No joking. Source: live in China for 10+ years.
I asked him about 'state media control' and he said "well, you know, someone could just, you know, get a knife and start stabbing people!" which was his justification for all the control.
I asked him, while we waiting for CalTrain ... 'do you feel safe right now?' he said 'sure'.
The paradox is uncanny.
I'm from Canada, I like it, and it's great in many ways, but I'll be happy to tell you all the ways that it's wonky.
Open question: What would you do if you have increasingly frequent terrorist attacks in major cities year after year at the same time that Wahhabism is taking root in your previously tolerant community? China doesn't have the luxury of two oceans to protect itself from religious fanatics. Xinjiang itself was Buddhist and Indo-Persian in culture well into the medieval period, until conquered and forcibly converted by Turco-Islamists who reveled in "shitting on the Buddha's head" and destroyed many monuments -- basically the Taliban and ISIS. Since then, Xinjiang's Islam has mellowed out but the insidious and fanatical influence from West Asia continues nonstop.
It's absolutely defensible and moral to stop any fundamentalist backsliding in Xinjiang or indeed anywhere in the world. Modern day Xinjiang's problem is very simple, it's one of people losing their identity in a modernizing world. You see the historically more Chinese-influenced Northern Xinjiang more peaceable and prosperous, and religion more tolerant and tolerated. The opposite can be said of Southern Xinjiang. People who fear change tend to become reactionary and turn to religion. It would have happened regardless of whether they were in China. The alternative is to never develop like some of the Central Asian -stans (e.g. bride kidnappings in Kyrgyzstan), but then who wants to live there -- not even Uyghur émigrés, who never go to those places but always head for the EU, the US, or if they have no choice, Turkey. It's sad to say but it might take materialist brainwashing ('re-education') to reverse religious brainwashing.
It might seem that way when you ignore attacks on people by the surveillance state. From the invasion of privacy en masse, to people being disappeared, thus robbing them of even their deaths in a way not even the most heinous terrorist attacks do. It's like nuking a city and then saying you "stopped all car thefts" in it.
It's just as fundamentalist and religious, only with a party line that can shift on its own, vs. preachers who shift their interpretations of fixed scripture, for the same result.
Also, monuments destroyed in medieval times? Really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
> The start of the Cultural Revolution brought huge numbers of Red Guards to Beijing, with all expenses paid by the government, and the railway system was in turmoil. The revolution aimed to destroy the "Four Olds" (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) and establish the corresponding "Four News", and this can range from changing of names and cutting of hair, to the ransacking of homes, vandalizing cultural treasures, and desecrating temples. In a few years, countless ancient buildings, artifacts, antiques, books, and paintings were destroyed by Red Guards.
Doesn't sound so great. A book I can recommend is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Swans
> it might take materialist brainwashing ('re-education') to reverse religious brainwashing.
They're not even getting "materialist" brainwashing, whatever that would even be, they're getting totalitarian brainwashing. Within the framework of totalitarianism, where there is no truth except the truth enforced by coercion, what you say makes sense: only a stronger lie can combat an existing lie, and anything grounded in truth or voluntary insight is lava.
It's still essentially arguing wether a turd or a puddle of puke constitutes better tasting food -- any no doubt existing differences are meaningless, they should never make you pick one or the other.
> "Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world." -- Hannah Arendt
Some extreme cruelties were practiced in Tibet before 1950, including mutilation as punishment and using human body parts for constructing religious instruments. The latter is documented in an article published in 1923 [2].
--
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/tibet-...
underdeveloped nation in an underdeveloped region in the 1950s has non modern social practices.
In other news, The world is round, and the sky is blue.
So, taking over a country, eradicating their culture, deciding who reincarnates, diluting the population is ok?
Are we saying ethnic Chinese are superior to tibetans China basically has the money to bully people into submission.
Also it’s funny that the people who support North Korea, murdered most of their educated class during the great revolution, have locus standii on this issue.
In fact, the writer actually states:
"Last December, Ye Xiaowen, head of China's administration for religious affairs, published a piece in the state-run China Daily newspaper that, although propaganda, rings true. " And argues some of the same points from the propaganda piece.
The author of the piece you link to formerly worked for the China Daily in Beijing, run by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China.
Finally, you do realize that skulls are easily obtained via death by natural causes, right? Especially before the adoption of antibiotics and vaccination?
Tibetans practice sky burial, where bodies are left out in a charnel ground and picked clean by wildlife. (Probably because digging graves is difficult and cremation would be a waste of scarce fuel.) I suspect they have a different attitude about the dead and their parts than you.
> the author of the piece you link to formerly worked for
> the China Daily in Beijing, run by the Publicity
> Department of the Communist Party of China.
> Finally, you do realize that skulls are easily
> obtained via death by natural causes, right?
> Especially before the adoption of antibiotics
> and vaccination?
>
> Tibetans practice sky burial, where bodies are
> left out in a charnel ground and picked clean by
> wildlife. (Probably because digging graves is
> difficult and cremation would be a waste of scarce
> fuel.) I suspect they have a different attitude
> about the dead and their parts than you.
There are trumpets made of human thigh-bones,
the bones of criminals of those who have died a
violent death being preferred for this purpose.
the bones of Father Brieux killed in 1881 [happened
in Tibet] were 1881 were taken from his grave, and
his skull was made into a drinking-cup.
My point is the matter could be more complicated than either you or I currently think...I am not an adherent of the Chinese government propaganda...but as averse to those propaganda as I am, this does not mean that there is no information or valuable points in their propaganda...I also hate to have to dig out knowledge from propaganda, but if that helps me to get closer to any fact or truth, then I feel I have to do that, instead of simply throwing all their words away without any discretion...
BTW, the article [2] I cited was published in 1923 by Berthold Laufer , supposedly before CCP's Propaganda Division became full-fledged enough to be capable to have any influence on that...
You know what life is in Tibet for Tibetans? The horrors are so great that once a while they prefer to publicly kill themselves, suffering a terrible death rather than going on like this. That's the sad reality of living under the Chinese rule. There were many things wrong in ancient Tibet, such as feudal fights, the abuse of power by the central government and so on, but nothing of this justifies the invasion and the current treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese.
That’s not far off from the current western use of relics. I’m glad the Italian government hasn’t raided the Vatican and turned it into a museum or government offices. The idea that this would be defensible because Catholics have retained medieval practices— well, I hope that’s plainly absurd to anyone reading this.
1. my original comment was not an attempt to justify the current policies by the Chinese government in Tibet;
2. I was just saying it is a complicated matter, with lots of historic elements in it;
3. I agree that lots of things need to be improved there.
4. I do not know a good solution to this problem at this time; but please do share with us if you do...
The commuism is an umbrella term, that covers many great details...I personally don't like the totalitarian way of ruling by almost all existing or past communist governments...But I do think the social collaboration and universal fraternity among all human beings are good things -- but those aspects seems to have certain totalitarianism in themselves as well...so I honestly do not know a good solution about this too...
But this is all par for the course for the human history of conflict!
> The victors right the history to justify
> their actions, whether it is true or not,
> or even reasonable.
> And to muddy that further, it isn't unreasonable
> to think that the PLA's invasion of Tibet was simply
> territorial in nature and had nothing to do with the
> condition of its people (like the Siege of Changchun
> that wound up killing more people than they liberated).
> But this is all par for the course for
> the human history of conflict
If you talk to folks who have to live in say Russia/Putin-stan today when the government lies and everyone knows that the government knows that everyone knows they're lying it's actually a mechanism of intimidation and control.
It really boils down to "we can get away with saying or doing whatever we want-- what are YOU going to do about it?" or "Your facts don't matter, your information doesn't matter, your data doesn't matter, your truth doesn't matter-- all that matters is power and we have the power and we're in charge."
This strategy is a bit different from the casual/blatant general dishonesty of the current American president (it seems to be a bit of a personal tick rather than this kind of deliberate thinking) --- but it is absolutely a well-worn trick of nightmare authoritarian regimes.
If you're not already familiar, check out these journalists:
- julia ioffe
- masha gessen
If you want some provocative Chinese muck-raking, these sometimes be useful/interesting resources:
"Region in Northwest China relocated 461,000 poverty-ridden residents to work in other parts of the region during the first quarter of the year, in what a Chinese expert on Friday said was a bid to improve social stability and alleviate poverty."
Slighhhtly different spin on why it is being done, what's being done, etc
That's English-language content for a foreign audience
"Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China relocated 461,000 poverty-ridden residents to work in other parts of the region during the first quarter of the year, in what a Chinese expert on Friday said was a bid to improve social stability and alleviate poverty."
How kind of the government to forcibly separate families and relocate Uighurs to camps where there culture is eradicated, all in the name of poverty alleviation.
Here is another quote, with a link to a longer, more detailed article from a less-biased source (the Global Times is run by the Chinese Communist Party):
"Asked to comment on the camps, China’s Foreign Ministry said it “had not heard” of the situation."
“Six million Jews have been relocated by the German government for the purpose of poverty reduction.”
And what makes you think they're forcibly separating families? Did you literally just make that up out of thin air?
But on March 10, back in China, the police took his sister, Adila Bekali. A week later, on March 19, they took his mother, Amina Sadik. And on April 24, his father, Ebrayem.“
What evidence?
The UN says it has "credible reports." There's absolutely no information about the contents of these reports or where they came from -- only a blind assertion that they exist.
Meanwhile China has always been transparent about what is happening in Xinjiang and makes little attempt to hide it. The public ceremonies and mandatory educational courses are public -- that's kinda the point.
The only thing remarkable here is that after the Iraq War, after the endless propaganda effort against Iran (remember all the breathless reporting about Iran forcing non-Muslims to wear badges [1]?) so many people are still dumb enough to accept this sort of "reporting" without any verifiable, documentary evidence let alone actual first-hand witness accounts.
To deny something that exists, and if there is open evidence that it does exists, really has to hurt one's own credibility.
The treatment of Tibetans is no secret, the Chinese use the 'look how Americans treated Aboriginals in the 19th century' which is bizarre, but not worse than denial.
Saudi Arabia is in a spat over human rights with Canada right now trying to indicate that Canada is a 'human rights abuser' given the number of homeless there.
But to just 'deny deny deny' is bad in the era of the Internet.
My bet is that average Chinese people could be propagandized into the line on Tibet, but if they find that there are 1M people in camps, and their government has been denying it, well, it just kills any credibility the government may have.