I have friends with Chinese heritage who say they are trapped between two nationalisms. They will get a flood of hate online from white nationalists on some posts, and a flood of attacks of being a "traitor" from online pro-CCP voices on others, even if they have never been to China, and just see themselves (and really just want to be seen as) Americans.
Chinese language Twitter is its own strange place. Pro Beijing nationalists and CCP critics meet there to battle it out every day, and often drag in anyone posting on nonpolitical topics. I don't know how to measure it, but it is so fiercely polarized, it makes our politics look downright chummy.
Sometimes posters there are attacked from every side, called "wumao" and "traitor to Beijing" in response to the same posts.
And social media has an amplifying effect. So it doesn't take many angry, hyperactive posters for those with Chinese heritage to see a flood of attacks, to feel threatened whichever way they turn.
The rhetoric you lay out sounds like a good start, and it's also worth hammering home that this conflict is about essentialism. What makes a valid country? America is constantly reasserting that countries can be formed under a union of ideals, not just ethnicity. And that union by core ideals holds even while we disagree fiercely on particular implementations. So for those Americans who happen to have Asian heritage, we need to make room for them to be proud of their unique identity, but also validate that they are fully "Americans," with no modifier needed, when they want that.
As a Chinese person who naturalized as a US Citizen, I can only imagine the partisan stupidity going on in Twitter between Chinese Nationalists and Anti-CCP people. Bad arguments going all around. This is pretty good so far. I think one thing Noah and liberals should focus on is deconstructing the idea that liberalism and democratic institutions are a uniquely western cultural construct unsuited for implementation in non-western contexts. This is the number 1 argument used by CCP shills everywhere and it's annoying to see as a Chinese person who likes Democracy myself. It basically makes the essentialist argument that there is something about Chinese people (and by extension PoC in general) that makes them incapable of practicing Democracy apparently due to its inherent "western whiteness" according to these people. I feel like I get mad at progressives getting duped by CCP shills and saying we should disarm ourselves and let the CCP do whatever they want just as much as I get mad at conservatives spreading racist conspiracies about Chinese ppl.
The rhetoric he lays out is most definitely not a good start, and the whole article reads like "but we didn't just do racist things, we did good things in the past too"
The dark side of using WW2-era examples is of course that while the US may have been promoting the Chinese and Chinese-Americans it was virulently demonizing the Japanese and the diaspora in ways that are shockingly nasty to read about today.
In fact, near the end of the war, the official U.S. efforts to portray Chinese Americans in a positive light were also extended to Japanese Americans! This was done because Japanese Americans were enlisting in the military in substantial numbers; also because internment was ending. This is recounted in "The Color of Success". I was very surprised to learn about it!
You mentioned Asians under threat, but I will also point out that China often targets the Chinese diaspora more voraciously (and to the point of having documented cases of overseas university students being told that they're being watched by their classmates—I can't find the article talking about it right this second, but I've heard privately from folks who this has actually happened to in large US universities).
As such, there is actually an interesting phenomenon of the most personal/direct folks under threat from China is the US... also tend to be Chinese-American (and hence, Asian-American from that). This is either from insinuated threats to friends/family abroad or just more concentrated attacks.
This is a random enough corner of the internet (and comments section) for me to be willing to make the point, but I have a lot of the same views as you, have shared a lot of comments/info privately on China... but would never actually step out into the public to do so. It's just not worth the harassment and potential serious risk to friends within Chinese territory. And my parents are from Taiwan!
- Appreciate you grappling with this openly; not a lot of people are doing this.
- Criticism of China (while worthy) gets us where as a country? Are they the cause of our high cost of health care, student debt crises, poor infrastructure, high levels of income inequality, etc.? Feel like the proportion of discourse devoted to the issue is a distraction.
- I have hard time believing this is all America doing good. Surely it's some of it, but it feels ahistorical: 1) Taiwan was still a dictatorship when we changed relations under Nixon; 2) While we talk about human rights and democracy, we neglect calling out Saudi Arabia about Yemen and Israel about Palestine. I know many will claim whataboutism, but I think lack of consistency here elucidates a larger American psychology.
