• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Opinion article: China has won the internet's future

SKINNER!

Banned
The Chinese do not view the government like a third party where people in the West typically feel.

They viewed the government more like a mentor, a sort of senior relative guiding the country.

It's not exactly a brainwashed thing like north korea, it's more of a nationalism thing and the economic growth lifting millions off property and providing comfort compare to the precious era.


Kool-Aid must taste extra refreshing in China.
 

eizarus

Banned
Maybe I haven't processed properly the replies in this thread, but there are too many people here thinking this is about China winning. It's about censorship spreading in "free" countries.
 
Come on now you're spewing pure propaganda. Please ask Liu Xiaobo, Students of Tien An Men or Ai Weiwei how that "mentor" has been treating them. For that matter ask any of the hundreds of human rights lawyer that were arrested without warrants, warning or fair trials how this "mentor" has been guiding them. Or ask the young assistant to one of these lawyers what this mentor did while she was raped in a jailcell....

Please ask the people of Hong Kong how China has been treating them while their liberal society and rule of law goes in the crapper.

To be fair the allegations of tax fraud for Ai Weiwei might have been true. He wanted to buy a gallery in Berlin and inside the 789 art district, people knew about that and how he is trying to have "offshore galeries" where the tax is lower. (though a lot of Chinese businessman have that)
There is more to the story than "Ai Weiwei criticised China, China puts him in jail."
If the talks in Chinese art circles is true, Weiwei actually did a deal with the PRC in the end.

A question that I have no idea the answer to: How difficult is it to break the great Chinese fire wall by using VPN/proxies/TOR?

China is clamping down on some VPNs. If you have some PC knowledge, you can easily set up a private server in a free country, use a SSH tunnel and then connect to the Internet by that.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Trump is in office. I mean, we're lucky, really fortunate, that Trump is too incompetent to get things done. Imagine a competent Trump, with a united GOP.

I do agree. It could be so much worse.

To address your point directly, I don't think the conversation is capable of "finishing" so long as people can interrupt it like this, and reverse course. Hypothetically, there may be a time in the indefinite future where the conversation is finished but practically speaking it looks like it never will unless we luck out for a couple of decades in a row.

Maybe Trump isn't an "interruption" so much as a new detail to be absorbed, understood and inoculated against in a kind of Hegelian synthesis in our national conversation?

Now we know a truly progressive society isn't just a matter of cramming an intelligent minority into office and walling the dissenters off as irrelevant troglodytes..... there's more work to be done. Trump has shown this, and so the national conversation will adapt to address this reality.
 

JettDash

Junior Member
Maybe I haven't processed properly the replies in this thread, but there are too many people here thinking this is about China winning. It's about censorship spreading in "free" countries.

I guess maybe it is different in some other countries.

But I can start a website like www.DonaldTrumpSucks.com (maybe that is an actual website I dunno) and he wouldn't be able to do anything about besides cry on Twitter.
 

TheWraith

Member
My grandfather was imprisoned by the PRC for political dissidence, and yet my views on the PRC is widely different from my father's. You really misunderstand, in a typical Western education kind of way, the attitude Chinese nationals have regarding the role of governance in their life.

Oh god, the "but you're western you don't understand crap". I have studied both Cantonese and Mandarin, and have lived and studied in university in China for two years, and now live in Hong Kong for almost 15 years. I have travelled all over China and met and still meet people of all walks of life there on many travels to China.

Also please ask Liu Xiabo's wife or Ai Weiwei what kind of attitude they have regarding rule of governance in their life. Truth is China is a country without any real rule of law, surely that can't be held as some kind of ideal for other countries to strife for.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
I do agree. It could be so much worse.

The thing is, progressives have to be lucky every time a Trump arises. Whether it's internal politics or foreign influences that cripple the authoritarian's desire to establish a police state, the fact is they will keep trying, like the GOP with healthcare. They only need to be lucky once.

