China - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2019/11/20/China.html <comment><USER5> Xi's in a trap. The nationalist fervor that the CCP has whipped up for decades, coupled with the demonization of the HK protestors by Chinese media and Xi's 'no compromise' stance, makes it impossible for him to lighten up -- and the protests to de-escalate -- without him seeming weak. The HK protestors/population at this point are so angry and the radical wing so large, that they won't willingly de-escalate. Even if Lam leaves the demonstrations will continue. This sets up the stage for atrocities and more international condemnation.

Already on the international front, China is in trouble. The pro-China KMT party in Taiwan may suffer greatly in the next election because of what's going on in HK now ([https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3037040/tai...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3037040/taiwan-2020-election- race-influence-mainland-based-voters-may)), making China's aggressive demands for forced unification even more unlikely in the medium term. This week, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a HK rights bill ([https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests- usa/us-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-usa/us- senate-passes-hk-rights-bill-backing-protesters-angers-beijing-idUSKBN1XT2VR)) that, if it becomes law, will put China through an annual review, which will further erode the Sino-U.S. relationship for years to come. There have been calls for a boycott of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing which seems fringey now, but won't be if China sends in the troops.

There's also the internal question. Ordinary people in China are getting censored news, but some of the raw information about what's going on is getting through via social media. What does this mean for sentiment in Cantonese speaking areas of southern China, or for areas of China where provincial officials are resented for unjust or unfair treatment of citizens?

<comment><USER6> Both the west and China omit information when reporting about HK. China highlights protester violence, the west talk about police. The only difference is that west is doing it voluntarily.

If you step back and think about it, if this protest were to happen in the US, with subways burned, shops destroyed, road blocked, for 6 months. What is going to happen? Compare this hypothetical scenario with what happened in Hong Kong.

Where's the gap? In 2019 we've been accustomed to export thinking to other people and import outrage from the cheapest source. And it doesn't take a dictatorial government to push a narrative.

<comment><USER7> In the US I can read any English source, both ones from China and ones from US/UK media. I read that the CCP imprisoned approximately one million Uighurs in concentration camps in Xinjiang, where they are being held indefinitely without due process, and there are reports of physical torture (waterboarding and tiger chair), rape, and occasional killings. I also read from CCP's point of view that this started because there were some terrorist knife attacks in 2014. So I can get both sides' point of views. But after reading both sides, my conclusion is that even if 10,000 people are guilty it does not justify a Holocaust-scale genocide of one million Uighurs, where the overwhelming majority are innocent and did not participate or condone the terrorists. There is no difference between the logic of those perpetrating the genocide in Xinjiang and the logic of Hitler during WWII.

<comment><USER6> You're right and entirely sideway to my point, which is that narrative pushing are not just from one side alone.

<comment><USER7> Let's consider a hypothetical scenario similar to the one you put forward then. Suppose the US government conducts mass imprisonment of a certain population in concentration camps, like CCP is doing to Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Well, it's not hypothetical, we already did it during WWII to Americans of Japanese ethnicity. And newspapers across the US spoke up against this atrocity [1]. Contrast that with China where the newspapers are forced to push the government's narrative, and invariably focus on the terrorism in 2014 that sparked the CCP's disproportional response rather than the barbaric violence perpetrated by the CCP.

The US government has formally apologized for the atrocities in the concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were held, and paid reparations ($42K per camp survivor in current USD). We vowed never to do something so horrible again. But in 2019 China is still playing with mass forced incarceration, and they even have the gall to call it a model for combating violence that other countries should follow. The CCP has replaced the Japanese empire in abusing their own population (but I think some in China are racist and view Uighurs as not part of the Chinese people, just like how Nazi Germany viewed the Jewish people, and how some in US during WW2 viewed Japanese- Americans).

[1] [https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/11/protests-against- in...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/11/protests-against-internment- camps-during-world-war-ii.html)

<comment><USER8> > Suppose the US government conducts mass imprisonment of a certain population

I'd argue that's not hypothetical at all, even with Xinjiang the US has by far the highest rate of imprisonment on the planet both of adults and children.

Most are black. Vast majority are not violent crimes.

It's entirely out of step with the rest of the developed world.

<comment><USER9> Ah, yes. Because someone convicted of a crime going to jail is the same thing as someone being sent to a camp due to their religion. Equating the issues in the US justice system to concentration camps is ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> Ah yes, my mistake, you only lock up convicted criminals, let's review that claim for a moment. Here's a visual:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/uKLej0KwcfGN583uqvyfQ...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/uKLej0KwcfGN583uqvyfQN591-k=/767x0/smart/arc- anglerfish-washpost-prod- washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/YRMTT4ITBY5V5NJS2JC6NPSS54.png)

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

I've noticed a massive apathy amongst Chinese towards Xinjiang, the vast majority don't care and think they deserve it. Perhaps you have a lot more in common than you think.

Both countries have horrendous records and many from there feel not the slightest bit of shame about it.

<comment><USER10> I grew up in Jiangsu province of China. I heard some very nice stories about people in Xinjiang from my neighbours who had worked in Xinjiang for some time. I also heard some very bad stories about certain group of people from Xinjiang. It's hard to agree with you that 'a massive apathy amongst Chinese towards Xinjiang' \--- as an ordinary Chinese, I want a peaceful country, and no terrorists, and I love diversity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >"It's economically productive for the 1% to maintain a trade relationship with China. The financial incentives don't help any Americans, and in fact, most of us are hurt by this relationship..."

So true, since its inception with GHW, its execution and realization through Clinton and then once fully engaged the timid, supplicant responses from GW and BO, China has contributed to the stagnation of the blue collar worker on America with the full complicity of Democrats, Republicans and most of Industry and even unions who didn't oppose their cozy politicians. They all only saw starry dollar signs...

That's where we are now. People have had enough. That's why they put up with the guy no one likes because he's willing to sever that codependent relationship.

Now, if you ask any pol running for the nomination who the greatest threat to America is... it's not going to be China...

<comment><AUTHOR> The guy "no one likes" isn't innocent of China-worship. Guiltier than most. On Jinping: "He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a 'tough business.'"

Misrepresenting him as "willing to sever that codependent relationship" is harmful. He's just as complicit if not more than most politicians, and most of his actions involving China have been inconsistent and self-serving.

<comment><USER12> How is that a misrepresentation? He's started a trade war with them. In a world with a few nations with ICBMs it's often valuable to maintain some semblance of respect with countries capable of destroying you, even when initiating a trade war. Most people didn't enjoy the cold war.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Countries routinely disrespect each other all the time.

"War is the continuation of politics by other means." \- Carl_von_Clausewitz

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i applaud your willingness to publish this content under your real name, and also understand your real name is closely associated with your software service.

i understand that gives you a certain amount of power that other employees, say of Apple, may not have. kudos to you for using it fruitfully - sincerely.

i am sure this will come across as tin foily, but i would advise you to monitor your digital assets and maybe even personal ones for probing/attack/etc. you're publishing an anti-CCP piece on a widely trafficked web property and are easily identifiable. you are making an enemy of a powerful adversary.

appreciate the piece and best of luck.

<comment><USER14> Author here. Thank you for your earnest concern. I'm a pretty risk-averse person and I take lots of pains to address those contingencies for all of my digital services.

<comment><USER15> Hi author, wondering what you think China should do with the organs of executed prisoners? It's easy to find fault with them for (presumably) not asking for permission but it seems it would be a pity for them not to be used to help patients in need, no? This is separate from the question of what supposed crimes led to the execution. Short waiting lists can be explained by the lack of permission not only for executions but for all deaths of healthy people... not to defend China on other points, but this one seems like a odd concern possibly just zeroed in on for dramatic emotional effect, rather than for any actual practical reason.

<comment><USER16> If the prisoners didn't consent to their organs being used (to bolster the health of the people who imprisoned them), they should not be used.

Anything else sets up a perverse incentive to execute more undesirables.

<comment><USER15> The perverse incentive part makes sense.

For the other part, I have trouble understanding why a dead person would care about anything after their death ...although I can understand them having wishes before death, but any such wishes should be weighed in context for their reasonableness given all factors.

<comment><USER17> It's not just about the rights of the person being executed, but also those of their loved ones.

You may say you wouldn't care if your dead carcass was, say, grotesquely abused for someone else's amusement—after all, you're dead and no longer around to have any feelings about it—but how would your children feel? How would you feel if that was the fate awaiting your life partner?

The shared endeavor of human society entitles people to dignity even in death. That includes the right to bodily integrity.

<comment><USER15> >grotesquely abused

Yeah that would be disrespectful. Kind of moving the goalposts though to use that example when talking about organ transplant, something that helps people who might otherwise die. Obviously I am not saying execution is worth it for that. Just more that if someone is dead already for whatever reason, it's hard to see it as a bad thing to help the living, if that can be done.

I mean if we're going to fashion extreme examples for dramatic effect, that can be done on the other side too. Imagine if the relatives have racist objections to donating an organ, and let someone die because their own feelings would be hurt if they saw a person of the "wrong" race being helped. How do you weigh their racist feelings, versus the life being saved? It's not that clear to me that their feelings should be at the forefront when other factors are considered.

I agree that dignity in death is a good thing. Just not so certain as you that there is only one way to get there. And none of this is to claim that China does what they do with dignity... I highly doubt that. But organ transplants are not such a terrible thing.

<comment><USER18> For some religions, organ donation is a grotesque abuse of the body.

<comment><USER15> True, but you can find a religious belief from some random major or minor religion to justify or prohibit just about anything.

Including things that harm others or infringe on their rights.

So if that is guiding policy, policy is going to be a mess at worst or severely hobbled at best.

China doesn't generally hold religion in high regard when formulating policy. They are more guided by practicality and expediency.

That puts them in conflict with many western values but it's interesting to look at it from their perspective.

For those people who believe that organ donation is a grotesque abuse, that is bad but it should be weighed against other bad things. People dying is also bad. Which is worse? Grotesque abuse of a corpse, or letting someone die? China appears to have made a decision on this question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a Hong Konger, thank you for writing this.

One nitpick: Hong Kong has its own legal definition of "rioting". It's from the Public Order Ordinance[1], and carries a maximum 10 years jail sentence. The entire law itself is quite draconian and was struck down in the final days of British rule, but was reinstated immediately after the handover.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Ordinance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Ordinance)

<comment><USER20> When China took the book sellers they prosecuted them in China under Chinese laws. It stands to reason China could take and prosecute some "rioters" under Chinese law and Chinese implications.

[https://qz.com/1110266/two-years-later-the-last-of-the- vanis...](https://qz.com/1110266/two-years-later-the-last-of-the-vanished- hong-kong-booksellers-gui-minhai-has-been-freed-in-china/)

<comment><USER19> Of course. But I'm specifically talking about "rioting" as referenced in the Five Demands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm a Chinese. I admire your courage to post this article.

