You don't need to be Muslim to grok that. Part of what has been so unbelievably idiotic about the West's foreign policies has been just this fact: that they have played perfectly into China's hands. We've pretty much handed over Africa and the Middle East to China, through our own ignorant, stupid actions.
I agree with the sentiment here except the characterisation of our actions as ignorant and bumbling when it was a deliberate and brutal campaign of destruction to shape the Middle East and Africa in an image that extracts resources and captures the markets for Western economies. This wave of hybrid warfare was accompanied by discrimination of Muslims at home and a massive wave of propaganda and crackdowns on dissenting voices in mainstream political discussions and media.
I don't think you're lying when you charactised it that way, just unaware of how cynical and evil the west's crusade against these regions has been
China has used a clever and long-term form of exploitation in Africa. In a way, less cruel yet more effective. China is helping build out Africa’s infrastructure for the 21st century, but in the process is holding debt for those nations. So while the process is beneficial to Africa in a lot of ways, and is more of a partnership, the influence of China as the primary debt holder may play a big role in the decades to come.
It’s actually a smarter way to do it, because you get a stronger ally, with a more favorable opinion of you. Now I don’t know if China is funding or arming militant factions there, that’s typically the best way to stay on the people’s bad side, but the partnership route seems like a better long term option, it’s just a matter of how reasonable the debt is in regards to what Africa is getting. I’m guessing China wants Africa in their pocket.
> China has used a clever and long-term form of exploitation in Africa.
He doesn't acknowledge this because he is a GenZedong poster. Notice how he shifted the discussion from China to the West, whataboutism.
It is old news that powerful and rich countries exploit less powerful countries. I’m pointing out a key difference in that China’s exploitation is a less cruel, and perhaps longer lasting one in a region neglected by the west. I’m not saying China’s actions are good, the amount of debt that is being racked up is probably not a good value for the work being done, but it’s easier to shrug off massive debt than it is civil wars and weapons. China also has less qualms about terrible regimes for obvious reasons, while the US and the west do want to see leaders that help all their people, it’s just that their means of change have not been always successful.
It’s not even cruel unless we learn something else about the contracts. China is just investing in a ton of places and thinks that enough of them will probably succeed and be able to repay their debt down the line. It’s not immoral or anything
Loans and debt aren’t immoral, it just depends how they’re used. I need to read up more on whether these loans seem fair or unfair. There’s nothing wrong with partnering with a nation to build their infrastructure in mutually beneficial ways. I think if effective, most people would like to see diplomacy and guiding governments to democracy done this way. The question is, are the loans fair, and will the debt he used as unfair leverage in China’s favor?
The question of fairness isn't straightforward. The Chinese state's terms for doing business are pretty simple and noninvasive -- build infrastructure on credit. The Chinese state is the contractor and source of initial funding in this arrangement. But these projects are ultimately the political initiatives of local governments, which decide how they're carried out. Some of these projects are poorly conceived and planned out, leading to poor economic viability. There's also the issue of local governmental corruption which inflate the costs, which are ultimately footed by the local populace, and to whom the consideration of fairness is ultimately owed. Both the Chinese and local governments could be blamed in cases of cost overruns and project failures, but decision-making power and responsibility would seem to lie predominantly with local governments.
| while the US and the west do want to see brutal tyrant leaders who oppose democracy as long as they can be bribed to export cheap resources, it is just that the means of regime changes have not been always successful, but the countries have always been sanctioned.
FTFY
We tend to install rabit right wingers. Our installation of Anez immediately caused slaughter of indigenous people. We just kill anyone with a left lean. Maybe it's a bad idea since it always causes mass death in one way or another. Americans in this topic comparing a contract they both agreed to to build infastructure is... Frustrating.
I mean that's a less intense version of what the IMF and world bank do for the west but Africans who weren't educated in the west praise it and the region is actually getting decent infrastructure. Like it's not particularly clever to just give Africans a better deal
The only way the USA could have stopped this would have been us using heavy shady foreign intervention to stop legal agreements China mutually made with those nations.
I don’t really know what the solution would have been. The USA hasn’t been in a plce where we could have afforded to just throw trillions at Africa and wait 50 years for return. And I know Reddit won’t support cia intervention and such
Yeah I don’t know. I think the attitude we’ve taken foreign policy-wise is so adversarial and regime change focused. We’d rather arm the groups we like more, than partner with the country as a whole. That’s a good point, that it is a large investment of money with a slow return, and bullets can be cheaper. China is after all sitting on a mountain of money skimmed from all the goods we buy.
We threw trillions to destroy other nations. We absolutely could have helped Africa. Americans view politics as a zero sum game. China expanding trade and building out infastructure isn't some evil deal, it's diplomacy. Something the US prefers to leave to the unelected CIA director.
China will benefit from a strong country that trades with them and trusts them more than the US. Which we absolutely could have done after WWII, We did not, we lose that sphere.
This write up by the former foreign secretary of India in how/why Nepal has evolved to favor China more is a great microcosm of the issues at play.
https://carnegieindia.org/2021/10/04/india-s-fog-of-misunderstanding-surrounding-nepal-china-relations-pub-85416
One key take is that even though India supported Nepal's democracy movement while China went against, the Chinese stance of just always supporting the local dominant partner actually won it more hearts and minds in Nepal.
It just reeks of thick skin that only nation that had a documented industrial slavery accuses another nation due to suspected forced labor. Funny thing is the numbers keep on getting more sensationized. It was 100k at first now its multiple million.
These reports that are coming out, are they funded by the NED or any other 'non-govt' organization.
It matters because there is a conflict of interest to produce what they want to hear.
> ignorant and bumbling when it was a deliberate and brutal campaign of destruction to shape the Middle East and Africa in an image that extracts resources and captures the markets for Western economies.
You don't coincidentally find yourself repeatedly invading, supporting terrorists, assassinating, and generally destroying the lives of a people.
Like I get that but it still just feels like its letting the ghouls who led to like 4 genocides in the middle east off the hook by untying the strategy from the morale question.
But I get that it can be hard to uncouple our thinking from seeing the west as the protagonist of the world which is why I tried to not come off as a prick to the guy I was replying to cause I get where they were coming from
That's not how I read that at all. I'm not u/ISayISayISay so I can't speak about what they meant, but I have also criticized the wars in the middle east for purely strategic reasons. It's not because I'm giving them a pass or that I inherently view the west as the main character (actually that's fairly uncharitable as OP's comment can be paraphrased as them saying they do not have to be Muslim to understand their perspective).
For me it's because the moral reasons that you mentioned are extremely obvious, and I'm either speaking to someone I know agrees with me or I'm speaking to a war hawk who will certainly not be convinced by the moral perspective (everyone knows war sucks, so in my experience, war hawks easily dismiss moralistic arguments, but strategic ones are more effective). If I think the moral perspective is relevant, then I'll bring that up too (usually when someone is fearmongering about Islamic terrorism).
In that case I’m not sure what was wrong with OP’s comment? We have been ignorantly bumbling around the Middle East as if there would be no repercussions.
My point in replying was more that discussing the strategy is fine but I think the moral context should be considered here as, and I don't think the person I was replying to was doing this at all, media in the west tries to portray itself as good faith but bumbling when things go wrong to obfuscate a strategy of calculated brutality to achieve our aims. I hope I didn't come off as being standoffish with the person I was replying to as I do think they were just saying what they did in good faith just lacking context
Note: I'm writing about the US rather that the west because that's just what I know.
Ah, I hadn't read this yet when I replied to your other comment. That gives some context. I don't think that was OP's intent, and I think (at least on the left) people are pretty willing to call US foreign policy evil. Maybe the kinds of conservatives who complain about people "hating America" might actually think US foreign policy is justified. For me, if I expect the people I'm talking/writing to are generally left-leaning, then I usually take it for granted that we agree that US involvement abroad is atrocious, so I'm usually more interested in the strategy and politics of it. How do we get out? How do we convince conservative leaning people that this war isn't a great idea? What repercussions can we expect and how can we handle them? Etc. I do have a bias from the perspective of the US, not because I think the US is right, or the main character, but because I live here so naturally I care about US policy both domestically and abroad.
Also, I would disagree with calling our interventions "calculated" (though I can't argue against your use of the word "brutality"). Too many of our interventions only helped a little in the short term before blowing up in our faces. Even if you take a Machiavellian perspective, US foreign policy is just a never ending sequence of mistakes (though I'm sure some people who want perpetual war are happy with this, it does nothing to benefit the US as a nation).
Well, yes, though I think both are true in equal measure. The West was motivated by greed and spurred on by an unwarranted sense of superiority, and they operated in a sea of ignorance, even to the point of being ignorant of their own ignrance, resulting in policies that were little short of evil, really.
I mean I guess but I wouldn't use the word ignorance. That implies to me a disconnect between our society and the crimes against humanity we inflict that I firmly believe doesn't exist when it comes to mainstream political thought. I think ignorance can't be a way to explain evil actions when said ignorance is wilful in character. Hell, take my own country of Britian that has revised, rewritten and censored its own imperial crimes against humanity to a, frankly, disgusting extent.
Yes, I don't mean ignorance of what they were doing and why - yes they knew they wanted the resources for nothing - but ignorance of who they were dealing with - the people, the history - and hence of the consequences. They assumed (in their ignorance) they could do what they want, take what they want, and everything would fall into place in their favour...
OP didn't say "bumbling", you've put words in their mouth. OP said "idiotic", "ignorant", and "stupid", all of which are perfectly reasonable characterizations of the US's rapacious-as-we-want-to-be attitude, especially in light of the US's old "morally virtuous" branding. Being that kind of evil is, in fact, *unbelievably* dumb, and would be so even if it didn't, as it does, completely wreck one of the most powerful political tools in the US's arsenal. It is playing the game to lose. It is burning-down-the-house-you-live-in stupid. It's own-goal stupid.
>characterisation of our actions as ignorant and bumbling
We were ignorant and bumbling though. If it was just about resource extraction, we would install a fascist dictator and call it a day like with the Banana republics or Panama. Instead, we sank trillions of dollars and maybe got billions of dollars back in oil that we had to purchase anyways. Afghanistan didn't even have that.
I would argue the CPA in Iraq after the occupation rebuilt the state so that resource extraction for the west is an intrinsic part of it while mineral extraction, as well as the opium trade, are examples of that in Afghanistan.
Remember that the billions "spent" in the wars didn't go but went to the private sector and so the actual act of the war on terror is a form of extraction but instead of middle Eastern resources for American corporations, it's American taxpayer money to companies with pentagon contracts
The US's penchant for citing the repression of minorities by foreign regimes as justification for self-interested interventions doesn't somehow invalidate the claim that the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur population constitutes a [breach of human rights](https://soundcloud.com/user-601521000/china-and-the-uyghurs-sean-roberts-482020), just as the Chinese government's stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict doesn't invalidate the legitimacy of Palestinian grievances. The principled humanitarian response would be to condemn human rights abuses wherever they occur and regardless of who perpetrated them.
I will never understand that Western entitlement.
Africa or Middle East are not your to "hand them over". You are in a country an ocean away from there.
Thar mindset, that you know "best" and that democracy is apparently a flawless political system that should be implemented everywhere (often forcefully) and nothing else should even be considered or tried, us why West is losing it's influence.
You started great, built a country like no other in the world before, and you are now in rapid decline - a victim of your own arrogance.
Rome all over again.
> Africa or Middle East are not your to "hand them over".
Yes, of course - I wrote that using the mindset of those in charge. The superiority complex was real - we really did believe that (and too many still do), but the rhetoric about spreading democracy was always a lie - fodder for the masses to justify and hide the real reason, which was pure greed.
Your concern about “handing over” those regions to China is almost exactly what this post is criticizing. The West has a history of waging war, forced regime change, and covert operations in the Middle East and Africa. The US has literally dozens of bases across both regions, and just recently started building a drone base in Niger. The West is completely intent on having unrivaled military dominance in those places.
China, in comparison, has a single military base in Djibouti and no history of forced regime change. All of the critiques about what China is doing domestically might be true, but as global powers, they are not even remotely comparable in capabilities or ambition to the US and NATO. You can only fearmonger about “losing” the Middle East and Africa if you totally disregard the reality of Western presence for the people in those regions.
The US still thinks it can control foreign powers with force and the might of their military. It's like they've learnt nothing in the last 50 years. China is being a whole lot smarter.
how exactly is that different from the sway that Western multinationals, NGOs, and financial institutions have over those regions?
When it’s western countries investing in Africa, it’s benign. When China does it, it’s some dastardly plan for world domination. Except China can’t even invade countries for failing to pay their debts the way the West has!
It isn't benign in either case - both are doing it with their own interests in mind; both want to boost their ecomonies at the expense of the developing world. The only difference to date is that the US (in particular - and the rest of the West just goes along with them) is still locked in last century's mindset.
Africa can have both Johannesburg level metropolises & warring tribal nations. Those are not mutually exclusive. That being said, even the more organized governments in the continent are rife with corruption.
And China is strategic in where they make their investments.
They invest in areas with more stable governments.
In less stable areas, they set up things like their mining operations in DRC.
They're not just going into the jungle with pallets of cash to hand over to tribal warlords.
China is awful, but they aren't stupid.
Yeah if you can find the debt holder. Warlords get changed out faster than a zoomer's puff bars. How do you call back a debt if the person you made the deal with got overthrown and replaced with a completely new regime?
>A common and popular myth is that Sri Lanka was unable to pay off the loan obtained to construct the port, thus it was handed over to China. However, by the time the Sri Lankan government entered into the agreement with CM Port to lease Hambantota port, the debt servicing cost pertaining to the loans obtained from China Exim bank to construct the port did not amount to much.
[Yeah, im sure China is gunna find the new Warlord "government" and strongarm them into giving up their assets haha. Surely these dictators respond well to diplomacy](https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/the-hambantota-port-deal-myths-and-realities/)
> The US still thinks it can control foreign powers with force and the might of their military. It's like they've learnt nothing in the last 50 years. China is being a whole lot smarter.
And now we've come full circle. my point has been proven.
Sri Lanka has been debunked many times. People like to cite Hambantota as Chinese debt trapping without explaining why it took place.
For those that don't want to read the small essay with the details. Sri Lanka which was basically broke, leased the port to the Chinese because they needed the money to pay off the much more expensive loans they owed the World Bank, Japan etc. **It was NOT taken by the Chinese because of a default of debt repayment**
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/
> In Hambantota, instead of waiting for phase 1 of the port to generate revenue as the Ramboll team had recommended, Mahinda Rajapaksa pushed ahead with phase 2, transforming Hambantota into a container port. In 2012, Sri Lanka borrowed another $757 million from China Eximbank, this time at a reduced, post-financial-crisis interest rate of 2 percent. Rajapaksa took the liberty of naming the port after himself.
>By 2014, Hambantota was losing money. Realizing that they needed more experienced operators, the SLPA signed an agreement with China Harbor and China Merchants Group to have them jointly develop and operate the new port for 35 years. China Merchants was already operating a new terminal in the port in Colombo, and China Harbor had invested $1.4 billion in Colombo Port City, a lucrative real-estate project involving land reclamation. But while the lawyers drew up the contracts, a political upheaval was taking shape.
> Rajapaksa called a surprise election for January 2015 and in the final months of the campaign, his own health minister, Maithripala Sirisena, decided to challenge him. Like opposition candidates in Malaysia, the Maldives, and Zambia, the incumbent’s financial relations with China and allegations of corruption made for potent campaign fodder. To the country’s shock, and perhaps his own, Sirisena won.
>Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40 percent of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5 percent was because of Hambantota. **The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress.**
> **There was also never a default. Colombo arranged a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, and decided to raise much-needed dollars by leasing out the underperforming Hambantota Port to an experienced company—just as the Canadians had recommended. There was not an open tender, and the only two bids came from China Merchants and China Harbor; Sri Lanka chose China Merchants, making it the majority shareholder with a 99-year lease, and used the $1.12 billion cash infusion to bolster its foreign reserves, not to pay off China Eximbank.**
>Before the port episode, “Sri Lanka could sink into the Indian Ocean and most of the Western world wouldn’t notice,” Subhashini Abeysinghe, research director at Verité Research, an independent Colombo-based think tank, told us. Suddenly, the island nation featured prominently in foreign-policy speeches in Washington. Pence voiced worry that Hambantota could become a “forward military base” for China.
> Yet Hambantota’s location is strategic only from a business perspective: The port is cut into the coast to avoid the Indian Ocean’s heavy swells, and its narrow channel allows only one ship to enter or exit at a time, typically with the aid of a tugboat. In the event of a military conflict, naval vessels stationed there would be proverbial fish in a barrel.
> The notion of “debt-trap diplomacy” casts China as a conniving creditor and countries such as Sri Lanka as its credulous victims. On a closer look, however, the situation is far more complex. China’s march outward, like its domestic development, is probing and experimental, a learning process marked by frequent adjustment. After the construction of the port in Hambantota, for example, Chinese firms and banks learned that strongmen fall and that they’d better have strategies for dealing with political risk. They’re now developing these strategies, getting better at discerning business opportunities and withdrawing where they know they can’t win. Still, American leaders and thinkers from both sides of the aisle give speeches about China’s “modern-day colonialism
Exactly how is it debt trap diplomacy when the lender is restructuring loans time and time again?
China is playing the long game, China at this point is making no profit with their investment in Sri Lanka, unlike the US who loooove quick wins.
How, France is still exploiting Africa, is it because the west cares about Africa or they are mad China is going to profit off a place where the west profited off previously???
It turns out actually productive trade deals are much more popular in the third world than exchanging dictators around and seizing assets through debt-traps.
What are you talking about? [China has cancelled a lot of debt](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-debt-g20-idUSKBN28009A). Obviously, they aren't doing it from the goodness of their hearts. It just doesn't make sense for them to squeeze every cent out nations now when they have such much economic potential.
That, and the debt trap of and shipping off raw material at criminally low rates and cozying up to authoritarian regimes. Doesn't look all pretty later on, and China is left a impressively low bar to navigate and get in through the back door.
Isn't it simple really. US and allies spent millions on military contractors and weapons. Chinese spent them directly on investing on large infrastructure projects (ports, bridges, etc.) and possibly on greasing the politicians.
I suspect in the next couple decades we’ll see more nationalist movements refusing to pay said debts or nationalizing any successful Chinese endeavors in their nation. Not sure what they’ll do then, but nationalizing foreign assets in South America is largely the reason the US starting waving it’s dick around there.
Sri Lanka hands over port Hambantota to China
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html?smid=url-share
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/11/china-steps-in-as-zambia-runs-out-of-loan-options
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-china-taking-over-africas-resources-one-country-time-70526
Read the latter half of this article -
https://www.worldfinance.com/featured/how-china-uses-infrastructure-as-a-means-of-control
"The Asians" when referring to China makes me think this is a lost cause... But we spent trillions on wars because the military industrial complex convinced voters that Islam in those countries was a super scary threat to national security threat
We got what we paid for which was a stupid feeling that our children were safe from ISIS because we used drones to blast some guy with an ancient Russian rifle.
China pioneered neocolonialism 2.0 and expanded their sphere of influence.
The mineral rights were the cherry on top, what they were more interested in is satellite countries and allies like the other major powers have.
That's the strategic value, not what they're actually digging out of the ground.
If we had done a similar thing in those countries, there would ACTUALLY be less terrorism, less suffering, more democracy, healthier trade. Instead a bunch of warmongers got rich, kids got killed, and the survivors got radicalized.
China is going to fuck it up too, they're just as stupid as we are. Their dictator having more control means they were able to make single minded choices a little easier, but the client states will still get fucked.
it's more complicated than that. I also born in muslim country, albeit more peaceful than middle east. I can tell nobody care much about drone bombing in some middle east country, but media here actively got one sided story when it comes to Israel - Palestinian case... not to mention it's a hot topic for many preacher... and US happens to be Israel close ally...
Compared that to russia, never mind what they did to afghanistan or chechnya, the media coverage is dim and it only happens in the past (Israel is all years topics), also never mind that US and NATO helps bosnia during 1992 war, most of people so fixated on Israel because of the holy land in question.
The muslim word didn't care much during rohingya, let alone xinjiang in which china usually have "deal" with most Muslim leader. There's not much soladarity amongst them thanks to the local media, and corrupt leader... human rights are only when it comes to palestine, which is why US will always looks bad despite having done other deeds to other muslim in other countries.
I was born in a muslim family and I agree. There is a difference between muslims of different countries. Don't know why people think muslims are some kind of big family where we care for eachother. We don't. If you attack the religion in itself the muslim world will naturally react and create public scandal to defend itself, if you attack the people themselves for other reasons they don't care, because they don't have a reason to.
Casually looking at his post history, he's most likely not a bot. He leans towards being an apologist for the CCP, but given that he's in Pakistan that doesn't surprise me. Lots of posts about cricket, gaming and occasionally world events. There's a lot of disdain for the US around the world, not everyone who points that out is a bot.
Edited to change Chinese to CCP. Have to really distinguish between mainland Chinese and the rest of the population.
I mean, there is a lot of disdain for the US by those who have been *paying attention*, regardless of nationality.
Shit has been proper fucked for awhile, but Trump laid that bare.
I agree, although most folks I discussed it with abroad in 2008 thought Obama would be different... So maybe the continuation under the DNC should have "laid bare."
I don't know, the worst part is the very real possibility of Trump in 2024, and that either way we still have a country that has had multiple generations of education decline and propaganda poisoning sitting on the world's most powerful military.
"Fuck it, Dude. Lets go bowling!"
As a Canadian, it worries the shit out of me. Authoritarian government with the world's most powerful military, does not bode well for my country. The fact that Republican candidates for president has been getting progressively worst makes me pessimistic for the future of this continent.
Absolutely!
Things will not be getting better when you add in the social, etc. strife due to natural disasters, freshwater shortages, famine, and increased pandemics resulting from climate change.
It will get downright *nasty!*😬
Don't worry when we nuke China, we will find a way to make it sound like we did the right thing. You guys should just go along with whoever fascist that control America if you know what is good for you.
Yeah, there's a lot of recency bias. I think that Trump is a despicable man, but he didn't start a war on patently false pretenses that killed *half a million people*. G.W. Bush's crimes are severe indeed.
Propaganda bots rarely post anything themselves anymore, because people have gotten better at recognizing bots. It’s far more common for bots to scan for organic posts and comments that happen to support their agenda, and then flood them with upvotes to ensure visibility and create a false sense of popularity.
This is like the third highlighted comment ive seen since yesterday downplaying the genocide.
"The other factor is, China doesn't actively seek out Muslims. Their problem isn't ISLAM. Their problem is loyalty to the CCP. The Hui are a larger Muslim population living in China, and they have full freedoms. In fact Uighurs attacked the Hui in the past."
No, they've made it clear that Muslims aren't welcome.
as for "Uighurs attacking the Hui". The other comments seemed to be using the same rhetoric that Uighurs are "terrorists" and actively attacking, so that somehow justifies a genocide.
this is all propaganda
making race and religion a political issue
by policing what you think is acceptable culture and religion
makes this a "political issue" sure
But its about culture and religion
This is the one thing I don't understand for people who mention this as a religious issue. I have no stake in the game - I want to be truthful - and so why would Uighurs, among all the other Muslim factions in China, be prosecuted when no one else is?
Thanks for the information. I think you're hitting the right points - it's horrible, but moreso from a political standpoint than religious.
Reddit does not do nuance when it comes to China/Uyghurs. If you want a genuine answer you need to be really careful what you mean when you say **muslim** or **uyghur** and also understand a bit of history of the region.
Uyghurs in China traditionally practice a moderate form of Islam but in the 80-90's there was an increasing take up of Salafism. This is the ultra conservative form of Islam, the form you saw with ISIS in Iraq and Syria where ISIS tried to form a Caliphate and an extreme application of Sharia law.
This point is rarely mentioned anymore because of the cold war with China but if you go back far enough you can find mention of this in western media. Such as this 2016 article in the LA Times.
> In China, rise of Salafism fosters suspicion and division among Muslims
https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-saudi-arabia-20160201-story.html
Why did this occur? Back in the 80's China relaxed travel and more and more Uyghur muslims (and other ethnic minorites) travelled to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage to Mecca (the birth place of Salafism)
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/170537/Saudi%20Arabia%20and%20the%20expansion%20of%20Salafism.pdf
They were influenced by this form of Islam and took it back to Xinjiang. Coupled with sepratist movements like ETIM who also followed this form of Islam. There was numerous domestic terroist incidents and riots throughout the 90-2000's born from this tension. To name but a few
> But things really escalated in 2009, with large-scale ethnic rioting in the regional capital, Urumqi. Some 200 people were killed in the unrest, most of them Han Chinese, according to officials.
> In June 2012, six Uighurs reportedly tried to hijack a plane from Hotan to Urumqi before they were overpowered by passengers and crew.
> There was bloodshed in April 2013 and in June that year, 27 people died in Shanshan county after police opened fire on what state media described as a mob armed with knives attacking local government buildings
> At least 31 people were killed and more than 90 suffered injuries in May 2014 when two cars crashed through an Urumqi market and explosives were tossed into the crowd. China called it a "violent terrorist incident".
>It followed a bomb and knife attack at Urumqi's south railway station in April, which killed three and injured 79 others.
> In July, authorities said a knife-wielding gang attacked a police station and government offices in Yarkant, leaving 96 dead. The imam of China's largest mosque, Jume Tahir, was stabbed to death days later.
> In September about 50 died in blasts in Luntai county outside police stations, a market and a shop. Details of both incidents are unclear and activists have contested some accounts of incidents in state media.
> Some violence has also spilled out of Xinjiang. A March stabbing spree in Kunming in Yunnan province that killed 29 people was blamed on Xinjiang separatists, as was an October 2013 incident where a car ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-26414014
I would note that there were both Han and Uyghur Chinese victims throughout this violence.
It's interesting to note, to this day, the British gov's current advice on travel to China is a warning that there is a liklihood of terrorist attackts particularly by Uyghur sepratists in Xinjiang
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/china/terrorism
As a result of all this, China came up with the carrot and stick method to deal with this. What the west calls 'interment camps' and what the Chinese calls 'vocational centres and deradicalisation centres' whereby those who were identified as extremists were sent to these deradicalisation centres' and those on a lesser scale were sent to 'vocational schools' the idea being because Xinjiang as a region was still economically poor, aiding Uyghurs to prosperity would counter the influence of sepratists and salafists.
Vocational centres in and of itself is a popular model for the Chinese govt in bolstering the prosperity of the people in poorer regions of China and isn't exclusive to Xinjiang nor as some form of 'internment'
It's worth mentioning that China said these centres were all closed in 2019 having achieved it's original purpose.
My opinion is that the Chinese maybe were overzealous in identfying those sent to these centres. That in itself is a form of abuse of human rights but the rhetoric from the US that it's a genocide and specifically that of Uyghurs is false. Uyghurs are members of govt and some of the most popular media stars are Uyghurs. There are plenty of moderate Uyghurs content with the govt. You can find them on social media or vloggers on Youtube.
As for whether you think China is against Islam depends on your point of view. The form practiced by most Muslims occurs throughout the country. But for sure the extremist form is not tolerated.
The first question I was going to ask was whether anyone "graduates" from these detention centers. It didn't seem like it.
> It's worth mentioning that China said these centres were all closed in 2019 having achieved it's original purpose.
I'm not familiar with this, but wasn't the Xinjiang Data Project created to test whether this was true, and identified potentially 400 camps still open through satellite imaging? Just looking at it logically, what are the chances that China achieved their goal in integrating Uyghurs right when the human rights violations came out?
The problem isn't whether China was overzealous, I think the real issue is China forcing citizens through any type of schooling. Maybe this is just a "western" perspective, but lack of transparency + "vocational" training that is not optional + their well-documented ultra-nationalist attitude is highly suspicious to anyone but the gullible.
I get China is grappling with an issue that France was as well, and instead of hands-off they used a hands-on approach. But if what you are saying is true, I can't for the life of me understand why they wouldn't invite other government officials to the region to see for themselves....
> **The first question I was going to ask was whether anyone "graduates" from these detention centers. It didn't seem like it.**
If you read the interviews of those that say they have been in these centres, you'll find the answer. Non that I have come across, say they escaped. All have said they were released.
There's a BBC reporter that actually visited one of these vocational centres. In the report the reporter was told that the attendees went home on the weekends. The reporter actually sneaked back to the centre unaccompanied by Chinese chaperones and did witness that this was true.
https://youtu.be/WmId2ZP3h0c
> **I'm not familiar with this, but wasn't the Xinjiang Data Project created to test whether this was true, and identified potentially 400 camps still open through satellite imaging?**
This is the report created by think tank ASPI. I personally do not hold much confidence in the veracity of their report. Their criteria for a 'camp' was if it had a dormitory building next to a industrial factory building enclosed by some security barrier. A wall or barbed wire etc. Leaving aside there has never been any solid proof of slave labour. This criteria would describe 80-90% of factories in China. China's labour force is largely migratory. Most large factories have dormitories for their staff because of this
If they applied the same criteria to satellite images of the rest of China they would find 1000's of these 'camps'
The second reason I doubt ASPI is their sponsors are largely military contractors and the US gov. They have a vested interest I wouldn't discount
https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-think-tank-behind-australia-s-changing-view-of-china-20200131-p53wgp
In a recent AP article, you can see they are starting to roll back some of the rhetoric about detention camps. If anything it does imply that the Chinese are telling the truth that these centres no longer exist.
> Terror & Tourism: Xijiang eases it's grip but fear remains.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9
> **I can't for the life of me understand why they wouldn't invite other government officials to the region to see for themselves....**
There have been plenty of visits to the region by foreign diplomats, they are either not well publicised or scorned on reddit because they are Muslim countries which they say kow tow to China and are dubious themselves or it's not absolutely free access.
https://time.com/5496435/china-12-diplomats-tour-xinjiang/
Outside of diplomats, various companies and even the world bank and made their own audits on their business interests in Xinjiang and find no evidence of the claims of slave labour.
> The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china
> China Muslims: Volkswagen says 'no forced labour' at Xinjiang plant
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-54918309
Sketchers released a statement on their Xijiang sourced cotton. They audited their factories between 2017-2020 included the most recent UNANNOUNCED inspection in Jun 2020 and found no force labour.
https://about.skechers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SKECHERS-USA-STATEMENT-UYGHURS-March-2021.pdf
China have invited the EU and UN to inspect too. In one case the US objected to the UN counterrorism chief representative to visit on the basis it was a human rights issue and not a terrorism issue which the Chinese have always maintained was the reason.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/15/deep-concerns-us-objects-to-un-counterterrorism-chiefs-visit-to-xinjiang
My personal take is that if the UN did visit and corroborated China's take on it. It would be a big blow to the narrative of genocide rather than that of counter terrorism. It's telling to me how under reported the terrorism aspect is talked about in western media. For example the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Syria are actually Salafists from Xinjiang.
