I was just showing what was wrong with the saying.Real Slavery vs. Modern "Slavery" in China &
Net Benefit of Today's China Trade
What "rising tide"? Once you concede that the rising tide happens, you also concede the possibility of the boats being unfastened from the seabed. Untying a boat from the seabed is an easier feat to accomplish than causing the tide to rise.A rising tide doesn't lift a boat tied to the seabed.Maybe the precise level of "slavery" is the same today. However, the living standard of everyone in China is higher today than 60 years ago as a result of trade with the West, and so trade with the U.S. has made everyone in China better off, including any "slave" workers there, of any nationality or culture or religion. (And has also made all Americans better off.)
(Is this poetry & metaphors contest really necessary?)
And trade does nothing to untie boats from the seafloor.
I am comparing how they have fared with how the rest of the Chinese have fared. They're the ones under the same government.It's all relative. How bad off are they? compared to whom? Aren't there many other oppressed populations? Should we boycott every country in the world which has an oppressed minority group in it? Almost every poor country is doing something oppressive toward someone in the population. E.g., many migrants to the U.S. from Central America where they were mistreated.1) Why are you comparing them to other populations?What's the evidence that Tibetans and Uighurs today are any worse off than they were before 1970? or any worse off than the average Africans today? or most other poor populations? Haitians? Vietnamese? Cambodians? Bangladeshis?
You're measuring it all in economics. I'm looking at the repression.Back before China trade. Maybe change the exact year. At some point back there we began a significant increase in trade with China. And all the economies improved as a result of that increased trade, both in China and the West. Where's the evidence that conditions for Uighurs and Tibetans got worse since then because of that increased trade? How is trading with them to blame, or how did this trade somehow cause those populations to suffer some setback different than before? making them worse off than they would have been otherwise?2) Why 1970?
We don't know. The point is the government goes to considerable effort to ensure visitors do not get to talk to many of the locals.Whatever this horrible "truth" is -- crimes against Tibetans etc. -- what does it have to do with trade with the U.S. or other western countries? How is this trading to blame for it? How is this evil magically cured by means of boycotts and embargoes and punitive trade barriers?3) "Evidence": I love mountains (even though I won't consider climbing anything that's not just a walk-up), Tibet is a place I would like to visit. I'm sure my wife would go for some of the ancient temples, also. (She likes ancient buildings that are still in good shape -- even though obviously they are renovated to approximate what they were like back then.) At the time of year we typically visit a trip to Tibet is unlikely to be permitted. Even when trips are permitted an escort is required for pretty much everything other than Lhasa. That's making sure the truth doesn't get out.
The problem is you are mixing up business contact with social contact. China wants the former but seeks to minimize the latter. In Tibet to the point you need a political escort. Uyghur country is bad enough it's recommended not to go--even before the State department put China at travel advisory level 3.More trade with a country serves to increase the openness, increase the contact with the outside, expose both populations to more knowledge of those from other cultures than their own. If anything happened that cut off contact and information, it could not have been an increase in trade with the West. As more trade is encouraged, there's also increased business and profits for both the populations. This encourages incentives to increasing the information and knowledge to locals and outsiders. Blaming those who invest and expand their business to new markets, hating them for wanting to make more profit, is not based on a concern to improve people's lives, but on hating the capitalists per se, and scapegoating them because of ideological prejudice.The existence of such escorts makes it pretty clear there's stuff they feel they need to hide. (Note that this is different than what Nepal has recently done with mandating local guides for hikers. That's a combination of a tax and that they don't like the bad publicity when people go where they shouldn't and die. It's shielding people from the wilderness, not shielding them from the locals.)
You're still mixing up business with social.So we need boycotts and embargoes and sanctions against anyone in the world who is "hiding" something? How does that make anyone better off? or reduce their instinct to hide something? Is this punishment of them going to change them, or expose/thwart some insidious Conspiracy going on there which threatens our survival?4) Evidence: The security procedures for visiting Uyghur territory are too intrusive for my taste -- and as a foreigner they aren't nearly as onerous as for the locals. Again, why the precautions if they aren't hiding anything?
In general, more trading between cultures leads to increased knowledge between them, and improved interactions and reduction of the barriers. The pro-democracy movement in China was partly inspired by the increased trade with the West, happening when "precautions" against people, suppressing human rights was the worst ever.
If you don't understand what I mean you don't understand the problem.Whatever this refers to, how is it somehow corrected by imposing boycotts, embargoes, sanctions onto trade going on there? Is anything suspicious going on made 10 times worse because it's happening in China? What if it's in India instead? Hasn't India done some underhanded insidious acts against Sikhs? If you visit some Sikh friends in India, should you assume the government there spies on you, hacks your devices, infects your computer with malware? The government of India hates the Sikhs, conspires against them and even murders some of them.If I were to visit I would assume my hardware was compromised.
I would assume that my phone and computer would forever be open to snooping by Chinese State Security. If you're a big enough fish (say, Fortune 100) you figure that for all of China. (They normally have dedicated hardware for taking to China. Use that, put on it only what you actually need and never deal with sensitive stuff. The machines are wiped when you get back but even then are not to be trusted.) As a little fish I wouldn't expect that from visiting China in general but I would expect it from visiting Uyghur territory.
