All: this thread quickly degenerated into a hellish flamewar. Please don't post nationalistic flamewar comments to HN, and do not post cheap internet insinuations about astroturfing, brigading, shilling, spying, foreign agents and communist party operatives. If you're worried about abuse, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. You're not welcome to fill HN threads with fervid imaginations about commenters who have different views than you. HN is a big place and that's the very simple explanation for why not everyone agrees. I've posted about this many times, both about astroturfing in general and China-related topics in particular:
There have been ugly mob behaviors on this site in the past, which have hounded people out of the community. Is that who you want to be? who we want to be? No it is not. Yet it happens all too easily, and the people doing it don't even realize that they're doing it—they just think they're righteously defending truth or freedom or the home team. If you don't want to be that way, then err on the side of respect, benefit of the doubt, and not jumping to predetermined conclusions. (If you do want to be that way, please find some other site to post to.)
We ban accounts that break these rules, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended. It has a very specific intended spirit and most of the people who've posted in this thread so far have been breaking it.
This how politics work in China. When the government is unhappy with someone, they go away for a while and often reappear at a completely unrelated event they had schedule long before and don't acknowledge their disappearance. Everything happens behind the scenes and never officially.
If they ever acknowledge it, it will be as a public apology for their past conduct. This is what Ma's protege Justin Sun did after he got into hot water with the Chinese government for promoting his crypto currency project too loudly:
Then it shouldn't be that weird, Ma overstepped with his speech and is carefully negotiating the minefield he's currently in. Alibaba stock rebounded ~5% since his showing. He'll slowly work his way back into public life as is customary for nature of his infraction. If CCP wanted to disappear him long term, there'd be predictable and fraud/corruption charges already laid.
It's typical Chinese politics to the point of status quo. Kill the chicken to scare the monkeys. This development is what anyone with understanding of the Chinese system has repeated in past posts on the subject matter, but people dismiss in preference for rampant conspiracy theories. General commentary: if HN audience insists on flamewarring over Chinese topics, there should be some effort to learn about how Chinese system operates instead of insipid shallow commentaries or predilection for shill accusations despite many Chinese HNers engaging in good faith.
To elaborate more broadly on the subject: these incidents are relatively formulaic to the point where it's reasonably straight forward to guess outcomes based on political status of individual and nature of infraction. Prominent individuals severely contradicting official line = CCP send you on temporary contrition vacation, repeat infractions = corruption charges -> jail. If individual is public official or nature of infraction affects political structure i.e. actual massive corruption or negligence that undermines public safety -> up to death, though more life sentences or death with reprieves in recent times. Less significant individuals (like activists) get invited to drink tea at police stations, sign and various warnings before escalating to boilerplate disturbing social order sentences and successively longer sentences. Ma's more business class than political, he overstepped at a time and on a topic he was precisely not suppose to over step, so he got sent to vacation. I'm sure he got talks by relevant cadres, maybe self-criticism letter is in the works, but he was always going to be let out of the dog house. Like many systems in China, rule by law is not capricious, but customary.
Are there any first hand accounts or primary sources on what happens during these "contrition vacations"? Info along those lines would help illuminate why and how the current process is the status quo. I have not seen any first hand accounts or primary sources but I normally only read about these incidents when they get wider coverage like this one.
Because nothing happened. So many westerners are so brainwashed on any China related topics that conspiracy theories are accepted as fact without any sort of filtering. If you think CCP is going to make the richest man(a popular public figure no less) in China disappear overnight, you ate way too much propaganda.
The Chinese government is highly structured and in general features most of the things one might expect in a modern nation-state (an executive, a legislature, a court system, etc.)
The exception, and what makes it hard to understand for outsiders, is that one of the political parties (Chinese Communist Party) is also an extra, supervisory, branch of government and sits on-top of and permeates all the regular bureaucratic structures. There are other political parties but since they cannot surmount the CCP in this structure they remain relegated to very minor roles. The military (PLA) is also a branch of government, but is also an element of the CCP. One way of thinking of it is that the government of China is not allowed to have a military, and the ruling political party's own security forces have assumed that role -- with subbranches of that force filling in for traditional military branches such as a Navy and an Air Force - which are all separate "forces" under the Army.
Within the CCP there are factions, or different wings, and the kinds of fairly expected politics in any such organization play out as people jostle for position within the party. These factions can have a number of quite profound disagreements, and may sound more like different parties in some ways, but are united by common core beliefs and history.
This structure creates as many problems as it solves, with no external checks to the current CCP policies - but there are internal processes and checks that are supposed to help maintain legitimacy of the party in this structure. On the flip side, establishing such a system also makes it easier to consolidate power over the major power structures. The current head of China, Xi Jinping, is the head of the party, the head of the executive branch and the head of the military, giving him no real outside checks on authority as he has both the supervisory power and the military power to overwhelm opposition - the presidency is more or a ceremonial role within the government at this point.
However, there are analogues, the U.S. President, for example, is also the head of their respective party, the head of the executive branch, and the head of the military. The difference is that there are built in exit ramps and external checks on power (other parties, other branches of government) that are designed to frustrate the accumulation of power and political parties hold no official and a subservient role to the government apparatus. The military in addition, is not a branch of government whereas it is in the Chinese system.
Since you did not mention it specifically, I'll mention that term limits are suspected to be an important part of keeping a reasonable concentration of power and not having a democracy devolve into a dictatorship.
On the one hand, term limits are deliberately eroded by long-running despots (primarily in some African countries so far, and increasingly elsewhere in the world lately.) On the other hand, Germany's chansellorship does not, IIRC, have term limits and that seems to work fine for them. So maybe being able to remove term limits is a symptom more than a cause?
Either way, questions like these are discussed in the book How Democracies Die, which has been recommended to me and is on my re-read list, but which I haven't gotten to yet.
> On the other hand, Germany's chansellorship does not [...] habe term limits
In fact, there is a limit: A German citizen might hold the office of Chancellor ("Kanzler", or "Kanzlerin" for female form) four times, or sixteen years in total.
And 4 times 4 is quite long actually. That is 16 long years and the current chancellor, Angela Merkel, is actually the 'brain child' of previous 16 year chancellor Helmut Kohl, with just a brief intermittence of Gerhard Schroder in between. For non-observers of the German political parties, Kohl and Merkel are from the 'regular' conservative party (CDU), while Schroder was from the SPD, the regular left or 'working people's party'. Of course after being chancellor he became an advisor for Russian Gazprom... A lot of Germany heats with (Russian) natural gas.
Merkel: 22 November 2005 - whenever Corona ends I suppose. Thuringia already postponed their state elections from April to September because of Corona.
Contributing factors also include, I suspect, more independence for individual subdivisions, e.g. states in the US or Bundesländer in Germany unless I'm mistaken.
>One way of thinking of it is that the government of China is not allowed to have a military, and the ruling political party's own security forces have assumed that role -- with subbranches of that force filling in for traditional military branches such as a Navy and an Air Force - which are all separate "forces" under the Army.
This is very similar in concept to the SA/SS (Nazi Germany) or the Red Army (USSR). All were paramilitary wings of political parties before their rise to power.
Most of what you described is generally true for autrocracies. The real interesting part of China is that usually autrocracies perform poorly as the leaders put power in front of technological advancement.
Chinese leaders though try really hard to allow tech advancements to happen, and perform quite well on the market.
> with subbranches of that force filling in for traditional military branches such as a Navy and an Air Force - which are all separate "forces" under the Army.
The Chinese Navy is called "People's Liberation Army Navy"
> One way of thinking of it is that the government of China is
> not allowed to have a military, and the ruling political
> party's own security forces have assumed that role
Not dissimilar to the Lebanese situation in practice, then?
I think this is more the rule than the exception. The idea that states exist to serve the individual would be laughed at for most of human history. Be it God or the state, man exists to serve. Conscripting and killing young men for the sake of the state/God/glory has been one of humanities favorite pastimes.
I've always been kind of interested in why autocratic regimes or dictators engage in seemingly unnecessary benevolent or constructive activities. At some point I decided to better understand how the Chinese government functions since for a long time it's been both autocratic and surprisingly benevolent in certain areas. So basically some combination of youtube, wikipedia and a few other places till I more or less came to a high-level understanding.
There are also some English language Chinese government produced youtube videos that also do a pretty good job at giving basic civics lessons on how their government works if you can look past all the self-congratulations. It's definitely "complicated" and is not just Xi Jinping barking his every desire and whim as it tends to get reduced to.
Surprised no one has mentioned “Red Capitalism (2012)” which specifically covers the finance industry in China (pre-AliPay but post reform in the modern era) which gives a clear insight into the sort of banking system Ma tried to shake up and their big role in China’s rise.
Not a book but a talk given at an internal government seminar by a China policy advisor to the Australian government and recommended by Bill Bishop, one of the bigger names in China related news. Talk given in 2017.
„China in ten words“ by Yu Hua, of course banned in China
„The awakening of China“ - by Sun Yat Sen. Old but informative least but not last becauseit was the only book heralded by both Chinas (PRC and Taiwan) and even allowed during Mao‘s heydays of Terror (in which the official amount of allowed books was in the single digits, and most of those were authored by Mao).
The problem of China - Bertrand Russell. Published in 1922. It's not recent but is an incredible insight for the era and forward thinking piece. It is incredibly relevant today.
A book from 1922? That's back during the Republican era, pre-civil war. I think any resource from before 30 years ago is totally irrelevant in today's setting, except maybe to explain how Chinese modern history developed.
It's shocking how accurate his predictions were, and I think it's really important to understand that these weren't lucky guesses. They were the product of a deep and insightful analysis of Chinese culture and society that is still very much relevant today. The personalities have changed, but in many ways China is still China.
He warned that their society is prone to endemic corruption, that merging the worst aspects of Chinese culture with Capitalism would be a very dangerous combination. He said that China could become an economic and military rival only exceeded by the united States over the next few centuries, so he was explicitly thinking long term. This was at a time when most Westerners thought of China as an archaic, irrelevant joke.
"In fact, [the west] have quite as much to learn from [China] as they from us, but there is far less chance of our learning it."
"[There's] a great eagerness to acquire Western learning, not simply in order to acquire national strength and be able to resist Western aggression, but because a very large number of people consider learning a good thing in itself"
But is there something specific to Chinese culture that he argued made them more corrupt? Because it seems to me like basically all poor countries are corrupt, that they tend to get less corrupt as they get richer (or rather, they get richer as they get less corrupt) and China in 1922 was very poor indeed.
Honestly it's very hard to tell. It's quite short. My wife is Chinese and I've spent a bit of time over there. It's hard for me to tell which aspects of cultural behaviour over there are a product of several generations of communist rule and which date back earlier. What I can say is the business environment over there is bare naked ruthless. It's always possible to make a deal, right up to the moment it isn't and then you're done. As for social order, the Chinese believe in the rule of authority, not law.
> most Chinese don't even understand how CCP works
That's on purpose, the first test of getting power to work for you is an intelligence and ambition check: can you focus enough ability for long enough to sniff out where the networks of power are ?