I appreciate the concern here but take issue with the whataboutery and isolationist sentiment here.
1: we are a superpower, we have to do multitasking and covering several things at once. silence on criticism of china in human rights implies acceptance for the same reasons that it does for Saudi Arabia or I-L conflict in the eyes of many in the public and internationally. The threat of an upcoming superpower might encourage domestic improvements like it does in the past which is a good thing but this time around now that the US is more diverse, it should be more about proving Democracy is the best system there is and we are the best at it not Chinese one-party state. Also, why does the fact that critiquing China is somehow "irrelevant" to America's domestic issues and culture wars and is a distraction but similar things are not said about many mid-east issues?
2. Taiwan democratized in the 80s. Our gaps in mid-east does not invalidate the need to defend human rights and democracy elsewhere or in Asia, it just means we need to improve our policy in the mid-east. Easier to do that from where we are now rather than totally give up because mixing and matching is hypocritical. What you are saying is an " elucidation of a larger American psychology" is merely the realities of running foreign relations as a superpower and especially when trying to frame yourself (an imperfect country with an imperfect government) as a leader of the freeworld when you have inherited an imperfect world order. The EU members and sometimes China commits similar crimes in its foreign relations but they have the excuse of being a herd of cats and a despotic one-party regime respectively.
I think it is important for western commentators to scrupulously separate the Chinese people from the CCP as it is the latter, not the former that is causing most of these issues. Conservatives have made it quite apparent that they hate China (whether that is the CCP or Chinese people is irrelevant) I just wish liberals and progressives put aside their partisanship and recognize that opposing the CCP (up to and including with force) is a necessary thing and to do so for the right reasons (to defend democracy where it exists and ensure that it grows in places where it does not)
A lot of self-congratulatory statements in there about the US's democracy. Let's be clear, US democracy is at a crossroads and appears to be failing. Massive budgets for disastrous military adventures in far-flung territories, whilst infrastructure, services, education are crumbling at home. These are signs of decline. Is this what the American people really want? Look at the state of misinformation in Western media. It's a complete and utter shambles. How can a country have a functioning democracy under circumstances where the dissemination of information is so distorted. What is becoming increasingly clear is that when you have concentrated ownership in the corporate media pursuing their own agenda, with a near monopoly on shaping public views, this is surely not good for democracy. You may talk about alternate news media on other digital platforms. But how can one have confidence in those outlets? It's apparent that US democracy seems to be on its last legs.
China, on the other hand, seems in the ascendancy. And, to be frank, this is a return to normal. China is huge - 1.4 billion people. Of course they have a legitimate say in world affairs. And the simple fact that many Westerners can't seem to admit, is that the CCP is great at governance. I don't accept for a second the human rights accusations against China. Are there some HR abuses? Of course there are. Genocide? Nope. There is simply no evidence for it. What evidence do we see? We see a country that has gone from being poor and destitute, to being the largest economy in the world. We see the incomes of hundreds of millions Chinese increase exponentially. And we've seen China rise extraordinarily peacefully. This claptrap about China's supposed "aggressiveness" is simply nonsense. The US has hundreds of military bases surrounding China. Of course they are going to defend themselves. And compare China's rise with that of the UK, Germany, Japan and the US. It's by far more peaceful and benevolent than any of those countries at the same stage of development. It is indeed far more benevolent that the US is right now in world affairs.
The Chinese people like what has happened under the rule of the CCP. Whilst slandering the CCP is not tantamount to slandering Chinese people, the Chinese people will of course be offended by this. Do you think that democracy could have brought about what China has today? All I can say is look at so-called democracies in Africa and India. The truth is that Western-style democracy imposed upon developing countries is designed to misinform, divide, exploit and allow for corruption - precisely to benefit Western corporate interests. The West also discounts local level democracy in China. Guys like Yanis Varoufakis and others have noted how affective democracy at local levels have been in implementing change in local communities.
