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Alchenar posted:I think the extremely rapid rise of right-to-far-right nationalist sentiment in the USSR and across the Warsaw Pact is a pretty strong indicator that the conventional wisdom that there was no ideological love for the USSR at at is correct, and that people value things they associate with stability over things they associate with instability. I have talked to a ukranian lady, and she was very conservative. She look at women that have to work and take care of the childrens at home and think "lol, is this freedom for womens?, looks like poo poo". She don't understand why womens would want that. I guess these countries did had feminist ideologies coming from communism, and communism made efforts to present womens in the workforce, has scientist, in space. But once communism was removed... what was below was a very conservative society. I have to guess the people that live in a communist country learn to grown a sketicism to everything coming from the governement, that people from democracies don't have that protection. Protection ...or weakness. The governement can be ill motivated...or not. Sometimes sketicism make so people avoid modern medicine, so they die young. A lot of people put their faith in traditional medicine, and thats convenient because is cheaper than real medicine. Tei fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Nov 23, 2023 |
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Nov 23, 2023 09:02
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Alchenar posted:I think the extremely rapid rise of right-to-far-right nationalist sentiment in the USSR and across the Warsaw Pact is a pretty strong indicator that the conventional wisdom that there was no ideological love for the USSR at at is correct, and that people value things they associate with stability over things they associate with instability. mass support for the soviet project was not especially deep towards the end, i agree with this. however, there's a difference between "not active ideological commitment" and "the project has fundamentally lost legitimacy among the masses". the generational attitude gap can, in my opinion, be best interpreted as a lot ordinary people in the soviet space being moderately positively disposed towards the soviet union but by no means willing to fight for it, and not on any deep level. that is congruent with mass consent - i.e. the soviet project was perceived as basically legitimate among the mass politic and its abolition was largely an elite-driven phenomenon. for china, then, the lesson becomes one of elite management, and the question of how to deal with dissent is fundamentally a question about how to deal with elites. judicious use of terror to impose discipline on some sections of the elite can even be quite popular among the masses, or at least not unpopular, as seen with jack ma's case; if the terror became too much a part of everyday life, then that would be a problem for the mass politic. when the soviet project collapses, because they saw the soviet project as basically legitimate, a lot of people then don't accept the post-soviet liberal-democratic political structure as more legitimate, and thus are willing to cast about for alternatives - and the most obvious one which is socially permissible and which they see as representing their interests is right-wing populism. there's imo no contradiction between having a positive view of the DDR and voting AfD, despite the AfD being vocally anticommunist - the key in my view is simply that these people don't have any loyalty to the replacement liberal-bourgeois regime, and especially don't like the elites representing that regime very much.
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Nov 23, 2023 09:56
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V. Illych L. posted:if the charitable interpretation is that the post is meant to counter a claim which other than the one explicitly made (in this case it's unclear what the precise claim being rebutted would be - everyone who lived to see the soviet union liked it? some people liked the soviet union? people in the satellites didn't like the soviet union? the latter is plausible, but not supported at all by the provided evidence), i think charity is doing us something of a disservice. it's also notably asymmetrical; it requires the claim being rebutted to be a much broader one than is apparently put forward, so we'd be assuming a suspicious reading of neuroliminal's post to provide a charitable reading of i fly airplanes' post The claim seems to be "People liked the USSR" implying "People liked communism" but capitalist propaganda turned younger generations against it. I think it's a somewhat useless observation. The USSR had incredible amounts of resources at its disposal - chiefly oil, gas and coal - so it would be a matter of staggering incompetence if they had somehow managed to build a society that benefitted no one. It's like saying people enjoy living in Norway so therefore capitalism is good or people enjoy living in Saudi Arabia so therefore monarchism is good. China is not gifted with infinite piles of money so it would have been a more instructive and representative sample of a centrally planned economy had they still been doing that.
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Nov 23, 2023 10:05
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V. Illych L. posted:if the charitable interpretation is that the post is meant to counter a claim which other than the one explicitly made (in this case it's unclear what the precise claim being rebutted would be - everyone who lived to see the soviet union liked it? some people liked the soviet union? people in the satellites didn't like the soviet union? the latter is plausible, but not supported at all by the provided evidence), i think charity is doing us something of a disservice. it's also notably asymmetrical; it requires the claim being rebutted to be a much broader one than is apparently put forward, so we'd be assuming a suspicious reading of neuroliminal's post to provide a charitable reading of i fly airplanes' post I think you are over-analyzing my post, and I also beg that you use capitalization in your posts. My argument was simply support of Soviet Russia is linked to Russian propaganda/being "close to the imperial core", which is why you see the difference between states like Belarus and Armenia, culturally and linguistically stronger to Russia, versus others like East Germany and Poland. It is not, as Neuroliminal incorrectly argued, about something to do with nostalgia/old age or feelings on how communism provided better for them than capitalism. An old person in East Germany will be far less likely to mourn Soviet Russia/support modern day Russia than a young person from Armenia or any other similar former Soviet Republic.