It works because a large part of it is based not just on Chinese culture, but on human nature.
Its the reason that the Ten Commandments are still relevant today, because as Paul Mooney said, "It puts its foot in man's ass", or in other words, because many of the stories in the Bible were written by people with an understanding of human nature.
The same reason so much of the Constitution of the United States of America still works. Its written to humanity's nature, not current events of 1776.
Yes. For example, here's a commentary, published in 2012 by Xinhua, arguing that the time was ripe to reform the "reeducation through labor" system http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2012-10-12/152725346359.shtml (in Chinese, of course)
The reform did happen, replacing e.g. labor camps for drug addicts by forced detox camps, but those were mostly the same, still using hard labor as their main method to "rehabilitate" addicts. So not much changed in practice. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/punish-and-cure%ef... (this one is in English)
You may wonder why you haven't heard about this before. The answer is, I think, that most groups subjected to "reeducation through labor" are not organized and scarcely have any international contacts, so they have a hard time getting mainstream international media to report on them.
Also how the 10 year term was removed. Seems like this is a core principle in the CCP party, but what events caused this to change. Was this planned from a long time or it the circumstances were right and it was grabbed.
Age of Ambition for how people outside navigate it. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap has some very good stuff on incentive structures inside the CCP.
Bill Gertz (the Author) is a very divisive figure in US politics, with a long history of anti China bias. His writings are much more polemic screeds and less balanced academic analysis. He sees the US-China situation very much as battle between good and evil (with the Democrats being complicit on the side of evil), has zero nuance and very little sourcing in his books. All of this makes his books rather controversial.
All that being said. None of this is evidence for his books actually being wrong.
Actually I think I read the second sentence as a snarky political jab, when on a closer look it seems to have been a neutral question, or at least that's a plausible interpretation.
"So accurate that it hurts" is the sort of thing that political trolls say, and it probably triggered the pattern matching machine in my head—which sometimes misses things, especially at speed. Sorry!
Honestly though, don't you think that's a valid question - asking for qualitative responses? Notice how the user responded to you, as an authority, I hope you're aware of that power dynamic as well.
I've also thought I'd love to see a Netflix style documentary of "a day in dang's life" to help us get to know you, to humanize you more + would be good marketing for HN and YCombinator. You're often very poetic in your responses, I think a documentary focused on you could be quite good.
Well written article, I learned a lot. I wasn't a huge fan of how little they espoused the actual positive side of the site, what continues to bring me and many of you back. The flaming and dramatic views of some are noise to me, the great insight and lively polite debate is what I see.
Dang, should there be a single meta-thread - monthly or quarterly -- where you hold a grand durbar and folks can vent their grievances, and you get some feedback from different segments?
If we were to have a seperate thread, then folks should absolutely not post these things in regular threads, thus leaving them cleaner and with a better tone.
they are free to reference this incident on the grievance thread. There, different downvote rules should apply of course.
There might be others who feel the same way, and therefore might upvote it. So, this way, you can get a sense of how many/deeply feel about a particular issue, and then address it suitably.
Once this particular case is addressed, then we create a link of sorts, and the next month someone brings this up, we just point to it.
I am thinking - maybe once a quarter -- to start with, and vary frequency as needed.
I understand the appeal, but users wouldn't abide by such a restriction on normal threads. The more one tried to force it, the more energy one would provoke to get around it or overcome it.
It would be a lost cause because it goes against human nature. People feel what they feel when they feel it; you can't stop them from expressing it, and trying to stop them would only multiply it.
How appropriate, people being told to shut up on a post about people being made to shut up.
Dammit dang, downvote abuse is a real issue.
The very fact that people keep bringing this up should clue you in. Once or twice, okay maybe it's the complainer's perception that's wrong, but again and again, for over a year? Then your damn system has a problem.
The least you could do to address it is not let downvotes instantly affect a comment's visibility. Fucking delay it for a few hours to allow everyone at least a chance to be seen.
Why is that so painfully hard for you to do? Did you lose the source code or can't find another Malbolge maintainer to take over?
This is not a one year problem. And it will stay that way because, as you know, HN is a corporation. Not a public forum.
Maintaining these rules allow dang@co to maintain the position of control over what happen in HN. The corollary is that changing them will dilute their control. They found a local maximum of discourse level and they keep it that way.
The justification that the discourse on HN is maintained at a high level by not talking about the rules is at least condescending to the participants.
It doesn't matter to them if they lose you on these grounds since talking about the rules appears only on extremes which are shallow in a normal distribution. They will lose the few participants that care enough about that while maintaining those in the middle. (Of course, cutting of the extremes will grow newer ones in the empty space but I digress...).
What happens with time is that people adjust their discourse to the middle ground making it void of any new or interesting information. Thus, HN becomes an echo chamber of mainstream ideas and people will leave when they got bored enough of the same thing. We're already there and @dang is more vocal now because he knows it.
I only partly agree with your view. It might be so, but there is a genuine reason behind not discussing the rules: they're always off-topic. For people like me who come to HN to read an interesting discussion about tech issues, anything mentioning downvoting is almost automatically useless in the sense that it doesn't bring any new information, it's not interesting, it doesn't affect me in any way.
Yes, if I were in charge of HN I would solve certain issues differently, and so would you, but it's a private forum run by someone else, so we have to obey in order to participate, whether we like it or not. The very fact that we're even having this discussion now means we prefer this place to any other in this moment. So you can't say these rules don't work.
> The very fact that we're even having this discussion now means we prefer this place to any other in this moment. So you can't say these rules don't work.
Oh fucking boy, no. What even is that logic
We have a bunch of tabs open on a bunch of other social sites and forums. We don’t prefer HN to any other place, we just think something about it sucks badly enough to express our disdain of it.
This is certainly not true if the "anyone else" is Jack Ma. If I gave you gun, and asked you to "hold" Jeff Bezos, you would certainly not be able to do it.
Where am I? Where is Bezos? What are the additional hypothetical details of this scenario? Do I know how to use a gun in this scenario (I do not IRL)?
I've only met one billionaire, but he was definitely not guarded by anyone, and had I the inclination, skills, and firepower, I could have easily taken him at gunpoint.
I don't accept the notion that Jack Ma is guarded 100% of the time, that's movie fiction.
> Anyone with a gun can hold anyone else, you don't need to be "powerful".
> had I the inclination, skills, and firepower
That's a very big "had I", and certainly not "anyone with a gun" as you said previously.
Let me put it this way: suppose you're Bezos or Jack Ma and had access to unimaginable resources, comfort, and security from the best of the best. Surely it would be absolutely trivial to hire someone so that the vast, vast, majority of people with guns wouldn't be able to get to you, no matter how hard they tried, even _with_ so-called inclination and skills?
I'm not even referring to having guard detail around them all the time; when you're that important and hundreds of billions of market cap depends on your very existence, their entire schedules will be mapped down to the smallest detail to minimize risk of harm to them, since if they were to get kidnapped, it would immediately wipe billions off the stock price. Do you really think that the only reason Bezos hasn't been captured is because ordinary people with guns just chose not to do so, and if anyone wanted, they could just kidnap Bezos easily? What percent of ordinary people like you or I have "skills" and "inclination" that can beat that hired by Bezos' billions?
I hear you, I just don't think it's as common to hire a team of bodyguards as media portrays it to be, and yeah I generally do think the only reason Bezos remains safe is because nobody has earnestly tried, not because he's got some hyper-sophisticated security apparatus at his command (and even if he did, I still think it's largely theater, and a person who actually manages to get a gun in proximity of Bezos/any person generally won't have much of a problem using it at that point). People just aren't looking to kill one another, generally, even the more polarizing people.
But message received -- Jack Ma probably would have a team of bodyguards, and the people who could get past that probably wouldn't need to manipulate markets using his appearance on a conference call to make money.
It is not so much about having a team of bodyguards 24/7 with you, but about having a security team in the back office that will oversee all the details of your schedule so that you just are not in a scenario where this is possible. (Eg no appearance at predictable place and time etc )
You're talking about state-level actors, not me. My point is that it doesn't have to be the Chinese government (though it probably is, if he's being held and isn't just in hiding).
Disappointingly paranoid comments jumping to conclusions here. It's equally possible that Ma's disappearance is self-imposed after making an out of character speech that was not well received by investors and regulators alike. We don't know either way at this point. To quote Leo Lewis of the FT: "His miscalculation now looks spectacular, even by his astral standards of showmanship." [1]
Lately the close-mindedness in HN has become amazing... many here seems to be a China expert, and their expertise says "I know what it is, it's an evil regime!".
Given their treatment of Uighurs, yes - there is an element of evil. It’s not as if the governments of the world are immune to this - the US has been involved in a long history of heinous acts and China is no different.
Yes, they're running terrible concentration camps.. but for some HNer to be able to say "I can see from this video that Jack Ma was imprisoned and is being forced by the CCP to do this"? Great job being an expert!
How about some political nuance? Maybe they wouldn't dare just mess with a billionaire who was well respected just a few months ago? Well, maybe they do dare, I don't know, I'm not an expert in Chinese politics. But some commenters here seem to take one little thing they know and extrapolate it to absolute knowledge of how that government works in all aspects.
"Learning and adapting to the Chinese system" and "the Chinese government is using constant terrifying threats to coerce public support" are not, in fact, mutually exclusive.
> In the 50-second video, Ma, wearing a navy pullover, spoke from a room with grey walls, a large painting and floral arrangements. It was not clear where the room was. [...] Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares jumped to finish 8.5% higher on the news...
I am pretty sure all sane people knowing that this video is going online had hold a huge long position on Alibaba shares.
I’m inclined to think no. If deepfakes weren’t a thing then there would be no need to fake something like this so I don’t think there’s be much reason to fake it now. Seems easier to just do the real thing.
I think the whole point of the messaging is to make it obvious what’s happened without explicitly saying it and a deepfake doesn’t help with that. If they had done something worse they would have done it deliberately and would want to prove it. Kind of like when the Russians assassinate some dissident and go on their news to say “we absolutely deny the allegations that so and so was assassinated but I guess it just shows what happens when you are a traitor”
No reason you can't "deepfake" that too. IMO, in the arms race of fakes vs detection technology, the fakes will inevitably win. Eventually, you won't be able to tell if content is fake at all. You'll just have to decide if you can trust the source or not.
So he only had one public event scheduled between late October and now? If he suddenly ended up in custody, you'd think he would have had more events set up then canceled.
> In the 50-second video, Ma, dressed in a navy pullover, spoke directly to the camera from a room with grey marble walls and a striped carpet. It was not clear from the video or the Tianmu News article where he was speaking from.
Uh, resurfacing from a fancy prison cell, perhaps? Can anyone find the video?
How much more mental gymnastics do we need? I think it's time to accept that he WASN'T jailed rather than trying to forcefully shoehorn the facts into a 'but China still bad' narrative.
The HN commentary went from 'Jack Ma is a national security threat' to 'Jack Ma is a poor victim of the CCP will will never be seen again' to 'this is fake, he is still jailed'. If he shows up someone else in person next time, will people say that the CCP staged that too? It's getting too ridiculous.