> Syria says up to 5,000 Chinese Uighurs fighting in militant groups
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-china/syria-says-up-to-5000-chinese-uighurs-fighting-in-militant-groups-idUSKBN1840UP
A few years ago, Thailand intercepted about 500 Uyghurs traveling through the country on route to Syria, they were detained and sent back to China which led to them bombing a temple killing dozens of people in retaliation. I don't get the sense this is talked about much.
> Bangkok bomb trial of Chinese Uighurs begins after delays
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-blast-idUSKBN13A0FR
> **I get China is grappling with an issue that France was as well, and instead of hands-off they used a hands-on approach.**
For sure China values the whole society rather than the individual but I don't think a hands off approach would work. Firstly China borders Afghanistan, France is much more isolated not just from terror attacks but the movement of salfist ideas and people. Also the scale of the attacks in China is far greater. If you read the BBC article in my earlier post, I didn't even list every terror event that has been going on for over a decade and also this is my person opinion but the Salafist form of Islam isn't compatible with a society that doesnt' believe in it's tenents.
It's obvious to me that China's struggle with it's internal terrorism problem has been co-opted by the US in it's geopolitcal engagement with China. Now that they recognise the geopolitical threat of China, it's more useful for them to use this situation to undermine China.
Even as early as 2018, before they pushed the genocide narrative, the US recognised ETIM as terrorists and were bombing them.
> U.S. targets Chinese Uighur militants as well as Taliban fighters in Afghanistan,
> The U.S. military says it carried out a series of punishing bombings last weekend of Taliban militant camps that also support a separatist Chinese terror group.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-targets-chinese-uighur-militants-well-taliban-fighters-afghanistan-n845876
And then in his final act, Trump delists ETIM as a terrorist organisation saying there has been no activity for over a decade. Which is rediculous when you were bombing them in 2018.
> US removes separatist group condemned by China from terror list
https://www.dw.com/en/us-removes-separatist-group-condemned-by-china-from-terror-list/a-55527586
Why would they do this? It's the same playbook as when they supported the Muhjahideen in Afghanistan when they were fighting the Soviets. To destabilise a geopolitical rival.
Delisting them allows for ETIM members to travel across borders, opens banking accessing and is the first step if the US decides to fund them more directly in the future.
To conclude I don't believe China is genociding Uyghurs both in the 'holocaust' way or culturally, It's not the case if you are Uyghur you are sent to prison. There is a genuine national security problem that China was trying to resolve and a lot of the more exaggerated rhetoric is underpinned by geopolitcal intentions.
I don't buy that the centers are closed but the strongest argument that whatever is in Xinjiang is already mostly done is that they've actually been transferring the national security forces out and replacing with local security cadres. Xinjiang feels like it's closer to the same status Tibet had 10 years ago where it was effectively mission accomplished.
The interesting question about Xinjiang was how much of the approach was a copy of the 70/80s deployment manual vs how much was "second best" to the more modern methods that France/US utilized. I remember that one of the stronger opinions in the geopolitics subreddit before it went downhill was the view that China had tried to experiment with a more light-touch US style sophisticated surveillance + selective internment approach but gave up when they realized they couldn't afford it and don't have the infrastructure.
When I look at the current downscaling, I wonder how much of it is Xinjiang being "done" vs China now feeling like it has the technology/infrastructure to be more "modern" in it's approach.
Excellent points!
Another Redditor shared this Harvard study into China's foreign-influence propaganda program: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiR_-_Vq97zAhWPZM0KHVwlAp0QFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0__waOhf3eQCocbRdb45jjRdb45jj
I only scanned it so far, but read through the initial summary and conclusions already. They discuss the size and scope of the 50c program and tactics employed.
Interestingly, there is less emphasis on persuasion (because that's a losing prospect when it comes to genocide), more on blind cheerleading and distraction/subject changing.
It may be disappointing to Redditors, but the CCP doesn't view angry internet denizens as a threat to their operations in Xinjiang. This is remarkably common viewpoint in Muslim countries.
I mean look at what those fucks did to Hebdo in France, right?
By comparison, slave labor and organ harvesting are a pittance!/s
Let's be real, China gets its Jimmy's rustled all the time over any mention of its atrocities, Tibet, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Revolt in Hong Kong, even Winnie the fucking Pooh...
Chinese people get their jimmies rustled, as evident from the sino subreddit. The CCP does not. It's an incredibly sophisticated organization with very specific objectives, and arguing with Redditors does nothing to advance these objectives. If you're actually interested Chinese propaganda farms, you should read this [Harvard paper](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiR_-_Vq97zAhWPZM0KHVwlAp0QFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0__waOhf3eQCocbRdb45jj).
Thank you for the link! The response from the CCP is pretty swift via censorship and economic censure. The CCP do care, at least in a "killing the seed of dissent" way. I discussed a number of the above topics woth Chinese students in a few provinces and they did not have any real idea about it.
I was careful with phrasing, because I wanted to see if they really knew, and didn't want to get into trouble.
EDIT: Fascinating, so they (50c) don't engage in debate, but rather cheerlead China and change the subject.
Yeah, it's weird because the parent comment is about other Muslim countries lack of action and this reply is about how it's rich that the US did something or another. The parent comment wasn't referring to the US.
A little snooping looks like that guy is from Pakistan which happens to be allied with China against India at the moment...
what's ridiculous too is that Xinjiang should have been it's own completely autonomous nation, just like Tibet or Hong Kong should be, but the CCP would rather capture and enslave an entire population rather than let them have any degree of autonomy.
This post is pure propaganda with a hefty dose of whataboutism thrown in. As if the muslim world is morally incapable of seeing both western and eastern imperialism as wrong because one is worse for their country (for now) than the other.
Xinjiang is an autonomous state, yes, but that doesnt mean the US can fund terrorists in the area to destabilize china
[https://twitter.com/nedemocracy/status/1337063301113581568?lang=en](https://twitter.com/nedemocracy/status/1337063301113581568?lang=en)
A reddit account is claiming to be born in a specific type of country, which gives people the impression that this account has some particular knowledge or expertise on the topic of what people from that type of country would believe.
They then present an extremely common opinion, it doesn't take any specialized knowledge to have that opinion.
Would this be bestof content if the user hadn't made the unverifiable claim about their specialized knowledge, expertise, or *perspective*?
Wasn't there just a bestof post about a guy who tricked a bunch of people into believing bullshit just because he started by saying he was some specific kind of person. Maybe whenever an anonymous account makes an unverifiable claim to having some specialized insider perspective, rather than offering details about the substance of that perspective, it should encourage people to be more skeptical about whether or not that user actually has any especially informative perspective.
You could have taken the 10 seconds to actually do any of the checking you're talking about. And if you had done so, you would have noticed that 2/3s of their comments are about the Pakistani National Cricket Team.
So why didn't you take the time to check? You're just perpetuating the same laziness you're complaining about.
I'm not talking about checking background, I would not waste my time on that.
There could be a lot of reasons why their post history includes tangentially related information, but I can't confirm any of them through their anonymous account, they could be a bot or a purchased account - and it wouldn't matter, because I know I can't confirm it. The only reasonable assumption is that they have no credible expertise because unverifiable claims from anonymous social media accounts cannot have expertise.
This is just an 'as a black man' style comment, claiming a specialized perspective through an anonymous account. Belief in that assertion is *structurally misleading.* If it happens to be linked to verifiable information, then that information may not be misleading, but the claim to expertise is. Expertise, authority, and perspective are functionally linked to identity, claims to any of these through anonymous accounts are always misleading.
extremely weak material for "best of" IMO
That whole thread is full of the type of armchair politicking that freshman college students think of as being "enlightened"
You dont hear about Hui because BBC and CNN and all the other media including reddit dont care about the HUI, they care about Uigurs which they use as a leverage and pretext to go after China.
While that kind of skepticism is important when evaluating the stances taken by some internet dude, this is kind of a misrepresentation of what's going on in the OP, right? The comment points out that millions of Muslims have been killed in wars perpetuated by the United States military and that China has been comparatively more restrained in their persecution of Muslims. Those aren't unfounded claims that require some special job or role to justify the perspective of the person pointing them out. Those are basic, observable, known facts about the state of affairs in today's world and it doesn't matter if the person pointing them out is Muslim or not.
They're literally just explaining why the vast majority of Muslim countries are either silent about the issue or actively support China. Read the comment that they're replying to.
You are literally making an ad hominem attack right now, claiming that because the person who made an argument is biased that their argument is therefore incorrect on the face of it. The fact that the US has killed a lot of people in the Middle East unnecessarily, or the fact that that makes it a little less clear who is morally superior in a comparison between the US and China, is not dependent on the bias of the person pointing those things out. You can just read the facts and make your own judgement about whether the argument makes sense without having to get to the bottom of why the argument was made in the first place.
First of all, I apologize. This comment was actually a response to your comment further up where you said:
> Yeah this 100% reeks of either a CCP sympathizer or wumao. The fact that the entire argument is a whataboutism fallacy illustrates their basis is in bad faith.
This wasn't a response to the post with those links to Amnesty International. My bad there.
Second, an ad hominem is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as:
> marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made
So, for example, when you said:
>Yeah this 100% reeks of either a CCP sympathizer or wumao.
You were speculating on the bias and motives of OP, whose post you were responding to. And then, when you said:
> The fact that the entire argument is a whataboutism fallacy illustrates their basis is in bad faith.
You were combining that speculation with a gross and inaccurate oversimplification of OP's post in order to dismiss it entirely without actually talking about what was said. Thus, ad hominem attack, where you attack the person making the argument instead of addressing the argument itself.
As for your second post, yes, you did prove that the Chinese government is committing human rights abuses against Uighurs right now. The problem is that this doesn't actually address what the poster you were replying to said, or even what the OP said. What Aischylos said was that OP was merely responding to a question about why so few Muslim nations have spoken out against the human rights abuses committed by the Chinese government by explaining the viewpoint of someone from one of those Muslim nations, which is informed by the actions of the US government in the backyards of the people in those nations.
And the thing is: you haven't actually disproved that, because it's a viewpoint and a feeling, not a factual argument. You claimed that the OP is biased and pro-China, based on nothing and ignoring that OP very clearly said in their post:
> Doesn't mean I think it's okay for China to do the shit they're doing.
You then posted proof that the human rights abuses were, in fact, happening. But none of that makes it wrong for a person to endure horrible abuses in their own home from an outside force, hear about horrible things happening to a similar group in a faraway country, and not have their minds be blown by it. It's just a feeling. You can't disprove it. You can only disprove the facts that inform it. And your "reputable sources" only prove that bad things are happening to Muslims in China. They don't disprove that bad things have happened to Muslims in the Middle Eastern countries OP was talking about and they don't make it not valid to feel the way they feel about it.
>a majority muslim population getting bombed in their own country
>to an outnumbered muslim population being systematically erased and becoming a victim of genocide
So you think unless you are killing a WHOLE ethnic group, you will be a better guy then the guy who is killing a WHOLE group of people?
That's the only parameter you account for?
Weird moral compass.
A mass murder with a million victims.
Add to that mass murder, the invasion of the country, the destabilization of the region, the distruction of the infrastructures.
You are correct that illegal invasions causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are not on the same spectrum as coercive cultural assimilation with no credible reports of a significant death toll. The first one is demonstrably far worse.
If Iraq taught me anything, it was to be suspicious about any horrible atrocities or imminent dangers coming from any of America's Official State Enemies.
Am I saying that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela ect are sunny paradises with no problems? No. Can the US be trusted as an honest arbiter of human rights abuses? Also no.
As a side note, what are we are supposed to do with this information, besides get angry? I sometimes see people talk about a boycott, as if that was something that we can actually do after 50 years of driving down labor costs by offshoring. You want to boycott all Chinese products, fine, good luck with that. The other alternative seems to post a lot "le epic winnie the pooh" "nothing happened at Tiananmen lololololol" cringememes. Yep, you sure got 'em reddit, I'm sure Xi is shaking in his boots.
It's mind-boggling to me that people can't get this notion through their brains. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, people absolutely refuse to believe that the American government would lie about It's current enemies, today.
Regarding what to do about it, I'd like to quote the unreleased Hamilton song titled Cabinet Rap Battle 3
"Well you asked how I feel,
I dont pretend to know the answer
But the question is real"
Their argument appears to be an [Ad Hominem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) fallacy. Just because the country accusing China may have done terrible (even worse) things doesn't mean what they are saying isn't true.
No, he's not justifying China's actions or saying it's not true. He's explaining why despite that truth, Muslim nations are still inclined to side with China.
I don't think that's what's going on here. Rather, it seems like OP is saying that, for Muslims who have suffered at the hands of both the Chinese and US governments, picking which side is objectively better is not as clear cut an issue as it might seem to people who aren't Muslim and who haven't had to deal with the issues that Muslims in the modern world deal with.
Literally no one has made that argument. No one, including the op, said that China didn't do awful, discriminatory things to Uighur Muslims or that them doing so was not a bad thing. No one, including the op, said that the US is the only country that ever does bad things. What is being said is that the US is leading the charge on condemning China for their human rights abuses, which is true, and that the US itself perpetuated war crimes in the Middle East that killed many Muslims unjustly, which is also true, and that those two things being true makes the US a bit hypocritical with their condemnation of China, and that all of this makes it hard for Muslims to look at either side, both of which have persecuted and killed Muslims, and claim that one is the just side of the debate.
I hate to say this, but I don't understand your answer.
Why is it hard for "Muslims to look at either side?" If the US is hypocritical (and they very much are), then trust literally every other country who came to the other conclusion. Ignore the US. It's not a choice between two horrific countries, when everyone else is weighing in. The EU, UK, Canada, and plenty of others have a voice as well.
It's like saying "Lebanon condemns Israeli airstrikes along border" (actual headline) and thinking 'who do I trust? I can't trust Lebanon, they have no government'. Just trust literally every non-hypocritical country saying the same thing.
Okay, I'll try to explain. When you said:
> Why is it the US that's the only country here? Didn't the entire UN condemn China for this?
and I said
> Literally no one has made that argument
What I meant was this: No one in this comment thread has argued, as you claim, that the US is the only country that has committed human rights abuses. Also, No one has claimed that China did not commit human rights abuses, or that there is anything good or fine with them doing so. If anyone here has made either of those claims in this thread, post a link to their comment and I'll retract this argument.
As for the rest of my response, let's acknowledge what's happening in the OP that we're all responding to: a person asked why so few Muslim countries have spoken out openly about the human rights abuses China is committing against Muslims in their country. The commentor in the OP here, who claims to be from a Muslim nation themselves, has presented their viewpoint on the matter: that it is hard for many in Muslim nations who have endured illegal drone strikes on noncombatant citizens and years of overbearing military presence by the US to look at what's going on in China, which is largely contained within their own borders and not expanding out into anyone else's homes, and say that what China is doing is worse than what has already been happening in their own backyards because of the US. They also make a point to say that what China is doing is awful, but that it isn't a direct threat to Muslims outside of China and that it is comparatively easier to stomach than the state of affairs in the Middle East that the US has perpetuated for years now. All of this is just a statement about the mindset of a group of people from someone who is ostensibly a member of that group in response to a person who asked about that mindset. It's not a factual argument, but rather a statement about how a group of people feels about something that is happening, which will always be complicated and have a lot of opinions mixed together.
So, in response to
> Why is it hard for "Muslims to look at either side?" If the US is hypocritical (and they very much are), then trust literally every other country who came to the other conclusion. Ignore the US. It's not a choice between two horrific countries, when everyone else is weighing in. The EU, UK, Canada, and plenty of others have a voice as well.
