On May 22 2022 02:51 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: chinese govt: the West are evil colonialists who want to treat us like they did africa and latin america chinese ppl: no way chinese people go overseas / read english forums and sees threads like this chinese ppl: damn, xi was right. all hail ccp
Chinese people travel over seas to Canada, wow it is sure nice amd the governmemt is not as awful, people treat them well. Then they stay.
Not so sure about this. When it comes to chinese students studying abroad, theres been a huge increase in those returning home compared to staying in foreign countries. This is an older article from 2018, but it shows the trend of chinese students electing to return home rather than stay in their study abroad countries. https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-home-after-studying-abroad/
I think a major factor people don't understand that Carnivorous Sheep doesn't really explain is that, at least for the young people of China born maybe 1985 onwards, all they've seen is growth in the economy and living standards go up. It's not like young people are idiots that are brainwashed either. It's not incredibly difficult to get a VPN in China. IIRC Huawei phones when they were still on Android literally came preinstalled with a VPN lol. Young chinese people know much more of what's going on in the west compared to western people knowing whats going in China. A lot of my friends who were overseas students initially came here with high expectations of the US being welcoming and friendly and ended up being disappointed. Imagine, you come to a foreign country to study that you have respect for. But when you get there, all you see every day in their media is how shit your country is and how bad it is, even though that doesn't line up at all with your actual lived experience, then get insulted for almost no reason just because you came from that country. That would leave a bad taste in your mouth wouldn't it? You'd probably think "man, the government was right. western people really do not like us. And at least our government is doing a good job improving our living standards" That would push you farther into just hanging out w/ people from your home country and desire to go home.
For the HK situation, they kind of fucked themselves in 1997 when they were ~20-25% of the GDP of China. HK people are notorious for being snobby and assholes to people from mainland China. They did not try to help improve the situation of the entire China, nor did they attempt to be friendly with the mainland people back in 1997. Much of the problems in HK really don't come from being governed by China, but their own system e.g. HK is such a business hub because of low taxes, but they are only able to have such low taxes since a large portion government income comes from sales of land. This incentivizes the government to increase the price of land by limiting supply of it i.e. no new housing. Plus a third of their voting population are literally companies, not people, since their system includes a vote for industries. So you have a generation of young people who grew up living in a place controlled by corporations and a perception that the future will not improve. That's a really easy group to take advantage of to further political goals; in this case, independence movements or if you buy into conspiracy theories, western insurrection. But in reality even independence wouldn't help HK at all. And the only people that possibly could've helped HK were the mainland people, but due to shitty behaviour, HKers already burned that bridge a long time ago.
edit: Just wanted to mention the perception of the strength of chinese censorship is greatly exaggerated in the west. You can totally criticize the government in personal conversations and on the internet. It just gets sketch when you have a huge audience and are calling for some sort of action against the government. But yeah, where do you think the xi = pooh meme came from lol.
1. Funny how you are blaming the "HK government" and the HK system - which is nothing more than a puppet regime. China/CCP laid out a framework for Hong Kong - "one country two system" (Proposed by Deng XiaoPing as a "unique" idea) with eventualy universal suffrage for the governer. They did not really honour this promise and is interefering with the everyday politics, restricting HK ppl's freedom etc... Jiang Zemin also said “Well water [Hong Kong] does not mix with river water [the Mainland]”
2. Most of the hate of the Hong Kong people is directed against the CCP. In fact a lot of them or their parents/grandparents fled the CCP - obviously some fled the war with Japan/the civil war - most still have relatives back home. You get some feeling of anti-Chinese people but it is by no means a majority. Some of it could be behaviour issues/
Hong Kong people do want to improve mainland China - a year after Tiananmen Square protests/masscare more than 150,000 people went to the memorial. You can also look at the amount of fund raised during flooding/earthquakes. A lot of HK people are quite optimistic after the handover initially....
3. Not many people (if any) wanted HK independence - they are not stupid afterall. What they want is to have their freedom/rights - which has been promised in the treaty but never fulfilled.
1. That is true and is one of the biggest factors causing the divide.
2. That might be true for the older generation but there is genuine hate against people from mainland China among the younger generation. Of course the source of this is political, they are being seen as invaders from a different country, not as countrymen.
3. That was true until the actions of China fanned the flames. Hong Kong independence was a fringe issue until the Chinese government kept saying it was a real thing, then because of that it actually became a real issue. Talk about self fulfilling prophesies.
The BBC published a report based on data hacked from Xinjiang regarding Uyghur detention. I think it really highlights some of the worst aspects of the CCP rule: use of digital surveillance, bullshit claims used for detention (e.g., growing a beard, listening to muslim lectures), "re-education camps", mass internment.
