mass systemic rape in Uighur camps

[Fadl]

@snowyowl I understand, civilizations do mistakes, but the scale of these mistakes are huge sometimes.

[Keyhole]

Human beings are terrible.
Why do we do this?  Is it ever going to change?
Now, with nuclear weapons, countries can do whatever they want.
And you can't even fight back!  You can't even help them.
There is so much suffering in the world, when will it ever end?
Why is our species like this?

We should pray for them.  Prayer is a good way to change things, prayer with strong intent.

How to pray:

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Keyhole

[snowyowl]

Don't the Chinese people have a grievance with Japan over the historic mass rape / sex slavery of Chinese "comfort women" during  The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)?  The hypocrisy is shocking. 

[Preety_India]

 

Time for the world to call out China on the BS, not only in regard to this but for many other evil things that China does as well. 

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Preety_India

[Lyubov]

Xinjiang is a dystopian nightmare for Uighur. It is believed over a million ethnic Uighur are detained in "re-education" camps. China's justification for this is that it is to prevent "terrorism" or a nationalist movement in the region for independence.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Lyubov

[lmfao]

Jfc that was one of the most demented things I've ever read. Very gruesome. I've never liked China, but I never thought much about it. Now I'm definitely more consciously aware of it. As well as the government, I never heard much good about the businessmen who are ruthless there. 

If they have over a million people in camps, you can just imagine what justifications they use to arrest people. There wouldn't be any reason, they just make one up for whoever they want to arrest. I found this https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/13/48-ways-to-get-sent-to-a-chinese-concentration-camp/

This is all literally sounds like the closest thing possible to a holocaust in the 20th century

Japanese supremacy for life, I'll continue watching my animes. 

Edited February 4, 2021 by lmfao

[Porphyry Fedotov]

That's just outright depressing that neighboring countries are sending Uyghur refugees back to China. The whole situation is a textbook example of unhealthy blue

[erik8lrl]

I realize was off-topic on the last post. After thinking about it more, and I think it is possible that it can be true. They could have done it in order to find the terrorists, which is horrible and wrong. But I also think there is the possibility of it being false. The woman could have lied to get support so she can go to the US from Kazakhstan (and she is staying). Of course, I am biased from my experience of China. For me, for the most part, China is not the dystopian and evil world that many believe to be. It's a very stable and peaceful country with mostly good and kind people like everyone else I've met around the world. Despite the government being perceived as evil, it has done a lot of good for its people and is continuing to do so. So I'm inclined to believe that they wouldn't go to the extreme of mass rape in this case. China and the Chinese government have changed so much in the past 50 years I personally look at it for what it is now. Eventually, the truth will come out. I think despite the differences, we all just want to live a happy and peaceful life. I just hope we can reach a better understanding and learn to love each other. I really hope the US and China don't go to war in the future. But in the end, it's all moving towards love and unity, even if it means having wars and deaths. I really think people should travel to China more and see for themselves what kind of place it is.    

Edited February 4, 2021 by erik8lrl

[erik8lrl]

@modmyth Yeah, a lot of Hong Konger and Taiwanese Chinese are actually racist against mainland Chinese. I think you really need to go to mainland China in order to see the dynamics more clearly. Collectivism is at the core of Chinese culture, and it’s the key to how they are able to survive as a civilization for 5000 years. 
I think learning Chinese history will give people a lot of perspective on everything. From ancient to modern times, every event had an impact on how China is now. Learning it, especially recent history on the founding of China as a nation has given me a better understanding of their perspective and motives. I think sinophobia is mainly caused by the lack of understanding of Chinese culture, history, and politics. Most people outside of China are not taught Chinese history in school (understandable since it’s really, really long), and they have never been to China. Most people don’t really know China. How and why it is the way it is today, and how it evolved over time. It’s a shame because I think it can help prevent a lot of conflicts if people did know. I think people wouldn’t be afraid of it if they did know. 
 

From my experience, only some of the older generations are a bit xenophobic due to war traumas. But most middle and younger generations are not at all xenophobic. In fact, they admired the west until recent years. A lot of the middle and younger generations now know how to access the internet without restrictions, so they are constantly learning about the west and the world in general. The speed of change in China is mind-boggling. Almost every year, it is changing dramatically. What is true a few years ago might not be now, and what’s true now might not be within a few years.

