I think the US is a democracy, just a flawed one. The electoral college is a big flaw because it gives rural states a disproportionate amount of power. But there is still a democratic process in the US. Look at how Zohran Mamdani has become the Democrat candidate to become NYC’s mayor, despite the fact that many leading Democrats didn’t want him to be the candidate. The primary voters made their voices heard.

We can argue about the merits and flaws of China and Russia, but neither of them represent an existential threat to me as an American. Pretty much the only thing that does present an existential threat, imo, is the rise of fascism domestically.

Fair point. Here in Europe though, Russia is probably a bit more worrying. E.g. I’m not surprised that Poland wants to take a firm stance of supporting Ukraine, because Poles are probably worrying that their land might be invaded if Ukraine is taken over by Russia.

As for China, maybe we would disagree, but I think they really want to expand their power, even if that means stamping on people’s rights… for one thing it might be good if China had political freedom and democracy. China will obviously do what it wants for the time being, but I think I will remain a bit wary of what seems to be expansionist ambitions.

I think it’s credible that China has been detaining Uyghurs en masse and I think it’s credible that many rapes have taken place. Maybe we will just have different views.

Interesting, I googled for reports of Arab emissaries going to Xinjiang and I found this from Time magazine, published in 2022:

Arab states are not only lending rhetorical support to China, they are also actively assisting Beijing in its global campaign of abuse and reprisals against Uighurs. At least six governments in the Arab world—Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE—have detained or extradited Uighurs at China’s behest. According to our dataset at the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, around 292 Uighurs have been detained or deported from Arab states at China’s behest since 2002.

Also you mention “multiple western* countries” as if western countries are automatically wrong. I don’t think that’s true. I think there are certainly biased media outlets in the West, but I think there are genuine and reliable media outlets too. I think the BBC is reliable. If someone proves their reporting to be plain wrong then I will re-evaluate them, but I haven’t yet seen that happen.

I think the testimonies of rape are credible and major news organisations from multiple countries clearly think that leaked police files from Xinjiang are credible. I’m not aware of similar accusations regarding American prisons concerning black inmates.

Anyway, I expect you just won’t believe anything the BBC says (which I just linked to). I think the BBC are credible and reliable, but if you don’t think that, okay. I can’t change your mind of course. We will just have different views.

are there any ONGOING acts of mass mistreatment of Uyghur in Xinjiang?

I don’t know. But even if the detention camps have closed (whether they have, I don’t know), the treatment of Uyghurs for a while still seems to have been bad. I’m not trying to say “China is worse than the West” or anything like that. I just think that massive internment camps for ethnic minorities, where rape allegedly happens, don’t seem like a great thing - whether they appear in China, the USA, or anywhere else.

there was a series of terrorist attacks in China in 2013-2014 onwards, coming from Islamist radicals linked to Al-Qaida and ISIS. The government responded later with a big reeducation program in the province of Xinjiang

If the US had done the same thing in their country after 9/11, I bet you would have criticised it.

The only example you produced of China’s “imperialism” was settling some uninhabited islands in the Pacific

Settling islands, wanting to take over Taiwan, trying to expand their global power, making friends with other world leaders who want to expand their power, etc.

the most important conflict is class conflict, and my most immediate enemy is the ruling class of my own country

In some situations that might be true but I think it depends. In some cases, the ruling class of your own country might be investing in a military which protects you, while a foreign government might want to invade your country and oppress you. For example, if you were an American Jew in WW2 then surely the US ruling class was a better friend to you than the foreign country of Germany, who wanted to exterminate all Jews.

I’m not expecting you to say anything to China. My original point which I said in my first post in this thread was this:

would you condemn seemingly imperialist behaviour from countries like Russia and China as much as you would condemn imperialist behaviour from western countries

That’s all I’m trying to say. Surely we should hold every country to consistent standards.

Tara Reade

I just looked up that person. I do think allegations of rape should be taken seriously, although apparently this particular person may not be entirely honest, because apparently she may not have been truthful about her education: “Antioch University… disputed her claim of receiving a bachelor’s degree from its Seattle campus”. Maybe she’s still right about Biden, I don’t know.

Anyway, I’m not some MAGA supporter who mentioned Xinjiang to smear my geopolitical adversary. I was just replying to someone who mentioned “imperialism”, and I asked them if they would condemn Chinese/Russian imperialism as well as western imperialism. The reason I asked this is because I’ve seen posts from Lemmy.ml or Hexbear users where they seem to celebrate China and Russia. Arguably the current US, China, and Russia are all imperialist.

It seems it wasn’t just the NYT and the BBC who have reported on the story of China’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang - Der Spiegel from Germany published leaked files, as did Le Monde from France. Then other outlets like The Guardian published articles about this too.

I’ll just say what I believe: I think the leaked documents from China, showing photos of internment camps for Uyghurs, and documents saying that people escaping the camps should be shot and killed, are probably real. Multiple media outlets have reported on this. There are also the allegations of rape regarding these internment camps. I think any rape allegation should be taken seriously.

