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french lies posted:Me neither, but I do know a lot of famous dissidents like Yu Jie and LXB have had similar stories attached to them. If you look at those two, you can actually see a strong pro-US undercurrent running through their writings, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the US turned out to have been giving them money. CGC I don't know well enough to comment on, though chances are if he's being heard from in mainstream US media outlets, US money has been involved in some fashion. Obviously an one sided article written not by a regular person. By the way, 50 cent party is real. I mean they are actually government paid jobs, not lovely contractor jobs farmed out to part timers. Some times a local government is dumb enough to post job description and "group photos" online.
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May 3, 2012 14:45
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50 cent etc do exist, true, but there's an irritating tendency to just dismiss anyone saying anything sufficiently opposed to whatever a particular person believes as paid propaganda. It's rarely helpful, or really even makes much difference. After all, let's be honest, there is no shortage of unpaid stupidity online.
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May 3, 2012 14:55
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Throatwarbler posted:Those are really your points? The poo poo in that post is what you literally believe?
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May 3, 2012 15:23
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Fangz posted:50 cent etc do exist, true, but there's an irritating tendency to just dismiss anyone saying anything sufficiently opposed to whatever a particular person believes as paid propaganda. That could be, although 50 centers reuse the same narratives, spin, and phrases to the point where if you start using them your posts become practically indistinguishable from them. PPL's post up there was a great example, with the usual victim-blaming, blanket dismissal of pro-reformists/dissidents/lawyers as American pawns, invocation of the CIA, "interference in domestic issues." Presumably PPL actually believes this stuff and isn't typing it up on the SA forums in exchange for money, but if he actually was would the post have been any different? Yeah, doesn't really help to call anyone wumaodang, but if you start using their content and style sheet for your posts it just might happen.
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May 3, 2012 15:46
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Jesus Christ, that's absolutely sick if the PRC literally threatened to beat his wife to death if he didn't leave the embassy. Who the gently caress defends that? I would be disgusted if the US did that to one of our worst enemies.
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May 3, 2012 16:14
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It sounds like it wasn't a literal threat like that- just a statement that they would be forced to return to Shandong, which just happens to be the place where they've endured extra-legal house arrest and severe beatings for the last two years. Someone from Linyi might have threatened to beat her to death, but that isn't exactly the same as Zhou Yongkang leaning over and whispering that in his ear or something. Still ludicrously lovely, but you know... How can someone defend that? Well you see he had it coming and therefore by proxy so did she, NED CIA CNN RFA etc, gross interference in Chinese affairs, *voice gets less and less distinct and eventually fades away*
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May 3, 2012 16:37
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french lies posted:
Ai Weiwei's house was also demolished because of "tax evasion" while he was in prison; they knew it was his pride and joy because he designed it himself and they found a reason that would be hard to verify. Except that, you know, he paid his taxes.
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May 3, 2012 16:52
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:How about a foreign government-backed NGO taking it upon itself to free "terror" suspects and stash them away in foreign embassies? He does have a point that it is naive to expect the U.S. to interfere with Chinese domestic politics, be they "good" or "bad", in the name of "human rights", especially if it would interfere with U.S. interests. The only relevance "human rights" might have would be as propaganda for the U.S. to justify helping Chen if it did in fact serve their interests.
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May 3, 2012 18:31
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eSports Chaebol posted:He does have a point that it is naive to expect the U.S. to interfere with Chinese domestic politics, be they "good" or "bad", in the name of "human rights", especially if it would interfere with U.S. interests. The only relevance "human rights" might have would be as propaganda for the U.S. to justify helping Chen if it did in fact serve their interests. Human rights may be an area where the US is hypocritical (you won't find me excusing Manning's detention or black sites or youth prisons, nor minimizing their evil), but that doesn't disqualify us from pointing out forcefully to China the desperately abusive state of their political system. Nor does it mean the US Embassy should force out asylum-seekers who might be politically inconvenient -- and if Chen was lured from the embassy by a trick, then they should pursue him and protect him as they would any asylum-seeker. Also, I don't see helping Chen as something abusive and cynical the way American aid to Contras or the Apartheid government of South Africa was -- it does coincide with the American foreign policy agenda with regards to regional rebalancing against China broadly, but Chen isn't exactly Pinochet. BrotherAdso fucked around with this message at 20:04 on May 3, 2012 |
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May 3, 2012 20:01
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BrotherAdso posted:Human rights may be an area where the US is hypocritical (you won't find me excusing Manning's detention or black sites or youth prisons, nor minimizing their evil), but that doesn't disqualify us from pointing our forcefully to China the desperately abusive state of their political system. Nor does it mean the US Embassy should force out asylum-seekers who might be politically inconvenient -- and if Chen was lured from the embassy by a trick, then they should pursue him and protect him as they would any asylum-seeker. To put it in a less cynical manner, the primary purpose of an embassy (besides intelligence-gathering) is to conduct diplomacy, and interfering in purely domestic Chinese politics is hardly diplomatic.
