Eh. By diminishing returns I mean that, once the poor are a small enough group, they hold very little sway, as any minority does, especially minorities with shit for resources, and often with a host of issues which have perpetuated their status. A trailer park full of paranoid rednecks is not going to have the easiest time convincing anyone to help them lift their status, and they may have learned to be hostile to such efforts to begin with. Additionally, their poverty doesn't really hurt anyone but themselves.
Compare that to, say, the Great Depression, or China's prior situation, where the vast poverty meant 1) a MAJORITY of people highly desiring change, even if it meant getting run over by tanks, 2) that the people who were still living large were not living nearly as large as they could because they had fewer people to invest heavily in, 3) the poor were EVERYWHERE, and you could not escape them without fleeing civilization.
When it is no longer a significant advantage to help the poor, the poor may not be bothered with overmuch.
Well, China is very different culturally and not a democracy, so I doubt that kind of retard-factor can be reproduced over there. But they already have their own retard-factor, see picture of dude with Mao on the back of his head.
Well, China is very different culturally and not a democracy, so I doubt that kind of retard-factor can be reproduced over there. But they already have their own retard-factor, see picture of dude with Mao on the back of his head.
I don't wish for the Chinese people to feel good about this jubilee. I simply don't think citizens under the rule of such a government should deserve any positive emotions stemming from their place in the timeframe of that government - even if they should be able to savor the awe of their nation's incredible history.
To enjoy worm-eaten and sparse fruits of freedom is to debase yourself in front of the government presenting you with such meagre fare. To be able to even enjoy any fruit while others in your nation no worse or better than you are denied any is to tolerate evil. A non-elected government is just as bad as if any madman were to seize control through pure dumb luck. The Chinese people and culture exist but the modern state and the government should not exist even as a mental construct until democracy has taken root. The government has zero legitimacy, and can be likened to a factory of anti-human ambitions, suffering and evil. Evil must be spoken and pointed out, and the current Chinese statehood is evil.
Loren's already replied to this, but I'd like to add some perspective.
Let's wind the clock back to 1975. Mao is still General Secretary. Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore are all busy leaping forward. Singapore is ten years into independence and South Korea is fifteen years into Park Chung-Hee's dictatorship.
Yes, dictatorship. You read that right. At this time, during the Taiwanese miracle and South Korean miracle and Singapore miracle, Chiang Kai-Shek is busy perpetrating the "white terror" in Taiwan, imprisioning or executing over a hundred thousand people. Park Chung-Hee shut down the free press, tortured and executed suspected dissidents, and rigged elections. Lee Kuan Yew shut down the free press and arrested and permanently imprisoned many opposition leaders. Singapore still has no free press, by the way, and the governing party sued another opposition leader into bankruptcy (and therefore electoral ineligibility) just a few years ago.
Hong Kong managed to skip this, by virtue of the British army having shut down its leftist newspapers and schools and arrested the rebels about ten years earlier.
All this doesn't seep into the American consciousness, apparently, probably due to all these East Asian tigers being nominally on the Allied side of the Cold War divide. Then the rebels in Hong Kong agitating for independence from the British and being arrested and executed for their pains are just commie scum, aye?
Compared to Chiang Kai-Shek's civil rights track record, Beijing is almost saintlike.
Yeah, all these "Hurrah for China, they've made so many middle class people!" things totally neglect that China only grows on the backs of its poor people (who will not be the new middle class someday, the new middle class represent people in the government bringing in more and more of their cronies), all it shows is how fast you can grow an economy with electricity and slavery.
Yes, because the American proto-middle class, the envy of the Western world, was built on puppy dogs and blow-jobs, not the extermination of native populations and slave labor of black people. The United Kingdom's middle-class came from good spirits and cheeriness, not the forced labor of the entire Indian sub-continent and African slavery. France, Belgium, Spain...all those middle-classes just spontaneously appeared. Millions weren't enslaved or killed in Algiers, the Congo, or Latin America.
It all shows how fast you can grown an economy with guns and slavery. For Europe and America to attempt to tell China, "Do as we say, not as we did to the entire world for centuries, including yourselves," isn't just the worse hypocrisy, it's not going to work either. China is under no obligation to listen. The world may have changed in the last century, but the middle-class that the Western world loves so much doesn't just spontaneously emerge, especially not in a country with more than a billion people, who spent the century beforehand being exploited for just that cause.
This is going off on a tangent, but for some reason I'm reminded of something I read not too long ago about trying to copy Hong Kong. That is, basically the British go in somewhere and take control and make everything awesome.
I think I may be some kind of neo-colonialist.
Were you reading this guy? He's a big advocate of the "benign colonalism" revisionist theory. There's also Paul Romer marching around pushing his "charter cities" idea, with Hong Kong as his ideal.
If you like, the idea of importing legal systems and institutions in order to promote growth isn't new. It does remain controversial, though.
Synthesis: the British Empire was built on finding new markets, and it was killed when there were no more new markets left to sell stuff made in England to. At least that's the orthodox economic narrative. It turns out that you eventually need to let the colonies develop on their own, which will entail manufacturing fleeing England for cheaper labor elsewhere. Then and only then will other people be able to continue buying more of your stuff.
It is for this reason that slavery was already on its way out even without the prodding of London - it was already becoming an expensive way to do things. The real use of India was as a market - they'd farm natural resources to buy stuff made in England (hence why Gandhi wanted to ban imports of English textiles). The problem was that as growth proceeded, stuff made in England became cheaper and cheaper while stuff from non-developing colonial India remained just as expensive, so economic growth stalled until World War I broke out.
Growth only proceeded as long the Empire kept finding new buyers by removing trade barriers by force, not finding new slaves by force. Growth is a weird topic.
English: Scatter graph of the People's Republic of China's GDP between years 1952 to 2005, based on publicly available nominal GDP data published by the People's Republic of China and compiled by Hitotsubashi University (Japan) and confirmed by economic indicator statistics from the World Bank.
A real-gdp graph will be more appropriate than a nominal graph, but I can't find one.
Anyway, I'm not really sure how this thread got diverted to comparing the PRC now with Europe of two centuries ago; the most accurate comparison is the PRC's fellow East Asian states, since their economic models are extremely similar (export-led industrialization). Meaning: make lots of low-quality stuff cheap, hope the West buys said stuff, use dollars to fund more human and industrial capital. This eventually raises incomes (= drives labor costs up). For obvious reasons, 19th century Europe is a poor point of reference for such a growth strategy.
In this vein, we can predict further human-rights savagery, since export-led growth works best initially with depressed wages. All this (and environmental pollution) is effectively a subsidy on industrialization. So Chinese labor leaders, workplace safety advocates, etc. can expect to have an unhappy career for the next few decades or so. This will last until the opposing pressure of domestic underconsumption makes itself felt (which will be principally when the productivity of labor becomes similar to that in the the first world. If China overshoots, it gets to experience deflation like Japan).
I would say that China today is the freest its ever been.
The people have more civil rights, more freedom of speech and more say in their goverment. Then in any time in China's 6000 year history.
The status of women is the best it has ever been. With the best rates of education and civil rights for them.
The economy has never been more inclusive, with real observable economic growth that is creating an expanding middle class.
That being said.... This is not an actual endorsment of China(PRC), but an attempt to put things into perspective. Because every goverment before Deng Xiaoping? D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:
Happy birthday China(PRC).
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited October 2009
Until Tiananmen Square is no longer covered up in China, I will not associate China's citizens with having freedom. An entire generation of people has grown up there not knowing what the fuck the famous picture of the man in front of the tanks is.
Yeah, all these "Hurrah for China, they've made so many middle class people!" things totally neglect that China only grows on the backs of its poor people (who will not be the new middle class someday, the new middle class represent people in the government bringing in more and more of their cronies), all it shows is how fast you can grow an economy with electricity and slavery.
Yes, because the American proto-middle class, the envy of the Western world, was built on puppy dogs and blow-jobs, not the extermination of native populations and slave labor of black people. The United Kingdom's middle-class came from good spirits and cheeriness, not the forced labor of the entire Indian sub-continent and African slavery. France, Belgium, Spain...all those middle-classes just spontaneously appeared. Millions weren't enslaved or killed in Algiers, the Congo, or Latin America.
It all shows how fast you can grown an economy with guns and slavery. For Europe and America to attempt to tell China, "Do as we say, not as we did to the entire world for centuries, including yourselves," isn't just the worse hypocrisy, it's not going to work either. China is under no obligation to listen. The world may have changed in the last century, but the middle-class that the Western world loves so much doesn't just spontaneously emerge, especially not in a country with more than a billion people, who spent the century beforehand being exploited for just that cause.
This is going off on a tangent, but for some reason I'm reminded of something I read not too long ago about trying to copy Hong Kong. That is, basically the British go in somewhere and take control and make everything awesome.
I think I may be some kind of neo-colonialist.
Were you reading this guy? He's a big advocate of the "benign colonalism" revisionist theory. There's also Paul Romer marching around pushing his "charter cities" idea, with Hong Kong as his ideal.
If you like, the idea of importing legal systems and institutions in order to promote growth isn't new. It does remain controversial, though.
Synthesis: the British Empire was built on finding new markets, and it was killed when there were no more new markets left to sell stuff made in England to. At least that's the orthodox economic narrative. It turns out that you eventually need to let the colonies develop on their own, which will entail manufacturing fleeing England for cheaper labor elsewhere. Then and only then will other people be able to continue buying more of your stuff.
It is for this reason that slavery was already on its way out even without the prodding of London - it was already becoming an expensive way to do things. The real use of India was as a market - they'd farm natural resources to buy stuff made in England (hence why Gandhi wanted to ban imports of English textiles). The problem was that as growth proceeded, stuff made in England became cheaper and cheaper while stuff from non-developing colonial India remained just as expensive, so economic growth stalled until World War I broke out.
I should have explicitly said I was considering near-slavery/indentured servitude/forced labor in my discussion of slavery (for example, I also considered the tens of millions of serfs in the Russian Empire in the same timeframe slaves). I think I also mentioned forcing economic dependence...if I didn't, I should have.
And for the record, I'm not anti-English. Compared to the horrors the Belgians visited on the Congo, a lot of what the British did seems humane. That, of course, doesn't exonerate them. Belgium tends to be given a free pass, of course....because of their delicious chocolate? I have no idea.
On another note, have you ever wondered why Taiwan, for example, failed to produce any sort of scathing human rights criticism movement of the mainland, ala White Emigre fleeing from the Russian SFSR? Well, for starters, the White Emigre is just that, white, consisting almost entirely of European Russian populations, who were more likely to be listened to in that time period. The more pressing reason is because Chinese exiles fleeing the communist revolution, upon arriving in Taiwan, tacitly stood by as the Kuomingtang arrest, tortured, and executed anyone remotely connected to leftist movements who wasn't hiding in the mountains.
Are all Chinese emigres responsible? Of course not. Which is probably why current day Taiwan experiences a sort of 'racial tension' that stops well short of a retaliatory race war. But it doesn't change the fact that the state wantonly imprisoned, executed, released and then re-imprisoned the local population "on their behalf". The White Emigre fled to a country where their civil rights and lives were respected, even promoted in the cause of anti-communism. In Taiwan, they enjoyed their comfortable lives until they stepped out of line and joined the poor people with their backs against the walls and in front of the firing line. The end result? Successive Taiwanese governments have zero interest in Beijing's human rights record. Standardizing the written Chinese language, of all things, is a higher priority between the strait.
Until Tiananmen Square is no longer covered up in China, I will not associate China's citizens with having freedom. An entire generation of people has grown up there not knowing what the fuck the famous picture of the man in front of the tanks is.
And most Americans genuinely don't care to know about the shadier parts of American history.
The PRCs I've talked to (my school principal used to go to Beijing to offer scholarships every year) tend to have a "so what" attitude to it. It's covered up about as well as you might expect it to be (i.e., very badly).
The problem is that it's hard to see why certain foreigners seem to care so much about it (a problem common everywhere is that "your government sucks" can sound very similar to "you and your countrymen suck").
It's like saying to an American, "I refuse to believe any of you have freedom, because one of your countrymen got picked up and detained without trial in Gitmo". Err, okay. Or to pick another example, "your President's war powers was and still are ill-defined, therefore your country's military has no legitimacy". It just doesn't come off well at all.
Many Americans care a lot about aspects of freedom like being able to hold peaceful protests on the street. My impression is that many other people like aspects of freedom like being able to be certain that no protests will interrupt your day or threaten to destabilize your neighbourhood.
There's an anecdote that the attitude on the street towards the 'tank man' (if it isn't ignorance) is that the tank driver was awfully nice in not running the guy over (and video does indicate the driver attempted to turn and go around the protester, who moved). Because the tank driver is just doing his job, and since the aims of the protesters isn't best achieved by putting tank drivers in a difficult position, the protester should have gotten out of the way.
It's a bizarre worldview, really. But such as it is.
There's an anecdote that the attitude on the street towards the 'tank man' (if it isn't ignorance) is that the tank driver was awfully nice in not running the guy over (and video does indicate the driver attempted to turn and go around the protester, who moved). Because the tank driver is just doing his job, and since the aims of the protesters isn't best achieved by putting tank drivers in a difficult position, the protester should have gotten out of the way.
It's a bizarre worldview, really. But such as it is.
It's not a very unusual worldview, it's simply myopia. China, right now, is still celebrating getting to eat, in many cases. Only so much of the population has gotten over getting to eat. When they are used to being able to eat, they will very likely start considering other things, like having control over their environment, like other historical risen middle classes have.
China is still living off of low standards.
I once spoke with a self-proclaimed Neo-Stalinist. He missed how things used to be. He missed having a guaranteed meal every day, with chocolate milk once a week. Because he was not so secure in his new life in the states.
Synthesis: the British Empire was built on finding new markets, and it was killed when there were no more new markets left to sell stuff made in England to. At least that's the orthodox economic narrative. It turns out that you eventually need to let the colonies develop on their own, which will entail manufacturing fleeing England for cheaper labor elsewhere. Then and only then will other people be able to continue buying more of your stuff.
It is for this reason that slavery was already on its way out even without the prodding of London - it was already becoming an expensive way to do things. The real use of India was as a market - they'd farm natural resources to buy stuff made in England (hence why Gandhi wanted to ban imports of English textiles). The problem was that as growth proceeded, stuff made in England became cheaper and cheaper while stuff from non-developing colonial India remained just as expensive, so economic growth stalled until World War I broke out.
I should have explicitly said I was considering near-slavery/indentured servitude/forced labor in my discussion of slavery (for example, I also considered the tens of millions of serfs in the Russian Empire in the same timeframe slaves). I think I also mentioned forcing economic dependence...if I didn't, I should have.
And for the record, I'm not anti-English. Compared to the horrors the Belgians visited on the Congo, a lot of what the British did seems humane. That, of course, doesn't exonerate them. Belgium tends to be given a free pass, of course....because of their delicious chocolate? I have no idea.
On another note, have you ever wondered why Taiwan, for example, failed to produce any sort of scathing human rights criticism movement of the mainland, ala White Emigre fleeing from the Russian SFSR? Well, for starters, the White Emigre is just that, white, consisting almost entirely of European Russian populations, who were more likely to be listened to in that time period. The more pressing reason is because Chinese exiles fleeing the communist revolution, upon arriving in Taiwan, tacitly stood by as the Kuomingtang arrest, tortured, and executed anyone remotely connected to leftist movements who wasn't hiding in the mountains.
Are all Chinese emigres responsible? Of course not. Which is probably why current day Taiwan experiences a sort of 'racial tension' that stops well short of a retaliatory race war. But it doesn't change the fact that the state wantonly imprisoned, executed, released and then re-imprisoned the local population "on their behalf". The White Emigre fled to a country where their civil rights and lives were respected, even promoted in the cause of anti-communism. In Taiwan, they enjoyed their comfortable lives until they stepped out of line and joined the poor people with their backs against the walls and in front of the firing line. The end result? Successive Taiwanese governments have zero interest in Beijing's human rights record. Standardizing the written Chinese language, of all things, is a higher priority between the strait.
Well, on the whole I think moving from "feudal caste system" to "selling stuff to the English" is a net gain, even if the gain is uneven enough for some people to suffer horribly along the way. The problem is then uneven gains, not the gain itself. Economic dependence is a funny way to look at international trade, I think. Is Britain now dependent on international trade? Well, probably. It's better off, though. Stuff is cheaper.
On Taiwan: hypocrisy is common enough that I doubt that Taiwan suppressed human rights criticism in order to violate a few rights themselves. That hasn't stopped numerous countries from cheerfully stomping on a few minorities while criticizing others for doing so, so why would it stop Taiwan?
I'm more partial to the idea that the sympathetic appeal common in the West - identify a sympathetic victim of some systematic injustice and use him/her as the emblem of such oppression - may not be universal. As such there is little appeal in screaming "but this protester may be arrested and tortured!". Well, so what? I may not be that person and may have no interest in becoming so. The "first they came for" slippery slope isn't so obviously slippery.
Are there any East Asian states where human rights enjoy even just rhetorical success over, say, another 0.1% of economic growth?
Another example of perspective is a large portion of Americans and their views on European countries, Canada, etc. They revile Europe largely because higher taxes, even if things are better in many many many other ways. Income>Overall National Well-Being.
Really, it likely comes from the same instinct as what drives people to add lead to paint and fake protein to food, but far more reasonable.
There's an anecdote that the attitude on the street towards the 'tank man' (if it isn't ignorance) is that the tank driver was awfully nice in not running the guy over (and video does indicate the driver attempted to turn and go around the protester, who moved). Because the tank driver is just doing his job, and since the aims of the protesters isn't best achieved by putting tank drivers in a difficult position, the protester should have gotten out of the way.
It's a bizarre worldview, really. But such as it is.
It's not a very unusual worldview, it's simply myopia. China, right now, is still celebrating getting to eat, in many cases. Only so much of the population has gotten over getting to eat. When they are used to being able to eat, they will very likely start considering other things, like having control over their environment, like other historical risen middle classes have.
China is still living off of low standards.
I once spoke with a self-proclaimed Neo-Stalinist. He missed how things used to be. He missed having a guaranteed meal every day, with chocolate milk once a week. Because he was not so secure in his new life in the states.