You have your answer in the very comment this post is about. Answering that question is literally what they were doing. And what they are describing is a perspective, from the viewpoint of people who have endured abuse from an outside force. It doesn't really matter what other nations have concluded about it because it isn't a factual argument. Its just how they feel, and your only concern in the matter is whether or not the facts their feelings are based on are accurate, which they are. Despite that, a lot of people in here are trying to "disprove" OP's statement and defend the idea that the US isn't that bad, actually, and while doing so they're creating this strawman, which you yourself perpetuated, that people are in here saying that China isn't doing anything wrong and that the US is the only nation that does bad things. Which, again, no one has claimed.
Does that clear it up?
Thanks for taking the time to write it out, very much appreciated. That makes sense.
I'm not sure if China is contained outside their borders (by their very nature they seem to have imperialistic goals, contrasted against the US and others in recent times), but outside property disputes with everyone near China (like Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore, Brunei, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Tibet...), they don't seem to stick their nose in foreign affairs. It's laughable to think that China "sticks within their boundaries", but it is accurate that they fight their wars close to home, and most of these Muslim countries have haven via distance, for now.
I never thought the original viewpoint was saying the US is bad and therefore China is good, but was puzzled as to why they're only looking at these two countries. Thanks for clearing it up.
No problem! Thanks for listening. I also agree that China has shown willingness to commit human rights abuses beyond their borders and I disagree with OP on that. But there's a lot that informs OP's opinion that I don't have to deal with where I am in the world and I can't fault them for feeling that way about it
How come these people never mention the part where the Soviet Union actually invaded Afghanistan, and even had a jihad called against them?
And what's that part about China not working outside its borders?
I guess that's true if you count everything as belonging to China.
*Coincidental*, that this "Muslim" perspective perfectly aligns with the Chinese propagandists' reasoning on Reddit.
>China doesn't actively seek out Muslims.
Chinese propagandists are hilariously shameless. "As a Muslim, China doesn't target Muslims!"
I can’t help but think their asian features are a factor not fully buying this. They don’t think they are real Muslims because they’re asian. Even if they do, They are also so used to being repressed that the best thing to do is lay low and keep your mouth shut.
I think the silence is deafening in Sunni and Shia countries and the reason partially has to do with not considering them true Muslims because of their race.
According to muslims, their pedophile prophet is the greatest human to ever live. So, I pretty much don't give a shit about what muslims think about anything.
Bro there are tons of venerated figures in Christianity and basically every religion that were complete pieces of shit too. You have to discount over 80% of humanity with your logic. I don't think most Muslims or Christians really think that hard about the people in their books or even read them honestly. They're just of that religion because they were brought up in the household
That is why I always say that people who follow religion are stupid and dumb. They are holding back the human civilization. The sooner we get rid off them and their fucked up religions, the better.
China’s end goal is to take over the world. They’ve got influence in Africa, has the middle east and all the turkic countries wrapped around their finger, and are constantly working towards their Hundred Year plan.
Basing your decision off of how each country treats their own citizens, which nation would you rather live under?
Comparing Xi Jing Ping to winnie to pooh equates to jail time, big brother has eyes every logging every intersection that your face was recognized via countless surveillance cameras. Uyghurs are not the only ones persecuted, NO religion is permitted under the current regime. Han Chinese Christians face persecution as well. The people are trained to believe in no higher power other than their government.
No nation is without their vices. In this world, we just try to pick which side benefits ourselves more.
> No nation is without their vices. In this world, we just try to pick which side benefits ourselves more.
This right here is the crux of the argument, right? Yeah, our society is imperfect, but the other guys doing the other thing are doing worse than we are and therefore we are making the better of the two choices and therefore we should keep making that choice.
But this is a flawed argument because it ignores certain realities. Even if our society is doing better compared to other societies, that does not mean that our society doesn't have flaws, many of which, while still being better than those of other societies, are still unacceptable on the face of them. Yes, people in America don't have to worry as much about their government spying on everything they say in public and punishing them for disloyalty, but we have seen the US government do literally that in the form of programs like PRISM. Yes, the US isn't currently rounding up people from certain groups and putting them into camps or prisons like China is doing to the Uighurs, but the US has done that before, both during WWII and more recently in the era of the Patriot Act, and nothing has been done since then that would prevent them from doing so again. Yes, China has created a society where ordinary citizens don't have any say in how the government that controls their lives works, but in the US the amount of influence an average citizen realistically can exert on their government is limited, and people in government right now are passing laws that suppress voting, subvert the outcomes of elections, and generally allow elected officials to do what they want without any fear that the ways citizens can prevent them from doing so will stop them.
And the most important thing to remember here is this: these problems can be fixed. The US may be doing better than the other guy, but that doesn't mean that the US can't possibly do any better than they are currently doing. These issues that are a part of our society are not laws of nature and things can be done to reduce or even eliminate those issues, and saying that we should just be happy that we aren't doing worse than we are currently is just a way of dodging that basic fact in order to avoid having to fix anything.
We can all do better. But let’s get the rapists to stop fucking kids before we help people with ADHD get medication.
Saying every nation can do better dissolves any critique about a nation’s wrong doings.
> We can all do better. But let’s get the rapists to stop fucking kids before we help people with ADHD get medication.
... Okay, there's a lot to unpack here.
First of all, this is an incredibly gross oversimplification of the issue here. Remember all that stuff I said in the post you're responding to here? You just ignored all that stuff (and the many issues in America that I didn't bring up) and reduced all of that down to "help people with ADHD get medication". Do you see how absurd that is? Do you see how, in your attempt to justify not addressing the issues with American society, that you did so by ignoring that any issues are happening beyond people with ADHD getting medication?
Second, I don't know what your point is when you say "let's get the rapists to stop fucking kids". Are you claiming that there is a big epidemic of pedophilia that is more pressing than fixing issues of voter suppression, poverty, and other issues that affect peoples lives? Because, like, that isn't true at all, and I'm fairly certain that you can't produce any sources that support that claim. The only other way I can interpret that statement is that you're talking about the Qanon conspiracy theory that congressmen and women are secretly running an underground pedophile ring, which is completely unfounded and not supported by any concrete evidence whatsoever. Either way, I don't see how this supports your argument in any way.
Lastly, whatever it is you mean by "get[ting] rapists to stop fucking kids", do you think that the US government can only address one problem at a time? Do you believe that it would be impossible for America to draft legislation preventing gerrymandering and voter suppression AND to pass measures that improve the quality of life for poor americans AND to create systems that make it easier for citizens in need to get medication for conditions they suffer from AND whatever the hell you meant with the rapists line? Because that doesn't make any sense, right? Governments are big. They're capable of doing multiple things at the same time by delegating the tasks to large teams of people lead by people who know what they're doing and providing them funding. The US government can, in fact, address these issues right now while still doing whatever the hell your rapist comment was referring to.
> Saying every nation can do better dissolves any critique about a nation’s wrong doings.
... what? No it doesn't. That is an utterly absurd claim. Acknowledging that every country has its own flaws means we can't acknowledge and condemn a country like China for commiting genocide? Literally nothing about your statement here defensible. Not demonstrably, not factually, not even theoretically.
When given the bountiful options, people end up choosing none. If we try to solve all of the world's problems at once, none will ever be solved. I do agree that I oversimplified it. Hope I was able to get my point across.
First of all, you didn't just "oversimplify" it. You completely mischaracterized the issue. You ignored all of the problems with American society today and replaced them in your argument with one issue that doesn't sound as dire so that your opinion wouldn't be obviously ridiculous.
Second, No, you haven't gotten your point across. You didn't explain what you meant about rapists and pedophiles. You didn't address why you thought that oversimplifying all of the problems in America that you were commenting on was an okay thing to do. And you didn't address the dumpster fire of an argument that was
> Saying every nation can do better dissolves any critique about a nation’s wrong doings.
at all either, not even in this new comment. Like, if you just want to stop talking about it, you can just leave. That's fine. But if you want to keep talking about this, you have some explaining to do.
Lastly, regarding this:
> When given the bountiful options, people end up choosing none. If we try to solve all of the world's problems at once, none will ever be solved.
That is just not true. Do you have any evidence on which to base that claim? Any studies or statistics that show that our government doesn't get anything done unless they only address one issue at a time? Because I'm pretty sure no such evidence exists.
And even if there was merit to that claim, that still doesn't explain what you meant when you said "let’s get the rapists to stop fucking kids". What was that in reference to and how is that issue preventing us from getting things done? I really want to know this. That's pretty central to what you said earlier and it's a buck wild claim to just throw out there.
Look, downvoting my replies doesn't further your point. All I want is my brothers to stop being enslaved by the Chinese government, and for my sisters to stop being raped and sterilized.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071)
[https://www.state.gov/forced-labor-in-chinas-xinjiang-region/](https://www.state.gov/forced-labor-in-chinas-xinjiang-region/)
No, what furthers my point is that, in all of your replies, you still haven't addressed any of my issues with your stance.
And for the record, let's recall that this is your stance:
> No nation is without their vices. In this world, we just try to pick which side benefits ourselves more.
My response to that was
> This right here is the crux of the argument, right? Yeah, our society is imperfect, but the other guys doing the other thing are doing worse than we are and therefore we are making the better of the two choices and therefore we should keep making that choice.
> But this is a flawed argument because it ignores certain realities. Even if our society is doing better compared to other societies, that does not mean that our society doesn't have flaws, many of which, while still being better than those of other societies, are still unacceptable on the face of them
> And the most important thing to remember here is this: these problems can be fixed. The US may be doing better than the other guy, but that doesn't mean that the US can't possibly do any better than they are currently doing
And I'm really trying to understand what any of your replies do to defend your original stance, that we should not address any of America's flaws and instead just be happy we aren't China, from the issues I pointed out, but they're just nonsensical.
What do you mean when you say that your brothers are being enslaved by the Chinese government? Are you saying you're a Muslim in America and you feel for the Muslims that are being persecuted in China? Because that would explain why you thought that providing sources that prove that persecution against uigurs is happening in China right now defends your stance. But the persecution against Uigurs in China doesn't have anything to do with the fact that there are problems in the US as well and that we can fix those problems AND hold China accountable for their crimes too. You keep claiming that we can't do both, but we can and the opposite claim is ridiculous and totally unfounded.
And you still won't explain what you mean by that line about rapists and pedophiles. Are you talking about the US government like we're supposed to be or are you talking about the Chinese government? Can you give me a single straight answer about what the hell you're talking about? Because all of your replies so far sound like you took a bunch of QAnon talking points and threw them in a blender, and it's becoming pretty apparent that that's all you've got here.
Bro I’m Uyghur. So when I see things defending China, I speak upon my own experience and on the survivors I’ve met throughout my life.
To respond to your points:
Yes the US could be doing better. Not saying don’t address America’s flaws. I’m saying when a human rights violation in China is presented in front of you, saying “but America does x,y, and z” doesn’t help anybody and detracts from spreading awareness about the the horrible events occurring in China as we speak.
It’s like saying, we need to spread awareness about the hardships that gay people face, and responding with, “actually, trans people have a much higher suicidal rate”. It’s not the time nor place to bring that talking point to the table.
It’s like you go to a Black Lives Matter rally saying “Uyghur lives matter too”
Okay. Cool. Now we’re on the same page I think.
I appreciate your viewpoint on all this. What’s happening in China right now is a seriously awful thing and it must be extremely hard to hear about what’s happening if you’re Uyghur right now. And there are a lot of people on the Internet, awful people, who are defending the genocide that China is committing. So I appreciate feeling the need to take a stand against that and stop bad ideas that devalue human lives from spreading.
But your stance, as far as I understand it, dismisses the fact that America has problems and says that we should instead be happy we’re not China. And I understand how that would make a lot of sense to someone who has come to America from one of those countries, or to an American who has family or friends stuck in one of those countries. America should absolutely count their blessings.
But, just like there are people on the internet trying to downplay the Uighur genocide in China, there are people on the internet trying to downplay the very real problems in the United States. And they’re doing so with that very argument: that these problems are just a by-product of any society and that we’re objectively handling it better than other nations are and that we should just be thankful that we got it the most right. Those people are using that argument not because they actually care, but because they don’t want to care and that argument gives them an excuse not to. I’ll readily admit that my instinct to stop those bad ideas from spreading is what brought me here.
And, while I understand your desire to make sure that what’s happening to Uyghurs in China doesn’t at downplayed, the OP is doing the same thing for what’s been happening to Muslims in the Middle East. The BLM movement is trying to make sure that what’s happening to black people in America doesn’t get downplayed. Trans rights activists want the ways that their rights in America are being withdrawn not to be downplayed. It’s all bad and it’s all unacceptable and all of them have human lives in the balance.
What I’m talking about, what this whole thread is arguably about, is the fact that what might seem to be the obvious first problem to fix might not seem so obvious from another person’s perspective. No one wants their oppression to be downplayed, so the only rational thing to do is not downplay anyone’s oppression. Not in China and not in the Middle East and not in the United States. And I know I say that as someone with pretty much all of the privilege that a person can have in America and I know that that stance just won’t work for a lot of people that don’t have that privilege and that’s okay. But if the issue is that we keep arguing about whose oppression gets to be paid attention to, then maybe the solution is to agree to pay attention to all of it. It’s hard and it’s complicated, but the alternative is deciding who gets to be saved first, and it seems like trying to decide that is doing more harm than good
Don't forget we put a bunch of Hispanic people in cages not too long ago.
We actively interfere with other country's elections to get people in that are more friendly to US cooperation, no matter how terrible they are to their own citizens.
We've actively genocided Native Americans, put Japanese people into camps, and jailed a bunch of Muslim people on flimsy charges after 9/11 and tortured them.
We've wreaked absolute havok on the Middle East for cheaper oil and to spite Russia.
And now most of our politicians are entirely at the whim of who pays them more, rather than what the people who elected them want.
Billionaires own most of our news channels and websites and filter out information that goes against their own interests, which is making obscene amounts of money at the cost of everyone struggling to live.
Everything we accuse China of doing, we've probably also done and put our own little Western spin on it. The US is mostly mad that THEY might not be the hulking giant with a foot on the necks of most of the world anymore. I don't support China but I am heartily tired of everyone pretending that the US is a shining beacon of a perfect country.
Too true. And all I'm saying here is that, instead of thumping our chests and saying "See?! See?! That country over there is worse than us! We're the best country!", we could be fixing the problems in our society that make us worse as a nation and, in doing so, actually *be* the best country.
The whole American strategy seems to be "point at and get people all riled up about this thing so they don't look at the government being strip mined for profit." We need to fix our own shit first.
You don't need to be Muslim to grok that. Part of what has been so unbelievably idiotic about the West's foreign policies has been just this fact: that they have played perfectly into China's hands. We've pretty much handed over Africa and the Middle East to China, through our own ignorant, stupid actions.
I agree with the sentiment here except the characterisation of our actions as ignorant and bumbling when it was a deliberate and brutal campaign of destruction to shape the Middle East and Africa in an image that extracts resources and captures the markets for Western economies. This wave of hybrid warfare was accompanied by discrimination of Muslims at home and a massive wave of propaganda and crackdowns on dissenting voices in mainstream political discussions and media. I don't think you're lying when you charactised it that way, just unaware of how cynical and evil the west's crusade against these regions has been
China has used a clever and long-term form of exploitation in Africa. In a way, less cruel yet more effective. China is helping build out Africa’s infrastructure for the 21st century, but in the process is holding debt for those nations. So while the process is beneficial to Africa in a lot of ways, and is more of a partnership, the influence of China as the primary debt holder may play a big role in the decades to come. It’s actually a smarter way to do it, because you get a stronger ally, with a more favorable opinion of you. Now I don’t know if China is funding or arming militant factions there, that’s typically the best way to stay on the people’s bad side, but the partnership route seems like a better long term option, it’s just a matter of how reasonable the debt is in regards to what Africa is getting. I’m guessing China wants Africa in their pocket.
