China in Another Lockdown?

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by pylon

The terms "Orwellian" and "Dystopian Future" get thrown around far too much. In the case of China, they are completely appropriate, and their methods deserve to be called into question, and anyone defending those ideas outside their borders, deserves to be shunned.

Watching their Covid Police running around in non-descript uniforms and gas masks beating citizens, rounding them up to put in internment camps, beating stray dogs to death with shovels, having to show digital ID at any request, having cameras planted outside your apartment to surveil your every movement. Having every communication monitored by the government on apps presented as harmless with cute pictures of robot pandas on them.....

You could have renamed the CCP Covid Police the Combine, and boom, you have the much craved 15 year overdue, Half Life, Episode 3. It almost mirrors the horrific vision Valve had when it created Half Life 2. But this time, it's even scarier. It's not some interdimensional technologically superior alien force, it's your own neighbours being indocrtinated and brainwashed by its government to commit these acts. And it is actually happening. In the real world, not inside the confines of a hard drive.

And this is just Covid. Peter12 touches on many of the other issues, and their are many more to add on to that. Corruption, the goverment stealing housing down payments from it's own citizens through banks they were told to trust. Homophobia. Rampant racism against non-chinese that makes racism in North America look laughably mild. The list goes on and on.

The citizens of China need to make a decision. Are they going to live on their knees, or die on their feet. They need to fight for their freedom. And they need to overthrow their corrupt goverment that is forcing them to basically live in servitude.

I don't know, we live in a much freer country and we willingly accept significant government and corporate surveillance into our private lives, so I'm not sure why anyone would expect the Chinese population to stage a revolution over that. Particularly when you've lived in that environment your whole life.

Ultimately, people will tend to trade prosperity and security for their rights. As long as China's per-capita GDP keeps growing as fast as it is, people will be generally happy with their government. I suspect their growth will slow in the somewhat near future (their demographics aren't looking great) and then there will be more of a reckoning, and maybe that's already happening to some degree with the economic effects of their zero-COVID policy.

As an aside, why is "digital id" the new fear? Is having to show that somehow worse than having to show physical ID?

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Calling people CCP agents. Calling people tankies. Peter12 once called a cp member a traitor just for sharing his own life experience in China.

Nobody who interacts like that deserves to be taken seriously on the topic at all. That's the kind of stuff that belongs on 4chan.

This is the first time i've ever heard this term.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

I would say it's the people who are using terms like CCP shill, CCP agent, tankie, bot, quisling etc. that are the ones violating forum rules in attacking the poster and not the ideas. By all means, attack policies, actions, ideas you disagree with. There's plenty to be critical of. Using pejorative terms to label people isn't that.

Sorry, but given where we are at in the world right now with making excuses for genocide, my position is that anyone that wants to make excuses for the CCP and call them 'not as bad as you think' should be publicly tarred and feathered.

If we can't do that, ban them from the forum forever.

And if we can't do that, I will continue calling them CCP apologists, CCP shills, CCP agents, tankies, CCP bot, quisling, etc, etc every single time they post their stupidity in one of these threads.

[pylon]

Originally Posted by opendoor

I don't know, we live in a much freer country and we willingly accept significant government and corporate surveillance into our private lives, so I'm not sure why anyone would expect the Chinese population to stage a revolution over that. Particularly when you've lived in that environment your whole life.

Ultimately, people will tend to trade prosperity and security for their rights. As long as China's per-capita GDP keeps growing as fast as it is, people will be generally happy with their government. I suspect their growth will slow in the somewhat near future (their demographics aren't looking great) and then there will be more of a reckoning, and maybe that's already happening to some degree with the economic effects of their zero-COVID policy.

As an aside, why is "digital id" the new fear? Is having to show that somehow worse than having to show physical ID?

I am fairly confident if I am walking down the street minding my own business, I can decline to show any form of ID to any government official without fear of being thrown in prison. I have the right to have a lawyer intervene and represent me. And all my Covid passport granted me was the ability to go to the Keg or a concert. It did not infringe on my fundamental human rights to exist or to not be imprisoned in an internment camp at the goverments whim.