 

I disagree with the claim that Chinese people don’t have individual will or opinion. From my experience, most have a clear and intelligent opinion on politics. Most people are aware of what is going on around the world and what the world thinks of China. I think just because we are living in an individualist society where individualism/freedom/democracy serves our survival and gives us power. We shouldn’t count all opinions from the Chinese to be brainwashed or untrue. I think that will only create more misunderstandings and conflicts since we are ignoring anything they say. But if you actually listen and try to think about things from their perspective. I think it’s not hard to see why most mainland Chinese support the Chinese government and think it is has a better system than democracy. Because their survival was completely built upon it (their system is actually quite similar to democracy as a concept but modified to pervert internal conflicts and divisions). I think until both sides can see and understand this main difference, there will always be conflicts. But the truth is both sides actually want the same thing. I think we are just too selfish to see it.

 

I also feel like sharing what I learned about the workings of the Chinese political system through my own study and my times in China to shed more light on it. So here it is: 

China's current political system consists of three main bodies. The Chinese government/communist party, The people's representative, and The people. They are three separate bodies that govern in three different abstractions. The mechanics of this system loops between the three bodies. First, the people vote for a representative from their city and town. The representative can be any adult regardless of gender, race (must be a Chinese citizen), or status. Anyone can run to become the representative of their city/town, and they will ask people to vote for them. Anyone who is over 18 has the right to vote, and the majority vote wins. The representatives are voted every five years, and during their time as a representative, they will observe problems/issues/complains the people have and create proposals for policies that solve those problems. Then once every year, there is an annual meeting for all representatives across the country (around 3000 in total). At the meeting, every representative will go over their proposals, and then everyone will discuss and then vote to pass it or not. They also have the power to vote and impeach the president and all higher officials in the government. Once the proposals are passed, they are then implemented by the government/party on all levels (province, city, town). The government is its own body. In order to get into the party/government, you need to have a good education and then pass a writing test to prove that you are educated and have a deep understanding of politics (it's supposed to be pretty hard from what I hear, the party and government are also separate tests, you need to pass the party one first, then you can enter the government one). Once you passed, you are basically hired by the government, and it depends on what you specialize in, and you will be sent to the city with problems that your skill can help solve. You will start at the bottom, and as you solve problems and create merit in your ability. Your higher-ups will vote to promote you. If you repeat this process, you will climb higher and higher up the ladder and end up as the president (in 10 - 20 years). As the government implements the policies, the people will experience the benefits/consequences of them. Then they will give feedback to their representative, and then the cycle repeats. 

I was the same as most people who lived in the west and believed (before I went to China) that this system doesn't work, and the Chinese government is full of corruption. However, if you examine the mechanics of the system, you will realize that it is designed (ionically) to prevent corruption and maximize merit and result. This goes into all levels. First, the government is actually not the most powerful body out of the three. The people actually have the most power. Since their vote for representatives can directly impact all the levels of the government. But at the same time, the people are not engaged in the actual decision making of politics. They simply live their life and complain when they have problems. They don't need to try to solve the problem. Thus they are also not accountable if something goes wrong. In this system, the more decision-making power you have, the more accountability and responsibility you have. If you mess up really badly and the people are not happy (Corruption/crimes), You will go to jail for life, and someone better will replace you. This also prevents partisanship/internal conflict/bad decisions. Since all of the people's problems are filtered through the system, and bad decisions are being minimized. The people don't have to figure out the problem, so they don't have the need to fight with each other. And since there is only one party in the government, they can fight internally but will never be enemies, and they can make long-term plans since the party never changes. This also allows anyone to give feedback to the system and proposals. Since you don't need to find the solution, no matter how educated or uneducated you are, all you need to do is voice your problems. But still, the problems are being heard by the representatives and then pushed to the governmental level. On the government side, the power is distributed through merits, and the people are holding them accountable. So if the government is not solving the problems, the people can replace them at any time. This decreases the corruption since the result is the only thing that counts. So most of the governmental bodies are not super corrupt, and the less corrupt you are, the higher you go. Since the process of climbing this power ladder is so hard, it filters out people who are only doing it for power/money. For example, the current president lived in some of the poorest areas in China for over 10 years to help alleviate poverty to climb this high, and most people can't do it. The system is also acknowledging the fact that you can't prevent corruption completely. Because no one is completely selfless, but since the system encourages merit, even corruption can lead to results since competition within the government is so strong. In this sense, the system suggests that some level of corruption is healthy for government and society as long as it serves the people. Of course, the system changed a lot over time, and there where actually a lot of corruption over the years. But ever since Xi's presidency, they have passed policies that make major corruption almost impossible (so they say). Things such as increased jail time, they created a system that allows anyone to report corruption, making the promotion process harder, etc. I think there is still a lot of corruption in the government, but the amount of merit and result the system creates is far greater and undeniable. Still, all of these sounds good on paper. Is it actually how the system works? We don't know for sure, and you will need to become a part of it to know for sure. But not looking at how it works, just looking at the result it creates, it is undeniable that it's working, especially if you have been to China many times in the past 10 years. The sheer amount of progress and speed at which things are developing and improving in China is insane. You can believe that its government is corrupt and the system is a fraud. But I think it's pretty hard to create the result they have without an extremely efficient government. The things they were able to achieve in the past 30 years is unprecedented in human history. The fact is that they have developed a system (whatever it might be) that works very well for them, and their people are living happier lives every day, and isn't that the end goal of any government/politics? If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it either.      