Lastly, Grayson Reim's comments about "whataboutism" is correct. This "whataboutism" nonsense is an attempt by Western elites to eliminate hypocrisy as a legitimate argument. The reason for this is clear: because it is all too easy to point out the gross hypocrisy of the West. In the words of the West's favourite philosopher:
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?.... You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Note to all readers: I was about to respond to this guy's comment in detail but noticed that he has a bit in this comment where he denies all human rights issues in China including the existence of genocide in Xinjiang. This guy is more than likely a tankie and engagement should be avoided. Thank you
I literally said: "Are there some HR abuses? Of course there are."
And yes I don't believe there is genocide in Xinjiang. Tellingly, even the Australian parliament has declined to label what is happening in XJ as genocide. Genocide accusations can't be bandied about without proper evidence. If I'm a tankie for saying this, then I'm a tankie. Using labels rather than engaging in discussion is another quintessential tactic used to silence differing views.
Debating whether it technically counts as "genocide" is not actually very useful, because whether it is genocide is not a measure of exactly how bad it is anyway. All genocide is very bad obviously, but some things that don't meet the technical definition of genocide are equally bad. For example, if Government 1 kills a million people because of their race, and Government 2 kills a million people because they are gay, or have the wrong politics, or are upper-middle class, only Government 1 has committed genocide but there isn't much difference between the 2. What is happening in Xinjiang-mass detention on the bases of ethnicity, psychological torture of those detained etc. can be very bad even if it's not "genocide". Maybe Marcelo disputes this is happening, but if so, he should come out and say that, rather than setting up a trap for people who want to 'no it is genocide' when they really just mean it is very bad.
China's developmental record is indeed impressive, and lots of other countries, including democracies have done bad things. But most East Asian countries are both richer and more democratic than China (and whilst their growth generally started pre-democracy, it continued under it.) Hong Kong developed very fast with Chinese culture under non-democratic, laissez-faire liberal rule. The only East Asian country arguably less democratic than China is North Korea, which is horrendously underdeveloped apart from all it's other horrors. It's not clear that these countries aren't better bench marks for China, being right next door, and culturally similar, than African countries thousands of miles away with complete different cultures, climates, pre-modern histories, colonial histories etc.
Most East Asian countries don't have 1.4 billion people with a vast territory. To compare a city (HK) with a country as vast as China is not valid. Furthermore, for the majority of HK colonial rule, there was no democracy at all, as you point out. For these reasons, I don't see HK (or Singapore for that matter) as a good comparison to China. Other East Asian countries have only been richer than China relatively recently. For the vast preponderance of history, China has been wealthier. Furthermore, the so-called East Asian democracies, in Japan for instance where 1 party has dominated for decades, is not an example of political plurality for me. Moreover, India is not miles away. It's in China's backyard. This is a more useful comparison due to its similar population size. I think most people would regard China as far more successful at development.
I'm not going to go into the XJ argument. It was just a side point I made in my original post to illustrate the weaponization of human rights against the Wests perceived enemies. Needless to say, there are no mass killings reported there, nor is there a mass refugee crisis. One could also show how hypocritical the West is in applying HR standards - both to themselves and their allies. In any case, this issue is an argument for another forum.
I don't think you've made any substantive points on democracy or China's spectacular successes
If signals from elites are key, why not resolve to do away entirely with the use of “China” to refer to the mainland Chinese government? Indeed, the use of any country name in such phrases as “France wants X”, “Russia says Y”, “Yemen is unwilling to Z”? The state, the civilization, the current government, and the average of the citizens’ preferences are all quite different things for any country, even if it’s an old custom to refer to them all by the same name, and it might be easier for listeners to intuitively see the difference if speakers are careful to enunciate it. Why not just be precise and always say “the Chinese government” when that’s what you’re referring to?
> But in fact, the peak of Islamophobic violence in America was not in 2001, but in 2016
I don't think that's true. Islamophobic assaults went up ~13% from 2001 to 2016. But so did the US population. Also, a big fraction of Islamophobic hate crimes in 2001 occured starting in September while as I understand it, islamophobic crimes are not concentrated in just a few months...
There is one flaw with Noah's logic. The two parties are asymmetrical, and the Republicans contain the vast majority of racists and xenophobes. If a Republican president (like Bush) tells the xenophobes to stand down, they may well stand down. If a Democratic president tells the xenophobes to stand down, nothing will happen. The Republicans are now the party of Trump, and will not tolerate any Bush-like behavior.