I’m really not trying to say “China bad, West good”. Not at all. But I also don’t think it’s useful to adopt an attitude of “West bad, China good”. Maybe instead we should think “every country is capable of doing bad things, and if we see a bad thing happening, then we can call it bad, no matter which country is doing it”.

According to the BBC, Xi Jinping himself may have been pushing for the system of camps used for the internment of Uyghurs:

In a speech, stamped as “classified” and delivered by Zhao Kezhi, China’s Minister for Public Security, on a visit to Xinjiang in June 2018, he suggests that at least two million people are infected with “extremist thought” in southern Xinjiang alone.

Peppered with references to President Xi Jinping, the speech heaps praise on the Chinese leader for his “important instructions” for the construction of new facilities and an increase in funding for prisons to cope with the influx in detainees necessary to reach that two million target.

You mention “massive amounts of footage” - the article I have just linked to has photos taken inside these internment camps, but it seems the wider world was only able to see these photos once Chinese police computers had been hacked (the source of the info in that article).

Anyway, maybe the truth is that every country is capable of bad things, whether it’s the US, or Israel, or China, or any other country.

Okay I read what you wrote. You say it’s just random instances of police violence in Xinjiang but it looks like an orchestrated programme of forcing Uyghurs to become communist loyalists. The BBC looked at documents leaked from Chinese authorities (these documents were leaked to other media outlets too such as Der Spiegel in Germany):

The cache contains another secret speech, delivered in 2017 by Chen Quanguo - until recently Xinjiang’s hardline Communist Party secretary.

“For some, even five years re-education may not be enough,” he tells his audience of senior military and police cadres, a seeming admission that for as long as any Uyghur continues to feel a loyalty to identity or faith at least as strong as to the Party, there’s no end in sight.

You mention fabricated western propaganda, and sure that can happen. Surely that would come from governments though rather than media companies.

As for the New York Times and the BBC. Maybe you think they spin things in a certain way, or that they don’t cover what they should cover. But that’s a different question to the question of whether their claims are factual. You could have a media outlet that selectively covers only particular topics, but nonetheless their facts may still be accurate.

You might dislike the US and Israel, and sure they have done some terrible things over the years, but maybe there are lots of countries that have done terrible things. Maybe China is one of those countries.

I found it by clicking on my inbox’s RSS feed. If you want to copy it, this is what I can see:

Regarding testimonies, apparently there are several women

There are some isolated testimonies, true. I don’t doubt police violence has taken place, as it does everywhere. Mistreatments of individuals by the police is a recurring phenomenon everywhere in the world, though, and not isolated or specific to China. I condemn the isolated events, but they don’t indicate widespread abuse of prisoners.

Furthermore, testimonies of atrocity propaganda are a well-known tool of the West, such as the infamous Nayirah testimony used to justify the Gulf war. It’s well known that bounties are offered by intelligence agencies to manufacture stories of atrocity propaganda, and so when using testimonies one has to be careful for generalizing. It’s better to refer to independent material evidence, of which essentially none exists for any ongoing mistreatment of Uyghurs.

The “leaked documents” feature internal communications of the party talking about adopting a strong stance against terrorism following the radical islamist terrorist attacks in 2013-onwards. They show no proof of mass mistreatment of Uyghurs, and the whole thing is more of a nothingburger consisting of a few questionably translated bold claims by government officials.

The New York Crimes and the BBC have been complicit over the past years in the whitewashing of the genocidal state of Israel, which has proven that beyond ethical journalism, they’re underpinned by supporting the US-aligned geopolitical narratives.

I will read through it now.

I don’t think I described the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang to be a “genocide” (if I have used that word then please do correct me). Some people do use that term of course.

I think that rape and arbitrary detention of Uyghurs has probably happened though, because sources like The New York Times and the BBC have reported on it.

If someone showed me a case of those two outlets lying and not correcting themselves when challenged, then maybe I’d believe that The New York Times and the BBC are not reliable. In my experience though they’re accurate with facts, even if I might not always agree with how their journalists might spin a story.

On the topic of Palestine, I think it’s completely wrong that Palestinian civilians have been killed with Israeli bombs and due to an Israeli starvation campaign. But I think that’s a separate issue to whether or not the PRC has mistreated ethnic minorities.

Regarding testimonies, apparently there are several women who have talked about rape and sexual abuse in Xinjiang camps. In the West, when a woman claims she’s been raped, people on the left will often say we should believe those women. If we’re going to take rape allegations by western women seriously then we should probably take rape allegations by Xinjiang women seriously too.

Also apparently there have been leaked documents from the Chinese government which give details about the Xinjiang camps.

Those last two links are to The New York Times and the BBC, and I guess you’ll say they’re “fake news” or whatever. I’m pretty sure they’re both accurate sources and if they do publish anything false they will usually publish corrections where they admit their mistakes.