But there's one thing that's fundamentally wrong in your article. Trading with China is, for now, beneficial to EVERYONE, including you, Drew DeVault, and the top 1% richest. Specialization and trading are the fundamental ways to advance the economy. Surely there will be blue collar workers in the US losing their jobs, but that's just how economy goes. We care about individuals, and it's a tragedy that anyone loses job, but looking at the big picture every working individual should be able to learn new skills and ready to move to new industries if the current industry no longer provides enough jobs.

When Samsung moved its factories out of China and into Vietnam, lots of Chinese workers lost their jobs. One day if Samsung pulled their factories out of Vietnam and moved to an even cheaper country, workers in Vietnam will lose their jobs too. What should those workers do? Learn new skills and move on to other industries. That's a cold thing to say but that's how the economy works. Workers in country A lose their jobs because of the trading with country B does not mean trading with country B is wrong.

If you hate (and you should) what the Chinese government has been doing, the right thing to do is work together to move factories, plants, and companies out of China and to another country, if and only if they can still provide the products/services at the same or even better quality with a lower cost.

<comment><USER22> I think it is not about not trading persay - it's about not supporting a totalitarian mercantilist. While we both benefit on paper, the fact that so much of this wealth is concentrated at the top in America slows the velocity of money, and the fact that the Chinese are using it to fuel totalitarian measures compounds the trade deficit to the point where it is no longer simply about money and jobs.

Maybe having a gigantic trade deficit is natural and okay, but when it is being used to fund the CCP it is problematic. America may have to take a short term hit, but if it moves its factories out to India, Thailand, Taiwan, Mexico, even back to America the marginal loss in wealth due to trade will be outranked by the substantial benefit to society we will get from not fuelling a nation that seeks supremacy at the cost of humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't necessarily disagree with the article, I just want to point out that outside of the US others will readily view this line of thought as hypocritical and self-serving.

As a US citizen, I try to consider how the rest of the world may view our actions (glass houses and all). Following the logic here it would make sense for the rest of the world to cutoff trade with the United States due to the Iraq war, which has caused many civilian deaths.

But if you agree that the rest of the world should have sanctioned the US for the Iraq war (among other things) then there might be a consistency with trying to sanction China.

<comment><USER24> The US has always valued "principle" over actual results. In Iraq, Saddam was "evil", so he had to go, even though it would leave the entire country in the power vacuum and destroy the livelihoods of the average Iraqi. Ditto for Gaddafi in Libya.

This post is much the same way. A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom. This happened in South Korea, which many forget used to be a brutal military dictatorship.

<comment><USER25> "A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom."

We've been testing that theory for decades with negative results.

Maybe it works other places, but it doesn't seem to be working in China.

<comment><USER26> Perhaps you just need to wait longer?

<comment><USER25> I hope so. But we have to start considering the possibility that we are causing more harm than good.

For instance, if China's economic influence is stifling free speech in the west, that's a pretty disturbing trend.

<comment><USER26> Given that the USA has federal and state laws preventing and punishing even muttering an idea about not selling to Israel, I'd say you should consider adding a few names to that list.

If its actually free speech you care about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Note: if you are interested in conducting an independent review of the > factuality of the claims expressed in this article, please contact me.

Since the author reads HN, I'll assume this comment counts.

> The Chief Executive of Hong Kong (Carrie Lam) is elected directly by the > mainland Chinese government, and the people have no representation in the > election whatsoever.

The Chief Executive is elected by the Election Committee. While that includes some members representing China's National People's Congress, the majority is made up of a carefully gerrymandered selection of company representatives and professional associations, similar to the Legislature Council. [https://www.elections.gov.hk/ecss2016/eng/figures.html](https://www.elections.gov.hk/ecss2016/eng/figures.html)

Also, if you intend to e.g. prevent Chinese developers from using your products, I'd advise against it. Foreign code hosting platforms are a major way for Chinese developers to organize where they can't be reached by the government.

<comment><USER14> Hey yorwba, thanks for the comments. I received similar comments from HKers earlier wrt the Chief Executive office. Minor corrections are on the way out.

The changelog for this article is here:

[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com/log/master](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com/log/master)

I have no plans to block Chinese citizens from using my services, though I wouldn't be surprised if the great firewall had other plans.

<comment><USER23> I am not trying to troll but genuinely interested in figuring out the boundaries of these proposed boycotts.

What is the difference between "accept investments from China" and allowing Chinese citizens to pay for your service?

This article does not call on US companies to stop selling to China. There seems to be a baseline assumption that creating (from the US point of view) trade deficit will destroy freedom and that a trade surplus does not. Intuitively it makes some sense, but I think it is good to explicitly discuss this question.

It seems like your real issue is with US companies that "kowtow", but having your own company accept a Chinese customer or a company accept Chinese investment does not require kowtowing.

As pointed out in the above comment, some forms of trade can promote freedom, and others can contribute to its destruction, so I am wondering if an approach that was rule-based rather than blanket would make more sense (but I have no idea how to make such rules).

<comment><USER14> >I am not trying to troll but genuinely interested in figuring out the boundaries of these proposed boycotts.

No problem, I'm grateful for your comments.

The difference is subtle but important. First of all, the Chinese users of my service or a minority of a minority. Their participation has little to no effect on the direction of the site. Their $5/mo subscription fee is not going to move mountains. The kinds of investments I'm referring to are much larger, and require treading softly to avoid insulting the Communist Party of China.

Second, because I've pubically condemned China, these users will have to go out of their way to use my services, which would amount to tacit agreement with these principles. I would be happy to support them. It's not individual Chinese citizens that I have a problem with, it's the actions of the government as a whole.

<comment><USER23> Then the principle would be that it is okay to do business with China if you don't kowtow. That works well for selling to China but it can only work for buying if there is a distributor outside of China which would just encourage buying direct from China. A general boycott doesn't work with the kowtow principle because an individual or company in China isn't in a position to be able to state their opinion of the government.

<comment><USER28> The problem is that in general for most companies, especially related to discretionary spending, the proportion of customers who are from China is increasing. Over time they end up kowtowing because the Chinese users threaten to boycott them unless they "respect China", which usually means doing whatever they are told to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't think that the cheaper goods that China gave the world only benefited the %1, and actually has helped a lot people in america and the world.

I also don't think that the economic miracle that has happened in China is a bad thing, and they could of been more singaporean/south korean authoritarian vs. genocidal authoritarian to achieve it. I really want china to become another Japan or Korea eventually.

I do agree with you that China is basically a modern day nazi germany, pre WW2 at this point.

<comment><USER30> The logic behind opening things up with China (including allowing them to buy American companies) was that as they become economically successful, they would be more open to things like democracy. At what point do you realize you failed and close the barn door?

<comment><USER6> This assume the goal for China is democracy, and the one the west set for them. If they failed, we must destroy their economy, take their people into poverty, because the barn door must be closed.

This narrative basically can be taken verbatim by the CCP as propaganda material. "The west didn't like our political system that made great economical progress, and they will try to destroy your livelihood. By the way, they think the economical success of China is entirely a gift of the west. It has nothing to do with your hard working."

<comment><USER30> So we should continue to let them buy US companies despite the reverse not being allowed? We should continue to let their companies operate freely in our markets despite the reverse not being allowed? We must maintain this double standard because the CCP might make propaganda out of it?

<comment><USER31> Given the number of times 'national security' has been the reason for barring Chinese companies from operating in the US or anywhere else, I don't think what you describe is true any more

<comment><USER29> That is a fairly recent development, while the opposite has been status quo for multiple decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I stopped reading here:

> $155B worth of electronics, which we already have domestic manufacturing > capabilities for [4]

The citation here is to the effect that the manufacturing technology is already present in the US. This does not at all translate to the capability to produce these goods, in at least three respects:

* Capacity of production (an industry manufacturing billions of goods requires at least new plants to be built)

* Logistics network (transportation, special zones with enough industry concentration to generate economies of scale)

* Skilled and experienced labor. Take whatever item you can think of, the people who have been in the manufacturing business for that specific item for over a decade have skill and experience above and beyond the mere technological capability to produce.

All of these things would translate at least to higher production costs (regardless of thoughts on currency exchange), market shrinkage from lower affordability, and potentially shortages as well.

The real economy is not as easy as software - you can't just install a new OS and run, it takes decades to transform industries at this scale.

<comment><USER33> Sure, it would cost the US to make a point to China that they find some of China's policies unacceptable in a trading partner, but it would also cost China - that's the point.

<comment><USER32> I am concerned with this statement appearing to make a misleading minimization of the cost on the US side, as if it was a simple matter of turning around to a different seller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are a lot of jobs dependent on trade with China (our company was affected by the Huawei ban, for example), and the fantasy that you can just cut-over to US manufacturing without huge transition job losses is unrealistic.

And if the US wants to get serious about the use of trade sanctions against human rights violations, there are a lot of places closer to home that it could look at. Not to mention the laws against boycotting a certain country for its human rights violations.

There's also the fantasy of assuming that China's _next_ move after the trade sanctions would be a de-escalation. There's a lot of escalation opportunities for them. Like Taiwan.

(Let's be clear, this is not an apology for the human rights violations by China, which are very real especially in Xinjiang; what I am asking for is the same to be applied consistently and not driven by straightforward nationalism)

<comment><USER35> >> There are a lot of jobs dependent on trade with China (our company was affected by the Huawei ban, for example), and the fantasy that you can just cut-over to US manufacturing without huge transition job losses is unrealistic.

Completely agree. I very much empathize with the author and this issue is the only one where I feel some sort of connection with the current POTUS, but the engineering-at-scale capacities in the United States pale in comparison to China for a variety of reasons - some due to a cheaper labor force and more "flexible" labor laws, and some simply due to culture.

We do not have this capacity now and it is dubious that we can build it quickly without serious governmental subsidies and efforts not seen since World War 2. I'm personally good with the change, but it will cost billions if not trillions of dollars in lost productivity and marginal costs over the next decade or two, and this is not something to handwave away.

<comment><USER36> There are a hundred million+ factory workers in China producing products at massive scale for the world. Scaling up enough equipment, robots, and skilled workers in America to do even a fraction of that work is going to be a huge undertaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Thank you for the article. I've personally stopped buying Chinese made/owned products due to the HK protests, but it has been extremely difficult to convince friends and families to do the same because I couldn't properly explain to them _why_ this was such a big issue. Thank you for spending the time to write up this article, and thank you for taking a stand.

</comment><comment><USER38> If I might post an unpopular opinion, and let me assure you I'm not secretly a pro-CCP shill: what's happening HK has much more to do with changing economic realities than it does with an evil agenda from the Chinese government.

In 1997 HK had 1/3 of the GDP of mainland China and was the only way for Western companies to interact with China. Today HK has 3% of the GDP of mainland China and a huge part of this is because China has opened its borders to foreign investment. Shenzhen has a thriving economy because if you're a western company and want to do business with China, you can just go there and do business. In the past you would have had to go through Hong Kong to make this happen.

The Hong Kong riots were sparked because China wanted to extradite someone who murdered his girlfriend in Taiwan and then went to hide in HK to avoid extradition. If the same thing happened in the united states we would be equally furious. Of course I'm not stupid, I know that this extradition is part of a growing feeling of increasingly powerful influence of China on HK, and I know this because this how independent nations feel when the US similarly puts extradition pressure on other countries. Look what happened with Julian Assange!

