[anthonyleecook]

I know there are a lot of clamoring here about ‘oh we are becoming this too and that too’. And it’s a natural reaction: we feel like we cannot change anything about China and how it governs its people, so we try to stigmatize our own government. But the truth of the matter is US government is nowhere near the heavy handed ness of China, and we can deal with China to some degree. We can hold China to its actions. After reading about the uigher concentration camps in China, I feel like it’s time to take a stand. It’s time to stop supporting such a bad regime. Time to voice my concerns about China to my government, and vote with my wallet. No more Chinese products if I can. No more trips to Shanghai. I don’t want to help the government terrorize my friends in China anymore.

[davesque]

I would have agreed with you before November 2016. Now, I'm being completely honest in saying I'm not so sure.

[drb91]

Oh come on, neoliberals aren’t much better. They’re two feet to the left of the right wingers when it comes to surveillance, policing, funding the military & pro-military nationalistic rhetoric, with industry hands in their pocket, and their own hands in the media. The seeds for fascism, authoritarianism, and cults of personality are well rooted in the senior offices of congress on both sides. It has been ripe for abuse and we have seen only a small bit of this in 2016.

Pinning any change here on trump is like blaming the crash on a pilot who took charge after the engines already blew. There is little to no recognition of the abuses of federal government in the government itself, and not for a while.

If any authoritarian power rises, it will be because the democrats are too busy shoveling their shit out of view to put up any real fight. Just look at how blame for a mediocre-at-best platform was shifted to russian propaganda, as if it could have possibly moved the needle more than the hundreds of millions of “legit” propaganda spent by the democrats, as if Bernie Sander's continued popularity doesn't point to a way to strong support in the future that they continue to reject for more unpopular, centrist, neoliberals.

[sjg007]

I think the issue is that Trump and the State department are not going to do anything about a strongman in China. Trump likes strongmen and hasn't doing anything to curb Duerte, Putin and now Xi in China.

[adventured]

Let's be realistic. China has an economy nearly three times the size of the #3 economy, Japan, at this point. They dominate dozens of aspects of global trade and commodities. They're a nuclear power, and clearly the world's #2 military (and persistently trying to close the gap with the US).

So, do what about Xi exactly? Nothing. There's absolutely nothing Trump or Obama could or would be able to do about Xi's power grab. Obama would have issued a PR about concerns of this or that, and it would have been meaningless in actuality (other than making a small number of people feel slightly better for a minute).

China has been authoritarian-heavy in one form or another for most of the last 300 years or so of modern history. Smacking them on the nose about it isn't going to accomplish much. It'll work about as well as it has with Russia over the prior century.

[sjg007]

An organized global response would probably dampen ambitions. In fact it's unlikely this would have happened except for in the current situation. There are a lot of ways to wield influence effectively.

[pesmhey]

Economic partnerships could be formed with the nations that surround China, especially the nations that could potentially restrict China’s access to global shipping. It would force them to spend huge amounts of capital on railroads to maintain control of their connection to the greater world.

All of the surrounding nations would agree with your accusation of authoritarian tendencies from China and would eagerly align themselves with each other and the US in order to level the playing field between them and China.

Another thing that could be done is to shame them on the international stage into adopting policies that restrict their ability to pollute, and subsequently slow their growth.

[longcheng]

China listens, and stops importing western recycle trashes to protect its environment, and the western countries panic.

[drb91]

Well, that may be true. I'm not sure what another state department might have done in this position against Xi, though; this is a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage either.

[forapurpose]

> I'm not sure what another state department might have done

The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy. It's believed that people with freedom and opportunity become vibrant trade partners and allies, not enemies in war. Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule.

That historic policy is widely believed to have given the US enormous influence, as people generally feel favorably towards others whose central goal is freedom and opportunity for all.

The current State Dept (including the Secretary of State) and other leading government officials have openly forewarn support for human rights. The Secretary of State said making money is more important (which fits the approach of many in the oil industry, and he was CEO of Exxon). Others deemphasize it for no given reason, and advocate even eliminating the State Dept in favor of military power.

> a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage

A lack of straightforward leverage is pretty normal for international relations; it's the sea in which diplomats swim. Almost every great thing that has been accomplished in that field was done in that environment.

[dragonwriter]

> The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy.

Rhetorically; the substance is less consistent.

> Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule.

There is basically no empirical evidence for this popular claim (the relative rarity of democracy-on-democracy war does not require any more than the small proportion of potential historical pairs of nations that consist of two democratic nations to explain it.)

[drb91]

This seems deeply, deeply idealistic to me--but ultimately this seems political, so I'll just say my point was that it's not clear what Obama could have done differently aside from save face and keep the state department staffed.

[forapurpose]

Tangentially: Is there a way to draw a line between this kind of comment and (IMHO) productive ones, in order to make enforceable, effective rules?

