China's surveillance state exposed

[steve_bank]

The gist of the show I watched was that a lot of Chinese citizens are ok with it. Culturally they do not have the same sense if the individual rights we do.

From the epidemic reporting, people are referring to the current Chinese president or chainman is 'the leader' with affection.

Someone in my building does work with the UN and Doctors Without Borders in Asia. As he puts it Asia is generally top down authoritarian,.i is their history.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Harry, please think before you type. There is ample public information available on China's huge, transparent elections, monitored by the Carter Center.

The Chinese government began direct village elections in 1988 to help maintain social and political order in the context of unprecedented economic reforms. Today, village elections occur in some 600,000 villages across China, reaching 75 percent of the nation's more than 1.3 billion people.

In a groundbreaking agreement, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China granted The Carter Center permission in 1997 to observe village election procedures; to provide assistance in gathering election data and educating voters; and to train election officials. The Center also was allowed to host Chinese officials to observe U.S. elections. After the Center's completion in 1999 of a successful pilot project, The Carter Center and the ministry signed a three-year cooperation agreement. At the invitation of the ministry, the Center also began observations of township elections — elections above the village level — in conjunction with the National People's Congress in 1999. In December 2002, the Center observed elections at the county level for the first time. In March 2010, The Carter Center sent its largest delegation ever to assess two villager committee elections in Zhaotong city, Yunnan province.

From the village level up, the >3k congresspeople go on to vote for all senior appointments and legislation, and the vote needs to be almost unanimous for anything to get done. Intensive polling and public participation goes into each Five Year Plan. If Chinese votes don't count, why do more Chinese people vote per capita than Americans? Something like 62% of the gigantic population of China takes part in voting. The Communist party has 90 million members from all over the nation.

At some point, Harry, you need to acknowledge that if there were a society that was committed to building socialism after centuries of being dominated, and wanted to create a stable foundation of production, technology, and culture in order to accomplish that in the context of their specific conditions, it would pretty much look like China. In order to dispute that, though, you have to assume: (1) no polls, even those taken by external organizations, can possibly be relied upon, (2) no media from the Chinese mainland, either state or independent, can be regarded as evidence, (3) all indications of a thriving, happy, satisfied, secure, engaged, varied, thoughtful, and self-determining Chinese population must be a flimsy facade hiding a corrupt underbelly. It's honestly stretching your credibility at this point, and I know the reason why, but I wonder if you do.

Autocratic states often have "elections". It doesn't give the people any real voice.

And the "communist party" is supposed to somehow be support for elections? They have no opposition!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

For the criticisms some here are leveling against the PRC to be even approximately true, it would have to be the case that over a billion people are cowed into complacent silence and blind servility not just to the Chinese government, but to anyone who asks them about it from an independent agency.

And how are they supposed to be certain that independent agency is who they say they are and won't hand over what they said to the government??

If you want any chance of honest answers you need to use the techniques that have been developed for answering embarrassing questions: Please take a coin out of your pocket and flip it where nobody can see it. If it comes up heads answer truthfully, if it comes up tails give the embarrassing answer.

 

[PyramidHead]

For the criticisms some here are leveling against the PRC to be even approximately true, it would have to be the case that over a billion people are cowed into complacent silence and blind servility not just to the Chinese government, but to anyone who asks them about it from an independent agency.

And how are they supposed to be certain that independent agency is who they say they are and won't hand over what they said to the government??

Galaxy brain reasoning right here, explains everything so neatly, why didn't I think of this obvious solution. Simply assume that all evidence to the contrary must be the product of something other than the point you're trying to refute, and invent counterfactual scenarios to fill in the gap.

 

[PyramidHead]

Autocratic states often have "elections". It doesn't give the people any real voice.

Interesting anecdote. Internet forums often contain reactionary, uninformed, imperialist pigs who consistently favor the most aggressive and brutal forces of capitalism over any opposition, just an observation I've made with no relevance to the current conversation

And the "communist party" is supposed to somehow be support for elections? They have no opposition!