We are not acting like China is the main bad guy. Rather, they're a lesser bad guy. We will sell them parts but with the condition that they don't go to places like North Korea. Nor does the US government want hardware made under the control of Chinese State Security to go anywhere near sensitive stuff. Putting a security camera made by CSS on my house would be of no concern--there's nothing for them to spy on. Putting the same camera on a FBI building--might help them identify counterespionage agents and thus a very bad idea.99% of the China-bashers in the U.S. don't have a clue about some US-made parts China sold despite promising not to. They like to hear such paranoia, but such claims are not why they hate China. Rather, it's because they already hate China that they want to hear any China-bashing talking points, and why they vote for China-bashers Biden and Trump etc.It's not just hate. It's that the US government quite rightly does not want hardware made under the auspices of Chinese State Security used in sensitive systems. And there have been sanctions because Chinese companies sold products with US-made parts to countries we don't want getting those parts despite agreeing not to.Nothing about trading with China makes anyone in China worse off. The real reason for China sanctions is China hate, because China is a competitor. And the ones who are hated are not the rulers of China, but the Chinese wage-earners who are willing to work for lower wages than U.S. workers, which makes them scum and enemies of uncompetitive whining American workers who can't stand to have anyone in the world do the same job at lower cost. The China-bashing by Biden and Trump is done to pander to these crybaby American workers who want to hear that their Demagogue Leader will protect them against cheap labor from China.
Why do we want someone not to get those parts and yet it's OK for China to get them? If China is our main Bad Guy, why do we approve of them getting the parts but make them promise not to sell them to another country which is not the bad guy?
I was simply explaining why some Chinese companies are under sanction. They broke such promises and now we won't allow US companies to do business with them.Why should the average citizen or consumer care who has US-made parts? or whether China sells them to someone or made a promise not to sell them and then violated that promise?
It sounds like you're fishing around for some excuse to condemn China, to find some propaganda gossip to feed to China-bashers, to appease their appetite for China-bashing dirt.
Compare it to the population in Uyghur areas, not to all of China.About one out of a thousand (of the whole population of 1+ billion). ---- = .1%.Most are not slaves, but the ones in the reeducation camps are. And that's been estimated at a million+.Are the Uighurs "slaves"? What is "slavery"?
Not the same thing at all.By comparison, the number of Americans drafted into military service during Viet Nam was more than 2 million, or 2/300 or so = about .5% to 1% of the U.S. population. .7 to .8%.
Which is worse? 1 or .5 percent of your population enslaved? (U.S.A.)? or
or .1% (one tenth of one percent) enslaved? (China)?
Sometimes, yes. And slavery isn't the objective, but simply a tool. (That will utterly not work, China is more concerned with revolution now than what's down the road.)You could argue that this Chinese "slavery" is worse than the U.S. "slavery" of the draftees. But maybe not if you figure in the period before the "slavery" that was imposed onto these "slaves." Many of the U.S. "slaves" were taken out of college and other places where their lives were reasonably well off. What about those Uighurs taken away from their earlier lives of convenience and high living standard? hmmmm? Were they taken away from college and profitable careers into this "slavery"?
I would not consider South Africa a success--yes, we got rid of the white government, but that was bad for the people. The blacks traded an oppressive government for a more oppressive and stupid government.In all the modern examples, the only time trade penalties against a nation were successful was the case of South Africa, where the ruling White minority oppressed the Black majority. Let's assume this is the classic case for trade sanctions. The only reason this succeeded is that a large majority of nations cooperated with the boycott. All other cases have been failures, because there was not the needed cooperation from other nations to make it work.
And sanctions are not about toppling governments. They're about encouraging more friendly behavior from governments. Sanctions are typically the only means we have of punishing misconduct.
Not everyone was fine with it. I'm just saying that widespread acceptance/support isn't proof of being right.That "most whites were fine with it" is largely incorrect, or maybe only 50% correct. How can we describe this most accurately, in simple terms, without doubling this Wall of Text even longer? And how is the Chinese "slavery" of Uyghurs to be compared? Should the U.S. conduct a crusade against today's "slavery" of Uyghurs similar to the North's anti-slavery crusade against the South in the 1860s?Agreed that there is major racism over there. We have had a relative of hers concerned about our plans to visit a part of China where the Han do not dominate. (Really, now, in a tourist-driven area you don't do serious things to tourists without a major police response!) Most of the people are fine with it because they don't realize what's going on and it's not "their" people anyway. That's like saying that Confederate slavery was ok because most whites were fine with it.Yet most Chinese probably are fine with the treatment of the Uyghurs and Tibetans (which is more a form of racism than slavery).
Ok, I'll accept most be apathetic--but the same applies to the situation in China now.Rather than "most whites were fine with it," it's more correct to say that most Whites, both North and South, were apathetic about either preserving the South's slave culture or abolishing it. Most Whites were "fine" with staying out of the fight and letting the Abolitionists and pro-Slavery ideologues condemn each other.
Except it's not. It's not that they see it as a wrong justified by social need, but that since they aren't Han it doesn't matter.How does this compare to the current "enslavement" of Uyghurs in China? This form of "slavery" is seen there as a social necessity/benefit similar to military conscription. It does not mean a Chinese citizen may purchase a Uyghur slave at a slave market and do anything they choose to this slave, on their personal property, plantation, etc. This private ownership of slaves by individual slave-owners is what was abolished in the U.S. and many other countries in the 19th century. But the practice of governments conscripting private persons into national service was not abolished.