Interestingly enough, Zhang was a close follower of the previous CCP leader. CCP leaders usually switch every 8 years between north and south, but the last time it was supposed to switch, it didn’t. I don’t know why.
>Peng's social media post was quickly deleted by government censors. Her social media account disappeared hours after her post. China's state media outlets have not mentioned her accusations at all.
>Screenshots of Peng's original post continued to circulate widely on the Chinese internet even as censors scrambled to delete any references to her allegations within group chats and blogs, a sign of the immense public interest in her allegations. The speed with which her post was deleted also reflects the extreme sensitivity of her remarks, which come just as Communist Party leaders convene in Beijing for the Sixth Plenum, an important political meeting during which the state is on high alert for any sign of discord.
Chinese internet censorship is insane. How many people work as censors?
Just recently I posted about looking for a lawyer on my WeChat (I wanted to file a lawsuit against the quarantine hotel I was in).
Right after I posted it, my WeChat started to take longer to load incoming messages, and my messages took longer to be sent. (I did a test with a phone logged into another account in the same wifi environment.)
This phenomenon disappeared a few days later though. I still wonder if I'm now in some watchlist or something.
An interesting stat I saw is that they spend, as a percentage of GDP, about as much on their internal looking police state as the US does on their military…
No, the meme claim is PRC spends roughly the same on domestic security as military (sub 2%). Which relative to GDP is about how much US spends on policing and homeland security without considerations of special budgets. US and PRC has comparable police state expenditures, US just also spends vastly more on military.
Just reminds me of Google, Facebook, etc. censors. Lots and lots of people work on those. I'd guess it's probably a similar amount given that Facebook and Google are worldwide, Chinese sites are not.
It’s not really that people work as censors, but that the government is the media. No one has to be told to take down material that is anti government, because everyone’s team lead is a communist party member and those are the obvious rules.
Did Trump rape someone and have all the news about it removed from the internet? Dont get carried away by your own bullshit.
The US media and social media is highly dysfunctional, partisan and polarising. But there is no dearth of Americans pointing it out.
The fact that it has not led to change has more to do with how complicated making change is. Meanwhile we have seen listening to randos and talking heads ends up with the storming of the area 51.
That's because it's almost certainly not true. If there were credible allegations do you think the rabidly anti Trump media outlets ever would have let us hear the end of it? Remember they dragged Russiagate on for 3 years until the anticlimactic Muller report finally put an end to it.
You are misconstruing the Mueller report which did no such thing. It pointed out clear examples of wrong doing and suspicious behaviour then declined a proper conclusion because of political actions within the DoJ.
> Peng says Zhang did not contact her for several years after the initial assault. But in 2018, the year Zhang retired from the government, Peng claims he got back in touch with her and the two began a tumultuous but consensual romantic relationship which ended when he cut off all contact.
The story is a bit confusing. Sometimes it’s romantic, sometimes it’s not. There is also consent mixed in, that fluctuates.
> He sexually assaulted her, then at some later point in time they had a consensual relationship.
I understand that the consensual relationship doesn't rule out the sexual assault. I do have, however, trouble digesting such relations. Is it normal that people get into relations with other people that they intend to take to court?
I would say that it is not greatly unusual. A frequent scenario, albeit slightly different, is that sexual assault occurs partway through an otherwise consensual relationship. And then the relationship continues for some time.
> Is it normal that people get into relations with other people that they intend to take to court?
Yes, it's very normal. Abusive partners can be very skilled at breaking down their victims; "you're so worthless, no one but me will ever love you" sort of scenarios. It's a very common phenomenon.
How a person perceives themselves, and how other people perceive them, those can be two quite different things. I agree that women are more qualified to talk about the former, but the latter is also interesting.
A part of the advantages of being human is that you can understand other humans. Having exactly the same pain receptors, eyes and body temperature... Yes, men can talk and understand about how women feel.
And "mansplaining" is a concept that was created to justify having smaller seats in a train basically. And to target and ashame people that cames in different sizes and shapes. The solution to mansplaining whatever it means is simple: bigger seats.
Maybe because I couldn't care less about those stupid new void concepts that are used basically as 'holier than thou' weapon against other people.
This terms are based in the --false-- claim that [all] men are dominant and [all] women are passive and unable to defend themselves from the big-bad-male. They aim for a society uniform when people will have much less margin to be an individual, and people with long legs or that weight different will be ashamed for that. Both terms, mansplaining and manspreading evoke a very dystopian feeling.
But if this is the kind of society that you wish for, feel free to spread the sticky mess
Yes, "men can talk and understand about how women feel." But mansplaining is not that.
Epistemic implication is saying, for example, "she is home, because her car is in the drive way". The car is not the reason, and the first clause is not a statement of fact. It is not too odd that "must" can be found in this middle voice, "She must be (a slut/a victim) because ..."
Saving grace is that the comment did not explain anything, so it can be chalked off as self-ironic take.
