As an Apple fanboy, I feel deeply conflicted to find Apple on the list and also Tim's approval & visit to one of the factories exploiting forced labor. I feel like a hypocrite, who supports human rights abuses through forced labour.
All the years I stubbornly rejected my friend's and colleague's criticism from the open source & linux community for being eccentric and making 'exaggerated' arguments, but now I am so deeply engrossed in the Apply ecosystem, that I fear a switch to some linux distribution would be unmanageable for me.
Ironically I feel like a slave of Apple myself. What could I do tho? Switch to some other brand and then find out, that they operate with the same unethical behaviour!? I'm just deeply conflicted.
We need laws that prevent this stuff. If you avoid all companies that have connections with China then not many will be left to choose from. From a company’s point of view it’s also difficult to compete with others who deal with China.
It’s similar to environmental rules. A single company can’t do much as long as it’s possible for others to keep polluting and be cheaper that way.
One of government’s tasks is to level the playing field so everybody can compete while following the same rules. Same thing for workplace safety, child labor and a ton of other things. We need rules for acceptable standards
Totally agree. But that comes at the expense of profit. Big public companies who claim they are there only to make money for shareholders won’t do that.
Which is sickening. We need some sort of heavy handed regulation that stipulates that labor up and down the supply chain of a given American company conforms to American labor protections. We also need this regulation to be backed by consequence which would directly harm the lives of those individuals who directly decide to eschew these regulations.
I think we can stand to hold executives far more accountable for them deciding to commit human rights abuses via casual email or shareholder memo, some 3000 miles out of sight and out of mind from the crimes themselves.
These sort of regulations would be very painful for the economy in the near term, but far less painful than continuing the status quo for those being abused.
i sure hope thats sarcasm. he just threw out random thoughts with no actual way to achieve anything. laws cant actually to force multinational companies to do anything. how would they be enforced after all?
you'd first need a world government for any laws to apply. and no chance of that happening within the foreseeable future.
You can force multinational corporations to do things by not allowing them into your own market if they don’t follow certain rules. The US does it all the time, so does Europe.
GDPR is a law, not a corporation and is a recent attempt at enforcing something, and spectacularly failed at that.
Almost all eu-foreign enterprises ignore it entirely or don't actually adhere to it, even after showing a big pop-up claiming they do.
And the multinational corporations just started to hide their tracking better. For an obvious example: chrome includes a 24 bit unique identifier per installation to track you and instead of saving your PII they just build a nrr to "predict" them. Such a success, indeed.
What’s your exact point? Are you trying to say that laws don’t work and nothing can be done so it shouldn’t be tried? I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
> Alright, but you know, that quite some people would add the US to that list, too?
> You know, private operated prisons, starting wars, torturing, kidnapping, dronestriking around the world called "extrajucidal killing" etc. etc. etc.
Sure, and you know what? If that were ever the justification for trade restrictions with the US, it’d be well deserved.
I’d prefer if we as a country took the moral high ground, but in the absence of that, some pressure from outside could be a good thing.
The EU?
Well, we have for example this glorious law that mainly because of the holocaust, we don't kick people out who come asking for help and have no other safe place to go. But since we don't actually want them, we pay and support other dictators and warlords to keep them away from us, so they cannot ask for help in the first place and we punish people who rescue those wrong people from drowning, when they dare to take them to a safe place where they ask for help.
So who is left?
Switzerland? Maybe, but they for example had never a problem with taking all the dirty money and doing buusness with anyone, as long as its money.
This world is not black and white, but yeah, there surely are places which are a lot darker and if we believe to be in a lighter place, we can't feel superior if our wealth is based on those very dark places.
Maybe just don't buy any new hardware until/unless Apple addresses this. I expect that most of the forced labor goes towards hardware production, and I don't think that continuing to use Apple software makes you (any more) complicit.
Yes, I do that myself! Might still make you complicit (edit: People may be more likely to buy Apple hardware if there's a stronger used market for them) to some extent, but less so, I guess.
Thank you for your constructive input, this sounds very reasonable. I'll try to keep that in mind and will try to desist buying new hardware until Apple addresses this.
Wow... you're really epitomizing the notion of 1st World problems here.