But the protests in Hong Kong aren't just about some emergent "evil" coming from China. Their part of the economic and social anxiety that comes from having your economic power completely change in the span of 20 years. In America we know power and independence go hand in hand.

I'm equally as wary of growing Chinese political power as I am of US Hegemony. But the current strife in Hong Kong is perfect propaganda fuel for both the US and China. Both nations essentially get to stoke the flames of nationalism while HK suffers. I strong encourage people to at least question the prevailing narratives from both sides and start to look at the economic realities of what's happening.

<comment><USER39> It's definitely about the economy. Just look at Macau.

There are no protests there. They were also a former Westen colony and now under 1 country, 2 systems like Hong Kong.

The only difference is their GDP per capita is almost twice that of Hong Kong's.

<comment><USER40> Macau's has been solidly pro-Beijing for over 50 years. While there are economic differences, there are certainly political differences as well.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-3_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-3_incident)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Assembly_of_Macau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Assembly_of_Macau)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Thanks for having the guts to say this. Granted that collectively "the West", those who explicitly or tacitly support the Anglo-American banking cartel, are not without major flaws and human rights abuses as well. But execution of your political opponents to harvest their organs for money? That is above and way, way beyond the pale.

We don't need China. Increasing automation, and with other countries picking up the slack, China will become more and more irrelevant. We don't need to support in any way the completely amoral CCP.

</comment><comment><USER42> Tech people: Rant about egregious things that China and Russia does (political, freedom, basic human rights, etc.)

Also tech people: Vehemently oppose helping the US DoD with their highly- sought after skills, sign online petitions, protest and/or quit their high- paying jobs at <insert tech company that provides value to US DoD>.

Serious question for these tech people: What are you exactly doing to help solve the issues you've ranted about?

I'd like to hear thoughtful responses that are not the typical fallacies (e.g. ad hominem, ad populum, straw man, etc.)

<comment><USER43> How is the DoD going to help with China and Russia? We're not going to invade them.

If you're referring to the NSA or CIA they're both organizations that ignore the US constitution so there's great reasons to not work for them.

<comment><USER42> > We're not going to invade them.

So, that is your opinion. The whole point of having a credible option to use violence, is that one is willing to use it. Otherwise, there is no credibility in the threat, which defeats the entire purpose of peace and security that is backed by the _potential_ use of violence. In that sense, if one misses a court ordered appearance, one shouldn't be surprised to see law enforcement knocking on one's doorstep with the threat of violence for legal non- compliance.

Do black hat cyber attacks constitute an "invasion"? If you say no, then that's what Russia / China is banking on, because they're doing it, and betting that the US won't resort to conventional military use of force in retaliation. Since there's no real threat of painful retaliation, they can continue hacking away with no consequence then?

If you say yes, then you're saying that the US should respond to cyber attacks with conventional military use of force, tanks, planes, boots on ground, etc. because you see cyber attacks as no different than a conventional attack by those countries.

Regardless, the US needs more cyber security professionals and other technical professionals (e.g. machine learning etc.) to help with the defense against these actors, but that's hard to do with all this backlash from techies.

<comment><USER44> Doesnt excuse it either way but do you believe the USA and its intelligence agencies doesnt conduct similar black hat cyber actions in China / Russia? That status quo is simply what modern espionage looks like and doesnt constitute hard military action until it crosses lines it has yet to (shutting down a power grid, for ex).

To build on my other response, perhaps intead of being a China warhawk, which could be the most devastating and destructive war in history if escalated to nuclear war, how about instead we revist things like permenant normalized trade relations with china? How about we invest in local high tech skilled and automation assisted manufacturing such as can be found in south korea? there are many other options besides hard military force and to rush to that is immature and dangerous.

<comment><USER42> So in my original question, I was inquiring what people were actually doing to positively impact the world in the direction they want it to go (preferably, objectively measurable results), because I know everyone here has opinions about what someone else should do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What is discounted is the value of a decent middle class job to a high school graduate in many parts of the country. The qualitative value of that loss of human happiness to pride, satisfaction, purpose is not measured by traditional economists. Now, 25 years out from NAFTA and the start of major deindustrialization in the Midwest we are seeing the fruits of those globalist policies. The rise of deaths of despair which is reducing lifespan for middle aged males in the United States.

This is the tragedy so silently born by The many that eludes the "but Wal-Mary lowered prices" crowd that is enriched by free trade.

</comment><comment><USER46> Drew is a smart guy. It's cool that we get to hear his geopolitical views. I knew he had some when I saw his name in the Patreon of Caspian Report.

edit: DDOS on sr.ht starts in 3... 2... 1...

</comment><comment> bloody-crow It's very easy to critisize someone else for not standing to some principles as long as you don't have to deal the the consequences of doing so. Think Blizzard for example. Sure, they could potentially publicly support Hong-Kong out of principle and immediately get banned in China. The consequence of this would be

\- Millions of Chinese people (lot of whom have nothing to do with HK or goverment or human right violation) instantly lose access Blizzard products. Their lives become unequivocally shitter.

\- Blizzard loses a ton of money and have to downsize significantly firing half of their staff. They can't affort investing in new projects at the scale they used to. Their products become cheaper and lose in quality. Maybe the company even have to shut down due to not being able to sustain itself. It's pretty shitty for Blizzard on all fronts here.

\- A lot of Blizzard employees lose their jobs, stop paying taxes and participating in economy at the rate they could afford while being employed by Blizzard. Seems pretty shitty for them and their communities.

\- Millions of consumers all over the world miss out on new Blizzard titles, stop buying their games and participating in events organized by Blizzard because company ceases to exist or can't afford to maintain the quality of their products due to less budget. This is a significant impact on the economy as a whole when a huge company generating wealth out of thin air ceases to exist or loses its steam.

\- Chinese goverment is not affected by any of this and keeps doing whatever it's doing.

Overall, seems like the move will hurt everyone involved, except for the Chinese government. Remind me please, why we keep demanding Blizzard to punch themselves in a dick for no benefit whatsoever?

I'm not necessary defending Blizzard here, really. I'm just pointing out that the situation is a lot more complicated than shallow takes like in the one in the linked article tend present to it to be.

<comment><USER47> It's the outrageous penalty that upset Blizzard supporters. Initially announced penalty to Blitzchung: [1]

(1) banned from the current tournament (2) forfeit any prize money (approximately US$4,000 by that point) (3) banned from other Grandmaster tournaments for one year

By contrast, Overwatch League player Josh "Eqo" Corono made a racist gesture and said "I am Korean" on a stream, and was suspended for three games and fined $3000. [2]

Not that Blizzard cannot penalize Blitzchung. Just not out of proportion.

> Millions of Chinese people (lot of whom have nothing to do with HK or > goverment or human right violation) instantly lose access Blizzard products. > Their lives become unequivocally shitter.

Judging from China's ban on NBA's that lasted only two days, China's ban on Blizzard may be equally short-lived. [3]

> Blizzard loses a ton of money and have to downsize significantly firing half > of their staff. They can't affort investing in new projects at the scale > they used to. Their products become cheaper and lose in quality. Maybe the > company even have to shut down due to not being able to sustain itself. It's > pretty shitty for Blizzard on all fronts here.

Only 12% of Blizzard revenue comes from Asia-Pacific, which includes China but also South Korea, Taiwan, etc [4]. Some sources say only 5% comes from China [5]. Even if Blizzard loses Chinese market completely, I don't see why they need to downsize significantly and fire half of the staff.

The same goes for your remaining claims.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy)

[2] [https://www.usgamer.net/articles/blizzard-is-in-an- internati...](https://www.usgamer.net/articles/blizzard-is-in-an- international-mess-of-its-own-making)

[3] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-basketball- nba/exci...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-basketball-nba/excited- china-fans-cheer-nba-game-despite-row-over-hong-kong-tweet-idUSKBN1WO017)

[4] [https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activis...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activision_blizzard_revenue_by_country_boycotts/)

[5] [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/dp1py7/blizzard...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/dp1py7/blizzard_lost_a_big_sponsor_after_the_hong_kong/f5s6rr8/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> It really surprised me that Google staff went apeshit over Dragonfly, and GitHubbers over the ICE contract, yet Apple rank and file seem relatively content with a special backdoored iCloud service that is used in China, no doubt used daily to target people for human rights abuses via surveillance.

<comment><USER49> Same thing could be said for Microsoft, where employees were upset they were providing O365 and Azure to ICE, but there is no similar outrage directed towards the special China cloud they run

<comment><USER48> Microsoft has always been firmly embedded with human rights abusers and military the world over—there was no departure from the status quo there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> this is certainly one way to inexpensively pentest sr.ht at enterprise scale, and thanks for the heads up

</comment><comment><USER51> Hey mods is there a particular reason this post is being penalized? As of writing it's #22 with 400 points in 1 hour, while #5 has 119 points in 3 hours.

<comment><USER52> Votes alone don't determine frontpage position and it's still on the front page, so clearly it's not being penalized. Some people probably flagged it too, as I did.

<comment><USER53> Why did you flag it?

<comment><USER27> It's flamewar fuel. (I didn't flag it, but only because I enjoy the heat too much.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Didn't the US blow up 30 afghani civilians a few months ago with drone strikes? Didn't even make the front page.

We all make deals with monsters for economic safety, or because there is near nothing we can do about it. That includes China AND the US.

<comment><USER55> Killing civilians is unfortunate and mistake. However it's controversial because the views of the leaders of a nation is quite different from average people that there are costs and risks you cannot avoid to protect more civilian death. Logically that's a legitimate claim. In statistics majority of killed were terrorists. i.e. the killing is quite effective and accurate.

The real flaw of the strategy is fundamental misunderstanding of root cause and how human society works. Killing didn't reduce the capability of the terrorists. The growth of terrorists out paste target drone killing numbers. Killing cause more growth. That's why US eventually talk to Taliban. The failure is on another level not accuracy of drone target killing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> "The United States would be unable to buy $155B worth of electronics, which we already have domestic manufacturing capabilities for4

4: [https://www.lg.com/us/press-release/lg-electronics-to- build-...](https://www.lg.com/us/press-release/lg-electronics-to-build-us- factory-for-home-appliances-in-tennessee)

4: [http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/22nm/pdfs/Global- Int...](http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/22nm/pdfs/Global-Intel- Manufacturing_FactSheet.pdf")

This is a truly perplexing argument, especially the sourcing to "make" the argument. Ones an article about a single factory that LG opened for washing machines in the US, the other that Intel has chip manufacturing plants in the US. This does not make the argument that America has the resources, both human and raw materials, to pull off a China manufacturing pull-out.

A lot of the article, especially the parts on who gets rich off this arrangement and the human rights components are very much on point. But making it out like a China manufacturing break would just be simply accomplished because LG makes some washing machines here is pretty ridiculous. It would be very difficult, and it would require a lot of government assistance & policy encouragements to develop people, acquire access to rare earth minerals, and lay out vast sums of upstart capital to get factories built. It would take time. Making it out like it's a simple fix is convenient and simple, but like most complex things that are made out to be simple & convenient, it's just flat-out wrong.