An absolute free society intrinsically carries the capacity to turn totalitarian, because you've granted freedom to the totalitarians as well as the egalitarians. Mathematically speaking, as time goes to infinite, the chances of a free society turning totalitarian approaches 1, like any classic probability curve. At best, you've established a temporarily free society, whereas I think we should work towards an eternal one, at the, yes, cost of some freedoms.
Also please ask Liu Xiabo's wife or Ai Weiwei what kind of attitude they have regarding rule of governance in their life. Truth is China is a country without any real rule of law, surely that can't be held as some kind of ideal for other countries to strife for.

Liu and his family are a drop of water in an ocean of billions of people. The poster you were objecting to, and I as well, was commenting on broad cultural trends, not the few cases where Chinese nationals attempted to (and were stopped by the PRC) import Western liberalism to China. You can't honestly believe the hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals, many of whom are still rural, can possibly feel about the PRC the way you feel about them. Their worldview wasn't built around a globalized perspective, it's the accumulation of centuries of obeisance to the government.

Simply put, a lot of China don't care, in much the same way a lot of Americans don't care about their government either, and this is with the benefit of a propaganda free (to some extent) education.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
The thing is, progressives have to be lucky every time a Trump arises. Whether it's internal politics or foreign influences that cripple the authoritarian's desire to establish a police state, the fact is they will keep trying, like the GOP with healthcare. They only need to be lucky once.

An absolute free society intrinsically carries the capacity to turn totalitarian, because you've granted freedom to the totalitarians as well as the egalitarians. Mathematically speaking, as time goes to infinite, the chances of a free society turning totalitarian approaches 1, like a any classic probability curve. At best, you've established a temporarily free society, whereas I think we should work towards an indefinite one, at the, yes, cost of some freedoms.

But a society with curbs on freedoms is closer to totalitarianism in an instant. By definition.

It's as if you're saying "freedom has the capacity to lead to non-freedom"... which may be true ("what if we vote in a totalitarian leader?") but a society which openly chooses to limit freedoms is the exact non-freedom we should fear.

Trust me... I am much more worried that a curb on freedom will lead to a loss of freedom than a policy of open freedom will lead to a loss of freedom. It sounds obvious when I say it like that... but I'm describing how I see your position here.
 
An indefinite free society following China would not be free at all. Let's fight totalitarianism ... by creating our own regime.

It wouldn't ever need to reach 1 because it would be 1 from the start.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Yes, it's closer, but it's also more stable in my opinion.

Your absolutist society is too volatile for my liking.

EDIT: There's a gradient between Orwell's Oceania, China, the US, and what Boco is proposing. I want something a little more totalitarian than absolute liberalism, which is if I'm being frank, probably the same thing as a libertarian nightmare. Believe it or not the government does grant you certain freedoms only because it restricts others. The freedom to kill is one, as natural a right as any and yet no one can argue it's protected by the Constitution.
 

Emdeepee

Member
China is clamping down on some VPNs. If you have some PC knowledge, you can easily set up a private server in a free country, use a SSH tunnel and then connect to the Internet by that.

A number of popular commercial VPNs still work pretty well. I can Google and YouTube over mobile and home networks without issue.

Although I am wholly aware this is likely at the whim of the government and can change at any time.

From my conversations with my China colleagues VPN use by China nationals is still relatively rare and they have little interest in the content they are missing.
 

TheWraith

Member
Liu and his family are a drop of water in an ocean of billions of people. The poster you were objecting to, and I as well, was commenting on broad cultural trends, not the few cases where Chinese nationals attempted to (and were stopped by the PRC) import Western liberalism to China. You can't honestly believe the hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals, many of whom are still rural, can possibly feel about the PRC the way you feel about them. Their worldview wasn't built around a globalized perspective, it's the accumulation of centuries of obeisance to the government.

But they do, I have met many many people who hate the CCP and are faced with corruption, extortion and lack of any rule of law on an everyday basis. Many people have their own horror stories, only told behind closed doors. I just gave a few examples as names which might be more known to people who are not familiar with China and what goes on there.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Yes, it's closer, but it's also more stable in my opinion.

Your absolutist society is too volatile for my liking.

An absolute freedom of speech society is less volatile, because it involves less government forcing one vision of society down people's throats. The imposition of order by government is an authoritarian and a threat-of-violence act, and that is volatile.