If you're really that moved (and you really shouldn't be surprised after the Foxconn reveal), get a Pinebook and start playing with Linux Mint and go from there. Support Open hardware and Open source software on the side while still working with your old hardware until you realize that at this point the Linux ecosystem and its various distros can do just about everything Windows and Mac could, this isn't the 90s anymore.
I will say, though that if you do video editing that can be a hard one as even I still revert back to a Windows box for that, unfortunately. And I went all-in on Linux after XP in 2004ish.
I'll check out the Pinebook and Linux Mint, thank you for the concrete suggestions!
> at this point the Linux ecosystem and its various distros can do just about everything Windows and Mac could, this isn't the 90s anymore.
That's good to hear! I used Ubuntu in University for a short while and it seemed quite well developed, the problem was that I was bound to some tools that were only available on Windows/Mac, such that I couldn't adopt it as my main OS. Anyways I appreciate your constructive input, thanks.
You could always dual boot Windows if it's critical. You don't need a registration for windows 10. All it will do is put up a little disclaimer in the bottom right corner and occasionally nag you, but otherwise there is no reason to pay for Windows anymore.
"the Linux ecosystem and its various distros can do just about everything Windows and Mac could."
Can you please stop spreading that myth? It is wrong, wrong, wrong. It will just lead to false expectations and then disappointment with linux.
It is not only video-editing. What about audio? Qubase or FL studio? Nope.
I like audacity, too. But it is not at all in the same league.
Photoshop?
No, gimp is not equal.
And countless other professional software no one bothered to write linux versions, but quite some people need for their work.
And how about driver support on laptops? It is a fckn* gamble and you are allmost allways worse with linux on a laptop, than with the windows drivers. I wish it would be different, than I could dump my chromebook for a real linux laptop that satisfy my use case (small, light, long batterie, no standby hickups)
So yes, we need more people in open source software and hardware to change that for the better, but that won't work with false promises.
> Why do you think pinebook wouldn’t be subject to the same slave labor? Isn’t it manufactured in china?
'all devices are manufactured and sold by Pine Microsystems Inc. based in Fremont, California. Its founder is TL Lim, the inventor of the PopBox and Popcorn Hour series of media players sold under the Syabas and Cloud Media brands'
> It's impossible to make $200 laptops in small batches in US. They really don't like mentioning it tho.
What? They state they do not make a profit from the sale of these devices on their storefront when you're ordering one, and are probably doing so at a loss to promote the ideology behind open source hardware/software.
But, your claim is mere speculation until you definitively can prove otherwise, and it seems that the phone is the device limited to HK production: not China. And, yes, there is a difference.
Update: From what I have been able to gather is that the single board computer itself is made in China, the assembly of the finished products like the Pinebook laptop are in CA. The phone, however, may likely be made in the mainland if I read that correctly (its late), which while slightly disappointing is not really a surprise. They're in HK awaiting shipping to Pine US.
> Factories [in China] producing the PinePhone, PineTab and Pinebook Pro remain closed because they need to undergo a long and complicated procedure that will allow them to resume operation...
I found the confirmation I was looking for; 'gear' was an ambigious term that related to the internal components to these devices, I had read in previous posts that these were made in Fremont as well as the wiki.
However, after another screening of the update it seems that the Pinebook pro is in fact made on the Mainland as its been the cause for the delay in new pre-orders.
You could just buy used gear. Apple doesn't benefit from that purchase.
Better to buy something that's already in existence in the local area where you live, than some new product from some supposedly ethical company that also requires turning natural resources into unrecyclable material via dirty energy and the generation of toxic waste.
The demise of american manufacturing happened in lock step with environmental regulations. Turns out the only way to have a profitable manufacturing operation is to hire cheap and dump your waste into the water supply, as was done in every single industrialized american city.
Maybe we should figure out how we focus less on making the most profit every quarter and more on how to establish sustainable industries that aren't going to look very profitable at all, and know that this lack of exponential profit isn't a bad thing. Advocating for a return of manufacturing is fruitless without this understanding coming to the business world first, and the only way to learn a lesson like this is to hold abusers of labor and the environment personally responsible.
