China

[Liquid]

Couldn't find a pre-existing thread. Surely worthy of its own?

Anyway, China and Taiwan hold their first official governmental talks in over 60 years. There were, of course, no flags, anthems or terratorial discussions but for the first time since the Chinese civil war broke out, the Chinese Republic and the People's Republic of China are having proper discussion.

Interesting exercise, wonder where it could lead to.

 

[a6m5]

Great article. I do remember reading about the Pro-Beijing President being voted in in Taiwan, but I had no idea that his support was dropping..... or that this is "the" first high-level talk between the two since the end of their war!

Whatever happens, I hope it's peaceful for both parties involved, and beneficial to Taiwan & Taiwanese people.

 

[mustafur]

Bit old news but should be highlighted to those that didn't know:

China using it's Soft power techniques to effectively censor Western shows at the threat of not allowing them to be in China if that don't cooperate.

 

[Danoff]

John Oliver just put up a segment on treatment of Uyghurs. I was thinking about about the comparisons to North Korea that have been made here on GTP, and of course Oliver made a comparison to the Holocaust.

It got me thinking... if Germany had been content to pull off the holocaust without trying to take over the world at the same time, I think they might have been successful. We tend to think of WWII as being a lot about rescuing a persecuted, slaughtered, and enslaved people, but honestly... how much are you wanting to invade China after seeing the John Oliver video?

 

[DesertPenguin]

John Oliver just put up a segment on treatment of Uyghurs. I was thinking about about the comparisons to North Korea that have been made here on GTP, and of course Oliver made a comparison to the Holocaust.

It got me thinking... if Germany had been content to pull off the holocaust without trying to take over the world at the same time, I think they might have been successful. We tend to think of WWII as being a lot about rescuing a persecuted, slaughtered, and enslaved people, but honestly... how much are you wanting to invade China after seeing the John Oliver video?

That video was more than informative. How many other issues around the world do we know absolutely nothing about and therefore don't even know exist? What else is the Chinese government able to censor to its people to control their perspective of the world around them? It's sickening to know we're just scratching the surface of humanity's evil.

And yes, if Hitler didn't try to do both at once he'd probably have been successful at one of the two. Good thing he was too ambitious?

 

[Blitz24]

John Oliver just put up a segment on treatment of Uyghurs. I was thinking about about the comparisons to North Korea that have been made here on GTP, and of course Oliver made a comparison to the Holocaust.

It got me thinking... if Germany had been content to pull off the holocaust without trying to take over the world at the same time, I think they might have been successful. We tend to think of WWII as being a lot about rescuing a persecuted, slaughtered, and enslaved people, but honestly... how much are you wanting to invade China after seeing the John Oliver video?

While I in NO WAY want to belittle the suffering of the Uighur Muslims, I still see a slight difference between the Holocaust and the situation in China.

In the Holocaust, certain minorities were targeted and systematically stripped of their liberties in a modernized country. After a few years of this, these people were then both placed into concentration camps (those that seemed to have some physical labor value left) and into death camps (those deemed less useful and needed to be exterminated).

In the Uighur situation, the Chinese don't seem to be killing off scores of ethnic minorities (at least from the information I have seen), but instead are more trying to force assimilation (Sinoization) of the people, claiming that their religious culture equates them to being terrorists (which is absurd, as terrorism can come from any culture or religion). They are being forced into re-education camps in order to destroy the culture of the Uighur people.

China probably sees the Holocaust as a guide of what NOT TO DO, and thus is not actively killing the people, but any actual belief that they are terrorists or even a threat to Sino culture is farfetched to absurd. They inhabit a province that is pretty much far away from most of the Chinese people. The minorities in Nazi Germany were not given any choice or even forced to assimilate, as they were marked for extermination from probably the onset of the Third Reich.

 

[DesertPenguin]

It's basically everything you can do to a group of people just short of killing them.

 

[Danoff]

While I in NO WAY want to belittle the suffering of the Uighur Muslims, I still see a slight difference between the Holocaust and the situation in China.

In the Holocaust, certain minorities were targeted and systematically stripped of their liberties in a modernized country. After a few years of this, these people were then both placed into concentration camps (those that seemed to have some physical labor value left) and into death camps (those deemed less useful and needed to be exterminated).