You seem to be describing slut-shaming, not mansplaining.
Mansplaining is the phenomenon of which an arrogant male-persons arrogance can be attributed to their sex/gender (as appropriate), usually with some reference to "patriarchy" and the undeserved confidence of those higher up in the power hierarchy when belittling or underestimating those lower on that same scale.
In practice, it is a gender-specific, weaponised term used in any situation where a man is perceived to be arrogant towards a women i.e. it is commonly abused beyond any positive philosophical aims.
Maybe it has a similar reasoning i.e. men sexist-ly assume women know less than them - but the fact is that it is rarely clear b/c arrogant, narcissistic people of both genders exist without the need for such a basis.
Normal? He was the 7th most powerful person in the CCP, in a country of 1.4 Billion. He was then a 65 year old having a "relationship" with a then 25 year-old...
"Is it normal?" just sounds like you saying "it isn't normal, she did something bad", almost putting the guilt on her. The thing is, it's just of no importance. We do not have the whole context, she might have loved him or saw an interest in the relationship, but it does not matter for this. It does not change the crime of the sexual assault.
That’s not at all what’s being asked. It was an honest question and you are attacking the asker for not being as woke as you in how relationships of victims often play out.
I'm not putting the guilt on anybody. I just have a hard time to understand the dynamics of such relations. I don't have any hidden motives for my comment.
> she might have loved him or saw an interest in the relationship, but it does not matter for this
That's exactly the part I have trouble digesting. If I was sexually assaulted by person (that I want to take them to jail for it), how can I pursue a relation (later) with them? I don't think, also, that I'll be able to love such a person. But I guess that's just me?
I disagree. Yes the law is the law and he should not have raped her, but she also should have had the moral fortitude not to then get into an affair with him.
The guy checks all the boxes, and will have to be punished, but giving the appearance of a scorned mistress doesn't help her convince something so wrong happened a decade ago.
But, no need to be perfect to he heard, and she'll have to have her chance.
> she also should have had the moral fortitude not to then get into an affair with him.
> giving the appearance of a scorned mistress doesn't help her convince
Given that we are certain both of those things can exist together, the case must at least be investigated. People should not have to be punished (or disbelieved) for being what they are: imperfect beings.
Why do folks stay in abusive relationships or situations?
Humans are complicated. I can't explain their point of view or the context, but I'm sure there's a reason. Sometimes it can be financial even. Trauma is a hell of a thing.
Think about kids who've been abused by their parents. They typically still can't help but try and earn their love. Human brains are. . . fucky, to say the least.
Not politically correct, and absolutely not condoning violence, but a lot of women have a deep primeval sexual response(they lubricate) to displays of physical strength, dominance, aggression and violence.
What about occam's razor? I mean, setting aside the insinuations of woke individuals.
Does Stockholm syndrome exist?
No doubt in my mind that it exists from the Sabine Women to the Abduction at Shiloh and every ancient siege aftermath to the war brides of WW2, the evidence is overwhelming.
> May be entirely mythical, and certainly doesn't leave us with any useful evidence to evaluate from a psychotherapy standpoint.
I know quite a bit about psychotherapy (Schema Therapy, CBT, DBT, Transactional Analysis) and I see very little use of such evolutionary explanations, even if correct to any form of therapy.
If Stockholm syndrome was real and if women were evolutionary inclined to physiologically respond to their captors sexual advances and later "infatuate" (so as not to suffer violence and that the children survive), how could that be useful in any way to psychotherapy or law or any other area of human life?
What evolutionary explanation? What are you talking about?
The three examples you cited as evidence of Stockholm Syndrome are made up of two unverifiable cases from over two thousand years ago, and a third that isn't Stockholm Syndrome.
I'm not sure why people get triggered by anybody mentioning these facts. Do you think that I or others are saying women should have no agency because they lubricate or "worse" have orgasms during rape?
> My point is this is not gender specific
I think the only stuff that is firewalled into gender specificity could be stuff that's in the Y chromosome, and even that would be debatable.
Why did a powerful communist party leader manage to get “consent” from someone he previously raped… well probably because despite resigning, he still retained the power, money and influence to make other people cower before him. One could easily go into this so called consensual relationship thinking that by not resisting they are at least not getting hurt.
> Screenshots of Peng's original post continued to circulate widely on the Chinese internet even as censors scrambled to delete any references to her allegations within group chats and blogs, a sign of the immense public interest in her allegations. The speed with which her post was deleted also reflects the extreme sensitivity of her remarks, which come just as Communist Party leaders convene in Beijing for the Sixth Plenum, an important political meeting during which the state is on high alert for any sign of discord.
This model of government is toxic. You cannot memory hole the abused to protect the inner circle.
Maybe she's a liar, but this claim warrants investigation and corroboration with other potential victims. It should embolden other victims to come forward.
The government should serve the people. And its members should be held to a greater standard of accountability.