Calculate the environmental damage, calculate the damage to quality of life, and put the bill right on the executive who oversaw this behavior. Putting it on the company lets executives like this walk off scott-free to their next executive position while the company bankrupts and the working class involved with the company loose their livelihood; lessons aren't learned by going after companies. We have to hold executives directly accountable for their direct decision making.
Fantastic actionable advice, I heard that they assembled the trash can mac pro in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately not any longer tho, if I am not mistaken. Thank you for your advice!
Out of the frying pan and into the fire? With it's wars causing the deaths of millions in the middle east and its excessive imprisonment of people for using near-harmless drugs, maybe the US is worse than China on human rights.
I am sorry you were downvoted. What you need to understand is that unlike China, the US spreads freedom. In the last two decades we have brought freedom to Afghanistan and Iraq.
No need to dump all your devices in the trash. But look into a small transition whenever the door opens - eg when your iPhone breaks get a Fairphone or similar. When you tablet breaks maybe Shift has a new tablet out, etc. It's hard when you make it all or nothing - easy when you just go with the flow.
Or buy your iphones used from craigslist, and ride your bike to the sale. That way you aren't contributing to further polluting the worlds oceans and the port of Los Angeles when the shipping container with your fairphone is received by the longshoreman.
If you're an American paying taxes, you're already a hypocrite for funding their international wars. Either accept that you're the baddie and enjoy life, or actually stop being the baddie even if you have to make huge sacrifices far beyond choice of consumer product brands. But you don't get to have it both ways being virtuous while selfishly doing harm.
I hear your pain but the average American citizen has no say or control over the war machine and many are actually against it. It's also not as easy as "stop paying your taxes" unless you're willing to give up being part of society and live as a social outcast (best case) or be taken to court and ruin yourself. Not paying taxes is only possible if you're already part of the system that made you. US citizens also are taxed on their income even they decide to live outside the US, so there is no escape for them if they disagree (and who would denounce their citizenship unless they're asylum seekers or political refugees). Don't hate the player, hate the game as they say.
I'll give you the answer I gave to myself and my apple-loving friends since 2015, grab yourself a dell(the xps ones are really nice, but I like a cheap laptop, so I went with a latitude e7280), then hackintosh it. It's a bit buggy, but that's better than having a company which is all but cooperative with repairs, constantly abuses human rights and makes laptops which break easily.
Wasn't the same true for child labor in various industries? Seems like outlawing slavery doesn't get rid of the slave owners, instead they just move to the next unprotected group.
> Wasn't the same true for child labor in various industries? Seems like outlawing slavery doesn't get rid of the slave owners, instead they just move to the next unprotected group.
Yup, many of those megacorps took that page directly from the IMF and World Bank.
Child labor is a tricky one because it's actually viewed as a positive in poor countries. The alternative isn't 'no child labor', it's other types of child exploitation like prostitution.
I don't have a reference but there was a follow up report in a poor region where commercial child labor was abolished, and the outcomes weren't great.
Child labor is often a net negative because children can't go to school. If employers had to ensure the children go to school then I could see how it could be a net benefit during the transition period.
calling your MP and making a stink works. Also public shaming on LinkedIn works by tagging their brands - they absolutely hate that (unless you're scared of your image in which case you're also part of the problem ofc).
No, I mean there's no clear solution. People in this thread are confusing the desired outcome with how to get there, and claiming that because the former is clear, so is the latter.
That's not true, and your comments in this thread break the site guidelines. We've had to ask you more than once to stop using this site for political, ideological, and/or nationalistic battle. Please read the rules and follow them.
Or HN has a large skeptical user-base who can spot obvious propaganda a mile away?
> That's also why this thread has been knocked off the frontpage despite having 155 points and being only 3 hours old.
This post is outright government propaganda.
"The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is a non-partisan defence and strategic policy think tank based in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, founded by the Australian government and partly funded by the Australian Department of Defence."
Seems you ignored half the sentence, so I'll repeat with emphasis: HN has a large Chinese user-base __who will be quick to downvote and flag threads and comments critical of China__.
Heck, it could be one guy who has 1-50 high karma accounts that do all the downvoting and flagging. He can then monitor https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments for threads/comments containing certain keywords to get a notification.
