
Chinese mass-indoctrination camps evoke Cultural Revolution - pulisse
https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b
======
cygx
Reeducation camps, mass surveillance, the _Social Credit System_ \- China has
made last century's dystopian fiction its playbook.

~~~
obelix_
Yup they really need to be feeding their population the Kardashians, WWE, Alex
Jones, super hero movies and space operas the whole day.

~~~
simonh
I'm sorry the actual choices free people make seem to disappoint you so much.
What do you think should be done about it?

~~~
teekert
"Free people" as in, attention high-jacked, rent paying, sugar'd up,
Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires represented by purchasable politicians?
What is freedom today anyway? We don't work for a company anymore, we work for
share holders. We don't pay eachother for housing anymore, we pay banks. We
don't choose what we eat anymore, we are seduced. We don't spend our time
anymore, companies sell our time and attention for us.

At the very least freedom should come with "being well informed", however we
are informed by commercials nowadays. Is this freedom?

~~~
fwn
Deconstructing freedom might be a fun exercise, it is, however, completely
unrelated if it comes to criticising dystopian state oppression. (Which the
linked article is about.)

Torture & forced reeducation camps are wrong regardless of some other
wrongness somewhere else.

~~~
teekert
This I agree with. I'm just saying that the free choices of people in the
western world are probably not as free as they could be. Is utopia a more
regulated place? This feels like a dirty proposition to my capitalist (minus
the tumors it has been growing lately) mind. But the seeds of doubt have been
placed...

~~~
simonh
Fair enough, but what’s stopping you from doing something about it? I mean
except for other individual free citizens generally not happening to agree
with you.

~~~
teekert
To be honest I just like posting hard statements that I think are logical
conclusions but would like to see proven false with even better arguments :)

~~~
simonh
The thing is, it’s coming across as implicit support for an oppressive
totalitarian regime.

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Bucephalus355
FYI the Chinese government literally pays ppl to sit in massive internet cafes
and camp out on various internet forums. They comment about how great China is
and how anything bad in China is made not bad by something similar happening
in the West.

~~~
Lionsion
> FYI the Chinese government literally pays ppl to sit in massive internet
> cafes and camp out on various internet forums. They comment about how great
> China is and how anything bad in China is made not bad by something similar
> happening in the West.

They're called the "50 Cent Army" or "50 Cent Party."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

The details of the contemporary Chinese censorship regime are actually pretty
interesting. It's not as simple as just banning content and keywords they
don't like, even with the benefit of the great firewall.

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vengefulduck
It's like the leaders of China read 1984 and thought: those are pretty good
ideas!

~~~
maxxxxx
Mix in Brave New World and you have a perfect work instruction.

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davidhyde
"Leading to what a U.S. commission on China last month said is “the largest
mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”" Oh the
irony.

~~~
Lionsion
> "Leading to what a U.S. commission on China last month said is “the largest
> mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”" Oh the
> irony.

You really need specify exactly what you're referring to, otherwise there can
be no discussion and your comment is content-less snark.

I'm _guessing_ that you're referring to the high numbers of African Americans
imprisoned in the US. However, the situations are clearly not comparable.
These camps appear to be the result of high-level Chinese government policy
that explicitly targets this ethic group. There are no contemporary parallels
in the US. If you think there are, do you think Obama was in on it? The US
situation is unfortunate, but it's more the result of poverty and lower-level
racism, not a policy to imprison blacks.

It's exceedingly frustrating that whenever there's an article about Chinese
human rights abuses, there are dozens of comments that seem to just want to
deflect attention from them. We never actually end up talking about China,
just the US.

~~~
abiox
> do you think Obama was in on it?

i find it fascinating how to some folks, pointing at obama's ethnic background
is apparently some kind of knockdown argument.

~~~
Lionsion
> i find it fascinating how to some folks, pointing at obama's ethnic
> background is apparently some kind of knockdown argument.

It's pretty close to a knockdown argument against someone whose position is US
government policy is to imprison black people on account of their ethnicity.

The great-grandparent comment may have been suggesting that. However, she was
too vague to be sure.

