a mixture of reasons. The Party deliberately sets out to integrate and reach deep into society. The most prudent thing one can say about the relationship between the two is that they are very complex. And if you want to start deploying language like `evil’ about the Party, then you are going to have to start labelling a good number of Chinese people that way to. Party members are Chinese people, after all – not some separate species!

 

Nor is the Party itself a uniform entity, despite the rigid image it can give to the outside world. In the past there have been deep divisions within it. These may still exist, though in Xi’s more regimented, disciplined era they are less easy to see. Liberals fought against the Leftists in the 1980s. Pro-globalisation figures slogged it out against more nativists ones in the build up to entry to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. There have been more recent fights over the role of rule of law, and even, in the final part of the Hu era up to 2012, a brief moment when democratisation, at least in the Party, was promoted by figures like Wen Jiabao, the premier then.

 

That lack of uniformity is clear looking back over the Party’s era in power. Under Mao, far from being the source of control, it was frequently more akin to an abused friend or ally, victimised in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 because the Chairman believed it was becoming bureaucratic and ossified. Mao was not just a dictator over Chinese society, but the Communist Party!  The anti-corruption battle under Xi has targeted Party actors more often than those outside. Does this mean we have to start dealing with qualifications like `good side’ and `evil side’ of the organisation? Once we do that, then the glorious neatness of the original line of attack starts to rapidly fade away. We are not talking about the evil Party, but the evil part of the Party – a far less arresting and dramatic claim.

 

Then there is the final issue. Labelling an entity like the Communist Party `evil’  or bad might work polemically. But it ends up doing a massive disservice to the many Chinese still in China who are not members. Some of these are deeply opposed to their government. Some are supportive. Some are in between. It would be hard to characterise what a standard view would be. But the idea that they are silent, suppressed, and without agency is profoundly condescending.  Many of them may know their rulers are problematic and often incompetent. They are in good company there with people in Europe and the US. But they are also averse to radical and disruptive change. They have seen enough of that in their own history. Maybe it is just a case of the `devil you know being better than the devil you don’t’. But to frame them as somehow cowed masses waiting for knights in shining armour to come from overseas is a colossal misjudgement. In any case, Europe and America need to save themselves now – not busy themselves fretting about the salvation of others!

 

In one of those tiresome Twitter clashes that sometimes occur these days, I was accused by someone some months ago of being into `nuance.’ This, they declared, with that lapidary style so common on social media, where so much is asserted, and very little explained, `was the sign of poor analysis. Every. Single. Time.’  Thinking about this afterwards, I concluded that in fact nuance was the point. Especially with something as complex as the state of modern China, and its governance system. There are many things it can be labelled. Autocratic. Sometimes in its decision making inhumane. Too vast in scale. Too laden with history. But the idea that its millions of cadres and actors are busying their lives just working on doing harm is risible.  Like government everywhere else, the vast majority most of the time are trying to do their best, for the society they live in and the people they live amongst. Nuance might not be dramatic, but recognising this prosaic fact must get us closer to a better view of the truth. Every. Single. Time.

 

Source:

 

https://oxfordpoliticalreview.com/2020/04/24/china-series-1/