There's no denying that the downvoting and flagging is taking place because you can see the same pattern in all threads that are negative towards China. Dang himself also have a history of knocking threads critical of China off the frontpage.
Dang isn't Chinese (his username is not a romanization of 党, but short for Daniel Gackle), but as you say he occasionally takes threads off the front page. Usually because he thinks they'll only lead to repetitions of the same old flamewars instead of significant new discussion.
There's no reason to suppose that a majority of people participating in China-related threads and voting (in either direction) on comments is Chinese. It's likely that they have some strong opinions on the topic, but ethnicity is neither necessary nor sufficient to develop such opinions.
> Aside from not purchasing from the listed companies, is there other action that can be taken in support, from a distance?
Support the Hong Kong Revolution, they're literately the front line when it comes to encroachment from the CCP.
If/when they succeed then the notion of 'One China' policy falls in shambles; Taiwan, Macau and possibly Tibet are all in good strategic positions to rise up and contest it as well now that China is weakened economically.
Follow up with Documentary from Daily Apple (Jimmy Lai was recently arrested for his involvement with the protests) this should be a good preface for what is happening in HK:
We need to stop using the propagandists terms when we describe these things. It’s not re-education, it’s psychological torture. It’s not forced labor, it’s slavery
As the name suggests, the "Australian Strategic Policy Institute" is a think tank for Australia's armed forces. It would save the outright lies for special occasions like 2003.
On the other hand, it doesn't pretend to take a neutral point of view. The strategic subtext is to warn Australia's neighbours that "them as makes muslim slaves of Uigurs, want to make ... oh, hang on, we keep forgetting that you're muslim as well ... slaves of you." Which warning will be all the more effective because it's quite possibly true.
To add, Australia is caught between US and Chinese interest, US for security, Chinese for trade.
ASPI is nominally aligned with US interests, receives funding from US State Department and is one of the largest proponents of China threat theory in Australian foreign policy. I wouldn't say their work is bad per say, but exceedingly one-sided in narrative. As long as that's understood.
>Former NSW premier Bob Carr has accused it of pumping out a “one-sided, pro-American view of the world”. Veteran foreign editor Tony Walker has slammed its "dystopian worldview" which "leaves little room for viewing China as a potential partner". "It lacks integrity and brings shame to Australia," says retired former DFAT chief and ex-Qantas CEO John Menadue. “I see it as very much the architect of the China threat theory in Australia”, adds ex-ambassador to China turned Beijing-based business consultant Geoff Raby.
>The rhetoric is extreme. And says much about how Australia’s consensus on China has dissolved.
...
>ASPI's annual reports list alternate funding sources. Sponsors from its most recent can be divided into three buckets.
>The first is filled with defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrop Grumman, Thales and Raytheon. The second, technology companies like Microsoft, Oracle Australia, Telstra, and Google. And lastly, there are the contributions from foreign governments, many being strategic competitors to China, including the Embassy of Japan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (that is, Taiwan).
I'm not going to label them as propaganda,they do some good work like collating data on Chinese firms abroad, but their analysis isn't neutral. They're certainly not as lolbad as ChinaTribunal and all the Falungong funded organ harvesting studies that's been spamming the internet since tradewar started.
You shouldn't. Almost everything ughyur and xinjiang related has pretty much been shown to be propaganda and from highly questionable sources. You should be inclined towards skepticism.
> however I don’t know anything about the organization producing the report.
It's literally australian government/defense propaganda.
"The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is a non-partisan defence and strategic policy think tank based in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, founded by the Australian government and partly funded by the Australian Department of Defence."
Remember the last time a major world power practiced ethnic cleansing and we joined a war over it? Instead of letting our corporations funnel money towards it?
I'm being sarcastic, but this has been the position of libertarians and both the center left and right for a long time. Of course, they didn't factor in the fact that trying to compete with literal slave labor means working class Americans see their wages stagnate. Further, it guarantees that this slave labor is very profitable for the Chinese upper class which get to live like kings, even though their GDP/capita might not be efficient.
For countries like North Korea, Cuba, and Iran, human rights abuses result in economic isolation and consternation. But for China, their human rights abuses pay for our cheap stuff so we'll look the other way.