In the Uighur situation, the Chinese don't seem to be killing off scores of ethnic minorities (at least from the information I have seen), but instead are more trying to force assimilation (Sinoization) of the people, claiming that their religious culture equates them to being terrorists (which is absurd, as terrorism can come from any culture or religion). They are being forced into re-education camps in order to destroy the culture of the Uighur people.

China probably sees the Holocaust as a guide of what NOT TO DO, and thus is not actively killing the people, but any actual belief that they are terrorists or even a threat to Sino culture is farfetched to absurd. They inhabit a province that is pretty much far away from most of the Chinese people. The minorities in Nazi Germany were not given any choice or even forced to assimilate, as they were marked for extermination from probably the onset of the Third Reich.

I'm not saying it's the same. But... keep in mind, that a lot of what Germany did was only evident after invasion. I was mostly trying to put myself in the shoes of someone in America prior to WWII - listening to conflict reports, rumors, about what was happening in Nazi Germany. It dawned on me that really if they had left their neighbors alone, the rest of us might have been content to leave them to it.

Certainly today North Korea is getting away with a great deal, and we don't know about all of it, and won't know about all of it unless we go in and do something about it. China seems to be walking a line here, and I think they're correctly estimating a lack of interest in intervention.

It seems amazing to consider that people would simply have allowed Hitler to have his concentration and labor camps. But I think we would have.

 

[mustafur]

John Oliver just put up a segment on treatment of Uyghurs. I was thinking about about the comparisons to North Korea that have been made here on GTP, and of course Oliver made a comparison to the Holocaust.

It got me thinking... if Germany had been content to pull off the holocaust without trying to take over the world at the same time, I think they might have been successful. We tend to think of WWII as being a lot about rescuing a persecuted, slaughtered, and enslaved people, but honestly... how much are you wanting to invade China after seeing the John Oliver video?

I would argue atleast the first parts of what got other countries to declare war on Germany was their ambition to restore old borders(which they acted on), something which China themselves are doing similar(see South China sea, and constant skirmishes with India and looming threat of a Taiwan invasion).

The Nuclear threat though makes things alot different to that time, to actually act on.

While I in NO WAY want to belittle the suffering of the Uighur Muslims, I still see a slight difference between the Holocaust and the situation in China.

In the Holocaust, certain minorities were targeted and systematically stripped of their liberties in a modernized country. After a few years of this, these people were then both placed into concentration camps (those that seemed to have some physical labor value left) and into death camps (those deemed less useful and needed to be exterminated).

In the Uighur situation, the Chinese don't seem to be killing off scores of ethnic minorities (at least from the information I have seen), but instead are more trying to force assimilation (Sinoization) of the people, claiming that their religious culture equates them to being terrorists (which is absurd, as terrorism can come from any culture or religion). They are being forced into re-education camps in order to destroy the culture of the Uighur people.

China probably sees the Holocaust as a guide of what NOT TO DO, and thus is not actively killing the people, but any actual belief that they are terrorists or even a threat to Sino culture is farfetched to absurd. They inhabit a province that is pretty much far away from most of the Chinese people. The minorities in Nazi Germany were not given any choice or even forced to assimilate, as they were marked for extermination from probably the onset of the Third Reich.

Would you not say mass sterilisation of the women not being classed in the extermination list even if it's not actual murder?

The methods are different sure but it looks like a similar goal.

 

[Blitz24]

I would argue atleast the first parts of what got other countries to declare war on Germany was their ambition to restore old borders(which they acted on), something which China themselves are doing similar(see South China sea, and constant skirmishes with India and looming threat of a Taiwan invasion).

The Nuclear threat though makes things alot different to that time, to actually act on.


Would you not say mass sterilisation of the women not being classed in the extermination list even if it's not actual murder?

The methods are different sure but it looks like a similar goal.

Definitely different method and the Chinese were very well known for population control on its own people until a few years ago. I do agree that it's similar. The sad thing is nobody will stand up to China effectively to stop it.

 

[Submerged]

Definitely different method and the Chinese were very well known for population control on its own people until a few years ago. I do agree that it's similar. The sad thing is nobody will stand up to China effectively to stop it.

They effectively still do population control, no more than two kids per family, last I heard that was legal for them.

