[JohnnyB]

I decided yesterday to take some time away and reflect before writing more on this.

It was the post yesterday about how it would be lucky to have NATO go to war and crush China that prompted me to get involved in this thread because of how horrific an expression I found that to be. I still do. Reading that led to me picking out a small number of other things that had been written that I felt were also deserving of being challenged.

From there, maybe there’s some misunderstanding of where people are talking about China’s government and China as a country in its entirety. Maybe there’s also misunderstanding about the scope of what I was addressing, which was just the quotes I picked out and not the whole discussion. I was never intending to address the discussion as a whole.

Still, when someone writes something like:

China is an awful, horror show of a country

####ty countries like China

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I'm sorry there isn't a world isn't he multiverse that China isn't a #### hole.

I take that as not just being about the government. If someone were to say Canada is a #### hole country, or a ####ty country, or an awful horror show of a country, I don’t think most people would assume that was just about the Liberal government or Trudeau. Country and government aren’t synonymous. I interpret these as being about the country as whole, including not just the government, but the land, the people, the history, the culture etc. Taken as a whole including all of these aspects, despite the worst aspects of the country I think China is an amazing place. As a whole, it’s far from being a #### hole, or a ####ty country, or an awful horror show. I stand by that completely.

I specifically responded to these posts on the basis of feeling they were saying things in a way that was not just about the government but about the country as a whole. If any of these posts are explicitly about the government and not about the country as a whole, and the poster is willing to say that they don't actually think China as a whole is a ####hole, or ####ty, or an awful horror show, then I accept that poster’s intent was different than I interpreted it and I’ll certainly withdraw my criticism.

Regarding these posts that I picked out:

This is essentially like a Jihadist group

Xi is starting to get reckless, and there is a year to go, any sort of mass casualty or major attack on infrastructure would make it a sure thing.

The first here actually is explicitly about the government, but it’s also a terrible mischaracterization. The Chinese leadership doesn’t act like Jihadists. That’s not the Chinese way of operating at all. When is the last time that someone waging a Jihad against a country wrote an op-ed advocating for economic cooperation with them? It’s just a total mischaracterization of Chinese leadership. So, I picked that out as ignorant. I also see it as an alarmist mischaracterization given post-9/11 history and fear associated with Jihadists as people intent on murdering you or your fellow citizens.

The second here I also see as fear mongering in suggesting a Chinese mass-casualty attack or an attack on infrastructure is something to be reasonably expected. I could be wrong, but I don’t see that as likely at all and I think it represents a weird interpretation of where China is at.

A real leader would play hardball, cut off diplomatic relations and seize everything in our nation owned by China.

Hey, maybe we would get lucky and they would declare war on us and NATO would be forced to crush them.

This quote I have already addressed, so I’ll just reiterate that suggesting it would be lucky for Canada to have NATO crush China in a war is an incredibly inhumane thing to suggest. A war like that would cost huge numbers of innocent lives. War is a fundamentally dehumanizing thing. To suggest that it would be lucky for something like this to happen is a terrible and inhuman expression. I don’t back down from my criticism of it.

If our guys are still rotting in Chinese prisons and we send a team it will represent one of the lowest points in the history of this country and no I’m not exaggerating.

This post I included because I also thought it was hyperbole and unreasonable. To suggest that going to these Olympics would be anything like on the same level as things like the residential school system (which is recognized as genocide), or the Japanese internment camps in BC, or eugenics in BC and Alberta etc. is just so unreasonable. Attending these Olympics would not be even close to these other low points in Canadian history. Maybe you disagree, but I would think the vast majority of Canadians would recognize the low points I’m referring to as not comparable to something like going to these Olympics.

Meng should be on a one way plane to Guantanamo

For this one, the poster has said it was not meant seriously. I accept that. I took it as written seriously at the time, and it would be a pretty ridiculous betrayal of Canadian values if it were serious, but the poster says that it was not. I accept that.
A few other things I’ll reply to:

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Canada was still engaged in genocide at the time of the '88 games and when most of the posters on CP were growing up here, including me.

Originally Posted by Manhattanboy

Bull****.

Again, read from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or just read the history. Canada was clearly and definitively still engaging in genocide at that time. They certainly didn't teach me that when I was back in school either, but it is the case. What’s happening in China is different in scale to what happened in Canada, but not so different in nature or intent. The residential schools in Canada and the camps in China are similar in wanting to erase a culture and group of people through forced separation of families, elimination of language and culture and forced integration into the majority group; both also involving deaths, forced sterilizations, trauma and needless suffering as a result of mistreatment and abuse. The outcomes of both likely also being generations of irreparable harm and suffering.

And, I didn’t make that comparison for the purpose of minimizing what’s happening in China. It was about trying to help with understanding the point that a country, taken as a whole, is not just the worst things that it does. Victims of the residential school system could certainly be empathized with in feeling that Canada was an awful, horror show of a country. It was for them. But, that terrible side of Canada doesn’t adequately define the country as a whole. I take it most people who grew up in Canada back then didn’t consider Canada to be an awful place. Same thing with China. Something terrible can be happening without that being representative of the country as a whole. That's not saying it's not terrible and that nothing should be done to oppose it. It’s just saying that it doesn’t define the country in its entirety.

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

Your schtick of pretending that they're somehow racist is tired

Nowhere, in any of my posts have I accused these posters of being racist. I called out posts on being ignorant, hateful towards the country, or disconnected from reality. I haven’t suggested racism anywhere in any of my previous posts, nor did I intend to. It’s not really what I’ve seen in this thread. If you’re bringing racism into it, that’s your own issue. I’m not accounting for why you in particular rush to a denial of racism when it hasn’t even been suggested.

Originally Posted by Manhattanboy

JohnnyB, I want to add as well that my comments are specifically directed at the Chinese government. Many on this board know me to be a staunch defender of Israel and I too find myself having to point out that criticism of government policy is one thing but too often the country and the people are unfairly targeted.

Okay. I accept that. I hope you can also understand why I picked out the few quotes that I did on the basis of them seeming to target the whole country rather than the government and made no criticism of other posts clearly targeting the government unless they were something that I saw as pretty out there, alarmist, and disconnected from reality.

On the whole, I wasn’t intending to express that everyone posting in this thread was attacking China as a country in its entirety or the Chinese people. I recognize that most posts have been about how to deal with the Chinese government, and I haven’t criticized or attacked posts that I recognize as such.