</comment><comment><USER57> I agree with all of this, but also can't help thinking about the old Bastiat quote: "When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will."

</comment><comment><USER58> What can I, as an average Joe living in the US, do to help?

Edit: After reading responses, I realize that there is a better question to ask: What people in the US in general do to help (vote a certain way, write to certain politicians, change purchasing habits), and how can I specifically participate in that?

<comment><AUTHOR> You work at a multibillion-dollar company, yet live in a state with an (comparatively) uneducated population. That's far from average.

One idea would be to run workshops for children/or families teaching them how to repair their devices, and which devices to get if they want them to last (think upgradability, battery-replacement, similar). If we're wanting to lessen China's power over the working class, making people capable of maintaining electronics in the same way they can maintain cars will go a long way. Bonus points if you teach them how to reinstall operating systems without bricking their systems.

Another idea would be to use your programming ability to create software to help people: think getting past censorship, keeping communications secure, similar. China and Hong Kong both are more or less tech wonderlands, solving the UX issues that stop anyone from throwing a single-board computer (think Orange/Raspberry Pi) online and using it to communicate over the open web and store data without fear of it being compromised in some way by doing nothing more than flashing an OS image and booting would mean that almost everyone would gain, but especially people in those countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> No mention of the TPP?

Seems like a pretty big omission, given that it's what smart people were putting together to give us some better leverage against them without "going cold turkey", which would tank the economy in a massive way that would absolutely crush those who are not so well off.

</comment><comment><USER60> The problem is that doing what the author proposes and severing trade relations entirely would be extremely harmful to the 99% of Americans in the short term. Prices for virtually everything would skyrocket far faster than wages. And they would do so for everyone, not just blue collar workers. In the long term things _might_ be better, but it would be a lot more painful to get there than I think most Americans are prepared to stomach.

Personally, my thoughts are in line with the author's, but realistically we need to be looking at unified trade sanctions on key goods and potentially clamping down on foreign investment in both directions.

<comment><USER61> If you treat the cost of consumer goods in isolation as the only thing that matters in the economy, sure.

People who are gainfully employed do not have a problem with the cost of general goods like food and electronics; this stuff is cheap.

The problem (not only in the US) for most is under/unemployment and the cost of housing.

Because the jobs have been shipped offshore.

<comment><USER62> The cost of housing is a complicated matter but is mostly not due to jobs going elsewhere. Single family zoning and 'never change' rules in home owners associations and cities are some of the biggest drivers of housing prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "not beneficial to anyone but those who are already obscenely rich, and certainly not for our poorest"

An otherwise fact-driven post is undermined with this claim. Even if true, it would be very hard to support this claim.

<comment><USER63> while exaggerated, he s probably referring to this:

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/2/2/16868838/el...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/2/2/16868838/elephant-graph-chart-global-inequality-economic- growth)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Er... why the fact that US is a net importer from China is a bad thing? (Admittedly, I'm not a US citizen, & I'm not really interested in US's trades so I don't know the numbers but...) I thought US was basically using China as a big factory?

US's exports will decrease when manufactured in the US since China's cheap labor is allowing US goods to have a not-that-high price. So really the net- import from China is just something that US should embrace to get the net- exports to other countries.

<comment><USER65> From what I understand, the issue is dependence on an external source for those goods that we consume, and through that the implicit support for the Chinese Government & its current regime

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> A few problems.

For one rare earth minerals are dominated by China making domestic electronic manufacturing impossible.

Second, less profit means stocks go down,economic recession is likely. People loss jobs,savings,etc...

China will be hostile, they have infiltrated US institutions extensively.

I agree the west should move away from China but only because of China's hostility and this needs to be done slowly!

</comment><comment><USER10> When you refer to some resources, you'll have great responsibility to check their factuality (especially for this kind of sensitive topic), otherwise, you are wasting your efforts on making your points and the reader's time for reading and even worse misleading the audience largely.

</comment><comment><USER67> Why is this on the front page of HN? It is showing up at #48 and yet has 672 points.

</comment><comment><USER68> You don't understand China. What I saw in this article is completely biased and brain washed by you know who.

<comment><USER69> Ok, but rather than name-calling ("completely biased", "brain washed"), it would be better to add good information in a neutral way, so readers can learn something. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, it would be better not to post, even though it's frustrating to see a thread full of comments you disagree with.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I traveled extensively in China this year. A strong sense of nationalism keeps the government strong and allows them to trample on the rights of minorities. A trade war / sanctions will only fuel that even further. (Like the humiliation of Germany after WWI helped Hitler to gain power).

The best remedy is to undermine the Great Firewall. And the easiest to hide censored content* in sites that are not filtered (like this one). Just hide it well enough that Baidu etc. cannot get to it.

*: That can include proxies to news sites, facebook etc.

<comment><USER27> If Baidu can't get to it, what's the point? Hiding censored content in sites that are not filtered isn't going to help anyone if it can't be found.

<comment><USER70> Many ways. A members only section or a captcha would look the most natural.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'm not convinced that most people are hurt by trade with China but I'm perfectly fine with paying $2 more for a keyboard and $15 more for a cupboard to not deal with a murderous communist (redundant, I know, no one is really surprised here, right) regime.

What is true is that this will not meaningfully impact lives of ordinary westerners. There is no reason other than corporate greed for the status quo.

<comment><USER72> I'm just playing devil's advocate here but I don't think it would cost $2 more for a keyboard, try > $100 for a keyboard. Unicomp is one example, made in Japan Realforce keyboards go for $200-$300. New balance makes sneakers in the USA but those cost ~$200. Everything would cost 2-3x. Would you pay $3000-4000 for an iphone that's built in the USA? Ever try to find a toaster oven that's made in USA? There is one but it'll set you back $285.

I would buy usa made stuff because I have the means to, currently typing this on a Realforce keyboard wearing USA NB sneakers. But I'm pretty sure it would put a huge dent in retail sales across the board. Maybe higher volume in manufacturing would lower usa-made prices and create more jobs in the usa which might tip the revenue flow from the 1% to everyone else.

<comment><USER73> Why made in USA? Why not made in India or Vietnam?

<comment><USER39> If it's human rights you're worried about, then Vietnam is also communist and what India is doing in Kashmir is worse than Hong Kong's situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Hey Drew, just wanted to say I couldn't agree more. I do not know about the US's domestic manufacturing capabilities, and I don't think I care, either; this situation is not OK. It probably wasn't OK for a very long time. Something needs to change. It probably won't come at a small cost.

I'm sure this thread will have a lot of whataboutism. Remember what your parents always told you: two wrongs don't make a right.

</comment><comment><USER75> It's also worth noting that the financial elites and the CCP aren't really doing business, they're committing fraud and theft. China isn't exporting productivity, it's exporting deflation and corruption.

Arguably, the trade war may have nothing to do with trade and, together with financial decoupling, everything to do with deliberate monetary strangulation.

The Trump administration holds all the cards, the CCP holds none. The challenge is getting the job done without more people getting killed.

[https://mises.org/wire/china-trouble](https://mises.org/wire/china-trouble)

[https://mises.org/wire/chinas-biggest-problem-isnt-trump- its...](https://mises.org/wire/chinas-biggest-problem-isnt-trump-its-broken- banking-system)

[https://thesoundingline.com/chinas-money-supply-has- outgrown...](https://thesoundingline.com/chinas-money-supply-has-outgrown-its- economy-over-two-fold-since-2009/)

</comment><comment><USER76> I am a bit weirded out and pessimistic. If in any case in 27 years HK will be totally under Chinese control what would be the reason to fight it now temporarily? Unless the issue at stake is complete freedom. That can escalate to full blown war and possibly a global one.

</comment><comment><USER77> All I can say is that I agree with everything in this article.

<comment><USER78> The article ignores the impact on poor people in the US if trade with China was cut off. In general, poor people would pay more for everything that is currently imported from China. Everyone would pay more, but poor people would be impacted the most.

I'm not sure if that's enough to say trade with China is a good thing.

But it should turn your idea of a very simple answer into a much more complicated picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I mostly agree with the substance and recommendations of the article, and greatly appreciate it. The following is just a quibble.

> Let's lay out the facts: China is conducting human rights violations on the > largest scale the world has seen since Nazi Germany.

Even if you ignore events like the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer rouge or the Rwandan genocide, on the basis that, while far more intensive, they affected a considerably smaller population, China's own cultural revolution was a far greater human rights violation than what is happening now in China. (Arguably, in terms of scope, it was even worse than anything than the Nazis did, even if its intentions were probably more benign.)

I'd recommend changing the quoted sentence to something to the effect of "one of the largest scales".

<comment><USER80> The Cultural Revolution was bad, but it caused "only" 1-2M deaths. Probably a stronger comparison would be the earlier Great Leap Forward, with 20-50M deaths.

But, yes, both are far greater human rights violations than what is happening now in mainland China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Richard Nixon carries a lot of responsibility for the current situation. He never ever put the human rights issue on the table, he never pressed on the issue, because from the beginning his sole goal was having access to a cheap workforce, and damned the rest. The Communist Party situation at that time rested on the abuse of power. Nixon just strengthened their position by given market access and capital without pressure on the human rights issues.

Actually, the cynic in me thinks that this was by design. By reinforcing the power of the communist party, american corporations wouldn't have to worry about the chinese workers fighting for better labor and environmental conditions, thus keeping costs low.

<comment><USER82> They do work together. There is benefit in controlling the growth and rise of the Chinese and american populace. I don't know how you guarantee working conditions for 1 billion people. Just the spread of resources alone gets thin very quickly. Buy giving them the space to rise by selling to the US with subsidized shipping and what else has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, abuses or not. That is a fundamental good assuming it is stable. I think the courageous view is to integrate the cynical view and go one step further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> > China is conducting human rights violations on the largest scale the world > has seen since Nazi Germany

I'm pretty sure China had been already committed human right violation on that scale before.

</comment><comment><USER84> "I call for a worldwide boycott of Chinese products, and of companies".

Yeah throw away every piece of electronic you have including Apple products.

</comment><comment><USER85> > It's nice to believe that we would have stood up to Nazi Germany if we had > been there in the 1940's. China is our generation's chance to prove > ourselves of that conviction.

I don't think the US joined the war out of concern for the welfare of Europeans so much as out of fear of Germany's continually-expanding borders (and as a reaction to that Pearl Harbor thing)

</comment><comment><USER86> Well, it does look like the West found its archenemy after all.

</comment><comment><USER87> It would be naive to say that China is the only country perpetrator of genocide today, look at its another neighbour i.e. India who is governed by extremist political party today and has locked down 8Million Kashmiri people from more than 100+ days who's land has been UN designated disputed territory. There are well documented genocides perpetrator by Indian military there. Whole of Kashmir is loced down under curfew (no mobiles, no data, no business, no healthcare services etc) from Aug 5 after Indian parliament unilaterally abrogated their rights articles. NO one talks about them :(

</comment><comment><USER88> > It's nice to believe that we would have stood up to Nazi Germany if we had > been there in the 1940's. China is our generation's chance to prove > ourselves of that conviction.