~~~
creaghpatr
>against someone whose position is US government policy is to imprison black
people on account of their ethnicity

Can you provide a source for this wild claim?

~~~
Maybestring
That's not even a claim.

------
TangoTrotFox
When I see things like this I can't help but consider that China is some 400%
larger than the US, in a slightly smaller landmass than we have, all while
bordering 14 different nations - including several hotspots of Islamic
extremism such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. I'm certainly not defending China,
but I simultaneously find it difficult to condemn them.

How would we cope with a similar situation? And as a deeper and deeper divide
is drawn within our nation - in no small part based on political extremism, I
can't help but think that our current system is ultimately headed towards a
climax that's not going to have a happy ending. And we live in a nation that
ought be a million times easier to manage according to most measurable
factors.

~~~
Lionsion
> How would we cope with a similar situation?

I've heard China described as one of the last classical empires. All the
others, such as the British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Soviet Empire have
dissolved.

So "our" solution would be independence for the imperial possessions.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Are you suggesting that as the US population increases you'd expect to see
states starting to secede from the nation? Or that that would be a productive
solution to whatever problems we may face in the coming years? For China the
areas outside the mainland such as Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are already
effectively independent and in any case are tangential to the issue here.

~~~
Lionsion
I'm saying Xinjiang and Tibet are akin to the Philippines, India, and Greece:
conquests that should get their independence. The latter independence
movements had varying degrees of conflict, but I think few argue that those
countries should still be ruled by their former foreign masters.

------
mistermann
Stories like this make me wonder if people in Taiwan and Hong Kong have some
serious concerns about the future for themselves and their children. I haven't
picked up much sense of concern from anyone in the West, but if China's long
term behavior pans out to resemble that of the USA in terms of forcing its
will upon others I'd think they'd be first in line for reeducation.

~~~
adventured
What major territories has the US annexed, or tried to annex, since it became
the global superpower post WW2?

Germany? No. France? No. Japan? No. South Korea? No. South Vietnam? No. The
Philippines? No. Canada? No. Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Mexico? No. Panama?
No. Grenada? No.

China just violently annexed territory 4x the size of France from its
neighbors. Nobody did a thing about it (and nobody is going to do a thing
about it), the world just stood aside and watched. The UN barely wagged its
finger at them.

~~~
mistermann
One might argue that "forcing its will" can manifest in forms other than
annexation of land. There is a bit of a rumor going around about the US
meddling in the affairs of other countries, but maybe that's just another one
of those conspiracy theories.

------
narrator
What if this works? It seems like China is trying to fight a psychological war
this time instead of with weapons as the Russians successfully did recently in
Chechnya. Maybe we are seeing the first time a religion/ideology has been
forced on Muslims. All other previous attempts at subduing Muslims have been
by genocide and brutal war, so this would be a first in world history if it
works. It would open a new chapter in the history of propaganda, behaviorism
and religion. We could have a post-war society where wars are fought with
psychology. Like some mash-up of 1984 and the Foundation Trilogy.

------
imbokodo
In 1971, England began interning thousands of Irish who opposed the English
army in the six counties of north Ireland. The New York Times wrote editorials
calling the interned without trial "diehards" and "uncompromising bigots". A
few months later, a march for their civil rights through Derry was met by
gunfire as 14 unarmed men were shot by the British.

It's strange (well, not really) how easily we see sympathy or shrugging when
the English speaking West interns without trial, or incarcerates Muslim
radicals under torture, or mass incarcerates its former slave population etc.,
then dabs a handkerchief for Muslim radicals in China. It reminds me of the
tears shed in Washington DC for the Muslim terrorists blowing up Chechnya in
1999, and 2000. That kind of slowed down in 2001.

I suppose this is "whataboutism", which is amazement at Western professionals
who pontificate about far-off lands of competitors, when the westerners have
done or are doing worse.

~~~
lainga
The British did not make captured IRA members renounce Catholicism, nor the
Americans make Guantanamo internees "erase their Islamic beliefs and reshape
their very identities". Here is an article from the CBC, if you can't bear to
see an American outlet report on the issue. Or are the Canadians complicit
with their actions as well?

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-internment-
camps-1.466668...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-internment-
camps-1.4666686)

~~~
imbokodo
And here we see it...the British intern people like Michael Farrell without a
trial, and he is said to be a "captured IRA member" and so forth. He's still
alive actually, acting as a lawyer for refugees. You people still have to
invent lies for why you interned people like him, shot unarmed people in the
street that protested the internment etc.

But the Chinese are the real bad guys. It's why the British had to burn his
winter palace at the end of the Opium wars.