Also this thread should probably be renamed to "The China Politics Thread" or something, "The Chinese Conundrum" is a bit prejudiced (not exactly the word I'm looking for but can't find it atm).
On May 24 2022 14:51 emperorchampion wrote: Also this thread should probably be renamed to "The China Politics Thread" or something, "The Chinese Conundrum" is a bit prejudiced (not exactly the word I'm looking for but can't find it atm).
I agree. "The Chinese Conumdrum" is pretty much "The Chinese Question", which implies that there is a vague problem and this problem needs to be solved. True as it may be, it assumes an adversarial viewpoint to begin with, and I can't see good discussion coming from that.
On May 24 2022 14:49 emperorchampion wrote: The BBC published a report based on data hacked from Xinjiang regarding Uyghur detention. I think it really highlights some of the worst aspects of the CCP rule: use of digital surveillance, bullshit claims used for detention (e.g., growing a beard, listening to muslim lectures), "re-education camps", mass internment.
The only Chinese who spoke objectively was banned. It's really difficult to communicate objectively with each other. As long as you criticize the news of China, you think it is right. And did not question whether those are false news or deliberately discredit China's news. As long as there is no news criticizing the Chinese government, you all look at it with suspicion. If you want to hear the views of Chinese people from China, what he said is the truth.
If you want to understand Xinjiang, you can understand Xinjiang only after living in Xinjiang for a period of time. If the BBC comes to China to interview and deliberately reports negative news or false news, how do you know what is true? You can also say how I know what they reported is false, and I can't prove it to you. I'm just an ordinary person living in China. You want to know about China, and I'm happy to share it with you. But it's hard for me to argue with you on various issues in China. I'm not a politician. I can only say that a lot of your information is wrong.
It's funny that if you ask ten Chinese people, nine Chinese people will say that the Chinese government is too good to the people of Xinjiang. For the same test, Xinjiang people only need lower scores. China has family planning policies, and people in Xinjiang do not need to abide by these policies. If Xinjiang people commit a crime, they will receive very low punishment. If you've really been to China, you can ask any Chinese.
On May 25 2022 17:35 [JXSA].Zergling wrote: The only Chinese who spoke objectively was banned. It's really difficult to communicate objectively with each other. As long as you criticize the news of China, you think it is right. And did not question whether those are false news or deliberately discredit China's news. As long as there is no news criticizing the Chinese government, you all look at it with suspicion. If you want to hear the views of Chinese people from China, what he said is the truth.
I'm not sure that the banned accounts were objective (there were a few new accounts banned around the same time for the same reason). (At least for me a clarification on what "PBU" means would be useful.) A decent portion of the BBC report that I linked is related to validation of the data, e.g., they had an AI specialist examine if the images were artificially generated (they concluded they are genuine) and correlated some of the images with those available of the detention center.
On May 25 2022 17:45 [JXSA].Zergling wrote: If you want to understand Xinjiang, you can understand Xinjiang only after living in Xinjiang for a period of time. If the BBC comes to China to interview and deliberately reports negative news or false news, how do you know what is true? You can also say how I know what they reported is false, and I can't prove it to you. I'm just an ordinary person living in China. You want to know about China, and I'm happy to share it with you. But it's hard for me to argue with you on various issues in China. I'm not a politician. I can only say that a lot of your information is wrong.
"Negative" things happen. That there may be "positive" things happening does not mean that there cannot be negative things also. It is important to report the negative things so that they can be fixed. Ignoring negative things does not fix them and does not make them go away.
I would be happy to hear about what information regarding what was reported by the BBC / other organizations regarding the leaked data is wrong since you know that it is wrong.
On May 25 2022 17:52 [JXSA].Zergling wrote: It's funny that if you ask ten Chinese people, nine Chinese people will say that the Chinese government is too good to the people of Xinjiang. For the same test, Xinjiang people only need lower scores. China has family planning policies, and people in Xinjiang do not need to abide by these policies. If Xinjiang people commit a crime, they will receive very low punishment. If you've really been to China, you can ask any Chinese.
Lower test scores and lesser criminal punishment do not make up for the current and likely past (I'm not an expert on the history of Xinjiang) and future generations of state-imposed abuse. The people that are saying the government are too good don't understand the concept of equity: marginalized people require additional support and resources. Especially when issues are caused by outside intervention (i.e., it's understandable if test scores are lower when you are in extremely adverse situation such as seems to be the case in Xinjiang). The people that are saying the government are too good to the people of Xinjiang are likely ignorant (people like this exist all over the world).
