The South China Morning Post has had the best English-language reporting on China for years. Both inside and outside China, that was what one read to get some idea of what was really going on. For comparison, read Xinhua.[1] Today's top story: "President Xi calls for structural reform, agricultural modernization". Story #2: "Premier Li urges Guangdong to pioneer reform". Story #3: "Top legislator delivers report on work of NPC Standing Committee". You get the idea. China Daily [2] on China is a bit better. But not much. "China to boost consumer goods quality: minister". "Top legislator lauds enhanced legislation on China's national security". There's also the People's Daily [3], which is the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China. This is literally the party line. Good coverage of the 13th Five-Year Plan and the 2016 National Party Congress.
This is a big loss for China. The USSR suffered from having all the press toe the party line. Even the people running the country didn't have a good overview of what was going on. The downfall of the USSR was a surprise to the leadership of the USSR.
SCMP was already going down the tubes in regards to journalistic integrity. I stopped reading more than a year ago due to the propaganda pieces they were shipping.
I wonder if China can fully enter the first world while still executing such a thorough and complete control over the media? Would anyone like to weigh in on if free speech is essential to what you'd consider a first world country, or is it simply one of those luxuries that only some need?
What do you mean by "first world country?" The terms first/second/third world were originally names used to distinguish countries aligned either with the capitalist west, communist east, or neither (which typically were less developed). Now it's used more as a synonym for "developed country," which is a category that certainly included the Soviet Union (there wasn't a lot of free speech there, to say the least).
I don't think the Chinese government cares about western political values, and it'll probably be satisfied with whatever economic development it can get without them.
A media industry outside of the control of the government isn't required to be part of the "first world". Turkey is part of NATO, as first world as it gets, and their government is increasingly curtailing rights like freedom of assembly and the press.
You are first world if the first world says you are first world. You are second world if the first world says you are second world. You are third world if the first world says nothing about you. Ideology serves geopolitics, it does not determine it.
Consider what the US would look like if there was zero oversight from the media. Many, many problems swept out of view and hidden indefinitely. Few lessons can be learned when the mistakes are nearly unknown.
Who in their right minds would want China to be the global hegemony when they censor free speech, treat people like they are disposable (Falun Gong body organ harvesting by President Zemin), impose Han Chinese ethnocentric ideologies as superior to the world as did Nazi Germany believed their blood made them pure?
What country in their right mind that enjoys the security and economic prosperity and trade with other democracies, uproot all of these perks in favor of China?
Who thinks like this besides delusional Chinese ultra nationalists and apologists?
United States is not perfect or all good either but fuck me if I'm going to let China become the world hegemony and bully every country like they do in the South China sea?
The world needs United States more than it needs the world.
edit: for those saying falun gong organ harvesting is a conspiracy.
Falun Gong is a Chinese qigong discipline involving
meditation and a moral philosophy rooted in Buddhist
tradition. The practice rose to popularity in the 1990s
in China, and by 1998, Chinese government sources
estimated that as many as 70 million people had taken up
the practice.[23][24] Perceiving that Falun Gong was a
potential threat to the Party’s authority and ideology,
Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin initiated a
nationwide campaign to eradicate the group in July 1999.
[25]
> Sure, "the world" needs a 4-decades-long "net-debtor+net-importer" very very badly..
I find it sad that this is your summary of the United States contributions to the rest of the world. I'm fairly sure there must be a few things you are skipping over here, good and bad.
> Who in their right minds would want China to be the global hegemony when they censor free speech, treat people like they are disposable (Falun Gong body organ harvesting by President Zemin), impose Han Chinese ethnocentric ideologies as superior to the world as did Nazi Germany believed their blood made them pure?
I can't believe people actually think this way... organ harvesting by the president?? Han Chinese ethnocentric ideologies??
not defending the parent, but Falun Gong organ harvesting by the Chinese government is widely considered to be a real human rights crisis by many different countries, the EU, and the UN. It was also admitted by the Deputy Health Minister[0] in 2005.
Minor correction: organ harvesting by the Chinese government on death row prisoners is considered human rights crisis by many countries, so is the death sentence itself. Also, illegal organ harvesting by criminals probably exists, but is a serious crime.