This, right over here, might explain why Hitler got away with what he did for a long time before the international community decided it's time to do something.

</comment><comment><USER89> I feel like the human rights angle might add enough political capital to the economic argument (that we should have used 50 years ago) to stop the fucking CEOs from mortgaging the country's economic future for an extra zero on their bonus checks.

TVs should cost $5000, washing machines $2500, etc... that will create a domestic repair industry, be better for the environment, create skilled jobs that don't require college, and improve our national self-sufficience and thus security, and deprive a totalitarian government of revenues.

</comment><comment><USER90> China doesn't want the protest to end. People who believe they are protesting China by supporting these terrorists and their activities in Hong Kong are only supporting the central government's plan.

The Hong Kong human rights and democracy act if enacted only supports the central government's position on Hong Kong. The unrest is an opportunity for Beijing. The media discourse suggests otherwise... only to the benefit of Beijing. Understand the true meaning of your position, so as not to look so foolish.

Or not, and keep supporting China ( I thank you ) but thinking you're not.

The world doesn't have to be unipolar.

</comment><comment><USER91> I'm well aware of the fact that the author lives in the US which has been and is still involved in numerous cases of human rights violations and oppression of entire countries worldwide. But the article is excellent. While China's foreign policy hasn't been as oppressive as the US so far, locally they are implementing Orwell's 1984 with precision. It is fucking disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER92> Straight from the heart of a coding nerd and amazingly well written. I had to make an account just for this. It there were pulitzers for blogs, this nameless coder would win it.

</comment><comment><USER93> > Hong Kong have been constant allies to the West

This is certainly an... interesting assertion. HK is the financial conduit that made Chinese rise possible, and the engine that powers Chinese financial influence abroad. HKers enabled this, not so much the generation that's protesting mind you, but most remotely affluent HK migrant in the past 30 years was the beneficiary to this arrangement.

Overall, fairly lazy and unsophisticated, Reddit tier analysis from generic American exceptionalism lens. Just to touch on XinJiang briefly, since people in the west are quick to draw on Godwins law and make ridiculous Nazi + genocide comparisons. The leaked NYT reports confirms if anything that the CPC motivations is consistent with their past claims of de-radicalization and de- secularization. There's no intention to eliminate if only because killing all the Uyghurs means China has to revise 56 minorities into 55, that would look bad on Xi's legacy. What is happening is an extremely immoral and excessive COIN strategy, you know the kind US embarked on post 9/11 that continues to this day. Each using instruments to their strength - US bombs, Chinese infrastructure. At best it would be classified as cultural-genocide, which is basically undefined and unenforceable in UN. The silver lining is that since the motivation is counter-terrorism, there's a chance China will pivot away from the harsh strategies. Mandatory disclaimer that explanation doesn't not mean endorsement.

Regardless, it's always a little cringe to see Americans try to play the moral Trump card. Argue security, argue hegemony, argue influence, but don't argue morals like that has any weight anymore. HK rights bill passed on the same day US changed stance on West Bank settlements. Chinese containment is cold geopolitics. The appeal for international condemnation is particularly out of touch. China is a driver for global growth, economically and demographically, most countries including the majority of developed g20 has their future prosperity pegged to China. US is the least trade dependent major economy int he world with enviable geopolitical posturing that enables her to disengage with China on a long enough timeline, no one else has that benefit, and they have even less incentive to as US is becoming increasingly unreliable and withdrawn from the global order that she created. There's a reason why, including US, only 2/5 and 3/195 countries in the world banned Huawei despite years aggressive US posturing. South Korean just signed a defense agreement with China. Being near peer power with US means China is afforded the luxury of getting away with crimes against humanity like the US have.

Want the world to shun the future Chinese order? Propose and _demonstrate_ a better one.

<comment><USER94> > Propose and _demonstrate_ a better one.

Let's start with the very simple "have more than one viable political party". The CCP would never tolerate that. The rest of your comment is casual dismissal of "cultural genocide" and whataboutism. Rather than try and distract with transparently propagandist techniques, you should really consider reforms that the CCP could undertake to adhere to the rule of law and respect human rights in China. That at least would be constructive.

<comment><USER93> >That at least would be constructive.

Starting with the western values as endpoint for reform is not constructive but "transparently propagandist". Different countries apply different models at different points in development - "rule of law and respect human rights - is simply not a priority for China or many developing nations, where the moral calculus is better spent on attaining other freedoms, chiefly the freedom from want.

> casual dismissal of "cultural genocide" and whataboutism

The point is cultural genocide is something that gets pragmatically dismissed everyday in the interest of geopolitics. Just like how people like to causally assert "whataboutism" whenever the brazenly obvious is pointed out: China gets away with abuses and will continue to because America led the way. If Americans want human rights to apply to large countries, start at home and demonstrate that international rule of law applies to everyone. No one takes hypocrites seriously except hypocrites themselves.

<comment><USER94> > Starting with the western values as endpoint for reform is not constructive > but "transparently propagandist"

Ah but the rule of law is a global concept many disparate civilizations invented independently. Even China, here's Wikipedia:

> In China, members of the school of legalism during the 3rd century BC argued > for using law as a tool of governance, but they promoted "rule by law" as > opposed to "rule of law", meaning that they placed the aristocrats and > emperor above the law.[15] In contrast, the Huang–Lao school of Daoism > rejected legal positivism in favor of a natural law that even the ruler > would be subject to.[16]

> "rule of law and respect human rights - is simply not a priority for China > or many developing nations

China is the 2nd largest GDP in the world. It's no longer a developing nation. It has the ability to destroy the entire planet with pollution from its industry, its biotech research, and of course its nuclear weapons. This is not an excuse.

It's also not an excuse for any nation anywhere. No nation can be small enough to abduct, torture, murder, and harvest organs from its own citizens. The mere suggestion is disgusting.

> The point is cultural genocide is something that gets pragmatically > dismissed everyday in the interest of geopolitics.

And practically everyone in this thread is lamenting that. We're ashamed of our nations for not acting against this, and OP explicitly calls for us to take action.

That is, except commenters like you, who are working extra hard to make excuses for the CCP with twisted arguments and whataboutism. Speaking of:

> Just like how people like to causally assert "whataboutism" whenever the > brazenly obvious is pointed out: China gets away with abuses and will > continue to because America led the way.

Besides being--again--whataboutism, you can't have it both ways. You can't say, "we're justified in doing the worst things the US has ever done" without also saying, "we're trying very hard to do the best things the US has ever done". Which, to be clear, are:

\- rule of law

\- respect for an expansive, equal set of human rights for all

\- free, fair, open elections

This is a very basic human rule that children learn. Someone else's bad behavior doesn't excuse your own bad behavior. Take responsibility for your actions, and try to do better. Say what you want about the US, but we try and do that, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of US history knows it's working.

<comment><USER93> "global concept" =/= "global endorsement", nevermind that there are constant reforms and improvements to Chinese legal system, the anticorruption drive for instance which the west dismiss as power consolidation but subsequent analysis has concluded to be a broadly genuine effort. Or to acknowledge that reforms take time, and is subject to regression depending on conditions. How long did it take African Americans to get the right to enfranchisement.

> no longer a developing nation

Of course it is by GDP PPP, comparable to IRAQ. By multiple other other measures as well. Just because it has a few extremely well developed coastal cities doesn't mean the population as a whole as been elevated.

> It's also not an excuse

I wasn't making an excuse, explanation =/= endorsement. I specifically said the situation in XinJiang was an immoral overreaction. Nor was I suggesting the OPs letter was not warranted, just poorly reasoned and articulated. China isn't a monolith, people shit talk the government all the time, publicly. Some third rail subjects are prone to hysteric consensus, XinJiang being one of them, because anti-terrorism makes people irrational everywhere, leading to disproportionate responses.

>whataboutism

Again, when did I justify? I was drawing a comparison on why US moral arguments are not credible with respects to containing China especially when one appeals to international audiences, particularly those who suffered under US hegemony.

> best things

Best things in principle but not practice - hence need to demonstrate actual commitment to values.

> very basic human rule that children learn

I mean the CPC also indoctrinates kids with 2/3 of those values. But what we teach children is simplified platitudes, reality is murkier. The 1/3 (open elections) elected a leader that is rapidly dismantling the global order or undermining allies everywhere. Not that that the last few prior administrations were faultless. That's what children growing up in such countries learn.

>Someone else's bad behavior doesn't excuse your own bad behavior.

Your bad behaviour undermines (but doesn't invalidate) your ability to criticize others, which this open letter and many myopic US arguments couched in moralism refuses to comprehend.

> anyone with even a passing knowledge of US history knows it's working.

And anyone with passing knowledge of contemporary US history knows vast components are degrading. Which makes these appeal to values arguments particularly unsuccessful. And whenever they're met with resistance, the canned dismissal is whataboutism or shills without acknowledging that the shiny city on the hill has been tarnished. Just like there are components of the Chinese system that is working and simultaneously degrading. You have a much rosier evaluation on the US system than the last 20 year warrants.

<comment><USER94> > nevermind that there are constant reforms and improvements to Chinese legal > system, the anticorruption drive for instance which the west dismiss as > power consolidation but subsequent analysis has concluded to be a broadly > genuine effort

This is certainly possible, and I of course applaud anti-corruption policies. We have something of a corruption problem here in the US you may have heard about.

The mistrust comes from the fact that the CCP doesn't respect the rule of law. If we had faith in its legal system, then we would have confidence. But we don't. It's also an odd coincidence that anti-corruption has consolidated Xi's power. Anti-corruption efforts need to be independent, lest they too become corrupt efforts. When they're led by those in power, how can they be anything other than a purge? Here's what Wikipedia--citing Willy Lam from the Jamestown Foundation--says the process is:

> Investigations by the party's disciplinary bodies are not part of the state > judicial system. When an official is detained for an investigation, known as > Shuanggui, they are essentially placed under house arrest and are isolated > from the outside world. The subject often must endure days of grueling > interrogation.[50] Data from the first half of 2014 showed that the > conviction rate of those who were investigated in that time period to be > around 99%.[50] The CCDI and its local counterparts usually gather evidence > covertly well in advance of detaining the subject. Generally, when an > official is announced to be under investigation, the CCDI has already > collected an overwhelming amount of hard evidence. China scholar Willy Lam > also wrote that the CCDI has seen a massive expansion of its powers since > Xi's ascension, and that it was increasingly involved in the governance of > the state. Lam also contended that the CCDI seemed to be deriving most of > its power from Xi Jinping personally.

This process is a joke. It cannot be taken seriously.

> Again, when did I justify?

This is a justification:

> Different countries apply different models at different points in > development - "rule of law and respect human rights - is simply not a > priority for China or many developing nations, where the moral calculus is > better spent on attaining other freedoms, chiefly the freedom from want.