Censorship in China is completely orthogonal to whether the issue will be investigated or not. This is because censorship's primary goal is not to suppress anti-government information, but to supress collective action. Both pro- and anti-govt messages are censored if they have collective action potential. Conversely, anti-govt messages are not censored if they lack collective action potential.
Furthermore, the Chinese government is very responsive to citizens' feedback. This means actually addressing feedback by changing policies. Online criticisms and offline protests are common. Threatening the govt with collective action, increases response rate.
Thus, a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon is common in China: messages get censored and the govt does something about the issue.
At the end of the day, westerners will still not agree with how China works. But I think it's important to keep in mind that China works quite differently from popular imagination.
I’d love to see an example of a pro-government message that had collective action potential (what kind of action would that even be?) and that was censored by the party.
> Another example is the following censored post supporting the state. It accuses the local leader Ran
Jianxin, whose death in police custody triggered
protests in Lichuan, of corruption:
> “According to news from the Badong county propaganda department web site, when Ran Jianxin was
party secretary in Lichuan, he exploited his position
for personal gain in land requisition, building demolition, capital construction projects, etc. He accepted
bribes, and is suspected of other criminal acts.”
One way collective action potential is measured is by measuring the virality of a post.
“Let’s form a patriotic march to support the govt on day X”
If there are to be such marches, it is the govt which will organize them. Not bottom up action, not via any process which could generate alternate leaders, power structures, organizations, etc
Anti-Japanese collective action, which nominally aligns with the interest of the government, would occur every year but it's clamped down early. When uninhibited, it culminates in riots where sushi restaurants, Japanese cars, buildings with Japanese consulates are torched and demolished.
The owners of those are fellow Chinese citizens who become understandably ticked off and come to the government for redress for the damage and can be a right pain. So it's less work to maintain public order and not let demonstrations like in 2012 spiral out of control.
> When uninhibited, it culminates in riots where sushi restaurants, Japanese cars, buildings with Japanese consulates are torched and demolished.
This is, then, ultimately against the government's interests and thus it is suppressed. The CCP would be completely okay with the torching of Japanese property if it wasn't against the state's economic/diplomatic interests (arguably such property would not even exist if it was against the state's interest).
So let's stop saying the CCP will suppress "pro government" speech.
The CCP is afraid of any unsanctioned collective action, even if that action is aligned with CCP policies. They don't want alternative power structures to arise which might challenge their authority in the future.
>> The government should serve the people. And its members should
In the real world the government serves the party people. This happens in democratic systems as well but in a communist/uni-party system is rapart as there is no election, no opposition and no real judiciary system! CCP can never be wrong or do wrong things because that would mean it must held accountable(by who?) and/or be changed...
Despite not having elections for higher representatives (China does have elections for lower-level representatives) and independent judiciary, China does have accountability for government officials, as well as citizen consultation on policies. It's also not true that China is a country in which CCP "can never be wrong", because criticisms and protests are common.
These claims are backed by eyewitnesses (expats living in China) as well as research.
- In China, citizen engagement and protest do not contribute to regime change. Instead citizen engagement contributes to regime survival.
- Section 6: “upper levels of government use citizens as an oversight mechanism on subnational leaders, which imbues citizens with the ability to sanction lower level leaders, and generates responsiveness among local leaders to citizen demands.”
China is neither a western democratic system, nor a totalitarian/communist/dictatorial system. Instead, China is a third distinct category, fitting neither of the first two.
> Despite not having elections for higher representatives (China does have elections for lower-level representatives) and independent judiciary
If there is no accountability at the top (and there clearly isn't), then there is no meaningful accountability at all. Such arrangements provide a veneer of agency, with lower level functionaries and regional governments acting merely as scapegoats when embarrassing situations get out of hand and cannot be suppressed. Likewise, when only one party is allowed to run for "elections", those "elections" by definition are a fraud with no meaningful choices.
That is certainly one way to view it, but it's not the only one. China is all about outcome legitimacy (actually governing well = legitimate, regardless of the selection process) as opposed to process legitimacy (legitimacy is tied to how officials are selected). Many Chinese prefer meritocracy because it makes it harder for bad leaders to get to the top in the first place. Many think it's backwards to oust a bad president after the fact. In China, it takes 30 years of political career to become the president. Of course meritocracy has its problems, as has democracies in which the top leader is directly elected. They both have their own pros and cons. There are examples which are accountable in the Chinese system but not in western democracies, and vice-versa.
> Likewise, when only one party is allowed to run for "elections", those "elections" by definition are a fraud with no meaningful choices.
In China, parties don't run for elections, people do. People from other parties (China has 8) are elected. At present, there are 152000+ members from other parties that hold positions in People's Congresses (China's representation body) as deputies. [1]
Parties don't form adversarial, power-balancing relationships with each other. The existance of other parties are not used to put up a fake display of western-style multiple-party elections. Instead, the system works completely differently, trying to push participants towards unity, even if only outwardly.