Free trade is maximally effective. Maximal effectiveness usually entails moral compromises. In real life we usually take a more balanced approach towards people: you forgive your girlfriend for having a little too much in the bum, and she forgives you for not being Tyson Fury. But when it comes to big money, greed and faraway countries/abstract masses of citizens, being uncompromising and exploitative comes easier.
Any sort of regulation of slave labor/human rights/ecology in China will inevitably reduce overall efficiency and make everything more expensive. That's the only way to make things fairer, but only until some other country makes a more efficient bid and offers up its citizens as low-wage slaves.
The good caused by global free trade far outweighs this small issue. If you don't like globalization, find a strong reason, not a random exception to the norm of win-win.
> The response to the abuses identified in this report should not involve a knee-jerk rejection of Uyghur or Chinese labour. The problem is the policies that require Uyghurs to work under duress in violation of well-established international labour laws. It is vital that, as these problems are addressed, Uyghur labourers are not placed in positions of greater harm or, for example, involuntarily transferred back to Xinjiang, where their safety cannot necessarily be guaranteed.
I really don't like the parts of this article that don't clearly distinguish between companies employing Uyghurs, companies using forced labor and companies treating their employees like shit regardless of ethnicity.
E.g.
> a September 2019 report by New York-based China Labour Watch said contract workers at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory—which includes Uyghur workers—put in at least 100 overtime hours a month.
is not a forced labor problem if their Han workers also work that much. If that factory decides to implement a policy of not hiring ethnic minorities, as some do (I've seen job ads explicitly excluding Uyghurs, Mongols, Hui and Yi) that doesn't solve the underlying problem that the factory is grinding its workers to the bone.
It's funny how this treatment is very bad because they're adults but it's pretty similar to how normal people treat children everywhere. Perhaps it's bad because adults are less malleable so they suffer more from being forced out of their natural ways while children are still learning how to behave so they tolerate going to school, learning languages, being politically indoctrinated, being forbidden from performing seances or voodoo revenge rituals, and being coerced by threats of social exclusion for failing to do the proper behaviors.
It's not unreasonable for society to expect both children and adults to work some of the time. It is unreasonable for both children and adults to be separated from their loved ones and to be denied personal freedom to move and pursue their own interests, religion, etc to this degree. Children require more discipline than adults because they don't always have common sense like "don't set a fire in your bedroom."
"The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is a non-partisan defence and strategic policy think tank based in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, founded by the Australian government and partly funded by the Australian Department of Defence."
So yes, lets see what both sides have to say. Or neither. You can't defend one set of propagandists while rejecting another without seeming a bit biased or agenda-driven.
>What interest would the Australian government have in challenging China
There's a general misalignment in FVEY countries between security and trade interests. Australia is particularly divided due to huge Chinese economic dependency but also absolute US security dependency (also Pine Gap). It's not surprising that intelligence agencies in countries in similar positions have tried protect their organizational interests - see UK defense Secretary Williamson fired over Huawei leak when US threaten to sever intelligence sharing if UK allowed even limited Huawei presence. AU PM basically admitted that the main reason for banning Huawei was because they didn't want to lose intelligence sharing not risk of Chinese spying. Then you have the recent fiasco with Wang Liqiang in Australia, the defecting Chinese "spy" whose ridiculous claims unsurprisingly turned out be sensationalist farce, debunked by multiple AU security sources including ASIO who vetted Wang a month before China Hawk MP Andrew Hastie tried to make his defection a narrative. They still let the story play out. It's textbook western propaganda. In the coordinated reports at the time, ASPI executive director Peter Jennings said something to the affect that Wang's testimony provided unprecedented insight into Beijing’s espionage activities, when all of Wang's dubious claims was immediately identified by anyone with 2 brain cells to be false. I mentioned in another post that ASPI does some decent work on aggregating Chinese data points, but their conclusions skew anti-China and pro-US because despite being and AU think tank, much of their funding comes from US and US aligned parties. Biased sources can still be useful, as long as you're aware it's biased.
I don't see how the points you made relate to the evidence provided by the research. Can you point out explicit segments from the research, which you think are 'biased'? You just wrote an unconvincing wall of text, talking about random events to somehow make a point that Australia is biased against China, despite their economic dependency on them. This still doesn't make anything coming from a CCP financed source any more credible or trustworthy, being cognisant of the history of the CCP and their never ending lies and manipulation.