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Nov 23, 2023 15:03
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V. Illych L. posted:mass support for the soviet project was not especially deep towards the end, i agree with this. however, there's a difference between "not active ideological commitment" and "the project has fundamentally lost legitimacy among the masses". the generational attitude gap can, in my opinion, be best interpreted as a lot ordinary people in the soviet space being moderately positively disposed towards the soviet union but by no means willing to fight for it, and not on any deep level. that is congruent with mass consent - i.e. the soviet project was perceived as basically legitimate among the mass politic and its abolition was largely an elite-driven phenomenon. for china, then, the lesson becomes one of elite management, and the question of how to deal with dissent is fundamentally a question about how to deal with elites. judicious use of terror to impose discipline on some sections of the elite can even be quite popular among the masses, or at least not unpopular, as seen with jack ma's case; if the terror became too much a part of everyday life, then that would be a problem for the mass politic. Well this is actually where Neuroliminal's points about free speech, coercion and hard-soft power come round to bite. The Soviet Union used less of the extreme ends of hard power towards the end, but still was extremely coercive over the information space to the point where everyone knew that everyone was lying to everyone else. Under those conditions, is it any surprise that the elites lost faith with the project before the masses did? After all, they were the ones with their hands on the scales preventing the masses from getting the true picture of just how bad life was in the USSR compared to the West.
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Nov 23, 2023 19:46
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Owling Howl posted:The claim seems to be "People liked the USSR" implying "People liked communism" but capitalist propaganda turned younger generations against it. I think it's a somewhat useless observation. The USSR had incredible amounts of resources at its disposal - chiefly oil, gas and coal - so it would be a matter of staggering incompetence if they had somehow managed to build a society that benefitted no one. this seems once again to be a rather suspicious reading. the claim, in plain text, is that attitudes towards the soviet union vary dramatically depending on whether one experienced it as an adult. the interpretation in plain text is that the soviet union has been demonised following its fall, and that this leads to the discrepancy. i agree with this, at least insofar as agreeing that this is an effect which influences the generational outcomes measured in all the polls used in this discussion. Alchenar posted:Well this is actually where Neuroliminal's points about free speech, coercion and hard-soft power come round to bite. The Soviet Union used less of the extreme ends of hard power towards the end, but still was extremely coercive over the information space to the point where everyone knew that everyone was lying to everyone else. elites care a lot more about principles of accountability, censorship and suchlike than mass polities do, in general, because they're usually the ones being censored or arbitrarily harassed and expect to not be censored or harassed. people experience for themselves just how bad life is before and after the collapse of the soviet union, and many people whith this experience don't agree with the assessment that life improved upon its abolition. they could be wrong, of course, but that they have this attitude is interesting because it speaks to the new regime not being notably more legitimate to them than the soviet regime was. i fly airplanes posted:I think you are over-analyzing my post, and I also beg that you use capitalization in your posts. you realise you ought to provide some evidence for this argument other than polling data which appears to support the claim you're trying to rebut e. i'm really not especially invested in defending the soviet union here, as i hope is clear from my previous posts about stalinist cultural policy etc., but a critical examination of the fall of the soviet union as it relates to the people's republic of china needs to have a reasonable basis and cannot fall into the trap of convenient demonisation when that very thing is what is being discussed. it clearly was a repressive society in many over ways, and this had consequences. what was the basis for such repression? what were the consequences? was the soviet union an imperial core exploiting the periphery or was it subsidising its periphery at the expense of the core? many claims have been made about this itt, many of which do not seem to be reconcilable. the observation that older people in the former soviet union systematically have a more positive opinion of the soviet union is in my opinion pretty clearly demonstrated by the polls posted itt. the interpretation that the drop has something to do with the subsequent demonisation of the soviet union seems eminently reasonable to me. i think that the further analysis that the post-soviet elites mostly had a stridently anti-soviet project (being largely generated and alienated by soviet repression of various kinds) and imposed such demonisation as part of their own political agendas is also reasonable. i think that the other explanation provided, that russian control of the information space is the main determinant, is weak and ignores key observations, not least that the ruling ideology of russia was also strongly anti-soviet until relatively recently and that this generational effect is also visible within russia itself. V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Nov 23, 2023 |
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Nov 23, 2023 21:17
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There's also the generational thing, which is that someone over 65 in Russia might not remember with fondness the everyday queues for or outright shortages of meat, bread, anything - but then, the new system has been a roller coaster ride for them and not everyone was able to land on their feet. Those now getting only the basic pension still can't buy meat and bread as often as they'd like, just not because of queues - but at least in USSR if you waited in line for four or six hours, you might get what you were looking for, and pensioners have nothing but time. Rents in big cities also skyrocketed in the last decade or so, although western sanctions on Russian oil seem to have had a calming effect on costs of living in Moscow in recent years.