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May 3, 2012 20:05
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eSports Chaebol posted:To put it in a less cynical manner, the primary purpose of an embassy (besides intelligence-gathering) is to conduct diplomacy, and interfering in purely domestic Chinese politics is hardly diplomatic. Asylum seekers are a special case. If we were to go out to Shandong with some kind of task force and pluck Chen from his village because we feared for his human rights, that would be beyond inexcusable and constitute something even worse than mere meddling in Chinese domestic politics. But he came to the embassy seeking asylum, and it is a long standing US policy to grant it in the case of likely human rights abuses. Now, if it can be proven that a US-funded NGO had a role in springing him from house arrest or in forcing him into asking for asylum or something, then the US is in a big pile of crap again.
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May 3, 2012 20:14
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Meeting with random people from the country that show up at your doorstep for asylum or want to give you information or whatever is basically part of what an embassy does. It's also pretty much accepted that you post a bunch of intelligence officers at the embassy under diplomatic cover.
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May 3, 2012 20:32
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BrotherAdso posted:Asylum seekers are a special case. If we were to go out to Shandong with some kind of task force and pluck Chen from his village because we feared for his human rights, that would be beyond inexcusable and constitute something even worse than mere meddling in Chinese domestic politics. But he came to the embassy seeking asylum, and it is a long standing US policy to grant it in the case of likely human rights abuses. He specifically did not ask to seek asylum, though. Depending on who you believe, he wanted to remain within the embassy as a sort of sanctuary for years. Which seems to push the limits of what the embassy can legitimately provide. IANAL, but it seems like there's a distinction here between what the embassy offers to an asylum applicant, and to someone who is a citizen of a different country who, in his words, just happens to wish to make use of medical facilities and habitation there. From a legalistic point of view, it seems to me somewhat arguable that by claiming *not to be an asylum seeker* while at the embassy, Chen put himself in the position where his threat of persecution was not examined and recognised by the usual channels, and so in terms legal status he was just any random person the US was assisting without any particular duty to. Fangz fucked around with this message at 21:08 on May 3, 2012 |
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May 3, 2012 20:54
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BrotherAdso posted:Now, if it can be proven that a US-funded NGO had a role in springing him from house arrest or in forcing him into asking for asylum or something, then the US is in a big pile of crap again. ChinaAid - funded by NED, funded by the us government was the group that made it happen and has admitted to what is essentially organizing and running a human smuggling operation in China.
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May 3, 2012 21:17
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So wait a minute, I apologize if this has been asked before but: Chen is on soverign Chinese soil now, right? The hospital is on Chinese land, right? So even if the US decides, hey, we changed our mind and we want to give this guy asylum, there's no way for them to do it legally unless China gives him back to the US, yes? Which is obviously never going to happen, so at this point aren't the US's hands pretty much tied?
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May 3, 2012 21:54
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OSheaman posted:So wait a minute, I apologize if this has been asked before but: Chen is on soverign Chinese soil now, right? The hospital is on Chinese land, right? So even if the US decides, hey, we changed our mind and we want to give this guy asylum, there's no way for them to do it legally unless China gives him back to the US, yes? Which is obviously never going to happen, so at this point aren't the US's hands pretty much tied? He would have to somehow get himself into the embassy again, yeah.
