[tranv94]

It’s amazing how little coverage this gets. Sure this behavior is exhibited all over the world and could be worse in some places (North Korea). But there are so many cries for help from there. Millions. This scale could be approaching Holocaust numbers and we seemingly can’t do anything because of politics? Nuclear weapons?

[csense]

There's too much money to be made by doing business in China for Western society to be willing to take a principled stand.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

On a not-unrelated note, I'm thinking about buying some South Park DVD's. Just a small way to vote with my wallet on the China issue.

[blacksmith_tb]

I wonder what happens when a factory in China gets an order to produce those South Park DVDs... I suppose it could be windfall for factories in Vietnam or Malaysia if they won't take the business.

[aeternum]

Consider that doing business with China may be the best way to prevent this kind of thing.

It's very likely that going to war with China or imposing economic sanctions would cause more of this rather than less. Doing business with other countries and promoting inclusive political institutions and labor opportunities is the best way we've found of ending these types of abuses.

[ebg13]

> Consider that doing business with China may be the best way to prevent this kind of thing.

I'm tired of hearing this refrain. We've been doing business in China for almost 50 years, and they're still doing shit like this, and the whole country is censored, and anyone with any kind of voice gets an immediate visit from the police. When does it end? When have we ever achieved any degree of government liberalization by doing business in China? What exactly does us giving them our money and our jobs and our realestate and our technology and our support in propagandizing their totalitarian regime accomplish?

When the entry requirements are "you must not attempt to liberalize our society or else", one no longer gets to pretend that business will liberalize their society.

[aeternum]

Hasn't it worked though? I'd much rather be a Chinese citizen now vs. 50 years ago. There are many ways to bypass the censorship and the majority of those are only possible because of business needs for SSL.

[ebg13]

> I'd much rather be a Chinese citizen now vs. 50 years ago.

You would not be saying that if you were Uyghur right now.

[athriren]

This is the argument people had when Nixon opened relations with China. If it hasn’t worked in half a century, I doubt it’s going to start working now.

[artsyca]

Here we go again with downvotes-as-disagreement; completely understand the sentiment behind this post and it ought to read 'proper' business, not mutual exploitation

You'd think all the free thinkers on this website would understand the value of thinking differently

[cirgue]

That worked in China when they needed us more than we needed them. Now, we’ve demonstrated ourselves to be unwilling to use the leverage we’ve built, so right now engagement doesn’t mean a damn thing.

[loceng]

As we have seen with the situation with Hong Kong, and more recently Lebron James and the NBA, the economic power of China and the censorship ability or perhaps fear of their tyrant leadership - is enough to stop many people.

[zachguo]

This has actually gained mass coverage recently given the current geopolitical atmosphere. However, I would take this with a grain of salt. If you do a bit of research, you will find the claim was made by people related to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement[1](a terrorist organization linked to Al-Qaeda) and the World Uyghur Congress.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkistan_Islamic_Party [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Uyghur_Congress

[ebg13]

> the World Uyghur Congress

How suspicious that a person talking about mass abuse is part of the group being abused. /s

The WUC is not recognized as a terrorist organization by anyone except China. China labels anyone who disagrees with them as terrorists, particularly religious groups (hello Falun Gong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Falun_Gong).

[zachguo]

I didn't claim WUC is a terrorist org, but it has a clear separatism agenda, which aligns with ETIM's goal even if there's no verifiable link between them. Personally I'm skeptical, considering how rampant misinformation is nowadays.

[RugnirViking]

I'd want to separate from a state responsible for supressing and punishing the use of my language in all official media and schools too.

[victoro0]

And is there anything at all wrong with separatism?