Although I am sure there are a lot of people on this very board, that feel those types of punishments are appropriate, I certainly do not. As someone who is fully vaccinated, I still believe people have the right to decline as well. At some stage, you have to allow people to live their lives, and place the onus on those wishing to live in a bubble, to supply their own.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I mean it sounded like the original post that started this whole debate was really just trying to say that whatever you think of the Chinese government, they actually do care if 1.5 million Chinese people die and actually do want to avoid that outcome. That is, they're not indifferent about that sort of thing and it's a motivating factor in their over-the-top public health policy. Which... is probably true, I would think? That doesn't really sound like some defense of the regime.

You mean the original post that said

"The CCP is not as bad as people in the west think."

That original post?

But yeah, why would they care about 1.5 million people potentially dying. Its not like they haven't detained millions of innocent Uyghurs in camps and committed all kinds of vile and despicable acts against them, from murder to mass sterilization, family separation, rape, forced labor, forced IUD implantation, sexual violence, physical violence, forced medications, gang rapes, and probably dozens of other atrocities.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by pylon

I am fairly confident if I am walking down the street minding my own business, I can decline to show any form of ID to any government official without fear of being thrown in prison. I have the right to have a lawyer intervene and represent me. And all my Covid passport granted me was the ability to go to the Keg or a concert. It did not infringe on my fundamental human rights to exist or to not be imprisoned in an internment camp at the goverments whim.

Although I am sure there are a lot of people on this very board, that feel those types of punishments are appropriate, I certainly do not. As someone who is fully vaccinated, I still believe people have the right to decline as well. At some stage, you have to allow people to live their lives, and place the onus on those wishing to live in a bubble, to supply their own.

But what does ID being digital have to do with any of that? Why the distinction between digital ID and physical ID?

[pylon]

Originally Posted by opendoor

But what does ID being digital have to do with any of that? Why the distinction between digital ID and physical ID?

Because there are reports of the CCP altering the status of the IDs from green to red based on tracking information to subvert people from attending protests, travelling freely, and used to catch and imprison people critical of the government. They've weaponized convenience.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

This is the first time i've ever heard this term.

Same with me. Apparently, it's meant to describe a person so far left, they would support driving a tank over someone in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by blankall

Same with me. Apparently, it's meant to describe a person so far left, they would support driving a tank over someone in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956?

Really? I always assumed it was just short for people who were "in the tank" for someone. Supporters.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...upportive.html

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Really? I always assumed it was just short for people who were "in the tank" for someone. Supporters.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...upportive.html

For some reason I misread that as for "short people" who were in someone's tank. I had a mental image of really short people standing upright in roof restricted tanks.

[driveway]

"Tankie" as it specifically relates to China is to tell someone that they would have been one of the people driving the tanks in Tiannanmen square. I have heard this term many, many times.

Johnny B is right that we should not throw around that term, or terms like "ccp shill" when people are simply relating their own lived experience.

However, it is completely true that China maintains a professional group who's role is to spread positive views of China online and to denigrate western nations. I don't know if this CP thread would arrive on their radar, but if you start following any journalists who cover Taiwan or China on twitter or online, it become immediately apparent that these people absolutely exist and they work in shifts. It would not suprise me at all if there is a CP account owned by one of these Chinese groups and that once in a while the CP forums are scanned over by some tired, bored 20-something working an entry-level job for the Chinese state/security aparatus.

[sharkov]

Originally Posted by Azure

Sorry, but given where we are at in the world right now with making excuses for genocide, my position is that anyone that wants to make excuses for the CCP and call them 'not as bad as you think' should be publicly tarred and feathered.

If we can't do that, ban them from the forum forever.

And if we can't do that, I will continue calling them CCP apologists, CCP shills, CCP agents, tankies, CCP bot, quisling, etc, etc every single time they post their stupidity in one of these threads.

You are correct! Only 1 narrative should be allowed on this forum