 

[DesertPenguin]

Here's your China thread to talk about Uighurs

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I'm not saying it's the same. But... keep in mind, that a lot of what Germany did was only evident after invasion. I was mostly trying to put myself in the shoes of someone in America prior to WWII - listening to conflict reports, rumors, about what was happening in Nazi Germany. It dawned on me that really if they had left their neighbors alone, the rest of us might have been content to leave them to it.

Certainly today North Korea is getting away with a great deal, and we don't know about all of it, and won't know about all of it unless we go in and do something about it. China seems to be walking a line here, and I think they're correctly estimating a lack of interest in intervention.

It seems amazing to consider that people would simply have allowed Hitler to have his concentration and labor camps. But I think we would have.

The US probably wouldn't have gotten actively involved at all were it not for the Japanese attacking us. We certainly wouldn't have bothered with Europe if it was just Hitler killing people within his own borders. I think its particularly obvious when you see how many other genocides that have happened since then with only token objection from the USA (that is, we didn't attempt to forcefully stop it).

While reading about this, I stumbled on this:

Which...is concerning.

 

[HenrySwanson]

 

[Dotini]

IMHO the big problem is going to come when China decides the time has come - quite possibly during the Biden-Harris administration - to forcibly annex Taiwan.

 

[AerodyManiac]

Eh, court trials behind closed doors are a common occurence in China. The 12 HK people caught fleeing HK by sea are having their trials starting today, and after much tussling from their relatives, the Chinese local court finally made the originally-closed-door trials into an open one, only to bar everyone interested in attending the court hearings, including foreign consulate staffs, from entering due to ‘full seating capacity’.

I’ve got to concede, though, that I didn’t expect the whistleblower cases to go behind closed doors as well. Maybe the Chinese government felt that this matter is politically-charged?

 

[andrea]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ng-re-education-camp-china-gulbahar-haitiwaji

Unreal. How can they get away with this?

 

[Dotini]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ng-re-education-camp-china-gulbahar-haitiwaji

Unreal. How can they get away with this?

Not so sure it is unreal, but is possibly all too real. I suppose they get away with it because they are a sovereign autocratic state, a superpower with no serious diplomatic, economic or military opposition to such "internal" matters.

 

[BobK]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ng-re-education-camp-china-gulbahar-haitiwaji

Unreal. How can they get away with this?

They can and do get away with it, because who's going to stop them?

 

[1241Penguin]

I'm genuinely curious about something. As a descendent of HK immigrants who are now in Canada, my family keeps a close eye on Hong Kong and Chinese news. News regarding things like the treatment of Uyghurs, the Chinese government cover-up of the coronavirus, CCP crackdown of dissidents, and so on, were all things that my family and I find out through non-mainstream sources including first-hand eyewitness accounts or photographic evidence, long before mainstream media picks up on it, if they even did so. So my question is, does anyone else feel that mainstream media shies away from reporting on the crap that goes on in China? I'm not sure if @AerodyManiac has an opinions on this as well.

 

[ToyGTone]

Seems everyone in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea and Japan hate each other yet I don't understand it, why?


------
I'm not a political person but I always noticed that over here, people seem to ignore anything political happening in East Asian countries unlike say what's happening in the Western world or locally. They look at let's say China, Korea or Japan and people think of technology, culture, Cars, Video Games, Kpop or something like that. Rarely do i hear anything political from there and it's not because we don't hear them at all but rather because most just gloss over them.

Its painful but what should we do?

 

[Blitz24]

Seems everyone in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea and Japan hate each other yet I don't understand it, why?


------
I'm not a political person but I always noticed that over here, people seem to ignore anything political happening in East Asian countries unlike say what's happening in the Western world or locally. They look at let's say China, Korea or Japan and people think of technology, culture, Cars, Video Games, Kpop or something like that. Rarely do i hear anything political from there and it's not because we don't hear them at all but rather because most just gloss over them.

Its painful but what should we do?

China hates Japan and South Korea due to capitalism (SK and Japan) and what atrocities were done in WWII (Japan).
China hates Taiwan because they don't believe Taiwan is an independent country and is part of the PRC (remnants of the 1949 Chinese Civil War where the Republic of China leadership fled to the island).
Taiwan believes it is the true leadership of all of China and treats the PRC as an enemy.
Hong Kong and Macau were granted freedoms as being former protectorates of Britain (Hong Kong) and Portugal (Macau). China gained ownership of the two in 1997 (HK) and 1999 (Macau) underneath the mantra "One Country, Two Systems" (They aren't Communist), but now their freedoms are eroding due to China slowly reversing the plan sooner than they promised they would.

