The western media does report those things, it’s just that the Chinese media only focuses on those pieces from the western media that it wants to be defensive about. Call it tunnel tunnel vision if you will.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a sensational exposé about alleviating poverty through technology-driven, sustainable farming in Xinjiang, in a mainstream publication. On the other hand, I don’t have enough hairs on my head to count the number of condemnations and denouncements.
This is likely the cause of frustration that you see seeping through in answers such as the one posted.
Your right to have good public transit is being violated by someone else's right to not have a rail go through their lawn. Protect that man's right to a lawn at all costs.
This is just a bullshit way of justifying oppression using the economic development they would have received anyway.
People make the same absurd arguments about slavery, and lack of suffrage, and it’s just as obviously bullshit in those cases as it is in this one.
"Tibet used to be a feudal serfdom with the Lamas lording over everyone else. Most Dalai Lamas were murdered by their rivals for control over the country. So yeah, of course the Lamas are upset that they're no longer in power."
"I’m of the opinion that it’s impossible to achieve economic progress with social upheaval, threats of separatism and terrorist attacks. Economic progress is incompatible with the others.
It's the extreme poverty and lack of economic opportunities which drive destabilizing forces such as these.
Prosperity by means of terrorism then separatism is the path offered by the WUC and ETIM.
Prosperity by means of forced “re-education” in vocational skills and poverty alleviation plans [1] is the one offered by the CCP.
I think it’s the CCP’s gambit that when there is economic prosperity in the region, there will be room for expanding human rights. There won’t be a need or desire to separate from a system which you are actively benefiting from and when that threat goes away, so do the armoured patrols and surveillance mechanisms.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-poverty-xinjiang/china...
I’m of the opinion that it’s impossible to achieve economic progress with social upheaval, threats of separatism and terrorist attacks. Economic progress is incompatible with the others.
It's the extreme poverty and lack of economic opportunities which drive destabilizing forces such as these.
Prosperity by means of terrorism then separatism is the path offered by the WUC and ETIM.
Prosperity by means of forced “re-education” in vocational skills and poverty alleviation plans [1] is the one offered by the CCP.
I think it’s the CCP’s gambit that when there is economic prosperity in the region, there will be room for expanding human rights. There won’t be a need or desire to separate from a system which you are actively benefiting from and when that threat goes away, so do the armoured patrols and surveillance mechanisms.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-poverty-xinjiang/china...
Because if we’re going to go down that road, I have to warn you that the Xinjiang story is not nearly as black and white as the British, Dutch or American stories.
China didn't really colonize, if colonization means to move there and enslave the natives.
> nothing in history has shown that China is any better at colonizing lands than the west
I agree - I guess historically speaking, China just hasn't colonized enough countries to have a decent sample size.
And I'm sure that many folks made the argument that Africans working on plantations in the South had a higher standard of living than where they came from.
That’s because it is, and if you visited you wouldn’t be so flippant about it. In large part because a tourist can’t even make a stop in the area without getting their own personal police minder.
It’s little different than North Korea.
That is not to say there isn’t a problem, but hanging out in Urumqi is definitely nowhere near as interesting as hanging out in Pyongyang.
Tibet is much harder to visit, foreigners have to apply for a permit (which you don’t need to visit Xinjiang).
The snark likely comes from the fact that Xinjiang is consistently portrayed in Western media as a nightmarish, dystopian, Orwellian hellhole suffering under the iron fisted oppression of the Communist Party. They ignore the very real benefits that have been afforded to millions of poverty-stricken people in Xinjiang via progressive government policies, while tunnel visioning solely on human rights abuses.