Personally, I like to highlight two things when this topic comes up:
1. The CCP is a monolith or at least poses as one; China is many ethnicities and languages.
2. People and institutions in Asia are really racist to begin with. Koreans in Japan, Japanese in China, Indians in Singapore, Chinese in Vietnam, Philipinos just about anyplace in Asia -- both explicit racism and subtle structural racism are very strong in Asia.
Americans have the unique advantage of being able to talk about both these points openly and honestly.
To me, #StopAsianHate means standing up for the human rights of Asians everywhere - including Asians victimized by racism in the US and Asians oppressed by the CCP. So thank you once again for being an ally to the Asian community. ❤️🧋
Looks like I'm stuck critiquing your charts these days! ;-)
If we assume that most of the above-pre-9/11-baseline attacks against American Muslims happened post-9/11 in 2001, then just eyeballing it, about 9 of the 93 attacks would have occurred before 9/11, under 2000's rate of 1/month. That leaves the other 84 happening over the remaining ~3.63 months of 2001, for a rate of just over 23 attacks/month.
Comparatively, 2016's rate was only 10.58 attacks/month.
So yes, it's true that more attacks happened in 2016, but the frequency of attacks in 2001 genuinely was more dire.
Actually this just reinforces my case. Look how quickly the attacks dropped to a much lower level after a very short post-9/11 burst. That means we were pretty successful at quelling rather than encouraging the hate.
> But it must be done. Netflix and Amazon shows, Hollywood movies, awards ceremonies, and every aspect of mass culture should depict Asian Americans in a positive light, as crucial members of the American polity. Asian American directors, writers, and other creators need to be given money and creative control to tell their own stories. Schools should teach lessons about the history of Asian Americans. Documentaries, newspaper features, and TV news features should bring consciousness of Asian Americans to the masses. And so on.
And after we get done doing that, we should think about doing the same for African Americans. As a group, they are (very roughly) twice as large as Asians but suffer ten times as many hate crimes. And let's not forget Native Americans who are (even more roughly) one tenth the size but suffer two thirds the number of the hate crimes as Asian. Once we start depicting those groups in a positive light, their experience in the country cannot help but improve.
Also, at the risk of sounding crass and callous, just how big a problem are we talking about here? Perhaps 215 Asian victims of hate crime out of a population of 18.5 million? If I have my numbers right, the US has 1.2 million violent crimes per year. Your Asian friend felt comfortable with that but rushed to buy a gun because of 70 extra crimes with faces he could better relate to?
The US has long been a violent, racist country, and the internet is not helping matters. But the US has also long been a country whose dominant emotion is fear, and, again, the internet is not helping.
"How not to address every China issue with the default mindset that "it's China, ergo it needs to be criticised.""
I mean, seriously, you claim China is "beating the war drums", and your reference is a *New York Post* article, of all things? Where exactly does China "threaten nuclear war"?
there's this weird no man's land now that "if a policy results in even one death" it's somehow "equal to murder" when so many of these things are law of small numbers randomness.
South Africans would be another good example, I'm sure many supported sanctions because you know maybe focus on preventing apartheid/genocide first?
I have friends with Chinese heritage who say they are trapped between two nationalisms. They will get a flood of hate online from white nationalists on some posts, and a flood of attacks of being a "traitor" from online pro-CCP voices on others, even if they have never been to China, and just see themselves (and really just want to be seen as) Americans.
Chinese language Twitter is its own strange place. Pro Beijing nationalists and CCP critics meet there to battle it out every day, and often drag in anyone posting on nonpolitical topics. I don't know how to measure it, but it is so fiercely polarized, it makes our politics look downright chummy.
Sometimes posters there are attacked from every side, called "wumao" and "traitor to Beijing" in response to the same posts.
And social media has an amplifying effect. So it doesn't take many angry, hyperactive posters for those with Chinese heritage to see a flood of attacks, to feel threatened whichever way they turn.