It makes me wonder why you actually support Hillary over Trump. Trump is the one who implied more authoritarian control over society. He's the one who chaffes at freedom of speech in many regards, suing people who insult him. He's the one who wants a more collective vision of society in which we are more deferent to political and military leaders, having military parades to which we all submit our individual identity to support the state en masse.

The reason, I'm sure, is that the content of what Trump would impose with authority is not what you'd like to impose with authority.... and that's the point. If you grant authority to government.... you don't invariably get progressive, non-hate speech policies. You get whatever the ruling party wants to impose (cross your fingers that it aligns with your personal political sentiments!). And that's far far more of an ill than the unpredictable result of a freedom of speech populace that can not be curbed by government intervention.
 

Firemind

Member
That because if they would say otherwise they can be jailed/tortured from one day to the next. the CCP IS a textbook case of a dictatorial regime, I don't know in what dimension or planet you live.
For minorities, yes, but it's not that different elsewhere. The White House abandons its Puerto Rican citizens and many Western countries are sending refugees back to war zones, so democracy isn't perfect either. Freedom of speech sucks in China, but at least it's not a totalitarian regime. It's authoritarian, bureaucratic, corrupt, heavily censored, violating human rights, and I certainly wouldn't want to live there, but there is a case to be made to have one party governing. Changes can be made quickly top down. The downside of democracy is that it can take months, years, to pass a bill into a law. Things like environmental policies have rapidly changed over the past decade, because the economic growth has now affected people's lives and health. They are trying to minimize greenhouse effects by investing in renewable energy. It's still the largest consumer of coal in the world, but hopefully they can turn things around quickly. When I see inaction in Western democracies, fueled by hate and self-interest, actively shifting money from scientists to other departments, I weep for this planet.
 

HarryKS

Member
"Winnie the Pooh - the bear with very little brain".

Hmmmmmm

Z0p5fh8.gif
 

kyser73

Member
No, it's not a good thing when a government does everything it can to keep its citizens ignorant and powerless. A government controlled social platform isn't a replacement for one that allows for the free and open exchange of ideas.

Sorry, are we talking about America or China here?

If you’re a PoC just walking down the street can get you arrested or shot.

Voters were so well informed they couldn’t link the ACA with Obamacare, thanks to a disinformation campaign by the right.

Your police are, in some places, essentially a paramilitary force with equipment to match.

Your security apparatus is probably more capable of spying on its citizens than China, oversees & carries out international extra-judicial executions and invented a whole new term - Extraordinary Rendition - for kidnapping foreign nationals overseas & holding them without charge or access to legal representation. Plus outsourcing enhanced interrogation to third party state actors.

But I guess FB is worth all that, right?
 

Usobuko

Banned
But they do, I have met many many people who hate the CCP and are faced with corruption, extortion and lack of any rule of law on an everyday basis. Many people have their own horror stories, only told behind closed doors. I just gave a few examples as names which might be more known to people who are not familiar with China and what goes on there.

My ethicity is Chinese and unlike most Chinese Singaporeans, my command of the language is much better and I have been to the country China many times before and after it gets prosperous.

It's simply your words against mine, anecdotally, except the nationalism pride is a real thing and only be cultivated more heavily in recent years. The boycott of Korean goods and tourism to the country has much more impact because of it. Wu jing Sniper Wolf movies won't be breaking record domestic box offices.

Simply put, if the citizens of China hate China so much, nationalism won't be as prominent as the likes of USA or even further exceeding it.

In fact, I don't expect China, until they exert considerable dominance in economic and military might, to embrace democracy.

China don't exist in a vacuum, the adoption of democracy is primarily beneficial to developed countries who got wealthy first and could exert influences for their self interest or to diminish China's power. That's what they want to avoid and why they are so hard against the independence movements of Hongkong and Taiwan.

Btw, the one who coined the "mentor" or "senior relative" analogy was a western guy who was speaking about China in ted talk. I'll post here if I can find it.
 

MikeyB

Member
What a load of horseshit.

You don't fight radicalisation, hate, harassment, racism and discrimination by censoring it after it has already taken root through the implementation of a full on police state. You combat it by improving education and fighting income inequality.