> and regional governments acting merely as scapegoats
Given the meritocratic system, in which officials are promoted based on KPIs, this is not a logical thing to do. Scapegoating your own subordinates undermines the system's selection process of a future leader. Even Xi himself started at the village level, working his way up to county, city and province level over a 30-year period.
It is also illogical given that China's governance system is highly decentralized. The central government doesn't make all the policies, a lot are left to local governments. They aren't mere puppets that follow instructions. That wouldn't even be scalable given the country's size.
---
China's system is distinct, and different from both actual western systems and from western imagined dystopias or fake democracies.
You can argue that only the western democratic way is acceptable. Fine, that's your opinion. I disagree. I subscribe to Kishore Mahbubani's thought. He's ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat. He says that the west should accept that not all countries will become carbon copies of the west. He says that the west should accept a world with a diverse range of governance systems.
> In China, parties don't run for elections, people do. People from other parties (China has 8) are elected. At present, there are 152000+ members from other parties that hold positions in People's Congresses (China's representation body) as deputies.
This is sophistry considering that out of the one group of representatives that are elected directly, those candidates are only allowed to run at the pleasure of Chinese Communist Party (the "CCP") leadership. Saying there are eight parties, when one party controls the candidate selection process is again just thin a veneer slapped on a defacto single-party system. It is worth noting it is impossible for the populace to determine if a leader is "actually governing well" considering the heavy restrictions on information, free speech, and a non-existent free press.
> You can argue that only the western democratic way is acceptable. Fine, that's your opinion. I disagree.
I made no such claim about democracies. My main point is that the CCP is objectively repressive and despotic on a scale, consistency, and breadth not yet seen over such a sustained period of time (i.e. Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, One Child Policy, The Great Firewall of China, Hong Kong, etc.). Therefore, the CCP regime is utterly loathsome from a humanitarian perspective.
>objectively repressive and despotic on a scale, consistency, and breadth not yet seen over such a sustained period of time
Not familiar with Chinese governance but on your last point, if we take the worst actions of the US Democrat and Republican party, don't they also have a horrific track record over the last 70+ years, both domestically and internationally (mass murder in Vietnam, Iraq, Cambodia, Japan, Afghanistan, South America, and so on..., mass surveillance, assassinations, racist laws, mass incarceration, etc)?
It would be hard to claim that just because we segment the atrocities into 4-8 year periods, these parties (which are united during the execution of much of these atrocities) are not as objectively repressive and despotic as the Chinese variety.
Where scale is concerned, we get equivalent scale by operating internationally while the CCP operates primarily domestically.
Mister Lai, I accuse you of being a sly fox who can tell lies with true words.
> China does have accountability for government officials
True, but is it the case that the laws are upheld every time? Is there an independent judiciary that sees violations persecuted through with due process?
I submit: no, this is not even possible due to the level of corruption. Officials accumulate influence, wealth and power so they can extract themselves out of sticky situations. Occasionally, officials are held accountable to much public fanfare, but they happen to be unwitting pawns, scapegoats taking the fall for someone else, or faction members that are opportunistically eliminated by their rivals.
> criticisms and protests are common
True, but do they effect change? I submit: rarely. The vast amount of forms of criticisms and protests are suppressed before collective action can occur.
Source: eyewitnesses (expats living in China)
> China is [not] a totalitarian/[…]dictatorial system.
Shill harder. I've seen you approve of CCP apologist Barrett.
> I accuse you of being a sly fox who can tell lies with true words.
I deny your accusation. I have my own opinion based on my own knowledge and research, thank you very much.
> True, but is it the case that the laws are upheld every time?
No. Accountability is not perfect. There is no country in which accountability is perfect. Accountability does not have to be perfect in order for there to be accountability.
I submit that the situation in China still has room for improvement, and that it is improving.
> True, but do they effect change? I submit: rarely.
The paper I showed you contradicts your submission. They define "receptiveness" as "actually changing policy".
> Source: eyewitnesses (expats living in China)
Please post their videos. I posted one, I showed data. In his videos he makes concrete, verifiable claims. I would like to see your data as well as concrete, verifiable claims.
> Shill harder. I've seen you approve of CCP apologist Barrett.
This reference to "shill" is uncalled for. It is an evidence-free out-of-hand dismissal of anybody who has a different opinion of China than yours.
I don't even watch Barrett's videos that often. The only time I posted something was when Barrett documented on how sanitary workers in Shenzhen receive 1 free meal every week. That's not even political, so why do you categorize this under "shilling"? Aren't we supposed to be "only against the CCP and supporting the Chinese people"?
I was following this chain until the parent poster said "Shill harder". What a shame.
I think it's made obvious that you're operating on a level in which you still critically think about the opinions that you hold. Most of the people who resort to anti-China platitudes or accusing others of shilling have simply tuned out the actual thinking part of the equation.