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May 3, 2012 21:58
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Adar posted:He would have to somehow get himself into the embassy again, yeah. Well it's not like he hasn't pulled it off before.
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May 3, 2012 22:02
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He should try another embassy, like Canada's.
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May 3, 2012 22:04
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Adar posted:He would have to somehow get himself into the embassy again, yeah. Then there's that little issue of getting him out of the country.
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May 3, 2012 22:05
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:Then there's that little issue of getting him out of the country. If that somehow happens, he'll be able to leave. Nobody is storming an embassy to get him out and keeping him blockaded would be a PR disaster for China. It won't happen because when he checks out of the hospital that embassy's going to be surrounded by plainclothes 24/7.
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May 3, 2012 22:09
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So at this point the debate among US officials is: how much is Chen worth giving up to China in terms of the ongiong trade negotiations, North Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Burma/Myanmar plus I'm guessing at the very least a formal apology for interfering in domestic Chinese politics. Yes? Man this could not have happened at a worse time politically for Obama. His team successfully shifts the debate away from the economy to foreign policy with Osama Bin Laden and now this. China has to be fully aware how Chen's interviews and public pleadings to Hillary are playing to the US media; it gives them a lot of leverage in negotiations.
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May 3, 2012 22:14
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OSheaman posted:So at this point the debate among US officials is: how much is Chen worth giving up to China in terms of the ongiong trade negotiations, North Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Burma/Myanmar plus I'm guessing at the very least a formal apology for interfering in domestic Chinese politics. Yes? Obviously they could take a hard line, but even then, the US did basically turn Chen back over to them, after doing their duty and giving him shelter for a few days, so they can only accuse the US of a limited amount of meddling. Also, Chinese domestic politics are such a shitstorm right now that they have to tread carefully in deciding what narrative to use with this thing. It's doubtless that the officials in Shandong are truly really bad guys, and Chen's narrative plays to a lot of the frustration with local and provincial party bosses bubbling up across China right now and equally frustrating the top Chinese leadership by weakening their ability to centrally decide important policies. So it could be good for them to pursue a conciliatroy narrative where they punish the local officials symbolically and let Chen leave the country with his family for "overseas medical treatment" or something.
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May 3, 2012 22:20
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That makes sense, but on the other hand I think they have to combat a growing narrative that China's inevitable rise to the top may have hit a few stumbling blocks, in part because of their own foreign policy problems (Syria, the instability of North Korea in transition, the loss of Myanmar as a firm ally). The sizeable domestic problems aside, could a perceived loss of global Chinese clout affect things like Taiwan's gradual integration with the mainland or drag up issues like Tibet?
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May 3, 2012 22:31
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OSheaman posted:So at this point the debate among US officials is: how much is Chen worth giving up to China in terms of the ongiong trade negotiations, North Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Burma/Myanmar plus I'm guessing at the very least a formal apology for interfering in domestic Chinese politics. Yes? Or he could man up for a change. One of my major disappointments for Obama is his China policy of putting economics before human rights. Other presidents and their secretaries of state have raised issues in the past, and a result, people have gotten out of jail or the CCP has at least made a public show out of looking less like what they are while diplomats are in town. We are major business partners with China. PARTNERS. They only own 10% of our debt if they ever called us on it and we defaulted, our economy would collapse and so would theirs, except their population is much closer to starving to death working as a sustenance farmer than ours is. They need us as much as we need them, so we're in this together, despite all the political posturing, to keep our governments in place and economies afloat. Now if I had a major business partner and he, say, went and shot a few guys over the weekend, and everyone knew it even though he denied it, I think I would be bothered if I DIDN'T say, "Hey, so I heard you shot a few people. What's up with that? Seriously, you cannot act like that if we're going to be partners."