The rhetoric you lay out sounds like a good start, and it's also worth hammering home that this conflict is about essentialism. What makes a valid country? America is constantly reasserting that countries can be formed under a union of ideals, not just ethnicity. And that union by core ideals holds even while we disagree fiercely on particular implementations. So for those Americans who happen to have Asian heritage, we need to make room for them to be proud of their unique identity, but also validate that they are fully "Americans," with no modifier needed, when they want that.
As a Chinese person who naturalized as a US Citizen, I can only imagine the partisan stupidity going on in Twitter between Chinese Nationalists and Anti-CCP people. Bad arguments going all around. This is pretty good so far. I think one thing Noah and liberals should focus on is deconstructing the idea that liberalism and democratic institutions are a uniquely western cultural construct unsuited for implementation in non-western contexts. This is the number 1 argument used by CCP shills everywhere and it's annoying to see as a Chinese person who likes Democracy myself. It basically makes the essentialist argument that there is something about Chinese people (and by extension PoC in general) that makes them incapable of practicing Democracy apparently due to its inherent "western whiteness" according to these people. I feel like I get mad at progressives getting duped by CCP shills and saying we should disarm ourselves and let the CCP do whatever they want just as much as I get mad at conservatives spreading racist conspiracies about Chinese ppl.
The rhetoric he lays out is most definitely not a good start, and the whole article reads like "but we didn't just do racist things, we did good things in the past too"
Fun fact: The Republic of China (Sun Yat-sen's project) was founded as a civic nation based on core ideals, the Three Principles of the People.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People
The dark side of using WW2-era examples is of course that while the US may have been promoting the Chinese and Chinese-Americans it was virulently demonizing the Japanese and the diaspora in ways that are shockingly nasty to read about today.
In fact, near the end of the war, the official U.S. efforts to portray Chinese Americans in a positive light were also extended to Japanese Americans! This was done because Japanese Americans were enlisting in the military in substantial numbers; also because internment was ending. This is recounted in "The Color of Success". I was very surprised to learn about it!
Nobody wants to hear anything good about the American government or white people. What the hell were you thinking?
You mentioned Asians under threat, but I will also point out that China often targets the Chinese diaspora more voraciously (and to the point of having documented cases of overseas university students being told that they're being watched by their classmates—I can't find the article talking about it right this second, but I've heard privately from folks who this has actually happened to in large US universities).
As such, there is actually an interesting phenomenon of the most personal/direct folks under threat from China is the US... also tend to be Chinese-American (and hence, Asian-American from that). This is either from insinuated threats to friends/family abroad or just more concentrated attacks.
This is a random enough corner of the internet (and comments section) for me to be willing to make the point, but I have a lot of the same views as you, have shared a lot of comments/info privately on China... but would never actually step out into the public to do so. It's just not worth the harassment and potential serious risk to friends within Chinese territory. And my parents are from Taiwan!
A few things:
- Appreciate you grappling with this openly; not a lot of people are doing this.
- Criticism of China (while worthy) gets us where as a country? Are they the cause of our high cost of health care, student debt crises, poor infrastructure, high levels of income inequality, etc.? Feel like the proportion of discourse devoted to the issue is a distraction.
- I have hard time believing this is all America doing good. Surely it's some of it, but it feels ahistorical: 1) Taiwan was still a dictatorship when we changed relations under Nixon; 2) While we talk about human rights and democracy, we neglect calling out Saudi Arabia about Yemen and Israel about Palestine. I know many will claim whataboutism, but I think lack of consistency here elucidates a larger American psychology.
- The propaganda (not in the pejorative sense) your proposing is a promising idea. Not exactly the same thing, but I think you'd enjoy PBS' Asian Americans and/or Donut king: https://www.pbs.org/show/asian-americans/ and https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/the-donut-king/
I appreciate the concern here but take issue with the whataboutery and isolationist sentiment here.
1: we are a superpower, we have to do multitasking and covering several things at once. silence on criticism of china in human rights implies acceptance for the same reasons that it does for Saudi Arabia or I-L conflict in the eyes of many in the public and internationally. The threat of an upcoming superpower might encourage domestic improvements like it does in the past which is a good thing but this time around now that the US is more diverse, it should be more about proving Democracy is the best system there is and we are the best at it not Chinese one-party state. Also, why does the fact that critiquing China is somehow "irrelevant" to America's domestic issues and culture wars and is a distraction but similar things are not said about many mid-east issues?
2. Taiwan democratized in the 80s. Our gaps in mid-east does not invalidate the need to defend human rights and democracy elsewhere or in Asia, it just means we need to improve our policy in the mid-east. Easier to do that from where we are now rather than totally give up because mixing and matching is hypocritical. What you are saying is an " elucidation of a larger American psychology" is merely the realities of running foreign relations as a superpower and especially when trying to frame yourself (an imperfect country with an imperfect government) as a leader of the freeworld when you have inherited an imperfect world order. The EU members and sometimes China commits similar crimes in its foreign relations but they have the excuse of being a herd of cats and a despotic one-party regime respectively.
I think it is important for western commentators to scrupulously separate the Chinese people from the CCP as it is the latter, not the former that is causing most of these issues. Conservatives have made it quite apparent that they hate China (whether that is the CCP or Chinese people is irrelevant) I just wish liberals and progressives put aside their partisanship and recognize that opposing the CCP (up to and including with force) is a necessary thing and to do so for the right reasons (to defend democracy where it exists and ensure that it grows in places where it does not)
Here are some articles by people smarter than me expressing concern about China-America relations:
- Ryan Hass, former Director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council (NSC) Staff: https://www.noemamag.com/playing-the-china-card/
- Daniel Ellsberg, former economist and famous Pentagon Paper leaker: https://theintercept.com/2021/06/01/daniel-ellsberg-china-atomic-nuclear-weapons/
- Fareed Zarkaria, CNN host and WP columnist: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-pentagon-is-using-china-as-an-excuse-for-huge-new-budgets/2021/03/18/848c8296-8824-11eb-8a8b-5cf82c3dffe4_story.html
A lot of self-congratulatory statements in there about the US's democracy. Let's be clear, US democracy is at a crossroads and appears to be failing. Massive budgets for disastrous military adventures in far-flung territories, whilst infrastructure, services, education are crumbling at home. These are signs of decline. Is this what the American people really want? Look at the state of misinformation in Western media. It's a complete and utter shambles. How can a country have a functioning democracy under circumstances where the dissemination of information is so distorted. What is becoming increasingly clear is that when you have concentrated ownership in the corporate media pursuing their own agenda, with a near monopoly on shaping public views, this is surely not good for democracy. You may talk about alternate news media on other digital platforms. But how can one have confidence in those outlets? It's apparent that US democracy seems to be on its last legs.
China, on the other hand, seems in the ascendancy. And, to be frank, this is a return to normal. China is huge - 1.4 billion people. Of course they have a legitimate say in world affairs. And the simple fact that many Westerners can't seem to admit, is that the CCP is great at governance. I don't accept for a second the human rights accusations against China. Are there some HR abuses? Of course there are. Genocide? Nope. There is simply no evidence for it. What evidence do we see? We see a country that has gone from being poor and destitute, to being the largest economy in the world. We see the incomes of hundreds of millions Chinese increase exponentially. And we've seen China rise extraordinarily peacefully. This claptrap about China's supposed "aggressiveness" is simply nonsense. The US has hundreds of military bases surrounding China. Of course they are going to defend themselves. And compare China's rise with that of the UK, Germany, Japan and the US. It's by far more peaceful and benevolent than any of those countries at the same stage of development. It is indeed far more benevolent that the US is right now in world affairs.
The Chinese people like what has happened under the rule of the CCP. Whilst slandering the CCP is not tantamount to slandering Chinese people, the Chinese people will of course be offended by this. Do you think that democracy could have brought about what China has today? All I can say is look at so-called democracies in Africa and India. The truth is that Western-style democracy imposed upon developing countries is designed to misinform, divide, exploit and allow for corruption - precisely to benefit Western corporate interests. The West also discounts local level democracy in China. Guys like Yanis Varoufakis and others have noted how affective democracy at local levels have been in implementing change in local communities.
