
China’s 'Thought Transformation' Camps [video] - HillaryBriss
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-48667221/inside-china-s-thought-transformation-camps
======
bArray
This is a concentration camp - they are collecting millions of specific groups
of people and concentrating them. From the little information available: They
are initially tortured and then brainwashed for several years, until
_possibly_ being released. The reason for doing this is for a crime they are
supposed to commit in the future.

Add this to: the removal of religious symbols replaced with pictures of their
president, the forced ownership of Hong Kong (who have a false democracy) and
Taiwan, the debt traps in African nations, the artificial islands in the South
China Sea (where they regularly threaten to blow US ships and planes up in
international waters), the large amount of debt bought by China after the 2008
financial crisis, the monitoring and/or controlling of University students
whilst overseas, meddling in foreign politics (e.g. NZ and Australia), cyber
attacks (>80% of attacks on my servers come from China), ignoring
international trade sanctions against North Korea (whose state backed hackers
it trains) and Iran - the list goes on.

China also has the largest active military. Is this where we're heading?

------
chocolatefor3
I am an American, here is what I am going to do.

There's currently an USTR tariff review session happening right now in
Washington. A bunch of companies are protesting against tariffs on China,
saying they can't live without China. Some of these companies are:

\- Best buy

\- American Apparel

\- Kenneth Col

\- iRobot

\- Roku

\- Element Electronics

\- Hallmark Cards

I will not buy from these companies for the rest of my life, as well as any
other companies that have products that are 'made in China'. These companies
must have heard about the concentration camps, and possible organ
harvesting/slave labor in those camps, and choose not to divest away. These
companies are horrendous actors who choose freely to prop up a regime like
his.

~~~
driverdan
> I will not buy from these companies for the rest of my life, as well as any
> other companies that have products that are 'made in China'.

Good luck with that. I hope you don't need any technology in your life since
nearly all modern computing components are made in China. The only way to
avoid Chinese imports is to live on a homestead and make everything yourself.

~~~
komali2
Good point. I'd like to find an article on phones with the least amount of, or
no, Chinese parts. Anybody have anything like this on hand? Otherwise, I'll
start researching and put an article together.

Similarly, I'd like to do the same for Laptops. Toshiba, Fujitsu, Samsung,
Panasonic, Sharp may not come with "made in China" labels, but components will
be Chinese.

I've been googling a bit and surprisingly am not coming up with pure non-
Chinese machines. Given that some people believe China puts spyware on devices
at the hardware level this surprises me - surely there's hyper-paranoid out
there, or people selling to the hyper-paranoid market?

------
wefarrell
"Our goal is to take a person who's on the edge of committing a crime and
return them to normal society as a law abiding citizen"

Even the official party line is horrifying. Shows just how out of touch they
are with the Western world if they think this message will be well
interpreted.

~~~
komali2
> Shows just how out of touch they are with the Western world if they think
> this message will be well interpreted.

They aren't interested in being aligned with Western values - why would they
be? Freedom and democracy run perfectly contrary to their goals. I've had very
in depth philosophical debates with Party members.

Democracy - why would we leave the decisions to the people? The people don't
know what's best for them, and they make bad decisions that lead to things
like Brexit. Democracy is inefficient. FEMA can't adequately respond to
disasters like the strong-arm of the Party can.

Freedom of Information - this is too scary for the people. The people
shouldn't have to deal with so much confusing information. Look at Fake News
and how scary the media is. It creates confusion and mistrust in the
government. That isn't good. The people don't want freedom of information.

I unequivocally disagree with these arguments but these are the beliefs of the
Party.

~~~
SubiculumCode
My take on it: Democracy is necessary and good. It can be inefficient when
times are good, but it is the most efficient way to right the ship when things
are bad...also unilateral actions may appear efficient, but there will be lots
of stakeholders that get hurt by those unilateral actions.

Consensus takes time, and is susceptible to all sorts of poor arguments and
one-liners, but when the people are suffering, I can think of no better way to
peacefully overthrow the ruling body than by democratic elections.

~~~
zjaffee
I'd argue that democracy doesn't matter nearly as much as constitutional
freedoms of assembly, speech (to a certain degree), independent press, ect.
China still fears protest/revolution and will work in such a way that benefits
their population in order to prevent uprisings and civil unrest.

Add on the fact that the vast majority of issues that we view as democratic
victories in the US, were more than anything, driven by direct action or
initial change at the local level (a level which is democratic in china).
Where in the cases where major change happened in a different way, it happened
through the Judiciary which is also not democratic.

Add on the fact that many of the direct democratic measures in the US tend to
be destructive (prop 13, voting against any tax increase even if necessary
over the long term), and there becomes a reason why a political system with a
single party, namely a party with a largely unified political goal, is
preferable.

I'd also question when in US history (or elsewhere) has there ever been a time
where democratic elections peacefully overthrew the ruling body. Usually there
is significant continuity from administration to administration, where any
serious political change happens due to outside direct action.

------
olliej
Call them what they are: Concentration camps.

~~~
umvi
The term "concentration camp" has an extremely negative connotation though due
to Nazi Germany. China isn't gassing and cremating people. They are helping
minorities integrate into Chinese society via ethically questionable means.

~~~
jandrese
Concentration camps are not necessarily death camps. They are prisons for
specific political, social, or ethnic groups--this seems to qualify.

Even the phrase "concentration camp" is a bit of a euphemism. A better phrase
might be a "political prison".

And yes it has a negative connotation, because it is a bad thing.

~~~
mehrdadn
The same kind of terminology debate comes up when people use "third world" to
mean "developing countries" and, when corrected, they just declare the meaning
changed. So if that's how we're supposed to roll then why wouldn't the same
logic apply here?

~~~
happytoexplain
I thought "third world" was an informal and occasionally derogatory synonym
for "developing countries". Is that not the case?

~~~
Tomte
Originally not. The meaning as it existed during the Cold War was "block-
free".

USA/NATO were the First World. USSR/Warsaw Pact was the Second World. Everyone
else was Third World.

That definition includes countries like Switzerland, which sounds very strange
today, because the meaning has changed to precisely the one you have in mind.

~~~
jandrese
The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact meant the old definition was a bit
meaningless, hence the shift in connotation where "First World" is a glorious
modern stable democracy and "Third World" is "shithole."

That said, "developing country" isn't necessarily the most precise phrase
either, since many of those countries are either keeping the status quo or are
actively decaying due to environmental disaster, war, famine, etc... Also,
when you say "developing country" what a lot of people still heard is
"shithole". Still, it's the preferred phrase and the inherent optimism built
into it does count for a little.

------
dustfinger
Can powerful nation states that commit atrocities against populations of
humans be over thrown peacefully? That is to say, without a war?

What will it take to have China removed from the UN? Or, is it better that
they are represented so that these issues can be raised and resolved in a
peaceful manner?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
England let a lot of its colonies go peacefully, I don't know if that counts.

~~~
manishsharan
>> England let a lot of its colonies go peacefully,

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

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-
church...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-
policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study)

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

The protesters were peaceful. The English oppressors were violent.

~~~
learc83
They didn't say all of their colonies. Some were let go relatively peacefully.

------
erokar
Somehow it's comforting to see how laughably bad China is at propaganda.

~~~
Shivetya
What isn't a laughing matter is how we excuse all our favorite tech companies
to continue manufacturing there.

~~~
SubiculumCode
For a long time we excused China in the hope that integration of our economies
would lift China towards Democracy and respect for human rights. We/It failed.
For all the things I disagree with Trump about, the trade war is not. I hope
the tariffs are increased over time so that the supply chain begins to exclude
China. There are other countries that will do it for almost as cheap, and do
not abuse the U.S.'s good will so thoroughly.

~~~
CapricornNoble
IMO, the hope that trade and economics would bring democracy to China was
delusional from the start. It's the same sort of flag-waving idiocy that
assumed toppling Saddam would turn Iraq into the Middle Eastern equivalent of
post-war Japan. The US has basically permanently nerfed its own global
hegemony barely 2 decades after defeating its only major adversary (the Soviet
Union), all because of the idealistic aspirations of flag-waving ideologues
that triumphed over pragmatic realists and cynics.

~~~
SubiculumCode
You are probably right, but I think that there was an idea that empowering (by
money) a broad swath of Chines citizens would naturally lead to increases in
their political power, hence a nation that would lean toward democratic
tendencies.

------
majia
If you visit some real high schools in China, you’d find they are not very
different from these camps. Curfews, political classes, and compulsory
attendance are commonplace.

These facilities are not built to treat ethnic minorities in the most brutal
way, but reflections of an authoritarian society.

~~~
elAhmo
Compulsory attendance to political classes or high-school in general? Second
one doesn't seem that bad.

------
rdtsc
> "The sound of thoughts being transformed echos late into the night"

Kind of a haunting last line from the video. They make them repeat the same
formulas, presumably praises to the party, over and over, endlessly.

I have always wondered how effective that is and if some end up internalizing
it and are actually brainwashed. I have recited many of those in the Soviet
Union. Learned poems praising Lenin and the workers and whatnot but never
believed a bit of it. How do officials test that their methods are working?
"Will you follow the party's commandments?". How many would say "no" knowing
they are buying themselves another yeah in the camps.