I present to you Singapore, which has already gone far beyond subsistence and into first-world wealth, but has yet to agitate substantially against authoritarianism.
Thus far the worldwide historical trend has been for middle classes to generally demand more democracy, I know. But Taiwan essentially disassembled itself and South Korea never bothered to establish the legitimacy of the dictatorship as a long-term approach to governance. The dictatorship still has a stain of American puppet governance (the South Korean democratization movement had a significant element of anti-Americanism in it) - it was never viewed as properly legitimate (for all that, the ruling party went on the win the first democratic election after dictatorship. The people protested for elections - and then elected the same leaders!).
Earlier in the 20th century it was common for powerful governments to go raring off on wild theories of economic governance (Fabian socialism! Dirigisme! No, income-doubling! Patience and Reconciliation!). And some of these were wildly successful, others abject failures. But now the economic mainstream tends to have a strong consensus of What To Do (even with the recent crisis).
So we may see a government that plays its cards correctly just keep sitting on year after year of continued world growth. Possibly?
All I really know about Singapore is that it's a really bizarre place with an unsual history and with some serious population density, so I can't really comment on it.
That said, China could do what Ancient Egypt did, but I'm not sure how well that works in the modern age.
Synthesis: the British Empire was built on finding new markets, and it was killed when there were no more new markets left to sell stuff made in England to. At least that's the orthodox economic narrative. It turns out that you eventually need to let the colonies develop on their own, which will entail manufacturing fleeing England for cheaper labor elsewhere. Then and only then will other people be able to continue buying more of your stuff.
It is for this reason that slavery was already on its way out even without the prodding of London - it was already becoming an expensive way to do things. The real use of India was as a market - they'd farm natural resources to buy stuff made in England (hence why Gandhi wanted to ban imports of English textiles). The problem was that as growth proceeded, stuff made in England became cheaper and cheaper while stuff from non-developing colonial India remained just as expensive, so economic growth stalled until World War I broke out.
I should have explicitly said I was considering near-slavery/indentured servitude/forced labor in my discussion of slavery (for example, I also considered the tens of millions of serfs in the Russian Empire in the same timeframe slaves). I think I also mentioned forcing economic dependence...if I didn't, I should have.
And for the record, I'm not anti-English. Compared to the horrors the Belgians visited on the Congo, a lot of what the British did seems humane. That, of course, doesn't exonerate them. Belgium tends to be given a free pass, of course....because of their delicious chocolate? I have no idea.
On another note, have you ever wondered why Taiwan, for example, failed to produce any sort of scathing human rights criticism movement of the mainland, ala White Emigre fleeing from the Russian SFSR? Well, for starters, the White Emigre is just that, white, consisting almost entirely of European Russian populations, who were more likely to be listened to in that time period. The more pressing reason is because Chinese exiles fleeing the communist revolution, upon arriving in Taiwan, tacitly stood by as the Kuomingtang arrest, tortured, and executed anyone remotely connected to leftist movements who wasn't hiding in the mountains.
Are all Chinese emigres responsible? Of course not. Which is probably why current day Taiwan experiences a sort of 'racial tension' that stops well short of a retaliatory race war. But it doesn't change the fact that the state wantonly imprisoned, executed, released and then re-imprisoned the local population "on their behalf". The White Emigre fled to a country where their civil rights and lives were respected, even promoted in the cause of anti-communism. In Taiwan, they enjoyed their comfortable lives until they stepped out of line and joined the poor people with their backs against the walls and in front of the firing line. The end result? Successive Taiwanese governments have zero interest in Beijing's human rights record. Standardizing the written Chinese language, of all things, is a higher priority between the strait.
Well, on the whole I think moving from "feudal caste system" to "selling stuff to the English" is a net gain, even if the gain is uneven enough for some people to suffer horribly along the way. The problem is then uneven gains, not the gain itself. Economic dependence is a funny way to look at international trade, I think. Is Britain now dependent on international trade? Well, probably. It's better off, though. Stuff is cheaper.
On Taiwan: hypocrisy is common enough that I doubt that Taiwan suppressed human rights criticism in order to violate a few rights themselves. That hasn't stopped numerous countries from cheerfully stomping on a few minorities while criticizing others for doing so, so why would it stop Taiwan?
I'm more partial to the idea that the sympathetic appeal common in the West - identify a sympathetic victim of some systematic injustice and use him/her as the emblem of such oppression - may not be universal. As such there is little appeal in screaming "but this protester may be arrested and tortured!". Well, so what? I may not be that person and may have no interest in becoming so. The "first they came for" slippery slope isn't so obviously slippery.
Are there any East Asian states where human rights enjoy even just rhetorical success over, say, another 0.1% of economic growth?
Japan? Before and after the Pacific Wars (not the one with the US, the one with China and the rest of the world), there were vibrant moves towards human rights. They were not always successful, but in the four years I spent in Yokohama, I'd say the Japanese enjoyed a stronger tradition of human rights than I had in Taichung, and even my rights as as an legal resident may have been more stable. Of course, I base that on things as simplistic as "in Taiwan, I've seen people be beaten up by police with some regularity. In Japan, I haven't". The rights didn't just vanish during the "Lost decade" of economic downturn (when I was living there).
Then again, Japan, like the United States, has its own very vicious and blood-stained history.
All I really know about Singapore is that it's a really bizarre place with an unsual history and with some serious population density, so I can't really comment on it.
That said, China could do what Ancient Egypt did, but I'm not sure how well that works in the modern age.
What did Egypt do?
A brief summary of Singapore: de facto one-party state. Although the system is formally fair, the ruling party employs a variety of complicated tactics to suppress challengers. Some are overt, like suing opposition leaders repeatedly for libel (bankrupts cannot run for office). Other tactics include selectively upgrading housing blocks in supporting political zones (arguing that if you voted to oppose policies that fund upgrading in the opinion of the ruling party, you don't deserve upgrades! More than 4/5ths of Singapore's population lives in high-rise public housing). Political zones are carefully drawn to favor the incumbent; a victory of 66% of the popular vote translates to 82 of all 84 seats in Parliament. The government is known to use the popular vote as a safe way to gauge public support.
The current social situation: one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, at a level very close to the US (the World Bank ranks Norway at 2nd, Singapore at 3rd, US at 4th). Crime is rare. Corruption is low.
The government can legally detain anyone without trial indefinitely (a power most recently used to detain suspected Muslim terrorists). It is illegal to assemble in public without a permit. A license is needed to publish in Singapore; the government famously revoked the license of Far Eastern Economic Review in 2006 after it failed to fight a libel suit, filed after publishing an article that suggesting corruption. Note that the FEER had less than four thousand subscribers in Singapore and is hardly an emblem of subversive thought.
Internet access is filtered; the local Media Development Authority maintains a "symbolic" list of 104 websites that cannot be accessed from within Singapore (e.g., playboy.com). Thus far, no political websites have ever been banned (the 104 websites comprise sexual and violent content).
The government maintains an explicit policy of "OB markers" - that there are topics which are not permissible for public discourse without risking being considered to be participating in politics (the penalty for which generally means being ejected from publishing or publicly-funded academia), and that there is deliberately no list of such topics. Also, speech which "may incite racial or religious hostility" is illegal - most recently, three people who posted racist comments on an online forum were charged for sedition and two were imprisoned.
So, very authoritarian. For all that the ruling party still enjoys electoral success at a stable 2/3 of the popular vote.
Synthesis: the British Empire was built on finding new markets, and it was killed when there were no more new markets left to sell stuff made in England to. At least that's the orthodox economic narrative. It turns out that you eventually need to let the colonies develop on their own, which will entail manufacturing fleeing England for cheaper labor elsewhere. Then and only then will other people be able to continue buying more of your stuff.
It is for this reason that slavery was already on its way out even without the prodding of London - it was already becoming an expensive way to do things. The real use of India was as a market - they'd farm natural resources to buy stuff made in England (hence why Gandhi wanted to ban imports of English textiles). The problem was that as growth proceeded, stuff made in England became cheaper and cheaper while stuff from non-developing colonial India remained just as expensive, so economic growth stalled until World War I broke out.
I should have explicitly said I was considering near-slavery/indentured servitude/forced labor in my discussion of slavery (for example, I also considered the tens of millions of serfs in the Russian Empire in the same timeframe slaves). I think I also mentioned forcing economic dependence...if I didn't, I should have.
And for the record, I'm not anti-English. Compared to the horrors the Belgians visited on the Congo, a lot of what the British did seems humane. That, of course, doesn't exonerate them. Belgium tends to be given a free pass, of course....because of their delicious chocolate? I have no idea.
On another note, have you ever wondered why Taiwan, for example, failed to produce any sort of scathing human rights criticism movement of the mainland, ala White Emigre fleeing from the Russian SFSR? Well, for starters, the White Emigre is just that, white, consisting almost entirely of European Russian populations, who were more likely to be listened to in that time period. The more pressing reason is because Chinese exiles fleeing the communist revolution, upon arriving in Taiwan, tacitly stood by as the Kuomingtang arrest, tortured, and executed anyone remotely connected to leftist movements who wasn't hiding in the mountains.