Here you are justifying China's violation of human rights because they're a developing nation. Plain as day.

> Your bad behaviour undermines (but doesn't invalidate) your ability to > criticize others, which this open letter and many myopic US arguments > couched in moralism refuses to comprehend.

If your argument is that the CCP should only listen to perfect governments (or citizens of perfect governments), that's a bad faith argument. If you don't think they need to be perfect, maybe you could list some governments you would listen to, or what standard a government could meet to warrant being an authority on human rights, in your eyes, because numerous governments have spoken out against the CCP's human rights abuses. It's also worth saying that non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and the UN have as well. Also whistleblowers in the CCP government itself, also people under the CCP's rule, etc. etc. etc.

So let's be honest, you're setting an impossible standard so you don't have to take responsibility.

> Nor was I suggesting the OPs letter was not warranted, just poorly reasoned > and articulated.

So how would you articulate it? How do you justify the CCP abducting people, and murdering them by harvesting their organs? Something that, to be clear, the US definitely does not do and has never done.

> The 1/3 (open elections) elected a leader that is rapidly dismantling the > global order or undermining allies everywhere.

Yeah that's how elections work. You live with the results, even when you don't like them and even when they're objectively bad. That's the commitment we have to our values. The CCP could learn from our example.

And lest you think I'm being sarcastic here, I'm absolutely not. Free and fair elections are a bedrock principle of any democracy.

> ...anyone with passing knowledge of contemporary US history knows vast > components are degrading. Which makes these appeal to values arguments > particularly unsuccessful.

You are again arguing that economic development trumps human rights. To be clear, this is the kind of argument used to justify human rights abuses like abduction, slavery, executions, mass censorship, and other horrors.

> You have a much rosier evaluation on the US system than the last 20 year > warrants.

In the last 20 years, multiple states have rolled back laws on felon disenfranchisement. We've passed significant criminal justice sentencing reform (we have a long way to go here). We weathered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We passed Obamacare. We've legalized recreational marijuana use in 11 states and DC, and some of those states are reversing convictions and expunging records. We've had the longest economic expansion on record. Oh and we legalized gay marriage.

Am I all sunshine and roses about everything that's happened in the last 20 years? Absolutely not. I'm no US apologist. I've read A People's History of the US. I proudly accept being an SJW, and I'm often hypercritical of US policy foreign and domestic.

All of which is to say I might be wrong about all kinds of things. I might be overly optimistic. But I'm definitely not uninformed. And even given all that, I can say without hesitation I would never choose CCP-occupied China over the US. And I deeply hope the world won't buy the kinds of arguments you're making. In fact, I hope you come around too :) Everyone can change.

<comment><USER93> This all boils down:

> Here you are justifying China's violation of human rights because they're a > developing nation.

...

> So let's be honest, you're setting an impossible standard so you don't have > to take responsibility.

Again, I'm not absolving China of their failures and abuses. But I also recognize that currently, China is operating within hegemonic standards set by 70 years of US leadership. That is, the privileged to ignore international laws and norms because as the great power, standard bearer, US set the precedence for such behavior. XJ specifically maps onto hysteric over reaction to post 9/11 attacks. There's a reason that XJ crackdown plays well to domestic audiences besides shared Islamophobic ignorance - there has no been no serious extremist attacks since the security apparatus was established. Great powers with the resources to keep their population safe will do so even if the cost is disproportionate to the risk or if the cost means eating away at domestic rights. This isn't an argument that China has a "moral right" to conduct such abuses like US in their war against terror, both are gross human right violations, rather the precedents set by the largely unchallenged US actions abroad, outside of concerned words like this letter, set the established the allowable scope of of atrocities in the name of security. So if Americans wants to have a credible podium to compel others to reduce their scope of atrocity, then they must also reduce their own. Security follows MAD logic in that regard, no one is willing to do less than what is acceptable. And if free and fair elections are the bedrock, then every American is culpable for setting the bar this low. Personally I wouldn't attribute blame to voters, because I find the US electoral system too imperfect to express populace desires when these conflict with challenge national interest.

> You are again arguing that economic development trumps human rights.

Economic development IS human rights. It's the basis for establishing the four freedoms Roosevelt preached everyone ought to enjoy - speech, worship, want, fear. There's a reason most Chinese / developing countries are preoccupied with "want" and countries that are victims to extremist attacks over react in response to "fear", because physiology and safety is the base of maslows hierarchy of needs. Not everyone has the luxury of affluence to fulfill everything freedom right now. Sometimes they must choose, moral calculus is not easy when every decision are bad trolley problems.

>And I deeply hope the world won't buy the kinds of arguments you're making. In fact, I hope you come around too :) Everyone can change.

This is your fundamental misreading of my position. I prefer liberal values as well but understand the conditions they spring from, and the long trajectory it takes / will take to get there in developing countries. All the Asian tigers that the west hoped China would emulate sprung from established authoritarian regimes who grew their economies via protectionism policies until the people reached a level of wealth that made pursuing other freedoms attractive. IMO China will be no different, even accounting current developments in surveillance society. And more specific to the quoted point, my criticism is the lack of US moral consistency and leadership is what makes the Chinese model attractive. And it is. Most developed western country that requires immigration to support their future is being destabilized by massive demographic and social changes, read non white immigration influx no small fault to US ME policy, leading to nativism and populism that's springing up in liberal societies around the world. No one has a solution to this, US is not offering a credible alternative. Nor do they have competing plans to help underdeveloped countries like Chinese B&R. If Chinese integration camps work in XJ, expect it to be adopted elsewhere relabeled as civic lessons with * characteristics. IF BRI works well, expect the many countries it touches to be Sino aligned if not out of ideology but dependence. Focusing on China bad and debt trap is ultimately deflection to the fact that an absence of US moral leadership and inability to address contemporary and global problems is causing people to lose faith in the model that US is championing.

<comment><USER94> I'll take your reluctance to defend other misdeeds committed by the CCP that I've listed as an admission that they are, indeed, indefensible. Let's finally move on to this last bit of whataboutism you're clutching.

> XJ specifically maps onto hysteric over reaction to post 9/11 attacks.

The Uighurs predate the CCP by hundreds of years. They are indigenous to their area of Xinjiang. They've resisted CCP rule--which has been imposed on them unwillingly--and because the CCP hasn't provided a political solution, some have resorted to violence (you might recognize this dynamic from what's happening in Hong Kong right now).

The 9/11 attacks had many motivations (Osama bin Laden made them all clear). But "you've annexed our homeland and are systematically erasing our religion and culture" was not one of them.

So there is no comparison between the CCP's actions against the Uighurs and the US's actions towards Muslims. The only thing they share, at all, is that the victims are Muslims. The Uighurs aren't immigrants. That's their land. It's a facile comparison, and reflexive whataboutism from a regime so used to playing this card it doesn't even think about it anymore.

If you're interested in a truer comparison, look to the US's treatment of Native Americans. Unfortunately that comparison isn't favorable to the CCP at all, because while we certainly committed atrocities when we invaded their homes hundreds of years ago, and while the reservation system has serious flaws, it's absolutely not "re-education" camps holding millions of people outside any rule of law or oversight whatsoever.

> Economic development IS human rights.

If the CCP is interested in economic development at all costs, why does it have such extreme income inequality? Let me quote the first paragraph from the Wikipedia article "Income inequality in China":

> China's current mainly market economy features a high degree of income > inequality. According to the Asian Development Bank Institute, "before China > implemented reform and open-door policies in 1978, its income distribution > pattern was characterized as egalitarianism in all aspects."[1] At this > time, the Gini coefficient for rural – urban inequality was only 0.16. As of > 2012, the official Gini coefficient in China was 0.474, although that number > has been disputed by scholars who "suggest China's inequality is actually > far greater."[2] A study published in the PNAS estimated that China's Gini > coefficient increased from 0.30 to 0.55 between 1980 and 2002.

What's actually happening is a relatively small number of CCP elites are exploiting the people of China for their own enrichment. They use the politics of fascism to secure their hold on power, they use their extremely sophisticated and wide-reaching surveillance state to curb dissent, and they leverage their economic might to gag nations around the world.

> So if Americans wants to have a credible podium to compel others to reduce > their scope of atrocity, then they must also reduce their own.

I 100% agree with this. I'm not arguing that the CCP should listen to the US though, and I'm not arguing that the US should be listened to. I'm arguing that the CCP is a violator of human rights on a scale close to some of the worst in history, and the world should do something about it.

> Not everyone has the luxury of affluence to fulfill everything freedom right > now. Sometimes they must choose, moral calculus is not easy when every > decision are bad trolley problems.

I 100% agree with this too. The problem I have with the CCP is that they argue that they absolutely must violate human rights on staggering scales in order to raise the quality of life for their citizens. This is, I hope obviously, a false choice. China's GDP has no relationship to putting a million Uighurs in camps. Actually that probably cost a lot of money, just like the political unrest in Hong Kong will cost a lot of money as the recession deepens and businesses leave.

But if the CCP refuses to see it this way, I'm comfortable playing on this field. Like OP, I call on everyone everywhere to make it known that if you violate human rights anywhere near the level that the CCP does, your economy will not grow. We should expel these regimes from world governing and trade bodies. We should not engage with them economically. Any diplomatic relations must be predicated on their respect for rule of law and human rights.

> All the Asian tigers that the west hoped China would emulate sprung from > established authoritarian regimes who grew their economies via protectionism > policies until the people reached a level of wealth that made pursuing other > freedoms attractive.

Not for nothing, but this is a real bad comparison. First of all, almost every nation started out in some way as an authoritarian nation. So if your argument is that you need to spend some time in a fascist incubator before your people can be free, that's pretty dark.

Second, the Asian tigers are Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. It's true that South Korea has a history (again like almost every nation) of authoritarian rule. It's also true that the KMT in Taiwan imposed martial law for decades but has recently blossomed into a vibrant democracy. But Singapore is not a free country, and Hong Kong isn't a country--much less a democracy-- at all.

(To be clear, Singapore has made great strides and I'm obviously not in charge of who's free and who's not. I'm going off indexes like Freedom in the World and the Press Freedom Index).

I'm sure people in the US thought free market principles would liberalize the CCP. I've brought that up elsewhere, even in this thread. That was very wrong, and it's important for us to realize that while economic development is, as you say, necessary to ensure human rights, it's far from sufficient.

> Most developed western country that requires immigration to support their > future is being destabilized by massive demographic and social changes, read > non white immigration influx no small fault to US ME policy, leading to > nativism and populism that's springing up in liberal societies around the > world. No one has a solution to this, US is not offering a credible > alternative.

Let me introduce you to a place called New York City, one of the most (if not the most) diverse, densely populated places on the planet. We have literally provided a blueprint and a working model for how to build a thriving, multicultural, hyperproductive city.

Or feel free to look at other western cities like Amsterdam, Paris, London, Toronto, Los Angeles, Sydney, etc. etc. etc. Of course there are problems, and we need to work seriously to address them. But to my knowledge, we've yet to disappear a million people into a secret camp.