Organ harvesting falun gong member just because they were part of a cult is a large leap of logic from what the government claims to do, and has been debunked many times. I was there when the cult was declared illegal, the few staunch practitioners in my neighbourhood were harassment by elderly women in neighbourhood watches daily, but few actually went to jail, let alone being sentenced to die or have their organs missing.
On the whole country's level, especially after the organization turned from a cult to anti-CCP dissident group, I won't be surprised some leaders are captured or even killed.
If anything, the successful campaign to legitimize falun gong, and various rumours they spread just shows how easily the public can be manipulated with fake facts. I didn't realize how many people actually believe in those propagandas until today, it has been quite a shocking revelation.
Just to put things in perspective, back before the cult was outlawed, their leader was advocating against seeing doctors when one is ill, and that practicing his school of qigong will cure all their problems.
This is a weird comment, you go from disputing my organ harvesting claim to just repeating Chinese propaganda while at the same time accusing me of doing the same but for the Falun Gong.
Perhaps you can explain where China gets the organs for their record setting transplant rates? Research has shown the organs they account for coming from death row inmates outpaces the number of death row inmates by several orders of magnitude (several thousands of transplants supposedly came from 14 death row inmates in one province that harbored the most Falun Gong during the early 2000s). Please point me to some of these debunkings, because I can't seem to find any by a reputable source. Meanwhile the EU and United Nations have clearly accused the Chinese government of harvesting Falun Gong organs.
But besides that, the Chinese government itself has admitted that over 2,000 Falun Gong members have died as a result of torture and abuse while being held for religious beliefs (in and of itself a human rights violation). Given that the government has been accused of lighting people on fire in public simply to discredit Falun Gong I wouldn't put it past them to harvest organs as well. At one point Falun Gong members made up 50% of long time prisoners in China. If organ harvesting is happening in general (which has been a long standing accusation), the statistics say Falun Gong members were highly likely to be among those abused.
Sure, the president himself might not have ordered a massive conspiracy. Doesn't mean the government doesn't harvest the organs of religious dissidents. It's very strange you'd use the term "legitimize" though, as if people needed to be "legitimate" in order to practice a religious belief.
Oh, and just to put things in perspective we have plenty of holistic medicine crazies here in the US. We just don't demonize, imprison, and execute them.
I'm not sure that simply expressing astonishment will change anyone's mind. Are these well-known ideas or something completely new? Can you refute them directly or explain where they come from to someone not familiar with Chinese history and current conspiracy theories?
One does not need familiarity with Chinese history or conspiracy theories to put those claims into the nonsense bin.
But in case it's not as obvious as I see it, here are my assumptions:
- president of China is a public figure
- he is probably not crazy
- most Chinese people are not crazy
- not-crazy people think organ harvesting is really bad
Based on those assumptions (feel free to prove me wrong), he is unlikely to have ordered organ harvesting, and even if he did, it's unlikely he can cover it up.
As to "Han Chinese ethnocentric ideologies", I have never heard of it. But if I were to take a guess, he might be referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinocentrism, and it has not been a thing for at least several hundred years.
Organ harvesting from prisoners is apparently legal in China (per the Wikipedia article, haven't followed through all the links yet). So apparently some not-crazy people think it's not really bad or crazy people are running the show. Let's assume not-crazy. They have a source of organs, people they intend to execute, and they apparently make use of this. There's a lack (or circa 2006 was) of a detailed registry showing the source of transplant organs. There's some evidence (but not conclusive) that some of those organs were from Falun Gong members.
So China is harvesting organs from prisoners. They have not maintained an accountable record of which prisoners were used that could be offered as verification. Torture and coercion of Falun Gong prisoners does happen. In an environment of poor accountability and oversight with a willingness for brutality, the potential abuse cannot be immediately discarded.
If you think I'm just bashing China, see the US and its various torture abuses over the past 15 (in particular) years. Abu Ghraib is not something that most people would have expected from the US Army, but it happened.
Bush was a public figure. Bush was probably not crazy. Most US people are not crazy. Not-crazy people think that dehumanizing and torture of prisoners is really bad. But it happened.
This is a different scale (thousands, not hundreds) and different issue (killing and harvesting, not torture) but your assumptions are insufficient to discard it out of hand. They do, however, provide a solid basis for skepticism.
But had the Chinese officials and agencies involved done their due diligence they should have had records demonstrating the source of organs. If for no other reason than the medical knowledge for recipients. A closed examination or audit of those records would have sufficed to put this case to rest (for the vast majority of people).