Are all Chinese emigres responsible? Of course not. Which is probably why current day Taiwan experiences a sort of 'racial tension' that stops well short of a retaliatory race war. But it doesn't change the fact that the state wantonly imprisoned, executed, released and then re-imprisoned the local population "on their behalf". The White Emigre fled to a country where their civil rights and lives were respected, even promoted in the cause of anti-communism. In Taiwan, they enjoyed their comfortable lives until they stepped out of line and joined the poor people with their backs against the walls and in front of the firing line. The end result? Successive Taiwanese governments have zero interest in Beijing's human rights record. Standardizing the written Chinese language, of all things, is a higher priority between the strait.
Well, on the whole I think moving from "feudal caste system" to "selling stuff to the English" is a net gain, even if the gain is uneven enough for some people to suffer horribly along the way. The problem is then uneven gains, not the gain itself. Economic dependence is a funny way to look at international trade, I think. Is Britain now dependent on international trade? Well, probably. It's better off, though. Stuff is cheaper.
On Taiwan: hypocrisy is common enough that I doubt that Taiwan suppressed human rights criticism in order to violate a few rights themselves. That hasn't stopped numerous countries from cheerfully stomping on a few minorities while criticizing others for doing so, so why would it stop Taiwan?
I'm more partial to the idea that the sympathetic appeal common in the West - identify a sympathetic victim of some systematic injustice and use him/her as the emblem of such oppression - may not be universal. As such there is little appeal in screaming "but this protester may be arrested and tortured!". Well, so what? I may not be that person and may have no interest in becoming so. The "first they came for" slippery slope isn't so obviously slippery.
Are there any East Asian states where human rights enjoy even just rhetorical success over, say, another 0.1% of economic growth?
Japan? Before and after the Pacific Wars (not the one with the US, the one with China and the rest of the world), there were vibrant moves towards human rights. They were not always successful, but in the four years I spent in Yokohama, I'd say the Japanese enjoyed a stronger tradition of human rights than I had in Taichung, and even my rights as as an legal resident may have been more stable. Of course, I base that on things as simplistic as "in Taiwan, I've seen people be beaten up by police with some regularity. In Japan, I haven't". The rights didn't just vanish during the "Lost decade" of economic downturn (when I was living there).
Then again, Japan, like the United States, has its own very vicious and blood-stained history.
Japan also had a system of rights written for them by the United States after WW2.
I am sceptical that Japan is sympathetic to rights reform; Japan has problems with racism, xenophobia, and integration of local ethnic minorities.
Synthesis: the British Empire was built on finding new markets, and it was killed when there were no more new markets left to sell stuff made in England to. At least that's the orthodox economic narrative. It turns out that you eventually need to let the colonies develop on their own, which will entail manufacturing fleeing England for cheaper labor elsewhere. Then and only then will other people be able to continue buying more of your stuff.
It is for this reason that slavery was already on its way out even without the prodding of London - it was already becoming an expensive way to do things. The real use of India was as a market - they'd farm natural resources to buy stuff made in England (hence why Gandhi wanted to ban imports of English textiles). The problem was that as growth proceeded, stuff made in England became cheaper and cheaper while stuff from non-developing colonial India remained just as expensive, so economic growth stalled until World War I broke out.
I should have explicitly said I was considering near-slavery/indentured servitude/forced labor in my discussion of slavery (for example, I also considered the tens of millions of serfs in the Russian Empire in the same timeframe slaves). I think I also mentioned forcing economic dependence...if I didn't, I should have.
And for the record, I'm not anti-English. Compared to the horrors the Belgians visited on the Congo, a lot of what the British did seems humane. That, of course, doesn't exonerate them. Belgium tends to be given a free pass, of course....because of their delicious chocolate? I have no idea.
On another note, have you ever wondered why Taiwan, for example, failed to produce any sort of scathing human rights criticism movement of the mainland, ala White Emigre fleeing from the Russian SFSR? Well, for starters, the White Emigre is just that, white, consisting almost entirely of European Russian populations, who were more likely to be listened to in that time period. The more pressing reason is because Chinese exiles fleeing the communist revolution, upon arriving in Taiwan, tacitly stood by as the Kuomingtang arrest, tortured, and executed anyone remotely connected to leftist movements who wasn't hiding in the mountains.
Are all Chinese emigres responsible? Of course not. Which is probably why current day Taiwan experiences a sort of 'racial tension' that stops well short of a retaliatory race war. But it doesn't change the fact that the state wantonly imprisoned, executed, released and then re-imprisoned the local population "on their behalf". The White Emigre fled to a country where their civil rights and lives were respected, even promoted in the cause of anti-communism. In Taiwan, they enjoyed their comfortable lives until they stepped out of line and joined the poor people with their backs against the walls and in front of the firing line. The end result? Successive Taiwanese governments have zero interest in Beijing's human rights record. Standardizing the written Chinese language, of all things, is a higher priority between the strait.
Well, on the whole I think moving from "feudal caste system" to "selling stuff to the English" is a net gain, even if the gain is uneven enough for some people to suffer horribly along the way. The problem is then uneven gains, not the gain itself. Economic dependence is a funny way to look at international trade, I think. Is Britain now dependent on international trade? Well, probably. It's better off, though. Stuff is cheaper.
On Taiwan: hypocrisy is common enough that I doubt that Taiwan suppressed human rights criticism in order to violate a few rights themselves. That hasn't stopped numerous countries from cheerfully stomping on a few minorities while criticizing others for doing so, so why would it stop Taiwan?
I'm more partial to the idea that the sympathetic appeal common in the West - identify a sympathetic victim of some systematic injustice and use him/her as the emblem of such oppression - may not be universal. As such there is little appeal in screaming "but this protester may be arrested and tortured!". Well, so what? I may not be that person and may have no interest in becoming so. The "first they came for" slippery slope isn't so obviously slippery.
Are there any East Asian states where human rights enjoy even just rhetorical success over, say, another 0.1% of economic growth?
Japan? Before and after the Pacific Wars (not the one with the US, the one with China and the rest of the world), there were vibrant moves towards human rights. They were not always successful, but in the four years I spent in Yokohama, I'd say the Japanese enjoyed a stronger tradition of human rights than I had in Taichung, and even my rights as as an legal resident may have been more stable. Of course, I base that on things as simplistic as "in Taiwan, I've seen people be beaten up by police with some regularity. In Japan, I haven't". The rights didn't just vanish during the "Lost decade" of economic downturn (when I was living there).
Then again, Japan, like the United States, has its own very vicious and blood-stained history.
Japan also had a system of rights written for them by the United States after WW2.
I am sceptical that Japan is sympathetic to rights reform; Japan has problems with racism, xenophobia, and integration of local ethnic minorities.
Undoubtly--you only need look at the Japanese "underclass" that is shunned for ancestral reasons (their name escapes me at the moment). And they are, without a doubt, ethnically Japanese. That's not even beginning on Koreans and Vietnamese in Japan. That being said, the major proponents of free rights in the Western World have some of the bloodiest histories possible.
Racism, xenophobia, forced assimilation all have a long standing history in the United States (not to mention slavery which, even including the Empire's wartime slavery, Japan cannot hope to compare to the mass bondage of blacks and mixed-raced populations). That doesn't stop the United States from having a culture that is sympathetic to human rights, indeed, I would argue that's part of the reason. Americans didn't just wake up one day and decide, "You know, completely forgetting about three hundred years of black slavery, I think human rights is a noble cause to pursue." Millions of slaves don't just vanish, obviously--but I personally don't believe that the largest slave economy of the late 19th century (with the possible exception of Czarist Russia) makes the population as a whole ineligible from enjoying some success in the field of human rights, nor does the very, very large disparity in health and wealth between whites and blacks. Of course, a lot of Americans (and others) would argue that poverty has nothing to do with human rights.
Honestly, all nations that even profess to being concerned with human rights--and have any sort of capacity to do anything about it--have bloody, racist, and genocidal histories. You just have to dig sufficiently deep. Western Europe and Britain included.
That's true, the point is that some countries are using their capacity to do things to do something, while other countries are sitting on their hands. Japan as a rich first-world nation could do a lot more about its minorities and underclasses, for instance.
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FandyienBut Otto, what about us? Registered Userregular
edited October 2009
My brother is in Dalian right now teaching English. The biggest celebrations are in Beijing - where foreigners aren't allowed to leave their hotel rooms all day - and everywhere else there are just a few fireworks and stuff.
That's true, the point is that some countries are using their capacity to do things to do something, while other countries are sitting on their hands. Japan as a rich first-world nation could do a lot more about its minorities and underclasses, for instance.
There's the problem--you're absolutely correct, but Japan is still far ahead of us when it comes to income disparity (I say this as a person who believes less income disparity is better than more of it). The United States is still, by many measures, the wealthiest nation in the world, and yet we could do far more about our racial minorities and our huge population of working (and, nowadays, increasingly non-working) poor. Japan has us beat when it comes to fighting poverty by a large margin (and even then, they're far behind countries like Singapore and Switzerland). But where is the line drawn?
Over here, there's the issue of access health care, which a lot of people (myself included) think is as important a civil right, if not more so, than freedom of assembly. At the risk of wondering further off topic, the United States is in a very unique, and I would say, very bad, position on this matter. Every day, there are very angry groups of people (trying to avoid the word 'mob' at all costs), demanding the President's head on a stick (or, in lesser cases, comparing him unfavorably to Adolf Hitler) for 'using their capacity'.
Frankly, I think we an America are sitting on our hands. And if people were sending me death threats about it, I'd sit on my hands too. The Chinese government may be very powerful, but they cannot just magically wave a wand and make everything better anymore than we can.
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BarcardiAll the WizardsUnder A Rock: AfganistanRegistered Userregular
looking at these pictures i have to wonder if any Chinese are allowed to look happy or look like they are having fun in pictures, or if they are even allowed to have fun period, or maybe they just dont like fun. Lets see some smiles and people pointing and cheering.
edit: not allowed to leave, why not?.... i mean... why not show off?
My brother is in Dalian right now teaching English. The biggest celebrations are in Beijing - where foreigners aren't allowed to leave their hotel rooms all day - and everywhere else there are just a few fireworks and stuff.
Foreigners aren't allowed to leave their hotel rooms?? Hail the glorious PRC and its fine policies... If this is true the fact people can defend this government in this day and age is insane. The Chinese government is an ongoing disaster of epic proportions, and soon we will all be stuck paying the piper.
This comes back a lot to our tariffs discussion of a few weeks back. China must be made to reform, and we must use the tools available to us to do it. So happy 60th China, lets hope that by your 70th birthday we can again wish a happy independence day to Tibet, and the other regions which have no desire to be part of you and see a democratically elected government celebrating its new environmental and human rights reform.
Of course, what I imagine we will see is a 'wealthier' china where a class of super elites exploits the workers and the environment in even more horrifying ways, and all the while exploiting free trade laws to make it impossible to maintain good working and environmental standards overseas.
It looks pretty typical of what you see in national celebrations in that part of the world. I've been to my share of Founding Days (which sucked because they are on January 1st, and the western New Years Day is still a pretty big deal in Taiwan), and people do not smile much there either.
I like to think that it's because people have a better historical understanding of the event than most people expect, and are more somber in their reflections of it accordingly. I kind of think Americans shouldn't be whooping up July 4th that much either, but again, that's just me.
Tbloxham, I don't know if this changes your opinion, but you know that the Beijing Government asked almost all of its Chinese residents in the city not to leave their homes either? With the exception of the 30,000 guests anyway (not much in a city of several million).
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BarcardiAll the WizardsUnder A Rock: AfganistanRegistered Userregular
It looks pretty typical of what you see in national celebrations in that part of the world. I've been to my share of Founding Days (which sucked because they are on January 1st, and the western New Years Day is still a pretty big deal in Taiwan), and people do not smile much there either.
I like to think that it's because people have a better historical understanding of the event than most people expect, and are more somber in their reflections of it accordingly. I kind of think Americans shouldn't be whooping up July 4th that much either, but again, that's just me.
Tbloxham, I don't know if this changes your opinion, but you know that the Beijing Government asked almost all of its Chinese residents in the city not to leave their homes either? With the exception of the 30,000 guests anyway (not much in a city of several million).
I guess i just have the more ... say italian view of life, its short so its not worth wasting being serious all the time. Is the after-party at least some fun? Some nice boozen in the back alleys? I mean, there is taking life seriously yes, but then there is taking life too seriously. Maybe I should just be looking into Shanghai or something.
It looks pretty typical of what you see in national celebrations in that part of the world. I've been to my share of Founding Days (which sucked because they are on January 1st, and the western New Years Day is still a pretty big deal in Taiwan), and people do not smile much there either.
I like to think that it's because people have a better historical understanding of the event than most people expect, and are more somber in their reflections of it accordingly. I kind of think Americans shouldn't be whooping up July 4th that much either, but again, that's just me.
Tbloxham, I don't know if this changes your opinion, but you know that the Beijing Government asked almost all of its Chinese residents in the city not to leave their homes either? With the exception of the 30,000 guests anyway (not much in a city of several million).
Changes it for the worse in fact, excellent to know that even on a day of celebration the Chinese government misses no chance to grind its underclass underfoot for the sake of appearances and the lifestyles of its cronies.
China will continue to blaze ahead full speed until they feel that it's no longer in their best interests to do so. When it comes to collective action they have the western world beat, hands down.
I think once they decide to go green, they will, and with amazing alacrity. Already can see some of this taking effect in small doses.
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
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BarcardiAll the WizardsUnder A Rock: AfganistanRegistered Userregular
China will continue to blaze ahead full speed until they feel that it's no longer in their best interests to do so. When it comes to collective action they have the western world beat, hands down.
I think once they decide to go green, they will, and with amazing alacrity. Already can see some of this taking effect in small doses.
In regards to that, China is actually going to accelerate building of coal plants as backup for if all the wind farms / solar farms go down / lose wind / it gets cloudy.
It looks pretty typical of what you see in national celebrations in that part of the world. I've been to my share of Founding Days (which sucked because they are on January 1st, and the western New Years Day is still a pretty big deal in Taiwan), and people do not smile much there either.
I like to think that it's because people have a better historical understanding of the event than most people expect, and are more somber in their reflections of it accordingly. I kind of think Americans shouldn't be whooping up July 4th that much either, but again, that's just me.
Tbloxham, I don't know if this changes your opinion, but you know that the Beijing Government asked almost all of its Chinese residents in the city not to leave their homes either? With the exception of the 30,000 guests anyway (not much in a city of several million).
I guess i just have the more ... say italian view of life, its short so its not worth wasting being serious all the time. Is the after-party at least some fun? Some nice boozen in the back alleys? I mean, there is taking life seriously yes, but then there is taking life too seriously. Maybe I should just be looking into Shanghai or something.
The Italian view of life is not the wrong one, of course. Honestly, after Founding Day 'Celebrations', most people just go home because, well, it's a little cold on January 1st. Some people drink, I guess. I don't think Taiwanese people really need an excuse to drink, we share alcoholism traditions with Korea and Japan. There definitely are not any well-established after parties. A lot of people don't bother at all.
During my stint with the ROCA, on September 3rd (Armed Forces Day), the Ministry of Defense so graciously gave us the day off to spend as short leave. We took buses to town and, for pretty much the only time in my service term, we wore our uniforms and didn't claim we weren't soldiers. Normally, we'd switch to the equivalent of Salvation Army clothes and claim we were laborers from the country side. Some guys would claim they were Vietnamese.
In retrospect, it wasn't all that good of an idea, since instead of being generally treated benignly and generally ignored, everyone just stared at us, as though we were cracking down on communists and about to break their skulls with our fists. There were a couple bars that dropped some very non-subtle hints that we were not welcome, Armed Forces Day or not (which was fine by me, I barely drank the entire fourteen months, I had almost no money). We ended going to a McDonalds next to a SOGO department store. There were some grade school kids who waved little flags at us and smiled when they saw us. Bless their little patriotic hearts, they probably hadn't yet heard story from their parents or grandparents about how the National Revolutionary Army used to beat and kill women and children with rifle butts, and the KMT used to shoot dissidents in the mouth (Soviets did it to the back of the head, Taiwanese do it in the front of the mouth).
Then again, Taichung is kind of an anti-military town (or it was). I've heard it's much nicer in Taipei. And maybe Taiwanese people don't know how to enjoy ourselves, unlike Italians...heh.
China will continue to blaze ahead full speed until they feel that it's no longer in their best interests to do so. When it comes to collective action they have the western world beat, hands down.
I think once they decide to go green, they will, and with amazing alacrity. Already can see some of this taking effect in small doses.
Again, nothing but dreams. China can't afford to become environmental, all its 'reforms' are simply in place to make it cheaper to look after its serf underclass. All these things the article mentions as environmental reforms are quite simply people being poor, the rich will be driving humvees, using half full driers and pouring billions of gallons of toxins into the water supply.
China will continue to blaze ahead full speed until they feel that it's no longer in their best interests to do so. When it comes to collective action they have the western world beat, hands down.
I think once they decide to go green, they will, and with amazing alacrity. Already can see some of this taking effect in small doses.
Again, nothing but dreams. China can't afford to become environmental, all its 'reforms' are simply in place to make it cheaper to look after its serf underclass. All these things the article mentions as environmental reforms are quite simply people being poor, the rich will be driving humvees, using half full driers and pouring billions of gallons of toxins into the water supply.
They can't afford it yet. Hopefully they start taking environmental concerns more seriously before they completely salt the earth there.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
I'm on what is basically the Chinese facebook (Xiaonei). During the Tiananmen anniversary, there was some pretty heavy censorship on numbers or anything that could remotely be related to tiananmen on the site. You'd have to use some pretty convoluted variations to post stuff. Lots of Chinese sites were also self-censoring.
My ex-roommate came back from China over the summer, then posted on Facebook about not being able to respond to birthday well-wishing 'cause she couldn't access any US sites.
Another Chinese ex-roommate I briefly talked politics with (I was in a Taiwanese independence student group back then (as the only one who wasn't actually for it ironically enough)) said that for him, the thing that matters the most is that the Chinese government made sure people had food.
China will continue to blaze ahead full speed until they feel that it's no longer in their best interests to do so. When it comes to collective action they have the western world beat, hands down.
I think once they decide to go green, they will, and with amazing alacrity. Already can see some of this taking effect in small doses.