 

But if you just look at this system as a concept, I think it fits very well with Chinese culture and society when it was created. For example, the concept of having a test for people to become government officials and enter the government as an individual body that makes decisions for the people but without the people have existed long ago before modern times. (back in 621AD to be specific, so it's been there for over 1000 years) At the time of China's founding as a nation, the whole group of people was actually called The People's Liberation Army (The irony since most of the world consider China the opposite of liberty). But you need to understand that China has always been a monarchy with one person overpowering everyone else, with no equality or freedom for most of its history. When the ruler at the time is good, the country rises and prospers, but when they are corrupt, the country split, fight, and overthrow. So The People's Liberation Army's goal was to create a society for the peasants and the working class, to rebalance the scale and take back power from the royal and the rich. (Sounds familiar?) So naturally, all the people joined forces and gathered up their rage of inequality and humiliation from The century of humiliation in the hope of building a new kind of society that is equal and free (They later tried communism and failed, so now they are socialists). So they fought in a war against the Japanese and the ROC (fled to Taiwan) and won in the end. Also, Tibet was a slave/feudal state with huge inequalities (According to the Chinese), so naturally, the slaves and peasants joined The People's Liberation Army and overthrew the state. (If you want to believe this, it's debatable, most people who are living in Tibet now are saying that this is true and their grandparents were slaves/servants, but most people who are rich and fled the country back when it happened says they are not true and the CCP is evil and killed so many people) You can actually go to Tibet today and see places where they claimed the slaves lived. So I would say just make your own judgment. Anyway, so the system is designed to allow people of any education to give feedback since most of the people with the Army are peasants who are illiterate/uneducated. This allows them to have a voice without giving them too much power. Most of them can't even read, so Democracy was not a good idea at the time. But present-day, as the younger generation all becomes educated, they are more active in politics, and I think they are part of the reason for a lot of the system changes now. (The people are harder to fool now) Also, I think the founding fathers of this system knew that it would take generations before it can really start to work (industrialization, technological advancement, education, etc.), so I think in the early stages, there were many party controlled (authoritarian) decisions to maintain stability and development to keep it on track. They made many mistakes along the way, but overall the country stayed stable and focused on development. So now and in the future, as the older generation passes and the younger generation takes over, the country will keep accelerating on its current trajectory, with the end goal of maintaining a stable and peaceful society.  It is not likely that they will start wars since they have learned from its long history of separation and unification that no one wins in wars; it only slows down progress. Instead, it wants to keep developing on its own while collaborating with other countries around the world. (Belt and road) Most Chinese hate wars because their grandparents were victims and told them horror stories. If you walk around any city, you often see peace in Chinese characters on walls with other values to remind people, and you can call it brainwashing lol. Since its founding as a nation, China has not started a single war. It achieved everything it has today, all through peaceful means. I really hope the west and China can understand our differences, work together, and help each other live better lives instead of fighting for wars, because we are really not that different... But I guess we'll see.    

 

Here is also a video from Chinese media about Xinjiang, most of us will probably call it propaganda and not even bother watching it. But I think that's a dangerous mindset and we should be more open-minded and at least learn about the other perspective before making any judgment. That's why I'm posting this just to balance the perspectives. Believe this or not, I think we should at least hear them out and examine the facts before believing anything. 