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May 3, 2012 23:30
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BrotherAdso posted:Obviously they could take a hard line, but even then, the US did basically turn Chen back over to them, after doing their duty and giving him shelter for a few days, so they can only accuse the US of a limited amount of meddling. Also, Chinese domestic politics are such a shitstorm right now that they have to tread carefully in deciding what narrative to use with this thing. I don't know, when you have as close to a monopoly on information as you can have short of going full North Korea, and a sizable group of hardcore nationalists who will start repeating whatever you say, you really don't have to limit how much meddling you accuse the US of having done. Some netizens might grumble about how you're overstating the case, but this is the same China that just compared the Dalai Lama to Hitler- reality doesn't really have much relation to what you're going to hear on Xinhua. And current domestic politics might make it worse if one group or another is afraid of being outflanked from the left and feels like going hard at America for interference is a known crowd-pleaser. Osheaman posted:The sizeable domestic problems aside, could a perceived loss of global Chinese clout affect things like Taiwan's gradual integration with the mainland or drag up issues like Tibet? Nah? I mean unless there's a serious economic meltdown the conditions will probably remain the same- Taiwan getting closer to China in some ways but farther in others, and other countries judging that even a weakened China has more to offer them than whatever limited returns they would get from championing Tibet.
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May 3, 2012 23:42
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dj_clawson posted:Or he could man up for a change. One of my major disappointments for Obama is his China policy of putting economics before human rights. Other presidents and their secretaries of state have raised issues in the past, and a result, people have gotten out of jail or the CCP has at least made a public show out of looking less like what they are while diplomats are in town. 'Territorial integrity' and 'domestic sovereignty' is China's core value in international affairs. China will *NEVER EVER* act in such a way that it appears that they backed down under US pressure. If they do it for Chen, then they lose all international credibility on the whole range of other issues, ranging from Taiwan, to Tibet, or the Uighurs, and so on. That the US demanded something publically of them is a strong reason to not do something, and any member of the CCP who appeared to respond to such a demand will be humiliated and destroyed. The only way to apply diplomatic pressure at this point is privately through backchannels. To make any concrete measures take place, the Chinese must be allowed to develop a narrative that they *chose* this. The stronger the public pressure foreign powers put on them, the more the Chinese will shift to the defensive position of 'gently caress off, none of your business', and CGC will never get a positive resolution.
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May 4, 2012 00:04
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Fangz posted:If they do it for Chen, then they lose all international credibility Can you explain this or provide some sort of citation/credibility? I've seen this idea a few times and never understood it.
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May 4, 2012 00:53
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What.... what does Chen actually expect to happen here? There's no way the Chinese government is going to back down. All this media/congressional pressure on the Obama administration that Chen generated is useless if the administration can't actually do anything to get Chen out. The only thing he's actually doing here, is making Obama look bad internationally. Which is honestly the opposite of what Chen should be doing.
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May 4, 2012 01:04
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Wedesdo posted:What.... what does Chen actually expect to happen here? There's no way the Chinese government is going to back down. All this media/congressional pressure on the Obama administration that Chen generated is useless if the administration can't actually do anything to get Chen out. Chen is under tremendous duress and is a self-taught human rights lawyer running from corrupt officials who have committed the coarsest violence against his family in the past, and he has now and has had in the past only minimal access to large amounts of western style news analysis. You can't expect him to sit back and do a 20,000 foot analysis of his international bargaining strategy like some chess game about who might look bad when.
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May 4, 2012 01:06
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BrotherAdso posted:Chen is under tremendous duress and is a self-taught human rights lawyer running from corrupt officials who have committed the coarsest violence against his family in the past, and he has now and has had in the past only minimal access to large amounts of western style news analysis. Yes. In terms of HIS escape, he pretty much nailed it, with Clinton being in town. Very smart of him. Remember when Rozanna Saberi was arrested for spying in Iran? So I know a lot about this, because my boss is her literary agent. Saberi was friends with a lot of other journalists, who happened to be in Israel or somewhere to cover Clinton's trip, and they also knew that Saberi knew Clinton and Clinton knew her, to some extent. So when the news broke that she was in prison after filtering through a lot of people, her family pushed her journalist friends to confront Hillary about it in I think Jerusalem, or wherever she was having a conference, and then she made the statement calling for her release, and later was a political player in that release. So a lot of it had to do with how the journalists cornered her while she was doing something else. I was living in a Tibetan refugee community and they were talking about how to get America's attention about Tibet, and this was before the second self-immolation in Delhi, and I said to one of them who had a US passport, "Go to a campaign rally and set yourself on fire in front of Obama, if that's how you want to do it, self-immolation. Because then you WILL get his attention." I wasn't telling this guy to kill himself - this was just the discussion we were having - but it certainly would have been a hell of a lot better than the Tibetan colony in New Delhi.