Most outrage culture nowadays involve blatant rage without giving a second thought. I checked out your links and it seems more substantial than "eyewitness accounts from expats".
The third distinct category of governance in China has more in common with mafia crime families than with what most westerners think of as political parties or government bureaucracies. The mafia also has accountability of a sort, and processes for selecting leaders. They can be surprisingly responsive to local communities, as long as no one challenges their power. At the higher levels there is constant hidden maneuvering, and a fall from favor can be quickly fatal.
I disagree. I think it has more in common with the traditional Chinese imperial Confucianist meritocratic bureaucracy. In fact, this is corroborated by political science professor Daniel A. Bell: https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/06/12/chinas-poli...
A mafia family does not work for the interest of those it "protects", nor do people approve of them. The Chinese government does work for the interest of its people, even if you don't agree with all of the ways they operate. It also enjoys very high levels of approval by its people. Apart from hearsay or informal street interviews [1], there are two researches that corroborate this [2][3].
As Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat, puts it: the CCP is more accurately described as the Chinese Civilization Party. Ultimately, they work to further the interest of Chinese civilization.
Low-level elections in China are by no means perfect. That I do not dispute. But you know that your source is Radio Free Asia, a CIA-funded propaganda organization, right?
Yeah, they are elections but first you must be a "club member" like in the mafia elections ...of course everyone can become the big boss but first it must prove loyalty to the "family" aka "party". There is a whole process from becoming a made man to reaching the top chair and become the big boss.
Everthing in a communist party is about loyalty and fear not merit or election. If you don't like censorship or try to challenge the direction of the CCP you are out of the club for life and maybe even in jail.
Imagine Jack Ma saying the Xi is a stupid bear and doesn't know anything about finance or technology and that he (Jack Ma) would be a better leader for China so the people should be let to vote him as China's leader.
What does rigorous research from renowned institutions such as Harvard have to do with "little pinkies" a.k.a. nationalistic Chinese Internet users? Are you saying that their research methodology does not sufficiently account for bias? If so, can you point out which part of the methodology is flawed and why?
First, Harvard is a very renowed institution, as you say. That has to do with the people who goes and has gone there, as it should. There are no absolute guarantees about quality or morality. We asume the quality is good because it often is, but no guarantee. Zuckerberg studied at Harvard, and started Facebook while at it. Draw your own conclusions.
Second, the authors in your Harvard article are
* Tinguang Meng
* Jennifer Pan
* Ping Yang
Jennifer Pan has Chinese backgrouds, as Tinguang and Ping do. I won't say the article is fake, I only hoovered over it, but I will put it in the same shelf where I keep RTNews (russian television) articles.
Edit: When I see a Harvard backed piece, the same as a Lancet piece, I don't give it a free pass. I read it because I know it is influential because of the name. We still have to go indeep, whenever possible.
But research is still research. It is still backed by data even if the data or methodology may be flawed. Where is your evidence that my claims are not true? As far as I can tell, your statement is complete speculation. Why does that deserve more priority?
You view the paper with suspicion because of Chinese names. Don't people usually tend to say "I support the Chinese people and I'm only against the CCP"? And yet Chinese people who live outside the mainland are suspect by default, without any evidence? Heck, whatever happend to "guilty until innocent"? I find your attitude to be highly problematic.
Furthermore, there is additional research which shows that:
1. The Chinese government doesn't force people to have positive opinions about the Chinese government. "How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression" https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-... Pro- and anti-government messages are equally censored, based solely on the criteria of whether messages have collective action potential. Anti-government messages that lack collective action potential are not censored.
2. The Chinese government has no hidden astroturfing agents. "How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument" — https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf They have agents, but these are government employees, and they post messages to distract to a different topic as opposed to defending a position in the same topic.
These two researches' authors only have western names.
The way I see it is that you have a prejudice. You stick to your beliefs even in the absence of evidence.
What's fascinating in China is the extradjudicial repossession of residential land.
Normally one gets a 99-year land lease to build a house, but the CCP has been repossessing the land after 30-40 years as it increases in value.
The CCP sends a goon squad with no uniform or id and a backhoe to tear down the house. Sometimes they wait for the "owner" to go to work, sometimes they just pull the house down with the occupants inside.
But here's the wrinkle. Since it's extrajudicial, the owner can kill the goons and no arrest or prosecution follows.
This actually happened in 2020. An owner threw a brick at the backhoe operator, IIRC, killing him, without being arrested. Although the court system is fixed in China, the CCP doesn't want the publicity, since it would reveal a war on citizens' property.
So if you can keep killing the goons, you keep your house until the next round.
doubtful there will be any serious investigation or consequences if this in fact occurred. he will just be moved to a less glamourous post at worst. but the party will take care of him.
There would be investigation but mostly at party level. This is not going to be a criminal investigation, I don't think even the lady is asking for a criminal investigation. It is more 'why didn't he divorce' than 'why did he do it to me'. Sometimes, investigation on something minor can lead to major issues, if corruption or other things are dig out. All these will happen in background, people won't have the joy of the drama until it is over.