------
salawat
Enumerating candidate PR spin Camps that were likely rejected: (Just add camps
for full effect)

>Cultural Enrichment >Sensibility Rectification >Behavior Rectification
>Sentiment Realignment >Sentiment Engineering

>Fundamental reconstruction of basic societal interaction loop by way of
teaching subordinazation of individual sentiment to collective will/norms
>Happy >Reeducation >Sequestration >Organ Donor >U.N. Tribunal No-go >What
>People Tranformation >Cultural Isolation >Cultural Indoctrination >Cultural
Reorientation >Internment >Help, I'm trapped in a CCP PR Dept

Feel free to add your own.

------
MrZongle2
_" What will it take to have China removed from the UN?"_

Until Taiwan can be _reinstated_ at the UN, I don't think your question will
have a satisfactory answer.

------
chrisco255
Why does China insist on using 1984 as a playbook, rather than a cautionary
tale?

~~~
stcredzero
Aren't we going towards a technological omni-surveillance state? Aren't we
going towards ubiquitous screens that monitor us while we get all of our
information from them? Haven't we already had "2 minutes hate" with people
screaming at the sky? Don't we already have a class of elite technocrats who
create media for a proletariat they look down upon, kaleidoscopically
recombining and rehashing old stories? Don't we already have Julias and the
civic league she belongs to?

Why does the world of 2019 keep using 1984 as a playbook?

~~~
nine_k
Not "1984", of course, but "Brave New World".

[https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-
webc...](https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webcomic-2/)

~~~
chrisco255
I agree Huxley was a bit closer (at least with regards to the West), depicting
a "soft tyranny" rather than the "harsh tyranny" of 1984.

~~~
stcredzero
Whether it's soft or harsh depends on your POV. Inner and outer party members
might well say "soft."

[https://www.wired.com/story/how-silicon-valley-fuels-an-
info...](https://www.wired.com/story/how-silicon-valley-fuels-an-informal-
caste-system/)

The West is still indeed much better than other parts of the world. However,
the West is supposed to be better qualitatively, not just quantitatively.

------
learc83
Can we stop arguing on the terminology and whether other countries do bad
stuff as well and just agree that this is something we should condemn.

It may be difficult or even impossible for the rest of the world to stop it,
but it shouldn't be so hard to come to a consensus that this is wrong.

Edit: this just dropped off the front page from #4 to #34 in a few minutes
while another article about China selling US dollars with far fewer upvotes
and comments from around the same time is still at #2. Can we get an
explanation for why this happened?

Edit: It's now almost off the 2nd page at #52 in under an hour.

~~~
dang
A moderator downweighted the thread the same way we downweight any topic that
has been highly repeated, especially when it is highly repeated and also
highly politicized and provocative.

I know that sounds tendentious when you feel strongly about a story, but you
have to remember what HN exists for. We're optimizing for one thing:
intellectual curiosity. If you take that statement literally, which you
should, then it will be obvious what the moderation call is here. Curiosity is
incompatible with repetition and rage, however justified the rage. Actually,
justified rage is even worse for curiosity; it crowds it out for longer. This
doesn't mean the story is unimportant—quite the contrary.

More on this for anyone who wants it:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
learc83
I understand that you're optimizing for curiosity, but I feel that on some
issues that this goal should take a backseat. For instance, I don't think that
optimizing for curiosity would be a particularly convincing defense for a
popular science type magazine that refused to publish letters to the
editor/articles related to the situation in Germany in the early 1930s.

Nevertheless, I understand that this is a subjective issue--there is room for
argument on whether allowing such discussions here would have any real world
benefit anyway, so thank you very much for the transparency.

------
SubiculumCode
These camps are clear evidence that the Honk Kong Democracy Protesters,
inheritors of the Umbrella protests, need our whole hearted support.

------
hart_russell
They're also harvesting their organs!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China)

~~~
low_poly_shiba
big if true!

unfortunately the Falun Gong is an insane cult and not a very reliable source
of information

RationalWiki has a big __citations-packed __section on their claims of organ
harvesting in China:

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Victims_of_Organ_Ha...](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Victims_of_Organ_Harvesting)

I hope after the Iraq "incubator smashing" fiasco, and "WMD"s, Americans apply
some skepticism towards claims that their geopolitical adversaries act like
fantastical TV show villains.

\---

edit, bc can't reply because I'm massively getting flagged and downvoted
across all my posts

here's me addressing claims that nobody has challenged the Matas report:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour–Matas_report](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour–Matas_report)

> The report, based on circumstantial evidence, concluded that "there has
> been, and continues today to be, large-scale organ seizures from unwilling
> Falun Gong practitioners."[2] China has consistently denied the
> allegations.[3][4]

then

> The initial report received a mixed reception. In the US, a Congressional
> Research Service report by Thomas Lum stated that the Kilgour–Matas report
> relied largely on logical inference, without bringing forth new or
> independently obtained testimony; the credibility of much of the key
> evidence was said to be questionable.[5]

~~~
roywiggins
Falun Gong being a weird culty organization (they absolutely are) doesn't mean
China _isn 't_ abusing them, which they are, or that they're not harvesting
their organs, which they may well be.

"China is harvesting organs from detainees, tribunal concludes. Victims
include imprisoned followers of Falun Gong movement, China Tribunal says"

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-
harve...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-
organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes)

> An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of
> detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include
> imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement.

> The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at
> the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a
> unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that
> Falun Gong as a source - probably the principal source - of organs for
> forced organ harvesting”.