China is committed to building communism. If you don't want communism, you will be suppressed in China. Within the communist party, there are many factions, however. But without unity around the cause of communism in a world totally dominated by capitalism, there would be no chance of achieving it. You are seeing things through an American lens, where radical swings in political priority take place every few years and nothing of consequence is ever built because of it. China operates under a different system: democracy must be tempered with unity, freedom must be tempered with discipline. Otherwise, you get the Western world of media sensationalism, rampant cronyism, invasion and occupation via military force, poverty existing alongside obscene wealth, and environmental destruction on a global scale. After the revolution, the Chinese path forward was declared to be socialism with Chinese characteristics, with the long aim of building communism. They have every right to suppress and restrict the forces who want to derail them in that goal.

 

[steve_bank]

From what I read online local elections are democratic up to a certain level. At the ruling CCP committee level you do not run or campaign, you are chosen. Preference give to descendants of revolutionaries.

 

[PyramidHead]

From what I read online local elections are democratic up to a certain level. At the ruling CCP committee level you do not run or campaign, you are chosen. Preference give to descendants of revolutionaries.

Chosen by elected representatives, rather than unaccountable superdelegates, you mean? Remind me again, does China give the power to appoint lifelong justices whose individual personalities will direct the fate of millions to a single official that is shifted every 4 to 8 years?

 

[steve_bank]

From what I read online local elections are democratic up to a certain level. At the ruling CCP committee level you do not run or campaign, you are chosen. Preference give to descendants of revolutionaries.

Chosen by elected representatives, rather than unaccountable superdelegates, you mean? Remind me again, does China give the power to appoint lifelong justices whose individual personalities will direct the fate of millions to a single official that is shifted every 4 to 8 years?

Of course. China is a democratic system of the people, by the people, and for the people. A worker's paradise with no corruption, human rights violations, wealth inequality, and racism. The top to bottom wealth inequality is far worse than over here if you count all the masses outside of developed areas. Places where western journalists are forbidden to travel.

I'd say China is communist in name only. They opened up to a large degree to western style investment and market economies. It is what pulled them out of the catastrophic failures of communist collectivism. Chaos and famine.

Mao was not an egalitarian communist, he was a dictator and a vicious one.

 

[PyramidHead]

From what I read online local elections are democratic up to a certain level. At the ruling CCP committee level you do not run or campaign, you are chosen. Preference give to descendants of revolutionaries.

Chosen by elected representatives, rather than unaccountable superdelegates, you mean? Remind me again, does China give the power to appoint lifelong justices whose individual personalities will direct the fate of millions to a single official that is shifted every 4 to 8 years?

Of course. China is a democratic system of the people, by the people, and for the people. A worker's paradise with no corruption, human rights violations, wealth inequality, and racism. The top to bottom wealth inequality is far worse than over here if you count all the masses outside of developed areas. Places where western journalists are forbidden to travel.

It's only worse if you compare highly developed urban areas to rural ones. Within urban, and within rural, the disparity is far lower.



Yes, the top of that chart is 8, as in the number 8. Not 800 or 8000.

I'd say China is communist in name only. They opened up to a large degree to western style investment and market economies. It is what pulled them out of the catastrophic failures of communist collectivism. Chaos and famine.

Mao was not an egalitarian communist, he was a dictator and a vicious one.

The transition from capitalism to communism requires the dictatorship of the working class over the capitalist class, to supplant the existing dictatorship of the capitalist class over the working class (as we have in America and Europe). What China accomplished in under a generation took centuries in the USA and elsewhere, even with the benefit of African slave labor; in that comparison, the death toll of rapid industrialization after freeing themselves from Japanese rule is maybe not so drastic. Mao is still loved in China, and his teachings are upheld alongside those of Deng, Xi, and Marx/Lenin.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

For the criticisms some here are leveling against the PRC to be even approximately true, it would have to be the case that over a billion people are cowed into complacent silence and blind servility not just to the Chinese government, but to anyone who asks them about it from an independent agency.

And how are they supposed to be certain that independent agency is who they say they are and won't hand over what they said to the government??

Galaxy brain reasoning right here, explains everything so neatly, why didn't I think of this obvious solution. Simply assume that all evidence to the contrary must be the product of something other than the point you're trying to refute, and invent counterfactual scenarios to fill in the gap.