It relates to your claim that Australia, in this case an AU think tank that represents pro-US security status quo funded by US/Japan/Taiwan has no reason to manufacture consent via biased analysis in current geopolitical climate. It does, especially ASPI which has been explicitly criticized by prominent AU political figures as being extremely biased.
>>Former NSW premier Bob Carr has accused it of pumping out a “one-sided, pro-American view of the world”. Veteran foreign editor Tony Walker has slammed its "dystopian worldview" which "leaves little room for viewing China as a potential partner". "It lacks integrity and brings shame to Australia," says retired former DFAT chief and ex-Qantas CEO John Menadue. “I see it as very much the architect of the China threat theory in Australia”, adds ex-ambassador to China turned Beijing-based business consultant Geoff Raby.
Alternatively these figures are themselves incentive to maintain friendly relationship with China. Every faction has their interests.
Also I didn't claim CCP was unbiased, the assertion is that neither is ASPI. Being cognizant the history of western foreign policy and their never ending lies and manipulation as per parent comment to evaluate like with like.
Well for one, they rely on figures from Chinese reporting, which I assume you wouldn't trust. These are propaganda articles for domestic consumption after all, and according CCP propaganda logic, would be over inflated to look good. Many of the transfers in the appendix do not mention prisoners or transfers in the re-education camps, merely people were given jobs as part of poverty alleviation program with much higher wages in exchange for brainwashing on the side - i.e. they're migrant labors. There's always been huge migrant worker movement in China from to industrial and manufacturing cities where pay is higher and for Uygher workers general mistreatment due to cultural differences, Shaoguan factory riot was what sparked the 2009 Urumqi riots that caused the crackdown in the first place. I'm sure there's coercive assignments going on, but the paper seems to conflate all sources as so. And ultimately they crawled through Chinese news sources and found a pool of 80,000 workers over 2 years of which some could have came directly from the camps. That's 0.03% of Chinese migrant working labour force, 0.07% of Chinese manufacturing force - aka rounding error, but somehow this small percentage, where an even smaller % is alleged coerced, tainted the supply chain of 87 of the largest western companies because this is definitely not spinning a relatively minor issue into the western companies should disengage with China narrative. If anything this report illuminates that the "vocational" training element of the entire XJ strategy barely exists, and the question is why? Because of all the heavy handed cultural genocide strategies employed in XJ right now, indoctrination through economic development is the least bad.
>Well for one, they rely on figures from Chinese reporting, which I assume you wouldn't trust. These are propaganda articles for domestic consumption after all, and according CCP propaganda logic, would be over inflated to look good.
- Don't trusting it, does not equal dismissing the entire data, rather analysing it with an extra bit of salt. It means that the situation is probably even worse, because as you yourself said, one can expect it to be 'over inflated to look good'.
> Many of the transfers in the appendix do not mention prisoners or transfers in the re-education camps, merely people were given jobs as part of poverty alleviation program with much higher wages in exchange for brainwashing on the side - i.e. they're migrant labors.
Now you're just parroting CCP propaganda and omitting facts of the research:
"The ILO lists 11 indicators of forced labour. Relevant indicators in the case of Uyghur workers may include:
-being subjected to intimidation and threats, such as the threat of arbitrary detention, and being monitored by security personnel and digital surveillance tools
-being placed in a position of dependency and vulnerability, such as by threats to family members back in Xinjiang
having freedom of movement restricted, such as by fenced-in factories and high-tech surveillance
-isolation, such as living in segregated dormitories and being transported in dedicated trains
abusive working conditions, such as political indoctrination, police guard posts in factories, ‘military-style’ management, and a ban on religious practices
-excessive hours, such as after-work Mandarin language classes and political indoctrination sessions that are part of job assignments.26
Chinese state media claims that participation in labour transfer programs is voluntary, and Chinese officials have denied any commercial use of forced labour from Xinjiang. However, Uyghur workers who have been able to leave China and speak out describe the constant fear of being sent back to a detention camp in Xinjiang or even a traditional prison while working at the factories..."
>I'm sure there's coercive assignments going on, but the paper seems to conflate all sources as so.