Still in use, probably less common than it used to.
Parents do not want their juvenile or young adult daughters to be a rape target or even have consensual romantic or sexual relationships without parental consent, so they take away a part of their sexuality by making them unattractive or passing them off as male with clothing, hair-style, (lack of) jewellery and make-up, mannerisms.
"But in 2018, the year Zhang retired from the government, Peng claims he got back in touch with her and the two began a tumultuous but consensual romantic relationship which ended when he cut off all contact."
smh typical storm in a teacup that only gets press because they can put "China" in the clickbait.
As someone who lived in China for years I fail to see what's the news here exactly? It would be strange, if as CCP official he didn't use his position to do this and other criminal acts. You better write articles about not doing it, those will be actually shocking revelations.
News was allowed to get out to the point that one could hear about that on abroad platforms. Usually anything that rocks the proverbial boat gets censored without trace.
Either there was a fuck-up of epic proportions with several fail-safes in a row not triggering, or (conspiracy theory) this is on purpose to "bury"/distract from more important news or to discredit Zhang so he can be removed easier by his enemies.
Please be more specific. Regardless of whether there was a secondary motive of purging political opponents, are you saying that it was ineffective in actually addressing corruption? Can you show some data?
it's ineffective if you replace one corrupted opponent with corrupted friend, that's not anti-coruption campaign by my standards, that's just purging opponents, because you are not really improving things, makes almost as much sense as war on drugs
That's like asking for data on the levels of corruption in a mafia family. No one is allowed to gather such data, but it's pretty obvious that the corruption at higher levels approaches 100%.
That assertion rests on the assumption that the Chinese government is like a mafia family. That premise requires evidence. As I mentioned in another reply to you, I disagree with this premise and I gave my reasons why.
I even question the assertion that no one is allowed to gather data about the government's conduct or performance. The research "Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China" [1] did exactly this.
>> Peng's social media post was quickly deleted by government censors. Her social media account disappeared hours after her post. China's state media outlets have not mentioned her accusations at all.
So the communist assault has two flavors: On at the individual level (as it happened) and then by the CCP government using censorship.
I feel bad for all the Hong Kongers and Taiwanese who fear their future while the west keeps pumping money into this fascist dictatorship which openly tortures people in Xinjiang.
How's is supporting China(CCP) different than supporting Nazi Germany burning jewish people during WW 2?
I m a Hong Konger, I have no debt, earn 10k USD a month, pay reasonable taxes for reasonable services and get annoyed like everyone at the yellow vs blue bullshit polarisation of the public discourse.
We're fine, but I do feel bad for the americans who live in some sort of delusion that their exploitation is freedom.
Friends from HK including my partner who left that place before it turns into a cesspit like China tend to disagree but good luck to you! You may not earn much in other countries, so you may stay since you don't care about freedom nor values anyway.
Sorry to be blunt, but I don't think you have even the faintest idea of the extent of the war of extermination the Nazis engaged in, even prior to WW2.
China certainly has its smattering of Han supremacy and engages in (mostly economic) imperialism, but even the Uyghur genocide pales in comparison to any of the multiple genocides of the Nazis.
What do you propose? Military invention would just mean global thermonuclear war. US sanctions against China? They'd either have to be ineffective enough not to have any significant impact (like the Huawei ban) or they'd amount to cutting off your nose to spite the face. The US (like most developed countries) is economically dependent on China at this point. China also holds a significant share of the US's debt. Cutting off China from the US would probably hurt the US more than China and nobody else would follow suit if it impacted their economy.
You want the US to cut off China? Sure. Stop relying on offshore production in developing nations. Pivot back to the isolationism of the pre-WW2 era. But that would mean giving up the excessive military domination and rebuilding the domestic economy from scratch. You can try to half-ass it and move production from China into other countries but that's just delaying the inevitable (who says India isn't going to slide into genocidal fascism next, given they already have a Hindu supremacist problem?).
In terms of number of deaths, the CCP killed 15-55m in the Great Leap Forward. In terms of mass murders of history, they killed a lot more than many actual genocides.
The deaths in the Great Leap Forward were largely due to famines resulting from administrative failures, it wasn't "mass murder" although it was definitely an avoidable mass death.
A genocide is not defined by literal death of individuals but for killings to be part of a genocide they have to intentionally target a specific group and its culture.
The Nazi's Eastern front was explicitly a war to create "Lebensraum" (living space) which went with depopulating large areas. They also deliberately initially displaced and then systematically exterminated Jewish populations. They also targeted Sinti and Roma people. For Jews they also went to the lengths of deliberately destroying their cultural artefacts as well as works they claimed to be influenced by Jewish culture.