I think you make an excellent point, and my assumptions are probably not sufficient to lead to my conclusions.
I'd like to point out though, organ harvesting death row prisoners is on a vastly different scale of acceptance than organ harvesting less-informed cult followers who has harmed nobody except themselves. The former is unethical because it incentivizes unjust sentencing, but the wrong part is unjust sentencing, not necessarily organ harvesting(although this is controversial and can get philosophical); the later would affect many millions of people, enraging orders of magnitude more.
Bottom line, did Jiang order the crackdown of falun gong and resulting in some being tortured or even sentenced to die? Yes. Did he order organ harvesting of falun gong members? Most definitely not.
A lot of people in the West hate China. Before 9/11, we were really despised and demonized in the US. Probably even worse than Muslims are treated today because at least some us defend them. It's kind of funny the crazy things Americans are willing to believe. Here is the most ridiculous example: a Chinese artist did a series of photographs where he ate a cooked human fetus prop. A white journalist saw the photos, assumed it was real, and wrote an article that made the rounds. Look at those Han barbarians and their baby eating!
We in the West have the privilege of using our culture of free expression and open communication to create marvels like pizza and burgers, and then oversell these marvels to the Chinese as brands that can never be 100% replicated, like Pizza Hut and McDonald's.
China will never be cool. Powerful, but not sexy. Keep being original and interesting, and you will be a part of the winning team.
Paul Graham gave the example of members of the Manhattan Project having lock-picking and safe-cracking as hobbies; that almost certainly wouldn't have been a thing on the NAZI side, and nicely illustrates the difference between the two.
IMO, people are starting to flip against globalization more than in the past, and in places like India as well. In the US, the rise of Trump & Bernie are a good example of people having enough with the mainstream political schtick.
That threatens China's role as factory to the world, and the cracks that are developing drives more repressive behavior.
What does "flip against globalization" actually mean? Unless people are suddenly preferring domestically produced goods over imports in statistically significant numbers, I don't see globalization slowing down any time soon.
Thomas Jefferson imposed heavy tariffs on imports. This was horrible for the (new) American consumer and raised prices significantly on manufactured goods.
Because people still wanted things like teacups and saucers and clothing, New England began to manufacture those same items within the country, and the rest is history.
Same thing could happen again. If something is too expensive to import, we'll just make our own.
And that worked in the 18th century, but how high would the tariffs have to be to make it economically feasible to manufacture an iPhone in the US? How much would that iPhone cost? I wouldn't be surprised if the answer put iPhones beyond the reach of the vast majority of Americans.
I don't doubt that new wide-ranging tariffs would increase American manufacturing (although we still make a lot of stuff in the US as it is), but I wonder if it wouldn't also lead to a measurable reduction in the American standard of living.
We don't have to manufacture everything here. It makes sense to do microelectronics in China because of factory network effects. Need a widget? My buddy at the factory down the road can ship you a million by Friday.
But we can manufacture textiles, plastics, metals, and so much more that we grow, extract, and refine here. The only reason China is so competitive is because of ridiculous energy subsidies and an artificially weak currency compared with the US dollar, which is also being artificially strengthened as a generally weak global economy seeks refuge in reserve currencies.
I dress well. I am currently wearing a designer shirt made in Pennsylvania. It cost me about 20% more than designer shirts made in China. If all shirts of similar quality were raised to that price due to tariffs, it would only marginally affect my buying habits.
A $120 price tag is not a big deterrent for someone who buys similar shirts for $100. I just want to look good. And right now, I do.
Did you really just link a campaign position from Donald Trump of all people as evidence against globalization? Do you have any evidence of an actual shift away from globalization? Trump can talk himself to death, but that doesn't mean that we are actually doing anything to reduce our reliance on China or any other country.
Falun Gong is a superstitious group that promotes the belief in magical powers. Knowing that, China's actions make far more sense (if still unfair). A large group that's irrational to the point of killing people via belief in magic is very possibly a threat.
This is a big loss for China. The USSR suffered from having all the press toe the party line. Even the people running the country didn't have a good overview of what was going on. The downfall of the USSR was a surprise to the leadership of the USSR.
[1] http://www.news.cn/english/ [2] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ [3] http://en.people.cn/