Cyrus Janssen, an expat who has worked in China for 12 years, blogged about this. I think he has a much more accurate view of what happened. Jack Ma was laying low, not jailed. And the rrason why his comments pissed off people is because the phase of development China is now in, rather than a generic "thou shall not criticize the party" https://cyrusjanssen.substack.com/p/trump-free-speech-and-wh...
In contrast to China's reputation here in the west, the govt actually DOES listen to criticism. Yes they censor at the same time. Calling for violence and overthrow of the govt is not allowed. But at the same time they do listen, and for the past 20 years they've continuously reformed policy based on citizen's criticism on social media, or those submitted via official channels. The key is to be constructive, and to criticize policy rather than people.
This also applies to this latest incident. Yes it bugged a lot of people in the government, but at the same time they're really looking into the actual criticism made and whether there's a need for reform.
So... where's multi-billionaire Xiao Jianhua? After being abducted from the Four Seasons in Hong Kong by the CCP, he popped up to explain he was seeking medical treatment on the mainland (haha) three years ago, and nobody's heard from him since. Also laying low? Or do you think he's discovered a new love of mining rare earth minerals in Xinjiang?
C'mon now, this isn't exactly some big exoneration one way or the other, is it? This happens from time to time. We both know there's a list of famous and semi-famous people as long as your arm you haven't heard from in a while.
Where's Fan Bingbing? Where's the former head of Interpol, Meng Hongwei? [2] Think they too have discovered a sudden need for mainland medical treatment -- or do you think it's more likely they may have discovered a passion for mining minerals also?
And where's Chen Qiushi -- or any of the other journalists who covered the draconian coronavirus measures taken in China, who suddenly disappeared a year ago?
I read his comments, and have studied Chinese and China for years. While he took a pretty slight risk, (it seems) he only criticized other business owners and potential regulatory ideas. Honestly, his comments were so mild that you'd probably regularly hear similar stuff _coming from the regulators themselves_ in most other countries (developed or no).
I'm not sure where on HN you found the sentiment Jack Ma was considered a national security threat. I think you're painting a picture here that is very bizarre, and not supplying the context necessary to understand why.
One of those was flagged, so it's pretty clearly "not-HN". The other says it's a state-run business (which, I mean, lots of people disagreed with that). That's miles away from saying something is a security threat [edit: it's worth saying, for those not clicking the link, he compares it to Saudi Aramco, which is, I mean, I've never heard that IPO described as a security threat either, so there's not really even any implications I can detect]. Nowhere in there is the narrative you're describing.
This sort of perception is notoriously unreliable and is pretty much entirely in the eye of the beholder. The majority of comments in this thread, and basically every other HN thread on the topic, are not at all as you describe.
Hey @dang, I appreciate your comment and will take it into account. I certainly appreciate your moderation and how quiet a place HN is in comparison with the rest of the rowdy world & internet. It's certainly a special place and I don't want to disturb that.
It seems you think this issue is particularly inflammatory to me (and others) because of "nationalistic interests," but for me it's much more about friendships. I have a group of Falun Gong practicing friends in Amsterdam, my math tutor was Taiwanese and had family who disappeared on the mainland, and I know a lot of people who were lucky enough to get out of China, including a very good family friend.
I appreciate that you have deep personal connections to this issue, as do many other commenters, both on your side and the opposite side. What are we to do with that but try harder to respect each other?
> Hate cannot drown out hate, only love can do that.
Please don't get me wrong — I wasn't trying to excuse my wording; I was just trying to explain that I don't mean to create a flamewar or bitter argument. My comments are a genuine expression of my thinking, and I'm not trying to make HN a place for ideological battle. I suppose these discussions just naturally veer into that sort of back-and-forth.
Sure, and I appreciate that. I think what makes this problem so hard is that we depart from that spirit without realizing that we've done so. This is why it feels like we're posting out of love and respect while the other party is being rude and is in denial, gaslighting, or worse. Meanwhile the other party feels exactly the same way. Each of us is casting our own shadow on the other.
That's unfortunately how human communication works, especially online, and it takes a conscious (and considerable) effort to learn to do otherwise. It's not easy! We're all working on it, including me. Unfortunately, when the topic is divisive and activating, the rapid-fire, low-information nature of internet comments causes threads like this to compound extremely quickly into an all-out war.
As I understand it he's been out of the public eye since October, after making comments critical of the Chinese government, and now the government is making noise about nationalizing his company. I agree that's not conclusive proof that the government has done something to him, but speculating that they have hardly seems like "mental gymnastics".
Anyone who is living in China, citizen or expat, is going to toe the party line (literally) since the consequences for not doing so these days can be severe.
We’ve been through this before with other business people or defrocked public officials: Jack Ma is currently having a peaceful relaxing vacation at one of the party’s many secure resorts (Chinese have memes too). Whether he comes out of this like Fan Binbin or not isn’t anything we will know until it happens.
Second, you're essentially saying that if the other person lives in China it doesn't matter what they say. Think about that for a second, and also about whether or not it really matters where they live if you've put some critical thought into their arguments. Granted some of what he says is subjective, but for something like this that's all you can really get. But if you've already decided the enemy must be wrong then there's no point discussing anything.
Third, the OP you were replying to said he lived in China, but according to his Twitter he's not living in China. So does that meet your standards of considering his opinions?
Neither myself, nor Cyrus Janssen, are currently living in China. This is my genuine opinion, believe it or not. Nobody forces me, nobody pays me. I thought people are supposed to be "against the CCP but support the Chinese people". Is your support limited to Chinese people who are against the CCP? Why do you not reflect for a while on why someone like me, who has grown up with western culture and has independently investigated China, is not as anti-China as you are? Why is it hard to accept that maybe some of of core assumptions you have about China is wrong?
And no, you don't go to jail for not toeing the party line. That's not how it works. They censor you if your views are stirring up social unrest or calling for overthrow. But they don't force you to say things they want.
At least, that's the case for average citizen. I suppose if you're a high-level business executive with many ties to the government, then things become more complex. But that's not very different from the west, is it? If you piss off a government customer, you won't be jailed, but do you think they'd be happy to continue doing business with you?
Just a note — there is basically zero chance that Jeff Bezos would face any sort of governmental action if he "pissed off a guy in a government department," however influential that person may be. AWS just blocked Parler, and I'm sure our current president — arguably the most powerful man on Earth (until tomorrow) — was not very happy with that.
We don't see Jeff Bezos in hiding for doing that, nor would he have to go into hiding for anything far less.
I don't say this to accuse you (@dang trying not to flamewar) — do you not see that this argument is a little disingenuous? If you don't, I'd love to hear your thinking on why.
Well, I'd just have to respectfully disagree then. As someone who runs my own company, I know better than to pick a quarrel with my customers, even if I don't agree with those customers on a political or whatever level.
It's not at all strange to have multiple factions in an organizations who are after multiple vendors, as tool for an internal power war. Maybe if I piss off the guy who chose me as vendor, then his rivals will use that fact against him.
My point is, social relations are complex. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequence.
It's not all that I care about, but the government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. I have recourse to that force if another private entity harms me. Who do I have recourse to if the government harms me?
I consider freedom of speech a baseline, and I think it's one of the only things the US Constitution got right.
> And no, you don't go to jail for not toeing the party line. That's not how it works.
No you don’t. But you might find your work visa renewal denied. Things can get inconvenient really quickly, as a foreigner you don’t want to be a grass mud horse while in China, river crab is the only way to go.
> If you're Jeff Bezos and you piss off the guy in a government department...
Then Jeff Bezos sues the government, which is exactly what happened.
> No you don’t. But you might find your work visa renewal denied.
Daniel Dumbrill, a vlogger in China, literally criticized the Guangzhou government for its negligent behavior against African workers. I did the same. We did this more than a year ago and we're both still fine.
> Then Jeff Bezos sues the government, which is exactly what happened.
You missed the point. You can't sue the government into continuing to do business with you.
Just because it doesn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, or that it could happen. If you have a 60k/month job, you can’t really take the risk that your visa won’t be renewed.
> You missed the point. You can't sue the government into continuing to do business with you.
No, of course you can, and that is what Amazon is doing.
It's extremely unlikely that the founder and CEO of a $600B publicly traded company would completely disappear for several months on his own initiative. A short interview or a couple of emails would have dispelled all speculation that he was detained without agitating the Chinese government.
Thanks. I've been on HN for more than a decade and this thread is just mind-boggling to read. Whatever people think is indicated by the facts of Jack Ma's case, it should be reconciled with the China's established history of abductions and disappearances, the reality of which are not disputed.
Look, if you don't believe me, at least believe in Kishore Mahbubani, ex-Singapore diplomat and ex-UN Security Council head. He's spoken extensively about this in his book "Has China Won?" and can corroborate what I said.
In the past 40 years, the freedoms of Chinese people have exploded. People could not choose what to wear, where to work, what to eat, where to live. Now they can. Millions travel world-wide every year, and all of them return home. Why would they do that if China is as bad as you say?
As for "a revolution against Beijing": prof. Mahbubani says that there are actually hundreds of protests in China every year. But those people aren't protesting against the central government: they're trying to get the central government's attention, to help them with their grievances. The central government is very popular. According to a poll by Harvard, who collected data over a 15 year period through anonymous in-person interviews, support for the central government has increased in this 15 year period. In 2016 (last year of the study), it was at an all-time high: 96% of respondents said they're satisfied or very satisfied with the central government.
What makes you believe you are more right than prof. Mahbubani and Harvard?
This. We've seen this in East Germany. Sure they gave you a visa, they let you out. Your family stayed. To make sure you come back. Some people screwed over their family. Most people played along and came back.
Are you saying East Germany was awesome and things should have stayed as they were?
That's tautologically true of course. What is far less clear cut is whether it's preferable for someone (and their children) to stay in a country with a bad regime that's improving or in one with a good regime that's deteriorating. It depends on many factors (levels of goodness/badness, rate of improvement/deterioration, persistence and stability of trends, how one is personally affected by goodness/badness/improvements/deterioration).
To make it more concrete, there are people (granted, overwhelmingly ethnically Had Chinese fluent in the language) who voluntarily choose to reside in China over the US or EU, and I don't think they are irrational about it.
So what are the better choices? Do you think that if someone were to liquidate the CCP top members, plunging the country into chaos, that the Chinese would be better off?
It's easy to say "X is bad" when you don't have to care about practical consequences, like whether there are better alternatives, why we're in a suboptimal situation in the first place, and how to get to a better place.
> Do you think that if someone were to liquidate the CCP top members, plunging the country into chaos, that the Chinese would be better off?
Yes, very much so.
Your presumption is that if CPCs rule, whose rule is a chaos itself, disappears, there will be more chaos?
We are talking about immediate ruinous effects for the majority of Chinese every day communists stay in power.
The moment it stops, lawless land repossessions instantaneously stop, house confiscations stop, fake cases, and expropriations against entrepreneurs stop.