Education and income isn't clearly tied to radicalisation. It's right in the wikipedia entry and searching "radicalisation linked to income" shows that radicalisation happens amongst the educated and relatively well off. Perceived injustice is a better indicator.
 

llien

Member
I'm pretty sure I do not want to give up freedom just to simplify it for the government to ban bunch of radical idiots.

It freaks me out that so many users are OK with it.
 
it is fashionable to suggest that cyberspace is some kind of _island of the blessed_ where people are free to indulge and express their Individuality. some people write about cyberspace as though it were a 60′s utopia. in reality, this is not true. major online services, like compuserv and america online, regular guide and censor discourse. even some allegedly free-wheeling (albeit politically correct) boards like the WELL censor discourse. the difference is only a matter of the method and degree. what interests me about this, however, is that to the mass, the debate about freedom of expression exists only in terms of whether or not you can say fuck or look at sexually explicit pictures. i have a quaint view that makes me think that discussing the ability to write “fuck” or worrying about the ability to look at pictures of sexual acts constitutes The Least Of Our Problems surrounding freedom of expression.
—humdog, 1994
 
At least China has national champions in IT, can't really say the same about the EU where people over the world will flock to. Would have loved if we had our own Google, Facebook or Apple but that ship sailed.

Good thing we still have the edge in high tech industries question is for how long. The human capital China can generate is kinda scary. And with a middle class off almost 500 million that's a lot of money their national champions can extract and use to push R&D.
 

Foolworm

Member
The counternarrative is that the current, 'free' internet is essentially the domain of several large corporations. It's all the more worse because it is the result of inaction by the US government, which simply shifts the levers of power to corporate actors.

In practice, I feel like the internet is moving towards the Chinese model, but due to a lack of regulation rather an excess.
 
I'm pretty sure I do not want to give up freedom just to simplify it for the government to ban bunch of radical idiots.

It freaks me out that so many users are OK with it.
Depends on which freedoms we talk about. The freedom to do whatever you want on the internet without oversight or consequence is not freedom to me for example. It provides less freedom for others, since now people can go harass and threaten people without anything being done about it.

Of course there is a large difference between thinking there should be some more oversight online at certain points, then actually wanting censorship on specific words or subjects like China is doing.
 

Jimrpg

Member
China is making a lot of money, and honestly I believe that they are already flexing their financial muscle just in places people are not normally aware of. They are already buying up all the farms in Australia, because the quality of the farms back in China are poor. Just think, they could buy up tech companies in the US too. If everything is under China control - look out!
 

Dr.Acula

Banned
Imagine a world where FB/Reddit/Twitter, as a group, said no to Trump and banned his campaign from their platforms. It's possible we'd be looking at a Hillary presidency in such a world.

I... really don't want to imagine a world where all the big media companies got together to supress the opposition candidate.
 

Somnid

Member
Decentralization platforms are still at the early dotcom bubble phase, but once that market segment starts maturing, solving some of the scalability and getting real marketing I think it will replace a lot of workhorse platforms in the long run.
 

erragal

Member
Oh god, the "but you're western you don't understand crap". I have studied both Cantonese and Mandarin, and have lived and studied in university in China for two years, and now live in Hong Kong for almost 15 years. I have travelled all over China and met and still meet people of all walks of life there on many travels to China.

Also please ask Liu Xiabo's wife or Ai Weiwei what kind of attitude they have regarding rule of governance in their life. Truth is China is a country without any real rule of law, surely that can't be held as some kind of ideal for other countries to strife for.

Yet for all that study you clearly didn't learn a thing.

People know. People talk. In private. Public solidarity, private dissent.

Their system has its flaws, it's injustices. But it's also hierarchical to a level that makes it predictable, stable, comfortable.

What is the intent of those that seek to radically alter the predictable stability for hundreds of millions? Is it really to make their lives better? Is an under educated farmer from norther inner mongolia really someone that needs the burden of a 'vote'? That just makes them a target for manipulation, pressure, alteration.