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by erik8lrl

[Keyhole]

@modmyth My experience with Chinese people has always been pleasant tbh, I have never been mistreated by a minority.  Ever.  Only white folks, oddly enough.  

My experience with Chinese has been limited, but they are very nice - in middle school I had to do a project with a girl who was a second generation immigrant.  Her grandmother made us a huge dinner, just because I was there, to show off the traditional Chinese cuisine.  It was actually the very best meal that I have ever eaten in my life.  I think about it still, to this day.
I have not had anything better since that dinner.

What is happening isn't a China problem, it is a human condition problem - we are all genocidal, all cultures seem to have this to some extent, at least all that I know of.

I have heard horror stories about folks from other cultures marrying into traditional families, though - they say sometimes it does feel like being brought into a small cult.

[StarStruck]

China is a monster that will eventually eat itself up. 

Now the Uighurs are on the menu. After that others will be on the menu. And eventually the leadership itself will be on the menu. 

Unfortunately though. Soon there won't be any Uygur left. We will only know them from pictures. 

[Vrubel]

14 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

China is a monster that will eventually eat itself up. 

Now the Uighurs are on the menu. After that others will be on the menu. And eventually the leadership itself will be on the menu. 

Unfortunately though. Soon there won't be any Uygur left. We will only know them from pictures. 

To be fair I do think China has a mostly bright future. Because there is some undoubtful progress they are going through.

The problem is that they have a one-party state which is almost cartoonishly evil in the way they deal with people that do not conform. This poisons their whole culture and will ultimately backfire for sure. I think the emphasis on conformity and secularism is very similar to post-Stalin Soviet Union. They are not exterminating people but they do make life a living hell for anyone who does not fit in with the party narrative.

[StarStruck]

1 hour ago, Vrubel said:

To be fair I do think China has a mostly bright future. Because there is some undoubtful progress they are going through.

The problem is that they have a one-party state which is almost cartoonishly evil in the way they deal with people that do not conform. This poisons their whole culture and will ultimately backfire for sure. I think the emphasis on conformity and secularism is very similar to post-Stalin Soviet Union. They are not exterminating people but they do make life a living hell for anyone who does not fit in with the party narrative.

China as a system is non-sustainable. It is a patch work of different people with different kind of interests. Until now they sustained themselves due to globalism and human exploitation.

Soon other economies will replace China and your national income will decline. That will naturally cause a disruption within China. They failed to create a national market to replace export.

In 10 years or something we will see the disintegration of China. I recommend the book "the next 100 years". It explains it very well.

[EddieEddie1995]

@erik8lrl Insightful post! Thank  you! 

[Vrubel]

27 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

In 10 years or something we will see the disintegration of China. I recommend the book "the next 100 years". It explains it very well.

I don't think this is very probable. The Soviet Union collapsed mainly because its economic system was not sustainable, I don't see the same thing happening with China which is practically capitalistic.

Obviously, they have a rocky road ahead because they are in a period of growth and transition. Like, I expect countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam will take China over as manufacturing hubs for all kinds of everyday stuff. But for China this not necessarily a bad thing as they can focus on further developing other sectors like their high-tech industry. 

In the long-run, China will do just fine in my opinion but again: a rocky road ahead indeed.

[StarStruck]

@Vrubel if they can replace exports with a domestic market, they can have a sustainable market, but like all economist say. It is a mission impossible. I don't really get from where you get the idea that China has a self-sustaining economy when a big portion of their income comes from export.

[Vrubel]

@StarStruck I never said China is self-sustainable, no country is. You have some unrealistic doom-thinking going on.

[StarStruck]

5 minutes ago, Vrubel said:

@StarStruck I never said China is self-sustainable, no country is. You have some unrealistic doom-thinking going on.

I didn't make absolute predictions. I said China will face problems if it can't create a strong domestic market and be less reliant on exports. If that is unrealistic for you, I'm sorry for you.

[Vrubel]

13 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

I didn't make absolute predictions. I said China will face problems if it can't create a strong domestic market and be less reliant on exports. If that is unrealistic for you, I'm sorry for you.

How is having one billion people that are growing in wealth, not a strong domestic market?

[StarStruck]

18 hours ago, Vrubel said:

How is having one billion people that are growing in wealth, not a strong domestic market?

Study the middle income trap.

Edited February 5, 2021 by StarStruck