If you desperately want to pin a mass murder on historical communists, you probably want the Holodomor. But even the Holodomor seems to have at least in part been a case of administrative failure and apparatchiks not taking complaints seriously. But at least there are indicators of some level of malintent even if it may not have been intentionally genocidal.
Unlike the above, the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims does qualify as genocide under most definitions as it actively seeks out to erase culture and traditions even if the settling of Han Chinese people in Uyghur territory may not. But while it involves imprisonment, so-called reeducation and arbitrary arrests, it doesn't involve mass murder.
Note that what the Nazis did to Jews, Roma, Sinti and (to a lesser extent) Slavs wasn't unique in European history either (except for the technology available to them), but Europeans previously only had done this to populations in Africa or the Americas. From the victim's perspective the distinction between fascism and colonialism is at most times completely arbitrary.
But "classicide" is not genocide. I'm not interested in defending authoritarian governments or state capitalist empires. I'm pointing out that it is extremely ill-informed to compare modern China (or even Maoist China) to the Nazis.
> Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile
To elaborate on Soviet and Maoist "administrative failures": both governments heavily relied on central planning and thus transferred authority from individual farmers to the bureaucracy. This often meant bureaucrats would set export quotas based on calculations rather than merely exporting excess product and making decisions based on spreadsheets rather than relevant expertise.
From what I can gather, the unofficial story behind the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward seems to be that Chinese bureaucrats fell for exaggerated claims about farming techniques used in the Soviet Union and pivoted the farmers to using those techniques and set quotas based on the expected returns. When the results didn't match the calculations, nobody wanted to (likely, literally) bite the bullet so they tried to make good on the overpromised exports, starving the local populations.
Much like the Chernobyl incident, this was more of a case of bad judgement followed by a rigid chain of command playing chicken with a catastrophe to avoid taking responsibility for a comparably minor gaffe.
Of course the CCP didn't want its bureaucracy to appear incompetent and for the US it was more useful as anti-communist propaganda to frame it as mass murder than administrative failure, so neither side has been particularly honest about it in most "official" material until the end of the (first?) Cold War.
If you want to point out deliberate mass murders by China or the Soviet Union there were plenty of those (e.g. Mao killing the landlords) but in terms of scale they don't really compare.
EDIT: Also if you seriously want to count famines as mass murder, you won't like hearing about what the British did in India.
> This often meant bureaucrats would set export quotas based on calculations rather than merely exporting excess product and making decisions based on spreadsheets rather than relevant expertise.
The official story is false. They knew what was happening -- they had agents in every village, who amazingly were always well fed. There were regular visits and inspections. Look, both the USSR and China had mass famines in the countryside, and it was for the same reason:
They wanted to rapidly industrialize which meant the creation of a large factory worker class in rapidly growing urban areas. This required a smaller and more productive agrarian class with surplus food being shipped to cities.
But rather than wait and let normal urbanization take its course, they simply transferred populations to the city and confiscated all the food that was needed to feed this class, letting a fraction - about 10% of the rural population - starve to death. The remaining farmers were forced to work harder to make up for their dead colleagues and this was accomplished via intimidation and near-slavery conditions. That is, at the end of the day, what forced agricultural collectivization was all about. It was to make up for the fact that a lot of the farmers would not be given food. And everyone understood what this was about.
It was intentional democide to free up mouths to eat in the cities, in order to achieve rapid industrialization.
I find it weird that you trust the inspections to have been genuine when the bureaucracy was so infamous for corruption, shifting the blame and being guided by a culture of fear. It's also unsurprising that the bureaucrats in charge were better fed while the populace was starving: both the USSR and China only managed to replace the ruling class rather than abolish the class divide altogether, regardless of the at times drastic measures they attempted. The Soviet Union literally put former oligarchs back in charge because they "needed the expertise".
The Great Leap Forward was remarkably incompetent in many parts exactly due to the same circumstances I described: forcing ordinary citizens to produce shoddy steel in their backyards to meet quotas for example. You seem to give Mao and the mid-century CCP a lot more credit than they deserved.
Well, that's something for you to work out. China was great at monitoring the population. If there was a Christian missionary somewhere in those villages they would have been swiftly found (and they were). But you think 50 million people dying and Mao didn't know? Entire villages wiped off the map and no one noticed? Emaciated bodies walking around, children with distended bellies everywhere and it was a secret? Remember for every one that died, there are 100 more walking skeletons that didn't. No serious historian believes this:
Even so, work by Yang and others has proved that senior leaders in Beijing knew of the famine as early as 1958. "To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward," Mao warned colleagues a year later. "When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that others can eat their fill."
And it was the exact same thing that happened in the USSR when they did the same rapid industrialization program and the same forced collectivization scheme, done for the same reason, in the 30s. Even up to similar proportions of the agricultural population dying. No one is claiming that the Soviets didn't know they were starving the countryside to enable rapid urbanization - they rode up with trucks and took all of the food from the farms, across the entire countryside. So, I don't understanding the apology for Mao here, we have logic, we have precedent, we have a documentary record, and we have his own speeches.
