
Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims - TurkishPoptart
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html
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bradknowles
So, who is brave enough — or powerful enough — to actually try to really do
anything about this problem?

China is the ultimate “too big to fail” problem, right?

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vanniv
The answer so far seems to be "nobody"

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thedudeabides5
There's a bunch of brave students in HK that might vehemently disagree with
you there.

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abbracadabbra
The documents released here describe high level directives from Xi Jingping,
and some quotes on how family members should be told of detained relatives.
Presumably there must be many other documents detailing design and
construction of the large scale facilities that would be needed for the number
people being detained; these might shed more light on the actual scale of what
is happening. The documents so far could be describing programs that target
100’s of people, not the millions claimed elsewhere.

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wbraun
I don't understand why the BDS movement against Israel gets so much attention
when stuff like this, or worse, regularly occurs in China. I have been making
an effort to reduce what I buy from China recently, which is difficult in
electrical engineering. I hope others consider the same. We need a BDS
(Mainland) China movement.

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CharlesColeman
> I don't understand why the BDS movement against Israel gets so much
> attention when stuff like this, or worse, regularly occurs in China.

The reason could be echoes of old Soviet influence campaigns directed against
Israel [1] [2]. Once you get an idea lodged in the public mind, it takes on a
life of its own (kinda like the trope of the AI weapon that fights on even
after its makers are dead).

[1] [https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-
culture/285781/sov...](https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-
culture/285781/soviet-anti-semitic-cartoons)

[2] This is a good presentation of Soviet disinformation tactics and strategy:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-
meddling-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-
disinformation-fake-news-elections.html) (youtube link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo))

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deogeo
It's quite shocking how blatantly China discriminates against everyone but
Han-Chinese, yet doesn't even get a mention on
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_(politics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_\(politics\))

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throw_this_one
Just anecdotally, every Chinese from China I've ever met has an obsession with
how great China is. They always refer to ancient history. I'm pretty sure the
communist party is coopting their history and cultural to create some sort of
civilizational euphoria for the people, to achieve their goals. It really
can't end well. It's funny because Americans will say America is the best
country on earth, but they don't actually 100% mean it, like they know other
places aren't bad too.

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thrwy_01
Chinese nationalism is trying to follow in the footsteps of Japanese
nationalism of the early 20th century. We all know how that played out.

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aaron695
> Leaked CCP files reveal crimes against humanity (reddit.com)

Given a link to a Reddit article that merely links a www.nytimes.com I expect
a flag asap.

Which is exactly what I assume the OP troll/Propagandaest wanted, else they
would have linked the original article with the proper title.

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frequentnapper
Maybe these recent developments in the Chinese culture and psyche can be
described as Han superiority complex much like Nazism. Victim mentality,
belief in one's racial superiority, and willingness to do away with any
ethnicities and cultures unlike your own. Maybe we need a term for this so we
can identify and talk about it. Hanzism?

~~~
thrwy_01
This is exactly my experience. The beliefs and utterances of many Chinese
wouldn't be out of place in 1930s Germany, replacing the appropriate nouns.
The scary thing is this has been going on for decades, just not visible to
most outsiders.

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aesterits
Fascinating article.

I didn’t realize this all started because of terrorist attacks,

> _In 2014, little more than a year after becoming president, he spent four
> days in the region, and on the last day of the trip, two Uighur militants
> staged a suicide bombing outside a train station in Urumqi that injured
> nearly 80 people, one fatally._

> _Weeks earlier, militants with knives had gone on a rampage at another
> railway station, in southwest China, killing 31 people and injuring more
> than 140. And less than a month after Mr. Xi’s visit, assailants tossed
> explosives into a vegetable market in Urumqi, wounding 94 people and killing
> at least 39._

> _Against this backdrop of bloodshed, Mr. Xi delivered a series of secret
> speeches setting the hard-line course that culminated in the security
> offensive now underway in Xinjiang. While state media have alluded to these
> speeches, none were made public._

Xi’s speech was enlightening too,

> _In several surprising passages, given the crackdown that followed, Mr. Xi
> also told officials to not discriminate against Uighurs and to respect their
> right to worship. He warned against overreacting to natural friction between
> Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, and rejected
> proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China._

> _“In light of separatist and terrorist forces under the banner of Islam,
> some people have argued that Islam should be restricted or even eradicated,”
> he said during the Beijing conference. He called that view “biased, even
> wrong.” “We say that development is the top priority and the basis for
> achieving lasting security, and that’s right,” Mr. Xi said. “But it would be
> wrong to believe that with development every problem solves itself.”_

> _“In recent years, Xinjiang has grown very quickly and the standard of
> living has consistently risen, but even so ethnic separatism and terrorist
> violence have still been on the rise,” he said. “This goes to show that
> economic development does not automatically bring lasting order and
> security.”_

The NYT did a great job reporting the situation.

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aliswe
> I didn’t realize this all started because of terrorist attacks

As did the Rohingya tragedy

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dragonwriter
It always “starts with” terrorist atrack, because those are such a powerful
excuse for any kind of violent excess that if you want to do something
otherwise indefensible and don't have those handy as an excuse, you first
generate some for the excuse; see, e.g., Operation Northwoods.

And if you do have them, but they don't implicate the right targets, you
engage in a propaganda campaign of conflation and false association—extra
points if it can leverage common racial, ethnic, and/or broad religious
identities—until they do, see, e.g., the US efforts re: 9/11 in the runup to
the war with Iraq.

