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by boapnuaput 2543 days ago
Today is a Lucky 10000 day for you. We'll start with human rights in China [0] and look at some highlights. (Yes, every citation is to Wikipedia today. You've earned it.)

* There are millions of people imprisoned in China. Could be as few as 1.5mil, but likelier around 3.5mil, [2] including likely over 1mil in "re-education" concentration camps in the Western region of Xinjiang. [1] By comparison, while the USA's legendarily held the highest per-capita incarceration rate for decades, presumably this is because we are more honest than China about our rates. (Not to mention Russia.) Also, consider this map of incarceration per state in the USA. [3] Thanks, Louisiana.

* The Internet is neither Free nor neutral in China. [4] You can expect not just to be spied upon, but also to have lots of non-Chinese literature removed from your view, and also to face social consequences from your Internet browsing choices. You would already be known as outspoken for your posts, which would not be hidden or pseudonymous, and which would travel through both automated and manually-reviewed filters before being published. Rumor has it that both Russia and China are researching ways to construct their own Internet-like sub-networks and infrastructure so that they can disconnect entirely from the rest of the world.

* A family-and-caste system, hukou [5], is used to systematically deny freedom of movement to the vast majority of Chinese citizens. While the system has experienced reforms since Deng, in the time of Mao, hukou was an oppressive tool, and to this day, one must apply for a permit to move to large cities in Eastern China like Beijing. Worse, if I understand correctly, the hukou permits can be zoned within a metropolitan area, so that one is only permitted to move to certain parts of Beijing. As a reminder, for contrast, the USA has a strong history of legally supporting the right to freedom of movement since 1823 [6], even if we have often failed to ensure those rights. [7]

* The USA has freedom of religion written into the Constitution, in the First Amendment. China does not have freedom of religion. [8] Party members must be atheists. Christians must belong to state-run churches. [11] Tibetan Buddhism is state-managed; lamas must fill out permits for reincarnation [9] and the Panchen Lama has been kidnapped and replaced with a state-chosen impostor. [10] Falun Gong has been systematically persecuted. [12]

* Tibet. [13] Additionally, Hong Kong. [15]

* In more recent fields of human rights: Homosexuality and non-binary sexuality are only recently permitted, within the past few decades, and associated rights like marriage/civil unions are still forthcoming.

* Meta: The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants, to promote their ability and right to do whatever they like to the people of China, to dismiss individual human rights as deleterious to the Party and its state, and to concentrate power arbitrarily. Compare and contrast with the USA.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peo...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfield_v._Coryell

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_China

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Religious_Affairs_Bureau...

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchen_Lama

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China#Subdivis...

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Tibet

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Hong_Kong

2 comments

Please do not haul pre-existing lists of links and talking points into HN threads. These discussions are supposed to be thoughtful conversations. Boilerplate kills that.

Also, nationalistic battle is off topic here, even in a thread like this one, and your comment is a huge step in that direction.

Also, please don't snark. That's in the site guidelines too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I am honored to have been mistaken for boilerplate! Thank you. In truth, this morning I woke up, read the claim, "I don't think China is any more evil than the US," and decided to examine it. What followed was 100% my own words, off the cuff, based on reading Wikipedia and their citations and sources. (For what it's worth, not much of this resembles what I remember studying when I was younger; "modern" Chinese history focused on Mao and Deng.) I stopped after I realized that no amount of refactoring would revive footnote 14.

Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you think that these aren't fresh words, then please explain where they came from.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Do you have commentary on the state of human rights in China?

I'm sorry I mistakenly assumed your words weren't freshly written. Still, please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want it here, and there has been a dismaying surge of it lately.
> The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants ...

This is the principle of democratic centralism[1]. A case could be made for conceptions of democracy other than the western one, but with the abolishment of term limits China is not making that case very well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism