dirtpoorchris

China demolishes mosque for not supporting Olympics: group - Yahoo! News
China demolishes mosque for not supporting Olympics: group

I wonder... What is your opinion. If our government came buy and put a Olympic poster for this upcomming event would you welcome it or look at it with a little disdain?

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America. God is wearing black.

FreeThinker

Every time I read about China I get angry. Their human rights violations are insane: they execute people the same day as conviction by driving a bus to the courthouse with a restraining seat and lethal injection equipment. People get executed in a f*cking bus.

Of course, no one in China can reply to my post with an argument, since they block all political websites.

Orion

I've never heard of this, and I've studied Asian history (both imperialistic and modern). Can you please provide a reliable source that talks about it? I am genuinely interested.

Western observers often criticize China for its human rights issues, but it's too late for China to make a major shift in government. Their country is in a period of rapid, delicately stable growth. A revolution at this point would kill hundreds of millions of people, and bring chaos to a rising power... not to mention the global market itself. It must, must, must maintain the current status quo of government, control, and power if it is to survive the coming decades. Whether or not China should democratize is irrelevant at this point. It simply can't in any sustainable fashion.

Academics in China rightfully argue that democracy and constitutional human rights are Western institutions that have never existed in China. We are judging them by our standard, but their society is completely different than ours. (I know as I have lived in Beijing, and I am returning to Shanghai to complete my studies in the fall.) What is good for the West is not good necessarily good for China. They experimented with constitutionalism in the early 20th century and it fell apart due to rebellion... and this was after Western Europe raped and pillaged their nations, and forced their ideals upon China. Obviously they are going to reject democracy, given what it has brought them in the past.

If China suddenly implemented all the human rights that we have here, world prices of goods (especially textiles) would rise by about 300%, the sky would be black, and food prices would quadruple. Yes it's sad that there are so many poor and imprisoned people in China, but for now, it is what it is. China is too focused on growth (at a rate of about 10% per year which is huge) and feeding its 1.4 billion people to care about human rights and the environment right now. And why should it care? We didn't during our industrial revolution. NOW we have the convenience of judging them because we are post-industrial, and realizing the errors of our ways. China looks at us and said, "Well you did it, so now we are too."

More sites are created per day than the Chinese government can monitor and block. When I get to China, you'll know if this site is blocked if I suddenly stop posting.

FreeThinker

USATODAY.com - China makes ultimate punishment mobile

You underestimate the resources China has devoted to censoring the internet. They have keywords that raise flags, so they only have to sensor what pops up. On top of that, major search engines like google and yahoo cooperate with Chinese censoring rules so they can compete in the Chinese market. Restriction of free speech has been outsourced to American companies, which is total bullsh*t in my opinion.

FreeThinker

First of all, there are no "academics" in a society without free speech. The nature of being academic is being neutral.

Second, they are not Chinese people - they are PEOPLE who happen to be Chinese. The idea that humans living in foreign countries are somehow fundamentally different is racist as hell. A jury of your peers, the right to assemble, free speech, and a representative government are ALL systems proven to work for human beings - not just Americans, not just Europeans, not just Japanese - HUMANS.

As far as forcing ideals on the Chinese, why don't you start with communism.

dirtpoorchris

And I bet people wonder why their earth rocks below them.

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America. God is wearing black.

Orion

Before I can really respond to you, I need to give you a crash course in Chinese culture because it is central to understanding why China has the system it does.

China has what are called feng and shou cycles, sort of like give and take. During feng cycles there is a lot of granting of freedoms, and in shou cycles a lot of repression and removal of freedoms. In the past 50 years China has been going through this cycle repeatedly.

Adademics are not outside of this cycle. The last feng cycle resulted in the Tiananmen massacre, when students were given freedom of assembly. You have to understand that China had just come out of 40+ years of revolution, and China has a deep seated fear of chaos as result of all of the damage done by Western imperialism. This lead to the popular rise of a government of control. Communism didn't just randomly take hold in China, it was given power by the people. Mao organized grassroots missions to establish good relations with the people, while being chased by KMT forces (who were supported by the U.S.) Once he came to power, he tossed them all out, mostly.

During past feng cycles, academics were relied upon to give feedback to the government regarding its policies in the hopes that improvement could be made... but allowing the academics to speak out lead to some criticism of the government. Fearing the flood of chaos and another revolution, the academics were shut down (following Tiananmen).

Now we're in another feng cycle, where academics have relative freedom to write about various topics. China has its own style of academia that differs from the West.

Universal human rights is a Western concept, started by the institution of International Relations. The very ideas that we hold dear were created by us. They're in the UN charter because the Western world created the UN, the Western world by far is the biggest financial supporter of the UN, and global politics centers on the Western world.

And as we know, the Western world is guilty of human rights abuses both past and present. Guantanamo? Detaining U.S. citizens without legal recourse? Torture (waterboarding)? Maybe it's a legal grey area, but what about universal human rights for them? The U.S. knows how to work around human rights, just like China does.

Communism isn't the problem. China has 1.4 billion people and is developing as we speak. Communism is remaining in China because it is providing, period. The West acts like we need to go in an free China, when really, from my own experience as well as that of others, when compared to Western alternatives, the majority of Chinese prefer their current government. And guess what, so do most Western countries. Yeah, they give all these PR talks about condemning violence in China... but right now China is a leading economic power in the world. It holds more economic influence than even the United States. If, tomorrow, China sold all of its U.S. currency holdings to the world market, the U.S. would enter depression over night. In fact, China was going to partially do that recently, until Washington sent their top economic negotiator to essentially beg them not to. With that kind of power, Chinese Communism is not going anywhere.

Their lack of human rights maintains our status quo. As long as it remains cheaper for a pair of socks to be made in China and shipped here than it does for us to make them here, the Western world will not touch China. As much as we decry their humanitarian status, we simultaneously enjoy enormous convenience and luxury from it.

That said, Chinese economy is essentially Capitalist right now, so it's not true Communism anymore. It's a very unique situation where you have a Communist party harbouring capitalist economic policy. It is the only country in world history to do this successfully, and I think that is worth taking a look at before you dismiss the evils of Communism according to your own nationalist indoctrination process. Go to Shanghai, and it does not feel Communist whatsoever. It's interesting because until this happened, most political scientists and economists felt that any country that is entered by the free market should become democratic. China has shown that this assumption is untrue.

Please clarify what you mean by this.

Ethereal

I'd call their form of government autocratic capitalism. They control the means of production but their actions are dictated by the market instead of empty-headed ideology. They are a model of effeciency, human rights violations notwithstanding.

Orion

I tend to agree, especially given that the rise of Communism in China was with widespread peasant support in rural areas, and those peasants, to this day, have remained extremely poor. Much of the nation's wealth is not ending up in the countryside despite original visions.

DivineComedy

Is the poster made in China?

{I am on orders to be light.}

I know for a fact that BBB and Sons Contruction with offices in Texas and Georgia has one employee, and you can bet it will not be Chinamen doing the workmans compensation. So if you need a sign put up, call them.

If the China gets broken will we hear again that the bull is on the payroll?

Seriously, wow, a business is destroyed by government on account of a sign? I hate it when our government uses laws to do that, but God is the greatest:
salat-o-matic mobile
That one is an inside joke, sorry.