[undercoverbrother]

Spoiler!

Originally Posted by 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:







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:





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.



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.



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.



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:





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.



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.



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.

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Also,



I don’t know why you seem to think I should be accountable to you in any way. I’m not. Not in the least. I have expressed my views clearly on genocide here and I’ve expressed my views clearly about Hong Kong in other threads. I have been personally affected by these things and people close to me who I care about have been personally affected by these things. Your validation of my experiences and my views of China as a whole are completely unneeded and totally unimportant to me.

Comments like







Say more about the posters writing them than they do about me.

Beyond that, I'll also add that some posts, like the ones suggesting I have a gun to my head in Shanghai to say things in support of the government, or implying that Chinese people all live in fear of their government, I think somewhat encourage a fearful, paranoid view of China. Regardless of innocent or positive intent of these kinds of posts, it’s also the case that fear, paranoia and ignorance can easily fuel xenophobia and posts like that should at least be challenged or clarified to reach a more accurate understanding of the country people are talking about. Life in China is not life in North Korea.

The truth is that the large majority of people in China trust and support their government. The Communist Party, for all it’s problems, has played a huge part in lifting over 800 million people out of poverty, providing them with access to quality education and healthcare, and ensuring they have ample food to eat. In the 40 years since Deng Xiaoping began the process of transforming China's economic system, the country has gone from being an economically and technologically impoverished nation to being right on the verge of leading the world in both categories. Some minorities would certainly describe being oppressed, but no shortage of Chinese are living flourishing lives and lives that are far better than they were in the past. The trend in the last decade has also shown that more and more Chinese nationals who go abroad for education in places like Canada, Australia, the US and the UK are choosing to return to the Mainland to make their lives. Those people choosing to return wouldn’t be doing that if they were so fearful of the Communist Party and yearning to be free of the Party’s oppression. They’re returning because they feel it offers them a better quality of life. Loads of Canadians and Americans in China are also living happy and flourishing lives. People who have spent substantial time in China would know that.

None of that is an excuse for needless brutalities or human rights abuses, and there are plenty of other valid things that China could be criticized for, but these good sides are also realities of the complex picture that is the country as a whole. There's no need to deny them.

Wow, the best defense is a good offence, so props to you.

On the topic of residential schools I wonder how the 500,000 children ripped from their families by the Chinese government are enjoying their residential schools

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/w...g-schools.html

the schools are also designed to assimilate and indoctrinate children at an early age, away from the influence of their families, according to the planning document, published in 2017. Students are often forced to enroll because the authorities have detained their parents and other relatives, ordered them to take jobs far from home or judged them unfit guardians.

The schools are off limits to outsiders and tightly guarded, and it is difficult to interview residents in Xinjiang without putting them at risk of arrest. But a troubling picture of these institutions emerges from interviews with Uighur parents living in exile and a review of documents published online, including procurement records, government notices, state media reports and the blogs of teachers in the schools.