That's just for starters.

 

[Imari]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ng-re-education-camp-china-gulbahar-haitiwaji

Unreal. How can they get away with this?

Because violation of the human rights of citizens of other states has never been a reason that major powers go to war. Jews were subject to similar things in Germany long, long before the start of WW2, and it was never part of the reason war broke out.

To put a pragmatic face on it, think of the amount of people that would be killed or wounded in a full scale war with China. There would almost certainly be more deaths than there are now with the Uighurs, and it would be citizens of the countries that intervened. Like it or not, the US government feels that it has a higher duty to it's own citizens than those of China, even if they're being unjustly incarcerated and tortured.

 

[ToyGTone]

They can and do get away with it, because who's going to stop them?

Not so sure it is unreal, but is possibly all too real. I suppose they get away with it because they are a sovereign autocratic state, a superpower with no serious diplomatic, economic or military opposition to such "internal" matters.

They can and do get away with it, because who's going to stop them?

Because violation of the human rights of citizens of other states has never been a reason that major powers go to war. Jews were subject to similar things in Germany long, long before the start of WW2, and it was never part of the reason war broke out.

To put a pragmatic face on it, think of the amount of people that would be killed or wounded in a full scale war with China. There would almost certainly be more deaths than there are now with the Uighurs, and it would be citizens of the countries that intervened. Like it or not, the US government feels that it has a higher duty to it's own citizens than those of China, even if they're being unjustly incarcerated and tortured.

When the other major powers have been doing the exact same things to the same or similar group, the only real difference I see between the two is that one group pretends to care about humanity and like to "pretend democracy" as I would call it. A full on bloodbath happened in so called free developed world few months back, you know? BLM? Trump extremists? Those yellow wearing jacket french men? All those aggressive authority figures? all those bombings and invasions of countries? Just to name few.

Let's be real, nobody's a saint and I doubt anyone would have done anything unfortunately. This world is too busy fighting over petty twitter arguments and ****.

 

[JKgo]

China hates Japan and South Korea due to capitalism (SK and Japan) and what atrocities were done in WWII (Japan)

The first part of this statement isn't exactly correct. The East Asian nations 'enjoy' a pretty complicated relationship deeply rooted not in political ideology, but in the shared history of the region. I can't speak for the other regions but at least when it comes to China-Korea-Japan relationship, you simply cannot leave out their history. I'd argue it plays a far more critical role than capitalism and war atrocities.

Xi Jinping in the past openly declared his admiration of South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee, and even enjoyed a close 'personal' relationship with the latter's daughter who was elected as SK's president only to be removed from the office by the current administration. Hence the icy relationship between Xi and Moon Jae-in's government atm.

As far as Japan is concerned, I remember reading somewhere that both China and Korea in the past saw the island nation as a bunch of no-good pirates who routinely invaded other two's territories to steal and plunder. I'm guessing that that sentiment didn't improve post WW2, and became even worse after Japan became prosperous on the back of the Korean War.

But Japan also doesn't view the 'mainlanders' favourably either. I've often heard or seen the news of hardline Japanese right wingers resorting to similar tactics that Trump might have approved to sow division. Doesn't help the fact that Abe's administration, and the one in power right now, are apparently blood-related to war criminals from WW2...

 

[HenrySwanson]

We (the UK) may be getting somewhere in recognising this genocide. The US too.

Now that the ICC has refused to investigate the claims of genocide, there is a movement to start an investigation in UK courts.

 

[Groundfish]

 

[Rage Racer]

We (the UK) may be getting somewhere in recognising this genocide. The US too.

Now that the ICC has refused to investigate the claims of genocide, there is a movement to start an investigation in UK courts.

Genocide?

Is there any evidence telling that the Chinese are killing Uyghurs on a daily basis just for being Uyghurs? I mean, that’s what normally happens when you call it a genocide.

 

[Groundfish]

Prisoners of conscience forced organ harvesting

 

[HenrySwanson]

Genocide?

Is there any evidence telling that the Chinese are killing Uyghurs on a daily basis just for being Uyghurs? I mean, that’s what normally happens when you call it a genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide