NYT: China Rules (part one of five article piece)

[Chikor]

The Occupation of Tibet is foreign intervention.

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I don't want to get into a semantic argument here, but Tibet and something like Porject FUBER are so different, that comparing them is not really useful beyond pointing the obvious that big strong countries do bad things.
Though if you must make the comparison, it's probably worth noting that the US is easily the world's #1 in foreign interventions since WW2, any way you want to cut it or count it and it's not even close. But to be clear, this is not meant as an excuse to shit that China do or to downplay anything.

Human rights record isn't just one thing or the other, it's the entire thing. Overall it is undeniable that China has a humans rights record of magnitudes worse than the United States, hell their people don't even have rights to begin with.

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Human rights violations is not like a scale that go from utopia to Man in the High Castle*. It's a list of bad shit that you want get addressed. I donno, I guess you can come up with some metric, but what's the point of it all?
Yeah, the Chinese government does some heinous shit and at times exercise immense violence against its citizens. All countries do. China do it more then some, less than other, way more than I would like them to. But what's the conclusion of that?
Is your argument is that the Chinese government is illegitimate and that the world should work toward overthrowing it?
I'm honestly asking, not trying to put words into your mouth.

* narrator's voice: Chikor has not read or seen The Man in the High Castle, he's making assumptions. But Nazis are bad.

 

[Slim]

It is sad that people instead of reading the article, just come to the thread to talk about who's country is worse than the other. The article is talking about the Chinese miracle, and for all means, it is very interesting and worth checking since there are lots of huge countries with huge populations in poverty.

India, Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan between others should study and try to apply all of the good aspects of what China did, obviously without falling into the human right abuses or the totalitarian governments.

The article talks about the Chinese abuses to minorities and kidnappings, but the focus is the Chinese miracle.

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This. People are gonna fight one another in literally any thread that mentions China. They'll disregard the article/OT (for the most part) and go on with The US vs China, democracy, communism, and so on.

Good on China from an economic standpoint though.

 

[BigWinnie1]

Maybe you need to watch ADV-China and see how them and there wives talk about the current regime and how things changed from how it used to be. They were bad but better but when the new guy came into power its been slowly getting scary for them to be in China and now they got to leave because people are being arrested for slightest infractions percieved by the chineses government.

 

[Narroo]

Amazing how people can read an article like this and just automatically assume it's a China puff piece. Here we have a country that in the span of less than a decade has managed to pull an unprecedented amount of its citizens out of poverty and is now in position to dictate politics on a global scale. The point of this article is to elucidate why and how this came to be. And predictably, the only talking points are backhanded statements about how corrupt the government is, oppression of ethnic minorities, social ranking system...and yes I agree all these things are evil but the discussion is always used to shut down any proper discussion on why China is where it is today (and it's always from a position of Western moral superiority as if people in the East don't understand their own situations). We've heard Western political commentators for bordering on decades with proclamations of China's collapse because of its reluctance to embrace democracy. "It's despotic so it doesn't count" is a completely unproductive and ignorant stance.



Prior to Qing, Ming dynasty China had a huge projection of international power with a strong navy and large reach. Coupled with a market that Western countries sought highly, China was definitely one of if not the biggest global power at the time. Of course the Chinese empire saw the other nations as behind and failed to recognize potential wealth in other lands, they disbanded their navy. This coincided with the European colonization of the new world and the discovery of many silver mines in South America, finally allowing European nations to access the Chinese markets (silver was the Chinese currency). Once those mines dried up, there was opium introduced into a chaotic Qing dynasty. Think about what kind of lesson China learned from imperialism. The country went from being at the top in terms of wealth and power to near the bottom because they allowed foreign countries to enter their market pretty much freely. They did not expand their own territories because they saw nothing outside of their borders. Ultimately, they were driven into the ground and invaded by the West and by Japan. How does that apply to China today? You can't do business in China without either the government or involving a Chinese company. China now is fiercely protective of not only its borders but the area surrounding it and there's now economic expansion into Africa. These are all lessons learned because as a country it still remembers how badly they fell. But this is the discussion no one ever wants to have...

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I didn't mean to say that China was always behind the curve. China in the past was definitely, one of the most powerful, wealthy and advanced countries on the planet. What I meant to say is that didn't last forever, and it was ultimately an oppressive governmental style that resulted in China's fall from grace.

Furthermore, much of China's woes during the 1900's was a result of it's authoritarian government: The Cultural Revolution.

 

[Deleted member 907]

Maybe you need to watch ADV-China and see how them and there wives talk about the current regime and how things changed from how it used to be. They were bad but better but when the new guy came into power its been slowly getting scary for them to be in China and now they got to leave because people are being arrested for slightest infractions percieved by the chineses government.

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A white South African expat that makes his bones on "conquering" China as a laowai is a reputable source? Really?

I didn't mean to say that China was always behind the curve. China in the past was definitely, one of the most powerful, wealthy and advanced countries on the planet. What I meant to say is that didn't last forever, and it was ultimately an oppressive governmental style that resulted in China's fall from grace.

Furthermore, much of China's woes during the 1900's was a result of it's authoritarian government: The Cultural Revolution.

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That's like saying the US had absolutely nothing to do with the Khmer Rouge.

 

[SillyGoose]

Does China have a better healthcare system than the USA?

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No. People have to get their own insurance like the USA and many doctors also go to traditional Chinese medicine schools.