Lastly, Grayson Reim's comments about "whataboutism" is correct. This "whataboutism" nonsense is an attempt by Western elites to eliminate hypocrisy as a legitimate argument. The reason for this is clear: because it is all too easy to point out the gross hypocrisy of the West. In the words of the West's favourite philosopher:
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?.... You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Note to all readers: I was about to respond to this guy's comment in detail but noticed that he has a bit in this comment where he denies all human rights issues in China including the existence of genocide in Xinjiang. This guy is more than likely a tankie and engagement should be avoided. Thank you
Honestly, I don't agree with the genocide part. Calling him a tankie and then dismissing his opinion out of hand though, boy I don't know....
I literally said: "Are there some HR abuses? Of course there are."
And yes I don't believe there is genocide in Xinjiang. Tellingly, even the Australian parliament has declined to label what is happening in XJ as genocide. Genocide accusations can't be bandied about without proper evidence. If I'm a tankie for saying this, then I'm a tankie. Using labels rather than engaging in discussion is another quintessential tactic used to silence differing views.
Debating whether it technically counts as "genocide" is not actually very useful, because whether it is genocide is not a measure of exactly how bad it is anyway. All genocide is very bad obviously, but some things that don't meet the technical definition of genocide are equally bad. For example, if Government 1 kills a million people because of their race, and Government 2 kills a million people because they are gay, or have the wrong politics, or are upper-middle class, only Government 1 has committed genocide but there isn't much difference between the 2. What is happening in Xinjiang-mass detention on the bases of ethnicity, psychological torture of those detained etc. can be very bad even if it's not "genocide". Maybe Marcelo disputes this is happening, but if so, he should come out and say that, rather than setting up a trap for people who want to 'no it is genocide' when they really just mean it is very bad.
China's developmental record is indeed impressive, and lots of other countries, including democracies have done bad things. But most East Asian countries are both richer and more democratic than China (and whilst their growth generally started pre-democracy, it continued under it.) Hong Kong developed very fast with Chinese culture under non-democratic, laissez-faire liberal rule. The only East Asian country arguably less democratic than China is North Korea, which is horrendously underdeveloped apart from all it's other horrors. It's not clear that these countries aren't better bench marks for China, being right next door, and culturally similar, than African countries thousands of miles away with complete different cultures, climates, pre-modern histories, colonial histories etc.
Most East Asian countries don't have 1.4 billion people with a vast territory. To compare a city (HK) with a country as vast as China is not valid. Furthermore, for the majority of HK colonial rule, there was no democracy at all, as you point out. For these reasons, I don't see HK (or Singapore for that matter) as a good comparison to China. Other East Asian countries have only been richer than China relatively recently. For the vast preponderance of history, China has been wealthier. Furthermore, the so-called East Asian democracies, in Japan for instance where 1 party has dominated for decades, is not an example of political plurality for me. Moreover, India is not miles away. It's in China's backyard. This is a more useful comparison due to its similar population size. I think most people would regard China as far more successful at development.
I'm not going to go into the XJ argument. It was just a side point I made in my original post to illustrate the weaponization of human rights against the Wests perceived enemies. Needless to say, there are no mass killings reported there, nor is there a mass refugee crisis. One could also show how hypocritical the West is in applying HR standards - both to themselves and their allies. In any case, this issue is an argument for another forum.
I don't think you've made any substantive points on democracy or China's spectacular successes
Told you so.
If signals from elites are key, why not resolve to do away entirely with the use of “China” to refer to the mainland Chinese government? Indeed, the use of any country name in such phrases as “France wants X”, “Russia says Y”, “Yemen is unwilling to Z”? The state, the civilization, the current government, and the average of the citizens’ preferences are all quite different things for any country, even if it’s an old custom to refer to them all by the same name, and it might be easier for listeners to intuitively see the difference if speakers are careful to enunciate it. Why not just be precise and always say “the Chinese government” when that’s what you’re referring to?
> But in fact, the peak of Islamophobic violence in America was not in 2001, but in 2016
I don't think that's true. Islamophobic assaults went up ~13% from 2001 to 2016. But so did the US population. Also, a big fraction of Islamophobic hate crimes in 2001 occured starting in September while as I understand it, islamophobic crimes are not concentrated in just a few months...
