China’s Re-education Camps

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-re-education-camps-1535497220

by dqpb • 8 years ago

102 56 8 years ago

3945494• 8 years ago

seibelj• 8 years ago

It's impossible to say for certain where the next financial crisis will come from, and when, but I bet there is a decent chance that a global meltdown originates in China.

Autocratic, opaque, statistics no one believes, infrastructure spending for cities and rails no one needs dictated by political hacks, entrenched corruption, rising national debt... a few wrong moves and the house of cards falls. The fact that the second largest economy is so radically different from western capitalist countries makes it difficult to predict how it will evolve. Democratic revolution could still happen.

herogreen• 8 years ago

I am pretty sure China cities do need electric buses. But that could be anecdotal.

ethbro3• 8 years ago

The problem with communism was a large country's economic system was too complex to manage. Centralized control simply wasn't possible.

China skirted that by pivoting to a market economy under political direction.

On the plus side, this affords them the power to directly deflate asset bubbles in a way democracies can't.

On the minus side, the lack of transparency and accountability increases inefficiency and hides issues.

It remains to be seen which of these will triumph. If the increased power offsets the inefficiencies, everything might stay fine. But if they fail to notice or act on a major issue... it's a pretty fragile system.

polskibus2• 8 years ago

You forgot that China has big data tools to help them achieve centralisation. That are using it on a very wide scale. No other authoritarian government had such resources available before.

gowld• 8 years ago

Not to mention the rest of the world exporting its labor needs, debt, waste, and pollution to China, with no plan for what to do if the Chinese government stops dumping these on its citizens.

gwbas1c• 8 years ago

I know we don't like to talk about politics on Hacker News...

But: This. Is. Fascism.

oh_sigh4• 8 years ago

You should resolve to stop buying Chinese goods, or using Chinese services or companies...or something?

rudolfwinestock• 8 years ago

No, it's not. It's Communism.

Granted, the difference isn't much in terms of human rights.

I don't have the reference handy, but I remember reading about a priest who had the dubious distinction of having survived both a Nazi concentration camp as well as a Communist concentration camp. In his opinion, the Communist camp was worse. In addition to the hard labor, other physical hardships, and the ever-present threat of death, the Communists added brainwashing. “At least the Germans didn't try turning you into a Nazi.”

Don't forget. Cuba and Vietnam have the same system in operation. Ask anyone in the exile communities in the United States.

educationdata• 8 years ago

How does this have anything to do with Communism?

The Chinese Communist Party has the word "Communist" in its name, but it has nothing to do with Communism.

thieving_magpie• 8 years ago

No, it's not. It's Communism.

Well it isn't that either. Let's be clear that it's a concentration camp run by Chinese Communists with 'added brainwashing' as you put it.

kenmicklas4• 8 years ago

Cuba and Vietnam have the same system in operation. Ask anyone in the exile communities in the United States.

There's a huge selection bias in asking emigrants or exiles or refugees or whatever you prefer to call them. If you are a militant Marxist-Leninist in Cuba you probably don't want to leave.

msla2• 8 years ago

The fact this is downvoted is proof of the historical illiteracy of Hacker News readers.

Bucephalus355• 8 years ago

It’s part of ICE’s job to inspect foreign factories for slave labor.

China is using, at minimum, 4 million people in slave factories (basically jail) to produce products. They’ve banned ICE since 2009 over disputes around the meaning of “visit” vs “inspection”.

To see the media recently reporting “slave labor” in Texas border camps is the height of hypocrisy.

PopsiclePete• 8 years ago

To see the media recently reporting “slave labor” in Texas border camps is the height of hypocrisy.

Why is it hypocritical? Just because the Chinese are worse doesn't excuse the US. Nor should the US use China as a basis for comparison when it comes to respect for human rights - that's a pretty low bar

msla2• 8 years ago

No, it's Communism. It's anti-Fascist.

dragonwriter3• 8 years ago

No, it's Communism.

It's the kind of “Communism” that is authoritarian, militaristic nationalism with significant economic role for private capital, but where both that private capital and labor are deeply intertwined with the administrative machinery of the state in a corporatist manner.

The system run by the Chinese Communist Party is “Communist” in the same way the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is “Democratic”; it's a label on the package that doesn't accurately reflect what is inside.

Which, in China, is a lot closer to fascism.

ocschwar2• 8 years ago

In Weimar Germany, there was a Keynesian jobs program very much akin to FDR's Civilian COnservation Corps - a jobs program to perform forestry work and prepare rural areas for the hiking and skiing that's so popular there to this day. One of the program's mottoes was "Arbeit macht frei", meaning "this work will free Germany of the economic woes affecting us right now."

When that same motto was put on the gates at Auschwitz, the intent was to reassure prisoners that the camp was NOT a slave camp.

The point is that we should not bother calling these re-education camps. We all know what they are. THey're going to do what all camps do once they enclose large numbers of people.

dmix5• 8 years ago

Are you suggesting China is on track to commit genocide against an ethnic minority because they established reeducation camps? A better example of the next tier is the gulags, you know, actual work camps... mass murder is quite the leap.

I know it's popular today to call everyone Nazis whenever they show the slightest signs of analogous behaviour...but isn't re-education bad enough as it is? Shouldn't we focus on the issue at hand and challenge it's merits? Just saying "hurr-durr China = Nazis" is a big distraction that ignores the context of how this came about (ie, under a pretext of suppressing terrorism) and glosses over the countless other ways this is distinct from historical death camps.

seppin2• 8 years ago

According to history, odds are yes

kerbalspacepro• 8 years ago

Does it matter if there is one step or ten steps if the final step is genocide and China is confidently walking down the path?

dragonwriter3• 8 years ago

Are you suggesting China is on track to commit genocide against an ethnic minority because they established reeducation camps?

I'm pretty sure the upthread poster is saying (and I'm not endorsing every element of this, only my understanding of the message) that China is in the process of committing genocide against the Uighur population, and the “re-education” camps are a component of that operation with a thin pretext.

A better example of the next tier is the gulags

The gulag was not, as whole, specifically targeted at resisters against an ethnic displacement policy targeting a particular ethnic group; it was a tool in political repression, but it wasn't narrowly targeted at repressing political resistance to policy targeting a particular ethnic group on the basis of core elements of the shared identity defining the ethnicity.

So, while both are manifestations of authoritarianism, they are arguably different in fairly critical ways as relates to the inference that I've it the other is part of a genocidal strategy.

OTOH, the gulag was, very early on, integral in the anti-kulakization effort that, while notionally targeting an economic class, apparently also had political and ethnic aspects and was arguably directly tied to a Soviet-directed genocide in Ukraine (the Holodomor), so I'm not sure, even if one accepts the analogy with the gulag, that's historically a justified argument against the camps being a leading sign of imminent genocide.

3945494• 8 years ago

Are you suggesting China is on track to commit genocide against an ethnic minority because they established reeducation camps?

Genocide doesn't require physical extermination. I believe some definitions consider forced assimilation and policies of cultural destruction to be genocide, and these camps are definitely tools to accomplish those things.

ocschwar2• 8 years ago

Are you suggesting China is on track to commit genocide against an ethnic minority because they established reeducation camps?

Yes.

A better example of the next tier is the gulags, you know, actual work camps... mass murder is quite the leap.

And the Nazi camps weren't actual work camps? Well, okay, two of them were gassing facilities with nothing else, but all the others were built to extract labor from prisoners. Most started as quarries.

Once you've rounded up people into camps crowded enough that they are unable to protect themselves from their own shit, they will die in large numbers. It's that simple.

China’s Re-education Camps

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