I note you didn't reply to the second part of my post indicating how to get accurate information despite this problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

China is committed to building communism. If you don't want communism, you will be suppressed in China.

China has long since abandoned communism. It's a capitalist oligarchy.

Otherwise, you get the Western world of media sensationalism, rampant cronyism, invasion and occupation via military force, poverty existing alongside obscene wealth, and environmental destruction on a global scale. After the revolution, the Chinese path forward was declared to be socialism with Chinese characteristics, with the long aim of building communism. They have every right to suppress and restrict the forces who want to derail them in that goal.

Their media is far less trustworthy than ours. I no longer bother with it, the only parts that are any good are business and sports.

Cronyism is far more rampant there than here. I'm aware of two criminal cases that nothing has done because the victims are neither connected nor willing to pay as much as it would take to get the police to take action.

China has either taken over or attacked every neighbor it has--within the last 70 years of the current power system.

Plenty of poverty over there, next door to extreme wealth.

The environment over there is shit. It's so bad they just lie about the numbers. (Simple test--note how often the numbers are just below the danger point. That's rigged data.)

 

[steve_bank]

Actually when the Chinese leader visited DC under Obama I remember him saying China is socialist. It is a mixed economy of sorts.

Communism precludes private ownership of means of production and the idea of profit. Mao tried it and the Soviets tried it. State owned production with quantities, wages, products, and prices set by the state.

China has long since divested of massive state run business.

What China did was abandon communism and Maoism opening up to western technology and investment. If not for that China would still be in a post Cultural Revolution wasteland. Get real.

How many Starbucks and MacDonald's are in China?

Certainly we all need to be skeptical of information from governments, including our won. All governments lie, we take that as axiomatic,. What we have that China des not have is a free press with the ability to do independent investigation of all government claims. Not so in China.

Considering the way the epidemic went China has no credibility. Chines media exists to be positive about China.

 

[Harry Bosch]

I bet you would get an even more "satisfied" population if you were allowed to conduct a poll in Kim's North Korea.

Unironically, yes you would.

Don't forget there are lies, and bloody lies, and statistics, and people knowing how they're expected to answer if they want to stay out of trouble ...
Mote, plank,eye, etc of the self-satisfied poll interpreter.

It's amazing that nobody questions this take, namely that literally over a billion fucking people are all so paralyzed in terror that in poll after independent (and anonymous!) poll, they are compelled to lie to protect themselves from the Chinese authorities. You couldn't come up with a more transparent Orientalist caricature of reality if you tried, and its function as an uncritical retort to evidence is similarly apparent.

The Western attitude is that no country in the world could be any different in its culture, its temperament, and its abstract values than us, so rather than taking things like history and conflict into account, we should just submit every society on Earth to the same blinkered analysis using the same white European categories that makes sense to us. Since actual solidarity and unity as a nation is impossible here, it must be impossible everywhere without some cartoonish dystopia running the show. Because life in the imperial core is stultifying and alienating for us, it must be the same everywhere, so any show of support on that large of a scale must be indicative of an elaborately staged hoax perpetuated on us all. It's simultaneously so naive, so unskeptical, and so self-inflatingly smug, as if each one of you is somehow piercing the veil of propaganda and grasping the truth by making the 145,609,339,395th reference to "Big Brother" in your fucking high school civics class.

There is no evidence that would convince you that China is anything other than Big Brother, because Orwell was successful in what the British Secret Service wanted of him: to undermine global opinions about communism.

The balance of effort required in this exchange is skewed. In order to be a reactionary Western liberal, all that is required of you is to passively absorb and regurgitate popular culture. You don't need to provide sources, you don't need to show why those sources are trustworthy, and you certainly don't need to bother taking the aggregated views of actual Chinese people into account. You just have to point to the BBC article, the NPR story, or the Reuters piece that informs you how Xi Jinping personally forced a Muslim woman to eat a live bat while her organs were harvested for his army of clones. I, on the other hand, am faced with the bolus of disinformation spanning multiple unreferenced posts, and not only do I have to find the data that refutes it, I have to start from first principles to get any of you to even accept it as data. I have to go back to square one of "let's start with the assumption that Chinese people are people and not vacuous automatons", or "being invaded and occupied by the most powerful nations on Earth might change a society's tolerance for disruption", and then the conversation gets derailed and the main point falls on deaf ears yet again. It's not my responsibility to lead you out of your ignorance when the roots of it are so deeply embedded in you that you actually wear it as a badge of honor, and think that it makes you savvy rather than tragically, clownishly gullible.