\---

To be frank, it's clear what the CCP's values are. If you look at the economic development of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities, their investments in growing their influence in the world, their policies to try and change the demographics and politics of states like Xinjiang (migration incentives for Han Chinese to move there) and Hong Kong (housing subsidies, etc.), their aggression in the South China Sea, their development of weapons to threaten their neighbors like Taiwan, their development of a sprawling propaganda and surveillance apparatus, their investment in stealing intellectual property, it's clear what kind of regime we're dealing with. If they were at all interested in multiculturalism, human rights, democracy, the rule of law, healthy political dialogue and dissent, religious freedom, or any other liberal values, they'd invest. They can build an insane metropolis in less than a decade, but they won't build a just court system. They aspire to build a national park system to rival that in the US in a fraction of the time, but they can't countenance rival political parties.

It's not because these things are hard. The CCP is obviously capable of doing hard things. It's because these things would be threats to their power.

<comment><USER93> > XJ : 9/11

Of course context varies but doesn't matter in relation to the response being a counter insurgency and domestic security issue. Which XJ is. It's not about GDP, it's about safety and control over security. Atrocities in the interest of that is a false argument, but it's also an predictable response as 9/11 demonstrated. Such comparison is not whataboutism, claiming so is just lazy rhetoric. Bringing up Native American treatment in NA is apt, XJ strategy is ostensibly "residential school" cultural genocide aka absolutely "re- education" with the ultimate goal of forced integration. The difference is China will backup stick of reeducation with carrot of development. XJ will have better infrastructure and growth opportunities than reservations up in Canada that doesn't have road access and water boiling notices. Incidentally Canadian Tribunal on indigenous treatment labelled it has "cultural genocide", but at the end of the day, few cares. Ultimately XJ will fall on the same deaf years as much as US and a handful of allies tries to weaponize it as geopolitical tool. Regardless, refer to explosive Tibet GDP growth and development in the last few years for context. As far as actual cost, building the infrastructure to intern a million is trivial compared to Chinese building capacities. The scope of XJ seems huge but relative to 1.4 billion people, it's literally trivial undertaking. The greater security apparatus throughout China on the other hand to maintain power is much more demanding, internal security budget exceeds that of military.

As for other strategies, they tried but it didn't work. The reason why Tibet and XJ are "autonomous regions" is because they were based of soviet oblasts where these regions and minorites retained extraordinary affirmative action privileges. Much more in the west - exemptions from taxes, family planning, bonuses to education enrollment on national test etc. The idea was multiculturalism salad bowl, but the riots and terrorists attacks failed hence integration strategy - the rational was melting pot analogy literally inspired by US and the cities you highlighted. Also these cities you named fails to recognize that multiculturalism is causing undeniable shift in nativism at the national scale, all around the world. A few liberal cities doesn't change the trend. The blue print works for some urban centres who can brain drain the best to build flourishing societies is fails in other contexts. Of course the issue in the west is immigration so the solutions / atrocities are different. Whole of EU delegates war refugees via Turkey. Australia has Nauru Regional Processing Centre. US has your camps and political pressure to Mexico to militarize their migration routes etc. Canada is chill right now, but there's backlash towards multiculturalism model all the same.

> Inequality & Corruption

This is an intentional Chinese development strategy for anyone versed in the subject matter. Deng wanted to rapidly develop successful economic models via SEZ on coastal cities, then apply these models to the interior provinces which has languished. The pivot towards interior development happening now with goal of total poverty elimination by 2030s. Current per capita GDP is $10,000 (actual forecast is $12,000), followed by complete urbanization and poverty alleviation by 2030, followed by "China Dream" of per capita GDP of $40,000 by 2050. Some of the coastal cities are currently at $20,000 or $40,000 by PPP. Rampant corruption was a tool used to direct state resources to generally meritocratically selected local officials whose opportunities to graft is connected to tied to fulfilling state mandates, i.e. take a little on the side as long as it fulfills X growth goals to meet Y targets established by politburo. This is why Chinese corruption is correlated to growth, against conventional wisdom. The nature of Chinese mixed economy allows state-directed capitalistic development. The problems you highlighted are features (well hacks) not bugs. It's the only country in the world where this is true. Everywhere else corruption leads to stagnation. But excess wealth inequity via corruption also disrupts social stability hence anti-corruption drive. This is posited by Yukon Huang, former World Bank director for China, Russia, and Former Soviet Union Republics.

> Tigers & Development

The demand for other freedoms doesn't happen until certain levels of economic development is reached. So yes, IMO absolutely "fascist incubator" is a dark but necessary stage towards eventual liberalization, because that's the default path. CPC is consistently responding to peoples needs, there's been legal reforms, environmental improvements etc. People are fixated with money right now, eventually they'll worry about values. The result will likely be something along the lines of Singapore, a rich dictatorship with more western compatible values but all that is dependent on people getting rich first. There's been large regressions under Xi, but overall I'm positive about future trajectory assuming the next phase of income equalization and development and the demographic time bomb can be negotiated successfully. My view is as long as China has GDP of Iraq there will be no broad pressure to purse values - <USER2> democracy mind you - HK instability has ruined the Chinese appetite for that.

> CCP's values

You've just listed all the goals of every great power, some manner of hegemony and political influence like that's somehow explicit to CPC. SCS claims is a multi party dispute by many nations, CPC just happen to be powerful enough to win. Building an military that makes neighbours feel threatened is the natural byproduct of a big country modernizing it's military to fit security needs. Chinese defense spending is only 2% of GDP, lower than her neighbours. Of course, the goal is going to be regional hegemony like Munro doctrine. That's not CPC values, that's just inevitable side affect of great power geopolitics and the natural reaction by neighbors in response should be concern. Like is the CPC not suppose to have an military suitable to her size or have missiles that can hit Taiwan? The island 130km away.

Obviously the primary goal for CPC is power and self-survival, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also pursue other policies that improve quality of life, it just so happens those are safety and economically related right now - hence CPC having broad domestic support. Explicitly because Chinese do not want CPC to collapse, they just crawled out of period of anarchy, it's in most Chinese people's self-interest that a competent CPC survives.

Again you have the right to call on people to antagonize CPC because you think they're the historical tier bad human rights violator, but I think you'll find that's a profoundly American-centric analysis. Relative to Chinese population, the atrocities happening in China is comparable to US prison industrial complex and wars abroad. No amount of moralizing is going to make such equivocation not true. Just because US dominated social media ceaseless spam China bad and HK protests to the exclusion of all else doesn't mean the rest of the world minus a few staunch US allies will take the bait. It's a filter bubble of American exceptionalism. Ultimately, my argument is you can't eat your morals. So trying to undermine China via moral arguments is fruitless, especially coming from Americans, who, having voting rights is individually culpable for US behaviours that undermines their ability to critique. If the west wants to contain China, they need to offer better alternatives - <USER3> US democracy and values is not it. There's a reason why so many nations are taking loans from China and many Indians would trade in their democracy for a few decades of Chinese development. Because it's more appealing than what the west has offered in a long time.

<comment><USER94> Part 2:

> That's not CPC values, that's just inevitable side affect of great power > geopolitics and the natural reaction by neighbors in response should be > concern.

I am _extremely_ confident that Canada and Mexico have no fear of the US sending missiles to their cities, or troops into their territory. That's because we don't do things like constantly assert that their land is our land, threaten them with destruction, run propaganda campaigns to that affect, and develop weapons specifically with the goal of penetrating their defenses.

> You've just listed all the goals of every great power, some manner of > hegemony and political influence like that's somehow explicit to CPC.

I fully admit that the US committed atrocities against Native Americans when we invaded North America. Slavery too was an abomination; Japanese internment camps were disgusting, our treatment of Chinese laborers and immigrants (as well as those from other parts of East Asia) was abhorrent, our criminal justice system is an affront to justice itself, our border control and immigration systems are deeply inhumane and unjust, etc. We would earn and deserve international condemnation if we did any of that stuff today. And we do, look at what organizations have to say about our immigration policies and our criminal justice system. I wish the West would exert more pressure on us, truly.

I'm happy to talk about those issues, just not in a thread about the CCP's actions. When are you going to stop using the actions of others as justification for the CCP?

And again if your argument is "well the US did it", why doesn't the CCP do the good things we do (rule of law, elections, etc.)?

> Obviously the primary goal for CPC is power and self-survival...

This is the definition of a corrupt regime.

> hence CPC having broad domestic support

How could you possibly measure that, given the CCP's surveillance state, re- education camps, vast propaganda network, and lack of any kind of free speech.

> Again you have the right to call on people to antagonize CPC because you > think they're the historical tier bad human rights violator

"Antagonize" means "to cause someone to become hostile". By any reasonable standard, the CCP is a hostile regime. You cannot make something hostile if it already is. Do not try and imply the CCP is a peaceful, benevolent government when the facts clearly show otherwise.

It's also very telling that you think my words, my political beliefs, could cause a government to become hostile. Of course, when you're dealing with a regime with no respect for human rights, that's a concern.

> Relative to Chinese population, the atrocities happening in China is > comparable to US prison industrial complex and wars abroad.

It is not. Here are the things we do not do as a matter of policy:

\- Forced sterilization

\- Forced rape and impregnation

\- Organ harvesting

\- Interning millions of people without cause

\- Forcing millions of our own citizens to violate their religious beliefs and to renounce their religion

> US dominated social media ceaseless spam China bad and HK protests...

This is pretty funny. Have you seen all the stories about the CCP's efforts to censor anything about HK? This is the CCP's playbook, whether it's 8964, Xinjiang, Tibet, or HK.

> Ultimately, my argument is you can't eat your morals.

Again, this is a false choice. You absolutely do not have to choose between human rights, rule of law, and economic development. Again feel free to look at the Democracy Index for examples.

> So trying to undermine China via moral arguments is fruitless, especially > coming from Americans, who, having voting rights is individually culpable > for US behaviours that undermines their ability to critique.

I'm not saying the CCP has to listen to my government or me. They obviously won't; regimes that invest in propaganda as heavily as the CCP does aren't interested in listening. I'm not even telling them what to do. You're making excuses for their behavior, and I'm offering alternatives (invest in independent legal systems, build liberal institutions that respect human rights), but I'm not saying they should. I'm saying if they don't, that's the definition of an authoritarian regime, valuing its own power and enrichment over the well being of its people.

I am imploring the West and our allies to take action though.

I also think it's funny how you're trying to tie me to every action my government takes via our democratic elections like I won't accept it. I do wholeheartedly accept it, every American is responsible for the actions of our government. That's because our government not only represents us, it is us. To paraphrase The West Wing: when you try and hurl that at my feet, as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work. Because I will pick it up and wear it as a badge of honor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> I can't help but agree. We're supporting a nation that is basically the equivalent of Nazi Germany, only of even greater power, committing atrocities of a similar scale, if not depth, and that's just what we know of - <USER4> reality can only be worse, not better.

We do not need them, and we absolutely should not permit their behavior, or allow them to profit from it. The time for a stand has come.

</comment><comment><USER68> You don't understand China.