The comment adds no knowledge to the discussion - I'm no wiser after reading it - and is inflammatory, risking further derailment of the discussion. Mostly it communicates the emotional state of the commenter, in regard to this issue, when the comment was written.

There are times and places to do that, but they are very common and we also need the other kind of interaction: A very important problem is how to have substantive, valuable discussion of public affairs, and I'm searching for a solution.

[EggsOnToast]

This. Obama radically expanded the surveillance state as did Bush and arguably Clinton abided it even if he didn't outright affect it in the same way as his successors. I'm not going to make the statement that the Chinese surveillance state is wrong, because in this instance I think it's irrelevant to the greater point that its execution is a totally different beast from the government surveillance that takes place in the USA. Whether or not one party in the USA is worse than another, neither is comparable in this context to the CPC.

[refurb]

Really? If I recall, HN was blowing up at all the surveillance and privacy concerns under Obama. Is it really worse under Trump?

[hrktb]

From a non US POV, under Obama people seemed disappointed and betrayed by how a man that they saw as on their side was not doing the right things in their eyes.

Under Trump it feels like those same people mostly gave up.

[adventured]

No. Nothing has fundamentally changed. That's merely partisan wishful dreaming, it makes people feel better to think their side isn't nearly so bad on eg privacy.

The machine that has been consistently moving these things along for 40-50 years now, transcends the parties. The parties have their marching orders, they largely obey. Politicians come and go. Feinstein for one example, if she gets replaced (which she will eventually, she's 84 years old), the anti-privacy pushers will find a replacement vessel.

[zombieprocesses]

> we feel like we cannot change anything about China and how it governs its people

Who are we to change anything about china? Talk about hubris. Considering the horrors and war crimes we committed against china for 150 years, I don't think china is interested on our input.

> After reading about the uigher concentration camps in China

That's as silly as a chinese person saying after reading about the native american "concentrations", they need to take a stand.

> I don’t want to help the government terrorize my friends in China anymore.

Your friends? If the government is "terrorizing" your friends, what are they doing in china?

Get off your high horse. We aren't the world police and we certainly aren't saints. Pretending we are "moral" while destabilizing countries and murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people is rather hypocritical.

[anthonyleecook]

> Native American > 150 years ago

Are you seriously whataboutism events from a few hundred years ago? Wow. Just wow.

People in China cannot speak. We have to speak for them somehow. Here is a snippet from a reddit post from a student in China.

“ It's been 4 days now. I look around, everything looks the same, but I know, it's not the same world anymore. He choose to become a dictator officially maybe means nothing to most foreigners, but as a Chinese born and raised in this land, I know it's just the beginning of a series following "1984" episodes, and maybe even worse: Cultural Revolution 2.0. This may not happend in 10 years, but I live here, we live here, someday, something very bad is gonna happen again, and I can't do anything to stop or evade it.

A lot people around me seems calm and quite. Maybe they already learned to "shut up and having fun while you still can", or, maybe they are just like me: too shocked and depressed to think of anything to comment. I feel so helpless and scaried, it's like, how do I put this? sitting in a biulding which is on fire, you watch the black smokes and red flame coming from the bottom, but you can't find a way out of your room, there isn't any extinguisher in the room neither. All you can do is just sitting in the corner, hugging yourself tight, waiting for that momnent to come, in despair and silence.

sorry my English sucks, I tried my best to write in English. As a native Chinese, I can't stop to feel pessimistic about the future, hell, now I know we are doomed, it'll be easier to suffer if just push me off the building instead of letting me watch it burning for decades.“

[anthonyleecook]

Here is another post

“’m studying in a university in China rn and holy fuck I thought I entered an alternate reality, my classmates were all talking and worrying about the issue on the internet few days ago before they were censored out but after that , no one dares to talk about it in the campus , it’s dead silence , I KNOW everyone cares but everyone is just so afraid , this is pretty much a 1984 scenario in real life and I don’t know what else can we do. I guess they have already won in this point . :(”

[zombieprocesses]

>Are you seriously whataboutism events from a few hundred years ago? Wow. Just wow.

Try a few decades.

> People in China cannot speak. We have to speak for them somehow.

Goodness.

> Here is a snippet from a reddit post from a student in China.

You mean the website full of russian, chinese, european and american propagandists where you can't take anything seriously? Where anyone can pretend to be anything and lie all day long? Did you write that reddit comment?

> sorry my English sucks

Going through your comment history, your english is fine. I don't know why you are pretending and faking as if your english sucks.

> I tried my best to write in English. As a native Chinese,

I thought native chinese couldn't speak? "People in China cannot speak. We have to speak for them somehow. "

> I can't stop to feel pessimistic about the future, hell, now I know we are doomed, it'll be easier to suffer if just push me off the building instead of letting me watch it burning for decades.

Is this for real? Are you gordon chang?