> It's easy to say "X is bad" when you don't have to care about practical consequences
Practical consequences of letting communists to stay in power are millions left destitute every year after their land, property, and businesses are stolen.
For all I know most things I know about China could be wrong - I'm certain that a lot of it is (seeing our media uncritically reporting the Adrian Zenz stuff has been mindblowing), but how could I possibly know whether something is true when there is so much disinfo going around? Like, what gives you the confidence that you're not just being fed propaganda yourself?
Quite naive so.
The thinking that one can at least understand the rationale of not killing a hen laying golden eggs has no place in China.
The reality is exact the opposite, and elites routinely keeping shooting the country, and themselves in the foot. Why should they care?
Any ranked party member half way the ladder already has enough privileges to swim in lard for the rest of his life.
I was pretty much there when Shenzhen govt bulldozed close to 10000 factories in between 2009, and 2012 for universiade vanities. That was one third of regions industry! One third
That was single most economically suicidal move I've seen any government do, and that was right after the global financial crisis.
That made a double digit dip in country's exports, and industrial output, so big it was.
You think that if the KMT had won, that China would have been better off? Do you have any idea how corrupt the KMT was? The CCP won for a reason.
CCP is mainland China. According to a poll by Harvard, who collected data over a 15 year period through anonymous in-person interviews, support for the central government has increased in this 15 year period. In 2016 (last year of the study), it was at an all-time high: 96% of respondents said they're satisfied or very satisfied with the central government.
That doesn't mean I "love the CCP". But is there any other party out there who actually advances the interests of Chinese civilization?
I'll tell you how: by being open to the notion that maybe "tiranical, genocidal and dictatorial" are false. And that Chinese people have different values, which are equally valid, but that are nevertheless not forced upon you.
If you actually want to discuss this, I'd be happy to. But I need to know whether you are genuine, or whether you merely mean to diss me.
This is exactly what iranian people told me: they are democratic country. AND in the very same sentence they concluded that they can ban messaging apps if government want to.
I understand the frustration, but please don't post flamewar comments to HN, and especially not nationalistic flamewar comments, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are. These threads are already hellish enough.
Okay, maybe I'm missing something, but someone posted[0] that exact phrase #4 at the same time you posted it. What gives?
PS: I agree with your points and am saddened the anti-China rhetoric has been flooding HN over the past years. I read a comment here long ago that said "HN is full of neocons" or something like that, but I can't help but believe there's also state backed propaganda (shills) fomenting sinophobia.
I agree with everything FooBarWidget said, and it's super annoying every time HN has an anti-China boner based on ridiculous things (don't even let me start about Reddit.)
And then, I found myself.. don't want to risk saying anything here with my main account (hence this throwaway account), even if it's defending China.
Will anything happen to me? Very unlikely, even if I "curse Xi". But still, I don't want any topics about Chinese politics to be related with my main ID, "just in case". Unlike FooBarWidget who (by glancing at his Twitter) has settled in EU, I don't have this luxury still plan to go back to China.
I found this whole "mental gymnastics" I have myself ironic and, to be honest, pathetic. So I just stopped. :/
I'm posting as my main account and I hope the downvotes are the only repercussion. I think it's fair to bring attention to when the discourse gets a little one-sided.
Yes, a HN member with a profile created in December of 2008, 5800+ Karma, with links to his Twitter and name of his employer in his profile page is a 五毛(50 center).
The CCP is truly all powerful!
If my dripping sarcasm wasn’t clear, you’re way off base here.
Edit 1: to the downvoters, please feel free to explain why it’s appropriate to accuse a 12-year HN member of being a paid shill for the CCP when all evidence points to the contrary.
My personal preference is for a HN community where dissenting views don’t lead to assigning ulterior motives (in this case being paid to shill for the CCP) to our debating “opponents”.
>Would you publicly curse Xi and denounce the CCP?
What if they don't want to? There is a trend in the west that pretends like dissent would overflow in China if it wasn't suppressed, but what if people genuinely actually like the government? That doesn't seem to fit the narrative that people have the agency to think differently from the status quo Americans would like to impose upon the world.
>I'm worried about what happens when Chinese software developers outnumber us
Is this Great Replacement propaganda?
>When we have no other advantage, what then? Do we implode?
You sit down and try to succeed on merit rather than privilege for once in your life, not unlike the 200-odd countries that aren't superpowers.
I didn't mean all the people all the time. But this harranguing of any random individual asking them why they aren't criticizing the CCP with every living breath seems to count on the idea that they are afraid to speak up and/or brainwashed with evil oriental commie magic.
In mainland China, people value outcome legitimacy rather than procedural legitimacy and freedom of speech. In other words: they care whether the government actually does a good job, rather than whether the procedure through which the government was selected is correct, or whether they could criticize Xi.
How would the government get feedback then if people aren't allowed to criticize? As I said before: one can submit feedback about policy. Just don't go around and insult people. The government monitors social media as well for grievances. At the same time they censor social media to prevent mass unrest, but they take grievances seriously and works to solve them.
Whereas the west has freedom of speech as a core value, mainland Chinese value unity, face, action over talk and freedom from poverty. To them, it's much more important to be able to have a good economic life, than freedom of speech. After all, 2 generations ago the Chinese were dirt-poor. When I was born, food rationing still existed!
As Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head and ex-Singapore diplomat, said: the CCP is in actuality more like a Chinese Civilization Party. Their goal is to advance the interests of Chinese civilization, not to spread communism world-wide.
China is not facist. Facism means that society is deliberately split up in classes (e.g. races), with one class being seen as inherently superior to other "untermenschen". This is not China. There's no notion that Han is better than Yao, or whatever. Official government policy is to give ethnic minorities preferential treatment, such as easier access to university.
Or maybe you're using "facism" as a generic word for something you don't like? This is an actual question, not a diss.
As for hypersonic weapons: yes escalating weaponry is not good. But on the other hand, the US is not blameless in this:
"The US Has No Place in the South China Sea Dispute"
https://original.antiwar.com/dave_decamp/2020/07/19/the-us-h...
The US isn't supposed to be sailing warships around in the South China Sea in the first place. How about we all calm down and de-escalate at the same time, rather than trying to demonize a single party?
> When we have no other advantage, what then? Do we implode?
What made America and the west great? It's because of the great many talented individuals, focus on science and technology, investment in education, research and development. Keep doing that. We've been dropping that ball lately, becoming complacent. The west can easily compete with China toe-to-toe if only we get our shit together.
China is not interested in exporting its governance model. It has never done that. There's no evidence it ever will do that. Why should they? It's not in their interest to change others' governance model. China's rise as a superpower is easily the most peaceful one in human history.
China is not an enemy, not a threat. When China and the west come together, the whole world wins.
> The government monitors social media as well for grievances.
I personally know people whose parents were stupid enough to go for such "anonymous grievance boxes" just to get a knock on the door from district committee enforcers the next day.
You don't seem to know anything about modern China if you don't even know that.
> After all, 2 generations ago the Chinese were dirt-poor. When I was born, food rationing still existed!
> mainland Chinese value unity, face, action over talk and freedom from poverty
If Beijing ever cared about freedom from poverty, China wouldn't be so poor as a result of its actions.
And I am not talking about Mao era here, but very much modern day.
> China is not interested in exporting its governance model. It has never done that.
> It's not in their interest to change others' governance model.
Then, why it is doing it?
Beijing sent armed Maoists to Naxalite insurgency, Indonesian Maoist insurgency, Malaysian Maoist insurgency, Singapore coup attempt, North Korea, Nepal, Burma, Laos, Campuchia, Sri Lanka, and ~10 African countries?
> I personally know people whose parents were stupid enough to go for such "anonymous grievance boxes" just to get a knock on the door from district committee enforcers the next day.
Okay, do tell. I'm being genuine here.
If those boxes are anonymous, why do they know who sent it?
What were the grievances? Why would they get in trouble?
What did the district committee enforces actually do?
How long ago was this?
> If Beijing ever cared about freedom from poverty, China wouldn't be so poor as a result of its actions.
> Then, why it is doing it?
That's a long list, let me go into a few.
North Korea is not an example of China exporting its governance model. If North Korea actually follows China's governance model it would be far more open than it is today. What happened is that during the Vietnam war, China allied with North Korea to prevent the Americans from setting up a base at the Chinese border. That's not "exporting governance model".
Naxalite: where's the evidence that this insurgency is supported by China. Just because they're Maoist doesn't mean China did this.
What do African countries have to do with this? Are you talking about this "debt trap" thing? China doesn't want African countries to default. China has even provided debt relief this year, without asking for anything in return.
China hasn't fired a bullet across its borders for over 30 years. That's more than I can say about the current hegemon.
Please don't cross into nationalistic flamewar. I respect and am grateful for how much your HN comments have improved over the years, in terms of sticking to the intended use of the site. And I'm aware that you know a lot about these topics. But your posts in this thread are sliding back into the sort of pattern we're trying to avoid here. Please go the other way.
Please don't bring in someone's posts on other sites as ammunition in an argument here. I know it always feels relevant, but the general case of people behaving this way is very ugly indeed, and we're trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture here.
It's sufficient to reply to what someone has actually posted in this context.
Of course it's ridiculous if you only know China through the media. But have you considered that maybe the media representation is inaccurate? I've actually lived there, my wife comes from there, and my family is still there. This is combined with new information about China coming from the west, and having no restrictions here. I've studied some of China's recent history, a subject which is rarely taught in the west. Why do you think you know the truth better than I do?
> Also, why live in the Netherlands if China is so great? Wouldn't it make sense to move back there, if everything is on the up & up?
Because China wasn't great. I came here in 1993 with my parents, back then China was dirt-poor. My wife came here much more recently, in 2012, and she's of the opinion that the Netherlands is very boring and has no good food compared to China. She'd fly back multiple times a year if she could.
This is a whole different topic. There's a lot to deconstruct and to respond to in just those few sentences you typed, and those few links you sent. I would be glad to engage with you on this subject, but I have to know something first: do you truly wish for a conversation, or do you just want to stick with your existing opinion?
China has problems, but it isn't the boogeyman the media makes it out to be. When the west better understands China, and when the west and China come together, the whole world wins.
I found the greatest offenders of media that portrays China in a poor light are CCTV, xinhua, people’s daily, etc... if you consume those media, you get the impression that China is a backwards authoritarian state with lots of flaws, but of course the truth is more nuanced.
I first visited China in 1999, did a 6 month Chinese course at PKU in 2002, and lived/worked in Beijing from 2007-2016. Frankly, the political situation simply got worse from 2008 on, whereas before it really looked like China was opening up and would continue to do so.
> I found the greatest offenders of media that portrays China in a poor light are CCTV, xinhua, people’s daily, etc... if you consume those media, you get the impression that China is a backwards authoritarian state with lots of flaws, but of course the truth is more nuanced.
You're not their target audience, period.
Also you're molded by Western culture, of course you interpret things differently with your own bias (in a neutral sense).
On the flip side, a lot of Chinese find Western media chaotic, unruly and full of lies, which portray Western society in a poor light. And of course, the truth is more nuanced like you said.