The engine of power and authority is not impenetrable in China. You can work your way up through the system and exert your will on society. They just don't let a random person that's not gone to the meetings, not shown their commitment to civil society suddenly become a decision maker. You need to be invested. Known.

There is a rule of law. It's just not one you perceive as being conducive to freedom. Your type of freedom, your exertion of freedom. On the other hand I look at the US and see how ' freedom of speech ' swiftly becomes a brick in the altar of ' freedom to exploit and manipulate' permeating the fabric of society. Notwithstanding that there is speech and political ideas in the US that will get you shot just as quickly. Did you forget to read the reports how the far left movements have been repeatedly infiltrated by the fbi for decades? Is that your idea of ' liberalism '? Kent State happened twenty years before Tiananmen.....

There's an idealistic version of human society that operates well with voting. You can see it in European micro states with culturally homogeneous populations and high education levels. Yet to suddenly spring that on a developing society honestly stinks of nefarious intent: a desire to light the powder keg on their stability.

Making arguments to the lowest points of injustice as if they definitive proof of abject failure is intellectually dishonest. Should we have pointed to the robber Baron era of the US as a failure state for the representative Republic? I mean western thought brought us corporatism as a concept. No idea is more damaging to human freedom than limited liability for human decisions. To think that can be a ' legal ' concept and claim these societies operate according to rule of law is absurd.
 

frontovik

Banned
... Making arguments to the lowest points of injustice as if they definitive proof of abject failure is intellectually dishonest. Should we have pointed to the robber Baron era of the US as a failure state for the representative Republic? I mean western thought brought us corporatism as a concept. No idea is more damaging to human freedom than limited liability for human decisions. To think that can be a ' legal ' concept and claim these societies operate according to rule of law is absurd.

I'm inclined to agree with that assessment.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
China's authoritarian government is currently functional for its people because its government recognizes that their health and safety is largely beneficial to the ruling class. That's good. What happens when that dynamic shifts? That's why that farmer in Mongolia needs "a vote". Or something like a vote. Something that actually makes the government, in some way, accountable, other than "because it currently wants to do good things". My concern for China is not what they have done, but for what they will do.
 

erragal

Member
China's authoritarian government is currently functional for its people because its government recognizes that their health and safety is largely beneficial to the ruling class. That's good. What happens when that dynamic shifts? That's why that farmer in Mongolia needs "a vote". Or something like a vote. Something that actually makes the government, in some way, accountable, other than "because it currently wants to do good things". My concern for China is not what they have done, but for what they will do.

Well the political theory is that the rigidity of their structure prevents extreme shifts in direction. The apparatus is too heavy for one person to move on their own, density of divested authority.

Knowing about humans though does the individual needs a vote or does an educated surrogate with verified intent as a beneficent actor need the vote? It's a population problem. It's being realistic that humans will simply never have equality of intellect and can be tricked, trained, programmed to act outside of their best interests. Is giving someone vulnerable to that authority anything more than painting a target on their back until we as societies figure out how to appropriately protect people from that?

It's not an argument that has clear answers. Certainly I see the counter argument that even what I'm saying can be construed as an attempt to control, manipulate and oppress these individuals. That depriving them of their freedom to make mistakes is more insidious of a position to take. I just suppose in my experiences with those who lead very simple, straightforward lives not thinking much of theories of government...they're a lot fucking happier and more secure in their lives than I'd have ever imagined in my youth.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Giving almost two billion people a right to vote is also a logistical nightmare.
Funnily enough China seems very good at solving those

I'm not saying China should hold elections tomorrow, I'm saying let's not romanticize their authoritarian and (if you're one of various minorities) repressive state
 
Giving almost two billion people a right to vote is also a logistical nightmare.
India does it and has almost as many people living in it as China. Even has higher turnouts than the US and lots of other countries if the numbers I see on Wikipedia are right.
 

BajiBoxer

Banned
A question that I have no idea the answer to: How difficult is it to break the great Chinese fire wall by using VPN/proxies/TOR?

Very easy. I have a number of Chinese friends who get around it, who don't have any kind of special IT knowlege.