Again, nothing but dreams. China can't afford to become environmental, all its 'reforms' are simply in place to make it cheaper to look after its serf underclass. All these things the article mentions as environmental reforms are quite simply people being poor, the rich will be driving humvees, using half full driers and pouring billions of gallons of toxins into the water supply.
They can't afford it yet. Hopefully they start taking environmental concerns more seriously before they completely salt the earth there.
Dark Champion, I wouldn't bother trying. Beijing could order the closure of every polluting factory in the country, at the point of police enforcement, and Tbloxham would consider it another effort to crush the underclass into further poverty and legal action at the point of the gun, disguised as environmentalism.
Which is a valid claim. Of course, China opening polluting factories all over the country is just more of their blatant disregard for the environment and suffering of the resident populations, disguised as economic growth.
And China not doing anything is just Beijing's usual callous inaction in regards to the rest of the world, disguised as moderation.
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BarcardiAll the WizardsUnder A Rock: AfganistanRegistered Userregular
It looks pretty typical of what you see in national celebrations in that part of the world. I've been to my share of Founding Days (which sucked because they are on January 1st, and the western New Years Day is still a pretty big deal in Taiwan), and people do not smile much there either.
I like to think that it's because people have a better historical understanding of the event than most people expect, and are more somber in their reflections of it accordingly. I kind of think Americans shouldn't be whooping up July 4th that much either, but again, that's just me.
Tbloxham, I don't know if this changes your opinion, but you know that the Beijing Government asked almost all of its Chinese residents in the city not to leave their homes either? With the exception of the 30,000 guests anyway (not much in a city of several million).
I guess i just have the more ... say italian view of life, its short so its not worth wasting being serious all the time. Is the after-party at least some fun? Some nice boozen in the back alleys? I mean, there is taking life seriously yes, but then there is taking life too seriously. Maybe I should just be looking into Shanghai or something.
The Italian view of life is not the wrong one, of course. Honestly, after Founding Day 'Celebrations', most people just go home because, well, it's a little cold on January 1st. Some people drink, I guess. I don't think Taiwanese people really need an excuse to drink, we share alcoholism traditions with Korea and Japan. There definitely are not any well-established after parties. A lot of people don't bother at all.
During my stint with the ROCA, on September 3rd (Armed Forces Day), the Ministry of Defense so graciously gave us the day off to spend as short leave. We took buses to town and, for pretty much the only time in my service term, we wore our uniforms and didn't claim we weren't soldiers. Normally, we'd switch to the equivalent of Salvation Army clothes and claim we were laborers from the country side. Some guys would claim they were Vietnamese.
In retrospect, it wasn't all that good of an idea, since instead of being generally treated benignly and generally ignored, everyone just stared at us, as though we were cracking down on communists and about to break their skulls with our fists. There were a couple bars that dropped some very non-subtle hints that we were not welcome, Armed Forces Day or not (which was fine by me, I barely drank the entire fourteen months, I had almost no money). We ended going to a McDonalds next to a SOGO department store. There were some grade school kids who waved little flags at us and smiled when they saw us. Bless their hearts, they probably hadn't yet heard story from their parents or grandparents about how the National Revolutionary Army used to beat and kill women and children with rifle butts, and the KMT used to shoot dissidents in the mouth (Soviets did it to the back of the head, Taiwanese do it in the front of the mouth).
Then again, Taichung is kind of an anti-military town (or it was). Maybe Taiwanese people don't know how to enjoy ourselves, unlike Italians...heh.
Forgive me if you think i was insulting you or anything, i wasnt meaning to. I do understand that its a different view and everything. Just different strokes for different folks.
China will continue to blaze ahead full speed until they feel that it's no longer in their best interests to do so. When it comes to collective action they have the western world beat, hands down.
I think once they decide to go green, they will, and with amazing alacrity. Already can see some of this taking effect in small doses.
China is (wisely) investing in every form of energy they can. Fossil fuels, nukes, wind/solar. They are bound and determined not to be the ones without a chair when energy gets expensive again.
It looks pretty typical of what you see in national celebrations in that part of the world. I've been to my share of Founding Days (which sucked because they are on January 1st, and the western New Years Day is still a pretty big deal in Taiwan), and people do not smile much there either.
I like to think that it's because people have a better historical understanding of the event than most people expect, and are more somber in their reflections of it accordingly. I kind of think Americans shouldn't be whooping up July 4th that much either, but again, that's just me.
Tbloxham, I don't know if this changes your opinion, but you know that the Beijing Government asked almost all of its Chinese residents in the city not to leave their homes either? With the exception of the 30,000 guests anyway (not much in a city of several million).
I guess i just have the more ... say italian view of life, its short so its not worth wasting being serious all the time. Is the after-party at least some fun? Some nice boozen in the back alleys? I mean, there is taking life seriously yes, but then there is taking life too seriously. Maybe I should just be looking into Shanghai or something.
The Italian view of life is not the wrong one, of course. Honestly, after Founding Day 'Celebrations', most people just go home because, well, it's a little cold on January 1st. Some people drink, I guess. I don't think Taiwanese people really need an excuse to drink, we share alcoholism traditions with Korea and Japan. There definitely are not any well-established after parties. A lot of people don't bother at all.
During my stint with the ROCA, on September 3rd (Armed Forces Day), the Ministry of Defense so graciously gave us the day off to spend as short leave. We took buses to town and, for pretty much the only time in my service term, we wore our uniforms and didn't claim we weren't soldiers. Normally, we'd switch to the equivalent of Salvation Army clothes and claim we were laborers from the country side. Some guys would claim they were Vietnamese.
In retrospect, it wasn't all that good of an idea, since instead of being generally treated benignly and generally ignored, everyone just stared at us, as though we were cracking down on communists and about to break their skulls with our fists. There were a couple bars that dropped some very non-subtle hints that we were not welcome, Armed Forces Day or not (which was fine by me, I barely drank the entire fourteen months, I had almost no money). We ended going to a McDonalds next to a SOGO department store. There were some grade school kids who waved little flags at us and smiled when they saw us. Bless their hearts, they probably hadn't yet heard story from their parents or grandparents about how the National Revolutionary Army used to beat and kill women and children with rifle butts, and the KMT used to shoot dissidents in the mouth (Soviets did it to the back of the head, Taiwanese do it in the front of the mouth).
Then again, Taichung is kind of an anti-military town (or it was). Maybe Taiwanese people don't know how to enjoy ourselves, unlike Italians...heh.
Forgive me if you think i was insulting you or anything, i wasnt meaning to. I do understand that its a different view and everything. Just different strokes for different folks.
Nah, no insult taken. Taken by itself, standing outside in the windy cold for hours to watch some banners pass by and some local politician give a speech is kind of stupid. But that's patriotism for you.
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Compare that to, say, the Great Depression, or China's prior situation, where the vast poverty meant 1) a MAJORITY of people highly desiring change, even if it meant getting run over by tanks, 2) that the people who were still living large were not living nearly as large as they could because they had fewer people to invest heavily in, 3) the poor were EVERYWHERE, and you could not escape them without fleeing civilization.
When it is no longer a significant advantage to help the poor, the poor may not be bothered with overmuch.
You see, they don't want things like the government taking over the healthcare industry and cutting their medicare.
...And?
We have yet to see if China avoids the retardation factor when their population has an equivalent saturation of middle class persons.
Exactly.
Or whatever the hell is up with the Chavs.
Classes started less than three weeks ago.
How does that make sense?
Loren's already replied to this, but I'd like to add some perspective.
Let's wind the clock back to 1975. Mao is still General Secretary. Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore are all busy leaping forward. Singapore is ten years into independence and South Korea is fifteen years into Park Chung-Hee's dictatorship.
Yes, dictatorship. You read that right. At this time, during the Taiwanese miracle and South Korean miracle and Singapore miracle, Chiang Kai-Shek is busy perpetrating the "white terror" in Taiwan, imprisioning or executing over a hundred thousand people. Park Chung-Hee shut down the free press, tortured and executed suspected dissidents, and rigged elections. Lee Kuan Yew shut down the free press and arrested and permanently imprisoned many opposition leaders. Singapore still has no free press, by the way, and the governing party sued another opposition leader into bankruptcy (and therefore electoral ineligibility) just a few years ago.
Hong Kong managed to skip this, by virtue of the British army having shut down its leftist newspapers and schools and arrested the rebels about ten years earlier.
All this doesn't seep into the American consciousness, apparently, probably due to all these East Asian tigers being nominally on the Allied side of the Cold War divide. Then the rebels in Hong Kong agitating for independence from the British and being arrested and executed for their pains are just commie scum, aye?
Compared to Chiang Kai-Shek's civil rights track record, Beijing is almost saintlike.
Were you reading this guy? He's a big advocate of the "benign colonalism" revisionist theory. There's also Paul Romer marching around pushing his "charter cities" idea, with Hong Kong as his ideal.
If you like, the idea of importing legal systems and institutions in order to promote growth isn't new. It does remain controversial, though.
Synthesis: the British Empire was built on finding new markets, and it was killed when there were no more new markets left to sell stuff made in England to. At least that's the orthodox economic narrative. It turns out that you eventually need to let the colonies develop on their own, which will entail manufacturing fleeing England for cheaper labor elsewhere. Then and only then will other people be able to continue buying more of your stuff.