I find your comments interesting because I've lived in Amsterdam for a significant period of time (as well as Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark), and I've intersected with a lot of people who probably have very similar life stories to you! I think the crowd I interact with is probably somewhat different though, because they're mostly crypto/blockchain people.
While I have encountered a fair number of expats who moved to China and regularly visit NL/DE/CH, and rave about how good things are in China, I've also heard the opposite from Chinese friends who moved away.
The issue is very complex, and I don't disagree that China is full of promise. I really would like China to succeed, and I think that co-operation is necessary to fix a lot of the problems that threaten us on a planetary and social scale (climate change, immigration, economics, etc.).
However, I have a very strong distaste for the CCP and really would like to see them dismantled. For this reason, I doubt I will ever visit China, simply because I've been very publicly vocal in this position.
I'd be interested to hear more from you — I think civil discourse is very important. But I also don't have much tolerance for gaslighting, and sadly many pro-China/CCP actors have gotten very good at that.
The thing is, I don't even consider myself particularly pro-CCP. But CCP is the only party that actually advances the interests of Chinese civilization. All the other parties only care about destroying CCP, no matter the negative consequences to Chinese society. Also, half of the reasons people use to oppose the CCP, are either false, or based on twisted half-truths. When I see such unwarranted attacks, how can I not help but feel defensive? It's my and my relatives' future that's at stake.
I don't need everyone to become CCP fans. I'd already be happy if people can see CCP in a more realistic, nuanced manner, rather than a cartoon villain.
> However, I have a very strong distaste for the CCP and really would like to see them dismantled. For this reason, I doubt I will ever visit China, simply because I've been very publicly vocal in this position.
This reminds me of myself more than 10 years ago. Back then I had been indoctrinated by western media and western views of China for 15 years. China is bad, China is communism, China kills people, Mao killed millions, one child policy bad, etc. When at the airport and police stations I saw government workers with those typical hats on, an alarm bell goes off in my head: OMG communism!!!!
But years later, I got married to my Chinese wife. I started having more interactions with Chinese people. I started researching Chinese recent history. I started researching Chinese society. I started talking to westerners actually living in China.
And I found out that a lot of the stuff people here say about the CCP are twisted half-truths, either deliberately or based on misunderstandings due to different culture and values. The Chinese police, rather than brutal enforces, and actually very friendly, don't carry guns, and it's very common for people to quarrel with the police without suffering consequences. Try that in some western countries.
That's an interesting insight — that the CCP is perhaps the best choice of many bad choices (the "lesser evil" as we say in the US). I do understand your perspective, but I respectfully disagree (though I do admit I don't know that much about how China really works).
Of course, China is a developed economy, and there is a lot of really impressive and legitimate industry in China. The hardware markets of Shenzen, the startups in Shanghai, the generally better-educated (than the US) populous. I want to make it clear that I don't hold a cartoonish "China bad" view, and I definitely don't see Chinese people as bad people — I have a lot of them as friends — nor even every member of the CCP as a bad person.
But I think these "attacks" of China aren't that unwarranted. There is something really foul afoot in China, moreso than the US. Perhaps, if the US didn't have such a strong constitution and democratic backing, it would be doing worse things than China. But it isn't, and that's because of the setup of the US government.
The things that really bother me about China are:
1. The invasion of Tibet (everyone seems to have forgotten about this)
2. The Uighur Genocide
3. Well-documented organ harvesting of political dissident groups like Falun Gong
4. The draconian social-credit system
5. The Great Firewall
6. Parts of the "Belt and Road" initiative, particularly landgrabs from poor African farmers
There is very good evidence for each of these points, and the West doesn't have problems like this.
I do see that the US has a lot wrong with it. I also see that Germany and Europe has a lot wrong with it. I also know that media perceptions are often wrong — I'm half German and hold German citizenship, so I know how strange it is to fly between countries and see how distorted media perceptions are on either end.
But China in its current incarnation is, to me, dangerous and scary, and also very promising. I hope we can patch up the past, but we can't do that by being blind to it.
> 1. The invasion of Tibet (everyone seems to have forgotten
about this)
Tibet is strategically important to the Chinese.
It's a major water source and the origin of the Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers. Allowing Tibet to remain independent would mean that India could occupy Tibet, use it as a base for invasion, and cut off China's water supply. There were skirmishes along the Tibet-Indian border earlier this year; it's not a theoretical threat. Any great power would use force under these circumstances.
>But it isn't, and that's because of the setup of the US government.
It has though. For the majority of its existence America had continuously screwed over the Native Americans. In fact, one of the primary reasons for the American revolution was to allow colonists to settle on Native American land. It's only after the natives lost their will to fight when America decided to play nice with them. This is pretty much what happened to Tibet and no doubt is going to happen to Xinjiang.
Sorry to go on a tangent, but gotta say, I'm impressed by the level of civility in the thread, and on this topic in particular. It's a rare sight in these troubled times.
I am kinda interested in the reading the discussion further though. But of course if you feel more comfortable taking it private I'd understand.
It's my goal to discuss civilly. But I'll have to find people who are willing to do that, rather than just wanting to push their views on others and denying that there are alternative legit points of view.
If you're interested, we could discuss privately too. Consider this an invitation to contact me.
> I think these "attacks" of China aren't that unwarranted.
The problem with "attacks" against China is not so much that they are unwarranted, but that, by the time they reach the Western public, they've gone through multiple layers of filtering, stripping them of relevant context. That can cause problems to appear either more widespread or more localized than they actually are.
Case in point:
> invasion of Tibet
Missing context: the invasion of the whole rest of China, partially by means of brutal military campaigns (e.g. Changchun, Taiyuan), partially by local KMT-affiliated warlords realizing that the CCP had the upper hand and switching allegiance. Tibet was an example of the latter, with the lamas remaining in power until the Panchen Lama allied with the central government in a power struggle against the Dalai Lama, causing him to flee into exile.
> Uighur Genocide
Missing context: all non-Uighur people in China who are nonetheless subjected to "reeducation through labor", political indoctrination, birth control (more than 60% (!) of all Chinese women were sterilized to enforce the One Child Policy) and so on.
> organ harvesting of political dissident groups like Falun Gong
Missing context: organ harvesting from non-Falun Gong, non-dissident executed prisoners.
> social-credit system
Missing context: the implementation pretty much failed. The nationwide rollout was originally scheduled for 2020, but the current state is far from the original vision. Both in terms of social scores (only pilot projects in a few cities) and in terms of credit scoring (Private companies like Ant Financial preferring to use their data for their own internal credit scores instead of sharing with the central Baihang Credit). Ironically, Jack Ma claimed in his speech that his company's credit scoring was so good that they shouldn't be required to back their loans with as much capital, but the regulators didn't buy it.
> Great Firewall
Missing context: the large amount of cross-border communication that happens despite of it, both due to not-uncommom use of technical circumvention tools and due to some sites (e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/china ) not being blocked when you'd expect them to be.
> the "Belt and Road" initiative
Missing context: the large amount of "Belt and Road" projects which are not part of any coordinated initiative, but rather an uncoordinated outpouring of Chinese capital in search of higher profits.
Of course the above is not a defense of China, but definitely a criticism of mainstream Western media discourse on China.
And concerning
> the West doesn't have problems like this.
The West did have problems like this, but a) waited them out (territories annexed a hundred years ago, minorities mostly assimilated, natural drop in birth rates) or b) adopted a different solution (organ harvesting from traffic deaths instead of prisoners, established credit scoring agencies, a political system that doesn't totally collapse if information flows freely, impact assessments for infrastructure projects). Most likely, China will solve their problems in a similar way.
I think people on both sides of the border need to acknowledge the limited value of news; not only will it give you a severely distorted lens of reality, but more importantly it is borderline ignoramus behaviour to base your reality of something on news as a source.
> It has been perfectly clear with the Chinese negligence around Covid
Urgh, let me tell you some facts.
On February 1 2020, I travelled from China (not Wuhan) back to the Netherlands, having aborted my holiday early. Wuhan was in lockdown for a week at that point, and my flight to the Netherlands was the very last one I could get. At that point, the WHO also declared global emergency.
I arrived in Germany and the Netherlands. What happened in the airports? No temperature checks or other checks. Nobody who took note of my name for contact tracing. Nothing.
Back in the Netherlands, I called the CDC: can I get tested? Reply: no, not even if I pay for it myself. I ask: do I need to quarantine myself? Reply: nope.
I didn't trust that. Chinese media has been raging for weeks about how infectious and dangerous it was, and that it could be spread asymptomatically. So I voluntarily quarantined myself and my family for 2 weeks. Turned out I wasn't infected.
Up until March or April or so, I saw on tv and newspapers and how multiple western governments called covid just a flu, that we're "well prepared", even criticizing the lockdown in Wuhan as a human rights violation.
You want to talk negligence? Okay, China could have done a better job, but let's say they were earlier by 2 weeks and reported to WHO mid-Dec rather than late-Dec. Would that have changed anything when for months the west totally dismissed the virus as being dangerous, and gleed at China's misfortune?
> and how they treated the doctors that sounded the alarm
Li Wenliang was not jailed. He was reprimanded by the police, and could go back to work the next day. He wasn't the first one: the first doctor who said something was Jiang Jixian, whose work led to the WHO escalation on Dec 31, 1 day after Li Wenliang said something. The Chinese court later ruled that the police's treatment of Li Wenliang was unjustified. The police then apologized.
> the HK issue and with the Uighur concentration camps
These are whole different, and rather complicated topics. I could go into them, but I need to know from you: do you actually want to discuss, or is this meant as a diss to me?
> So you're not behind the great firewall huh? Reminds me of Chinese agents bullying Chinese students in Canada to not badmouth the government
So what? I don't "bully" others for disagreeing with me about China, I talk to them. If you ask me whether those students should bully, then I'd say no: they should discuss. That's something they need to learn.
But the same applies to a great many people in the west, who despite being raised in a free society, prefer to cancel rather than talk.
Still, that doesn't mean that those students' support for China is not genuine or legit.
You raise an important point. We see a lot of criticism of China on Covid despite them being at the forefront of the battlefield. On the other hand, large parts of the world reacted at a snail pace despite having a WHO warning. If we were to follow the same yardstick as China, the rest of the world won’t do well on it.
I don't think it matters that he's reading off of a script. Imagine Bezos in the same situation, do you honestly think he wouldn't delegate the responsibility of speechwriting to his team of publicists?
If none of us heard from Bezos for months and the resurfacing video appeared to be him reading off a script, there would be questions. The optics would be off.
The optics are meant to be off. That he received some kind of detention and punishment by the ccp is meant to be obvious (but they cannot admit to it so it’s just heavily implied)
Yes but he was comparing to how Bezos and Musk appear.
Everyone is not how they normally appear because of the pandemic, and Ma addresses the reason why he's just video taping himself in a room because of this. Stop armchair speculating.
The odd outbreak aside (and Shijiazhuang is nowhere near Hangzhou), lockdowns are long over in China, there's no need for Ma to cower in a basement.