Edit: of course they're also not any kind of high profile outspoken dissenters, so I couldn't say how difficult it is for such people to not get caught if targeted.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
A question that I have no idea the answer to: How difficult is it to break the great Chinese fire wall by using VPN/proxies/TOR?
From what I hear, it's not too hard to get VPN services that get around it, but said VPN companies can get taken down without notice.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
The reason, I'm sure, is that the content of what Trump would impose with authority is not what you'd like to impose with authority.... and that's the point. If you grant authority to government.... you don't invariably get progressive, non-hate speech policies. You get whatever the ruling party wants to impose (cross your fingers that it aligns with your personal political sentiments!). And that's far far more of an ill than the unpredictable result of a freedom of speech populace that can not be curbed by government intervention.

Yes, but what if there were hate-speech laws? I really doubt you believe that hate speech laws are impossible to implement.

I don't think the response by the University here can be considered morally just or responsible, and these cases are typically what I think of when I hear "absolute" free speech. I don't really see any concrete benefit of the idea except from a position of principles.

I... really don't want to imagine a world where all the big media companies got together to supress the opposition candidate.

They signal boosted Trump while throwing shit on Hillary at the instigation of Russian operations. How is that significantly different, aside from a judicious helping of "free market!" forces?

People take issue with speech suppression, fine, I understand that, I don't like it either, but what about speech amplification? Why do we have free speech laws, to defend racist speech, or to protect the populace from government manipulation? And if you can achieve the same ends as suppression using amplification, that to me is a failure of the concept itself.

Putin's regime has rewritten the playbook of social espionage. As their tactics become more sophisticated and widespread (what if China gets on the same game?), what are going to be our defenses against our people being brainwashed by foreign forces? This isn't going to go away in 3-7 years after Trump leaves office, we'll be dealing with this for the foreseeable future, and all this will be possible because of the blind aegis of "free speech".
 

Laiza

Member
Same. As if that would solve anything.
It would solve something, though - the constant harassment of minority users who dare to espouse views that go against the majority's interests.

We absolutely need some form of moderation to curtail that chilling effect. To believe otherwise is absolutely naivete in its worst form.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
It's not an argument that has clear answers. Certainly I see the counter argument that even what I'm saying can be construed as an attempt to control, manipulate and oppress these individuals. That depriving them of their freedom to make mistakes is more insidious of a position to take. I just suppose in my experiences with those who lead very simple, straightforward lives not thinking much of theories of government...they're a lot fucking happier and more secure in their lives than I'd have ever imagined in my youth.

I think I found some things the simple lived people of China might want to have some political influence over

This is a city where growing a beard can get you reported to the police. So can inviting too many people to your wedding, or naming your child Muhammad or Medina.

Driving or taking a bus to a neighboring town, you’d hit checkpoints where armed police officers might search your phone for banned apps like Facebook or Twitter, and scroll through your text messages to see if you had used any religious language.

You would be particularly worried about making phone calls to friends and family abroad. Hours later, you might find police officers knocking at your door and asking questions that make you suspect they were listening in the whole time.

For millions of people in China’s remote far west, this dystopian future is already here. China, which has already deployed the world’s most sophisticated internet censorship system, is building a surveillance state in Xinjiang, a four-hour flight from Beijing, that uses both the newest technology and human policing to keep tabs on every aspect of citizens’ daily lives. The region is home to a Muslim ethnic minority called the Uighurs, who China has blamed for forming separatist groups and fueling terrorism. Since this spring, thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities have disappeared into so-called political education centers, apparently for offenses from using Western social media apps to studying abroad in Muslim countries, according to relatives of those detained.

Whenever D. called her grandmother, police would barge in hours later, demanding the elderly woman phone D. back while they were in the room.

“For god’s sake, I’m not going to talk to my 85-year-old grandmother about how to destroy China!” D. said, exasperated, sitting across the table from me in a café around the corner from her office.

After she got engaged, D. invited her extended family, who live in Xinjiang, to her wedding. Because it is now nearly impossible for Uighurs to obtain passports, D. ended up postponing the ceremony for months in hopes the situation would improve.