On May 24 2022 14:51 emperorchampion wrote: Also this thread should probably be renamed to "The China Politics Thread" or something, "The Chinese Conundrum" is a bit prejudiced (not exactly the word I'm looking for but can't find it atm).
I agree. "The Chinese Conumdrum" is pretty much "The Chinese Question", which implies that there is a vague problem and this problem needs to be solved. True as it may be, it assumes an adversarial viewpoint to begin with, and I can't see good discussion coming from that.
Since you've read the articles and watched the videos can you give a brief summary of the general conclusions? edit: with respect to the leaked data about Xinjiang.
On May 25 2022 17:52 [JXSA].Zergling wrote: It's funny that if you ask ten Chinese people, nine Chinese people will say that the Chinese government is too good to the people of Xinjiang. For the same test, Xinjiang people only need lower scores. China has family planning policies, and people in Xinjiang do not need to abide by these policies. If Xinjiang people commit a crime, they will receive very low punishment. If you've really been to China, you can ask any Chinese.
The people doing the podcast I have linked up above are not some random guys that don't like China. They have lived in China for 15+ years, their wives are Chinese and they have plenty of friends and family there. Before they started doing all those demystifying videos and podcasts they did a lot of materials on China itself as they have traveled across it on their bikes, visiting small towns and villages and plenty of places outside your typical tourist locations. You could say that they have seen more of China than most Chinese people will in their lives. They also have a unique perspective, one being South African and the other American, of not being susceptible to CCP propaganda and thus seeing what's going on in there more clearly.
They're not against China, they actually love China, but they're making all those videos in hopes that someday in the future the Chinese people will be able to move forward when CCP will stop holding them back.
On May 25 2022 17:45 [JXSA].Zergling wrote: If you want to understand Xinjiang, you can understand Xinjiang only after living in Xinjiang for a period of time. If the BBC comes to China to interview and deliberately reports negative news or false news, how do you know what is true? You can also say how I know what they reported is false, and I can't prove it to you. I'm just an ordinary person living in China.
You state that you cannot prove that the information contained in this BBC report is false, yet you clearly believe that it is false. How did you come by that belief? Do you assume that any information presented by the BBC that isn’t favorable to China is false? Or do you have other sources of information on this matter?
You said nine out of ten Chinese people think Uyghur people in Xinjiang are too well treated. I’m not sure I believe that, but assuming it’s true, does that contradict the information in the BBC story? Is the perception that religious freedom is respected, due process is followed, surveillance is not invasive, and everybody gets a fair trial? Or is the perception that religious freedom is not respected, due process is not followed, surveillance is invasive, and not everybody gets a trial, but none of that matters if you’re combating terrorism?
Also, to what degree is public opinion in China an accurate guide to the Uyghur experience? Is the public educated in this matter, or ignorant? Again, what are the trustworthy sources if you don’t trust the BBC/CNN/etc.?
Is this topic on the radar in Chinese public discourse?
Do you know what the Chinese government’s rhetoric is like on this topic? I ask because one can often gain information from a party’s stated position even if one suspends judgment on their credibility.
I am trying to understand the headspace of someone who considers the BBC story to be full of lies, which, if you and fakovski are correct, is most Chinese people.
On May 25 2022 17:45 [JXSA].Zergling wrote: If you want to understand Xinjiang, you can understand Xinjiang only after living in Xinjiang for a period of time. If the BBC comes to China to interview and deliberately reports negative news or false news, how do you know what is true? You can also say how I know what they reported is false, and I can't prove it to you. I'm just an ordinary person living in China. You want to know about China, and I'm happy to share it with you. But it's hard for me to argue with you on various issues in China. I'm not a politician. I can only say that a lot of your information is wrong.
These aren't arguments or even attempts to provide comment. You are making authoritative statements while also saying you have no authority.
Line 1 is a made-up argument no one is having. No one wants to live in a region where they believe that concentration camps are operating in to reprogram people the government doesn't like. Thats a silly ask to make for people.
Line 2 is assuming motivation, if you take that nonsupported assumption out its a question posed to you that I would ask.
Line 3 basically is you saying that you don't know if the stuff BBC posted is false or not and you explaining why you shouldn't be believed on why its false or not because you have no authority or credibility in your own opinion
Line 4 is what we are asking for and what you are providing already.
Line 5 is really insidious. You are saying you can't argue on issues in China because you're not apart of the CCP and therefore you can only belive that negative information about china is false because the CCP tells you its false. Are you admitting that the CCP is the one that decides what is true and not for you?
EPT