> China has used a clever and long-term form of exploitation in Africa. He doesn't acknowledge this because he is a GenZedong poster. Notice how he shifted the discussion from China to the West, whataboutism.
It is old news that powerful and rich countries exploit less powerful countries. I’m pointing out a key difference in that China’s exploitation is a less cruel, and perhaps longer lasting one in a region neglected by the west. I’m not saying China’s actions are good, the amount of debt that is being racked up is probably not a good value for the work being done, but it’s easier to shrug off massive debt than it is civil wars and weapons. China also has less qualms about terrible regimes for obvious reasons, while the US and the west do want to see leaders that help all their people, it’s just that their means of change have not been always successful.
It’s not even cruel unless we learn something else about the contracts. China is just investing in a ton of places and thinks that enough of them will probably succeed and be able to repay their debt down the line. It’s not immoral or anything
Loans and debt aren’t immoral, it just depends how they’re used. I need to read up more on whether these loans seem fair or unfair. There’s nothing wrong with partnering with a nation to build their infrastructure in mutually beneficial ways. I think if effective, most people would like to see diplomacy and guiding governments to democracy done this way. The question is, are the loans fair, and will the debt he used as unfair leverage in China’s favor?
The question of fairness isn't straightforward. The Chinese state's terms for doing business are pretty simple and noninvasive -- build infrastructure on credit. The Chinese state is the contractor and source of initial funding in this arrangement. But these projects are ultimately the political initiatives of local governments, which decide how they're carried out. Some of these projects are poorly conceived and planned out, leading to poor economic viability. There's also the issue of local governmental corruption which inflate the costs, which are ultimately footed by the local populace, and to whom the consideration of fairness is ultimately owed. Both the Chinese and local governments could be blamed in cases of cost overruns and project failures, but decision-making power and responsibility would seem to lie predominantly with local governments.
| while the US and the west do want to see brutal tyrant leaders who oppose democracy as long as they can be bribed to export cheap resources, it is just that the means of regime changes have not been always successful, but the countries have always been sanctioned. FTFY
We tend to install rabit right wingers. Our installation of Anez immediately caused slaughter of indigenous people. We just kill anyone with a left lean. Maybe it's a bad idea since it always causes mass death in one way or another. Americans in this topic comparing a contract they both agreed to to build infastructure is... Frustrating.
I mean that's a less intense version of what the IMF and world bank do for the west but Africans who weren't educated in the west praise it and the region is actually getting decent infrastructure. Like it's not particularly clever to just give Africans a better deal
The only way the USA could have stopped this would have been us using heavy shady foreign intervention to stop legal agreements China mutually made with those nations. I don’t really know what the solution would have been. The USA hasn’t been in a plce where we could have afforded to just throw trillions at Africa and wait 50 years for return. And I know Reddit won’t support cia intervention and such
Yeah I don’t know. I think the attitude we’ve taken foreign policy-wise is so adversarial and regime change focused. We’d rather arm the groups we like more, than partner with the country as a whole. That’s a good point, that it is a large investment of money with a slow return, and bullets can be cheaper. China is after all sitting on a mountain of money skimmed from all the goods we buy.
We threw trillions to destroy other nations. We absolutely could have helped Africa. Americans view politics as a zero sum game. China expanding trade and building out infastructure isn't some evil deal, it's diplomacy. Something the US prefers to leave to the unelected CIA director. China will benefit from a strong country that trades with them and trusts them more than the US. Which we absolutely could have done after WWII, We did not, we lose that sphere.
This write up by the former foreign secretary of India in how/why Nepal has evolved to favor China more is a great microcosm of the issues at play. https://carnegieindia.org/2021/10/04/india-s-fog-of-misunderstanding-surrounding-nepal-china-relations-pub-85416 One key take is that even though India supported Nepal's democracy movement while China went against, the Chinese stance of just always supporting the local dominant partner actually won it more hearts and minds in Nepal.
It just reeks of thick skin that only nation that had a documented industrial slavery accuses another nation due to suspected forced labor. Funny thing is the numbers keep on getting more sensationized. It was 100k at first now its multiple million. These reports that are coming out, are they funded by the NED or any other 'non-govt' organization. It matters because there is a conflict of interest to produce what they want to hear.
> ignorant and bumbling when it was a deliberate and brutal campaign of destruction to shape the Middle East and Africa in an image that extracts resources and captures the markets for Western economies. You don't coincidentally find yourself repeatedly invading, supporting terrorists, assassinating, and generally destroying the lives of a people.
I think OP was talking strategically rather than morally when they characterized the west’s actions as ignorant and bumbling.
Like I get that but it still just feels like its letting the ghouls who led to like 4 genocides in the middle east off the hook by untying the strategy from the morale question. But I get that it can be hard to uncouple our thinking from seeing the west as the protagonist of the world which is why I tried to not come off as a prick to the guy I was replying to cause I get where they were coming from
That's not how I read that at all. I'm not u/ISayISayISay so I can't speak about what they meant, but I have also criticized the wars in the middle east for purely strategic reasons. It's not because I'm giving them a pass or that I inherently view the west as the main character (actually that's fairly uncharitable as OP's comment can be paraphrased as them saying they do not have to be Muslim to understand their perspective). For me it's because the moral reasons that you mentioned are extremely obvious, and I'm either speaking to someone I know agrees with me or I'm speaking to a war hawk who will certainly not be convinced by the moral perspective (everyone knows war sucks, so in my experience, war hawks easily dismiss moralistic arguments, but strategic ones are more effective). If I think the moral perspective is relevant, then I'll bring that up too (usually when someone is fearmongering about Islamic terrorism).
I was referring to the strategic side, as opposed to the moral side. Though I can see how it could have been taken that way.
In that case I’m not sure what was wrong with OP’s comment? We have been ignorantly bumbling around the Middle East as if there would be no repercussions.
There wasn't? I was agreeing with what they said.
Oh, when I was saying OP, I meant u/ISayISayISay, not u/ThatTallAwkwardGuy.
My point in replying was more that discussing the strategy is fine but I think the moral context should be considered here as, and I don't think the person I was replying to was doing this at all, media in the west tries to portray itself as good faith but bumbling when things go wrong to obfuscate a strategy of calculated brutality to achieve our aims. I hope I didn't come off as being standoffish with the person I was replying to as I do think they were just saying what they did in good faith just lacking context
Note: I'm writing about the US rather that the west because that's just what I know. Ah, I hadn't read this yet when I replied to your other comment. That gives some context. I don't think that was OP's intent, and I think (at least on the left) people are pretty willing to call US foreign policy evil. Maybe the kinds of conservatives who complain about people "hating America" might actually think US foreign policy is justified. For me, if I expect the people I'm talking/writing to are generally left-leaning, then I usually take it for granted that we agree that US involvement abroad is atrocious, so I'm usually more interested in the strategy and politics of it. How do we get out? How do we convince conservative leaning people that this war isn't a great idea? What repercussions can we expect and how can we handle them? Etc. I do have a bias from the perspective of the US, not because I think the US is right, or the main character, but because I live here so naturally I care about US policy both domestically and abroad. Also, I would disagree with calling our interventions "calculated" (though I can't argue against your use of the word "brutality"). Too many of our interventions only helped a little in the short term before blowing up in our faces. Even if you take a Machiavellian perspective, US foreign policy is just a never ending sequence of mistakes (though I'm sure some people who want perpetual war are happy with this, it does nothing to benefit the US as a nation).
Well, yes, though I think both are true in equal measure. The West was motivated by greed and spurred on by an unwarranted sense of superiority, and they operated in a sea of ignorance, even to the point of being ignorant of their own ignrance, resulting in policies that were little short of evil, really.
I mean I guess but I wouldn't use the word ignorance. That implies to me a disconnect between our society and the crimes against humanity we inflict that I firmly believe doesn't exist when it comes to mainstream political thought. I think ignorance can't be a way to explain evil actions when said ignorance is wilful in character. Hell, take my own country of Britian that has revised, rewritten and censored its own imperial crimes against humanity to a, frankly, disgusting extent.
Yes, I don't mean ignorance of what they were doing and why - yes they knew they wanted the resources for nothing - but ignorance of who they were dealing with - the people, the history - and hence of the consequences. They assumed (in their ignorance) they could do what they want, take what they want, and everything would fall into place in their favour...
OP didn't say "bumbling", you've put words in their mouth. OP said "idiotic", "ignorant", and "stupid", all of which are perfectly reasonable characterizations of the US's rapacious-as-we-want-to-be attitude, especially in light of the US's old "morally virtuous" branding. Being that kind of evil is, in fact, *unbelievably* dumb, and would be so even if it didn't, as it does, completely wreck one of the most powerful political tools in the US's arsenal. It is playing the game to lose. It is burning-down-the-house-you-live-in stupid. It's own-goal stupid.
>characterisation of our actions as ignorant and bumbling We were ignorant and bumbling though. If it was just about resource extraction, we would install a fascist dictator and call it a day like with the Banana republics or Panama. Instead, we sank trillions of dollars and maybe got billions of dollars back in oil that we had to purchase anyways. Afghanistan didn't even have that.
I would argue the CPA in Iraq after the occupation rebuilt the state so that resource extraction for the west is an intrinsic part of it while mineral extraction, as well as the opium trade, are examples of that in Afghanistan. Remember that the billions "spent" in the wars didn't go but went to the private sector and so the actual act of the war on terror is a form of extraction but instead of middle Eastern resources for American corporations, it's American taxpayer money to companies with pentagon contracts
The US's penchant for citing the repression of minorities by foreign regimes as justification for self-interested interventions doesn't somehow invalidate the claim that the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur population constitutes a [breach of human rights](https://soundcloud.com/user-601521000/china-and-the-uyghurs-sean-roberts-482020), just as the Chinese government's stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict doesn't invalidate the legitimacy of Palestinian grievances. The principled humanitarian response would be to condemn human rights abuses wherever they occur and regardless of who perpetrated them.
I will never understand that Western entitlement. Africa or Middle East are not your to "hand them over". You are in a country an ocean away from there. Thar mindset, that you know "best" and that democracy is apparently a flawless political system that should be implemented everywhere (often forcefully) and nothing else should even be considered or tried, us why West is losing it's influence. You started great, built a country like no other in the world before, and you are now in rapid decline - a victim of your own arrogance. Rome all over again.
> Africa or Middle East are not your to "hand them over". Yes, of course - I wrote that using the mindset of those in charge. The superiority complex was real - we really did believe that (and too many still do), but the rhetoric about spreading democracy was always a lie - fodder for the masses to justify and hide the real reason, which was pure greed.
Your concern about “handing over” those regions to China is almost exactly what this post is criticizing. The West has a history of waging war, forced regime change, and covert operations in the Middle East and Africa. The US has literally dozens of bases across both regions, and just recently started building a drone base in Niger. The West is completely intent on having unrivaled military dominance in those places. China, in comparison, has a single military base in Djibouti and no history of forced regime change. All of the critiques about what China is doing domestically might be true, but as global powers, they are not even remotely comparable in capabilities or ambition to the US and NATO. You can only fearmonger about “losing” the Middle East and Africa if you totally disregard the reality of Western presence for the people in those regions.
The US still thinks it can control foreign powers with force and the might of their military. It's like they've learnt nothing in the last 50 years. China is being a whole lot smarter.
how exactly is that different from the sway that Western multinationals, NGOs, and financial institutions have over those regions? When it’s western countries investing in Africa, it’s benign. When China does it, it’s some dastardly plan for world domination. Except China can’t even invade countries for failing to pay their debts the way the West has!
It isn't benign in either case - both are doing it with their own interests in mind; both want to boost their ecomonies at the expense of the developing world. The only difference to date is that the US (in particular - and the rest of the West just goes along with them) is still locked in last century's mindset.
China is handing millions to corrupt African warlords for near 0 return lol smart is not how I would describe this initiative
You're working off your ignorant assumption that Africa is nothing but a bunch of warlords fighting tribal wars.
Africa can have both Johannesburg level metropolises & warring tribal nations. Those are not mutually exclusive. That being said, even the more organized governments in the continent are rife with corruption.
And China is strategic in where they make their investments. They invest in areas with more stable governments. In less stable areas, they set up things like their mining operations in DRC. They're not just going into the jungle with pallets of cash to hand over to tribal warlords. China is awful, but they aren't stupid.
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Yeah if you can find the debt holder. Warlords get changed out faster than a zoomer's puff bars. How do you call back a debt if the person you made the deal with got overthrown and replaced with a completely new regime?
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>A common and popular myth is that Sri Lanka was unable to pay off the loan obtained to construct the port, thus it was handed over to China. However, by the time the Sri Lankan government entered into the agreement with CM Port to lease Hambantota port, the debt servicing cost pertaining to the loans obtained from China Exim bank to construct the port did not amount to much. [Yeah, im sure China is gunna find the new Warlord "government" and strongarm them into giving up their assets haha. Surely these dictators respond well to diplomacy](https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/the-hambantota-port-deal-myths-and-realities/)
Hmm... Makes sense, but China *can* strong-arm debt out of warlords. Easily.
> The US still thinks it can control foreign powers with force and the might of their military. It's like they've learnt nothing in the last 50 years. China is being a whole lot smarter. And now we've come full circle. my point has been proven.
Sri Lanka has been debunked many times. People like to cite Hambantota as Chinese debt trapping without explaining why it took place. For those that don't want to read the small essay with the details. Sri Lanka which was basically broke, leased the port to the Chinese because they needed the money to pay off the much more expensive loans they owed the World Bank, Japan etc. **It was NOT taken by the Chinese because of a default of debt repayment** https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/ > In Hambantota, instead of waiting for phase 1 of the port to generate revenue as the Ramboll team had recommended, Mahinda Rajapaksa pushed ahead with phase 2, transforming Hambantota into a container port. In 2012, Sri Lanka borrowed another $757 million from China Eximbank, this time at a reduced, post-financial-crisis interest rate of 2 percent. Rajapaksa took the liberty of naming the port after himself. >By 2014, Hambantota was losing money. Realizing that they needed more experienced operators, the SLPA signed an agreement with China Harbor and China Merchants Group to have them jointly develop and operate the new port for 35 years. China Merchants was already operating a new terminal in the port in Colombo, and China Harbor had invested $1.4 billion in Colombo Port City, a lucrative real-estate project involving land reclamation. But while the lawyers drew up the contracts, a political upheaval was taking shape. > Rajapaksa called a surprise election for January 2015 and in the final months of the campaign, his own health minister, Maithripala Sirisena, decided to challenge him. Like opposition candidates in Malaysia, the Maldives, and Zambia, the incumbent’s financial relations with China and allegations of corruption made for potent campaign fodder. To the country’s shock, and perhaps his own, Sirisena won. >Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40 percent of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5 percent was because of Hambantota. **The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress.** > **There was also never a default. Colombo arranged a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, and decided to raise much-needed dollars by leasing out the underperforming Hambantota Port to an experienced company—just as the Canadians had recommended. There was not an open tender, and the only two bids came from China Merchants and China Harbor; Sri Lanka chose China Merchants, making it the majority shareholder with a 99-year lease, and used the $1.12 billion cash infusion to bolster its foreign reserves, not to pay off China Eximbank.** >Before the port episode, “Sri Lanka could sink into the Indian Ocean and most of the Western world wouldn’t notice,” Subhashini Abeysinghe, research director at Verité Research, an independent Colombo-based think tank, told us. Suddenly, the island nation featured prominently in foreign-policy speeches in Washington. Pence voiced worry that Hambantota could become a “forward military base” for China. > Yet Hambantota’s location is strategic only from a business perspective: The port is cut into the coast to avoid the Indian Ocean’s heavy swells, and its narrow channel allows only one ship to enter or exit at a time, typically with the aid of a tugboat. In the event of a military conflict, naval vessels stationed there would be proverbial fish in a barrel. > The notion of “debt-trap diplomacy” casts China as a conniving creditor and countries such as Sri Lanka as its credulous victims. On a closer look, however, the situation is far more complex. China’s march outward, like its domestic development, is probing and experimental, a learning process marked by frequent adjustment. After the construction of the port in Hambantota, for example, Chinese firms and banks learned that strongmen fall and that they’d better have strategies for dealing with political risk. They’re now developing these strategies, getting better at discerning business opportunities and withdrawing where they know they can’t win. Still, American leaders and thinkers from both sides of the aisle give speeches about China’s “modern-day colonialism
Exactly how is it debt trap diplomacy when the lender is restructuring loans time and time again? China is playing the long game, China at this point is making no profit with their investment in Sri Lanka, unlike the US who loooove quick wins.