<comment><USER69> Could you please take a look at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587861)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> We're already starting to get a lot of Whataboutism in the comments here. Yes there are other issues in the world, do you really think we're not aware there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world??? If you're so concerned with those other issues go write your own blog post about your issue and gather supporters on your own.

</comment><comment><USER97> Liberal societies, such as the Bay Area (where I live), it's impossible to criticize anyone without having the doubt of "offending" someone. When it comes to China, I can't go out in the lunch room and openly criticize CCP because you know, I could "offend" a Chinese National.

This needs to stop. I see this behavior on HN, which is frustrating, counterproductive, anti-free speech and extremely left-winged.

Another problem is to try being a moderate in these liberal pockets of America. The moment you pick out a couple of things that I agree about what Trump is doing, I get intense opposition, lose friendships, get judged, etc.

The Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, the 3 trillion dollar neighbor of America is a suffocating place for anyone who has dissenting opinion about some liberal concepts.

Silicon Valley people think that moderates and right-wing folks hate gays, lgbt community and loves guns, hates China which is far from the truth. Then they feel to justify themselves by overcompensating, supporting China and smearing the truth. Ironically, they make fun of right-wing echo chambers.

If your political ideology looks away from objective truth, you need to question it. No matter how "conservative" or "liberal".

This is from my personal experience, your MMV.

<comment><USER98> You're being downvoted for expressing a contrarian viewpoint.

This kind of censorship isn't even targeting hate speech, and it drives me crazy. Why downvote them?

<comment><USER99> Because he's criticizing liberals and most people on HN are liberals. Most censorship ("hate speech" included) is code for shutting your political opponents up. HN makes this really easy by making comments hard to read by removing contrast with the background as they get voted down; post something too much against the grain and it'll get flagged and hidden by default. When you hand users the power to shut those with whom they disagree up, it will inevitably be abused.

<comment><AUTHOR> Paul Graham:

 _I think it 's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness._

 _It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

<comment><USER99> Problem is, it doesn't just attach a "score" to a comment. The UI will gradually hide comments as they are voted farther down; I've seen many that are barely legible. Flagging also hides comments by default. I can't tell you how many reasonable, well-thought out points I've seen that I have to highlight with the mouse to actually read. I wouldn't even see many insightful comments had I not logged in and enabled "showdead".

There is a great deal of difference between giving users the tools to express disagreement and giving them the tools to block out the opinions of those with which I disagree.

Finally, quoting Paul Graham isn't really an argument. Fine, it's his site, but I'm allowed to say I disagree with how the voting on his site is implemented.

<comment><USER69> If a comment is faded, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, where it should be in the regular readable black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> The key logical fallacy is that by cutting trade with China, the various grievances you list will somehow improve. For example, if we don't trade with China, do you think the recently passed Hong Kong Freedom And Democracy act will have any leverage with the Chinese? They will turn Hong Kong into another city in Guangdong the next day.

</comment><comment><USER101> China is like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood) and the devil is in the details [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war)

</comment><comment><USER102> > The financial incentives don't help any Americans, and in fact, most of us > are hurt by this relationship.

What a weird statement. We buy Chinese goods because it makes us better off. "The US is full of idiots that engage in voluntary transactions that make them worse off" is a hard claim to accept.

Obviously some people are worse off because of trade with China. And some are worse off because of technology. And a much larger number are worse off because of domestic competition. Open source software has killed lots of commercial software jobs. That's a good thing for most of us.

</comment><comment><USER103> All governments use the same playbook of tactics. China is in some ways worse than the US, but the US has caused a lot more harm and destruction around the world than China has over the past few decades.

It's absurd to spend one's moral indignation on foreign countries that are marginally worse than the US in a handful of ways.

Organ donation in the US is hamstring by one main factor: Christianity.

American views on US atrocities are colored by one main factor: the religion of American Exceptionalism.

The essay's take on the economic consequences of economic freedom is utter rubbish, but the larger issue is the absurd and misplaced moral indignation. What a shameful, naive rant. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER104> Empires rise and fall, and are replaced by new ones. It's the cycle of life. As much as I would hate to live in a China-dominated global economy, it now seems highly likely to happen within my lifetime. Better learn to live with it, or move to a country which isn't so dependent on the global supply chain by virtue of its Western lifestyle.

<comment><USER105> With a concerted effort we could push india into being the next superpower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I lived in China for 5 years, most of the time in Xinjiang, and is sad how the media manipulates people in the west, you clearly have never been in XinJiang or in China at all. You can believe whatever you want and I'm sure most readers here will support you, because like you , they have been deceived. What is happening in Hong Kong is sad, I agree with you there, and something should be done by the US and their allies.But, Uighurs are one of the 56 ethnics groups of China, like Mongolians, Weiwer, ... not a nationality, and not the only Muslim ethnic group, there is no concentration camps or anything like that. Sorry. There are Uighurs terrorists in prison after the bomb car exploded in TianAnMen and the incident in Kunming's train station in 2013, that you probably dont know about, in the same way the US have Iraqis and afghans in Guantanamo... just because..... Good luck with your campaign, I'm sure people with join you and think you are the coolest guy in HN today. But I had to break it up to you... sorry

<comment><USER107> It is whataboutism, but the U.S. is guilty of a lot of similar things that China is, not as bad in most cases, but I think it's fair to compare the Uyghurs to Guantanamo, the way we're treating immigrants at the border, or how discriminatory our justice system is towards black people.

We have a higher percentage of people in jail then China by a lot (5x). Many of them are in jail for political/racial reasons (the Drug War, Immigration).

We have the NSA spying on all of us. As well as Google, FB, etc.

We treat our protestors horribly as well, look at what the FBI did to black rights protesters or look at how the Dakota Access pipeline protesters were treated.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with Drew on this article, and I'd support a boycott, but in the words of someone I'm not a fan of: "Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world."

<comment><USER108> The Drug War is hardly political, and hardline immigration policies are not "racial".

<comment><USER107> "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday. "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." [1]

Crack cocaine carried a much harsher sentence then Cocaine, a law that very clearly targeted black people. [2]

Marijuana use is the same between white and black people, but black people are 3.73x more likely to be arrested for it.[3]

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman- rich...](https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard- nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html)

[2] [https://www.aclu.org/other/cracks-system-20-years-unjust- fed...](https://www.aclu.org/other/cracks-system-20-years-unjust-federal- crack-cocaine-law)

[3] [https://www.aclu.org/report/report-war-marijuana-black- and-w...](https://www.aclu.org/report/report-war-marijuana-black-and- white?redirect=criminal-law-reform/war-marijuana-black-and-white)

<comment><USER108> [1] Plenty of countries with homogenous populations have harsh drug laws, so it hardly seems like that was the only consideration, if at all. After all, Prohibition in the US happened a long time before 1968, and alcohol is arguably less destructive than heroin, and nobody was targeting hippies or black people with a ban on alcohol.

[2] [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/14/_if_to...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/14/_if_tough_anti- drug_laws_are_racist_blame_black_leaders_137273.html)

[3] Black people getting arrested at a higher rate doesn't make the policies racist. It either makes the cops racist (possible) or it means that there are other factors beyond skin color that are affecting the stats (most likely explanation).

<comment><USER109> > Plenty of countries with homogenous populations have harsh drug laws

encouraged/demanded by the US economic doctrine for the last 40+ years

<comment><USER108> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Drug_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Drug_War)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_\(Singapore\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_China#Ov...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_China#Overview)

[http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/topic- overviews/con...](http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/topic- overviews/content/drug-law-penalties-at-a-glance_en)

[https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/06/14/a-change-in- russia...](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/06/14/a-change-in-russias- draconian-drug-laws-could-be-on-the-horizon-a65911)

[https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/28/ten-years-drug-policy- fa...](https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/28/ten-years-drug-policy-failure- brazil)

You'll notice a lot of countries on the list who aren't exactly best buds with the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> > Hong Kong is the place where humanity makes its stand against oppressors.

Really? I didn't know protesters targeted the local tycoons who made their lives unbearable in the past 20 years. Not to mention the humanity of laundering money for the worst thugs in the world. Perspective.

<comment><USER27> You may have heard reports of vandalism. I'm pretty sure the tycoons weren't too happy about their property getting damaged. They'd probably also like to keep the seats in Election Committee that they'd lose if universal suffrage were instated, but that the CCP has guaranteed them so far. [https://www.elections.gov.hk/ecss2016/eng/figures.html](https://www.elections.gov.hk/ecss2016/eng/figures.html)

If you think the protesters support tycoons because they oppose the CCP, you ought to reconsider whether those are really opposites.

<comment><USER110> Yes, this sounds reasonable, unlike the outcry over Communist oppression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> I applaud standing up to China's human rights violations.

But this post grossly underestimates the short term economic effects that cutting trade ties with China would have. Companies would go bankrupt. It is quite likely that the US and possibly the world would enter a recession or depression. These events will have devastating effects on people around the world far beyond the 1%.

We are part of a world economy. We are dependent on China and China is dependent on us.

Surely there are better ways to effect change in China than waging economic war. War of any kind will cause suffering.

<comment><USER112> In 10 or 15 years the the better way to effect change will be armed conflict in addition to economic recession. In another 30 years there will be no way to effect change. The time to act is now.

<comment><USER111> Sure, let's act. But is cutting trade ties with China the right way to achieve our goals?

I disagree with the premise that starting an economic war is the right way to get China to change its policies.

<comment><USER105> What are the alternatives of not kinetic or economic? Sanctions of government officials? Cyber warfare?

<comment><USER111> Maybe not cyber warfare. But perhaps there are ways to give more and better uncensored information to Chinese citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Full of bs that rides the trending US narrative on China. How much a self- fulfilling bubble of lies the western propaganda machine has weaved. Reading this article makes me feel like reading a white day dream that totally misses the reality, but checks all the right marks for the crusader mentality.

I see how quickly this gets down voted. I guess the media is not to be blamed for fabricating all kinds of lies, for it what does is only a reflection of what the western audience wants to see. The world is dividing just as quickly as the US is dividing internally. I would not doubt the possibility of another cold war, if the US bloc continues down this path by painting rivaling nations with a different ideology as a heretic against US' version of democracy and freedom, as an ultimate evil to be crusaded, its people as mindless zombies brainwashed and eager for a quick dose of freedom drug. After all, the zealous fever commits all the worst atrocities with the most self-righteous goals. History has repeated itself enough times to not see the obvious.

<comment><AUTHOR> News Guidelines:

 _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER113> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys intellectual curiosity, the value of the site.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER114> How else to turn HN guys to do illegal and/or immoral privacy-related things if not to make them feel that they are doing the right thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both of you are Han Chinese, judging by your post history, correct? While this may be intellectually hostile for you, it's certainly intellectually stimulating, and helpful to the people in your country who aren't of the ethnic majority (and to people of the ethnic majority outside of your country, in places like Taiwan, that your government desires to claim so strongly).

<comment><USER113> "If you can't convince with a real argument, bring ethnicity into the discussion to discredit."

<comment><USER114> even with that he failed</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>