That said, I actually agree with you that the "hurr durr CCP torture cell" comments are overblown. It's entirely plausible that he's keeping a low profile for a while, if likely in response to some rather heavy-handed advice.
My problem is the OP is trying to insinuate things based off pure speculation, cultural bias, and irrelevant details. He may as well have said that there was an excess of red pixels in the video and that means it must be reflections off of communist symbolism in the room.
So yes we are in agreement that the OP's comment is adds no substance to the conversation and is pure "hurr durr CCP torture cell" that just furthers the stereotypes of China.
No, we're not in agreement on that. It's clear that Ma's dress & appearance in the video was distinctly at odds with his own usual profile, no need for any stereotypes or comparisons to other people.
He upgraded from sweatpants to khakis. I think people are over reading the situation. All the usual factors that gets someone disappeared is not present with Ma's current faux pas.
Yes but he (OP) was specifically comparing to how Bezos and Musk appear and insinuating that someone from the Chinese culture must present themselves in the same way or there must be foul play.
Just to clarify, I'm not really in a position to analyze the meaning behind his current attire and choice of background relative to his past, so I'll take your word on your analysis of that.
It's about the status of people in the video and the general expectation of public of how they usually presented themselves. People of this caliber usually comes up with carefully craft image, along with good production. It's the same no matter where you live or born.
The Bezos and Gates example is just that, and example of famous people that we familiar with and that's it.
Your assertion doesn't even apply in Western culture, let alone generalization across cultures you probably know nothing about.
Most people would consider Elon to be eccentric, Paul Graham to not look like traditional VC, and these superficial aspects are frankly irrelevant. So why is it ok to use that to insinuate stereotypes and hand-wavy assertions of malfeasance.
Perhaps for you there is no consequence, but much like calling the coronavirus the "China virus", you're doing cultural damage by spreading negative stereotypes via fabricated or insinuated purely speculative assertions. The stereotype here is that China is associated with as some dystopian backwards society that has done no favors for its citizenry, which may or may not be true, but is definitely not defended by any objective evidence presented by the OP.
To flip the scenario, imagine if some random people from China commented about how the US elections seems like there was rampant fraud, without much supporting evidence. By lending credence to something without any concrete evidence you give it some air of legitimacy. When you do so by purely speculating on non-important things you've entered the realm of purely pushing an agenda with no substance.
> The stereotype here is that China is associated with as some dystopian backwards society that has done no favors for its citizenry
I think people are mostly just trying to figure out what is going on with one of the richest/most powerful people in the world. There's not a lot of evidence to go on, so any scrap is potentially relevant. In your view, what are the best theories for his behavior?
And this isn't just an academic or social exercise; Alibaba jumped billions due to this appearance.
OP is taking scraps and extrapolating completely out of proportion. I am simply pointing out his extrapolation is out of proportion. Just because there is a lack of info doesn't mean you should make up random things and give them credence.
Assuming the standards of appearance for public figures are based on specific people from America of specific ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
I mean if I video conferenced with you right now you'd probably speculate I've been coopted by Communist powers because simply because my background isn't up to your standards (it'd be of a water heater and radon pipes since I'm in the basement).
Ok, but I didn't say that because he's Chinese, rather because he's a person of power and a multi-billionaire, and I was comparing him to other such people (not specifically Americans).
It may be unintentional, but you ultimately did end up comparing his appearance to the standard of two other people that happened not to be Chinese, but also using this as the premise for a theory of foul play. What if his appearance ends up having nothing to do with it? Then it ends up just being insulting, especially if culturally his appearance is considered normal.
Nothing to do with his appearance, but with his surroundings and things like his video quality. It's also just one observation of a number of very odd things — the oddest thing being that a multibillionaire has reappeared after 3 months of disappearance without making a mention of it! Especially after such widespread speculation, if there were nothing going on, you'd think he'd care to comment "hi everyone, I've just been on vacation," or something innocuous like that.
With all due respect, you are presumably also not the multibillionaire CEO of one of the world's largest Internet companies.
If I saw Zuck, Satya or Sundar do a video conference looking like they're chained to the radiator in somebody's basement, I'd also be kinda concerned. (At least for the latter two. Zuck, maybe not so much.)
With all due respect if we judged people by their appearances we'd have discredited Paul Graham long ago for eschewing the traditional VC outfit.
The OP's comments about the appearance of the video is completely irrelevant and merely serving to throw speculative shade. For what it's worth, something probably did happen but his choice of webcam + background probably has nothing to do with it, but rampant speculation and false information is how we lead to the capital riots.
While the idea of gulags and "re-education camps" pervade Western perceptions of Chinese life, the reality is that conformity and centralized government is probably more dull than you think.
Telling that the Global Times (CPC-affiliated media) refers to him as the "former executive chairman of #Alibaba", and that he's making the video from some "rural teacher-themed social welfare event".
This isn't what normally happens to billionaire corporate executives, unless they've been convicted of violating the law.
Good point — the whole matter really is quite strange, whatever one believes about China/the CPC aside. It does seem there's an established pipeline for this sort of "deplatforming" that the CPC has gotten very adept at pushing high-status people through.
Most CEOs will read from a PR script at opening ceremonies for events and conferences. Apparently - as mentioned in the article and clarified in other comments here - it was a PR moment in a charitable event he’s been doing for a while.
That video looks strange to me - either it is a green screen or it has some compression artefacts that I have not seen before (or perhaps something else).
Yeah dude. The Chinese are so technologically advanced, that they built an AI robot that looks exactly like the real Jack Ma.
The real Jack Ma is getting his kidneys harvested right now, because apparently, that’s what the CCP does to their own citizens (according to western media).
FLG affiliated china tribunal / ETAC is propaganda on par with epochetimes / qanon in terms of credibility. They launder their claims via US NGOs to MSM - turducken of creating misinformation. Prior to current China/FVEY spat, formal government level investigations by AU/US have found FLG sponsored reports to be non-credible.
At this time, Chinese political structure was _thoroughly_ infiltrated by CIA assets. There's also orthogonal indicators like amount of immuno-suppressant drugs in Chinese market cannot support a vast shadow organ harvesting system like FLG claims. There's a reason no credible institutions without FLG sponsorship have ever endorsed these findings. Including Mike Pompeo, at the urging for US lawmakers no less, who got drunk on FLG/epochtime coolaid. There's a special tier of ridiculous claims when even Pompeo can't spin it against China. FLG organ harvesting / vivisection has always been atrocity porn for useful idiots. It shouldn't be surprising these narratives are finally gaining traction during a period where media landscape is generating loads of them, when epochetimes is the #1 news paper on the appstore.
I say this as someone with several FLG family members who was prosecuted in China, they are delusional cultists. Everything is peaceful and good intensions until they convince themselves not to seek medical advice and dies from completely preventable illnesses.
Uh, should they be prosecuted or persecuted for holding cultist views or not seeking medical treatment? I don't think so, maybe you do. If so, we have irreconcilable differences...
Also — I didn't know the Epoch Times was the #1 newspaper in the App Store. I'm definitely not on that side of the political spectrum, if that's your worry. My concerns about China come more from a progressive perspective. That said, I do think the treatment of Falun Gong in China is atrocious, and I have some Falun Gong friends/acquaintances in the Netherlands (perhaps a bias).
You can find repression is immoral without wholesale endorsing fake narratives from questionable sources. I have very nice friends who are antivax, does not mean I endorse their views from infowars. FLG is no different. They're the one dissident group where human right lawyers in China, who risk their necks for a variety of causes, still could not corroborate their fantastic claims. Sometimes friends/acquaintances/family believe fake things, which is even less wild if said belief stems from being in a cult.
Black market organ trading is real problem but also stop gap solution in China, a country with abysmally low organ donation rates that's improving since reforms. Reference per capita transplant rate, China is 1/4 of west, however large the market, it isn't enough to provide even parity availability, not to mention large numbers goes towards transplant tourism for western customers who never seem to get appropriate denouncement from FLG despite their massive discourse power. It takes two to tango.
At the end of the day, there are irreconcilable priorities and moral calculus due to differences in culture and development. CN transplant system is moving in the right direction - FLG didn't convince west to stop getting transplants in China, CCP had to legislate against when the time was right. Things improve incrementally, otherwise FLG would need to resurrect long debunked accusations to suit their agenda.
The battle for science and research talent is probably the biggest silent battle that's ever gone on, and the general public is completely unaware.
I really, really hope the new administration has someone who cranks up the "brain drain agenda" to 10. The only challenge is doing so without importing too many spies or covert actors — and that's a REAL challenge. Perhaps it would be easier to aggressively brain-drain China's allies (not that there are any I can think of)...
I was quite shocked that an opthamologist at a clinic I regularly visit resigned after being ousted as a member of the Thousand Talents Program, here in San Diego [0].
Yeah somebody just calls you up basically and talks about how they have this great company/opportunity and emphasizes that they have close ties to the local government.
I generally stay out of speculation and fear mongering, but the fact that your comment has been repeatedly - and quickly - downvoted worries me.
The CEO of a $600B global publicly traded company disappeared for several months. This does not explicitly mean that he was detained, but it should be a point of concern.
Imagine the outcry if this happened to an American CEO with controversial political opinions (there are a lot of them, so take your pick).
> I generally stay out of speculation and fear mongering, but the fact that your comment has been repeatedly - and quickly - downvoted worries me.
You should take a look at my post history, then. Any time I express concern over China I'm voted into oblivion.
It's the same with Apple, but that I expect.
Recently I think someone has taken to downvoting entirely innocuous posts I make from my post history. Sometimes I'll post replies to day-old threads and find myself downvoted within half an hour.
Just wanted to say I've seen you around HN and respect your principles on this front. Would love to get in touch, contact info is in my profile or I can send you a message if your profile Gmail is accurate.
>Sometimes I'll post replies to day-old threads and find myself downvoted within half an hour.
This has also been happening on Reddit threads where people post comments critical of China. Top level comments are critical, but then far down the thread, low visibility comments suddenly swing aggressively upward or downward by dozens of votes if they relate to China.
We (the UK) have already created a fast and easy path to citizenship for BNO citizens in Hong Kong. I don't think it's practical or desirable to do the same for the 1.4 billion citizens of the PRC though.
that helps the chinese people how? i mean i see the benefit for americans, but how do you propose to get people in china to support this?
if this view is commonly held by westerners then doesn't this just give the CCP more legitimacy?
One could also apply this the other way around – when the "disappearance" started getting news coverage, why not just pop up to say hi? Did he really miss all that news coverage about his own disappearance? Occam's razor might suggest there's a reason why he didn't.
My guess, applying this both ways, is that he's been ill or having some treatment or been in hospital, and that perhaps if it was bad, the calculation came out that disappearance rumours were better than "Jack Ma on his death bed" stories.
I agree with dang's comment re nationalistic flamewar comments, but then I wonder why is this news article even allowed to appear on HN front page for so long and not being flagged by the admins? There is no substance in this news report which is interesting beyond the usual nationalistic flame wars and conspiracy theories or have I missed something?