I respect the fact that you are learning Chinese and have plans to travel there someday. I would like to hear your opinion of the Chinese government after that. Separate issue: you hammer the US and it's military adventures. Why do you give China such a pass? China's one of the biggest thugs in the world, routinely threatening their neighbors. Just google "China threatens Taiwan".

 

[PyramidHead]

Unironically, yes you would.



It's amazing that nobody questions this take, namely that literally over a billion fucking people are all so paralyzed in terror that in poll after independent (and anonymous!) poll, they are compelled to lie to protect themselves from the Chinese authorities. You couldn't come up with a more transparent Orientalist caricature of reality if you tried, and its function as an uncritical retort to evidence is similarly apparent.

The Western attitude is that no country in the world could be any different in its culture, its temperament, and its abstract values than us, so rather than taking things like history and conflict into account, we should just submit every society on Earth to the same blinkered analysis using the same white European categories that makes sense to us. Since actual solidarity and unity as a nation is impossible here, it must be impossible everywhere without some cartoonish dystopia running the show. Because life in the imperial core is stultifying and alienating for us, it must be the same everywhere, so any show of support on that large of a scale must be indicative of an elaborately staged hoax perpetuated on us all. It's simultaneously so naive, so unskeptical, and so self-inflatingly smug, as if each one of you is somehow piercing the veil of propaganda and grasping the truth by making the 145,609,339,395th reference to "Big Brother" in your fucking high school civics class.

There is no evidence that would convince you that China is anything other than Big Brother, because Orwell was successful in what the British Secret Service wanted of him: to undermine global opinions about communism.

The balance of effort required in this exchange is skewed. In order to be a reactionary Western liberal, all that is required of you is to passively absorb and regurgitate popular culture. You don't need to provide sources, you don't need to show why those sources are trustworthy, and you certainly don't need to bother taking the aggregated views of actual Chinese people into account. You just have to point to the BBC article, the NPR story, or the Reuters piece that informs you how Xi Jinping personally forced a Muslim woman to eat a live bat while her organs were harvested for his army of clones. I, on the other hand, am faced with the bolus of disinformation spanning multiple unreferenced posts, and not only do I have to find the data that refutes it, I have to start from first principles to get any of you to even accept it as data. I have to go back to square one of "let's start with the assumption that Chinese people are people and not vacuous automatons", or "being invaded and occupied by the most powerful nations on Earth might change a society's tolerance for disruption", and then the conversation gets derailed and the main point falls on deaf ears yet again. It's not my responsibility to lead you out of your ignorance when the roots of it are so deeply embedded in you that you actually wear it as a badge of honor, and think that it makes you savvy rather than tragically, clownishly gullible.

I respect the fact that you are learning Chinese and have plans to travel there someday. I would like to hear your opinion of the Chinese government after that. Separate issue: you hammer the US and it's military adventures. Why do you give China such a pass? China's one of the biggest thugs in the world, routinely threatening their neighbors. Just google "China threatens Taiwan".

Taiwan belongs to China, as does Tibet and Hong Kong. They were part of China for centuries before imperialist takeover by Japan and other western powers. They did not appear out of thin air in the 20th century with no history or culture.

 

[steve_bank]

Unironically, yes you would.



It's amazing that nobody questions this take, namely that literally over a billion fucking people are all so paralyzed in terror that in poll after independent (and anonymous!) poll, they are compelled to lie to protect themselves from the Chinese authorities. You couldn't come up with a more transparent Orientalist caricature of reality if you tried, and its function as an uncritical retort to evidence is similarly apparent.