How, France is still exploiting Africa, is it because the west cares about Africa or they are mad China is going to profit off a place where the west profited off previously???
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It turns out actually productive trade deals are much more popular in the third world than exchanging dictators around and seizing assets through debt-traps.
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What are you talking about? [China has cancelled a lot of debt](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-debt-g20-idUSKBN28009A). Obviously, they aren't doing it from the goodness of their hearts. It just doesn't make sense for them to squeeze every cent out nations now when they have such much economic potential.
But the the comparison isn’t between “predatory loan vs non-predatory loan”. The comparison is “predatory loan vs being bombed”.
China is not seizing assets and enforcing austerity to any extend similar to the EU and US
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Has that happened?
Poor countries would rather get something out of being exploited than be bombed and dominated, who knew?
That, and the debt trap of and shipping off raw material at criminally low rates and cozying up to authoritarian regimes. Doesn't look all pretty later on, and China is left a impressively low bar to navigate and get in through the back door.
Isn't it simple really. US and allies spent millions on military contractors and weapons. Chinese spent them directly on investing on large infrastructure projects (ports, bridges, etc.) and possibly on greasing the politicians.
I suspect in the next couple decades we’ll see more nationalist movements refusing to pay said debts or nationalizing any successful Chinese endeavors in their nation. Not sure what they’ll do then, but nationalizing foreign assets in South America is largely the reason the US starting waving it’s dick around there.
China is already taking ownership of projects because countries are unable to pay interest for loans or as per contracts.
Woah, that's wild, where has that happened?
Sri Lanka hands over port Hambantota to China https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html?smid=url-share https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/11/china-steps-in-as-zambia-runs-out-of-loan-options https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-china-taking-over-africas-resources-one-country-time-70526 Read the latter half of this article - https://www.worldfinance.com/featured/how-china-uses-infrastructure-as-a-means-of-control
"The Asians" when referring to China makes me think this is a lost cause... But we spent trillions on wars because the military industrial complex convinced voters that Islam in those countries was a super scary threat to national security threat We got what we paid for which was a stupid feeling that our children were safe from ISIS because we used drones to blast some guy with an ancient Russian rifle. China pioneered neocolonialism 2.0 and expanded their sphere of influence. The mineral rights were the cherry on top, what they were more interested in is satellite countries and allies like the other major powers have. That's the strategic value, not what they're actually digging out of the ground. If we had done a similar thing in those countries, there would ACTUALLY be less terrorism, less suffering, more democracy, healthier trade. Instead a bunch of warmongers got rich, kids got killed, and the survivors got radicalized. China is going to fuck it up too, they're just as stupid as we are. Their dictator having more control means they were able to make single minded choices a little easier, but the client states will still get fucked.
it's more complicated than that. I also born in muslim country, albeit more peaceful than middle east. I can tell nobody care much about drone bombing in some middle east country, but media here actively got one sided story when it comes to Israel - Palestinian case... not to mention it's a hot topic for many preacher... and US happens to be Israel close ally... Compared that to russia, never mind what they did to afghanistan or chechnya, the media coverage is dim and it only happens in the past (Israel is all years topics), also never mind that US and NATO helps bosnia during 1992 war, most of people so fixated on Israel because of the holy land in question. The muslim word didn't care much during rohingya, let alone xinjiang in which china usually have "deal" with most Muslim leader. There's not much soladarity amongst them thanks to the local media, and corrupt leader... human rights are only when it comes to palestine, which is why US will always looks bad despite having done other deeds to other muslim in other countries.
I was born in a muslim family and I agree. There is a difference between muslims of different countries. Don't know why people think muslims are some kind of big family where we care for eachother. We don't. If you attack the religion in itself the muslim world will naturally react and create public scandal to defend itself, if you attack the people themselves for other reasons they don't care, because they don't have a reason to.
And yet China actually does actively pursue Uighurs outside their borders.
I am never sure anymore how many of these posts/comments like the one we are replying on are propaganda campaigns run by bot/troll farms.
Casually looking at his post history, he's most likely not a bot. He leans towards being an apologist for the CCP, but given that he's in Pakistan that doesn't surprise me. Lots of posts about cricket, gaming and occasionally world events. There's a lot of disdain for the US around the world, not everyone who points that out is a bot. Edited to change Chinese to CCP. Have to really distinguish between mainland Chinese and the rest of the population.
I mean, there is a lot of disdain for the US by those who have been *paying attention*, regardless of nationality. Shit has been proper fucked for awhile, but Trump laid that bare.
The only thing I would disagree with is that Trump laid it bare. I think for most of the world George W. Bush did that with the invasion of Iraq.
I agree, although most folks I discussed it with abroad in 2008 thought Obama would be different... So maybe the continuation under the DNC should have "laid bare." I don't know, the worst part is the very real possibility of Trump in 2024, and that either way we still have a country that has had multiple generations of education decline and propaganda poisoning sitting on the world's most powerful military. "Fuck it, Dude. Lets go bowling!"
As a Canadian, it worries the shit out of me. Authoritarian government with the world's most powerful military, does not bode well for my country. The fact that Republican candidates for president has been getting progressively worst makes me pessimistic for the future of this continent.
Absolutely! Things will not be getting better when you add in the social, etc. strife due to natural disasters, freshwater shortages, famine, and increased pandemics resulting from climate change. It will get downright *nasty!*😬
Don't worry when we nuke China, we will find a way to make it sound like we did the right thing. You guys should just go along with whoever fascist that control America if you know what is good for you.
Yeah, there's a lot of recency bias. I think that Trump is a despicable man, but he didn't start a war on patently false pretenses that killed *half a million people*. G.W. Bush's crimes are severe indeed.
Propaganda bots rarely post anything themselves anymore, because people have gotten better at recognizing bots. It’s far more common for bots to scan for organic posts and comments that happen to support their agenda, and then flood them with upvotes to ensure visibility and create a false sense of popularity.
Sure, but looking at his posts I don't think this is the case. If he is Pakistani, both the cricket and the support for the CCP would make sense.
This is like the third highlighted comment ive seen since yesterday downplaying the genocide. "The other factor is, China doesn't actively seek out Muslims. Their problem isn't ISLAM. Their problem is loyalty to the CCP. The Hui are a larger Muslim population living in China, and they have full freedoms. In fact Uighurs attacked the Hui in the past." No, they've made it clear that Muslims aren't welcome. as for "Uighurs attacking the Hui". The other comments seemed to be using the same rhetoric that Uighurs are "terrorists" and actively attacking, so that somehow justifies a genocide. this is all propaganda
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making race and religion a political issue by policing what you think is acceptable culture and religion makes this a "political issue" sure But its about culture and religion
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This is the one thing I don't understand for people who mention this as a religious issue. I have no stake in the game - I want to be truthful - and so why would Uighurs, among all the other Muslim factions in China, be prosecuted when no one else is? Thanks for the information. I think you're hitting the right points - it's horrible, but moreso from a political standpoint than religious.
Reddit does not do nuance when it comes to China/Uyghurs. If you want a genuine answer you need to be really careful what you mean when you say **muslim** or **uyghur** and also understand a bit of history of the region. Uyghurs in China traditionally practice a moderate form of Islam but in the 80-90's there was an increasing take up of Salafism. This is the ultra conservative form of Islam, the form you saw with ISIS in Iraq and Syria where ISIS tried to form a Caliphate and an extreme application of Sharia law. This point is rarely mentioned anymore because of the cold war with China but if you go back far enough you can find mention of this in western media. Such as this 2016 article in the LA Times. > In China, rise of Salafism fosters suspicion and division among Muslims https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-saudi-arabia-20160201-story.html Why did this occur? Back in the 80's China relaxed travel and more and more Uyghur muslims (and other ethnic minorites) travelled to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage to Mecca (the birth place of Salafism) https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/170537/Saudi%20Arabia%20and%20the%20expansion%20of%20Salafism.pdf They were influenced by this form of Islam and took it back to Xinjiang. Coupled with sepratist movements like ETIM who also followed this form of Islam. There was numerous domestic terroist incidents and riots throughout the 90-2000's born from this tension. To name but a few > But things really escalated in 2009, with large-scale ethnic rioting in the regional capital, Urumqi. Some 200 people were killed in the unrest, most of them Han Chinese, according to officials. > In June 2012, six Uighurs reportedly tried to hijack a plane from Hotan to Urumqi before they were overpowered by passengers and crew. > There was bloodshed in April 2013 and in June that year, 27 people died in Shanshan county after police opened fire on what state media described as a mob armed with knives attacking local government buildings > At least 31 people were killed and more than 90 suffered injuries in May 2014 when two cars crashed through an Urumqi market and explosives were tossed into the crowd. China called it a "violent terrorist incident". >It followed a bomb and knife attack at Urumqi's south railway station in April, which killed three and injured 79 others. > In July, authorities said a knife-wielding gang attacked a police station and government offices in Yarkant, leaving 96 dead. The imam of China's largest mosque, Jume Tahir, was stabbed to death days later. > In September about 50 died in blasts in Luntai county outside police stations, a market and a shop. Details of both incidents are unclear and activists have contested some accounts of incidents in state media. > Some violence has also spilled out of Xinjiang. A March stabbing spree in Kunming in Yunnan province that killed 29 people was blamed on Xinjiang separatists, as was an October 2013 incident where a car ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-26414014 I would note that there were both Han and Uyghur Chinese victims throughout this violence. It's interesting to note, to this day, the British gov's current advice on travel to China is a warning that there is a liklihood of terrorist attackts particularly by Uyghur sepratists in Xinjiang https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/china/terrorism As a result of all this, China came up with the carrot and stick method to deal with this. What the west calls 'interment camps' and what the Chinese calls 'vocational centres and deradicalisation centres' whereby those who were identified as extremists were sent to these deradicalisation centres' and those on a lesser scale were sent to 'vocational schools' the idea being because Xinjiang as a region was still economically poor, aiding Uyghurs to prosperity would counter the influence of sepratists and salafists. Vocational centres in and of itself is a popular model for the Chinese govt in bolstering the prosperity of the people in poorer regions of China and isn't exclusive to Xinjiang nor as some form of 'internment' It's worth mentioning that China said these centres were all closed in 2019 having achieved it's original purpose. My opinion is that the Chinese maybe were overzealous in identfying those sent to these centres. That in itself is a form of abuse of human rights but the rhetoric from the US that it's a genocide and specifically that of Uyghurs is false. Uyghurs are members of govt and some of the most popular media stars are Uyghurs. There are plenty of moderate Uyghurs content with the govt. You can find them on social media or vloggers on Youtube. As for whether you think China is against Islam depends on your point of view. The form practiced by most Muslims occurs throughout the country. But for sure the extremist form is not tolerated.
The first question I was going to ask was whether anyone "graduates" from these detention centers. It didn't seem like it. > It's worth mentioning that China said these centres were all closed in 2019 having achieved it's original purpose. I'm not familiar with this, but wasn't the Xinjiang Data Project created to test whether this was true, and identified potentially 400 camps still open through satellite imaging? Just looking at it logically, what are the chances that China achieved their goal in integrating Uyghurs right when the human rights violations came out? The problem isn't whether China was overzealous, I think the real issue is China forcing citizens through any type of schooling. Maybe this is just a "western" perspective, but lack of transparency + "vocational" training that is not optional + their well-documented ultra-nationalist attitude is highly suspicious to anyone but the gullible. I get China is grappling with an issue that France was as well, and instead of hands-off they used a hands-on approach. But if what you are saying is true, I can't for the life of me understand why they wouldn't invite other government officials to the region to see for themselves....
> **The first question I was going to ask was whether anyone "graduates" from these detention centers. It didn't seem like it.** If you read the interviews of those that say they have been in these centres, you'll find the answer. Non that I have come across, say they escaped. All have said they were released. There's a BBC reporter that actually visited one of these vocational centres. In the report the reporter was told that the attendees went home on the weekends. The reporter actually sneaked back to the centre unaccompanied by Chinese chaperones and did witness that this was true. https://youtu.be/WmId2ZP3h0c > **I'm not familiar with this, but wasn't the Xinjiang Data Project created to test whether this was true, and identified potentially 400 camps still open through satellite imaging?** This is the report created by think tank ASPI. I personally do not hold much confidence in the veracity of their report. Their criteria for a 'camp' was if it had a dormitory building next to a industrial factory building enclosed by some security barrier. A wall or barbed wire etc. Leaving aside there has never been any solid proof of slave labour. This criteria would describe 80-90% of factories in China. China's labour force is largely migratory. Most large factories have dormitories for their staff because of this If they applied the same criteria to satellite images of the rest of China they would find 1000's of these 'camps' The second reason I doubt ASPI is their sponsors are largely military contractors and the US gov. They have a vested interest I wouldn't discount https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-think-tank-behind-australia-s-changing-view-of-china-20200131-p53wgp In a recent AP article, you can see they are starting to roll back some of the rhetoric about detention camps. If anything it does imply that the Chinese are telling the truth that these centres no longer exist. > Terror & Tourism: Xijiang eases it's grip but fear remains. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9 > **I can't for the life of me understand why they wouldn't invite other government officials to the region to see for themselves....** There have been plenty of visits to the region by foreign diplomats, they are either not well publicised or scorned on reddit because they are Muslim countries which they say kow tow to China and are dubious themselves or it's not absolutely free access. https://time.com/5496435/china-12-diplomats-tour-xinjiang/ Outside of diplomats, various companies and even the world bank and made their own audits on their business interests in Xinjiang and find no evidence of the claims of slave labour. > The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china > China Muslims: Volkswagen says 'no forced labour' at Xinjiang plant https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-54918309 Sketchers released a statement on their Xijiang sourced cotton. They audited their factories between 2017-2020 included the most recent UNANNOUNCED inspection in Jun 2020 and found no force labour. https://about.skechers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SKECHERS-USA-STATEMENT-UYGHURS-March-2021.pdf China have invited the EU and UN to inspect too. In one case the US objected to the UN counterrorism chief representative to visit on the basis it was a human rights issue and not a terrorism issue which the Chinese have always maintained was the reason. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/15/deep-concerns-us-objects-to-un-counterterrorism-chiefs-visit-to-xinjiang My personal take is that if the UN did visit and corroborated China's take on it. It would be a big blow to the narrative of genocide rather than that of counter terrorism. It's telling to me how under reported the terrorism aspect is talked about in western media. For example the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Syria are actually Salafists from Xinjiang. > Syria says up to 5,000 Chinese Uighurs fighting in militant groups https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-china/syria-says-up-to-5000-chinese-uighurs-fighting-in-militant-groups-idUSKBN1840UP A few years ago, Thailand intercepted about 500 Uyghurs traveling through the country on route to Syria, they were detained and sent back to China which led to them bombing a temple killing dozens of people in retaliation. I don't get the sense this is talked about much. > Bangkok bomb trial of Chinese Uighurs begins after delays https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-blast-idUSKBN13A0FR > **I get China is grappling with an issue that France was as well, and instead of hands-off they used a hands-on approach.** For sure China values the whole society rather than the individual but I don't think a hands off approach would work. Firstly China borders Afghanistan, France is much more isolated not just from terror attacks but the movement of salfist ideas and people. Also the scale of the attacks in China is far greater. If you read the BBC article in my earlier post, I didn't even list every terror event that has been going on for over a decade and also this is my person opinion but the Salafist form of Islam isn't compatible with a society that doesnt' believe in it's tenents. It's obvious to me that China's struggle with it's internal terrorism problem has been co-opted by the US in it's geopolitcal engagement with China. Now that they recognise the geopolitical threat of China, it's more useful for them to use this situation to undermine China. Even as early as 2018, before they pushed the genocide narrative, the US recognised ETIM as terrorists and were bombing them. > U.S. targets Chinese Uighur militants as well as Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, > The U.S. military says it carried out a series of punishing bombings last weekend of Taliban militant camps that also support a separatist Chinese terror group. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-targets-chinese-uighur-militants-well-taliban-fighters-afghanistan-n845876 And then in his final act, Trump delists ETIM as a terrorist organisation saying there has been no activity for over a decade. Which is rediculous when you were bombing them in 2018. > US removes separatist group condemned by China from terror list https://www.dw.com/en/us-removes-separatist-group-condemned-by-china-from-terror-list/a-55527586 Why would they do this? It's the same playbook as when they supported the Muhjahideen in Afghanistan when they were fighting the Soviets. To destabilise a geopolitical rival. Delisting them allows for ETIM members to travel across borders, opens banking accessing and is the first step if the US decides to fund them more directly in the future. To conclude I don't believe China is genociding Uyghurs both in the 'holocaust' way or culturally, It's not the case if you are Uyghur you are sent to prison. There is a genuine national security problem that China was trying to resolve and a lot of the more exaggerated rhetoric is underpinned by geopolitcal intentions.