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May 4, 2012 01:47
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mitztronic posted:Can you explain this or provide some sort of citation/credibility? I've seen this idea a few times and never understood it. I see alot of people with this view in the Chinese forum I hang out in. Basically Americans didn't stand up for injustice.
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May 4, 2012 01:52
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How is he even giving out all these interviews if he is supposedly under duress and fearing for his own safety right now?
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May 4, 2012 02:55
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Well he's in a hospital in Beijing right now. The fear for his safety is what happens after the cameras leave.
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May 4, 2012 02:57
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Since I don't believe in states acting of humanitarian reasons I think Chen has little strategic value as a propaganda tool for the U.S. That's probably why Obama hasn't arranged asylum for him yet. Plus this creates a bad precedent for U.S. policy. There's a lot of people on the long U.S. poo poo list. Imagine if a Madoff type character with his billions was given asylum in China down the road. It's best not to open that can of worms over a blind Chinese hippie.
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May 4, 2012 03:08
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Modus Operandi posted:Since I don't believe in states acting of humanitarian reasons I think Chen has little strategic value as a propaganda tool for the U.S. That's probably why Obama hasn't arranged asylum for him yet. Plus this creates a bad precedent for U.S. policy. Fortunately, neither the US nor the UN take your position and both act, or profess to act, for humanitarian ends pretty regularly. There are a variety of good reasons asylum is hard to arrange, but I don't think Obama being a Machiavellian realist about things is high on the list. Modus Operandi posted:It's best not to open that can of worms over a blind Chinese hippie. Why are you seriously comparing a physically abused anti-corruption advocate, defender of the rights of women to choose their own reproductive fate, and demanding voice for accountability and responsibility in the nasty lower levels of the Chinese government to Bernie Madoff or a blind hippie? It's pretty gauche.
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May 4, 2012 03:13
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BrotherAdso posted:Fortunately, neither the US nor the UN take your position and both act, or profess to act, for humanitarian ends pretty regularly. quote:Why are you seriously comparing a physically abused anti-corruption advocate, defender of the rights of women to choose their own reproductive fate, and demanding voice for accountability and responsibility in the nasty lower levels of the Chinese government to Bernie Madoff or a blind hippie? It's pretty gauche.
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May 4, 2012 03:31
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mitztronic posted:Can you explain this or provide some sort of citation/credibility? I've seen this idea a few times and never understood it. If it's the why of it, it's that China, due to the century of humiliation has a rather sore spot about foreign intervention and following the Korean war has made their stance against Western Imperialism a somewhat important, part of their current identity. Then again, no-one really likes being told what to do by foreign countries. Take whaling in the north for instance. I doubt many people would support it except foreigners told us we couldn't.
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May 4, 2012 03:31
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Modus Operandi posted:I'm not directly comparing him with Madoff i'm just saying that China could turn around and screw the U.S. in much worse ways by allowing truly reprehensible characters asylum. There's little to be gained from giving Chen asylum from a geopolitical point of view. How would that screw us exactly? It would just make the Chinese look like babies, like the Confucius Peace Prize.
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May 4, 2012 03:50
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BrotherAdso posted:Why are you seriously comparing a physically abused anti-corruption advocate, defender of the rights of women to choose their own reproductive fate, and demanding voice for accountability and responsibility in the nasty lower levels of the Chinese government to Bernie Madoff or a blind hippie? It's pretty gauche. It's a clever and very cynical way of taking down figures like these. Money is base, dirty, not at all congruous with our image of idealists fighting for the rights of the weak and downtrodden. Get some allegations of petty corruption or white-collar crime out there, and you can probably be quite successful in killing domestic, if not international support for someone like Chen. Just look at how readily PPL believed in a totally bogus forum post saying that Chen had received millions in foreign aid from the Brits.
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May 4, 2012 03:57
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Bottom line is, money and/or a green card is an easier motive for many Chinese people to buy than a person actually trying to do good.
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May 4, 2012 04:09
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