The Western attitude is that no country in the world could be any different in its culture, its temperament, and its abstract values than us, so rather than taking things like history and conflict into account, we should just submit every society on Earth to the same blinkered analysis using the same white European categories that makes sense to us. Since actual solidarity and unity as a nation is impossible here, it must be impossible everywhere without some cartoonish dystopia running the show. Because life in the imperial core is stultifying and alienating for us, it must be the same everywhere, so any show of support on that large of a scale must be indicative of an elaborately staged hoax perpetuated on us all. It's simultaneously so naive, so unskeptical, and so self-inflatingly smug, as if each one of you is somehow piercing the veil of propaganda and grasping the truth by making the 145,609,339,395th reference to "Big Brother" in your fucking high school civics class.

There is no evidence that would convince you that China is anything other than Big Brother, because Orwell was successful in what the British Secret Service wanted of him: to undermine global opinions about communism.

The balance of effort required in this exchange is skewed. In order to be a reactionary Western liberal, all that is required of you is to passively absorb and regurgitate popular culture. You don't need to provide sources, you don't need to show why those sources are trustworthy, and you certainly don't need to bother taking the aggregated views of actual Chinese people into account. You just have to point to the BBC article, the NPR story, or the Reuters piece that informs you how Xi Jinping personally forced a Muslim woman to eat a live bat while her organs were harvested for his army of clones. I, on the other hand, am faced with the bolus of disinformation spanning multiple unreferenced posts, and not only do I have to find the data that refutes it, I have to start from first principles to get any of you to even accept it as data. I have to go back to square one of "let's start with the assumption that Chinese people are people and not vacuous automatons", or "being invaded and occupied by the most powerful nations on Earth might change a society's tolerance for disruption", and then the conversation gets derailed and the main point falls on deaf ears yet again. It's not my responsibility to lead you out of your ignorance when the roots of it are so deeply embedded in you that you actually wear it as a badge of honor, and think that it makes you savvy rather than tragically, clownishly gullible.

I respect the fact that you are learning Chinese and have plans to travel there someday. I would like to hear your opinion of the Chinese government after that. Separate issue: you hammer the US and it's military adventures. Why do you give China such a pass? China's one of the biggest thugs in the world, routinely threatening their neighbors. Just google "China threatens Taiwan".

Taiwan belongs to China, as does Tibet and Hong Kong. They were part of China for centuries before imperialist takeover by Japan and other western powers. They did not appear out of thin air in the 20th century with no history or culture.

Ancient historical justification for conquest, if that is not imperialism than what is.

I have read the Chinese reasoning. In terms of legal history over the last 100 years I don't think Taiwan 'belongs' to China. China has made a claim of owning Okinawa.

In the case of Tibet it was cultural genocide. The forced eradication of Tibetan culture in favor of Chinese indoctrination. When resources were found in Tibet a piece of India was annexed for a transportation route. The Chinese government presumed to appoint the next Dali Lama. For China it is about absolute control of thought and culture.

Quite the opposite in the USA and Canada as I understand it. In Canada there is a native group camping on rail lines slowing down the economy as a protest. There are negotiations. In China the military would collect them and d send them to camps. That is the basic difference between the west and China. We do not always succeed but we try to accommodate cultural diversity. We consider it a strength not a weakness.

Chinese communism remains about a forced indoctrination into a narrow rigid ideology. Minority Muslims sent to 're-education ' camps. Attempts to force CCP ideology into HK schools.

You folks will have to come up with better counter arguments.

 

[J842P]

They were part of China for centuries before imperialist takeover by Japan and other western powers. They did not appear out of thin air in the 20th century with no history or culture.

Haha. That's an interesting take. Imperialism isn't imperialism if it happened centuries ago. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you aren't consistent in that defense of imperialism.

Chinese imperialism central theme of East Asian history. This isn't propaganda, and it isn't contested by anyone, including the Chinese.

And look, I'm not some big opponent of China. I like China. From my perspective, Chinese imperialism in Tibet is favorable over what is essentially a feudal, medieval religious cult.

 

[J842P]

Quite the opposite in the USA and Canada as I understand it. In Canada there is a native group camping on rail lines slowing down the economy as a protest. There are negotiations. In China the military would collect them and d send them to camps. That is the basic difference between the west and China. We do not always succeed but we try to accommodate cultural diversity. We consider it a strength not a weakness.

You cannot seriously say that it is "quite the opposite in the USA".