It is for this reason that slavery was already on its way out even without the prodding of London - it was already becoming an expensive way to do things. The real use of India was as a market - they'd farm natural resources to buy stuff made in England (hence why Gandhi wanted to ban imports of English textiles). The problem was that as growth proceeded, stuff made in England became cheaper and cheaper while stuff from non-developing colonial India remained just as expensive, so economic growth stalled until World War I broke out.
Growth only proceeded as long the Empire kept finding new buyers by removing trade barriers by force, not finding new slaves by force. Growth is a weird topic.
A real-gdp graph will be more appropriate than a nominal graph, but I can't find one.
Anyway, I'm not really sure how this thread got diverted to comparing the PRC now with Europe of two centuries ago; the most accurate comparison is the PRC's fellow East Asian states, since their economic models are extremely similar (export-led industrialization). Meaning: make lots of low-quality stuff cheap, hope the West buys said stuff, use dollars to fund more human and industrial capital. This eventually raises incomes (= drives labor costs up). For obvious reasons, 19th century Europe is a poor point of reference for such a growth strategy.
In this vein, we can predict further human-rights savagery, since export-led growth works best initially with depressed wages. All this (and environmental pollution) is effectively a subsidy on industrialization. So Chinese labor leaders, workplace safety advocates, etc. can expect to have an unhappy career for the next few decades or so. This will last until the opposing pressure of domestic underconsumption makes itself felt (which will be principally when the productivity of labor becomes similar to that in the the first world. If China overshoots, it gets to experience deflation like Japan).
I would say that China today is the freest its ever been.
The people have more civil rights, more freedom of speech and more say in their goverment. Then in any time in China's 6000 year history.
The status of women is the best it has ever been. With the best rates of education and civil rights for them.
The economy has never been more inclusive, with real observable economic growth that is creating an expanding middle class.
That being said.... This is not an actual endorsment of China(PRC), but an attempt to put things into perspective. Because every goverment before Deng Xiaoping? D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:
Happy birthday China(PRC).
I should have explicitly said I was considering near-slavery/indentured servitude/forced labor in my discussion of slavery (for example, I also considered the tens of millions of serfs in the Russian Empire in the same timeframe slaves). I think I also mentioned forcing economic dependence...if I didn't, I should have.
And for the record, I'm not anti-English. Compared to the horrors the Belgians visited on the Congo, a lot of what the British did seems humane. That, of course, doesn't exonerate them. Belgium tends to be given a free pass, of course....because of their delicious chocolate? I have no idea.
On another note, have you ever wondered why Taiwan, for example, failed to produce any sort of scathing human rights criticism movement of the mainland, ala White Emigre fleeing from the Russian SFSR? Well, for starters, the White Emigre is just that, white, consisting almost entirely of European Russian populations, who were more likely to be listened to in that time period. The more pressing reason is because Chinese exiles fleeing the communist revolution, upon arriving in Taiwan, tacitly stood by as the Kuomingtang arrest, tortured, and executed anyone remotely connected to leftist movements who wasn't hiding in the mountains.
Are all Chinese emigres responsible? Of course not. Which is probably why current day Taiwan experiences a sort of 'racial tension' that stops well short of a retaliatory race war. But it doesn't change the fact that the state wantonly imprisoned, executed, released and then re-imprisoned the local population "on their behalf". The White Emigre fled to a country where their civil rights and lives were respected, even promoted in the cause of anti-communism. In Taiwan, they enjoyed their comfortable lives until they stepped out of line and joined the poor people with their backs against the walls and in front of the firing line. The end result? Successive Taiwanese governments have zero interest in Beijing's human rights record. Standardizing the written Chinese language, of all things, is a higher priority between the strait.
And most Americans genuinely don't care to know about the shadier parts of American history.
The PRCs I've talked to (my school principal used to go to Beijing to offer scholarships every year) tend to have a "so what" attitude to it. It's covered up about as well as you might expect it to be (i.e., very badly).
The problem is that it's hard to see why certain foreigners seem to care so much about it (a problem common everywhere is that "your government sucks" can sound very similar to "you and your countrymen suck").
It's like saying to an American, "I refuse to believe any of you have freedom, because one of your countrymen got picked up and detained without trial in Gitmo". Err, okay. Or to pick another example, "your President's war powers was and still are ill-defined, therefore your country's military has no legitimacy". It just doesn't come off well at all.
Many Americans care a lot about aspects of freedom like being able to hold peaceful protests on the street. My impression is that many other people like aspects of freedom like being able to be certain that no protests will interrupt your day or threaten to destabilize your neighbourhood.
There's an anecdote that the attitude on the street towards the 'tank man' (if it isn't ignorance) is that the tank driver was awfully nice in not running the guy over (and video does indicate the driver attempted to turn and go around the protester, who moved). Because the tank driver is just doing his job, and since the aims of the protesters isn't best achieved by putting tank drivers in a difficult position, the protester should have gotten out of the way.
It's a bizarre worldview, really. But such as it is.
It's not a very unusual worldview, it's simply myopia. China, right now, is still celebrating getting to eat, in many cases. Only so much of the population has gotten over getting to eat. When they are used to being able to eat, they will very likely start considering other things, like having control over their environment, like other historical risen middle classes have.
China is still living off of low standards.
I once spoke with a self-proclaimed Neo-Stalinist. He missed how things used to be. He missed having a guaranteed meal every day, with chocolate milk once a week. Because he was not so secure in his new life in the states.
Well, on the whole I think moving from "feudal caste system" to "selling stuff to the English" is a net gain, even if the gain is uneven enough for some people to suffer horribly along the way. The problem is then uneven gains, not the gain itself. Economic dependence is a funny way to look at international trade, I think. Is Britain now dependent on international trade? Well, probably. It's better off, though. Stuff is cheaper.
On Taiwan: hypocrisy is common enough that I doubt that Taiwan suppressed human rights criticism in order to violate a few rights themselves. That hasn't stopped numerous countries from cheerfully stomping on a few minorities while criticizing others for doing so, so why would it stop Taiwan?
I'm more partial to the idea that the sympathetic appeal common in the West - identify a sympathetic victim of some systematic injustice and use him/her as the emblem of such oppression - may not be universal. As such there is little appeal in screaming "but this protester may be arrested and tortured!". Well, so what? I may not be that person and may have no interest in becoming so. The "first they came for" slippery slope isn't so obviously slippery.
Are there any East Asian states where human rights enjoy even just rhetorical success over, say, another 0.1% of economic growth?
Really, it likely comes from the same instinct as what drives people to add lead to paint and fake protein to food, but far more reasonable.
I present to you Singapore, which has already gone far beyond subsistence and into first-world wealth, but has yet to agitate substantially against authoritarianism.
Thus far the worldwide historical trend has been for middle classes to generally demand more democracy, I know. But Taiwan essentially disassembled itself and South Korea never bothered to establish the legitimacy of the dictatorship as a long-term approach to governance. The dictatorship still has a stain of American puppet governance (the South Korean democratization movement had a significant element of anti-Americanism in it) - it was never viewed as properly legitimate (for all that, the ruling party went on the win the first democratic election after dictatorship. The people protested for elections - and then elected the same leaders!).
Earlier in the 20th century it was common for powerful governments to go raring off on wild theories of economic governance (Fabian socialism! Dirigisme! No, income-doubling! Patience and Reconciliation!). And some of these were wildly successful, others abject failures. But now the economic mainstream tends to have a strong consensus of What To Do (even with the recent crisis).
So we may see a government that plays its cards correctly just keep sitting on year after year of continued world growth. Possibly?
That said, China could do what Ancient Egypt did, but I'm not sure how well that works in the modern age.
Japan? Before and after the Pacific Wars (not the one with the US, the one with China and the rest of the world), there were vibrant moves towards human rights. They were not always successful, but in the four years I spent in Yokohama, I'd say the Japanese enjoyed a stronger tradition of human rights than I had in Taichung, and even my rights as as an legal resident may have been more stable. Of course, I base that on things as simplistic as "in Taiwan, I've seen people be beaten up by police with some regularity. In Japan, I haven't". The rights didn't just vanish during the "Lost decade" of economic downturn (when I was living there).
Then again, Japan, like the United States, has its own very vicious and blood-stained history.
What did Egypt do?
A brief summary of Singapore: de facto one-party state. Although the system is formally fair, the ruling party employs a variety of complicated tactics to suppress challengers. Some are overt, like suing opposition leaders repeatedly for libel (bankrupts cannot run for office). Other tactics include selectively upgrading housing blocks in supporting political zones (arguing that if you voted to oppose policies that fund upgrading in the opinion of the ruling party, you don't deserve upgrades! More than 4/5ths of Singapore's population lives in high-rise public housing). Political zones are carefully drawn to favor the incumbent; a victory of 66% of the popular vote translates to 82 of all 84 seats in Parliament. The government is known to use the popular vote as a safe way to gauge public support.
The current social situation: one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, at a level very close to the US (the World Bank ranks Norway at 2nd, Singapore at 3rd, US at 4th). Crime is rare. Corruption is low.
The government can legally detain anyone without trial indefinitely (a power most recently used to detain suspected Muslim terrorists). It is illegal to assemble in public without a permit. A license is needed to publish in Singapore; the government famously revoked the license of Far Eastern Economic Review in 2006 after it failed to fight a libel suit, filed after publishing an article that suggesting corruption. Note that the FEER had less than four thousand subscribers in Singapore and is hardly an emblem of subversive thought.