There is one flaw with Noah's logic. The two parties are asymmetrical, and the Republicans contain the vast majority of racists and xenophobes. If a Republican president (like Bush) tells the xenophobes to stand down, they may well stand down. If a Democratic president tells the xenophobes to stand down, nothing will happen. The Republicans are now the party of Trump, and will not tolerate any Bush-like behavior.
Personally, I like to highlight two things when this topic comes up:
1. The CCP is a monolith or at least poses as one; China is many ethnicities and languages.
2. People and institutions in Asia are really racist to begin with. Koreans in Japan, Japanese in China, Indians in Singapore, Chinese in Vietnam, Philipinos just about anyplace in Asia -- both explicit racism and subtle structural racism are very strong in Asia.
Americans have the unique advantage of being able to talk about both these points openly and honestly.
1. The CCP certainly love to play up how unified they are and how unified the Chinese people are behind them.
2. Asia's in a weird place in social issues, yeah. Taiwan is kinda an exception to that which is all the more reason to defend it tbh.
To me, #StopAsianHate means standing up for the human rights of Asians everywhere - including Asians victimized by racism in the US and Asians oppressed by the CCP. So thank you once again for being an ally to the Asian community. ❤️🧋
Looks like I'm stuck critiquing your charts these days! ;-)
If we assume that most of the above-pre-9/11-baseline attacks against American Muslims happened post-9/11 in 2001, then just eyeballing it, about 9 of the 93 attacks would have occurred before 9/11, under 2000's rate of 1/month. That leaves the other 84 happening over the remaining ~3.63 months of 2001, for a rate of just over 23 attacks/month.
Comparatively, 2016's rate was only 10.58 attacks/month.
So yes, it's true that more attacks happened in 2016, but the frequency of attacks in 2001 genuinely was more dire.
Actually this just reinforces my case. Look how quickly the attacks dropped to a much lower level after a very short post-9/11 burst. That means we were pretty successful at quelling rather than encouraging the hate.
> But it must be done. Netflix and Amazon shows, Hollywood movies, awards ceremonies, and every aspect of mass culture should depict Asian Americans in a positive light, as crucial members of the American polity. Asian American directors, writers, and other creators need to be given money and creative control to tell their own stories. Schools should teach lessons about the history of Asian Americans. Documentaries, newspaper features, and TV news features should bring consciousness of Asian Americans to the masses. And so on.
And after we get done doing that, we should think about doing the same for African Americans. As a group, they are (very roughly) twice as large as Asians but suffer ten times as many hate crimes. And let's not forget Native Americans who are (even more roughly) one tenth the size but suffer two thirds the number of the hate crimes as Asian. Once we start depicting those groups in a positive light, their experience in the country cannot help but improve.
Also, at the risk of sounding crass and callous, just how big a problem are we talking about here? Perhaps 215 Asian victims of hate crime out of a population of 18.5 million? If I have my numbers right, the US has 1.2 million violent crimes per year. Your Asian friend felt comfortable with that but rushed to buy a gun because of 70 extra crimes with faces he could better relate to?
The US has long been a violent, racist country, and the internet is not helping matters. But the US has also long been a country whose dominant emotion is fear, and, again, the internet is not helping.
Suggestion: what about penning a counterpoint?
"How not to address every China issue with the default mindset that "it's China, ergo it needs to be criticised.""
I mean, seriously, you claim China is "beating the war drums", and your reference is a *New York Post* article, of all things? Where exactly does China "threaten nuclear war"?
It all amounts to a seriously bad faith approach.
China represents a commercial threat, and that drives almost all political rhetoric.
there's this weird no man's land now that "if a policy results in even one death" it's somehow "equal to murder" when so many of these things are law of small numbers randomness.
South Africans would be another good example, I'm sure many supported sanctions because you know maybe focus on preventing apartheid/genocide first?
while your chance of being assaulted as an asian is likely 1/500000, racial quota against asians will affect every asian american person
first, american universities can stop setting quota on asian americans
Still waiting...