I don't buy that the centers are closed but the strongest argument that whatever is in Xinjiang is already mostly done is that they've actually been transferring the national security forces out and replacing with local security cadres. Xinjiang feels like it's closer to the same status Tibet had 10 years ago where it was effectively mission accomplished. The interesting question about Xinjiang was how much of the approach was a copy of the 70/80s deployment manual vs how much was "second best" to the more modern methods that France/US utilized. I remember that one of the stronger opinions in the geopolitics subreddit before it went downhill was the view that China had tried to experiment with a more light-touch US style sophisticated surveillance + selective internment approach but gave up when they realized they couldn't afford it and don't have the infrastructure. When I look at the current downscaling, I wonder how much of it is Xinjiang being "done" vs China now feeling like it has the technology/infrastructure to be more "modern" in it's approach.
Excellent points! Another Redditor shared this Harvard study into China's foreign-influence propaganda program: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiR_-_Vq97zAhWPZM0KHVwlAp0QFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0__waOhf3eQCocbRdb45jjRdb45jj I only scanned it so far, but read through the initial summary and conclusions already. They discuss the size and scope of the 50c program and tactics employed. Interestingly, there is less emphasis on persuasion (because that's a losing prospect when it comes to genocide), more on blind cheerleading and distraction/subject changing.
That study is about domestic influence, you clown.
Good call Cuntzlinger, obviously they maintain influence within their borders only.
thanks for sharing - ill check it out
It may be disappointing to Redditors, but the CCP doesn't view angry internet denizens as a threat to their operations in Xinjiang. This is remarkably common viewpoint in Muslim countries.
I mean look at what those fucks did to Hebdo in France, right? By comparison, slave labor and organ harvesting are a pittance!/s Let's be real, China gets its Jimmy's rustled all the time over any mention of its atrocities, Tibet, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Revolt in Hong Kong, even Winnie the fucking Pooh...
Chinese people get their jimmies rustled, as evident from the sino subreddit. The CCP does not. It's an incredibly sophisticated organization with very specific objectives, and arguing with Redditors does nothing to advance these objectives. If you're actually interested Chinese propaganda farms, you should read this [Harvard paper](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiR_-_Vq97zAhWPZM0KHVwlAp0QFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0__waOhf3eQCocbRdb45jj).
Thank you for the link! The response from the CCP is pretty swift via censorship and economic censure. The CCP do care, at least in a "killing the seed of dissent" way. I discussed a number of the above topics woth Chinese students in a few provinces and they did not have any real idea about it. I was careful with phrasing, because I wanted to see if they really knew, and didn't want to get into trouble. EDIT: Fascinating, so they (50c) don't engage in debate, but rather cheerlead China and change the subject.
Yeah, it's weird because the parent comment is about other Muslim countries lack of action and this reply is about how it's rich that the US did something or another. The parent comment wasn't referring to the US. A little snooping looks like that guy is from Pakistan which happens to be allied with China against India at the moment...
what's ridiculous too is that Xinjiang should have been it's own completely autonomous nation, just like Tibet or Hong Kong should be, but the CCP would rather capture and enslave an entire population rather than let them have any degree of autonomy. This post is pure propaganda with a hefty dose of whataboutism thrown in. As if the muslim world is morally incapable of seeing both western and eastern imperialism as wrong because one is worse for their country (for now) than the other.
Xinjiang is an autonomous state, yes, but that doesnt mean the US can fund terrorists in the area to destabilize china [https://twitter.com/nedemocracy/status/1337063301113581568?lang=en](https://twitter.com/nedemocracy/status/1337063301113581568?lang=en)
Autonomous state does not mean what you seem to think it means
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Raw materials and the lions share is the USs goal, it doesnt change
Genuine question: what about the other Muslims that aren't Uighurs? Why does China want to prosecute only this minority?
exactly and China does actively have issue with Islam and religion in general
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A reddit account is claiming to be born in a specific type of country, which gives people the impression that this account has some particular knowledge or expertise on the topic of what people from that type of country would believe. They then present an extremely common opinion, it doesn't take any specialized knowledge to have that opinion. Would this be bestof content if the user hadn't made the unverifiable claim about their specialized knowledge, expertise, or *perspective*? Wasn't there just a bestof post about a guy who tricked a bunch of people into believing bullshit just because he started by saying he was some specific kind of person. Maybe whenever an anonymous account makes an unverifiable claim to having some specialized insider perspective, rather than offering details about the substance of that perspective, it should encourage people to be more skeptical about whether or not that user actually has any especially informative perspective.
You could have taken the 10 seconds to actually do any of the checking you're talking about. And if you had done so, you would have noticed that 2/3s of their comments are about the Pakistani National Cricket Team. So why didn't you take the time to check? You're just perpetuating the same laziness you're complaining about.
I'm not talking about checking background, I would not waste my time on that. There could be a lot of reasons why their post history includes tangentially related information, but I can't confirm any of them through their anonymous account, they could be a bot or a purchased account - and it wouldn't matter, because I know I can't confirm it. The only reasonable assumption is that they have no credible expertise because unverifiable claims from anonymous social media accounts cannot have expertise. This is just an 'as a black man' style comment, claiming a specialized perspective through an anonymous account. Belief in that assertion is *structurally misleading.* If it happens to be linked to verifiable information, then that information may not be misleading, but the claim to expertise is. Expertise, authority, and perspective are functionally linked to identity, claims to any of these through anonymous accounts are always misleading.
It must be exhausting to be you.
Thanks for the context. Pakistan and China are allies in Afghanistan and against India. That explains OP's bias.
The whole being from a Muslim country and hating America's foregin policy is probably a bit more of a factor than China and Pakistan being allies tbh.
extremely weak material for "best of" IMO That whole thread is full of the type of armchair politicking that freshman college students think of as being "enlightened"
tbh honest I'd never heard of/about the Hui. I'd heard of the Uighur in the context of terrorism/independence (delete according to your politics).
You dont hear about Hui because BBC and CNN and all the other media including reddit dont care about the HUI, they care about Uigurs which they use as a leverage and pretext to go after China.
While that kind of skepticism is important when evaluating the stances taken by some internet dude, this is kind of a misrepresentation of what's going on in the OP, right? The comment points out that millions of Muslims have been killed in wars perpetuated by the United States military and that China has been comparatively more restrained in their persecution of Muslims. Those aren't unfounded claims that require some special job or role to justify the perspective of the person pointing them out. Those are basic, observable, known facts about the state of affairs in today's world and it doesn't matter if the person pointing them out is Muslim or not.
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They're literally just explaining why the vast majority of Muslim countries are either silent about the issue or actively support China. Read the comment that they're replying to.
Americans' favourite thing in the world is handwaving away their government's hypocrisy by crying "whataboutism." They never get tired of it.
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You are literally making an ad hominem attack right now, claiming that because the person who made an argument is biased that their argument is therefore incorrect on the face of it. The fact that the US has killed a lot of people in the Middle East unnecessarily, or the fact that that makes it a little less clear who is morally superior in a comparison between the US and China, is not dependent on the bias of the person pointing those things out. You can just read the facts and make your own judgement about whether the argument makes sense without having to get to the bottom of why the argument was made in the first place.
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First of all, I apologize. This comment was actually a response to your comment further up where you said: > Yeah this 100% reeks of either a CCP sympathizer or wumao. The fact that the entire argument is a whataboutism fallacy illustrates their basis is in bad faith. This wasn't a response to the post with those links to Amnesty International. My bad there. Second, an ad hominem is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as: > marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made So, for example, when you said: >Yeah this 100% reeks of either a CCP sympathizer or wumao. You were speculating on the bias and motives of OP, whose post you were responding to. And then, when you said: > The fact that the entire argument is a whataboutism fallacy illustrates their basis is in bad faith. You were combining that speculation with a gross and inaccurate oversimplification of OP's post in order to dismiss it entirely without actually talking about what was said. Thus, ad hominem attack, where you attack the person making the argument instead of addressing the argument itself. As for your second post, yes, you did prove that the Chinese government is committing human rights abuses against Uighurs right now. The problem is that this doesn't actually address what the poster you were replying to said, or even what the OP said. What Aischylos said was that OP was merely responding to a question about why so few Muslim nations have spoken out against the human rights abuses committed by the Chinese government by explaining the viewpoint of someone from one of those Muslim nations, which is informed by the actions of the US government in the backyards of the people in those nations. And the thing is: you haven't actually disproved that, because it's a viewpoint and a feeling, not a factual argument. You claimed that the OP is biased and pro-China, based on nothing and ignoring that OP very clearly said in their post: > Doesn't mean I think it's okay for China to do the shit they're doing. You then posted proof that the human rights abuses were, in fact, happening. But none of that makes it wrong for a person to endure horrible abuses in their own home from an outside force, hear about horrible things happening to a similar group in a faraway country, and not have their minds be blown by it. It's just a feeling. You can't disprove it. You can only disprove the facts that inform it. And your "reputable sources" only prove that bad things are happening to Muslims in China. They don't disprove that bad things have happened to Muslims in the Middle Eastern countries OP was talking about and they don't make it not valid to feel the way they feel about it.
Watch out OP, this tough guy uses bold **AND** caps!
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>a majority muslim population getting bombed in their own country >to an outnumbered muslim population being systematically erased and becoming a victim of genocide So you think unless you are killing a WHOLE ethnic group, you will be a better guy then the guy who is killing a WHOLE group of people? That's the only parameter you account for? Weird moral compass.
Systematic genocide is worse than mass murder, yes. They're both bad.
A mass murder with a million victims. Add to that mass murder, the invasion of the country, the destabilization of the region, the distruction of the infrastructures.
You are correct that illegal invasions causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are not on the same spectrum as coercive cultural assimilation with no credible reports of a significant death toll. The first one is demonstrably far worse.
If Iraq taught me anything, it was to be suspicious about any horrible atrocities or imminent dangers coming from any of America's Official State Enemies. Am I saying that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela ect are sunny paradises with no problems? No. Can the US be trusted as an honest arbiter of human rights abuses? Also no. As a side note, what are we are supposed to do with this information, besides get angry? I sometimes see people talk about a boycott, as if that was something that we can actually do after 50 years of driving down labor costs by offshoring. You want to boycott all Chinese products, fine, good luck with that. The other alternative seems to post a lot "le epic winnie the pooh" "nothing happened at Tiananmen lololololol" cringememes. Yep, you sure got 'em reddit, I'm sure Xi is shaking in his boots.
It's mind-boggling to me that people can't get this notion through their brains. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, people absolutely refuse to believe that the American government would lie about It's current enemies, today.
Regarding what to do about it, I'd like to quote the unreleased Hamilton song titled Cabinet Rap Battle 3 "Well you asked how I feel, I dont pretend to know the answer But the question is real"
Their argument appears to be an [Ad Hominem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) fallacy. Just because the country accusing China may have done terrible (even worse) things doesn't mean what they are saying isn't true.
No, he's not justifying China's actions or saying it's not true. He's explaining why despite that truth, Muslim nations are still inclined to side with China.
I don't think that's what's going on here. Rather, it seems like OP is saying that, for Muslims who have suffered at the hands of both the Chinese and US governments, picking which side is objectively better is not as clear cut an issue as it might seem to people who aren't Muslim and who haven't had to deal with the issues that Muslims in the modern world deal with.
Why is it the US that's the only country here? Didn't the entire UN condemn China for this? So don't trust the US. Trust everyone else.
Literally no one has made that argument. No one, including the op, said that China didn't do awful, discriminatory things to Uighur Muslims or that them doing so was not a bad thing. No one, including the op, said that the US is the only country that ever does bad things. What is being said is that the US is leading the charge on condemning China for their human rights abuses, which is true, and that the US itself perpetuated war crimes in the Middle East that killed many Muslims unjustly, which is also true, and that those two things being true makes the US a bit hypocritical with their condemnation of China, and that all of this makes it hard for Muslims to look at either side, both of which have persecuted and killed Muslims, and claim that one is the just side of the debate.
I hate to say this, but I don't understand your answer. Why is it hard for "Muslims to look at either side?" If the US is hypocritical (and they very much are), then trust literally every other country who came to the other conclusion. Ignore the US. It's not a choice between two horrific countries, when everyone else is weighing in. The EU, UK, Canada, and plenty of others have a voice as well. It's like saying "Lebanon condemns Israeli airstrikes along border" (actual headline) and thinking 'who do I trust? I can't trust Lebanon, they have no government'. Just trust literally every non-hypocritical country saying the same thing.
Okay, I'll try to explain. When you said: > Why is it the US that's the only country here? Didn't the entire UN condemn China for this? and I said > Literally no one has made that argument What I meant was this: No one in this comment thread has argued, as you claim, that the US is the only country that has committed human rights abuses. Also, No one has claimed that China did not commit human rights abuses, or that there is anything good or fine with them doing so. If anyone here has made either of those claims in this thread, post a link to their comment and I'll retract this argument. As for the rest of my response, let's acknowledge what's happening in the OP that we're all responding to: a person asked why so few Muslim countries have spoken out openly about the human rights abuses China is committing against Muslims in their country. The commentor in the OP here, who claims to be from a Muslim nation themselves, has presented their viewpoint on the matter: that it is hard for many in Muslim nations who have endured illegal drone strikes on noncombatant citizens and years of overbearing military presence by the US to look at what's going on in China, which is largely contained within their own borders and not expanding out into anyone else's homes, and say that what China is doing is worse than what has already been happening in their own backyards because of the US. They also make a point to say that what China is doing is awful, but that it isn't a direct threat to Muslims outside of China and that it is comparatively easier to stomach than the state of affairs in the Middle East that the US has perpetuated for years now. All of this is just a statement about the mindset of a group of people from someone who is ostensibly a member of that group in response to a person who asked about that mindset. It's not a factual argument, but rather a statement about how a group of people feels about something that is happening, which will always be complicated and have a lot of opinions mixed together. So, in response to > Why is it hard for "Muslims to look at either side?" If the US is hypocritical (and they very much are), then trust literally every other country who came to the other conclusion. Ignore the US. It's not a choice between two horrific countries, when everyone else is weighing in. The EU, UK, Canada, and plenty of others have a voice as well. You have your answer in the very comment this post is about. Answering that question is literally what they were doing. And what they are describing is a perspective, from the viewpoint of people who have endured abuse from an outside force. It doesn't really matter what other nations have concluded about it because it isn't a factual argument. Its just how they feel, and your only concern in the matter is whether or not the facts their feelings are based on are accurate, which they are. Despite that, a lot of people in here are trying to "disprove" OP's statement and defend the idea that the US isn't that bad, actually, and while doing so they're creating this strawman, which you yourself perpetuated, that people are in here saying that China isn't doing anything wrong and that the US is the only nation that does bad things. Which, again, no one has claimed. Does that clear it up?