~~~
xmly
Falun Gong claims they could cure any cancers. If you believe them, cancer
patients could save a lot.

------
novok
My metaphor for China is in this timeline, the Chinese Nazis won and now you
see the results of a stable Chinese-Nazi dictatorship.

------
threeisoneis
Concentration camps

------
MadWombat
I think the better parallel is not with the Nazi concentration camps where the
goal was to methodically eradicate people, but rather American conversion
therapy camps where they try to "convert" gay kids to straight.

~~~
ceejayoz
Not all of the Nazi concentration camps served as extermination camps.

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

------
xmly
Where is terrorism coming from? Why they attack USA? What about domestic
terrorism? What are the USA's solutions?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> What are the USA's solutions?

Definitely not concentration camps. Not since WW2 anyways.

~~~
xmly
Not on American soil, I believe more accurately.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Prisons are a bit different from concentration camps. One has people accused
of doing the deed, the other has people who are friends, family or somewhat
remotely connected with those doing the deed. As a mainly British invention
(rounding up the Boers during wars in colonial South Africa), the past time
America bothered with something like that was the Japanese internment camps
during WW2.

~~~
xmly
So what are the USA's solutions anyway?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Policing the populous? It isn’t rocket science, something like the kunming
train station knife stabbing would have been seen as a heinous criminal act
rather than a reason to intern many people of a particular ethnicity.

------
thoughtxformer
I think many of us wouldn't mind the capability to Transform the Thoughts of
large segments of our society...

~~~
nine_k
Humans are generally prone to this, alas.

A great essay on the topic: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-
tolerate-anythin...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
anything-except-the-outgroup/)

------
avanti
How about Guantanamo? Is that a concentration camp? And what about those
border facilities detaining immigrants? What's happening inside there? Why
eliminating terrorism justifies bombarding a country most of innocent
civilians? Our views are always biased by what we think is right. However
there's no absolute right or wrong, only stories planted in our minds.

~~~
ryanmarsh
People at the border facilities are encouraged to leave back to their home
country and to use the US Immigration system properly.

I don't know much about Guantanamo. Who is currently held there? I've read
they recently expanded the facilities but I'm not aware of new arrivals.

~~~
xmly
Guantanamo will be used as the detention facility for illegal immigrants
pretty soon based on the news.

~~~
fourier_mode
Reference?

~~~
xmly
US immigration officials looking at housing migrant children at Guantánamo
Bay, report says

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
politic...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
politics/guantanamo-bay-migrant-children-us-immigration-trump-
border-a8883511.html)

------
low_poly_shiba
It's wild to me that americans point at China for this when they:

1) routinely bomb muslims to death, destroying entire nations, I guess
gesturing towards vague notions that being murdered is better than being
brainwashed

2) have their own immigrant concentration camps, going as far as to reuse the
same infrastructure for japanese internment camps
([https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
news/migrant-...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/migrant-
children-internment-camp-fort-sill-847183/))

the main difference is that the victims of abuse in China are Chinese
citizens, whereas americans draw their borders in such a way that their
victims live in their "backyard" and not america proper.

American exceptionalism is alive and well!

edit: lol I'm a lily-white Canadian, for all of those claiming China is
somehow "my side".

also, the completely reflexive, kneejerk way in which posters deploy
accusations of "whataboutism" to avoid any critical assessment of what they're
witnessing, is truly spectacular.

~~~
maxton
This piece isn't about Americans or their reactions to this horrible
situation.

~~~
low_poly_shiba
so? I find it interesting to point out the double standard

I'm hardly the first Canadian to notice the insane ramp-up in anti-China
sentiment from our American neighbours, especially given the stark contrast
with the royal treatment given to the genocidal regime in Saudi Arabia.

Dismembered journalists, decapitated feminists and democratic activist
teenagers, famine in Yemen, Senate voted to stop the war and Trump vetoed
it... and yet HN is all China every day.

China isn't the only country that looks a lot like 1984 from the outside
peering in.

~~~
komali2
Where do you see a double standard applied?

~~~
low_poly_shiba
The way the US deals with Saudi Arabia vs. the way it deals with China.

And the disciplined way in which people here rationalize that status quo.