If it wasn't for the 'nationalistic flamewar' comments this article would still be a classic HN link; news over a buisiness leader that started the biggest IPO and then regulatory influence came along. regardless of where you fall on the debate, I think we're all interested and are going to follow Jack Ma's next steps.
Maybe Ma was just trying to stay out of the limelight[0] until the investigation of Ant Financial settled down a bit. He also owns SCMP[1], which has a mix of supportive and critical articles on the central government. Assuming he wanted to throw some pressure, in the mild form of (probably mostly disregarded) external censure back on the investigation, he may have been passive aggressively refusing to show his face. Perhaps to sow suspicion he'd been mysteriously detained in order to draw (Western) media scrutiny, and the "inevitable" torrent of China-critical speculation that invites. Of course, it could also be an Elon Musk-style stock manipulation play, but I think he's more motivated by the passions than pure financials.
Speculation is fun, but it's possible this is apophenia.
[0]no pun intended, he does like to dress up in camp drag and sing, if you don't believe, search for the videos, it's pretty funny for an (ex) CEO to do this
Please don't do nationalistic flamewar on HN, regardless of what other people do. This is supposed to be a site for curious conversation across differences, even when the differences are deep and wide. High-indignation rhetoric makes that impossible.
Hi dang. I understand. It wasn't my intention to start a nationalistic flamewar, I'm just hoping to get people to understand China better so that the west and China can come together, which benefits everyone. But looking back at my comment, I can see how some of my pent-up frustration with past comments can come over as gaslighting. I'll be more mindful of this in the future.
> In the last Hacker News thread, people were so sure that the government jailed him for criticizing the party. Even though there was no evidence of such, people just assumed it MUST be true because the CCP MUST be evil.
That's because in any other moderately functioning country, it takes at most a few phone calls by journalists to clarify the matter: "Excuse me, billionaire Mr. X hasn't been seen for days. Could you verify if the police arrested him?" "Oh really? We have no record of such an arrest - in any case, arresting someone like him will generate five hundred tweets within minutes, wouldn't it?" "You're absolutely right, have a good day!"
There's only one other country where I've seen high-profile figures just "disappearing" regularly: North Korea.
i mean that's the point isn't it, in all the news about jack ma's disappearance, has any journalist tried to clarify the matter? NO, it's all speculation and journalists trying to create a narrative.
So, jack ma has only disappeared in this magical world created by western media.
Journalists could certainly do a much better job with the data already available. For example, there's the actual underlying financial issue: the way Ant Group handled money is very risky, but they want to be regulated as a tech company instead of as a financial institution. This has the potential to cause a huge financial bubble.
Even if there's some merit to the accusation that Jack Ma got into trouble for criticizing, I think the regulatory issue at least deserves some investigation, or explanation. But very few journalists chose to cover this; pretty much everybody went all-in on the "Jack Ma got into trouble" angle.
If we are talking about the disappearance, I think the issues you describe are separate from the issue of whether Ma was being involuntarily detained. And that is the question - "Ma got into trouble" could mean a lot of things.
Even if it's separate, does that warrant a near-complete lack of interest in the other issues, which are at least strongly related, even if it's just to provide context? I think it's quite irresponsible to cover things from a single angle only, which paints a caricature.
I'm not sure there is a lack of interest in the financial issue in general; but why do you say it's strongly related, or relevant context? Why would regulatory/financial issues with Ant be related to Mas apparent disappearance?
Here are some possibilities based on my limited knowledge of the topic:
* Because being involved with a "scandal" in such a way is an embarrassment to Jack Ma. He lost face and is ashamed to see people for a while. This is a much bigger cultural issue in China than in the west. He wants emotions around him to die down a bit.
* The regulators were asleep. Or maybe there was corruption, and an IPO which should have been stopped, almost wasn't, until Jack woke up sleeping dogs. Maybe a few people in the regulatory body have been sacked for not pulling the brakes earlier.
I believe that if Ant didn't actually violated regulatory concerns, that Jack Ma would've been in a lot less trouble.
I honestly can't see how they aren't strongly related, or how such things aren't equally interesting. It's like reporting "Trump got in trouble with the tax authority after having insulted the tax authority boss" (implying that the tax authority is "evil" and merely bullying Trump), without covering whether the tax authority actually found tax crimes that Trump is guilty of.
This comment is doing exactly the thing it accuses others of doing: not understanding and painting with too wide a brush.
Of course on a forum you are simultaneously going to find large swathes of people that take on seemingly contradicting viewpoints. Interpreting that to mean that all participants in these discussions are hypocrites or anti-China is either an emotional reaction or a failure to consider the truth of diversity on a forum.
Some people view high profile Chinese business people to effectively be extensions of the Chinese political class. Look at what happened to Canada after they arrested Meng Manzhou for the rationale behind these views. The success of a Chinese company in a foreign market should be considered as a potential security risk for any security analyst that still knows the meaning of the word dilligence. Whether it is only potential or actuality is another matter.
As for lying low, some people are still hoping to hear from the panchen lama; it is totally rational for people to consider that China will arrest critics or people it views as risks and that those people may never be heard from again or their apparent freedom may be staged. There are many other examples. People in the West have a concept of due process that the government--and perhaps the people--of China does not seem to accept as reasonable or necessary.
All of these views are possible to hold simultaneously with varying degrees of nuance, and certainly some people hold some or none of these views again with varying degrees of nuance. There is an understanding of China and how China does not necessarily share some things viewed as ideals by some participants here. There is no West vs China, because "the West" is not a unified set of ideals or viewpoints, as any cursory survey of views on healthcare, military, the treatment of Assange, etc. will quickly reveal.
> Look at what happened to Canada after they arrested Meng Wanzhou for the rationale behind these views.
The Chinese government treated the arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a political issue because it was clearly tied to the US trade war, and more generally to the US government's attempts to undermine the Chinese tech sector (which we see from the ever-widening US sanctions against Chinese tech companies). Donald Trump himself even suggested that the US might drop the prosecution of Meng Wanzhou in exchange for Chinese concessions on trade.
If what you are saying is true, then why target random Canadians traveling through China? If you want to exert political pressure on the USA, then you should put political pressure on the USA. The USA doesn't care what happens to random Canadians getting arrested in China as a political reprisal.
The truth is that many more Canadians would have been sympathetic towards China and Meng--some people for the reasons you are stating--nd would have argued against the extradition (in the same grain that UK people are arguing against the extradition of Assange) if the government of China had not decided to retaliate against Canada. US sanctions against Iran are a topic for discussion in Canada, Canada doesn't stand up to Iranian sanctions as much as against Cuban sanctions, but support for doing business with Iran exists in Canada.
Most of that support for Meng evaporates when you get attacked by a foreign government for following the rule of law. The takeaway for a lot of people is that the government of China will retaliate against countries that "mistreat" their CEOs. Hence considering them as security risks.
> Most of that support for Meng evaporates when you get attacked by a foreign government for following the rule of law.
This was the message that was pretty relentlessly propagated in the media in Canada, but the reality is that the extradition of Meng Wanzhou has little to do with the rule of law. It's being done because the political and economic relationship with the US is too important to risk. The Chinese government is trying to show the Canadian government that there's a cost to going along with the US when the US tries to take Chinese executives hostage for its trade negotiations with China. From the Chinese perspective, if this extradition goes through without any retaliation, then Chinese executives abroad will be increasingly targeted by the US in order to put pressure on China.
China's attempts to put pressure on Canada have backfired politically. But equally, the Trudeau government was incredibly unwise to allow Meng Wanzhou to be arrested in the first place. They could have done any number of things to avoid being placed in this situation, such as "failing" to arrest her or letting the existence of the warrant leak beforehand. When the US requested that Hong Kong extradite Snowden, Hong Kong rejected the initial request due to supposed minor technical defects, giving Snowden enough time to get on a plane. But now Canada will have to very publicly go against either the US or China.
> people just assumed it MUST be true because the CCP MUST be evil.
Whether or not assertions about Ma's whereabouts are true or false, the conclusion holds in either case. The predicate for westerners is largely, yes, the CCP is evil. But most aren't so reductionist as to say, that means {random bad thing} happened to Ma.
Intentional or not, the phrasing reads like a defense of the CCP -- because regardless of the CCP's actions towards Ma, the CCP has historically gone through with some internationally questionable acts. Or that, because the CCP didn't do anything bad to Ma, the CCP isn't bad. It's the phrasing that's concerning, and it taints the interpretation of rest of the comment. That's how Westeners will read this.
I'm not sure "just laying low" is all that reassuring to anyone. The specifics of 'jail' or something else really isn't what anyone is concerned about.
People do not assume that CCP is evil. If you have literal concentration camps ("re-education) then you are evil. Simple as that. I do not even understand how is this even a discussion, and how are people so blatantly willing to defend CCP.
But the thing is they don't have literal concentration camps. For one, 50+ muslim countries testified this in the UN. An UN counterterrorism expert visited Xinjiang and wrote a favorable report.
You explicitly went to bat for the CCP regarding their treatment of Taiwan some time ago. That you are pro-CCP is fine just be transparent about it.
And yes, there are camps and yes, those camps are hurting people psychologically / physically. We’ve had several interviews with refugees who have escaped to date, as well as photos and videos of the conditions.
I don't deny there are camps. I deny there are concentration camps with the intention to murder people. Big difference.
I don't say all camps are good. I don't say nobody is being ill-treated. I'm sure there are incidents. But I deny that it's a mass concentration camp with the intention of murdering 2 million people. Big difference.
All the interviews with people who say there are concentration camps, are with Uyghur separatists who have ties with extremist members. The very same people that just a few years ago the US would have labeled as terrorists. Don't you think their answers would be biased? Look at the track record of North Korean dissidents, it's been proven again and again that they have an incentive to lie and that not everything they say can be 100% trusted. What makes you think Uyghur dissidents are different?
Heck, for years I've heard stories about Falun Gong being painted as wholly-innocent people who are wrongly prosecuted by the CCP. But now, the New York Times exposed them as spreaders of pro-Trump misinformation. This is another example that shows that people who are in conflict with the CCP, are not automatically trustworthy or honest people. Yes maybe the CCP's treatment on them is wrong, but two things can be true at the same time: CCP could be wrong to treat them like that, AND they could be untrustworthy or have a evil agenda of their own.
Even this point is discussed extensively in the video.
If you're gonna argue whether China's anti-terrorism efforts use too broad sweeps and is heavy-handed, fine, I don't disagree with that. What I do disagree with, is that it's a genocide/enslavement of 2+ M people or whatever the made-up count is today.
You mentioned Taiwan. Whatever I spoke about here on HN about Taiwan is neither in support of the mainland position on Taiwan, nor against it. I was just providing perspective so that people gain a more accurate understanding of the issue. Perhaps you think CCP is "the enemy" and their perspective is automatically invalid. No I don't agree with that.
I don't consider myself pro-CCP. You're not gonna find me in agreement with the great firewall policy for example. But that doesn't mean I need to be necessarily against everything they say/do either.