Internet access is filtered; the local Media Development Authority maintains a "symbolic" list of 104 websites that cannot be accessed from within Singapore (e.g., playboy.com). Thus far, no political websites have ever been banned (the 104 websites comprise sexual and violent content).
The government maintains an explicit policy of "OB markers" - that there are topics which are not permissible for public discourse without risking being considered to be participating in politics (the penalty for which generally means being ejected from publishing or publicly-funded academia), and that there is deliberately no list of such topics. Also, speech which "may incite racial or religious hostility" is illegal - most recently, three people who posted racist comments on an online forum were charged for sedition and two were imprisoned.
So, very authoritarian. For all that the ruling party still enjoys electoral success at a stable 2/3 of the popular vote.
Japan also had a system of rights written for them by the United States after WW2.
I am sceptical that Japan is sympathetic to rights reform; Japan has problems with racism, xenophobia, and integration of local ethnic minorities.
Undoubtly--you only need look at the Japanese "underclass" that is shunned for ancestral reasons (their name escapes me at the moment). And they are, without a doubt, ethnically Japanese. That's not even beginning on Koreans and Vietnamese in Japan. That being said, the major proponents of free rights in the Western World have some of the bloodiest histories possible.
Racism, xenophobia, forced assimilation all have a long standing history in the United States (not to mention slavery which, even including the Empire's wartime slavery, Japan cannot hope to compare to the mass bondage of blacks and mixed-raced populations). That doesn't stop the United States from having a culture that is sympathetic to human rights, indeed, I would argue that's part of the reason. Americans didn't just wake up one day and decide, "You know, completely forgetting about three hundred years of black slavery, I think human rights is a noble cause to pursue." Millions of slaves don't just vanish, obviously--but I personally don't believe that the largest slave economy of the late 19th century (with the possible exception of Czarist Russia) makes the population as a whole ineligible from enjoying some success in the field of human rights, nor does the very, very large disparity in health and wealth between whites and blacks. Of course, a lot of Americans (and others) would argue that poverty has nothing to do with human rights.
Honestly, all nations that even profess to being concerned with human rights--and have any sort of capacity to do anything about it--have bloody, racist, and genocidal histories. You just have to dig sufficiently deep. Western Europe and Britain included.
There's the problem--you're absolutely correct, but Japan is still far ahead of us when it comes to income disparity (I say this as a person who believes less income disparity is better than more of it). The United States is still, by many measures, the wealthiest nation in the world, and yet we could do far more about our racial minorities and our huge population of working (and, nowadays, increasingly non-working) poor. Japan has us beat when it comes to fighting poverty by a large margin (and even then, they're far behind countries like Singapore and Switzerland). But where is the line drawn?
Over here, there's the issue of access health care, which a lot of people (myself included) think is as important a civil right, if not more so, than freedom of assembly. At the risk of wondering further off topic, the United States is in a very unique, and I would say, very bad, position on this matter. Every day, there are very angry groups of people (trying to avoid the word 'mob' at all costs), demanding the President's head on a stick (or, in lesser cases, comparing him unfavorably to Adolf Hitler) for 'using their capacity'.
Frankly, I think we an America are sitting on our hands. And if people were sending me death threats about it, I'd sit on my hands too. The Chinese government may be very powerful, but they cannot just magically wave a wand and make everything better anymore than we can.
looking at these pictures i have to wonder if any Chinese are allowed to look happy or look like they are having fun in pictures, or if they are even allowed to have fun period, or maybe they just dont like fun. Lets see some smiles and people pointing and cheering.
edit: not allowed to leave, why not?.... i mean... why not show off?
Foreigners aren't allowed to leave their hotel rooms?? Hail the glorious PRC and its fine policies... If this is true the fact people can defend this government in this day and age is insane. The Chinese government is an ongoing disaster of epic proportions, and soon we will all be stuck paying the piper.
This comes back a lot to our tariffs discussion of a few weeks back. China must be made to reform, and we must use the tools available to us to do it. So happy 60th China, lets hope that by your 70th birthday we can again wish a happy independence day to Tibet, and the other regions which have no desire to be part of you and see a democratically elected government celebrating its new environmental and human rights reform.
Of course, what I imagine we will see is a 'wealthier' china where a class of super elites exploits the workers and the environment in even more horrifying ways, and all the while exploiting free trade laws to make it impossible to maintain good working and environmental standards overseas.
I like to think that it's because people have a better historical understanding of the event than most people expect, and are more somber in their reflections of it accordingly. I kind of think Americans shouldn't be whooping up July 4th that much either, but again, that's just me.
Tbloxham, I don't know if this changes your opinion, but you know that the Beijing Government asked almost all of its Chinese residents in the city not to leave their homes either? With the exception of the 30,000 guests anyway (not much in a city of several million).
I guess i just have the more ... say italian view of life, its short so its not worth wasting being serious all the time. Is the after-party at least some fun? Some nice boozen in the back alleys? I mean, there is taking life seriously yes, but then there is taking life too seriously. Maybe I should just be looking into Shanghai or something.
Changes it for the worse in fact, excellent to know that even on a day of celebration the Chinese government misses no chance to grind its underclass underfoot for the sake of appearances and the lifestyles of its cronies.
I think once they decide to go green, they will, and with amazing alacrity. Already can see some of this taking effect in small doses.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/10/HOOS14SO0T.DTL
In regards to that, China is actually going to accelerate building of coal plants as backup for if all the wind farms / solar farms go down / lose wind / it gets cloudy.
The Italian view of life is not the wrong one, of course. Honestly, after Founding Day 'Celebrations', most people just go home because, well, it's a little cold on January 1st. Some people drink, I guess. I don't think Taiwanese people really need an excuse to drink, we share alcoholism traditions with Korea and Japan. There definitely are not any well-established after parties. A lot of people don't bother at all.
During my stint with the ROCA, on September 3rd (Armed Forces Day), the Ministry of Defense so graciously gave us the day off to spend as short leave. We took buses to town and, for pretty much the only time in my service term, we wore our uniforms and didn't claim we weren't soldiers. Normally, we'd switch to the equivalent of Salvation Army clothes and claim we were laborers from the country side. Some guys would claim they were Vietnamese.
In retrospect, it wasn't all that good of an idea, since instead of being generally treated benignly and generally ignored, everyone just stared at us, as though we were cracking down on communists and about to break their skulls with our fists. There were a couple bars that dropped some very non-subtle hints that we were not welcome, Armed Forces Day or not (which was fine by me, I barely drank the entire fourteen months, I had almost no money). We ended going to a McDonalds next to a SOGO department store. There were some grade school kids who waved little flags at us and smiled when they saw us. Bless their little patriotic hearts, they probably hadn't yet heard story from their parents or grandparents about how the National Revolutionary Army used to beat and kill women and children with rifle butts, and the KMT used to shoot dissidents in the mouth (Soviets did it to the back of the head, Taiwanese do it in the front of the mouth).
Then again, Taichung is kind of an anti-military town (or it was). I've heard it's much nicer in Taipei. And maybe Taiwanese people don't know how to enjoy ourselves, unlike Italians...heh.
Again, nothing but dreams. China can't afford to become environmental, all its 'reforms' are simply in place to make it cheaper to look after its serf underclass. All these things the article mentions as environmental reforms are quite simply people being poor, the rich will be driving humvees, using half full driers and pouring billions of gallons of toxins into the water supply.
They can't afford it yet. Hopefully they start taking environmental concerns more seriously before they completely salt the earth there.
I'm on what is basically the Chinese facebook (Xiaonei). During the Tiananmen anniversary, there was some pretty heavy censorship on numbers or anything that could remotely be related to tiananmen on the site. You'd have to use some pretty convoluted variations to post stuff. Lots of Chinese sites were also self-censoring.
My ex-roommate came back from China over the summer, then posted on Facebook about not being able to respond to birthday well-wishing 'cause she couldn't access any US sites.
Another Chinese ex-roommate I briefly talked politics with (I was in a Taiwanese independence student group back then (as the only one who wasn't actually for it ironically enough)) said that for him, the thing that matters the most is that the Chinese government made sure people had food.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
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Dark Champion, I wouldn't bother trying. Beijing could order the closure of every polluting factory in the country, at the point of police enforcement, and Tbloxham would consider it another effort to crush the underclass into further poverty and legal action at the point of the gun, disguised as environmentalism.
Which is a valid claim. Of course, China opening polluting factories all over the country is just more of their blatant disregard for the environment and suffering of the resident populations, disguised as economic growth.
And China not doing anything is just Beijing's usual callous inaction in regards to the rest of the world, disguised as moderation.
Forgive me if you think i was insulting you or anything, i wasnt meaning to. I do understand that its a different view and everything. Just different strokes for different folks.
China is (wisely) investing in every form of energy they can. Fossil fuels, nukes, wind/solar. They are bound and determined not to be the ones without a chair when energy gets expensive again.
Nah, no insult taken. Taken by itself, standing outside in the windy cold for hours to watch some banners pass by and some local politician give a speech is kind of stupid. But that's patriotism for you.