Objectively it isn't any different, the tacit approval of CCP means that today's generation does not meet the moral standard.
> pumping money into this fascist dictatorship
SNAFU; people invest money into the regime unknowingly. It should be every government's ministry of finance's responsibility to clearly mark a financial instrument (retirement fund, stock bundle etc.) as having ties to a CCP controlled company, so that at least an investor can make an informed decision; and if the parliament has passed a resolution to condemn the genocide, then it should follow through and outright ban such investments. Instead nothing happens, apathy rules, and tragically the victims of the genocide have no mindshare to lobby to change the situation.
Twitter marks CCP controlled content as such, but your stock portfolio and broker do not.
Not so long ago, it was said that Xinjiang was "worse than the holocaust". But now "The barbed wire is almost gone. So are the armored personnel carriers. Young [supposedly genocided] Uyghur men are back on the streets" and "sense of normality is creeping back in". What's more, this "Nazi Germany-like regime" is doing all this voluntarily?!
The fact that AP backpedaled like this shows how shaky all the evidence was.
There is a problem in Xinjiang, no doubt about it. But it's not the second coming of Nazi Germany. It's a heavy-handed fight against sallafist jihadists that have killed thousands of Han and Uyghur alike, with the end goal of making society safe again even if that means collateral damage and intruding on individual rights.
I did not say the AP said that. What I mean is that that was general commentary from people about what's going on in Xinjiang, based on all the reporting.
It was (and I argue, still is) quite common for people to call someone a "genocide denier" simply for saying "what happens in Xinjiang is bad but it's not genocide / it lacks evidence". For example: https://twitter.com/redditiosymboli/status/13875617117339361...
Then that's a nice rhetorical trick, but dishonest.
A direct quote from you:
The fact that AP backpedaled like this shows how shaky all the evidence was.
You're comparing your impression of a bunch of poor quality news with an article by the AP and calling it backpedaling. The AP did not backpedal, because it never said that Xinjiang was worse than the Holocaust.
Further, things can change with time... that AP article is saying that things used to be much worse.
Okay take a look at this then: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...
"It’s genocide, full stop [..] These are direct means of genetically reducing the Uighur population" (whose populations have grown are are now apparently showing up more often on the streets again)
In any case, your focus on whether AP specifically said or didn't say something misses the bigger picture. The real world isn't a high school debate in which only strict debating rules are important.
What's happening here is that the US government and the military industrial complex are manufacturing consent for a war against China, and the media is ignorantly taking the claims at face value and giving the messages a platform. Sure, the media may not always literally make the same claims word for word, but the point is that all these insinuations and mood-making still instil ideas in people's minds. That's why on the one hand "State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China" [1] while on the other hand we have people like shell0x proclaiming that China is the second coming of Nazi Germany.
Have enough people with such a sentiment, and the sentiment becomes truth even if nobody explicitly said it. That's why Dutch parliament members said in parliament debates that "1 million Uyghurs are imprisoned" (not "up to"; exactly 1 million, or even more), even though "reputable" media such as AP only ever said "up to 1 million". Dutch parliament members even said "Amnesty International confirms that there's a genocide", but if you go to Amnesty International's website then the website says "there's not enough evidence for a genocide".
The public and even politicians are being psychologically manipulated to accept a war against China. In the mean time, even though accusations of "genocide denial" don't come from the mainstream media, having enough people say something like that will deter other people from speaking out against the genocide narrative out of fear for being socially ostracized. For a while I feared speaking up for this exact reason. Aren't we supposed to be a free society in which we can question things?
Also in the mean time, actual Uyghurs who wanted to speak out against the genocide narrative are being banned from social media platforms simply for not abiding to that narrative. [2]
And I'm sure I don't need to remind you how devastating a war against China would be for the entire planet.
I’m not on the opposite side of a debate with you, and I don’t care about “high school debate rules.” If you’re right then you don’t need to lie or mislead and use little tricks like the one I pointed out. Just make your point without them - people here are happy to hear your perspective, and will be more likely to hear what you’re saying without all your embellishments.
All right. I don't believe I am "lying" or being dishonest, but point taken.
I suppose the difference between us is that you care a lot less about this topic and thus aren't constantly bombarded with extreme claims and things such as being called a genocide denier, while for me the topic directly affects the lives of my family.
> and doesn't censor all online and offline mentions of it.
They don't censor it yet because they don't have the capabilities and the actual man-force to do it, but they're not that far off [1]:
> The police watchdog is investigating alleged corruption in the Metropolitan Police, including claims it covered up child sex offences because MPs and police officers were involved.
That's not at odds with him having raped her. In addition, most rapes (and murders, and most violent crimes) are committed by those in close relationships. Double in addition, I don't doubt for a minute that a rapist 40 years her senior would manipulate this woman into a "consensual" relationship post-facto.