This is about a deportation of Uyghurs from Thailand

Yes, but it mentions their assessment of the situation in China.

Sky News (Australian equivalent of FOX)

Wrong. The British Sky News is different (owned by Comcast, who also own NBC and Universal Pictures). Murdoch sold it. But Murdoch does still own Sky News Australia.

You keep proving that you have no idea about the topic

I provided stories that you have been unable to disprove. Everything they say stands until you can disprove it.

I don’t defend human right abuses

You’ve spent the last few posts doing exactly that.

The reeducation camps were closed years ago

I found this from Amnesty International earlier this year. It says that “Uyghur and other non-Han ethnic groups in Xinjiang have faced torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance”. It mentions “internment camps” and it doesn’t say those camps have been closed.

BBC was constantly airing lies of the genocidal maniacs of Isntreal, such as mass rapes during Oct 7th in an attempt to do atrocity propaganda against Palestine to justify genocide. They’re literal genocide supporters.

Here you have an interview with an openly lying genocide supporter on prime time.

The BBC airs the views of many people, but it doesn’t mean the BBC agrees with those views. E.g. they did a high-profile interview with Prince Andrew about the sex scandal surrounding him. That doesn’t mean the BBC agrees with everything Prince Andrew said.

On the topic of Israel and Palestine, I have seen Palestine’s head diplomat to the UK interviewed on the BBC, multiple times I think, such as this.

based not on independent journalism but on supposed “anonymous interviews”

Anonymous interviews are part of journalism. Some people don’t want to provide their names because they could be persecuted. Maybe you dislike the fact that the BBC is not “independent” because it’s owned by the UK government. In which case, look at the articles I provided from The Guardian and Sky News - neither of them is owned by a state.

TLDR: I don’t understand how people who are supposedly on the left try to defend human rights abuses just because they’re done by countries that aren’t allied with the US.

Hardly can you call it “colonize” when there isn’t a population in said islands. At any rate it’s much less violent than the poverty and lack of political representation that Puertoricans are imposed by the US.

Whatever you call it, I would still say it’s imperialist behaviour of China to take over islands that it doesn’t seem to have a right to. Regarding Puerto Rico, I think they should have proper representation in the US Congress. Are Puerto Ricans being interned in camps like Uyghurs in Xinjiang though?

Taking the BBC seriously on the mistreatment of Muslims in China is as laughable as taking Russia Today seriously on the mistreatment of ethnic Russians in Donetsk.

No it isn’t, because RT seems to air lies, while I don’t think the BBC does. For example, RT featured an interview with two Russian military intelligence agents who seemed to have lied to hide the fact that they poisoned Sergei Skripal in England in 2018. Can you provide an example of the BBC doing something like this?

any independent journalistic work post-2021 about mass mistreatment of Uyghurs

What is wrong with the BBC article I provided? You haven’t shown that the BBC lies or is unreliable. It looks like The Guardian has also reported on this story though and here are articles from Sky News.

your lack of concern for Ukrainian mass economic and population crisis

I genuinely am just not aware of what you were referring to. Anyway, I hope that Ukrainians and Russians can live in peace, and preferably with political freedom. The first step towards achieving this would be the Kremlin withdrawing their invasion of Ukraine. I think Ukraine should be able to make their own democratic decisions. Ideally every country should be able to make independent democratic decisions I think.

Tell me a war in which China has participated over the last 30 years

I guess the answer to my question is “no” then…

China simply doesn’t engage in remotely imperialist behaviour compared to the west

They’re colonising islands in the South China Sea which other South East Asian countries claim, even though a UN tribunal ruled that China’s claims aren’t valid. Also what should people think of seeming mistreatment of ethnic minorities in China? Of course there are examples of western countries mistreating minorities, e.g. the USA interning Japanese-Americans during WW2. I don’t know if the USA is currently doing anything similar to what is described in the article I just linked to though.

Surely since you care about Ukraine, you condemn the capitalist regime in Ukraine which led to the defunding of healthcare, education, the removal of guaranteed housing and guaranteed employment, and a massive demographic crisis of loss of life through hunger, crime, drug abuse and lack of healthcare, which killed millions of Ukrainians prematurely?

Did this happen after the USSR collapsed? I don’t know enough about Ukrainian history to be honest. I do think though that it’s probably a good idea if world borders, such as those of Ukraine currently, aren’t redrawn by force. It’s probably better to settle disputes democratically and diplomatically.

I think it’s right to say that Palestinian civilians should be able to live in peace, and it would good if poorer people can get healthcare. On the point of “imperialism”, would you condemn seemingly imperialist behaviour from countries like Russia and China as much as you would condemn imperialist behaviour from western countries? I see users from Lemmy.ml and Hexbear who defend the behaviour of Russia and China for whatever reason.