No, people who don't oppose CCP at every turn, are not pro-CCP. As I said: I'm pushing back against people who are against China for the wrong reasons.
There is no need to be pedantic about technical or legal definitions. We all know that the word 'concentration camp' is used to conjure up images of Nazis killing jews en masse. But I'm arguing they're not killing/enslaving Uyghurs en masse. I base this on my own research and sources.
If you go by the more flexible definition of 'large number of people in a small room' regardless of what actually happens to them: I can't independently verify how large rooms are but I agree that people should be treated as humanely as possible.
But in all of this, you've completely neglected the fact that China has reeducation camps (real reeducation camps, not "reeducation camps" in quotes) is because of terrorism influences from Afghanistan. If you watch the video I provided, there's a testimony that says that the US were in Afghanistan in order to make use of Uyghur extremists to destabilize China. What is China supposed to do, do nothing and let people continue to walk around with bombs and machetes? China isn't doing all this just for fun, terrorism is a real problem that has no good solution without collateral damage.
> We all know that the word 'concentration camp' is used to conjure up images of Nazis killing jews en masse.
There's a really important point here about holocaust denial. We need to make sure that people understand some of the camps were extermination camps, and that some of the camps were work camps. This is because anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists will point to the work camps and say "See? No evidence of people being killed in this camp. That 6 million number doesn't make any sense."
Concentrations camps aren't just about mass murder. They're a human rights violation and we rightly draw attention to this by using the correct terms.
Some people go to prison for being extremists. Some people go to mandatory reeducation for being extremists. Some people are wrongly convicted, with the prosecutor not having done its job well, and that's wrong. But you can't compare mandatory forced reeducation (like a super-boarding school for adults), and instances of lazy prosecutors, to concentration camps; that's a totally different level of crime that's not even in the same ballpark.
You just conjured up the word "holocaust denial". Not sure whether you are implying I am like a holocaust denier. But don't you think that such a serious accusation, requires serious evidence? So far I haven't seen you addressing any of the actual content that my sources discuss.
Again, if you argue whether people should be treated as humanely as possible, then I agree. But you can't brush terrorism and the US involvement in Afghanistan, under a carpet and pretend like they're not relevant and like they're wholly-independent issues. Again: what else is China supposed to do? It's easy to say "choice x is bad" without considering whether there are better choices. Has anybody found a better solution to terrorism? Even France is now talking about things very similar to Chinese reeducation camps.
Do you also denounce the US war on terror as an equally, if not bigger human rights violation? Do you believe the US deserves the same treatment as the one you think China should receive? If you do then I'll believe you are arguing in good faith, because selectively enforcing human rights is how it is weaponized nowadays.
> You're wrong, there are, and this is well established.
You're wrong, you conveniently refuse to acknowledge the UN visit which said otherwise, and the muslim countries who testified otherwise. You conveniently ignore addressing the many other sources I cite that indicate otherwise. You are closing your eyes and supporting a false atrocity.
> Here's what China says is extremist:
I literally said that cases of wrong conviction exist and that I condemn wrong convictions. I literally said that I don't agree with their way of using too broad strokes. In your zeal to see nazis everywhere, you completely ignore everything I said that indicates otherwise.
While spending so much time accusing me, you still refuse to condemn the US war on terror and literal concentration camps at the US border. Now why's that?
You can claim that you are not pro-CCCP, but when you reject the clear evidence provided by numerous well respected an neutral news organizations that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are being locked up in camps without committing a crime and without a trial, simply because thegrayzone.com calls it U.S. "propaganda", you are being pro-CCCP in your actions, regardless of what you proclaim.
You need to understand,the people in German concentration camps were accused of betraying the German state, supporting terrorism, or hurting Germany and its people. The German government did not say "we are taking all the Jews and gassing them", they said they were taking criminals, traitors, and their sympathizers, and sending them to re-education camps where we will use labor to re-educate them.
> During 1933-34 some 100 concentration camps existed throughout Germany, and more than 100,000 detainees went through them. The purpose of the camps was correctional because detainees of "Aryan blood" were to be "re-educated" by means of violence and hard discipline, slave labor and propaganda in order to make them give up earlier ideas and beliefs and merge into the conformist “Volksgemeinschaft” or "people's community," which the Nazis proclaimed.
It was not until later that the extermination was really ramped up, and it was not until after the war that the full scope of the genocide was revealed. And as another commenter pointed out, there actually were multiple different types of camps, some which were labor camps (such as auschwitz), and some which were extermination camps (such as sobibor).
Now, you claim to be arguing that the re-education camps are not concentration camps, but the plain words of your argument make it clear that you agree that the re-education camps indeed fit the definition of a concentration camp. Instead, you seem to mainly be arguing that concentration camps are not necessarily so bad, since they don't involve literally mass murdering Muslims, and that they are actually necessary (??), so you prefer not to call them concentration camps since it has bad associations.
But understand that yes, it is entirely appropriate to compare the Chinese concentration camps to the Nazi ones, because just on the basis of the description you gave of the Chinese concentration camps, they match the description of the camps as understood by the German public at the time, and some prisoners actually were treated in that way.
> when you reject the clear evidence provided by numerous well respected an neutral news organizations that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are being locked up in camps without committing a crime and without a trial, simply because
"well-respected and neutral news organizations"? Adrien Zenz publically admitted that the BBC paid him to write a bad report about Uyghurs! Again, watch the video and see the evidence.
Why do you glance over the fact that the UN, another well-respected organization, visited and reported favorably?
I won't let you define who I am. I have a say in that. Seems to me more like you're so fanatically anti-China that you can't help but label everyone who's not as zealous, as "pro-CCP". This is a false dichotomy.
No, I don't support literal concentration camps. No I'm not arguing that actual concentration camps shouldn't be called as such because that sounds bad. I'm arguing that the standard for evidence should be very high because it's a very serious accusation, and that this standard hasn't been met! Until the evidence is clear, it's irresponsible to assume there are concentration camps.
You keep trying to link me back to nazis and keep painting me as a concentration camp supporter, but you keep avoiding 60% of the arguments I put forth (where I showed ahain and again how problematic your sources are), focussing instead on a few strawmans.
Do you think my concerns are like pro-Nazi Germans worried about their image? Don't you remember Iraq and the non-existant WMDs? The result of that is a literal genocide by the hands of the US and its allies! Weapons manufacturers are cooking up consent for a war with China. They've deceived us again and again; see earlier instances: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin... and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
How long will you let yourself and your zeal to see nazis everywhere, to be used to cause actual atrocities?
So I ask you again: do you denounce the US war on terror? Do you denounce the verifiable concentration camps at the US border? Are you really arguing in good faith?
No, words have meaning, you don't get to turn the meanings to suit whatever you wish it is just because you don't want to accept another reality.
Going with that sort of attitude I can accuse you of supporting literal genocide and concentration camps, because you refuse to denounce the war on terror and the camps at the border.
Are you just saying that people are making wild assumptions on the basis that the CCP is evil, or that "the CCP is evil" is also an unsubstantiated assumption as well?
> things in China are far more complex and nuanced
sure, but these comments are anti-CCP, not anti-China/Chinese; it's a problem if the two are considered synonymous.
> Maybe there's an alternative point of view than "CCP is evil" that is at least just as valid.
Is there an alternative point of view than "the Nazi regime is evil"? You can undermine any reasonable assumption by invoking Descartes daemon, at that point you're just gaslighting people.
> See Cyrus Janssen's blog
from that post:
In China it’s always important to remain (低调 Dīdiào) or “low-key”.
There is not much he can say after being chastened for thinking he is above the greater good. A little humbling is good for an inflated ego.
What's missing is an explanation for these. A "cultural" reason implies mere social influence, and self-imposed behaviour. But it doesn't explicitly say that - given the topic of discussion, that's pretty suspicious.
The question is; what happens when people ignore the "greater good", and refuses to remain low-key?
Pray tell me, what is the benign reason for all the territorial aggression that China is showing? Is the West supposed to ignore all that and the 'whole world will win'?
There is a very obvious anti-China sentiment on Reddit, where you barely see any post with good news about China, where any news coming out of China is seen as CCP propaganda, and pro-China comments are downvoted and accused of being shills for the CCP. I'm disappointed to see the same trend on HN, even if it's not as bad.
In your thinking, how is Jack Ma's reappearance "good news"? Doesn't that imply that he was potentially in danger, or taken "out of commission," and it's reassuring that he's not dead or in jail?
This sort of conversation would never take place if a high-profile US executive like Bezos, Musk, or Gates disappeared for months after criticizing the government, and reappeared without making any mention of it. People would be freaking out and we would already have 500+ investigative journalists on the case, articles all over the place, widespread speculation... In China, it seems all of those are disallowed.
If anything, this seems to be pro-China hypocrisy, not the other way around.
When you employ propaganda on a massive scale nobody who knows about it is ever going to take your words seriously again, even if you are actually speaking the truth in that instance. The existance of the 50 Cent Army makes every positive comment about China dubiuos.
I know. But I'm way past the point of being scared of that, or even caring. As a Chinese person I was scared of being lynched by the mob for speaking up (ironic isn't it, this is the so-called "free society" but apparently it only applies when you agree with the mob), but now I just think the truth must come out, and someone must push back against this insane, evidence-free anti-China hysteria.
Notice that I'm not even saying "CCP good". I just say "it's nuanced and complex, there are alternative points of view". Which is what most things in reality are. But when it comes to China, people will only allow simplifiying it to a cartoon villain.
The issue with China is not China specific or CCP specific, the issue is Xi and how he's clearly playing directly from Putin's playbook to the detriment of world stability.
A lot of people are not interested in understanding or cooperation when it comes to China.
They want a confrontation so much that they would rather entertain completely made up speculation (it is a deep fake, recorded from prison ...) than something rooted in actual reality.
I think it sticks deep and it leads us, the west, down a dark path.
Banking is a regulated industry in all parts of the world as modern fractional banking is essential a form of legalised pyramid scheme. If it is not regulated will inevitable oscillate and collapse.
That Ant Financial need to be regulated like bank, rather than any other company, naturally follows from the nature of its business.
The regulative crackdown on it would have happened in any other country as well. Maybe not in exactly the same manner but in substance.
Indeed. People have too strong conviction on what is right and what is wrong, and they don't want to change their opinion. The internet echo chamber only amplifies that.
> Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares jumped to finish 8.5% higher on the news
Together with the geopolitics surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the public disappearance [1] of Jack Ma may turn out to be a key turning point for the modern Chinese state.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
There have been ugly mob behaviors on this site in the past, which have hounded people out of the community. Is that who you want to be? who we want to be? No it is not. Yet it happens all too easily, and the people doing it don't even realize that they're doing it—they just think they're righteously defending truth or freedom or the home team. If you don't want to be that way, then err on the side of respect, benefit of the doubt, and not jumping to predetermined conclusions. (If you do want to be that way, please find some other site to post to.)
We ban accounts that break these rules, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended. It has a very specific intended spirit and most of the people who've posted in this thread so far have been breaking it.