Finally, in May, she and her mother had a video call with her family on WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging platform. When D. asked how they were, they said everything was fine. Then one of her relatives, afraid of police eavesdropping, held up a handwritten sign that said, “We could not get the passports.”

D. felt her heart sink, but she just nodded and kept talking. As soon as the call ended, she said, she burst into tears.

But don't worry, China says there's lots of good jobs to go around!
China’s government says the security measures are necessary in Xinjiang because of the threat of extremist violence by Uighur militants — the region has seen periodic bouts of unrest, from riots in 2009 that left almost 200 dead to a series of deadly knife and bomb attacks in 2013 and 2014. The government also says it’s made life for Uighurs better, pointing to the money it’s poured into economic development in the region, as well as programs making it easier for Uighurs to attend university and obtain government jobs. Public security and propaganda authorities in Xinjiang did not respond to requests for comment. China’s Foreign Ministry said it had no knowledge of surveillance measures put in place by the local government.

“I want to stress that people in Xinjiang enjoy a happy and peaceful working and living situation,” said Lu Kang, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, when asked why the surveillance measures are needed. “We have never heard about these measures taken by local authorities.”
 

Kthulhu

Member
A question that I have no idea the answer to: How difficult is it to break the great Chinese fire wall by using VPN/proxies/TOR?

A lot harder now that they cracked down on VPN usage.

Has it though?


I mean China has played a good game, but it's done it by restricting all competition to nothing.

I always laugh when I hear stories like this.

"China XXX has more than a billion users."

Well yeah it will. It's the only thing they can use. The problem is that the market outside of China is pretty healthy. Competition has given way to innovation.

Yup. The Chinese equivalents to a lot of things the rest of the world uses are generally inferior. Not to mention they are forced to hand over everything to the government.
 
A lot harder now that they cracked down on VPN usage.



Yup. The Chinese equivalents to a lot of things the rest of the world uses are generally inferior. Not to mention they are forced to hand over everything to the government.

For many products and services I would agree, but their e-commerce (along with their mail delivery service) and WeChat app are actually far superior. I think their food delivery system is also superior (with no tips required). Most of the newer innovations related to fusing Internet technology with daily conveniences are actually quite good, perhaps world leading (at least better than Canada hahaha).
 

erragal

Member

The Xinjiang people are definitely oppressed, marginalized and given short shrift in Chinese society. Innocent people are unduly punished for the violent actions of the few.

Of course it's yet more intellectual dishonesty to suggest voting would solve their fortunes. Consider the consequences of mass population based voting. At best for a short period of time they might have some toothless representative in a national position that no one listens to at all. Then they'll flood the province with more Han (probably even temporary people just to vote) and they'll have no voice at all but now you have the illusion of representation as a hand wave dismissal of their concerns.

You believe in a cause without the willingness to evaluate the consequences. Fit your solutions to the problem rather than creating more problems to fit your idea of what's 'best'.
 

Kthulhu

Member
For many products and services I would agree, but their e-commerce (along with their mail delivery service) and WeChat app are actually far superior. I think their food delivery system is also superior (with no tips required). Most of the newer innovations related to fusing Internet technology with daily conveniences are actually quite good, perhaps world leading (at least better than Canada hahaha).

Oh don't get me wrong, aside from the privacy concerns, WeChat seems awesome. And a lot of the tech China has is great.

But I've seen quite a few people complain about Baidu and other companies that are filling the void of companies like Google and Facebook.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
The Xinjiang people are definitely oppressed, marginalized and given short shrift in Chinese society. Innocent people are unduly punished for the violent actions of the few.

Of course it's yet more intellectual dishonesty to suggest voting would solve their fortunes. Consider the consequences of mass population based voting. At best for a short period of time they might have some toothless representative in a national position that no one listens to at all. Then they'll flood the province with more Han (probably even temporary people just to vote) and they'll have no voice at all but now you have the illusion of representation as a hand wave dismissal of their concerns.

You believe in a cause without the willingness to evaluate the consequences. Fit your solutions to the problem rather than creating more problems to fit your idea of what's 'best'.

There's a reason I did not phrase that as voting. These people need influence over the political system that controls their lives. What do you propose?
 
Top Bottom