Indeed, a good historical parallel of Chinese expansion into Central Asia (and Southeast Asia) is the United States expansion into the rest of North America. The Chinese had very similar sentiments to the American "Manifest Destiny".

I mean, it was barely a generation ago when official policy towards the indigenous peoples of the United States was simply eradication or re-location and forced assimilation. People are still living that went through this.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Taiwan belongs to China, as does Tibet and Hong Kong. They were part of China for centuries before imperialist takeover by Japan and other western powers. They did not appear out of thin air in the 20th century with no history or culture.

Ancient historical justification for conquest, if that is not imperialism than what is.

I have read the Chinese reasoning. In terms of legal history over the last 100 years I don't think Taiwan 'belongs' to China. China has made a claim of owning Okinawa.

In the case of Tibet it was cultural genocide. The forced eradication of Tibetan culture in favor of Chinese indoctrination. When resources were found in Tibet a piece of India was annexed for a transportation route. The Chinese government presumed to appoint the next Dali Lama. For China it is about absolute control of thought and culture.

Quite the opposite in the USA and Canada as I understand it. In Canada there is a native group camping on rail lines slowing down the economy as a protest. There are negotiations. In China the military would collect them and d send them to camps. That is the basic difference between the west and China. We do not always succeed but we try to accommodate cultural diversity. We consider it a strength not a weakness.

Chinese communism remains about a forced indoctrination into a narrow rigid ideology. Minority Muslims sent to 're-education ' camps. Attempts to force CCP ideology into HK schools.

You folks will have to come up with better counter arguments.

China has a not so interesting imperialist history. It's name tells the story. Imagine if what is the USA today was instead called Siouxa. This would be so because the Sioux people were able to conquer all competing tribes by force of arms and maintain that control for centuries. Not exactly the land of the free.

 

[J842P]

Taiwan belongs to China, as does Tibet and Hong Kong. They were part of China for centuries before imperialist takeover by Japan and other western powers. They did not appear out of thin air in the 20th century with no history or culture.

Ancient historical justification for conquest, if that is not imperialism than what is.

I have read the Chinese reasoning. In terms of legal history over the last 100 years I don't think Taiwan 'belongs' to China. China has made a claim of owning Okinawa.

In the case of Tibet it was cultural genocide. The forced eradication of Tibetan culture in favor of Chinese indoctrination. When resources were found in Tibet a piece of India was annexed for a transportation route. The Chinese government presumed to appoint the next Dali Lama. For China it is about absolute control of thought and culture.

Quite the opposite in the USA and Canada as I understand it. In Canada there is a native group camping on rail lines slowing down the economy as a protest. There are negotiations. In China the military would collect them and d send them to camps. That is the basic difference between the west and China. We do not always succeed but we try to accommodate cultural diversity. We consider it a strength not a weakness.

Chinese communism remains about a forced indoctrination into a narrow rigid ideology. Minority Muslims sent to 're-education ' camps. Attempts to force CCP ideology into HK schools.

You folks will have to come up with better counter arguments.

China has a not so interesting imperialist history. It's name tells the story. Imagine if what is the USA today was instead called Siouxa. This would be so because the Sioux people were able to conquer all competing tribes by force of arms and maintain that control for centuries. Not exactly the land of the free.

Um, the USA is essentially a state founded in North America that went on to conquer all the competing tribes... so I can imagine it. That is the reality. The US just didn't call itself an empire, but and used strange terms, like Manifest Destiny. But it is the same shit.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

China has a not so interesting imperialist history. It's name tells the story. Imagine if what is the USA today was instead called Siouxa. This would be so because the Sioux people were able to conquer all competing tribes by force of arms and maintain that control for centuries. Not exactly the land of the free.

Um, the USA is essentially a state founded in North America that went on to conquer all the competing tribes... so I can imagine it. That is the reality. The US just didn't call itself an empire, but and used strange terms, like Manifest Destiny. But it is the same shit.

China is called China for a reason. It is very different than the USA in that sense. That's the point I was making. The land that is the USA was not conquered by a people native to the land that became the USA. That they are both lands born of conquest is obvious. That there is less personal freedom in China is also obvious, or at least should be.