Rather nit-picky or what evidence do you rely on making that judgment, except your own highly biased opinion.
> And ultimately they crawled through Chinese news sources and found a pool of 80,000 workers over 2 years of which some could have came directly from the camps. That's 0.03% of Chinese migrant working labour force, 0.07% of Chinese manufacturing force - aka rounding error, but somehow this small percentage, where an even smaller % is alleged coerced, tainted the supply chain of 87 of the largest western companies because this is definitely not spinning a relatively minor issue into the western companies should disengage with China narrative. If anything this report illuminates that the "vocational" training element of the entire XJ strategy barely exists, and the question is why?
They found 'a' pool of 80000, so there are probably even more the researchers couldn't find, with all the effort the CCP puts into hiding their atrocities.
That is furthermore just a plainly disgusting attempt to sweep the exploitation of 80000 'workers' (the real number is probably even higher, not that it needs to be, this is already product of systemic abuse of human rights, also correction: - FORCED labour i.e. slave labour) under the rug, by deceptively belittling the figures playing number's game. The irony is that you are accusing the researchers of 'bias', while your apologetic rhetoric is the ultimate manifestation of bias.
>Because of all the heavy handed cultural genocide strategies employed in XJ right now, indoctrination through economic development is the least bad.
This is a rather bizarre statement, the cultural genocide is incorporated as part of the indoctrination! It's in the research, if you read it properly that is.
Over-inflated in this context is local governments would be incentivized to report that more workers were recruited under poverty alleviation scheme, so the actual number of workers would be lower i.e. local officials are inflating stats to meet quotas. The researchers associates the ILO list, 1 article of transfer from 1 actual reeducation camp, uses the testimonial of a few workers (from Bitter Winter no less) and tries to conflate this to all 80k workers. They have no idea how much is migrant labor vs forced labor. Again, only the most biased and agenda-ed reading would conclude it was all forced labor. Just like the original XJ camp estimates by Zenz based off bidding information, geospatial analysis extrapolated from 50k to 4million to whatever fits the needs of western propaganda. The Chinese system is opaque, the data can be massaged to fit any narrative, which is why the agendas of those that make these claims need to be considered. The fact that the researchers collated all this data (which ASPI is very good at) but still had to massage the narrative through dubious associations (which ASPI has been frequently criticized over), and still only found 80k workers is indicative that that the XJ campaign has scaled down - the original XJ poverty alleviation program called for 400k workers if memory serves. But ASPI isn't going to announce that data indicates China has actually reduced the scale of repression. ASPI is characteristic of the sensationalist extreme analysis for anyone who follow reporting on Chinese issues over the last decade. You need to understand the researcher's bias to contextualize the research.
> when considering that the CCP has a well established track record of outright lying and denying facts
Fine, then expose the lies. Also, typing "CCP" makes it very obvious you have an agenda. And as I said, everybody lies.
> What interest would the Australian government have in challenging China, when much of their economy relies on them!
It's called the american/anglo-american/western world order. The same reason Canada arrested a chinese executive. Before ww2, germany relied on soviet union for their economy and Japan relied on the US for their economy. WW2 still happened. Not sure why you think economic reliance necessarily prevents national rivalries. Especially during a major trade war.
> On top of that, most of the provided information just matches other independent research.
I'm sure they do. Propaganda usually works that way. And I wouldn't be so loose with words like "indepedent research".
> The only one who is defending propagandists is you.
Aren't you the one defending Australian Strategic Policy Institute? The only one defending propagandists is you. I'm more than happy to call all propagandists out.
A lot of people criticizing, but was from the human rights perspective. While it's important to debunk the lies about terrorisms happened in Xinjiang, which was used by Chinese propaganda to disguise as the legitimate excuse and secured the support from the Chinese citizens, even people living in Xinjiang.
All the years I stubbornly rejected my friend's and colleague's criticism from the open source & linux community for being eccentric and making 'exaggerated' arguments, but now I am so deeply engrossed in the Apply ecosystem, that I fear a switch to some linux distribution would be unmanageable for me.
Ironically I feel like a slave of Apple myself. What could I do tho? Switch to some other brand and then find out, that they operate with the same unethical behaviour!? I'm just deeply conflicted.