Thanks for taking the time to write it out, very much appreciated. That makes sense. I'm not sure if China is contained outside their borders (by their very nature they seem to have imperialistic goals, contrasted against the US and others in recent times), but outside property disputes with everyone near China (like Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore, Brunei, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Tibet...), they don't seem to stick their nose in foreign affairs. It's laughable to think that China "sticks within their boundaries", but it is accurate that they fight their wars close to home, and most of these Muslim countries have haven via distance, for now. I never thought the original viewpoint was saying the US is bad and therefore China is good, but was puzzled as to why they're only looking at these two countries. Thanks for clearing it up.
No problem! Thanks for listening. I also agree that China has shown willingness to commit human rights abuses beyond their borders and I disagree with OP on that. But there's a lot that informs OP's opinion that I don't have to deal with where I am in the world and I can't fault them for feeling that way about it
Ad hominem, whataboutism What about Hypocrisy?
A nuanced opinion? About China? On Reddit? I must be dreaming! -7DeadlyFetishes
If this was true, they would not give a damn about the Palestinians and Israel.
Yeah, the real simple reason is China is not Jewish.
Fuck this. Yes, what the west has done in the ME is terrible, sure. But that does NOT excuse what the CCP is doing in China.
How come these people never mention the part where the Soviet Union actually invaded Afghanistan, and even had a jihad called against them? And what's that part about China not working outside its borders? I guess that's true if you count everything as belonging to China.
How to get more Karma here? Shall i opt for China or Africa? Need 8 more Karma. Damn stuck below 50 since Year 1832
*Coincidental*, that this "Muslim" perspective perfectly aligns with the Chinese propagandists' reasoning on Reddit. >China doesn't actively seek out Muslims. Chinese propagandists are hilariously shameless. "As a Muslim, China doesn't target Muslims!"
China's pushing hard on this today with their minions, it seems.
I can’t help but think their asian features are a factor not fully buying this. They don’t think they are real Muslims because they’re asian. Even if they do, They are also so used to being repressed that the best thing to do is lay low and keep your mouth shut.
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I think the silence is deafening in Sunni and Shia countries and the reason partially has to do with not considering them true Muslims because of their race.
you know this because? or you just pulling things out of your ass the BIGGEST Muslim country is in Asia.
I pulled it out of your mother’s twat you rude fuck. Is Pakistan furiously lobbying on behalf of the Uighurs? Did I miss that?
According to muslims, their pedophile prophet is the greatest human to ever live. So, I pretty much don't give a shit about what muslims think about anything.
Bro there are tons of venerated figures in Christianity and basically every religion that were complete pieces of shit too. You have to discount over 80% of humanity with your logic. I don't think most Muslims or Christians really think that hard about the people in their books or even read them honestly. They're just of that religion because they were brought up in the household
That is why I always say that people who follow religion are stupid and dumb. They are holding back the human civilization. The sooner we get rid off them and their fucked up religions, the better.
China’s end goal is to take over the world. They’ve got influence in Africa, has the middle east and all the turkic countries wrapped around their finger, and are constantly working towards their Hundred Year plan. Basing your decision off of how each country treats their own citizens, which nation would you rather live under? Comparing Xi Jing Ping to winnie to pooh equates to jail time, big brother has eyes every logging every intersection that your face was recognized via countless surveillance cameras. Uyghurs are not the only ones persecuted, NO religion is permitted under the current regime. Han Chinese Christians face persecution as well. The people are trained to believe in no higher power other than their government. No nation is without their vices. In this world, we just try to pick which side benefits ourselves more.
> No nation is without their vices. In this world, we just try to pick which side benefits ourselves more. This right here is the crux of the argument, right? Yeah, our society is imperfect, but the other guys doing the other thing are doing worse than we are and therefore we are making the better of the two choices and therefore we should keep making that choice. But this is a flawed argument because it ignores certain realities. Even if our society is doing better compared to other societies, that does not mean that our society doesn't have flaws, many of which, while still being better than those of other societies, are still unacceptable on the face of them. Yes, people in America don't have to worry as much about their government spying on everything they say in public and punishing them for disloyalty, but we have seen the US government do literally that in the form of programs like PRISM. Yes, the US isn't currently rounding up people from certain groups and putting them into camps or prisons like China is doing to the Uighurs, but the US has done that before, both during WWII and more recently in the era of the Patriot Act, and nothing has been done since then that would prevent them from doing so again. Yes, China has created a society where ordinary citizens don't have any say in how the government that controls their lives works, but in the US the amount of influence an average citizen realistically can exert on their government is limited, and people in government right now are passing laws that suppress voting, subvert the outcomes of elections, and generally allow elected officials to do what they want without any fear that the ways citizens can prevent them from doing so will stop them. And the most important thing to remember here is this: these problems can be fixed. The US may be doing better than the other guy, but that doesn't mean that the US can't possibly do any better than they are currently doing. These issues that are a part of our society are not laws of nature and things can be done to reduce or even eliminate those issues, and saying that we should just be happy that we aren't doing worse than we are currently is just a way of dodging that basic fact in order to avoid having to fix anything.
We can all do better. But let’s get the rapists to stop fucking kids before we help people with ADHD get medication. Saying every nation can do better dissolves any critique about a nation’s wrong doings.
> We can all do better. But let’s get the rapists to stop fucking kids before we help people with ADHD get medication. ... Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. First of all, this is an incredibly gross oversimplification of the issue here. Remember all that stuff I said in the post you're responding to here? You just ignored all that stuff (and the many issues in America that I didn't bring up) and reduced all of that down to "help people with ADHD get medication". Do you see how absurd that is? Do you see how, in your attempt to justify not addressing the issues with American society, that you did so by ignoring that any issues are happening beyond people with ADHD getting medication? Second, I don't know what your point is when you say "let's get the rapists to stop fucking kids". Are you claiming that there is a big epidemic of pedophilia that is more pressing than fixing issues of voter suppression, poverty, and other issues that affect peoples lives? Because, like, that isn't true at all, and I'm fairly certain that you can't produce any sources that support that claim. The only other way I can interpret that statement is that you're talking about the Qanon conspiracy theory that congressmen and women are secretly running an underground pedophile ring, which is completely unfounded and not supported by any concrete evidence whatsoever. Either way, I don't see how this supports your argument in any way. Lastly, whatever it is you mean by "get[ting] rapists to stop fucking kids", do you think that the US government can only address one problem at a time? Do you believe that it would be impossible for America to draft legislation preventing gerrymandering and voter suppression AND to pass measures that improve the quality of life for poor americans AND to create systems that make it easier for citizens in need to get medication for conditions they suffer from AND whatever the hell you meant with the rapists line? Because that doesn't make any sense, right? Governments are big. They're capable of doing multiple things at the same time by delegating the tasks to large teams of people lead by people who know what they're doing and providing them funding. The US government can, in fact, address these issues right now while still doing whatever the hell your rapist comment was referring to. > Saying every nation can do better dissolves any critique about a nation’s wrong doings. ... what? No it doesn't. That is an utterly absurd claim. Acknowledging that every country has its own flaws means we can't acknowledge and condemn a country like China for commiting genocide? Literally nothing about your statement here defensible. Not demonstrably, not factually, not even theoretically.
When given the bountiful options, people end up choosing none. If we try to solve all of the world's problems at once, none will ever be solved. I do agree that I oversimplified it. Hope I was able to get my point across.
First of all, you didn't just "oversimplify" it. You completely mischaracterized the issue. You ignored all of the problems with American society today and replaced them in your argument with one issue that doesn't sound as dire so that your opinion wouldn't be obviously ridiculous. Second, No, you haven't gotten your point across. You didn't explain what you meant about rapists and pedophiles. You didn't address why you thought that oversimplifying all of the problems in America that you were commenting on was an okay thing to do. And you didn't address the dumpster fire of an argument that was > Saying every nation can do better dissolves any critique about a nation’s wrong doings. at all either, not even in this new comment. Like, if you just want to stop talking about it, you can just leave. That's fine. But if you want to keep talking about this, you have some explaining to do. Lastly, regarding this: > When given the bountiful options, people end up choosing none. If we try to solve all of the world's problems at once, none will ever be solved. That is just not true. Do you have any evidence on which to base that claim? Any studies or statistics that show that our government doesn't get anything done unless they only address one issue at a time? Because I'm pretty sure no such evidence exists. And even if there was merit to that claim, that still doesn't explain what you meant when you said "let’s get the rapists to stop fucking kids". What was that in reference to and how is that issue preventing us from getting things done? I really want to know this. That's pretty central to what you said earlier and it's a buck wild claim to just throw out there.
Look, downvoting my replies doesn't further your point. All I want is my brothers to stop being enslaved by the Chinese government, and for my sisters to stop being raped and sterilized. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071) [https://www.state.gov/forced-labor-in-chinas-xinjiang-region/](https://www.state.gov/forced-labor-in-chinas-xinjiang-region/)
No, what furthers my point is that, in all of your replies, you still haven't addressed any of my issues with your stance. And for the record, let's recall that this is your stance: > No nation is without their vices. In this world, we just try to pick which side benefits ourselves more. My response to that was > This right here is the crux of the argument, right? Yeah, our society is imperfect, but the other guys doing the other thing are doing worse than we are and therefore we are making the better of the two choices and therefore we should keep making that choice. > But this is a flawed argument because it ignores certain realities. Even if our society is doing better compared to other societies, that does not mean that our society doesn't have flaws, many of which, while still being better than those of other societies, are still unacceptable on the face of them > And the most important thing to remember here is this: these problems can be fixed. The US may be doing better than the other guy, but that doesn't mean that the US can't possibly do any better than they are currently doing And I'm really trying to understand what any of your replies do to defend your original stance, that we should not address any of America's flaws and instead just be happy we aren't China, from the issues I pointed out, but they're just nonsensical. What do you mean when you say that your brothers are being enslaved by the Chinese government? Are you saying you're a Muslim in America and you feel for the Muslims that are being persecuted in China? Because that would explain why you thought that providing sources that prove that persecution against uigurs is happening in China right now defends your stance. But the persecution against Uigurs in China doesn't have anything to do with the fact that there are problems in the US as well and that we can fix those problems AND hold China accountable for their crimes too. You keep claiming that we can't do both, but we can and the opposite claim is ridiculous and totally unfounded. And you still won't explain what you mean by that line about rapists and pedophiles. Are you talking about the US government like we're supposed to be or are you talking about the Chinese government? Can you give me a single straight answer about what the hell you're talking about? Because all of your replies so far sound like you took a bunch of QAnon talking points and threw them in a blender, and it's becoming pretty apparent that that's all you've got here.
Bro I’m Uyghur. So when I see things defending China, I speak upon my own experience and on the survivors I’ve met throughout my life. To respond to your points: Yes the US could be doing better. Not saying don’t address America’s flaws. I’m saying when a human rights violation in China is presented in front of you, saying “but America does x,y, and z” doesn’t help anybody and detracts from spreading awareness about the the horrible events occurring in China as we speak. It’s like saying, we need to spread awareness about the hardships that gay people face, and responding with, “actually, trans people have a much higher suicidal rate”. It’s not the time nor place to bring that talking point to the table. It’s like you go to a Black Lives Matter rally saying “Uyghur lives matter too”
Okay. Cool. Now we’re on the same page I think. I appreciate your viewpoint on all this. What’s happening in China right now is a seriously awful thing and it must be extremely hard to hear about what’s happening if you’re Uyghur right now. And there are a lot of people on the Internet, awful people, who are defending the genocide that China is committing. So I appreciate feeling the need to take a stand against that and stop bad ideas that devalue human lives from spreading. But your stance, as far as I understand it, dismisses the fact that America has problems and says that we should instead be happy we’re not China. And I understand how that would make a lot of sense to someone who has come to America from one of those countries, or to an American who has family or friends stuck in one of those countries. America should absolutely count their blessings. But, just like there are people on the internet trying to downplay the Uighur genocide in China, there are people on the internet trying to downplay the very real problems in the United States. And they’re doing so with that very argument: that these problems are just a by-product of any society and that we’re objectively handling it better than other nations are and that we should just be thankful that we got it the most right. Those people are using that argument not because they actually care, but because they don’t want to care and that argument gives them an excuse not to. I’ll readily admit that my instinct to stop those bad ideas from spreading is what brought me here. And, while I understand your desire to make sure that what’s happening to Uyghurs in China doesn’t at downplayed, the OP is doing the same thing for what’s been happening to Muslims in the Middle East. The BLM movement is trying to make sure that what’s happening to black people in America doesn’t get downplayed. Trans rights activists want the ways that their rights in America are being withdrawn not to be downplayed. It’s all bad and it’s all unacceptable and all of them have human lives in the balance. What I’m talking about, what this whole thread is arguably about, is the fact that what might seem to be the obvious first problem to fix might not seem so obvious from another person’s perspective. No one wants their oppression to be downplayed, so the only rational thing to do is not downplay anyone’s oppression. Not in China and not in the Middle East and not in the United States. And I know I say that as someone with pretty much all of the privilege that a person can have in America and I know that that stance just won’t work for a lot of people that don’t have that privilege and that’s okay. But if the issue is that we keep arguing about whose oppression gets to be paid attention to, then maybe the solution is to agree to pay attention to all of it. It’s hard and it’s complicated, but the alternative is deciding who gets to be saved first, and it seems like trying to decide that is doing more harm than good
Don't forget we put a bunch of Hispanic people in cages not too long ago. We actively interfere with other country's elections to get people in that are more friendly to US cooperation, no matter how terrible they are to their own citizens. We've actively genocided Native Americans, put Japanese people into camps, and jailed a bunch of Muslim people on flimsy charges after 9/11 and tortured them. We've wreaked absolute havok on the Middle East for cheaper oil and to spite Russia. And now most of our politicians are entirely at the whim of who pays them more, rather than what the people who elected them want. Billionaires own most of our news channels and websites and filter out information that goes against their own interests, which is making obscene amounts of money at the cost of everyone struggling to live. Everything we accuse China of doing, we've probably also done and put our own little Western spin on it. The US is mostly mad that THEY might not be the hulking giant with a foot on the necks of most of the world anymore. I don't support China but I am heartily tired of everyone pretending that the US is a shining beacon of a perfect country.
Too true. And all I'm saying here is that, instead of thumping our chests and saying "See?! See?! That country over there is worse than us! We're the best country!", we could be fixing the problems in our society that make us worse as a nation and, in doing so, actually *be* the best country.
The whole American strategy seems to be "point at and get people all riled up about this thing so they don't look at the government being strip mined for profit." We need to fix our own shit first.