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Nov 23, 2023 21:34
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Nenonen posted:There's also the generational thing, which is that someone over 65 in Russia might not remember with fondness the everyday queues for or outright shortages of meat, bread, anything - but then, the new system has been a roller coaster ride for them and not everyone was able to land on their feet. Those now getting only the basic pension still can't buy meat and bread as often as they'd like, just not because of queues - but at least in USSR if you waited in line for four or six hours, you might get what you were looking for, and pensioners have nothing but time. Rents in big cities also skyrocketed in the last decade or so, although western sanctions on Russian oil seem to have had a calming effect on costs of living in Moscow in recent years. to be clear and to restate a previous post, i also agree that the fall of the soviet union being such a traumatic mess likely is also an explaining factor here. i just don't think it's reasonable to claim that the new regime's strong and loudly proclaimed anti-communism has not had a meaningful effect on younger people's attitudes towards the soviet project.
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Nov 23, 2023 21:39
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https://twitter.com/whyyoutouzhele/status/1727703991788675241quote:“我不知道” something something gray rhinos more seriously, tackling the debt gray rhino actually melded well with Beijing's financial biases (toward budgetary discipline and central visibility), whereas the growth slowdown does not ronya fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 04:48
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https://twitter.com/wentisung/status/1727996261998141501 Now that's a thought. I don't think Taiwan has ever had non-lame-duck cohabitation before? Chen's presidency "enjoyed" a legislature with some basic legitimacy problems that would not plague it today. Could definitely lead to some inconvenient ambiguities ronya fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 12:53
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V. Illych L. posted:basically i'm saying that imo a more plausible interpretation of the post in question is that it's just missing its target or wrong. that is fine - this can be demonstrated and then the china thread can ideally go back to discussing china with the question of generational attitudes towards the soviet union a largely settled empirical question. i do think that there being such an effect is relevant, because the soviet project and the people's republic of china have many points of contact and it's worth noting that that project remains much more popular/much less unpopular to people with their own memories of it, implying that the general brutishness of the regime did not actually cause a general collapse of legitimacy among the masses, and when we discuss chinese neo-authoritarian strategies that is pertinent; if one's interpretation is that what the soviets did wrong was pretend to not be brutes and then behave brutally, which caused disaffection among certain elite segments who quite liked the idea of not being brutes, which contributed to the collapse of legitimacy among those elites, then just not entertaining those pretensions is a perfectly reasonable lesson to learn from the soviet collapse. it does not make sense if the correct interpretation is that the brutality itself destroyed popular consent for the soviet project per se - if that is the only supportable view, then the neo-authoritarians in ronya's telling seem to just be stupid. To be clear, I interpet XJP thought as pitching a tent on the view that "quite liking the idea of not being brutes" is a viable position to maintain: that myriad sins of the Soviets - forsaking a formal commitment to defend continued Party rule by violence and ceasing to punish open criticism of Party supremacy (campaigning for repeal of Article 6), or accepting electoral legitimation via demokratizatsiya as a necessary mandate for local government consent, or accepting the existence of civil-social organizations that insisted on independence from Party governance - were all unforced errors out of ideological weakness or deviationism and hence that can be stopped by committing explicitly against these things Whereas I would locate this evolution as an inevitability stemming from social changes, in particular the development of rule of law and the steady rationalization and lowering of stakes from political battles. Contemporary China is of course not Maoist in a continuous revolution sense and would quite like 全面依法治国 total rule of law itself, as a centralizing goal to insert the Party in all institutions in life (as a rational overseer exercising continuous oversight, not merely as a final court of appeal. It really cannot be understated the degree to which Xi's popularity stems from successfully mitigating how petty corruption stands in the way of that rationalization - but of course, you can only claim credit for eliminating petty corruption once), but without having the Party itself inevitability become a de facto parliament (hence layering the Two Establishes/Two Safeguards atop the XJP project subsequently in 2018). So that's a bit of a conundrum. ronya fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 16:00
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ronya posted:https://twitter.com/wentisung/status/1727996261998141501 The legislature of 96-2008 was also a pretty different beast (and twice the size) than what it is today. Even Tsai having a clear majority after 2020 didn't make passing legislation easy. If the question is "how does a divided government going to work with a more legitimate legislative yuan" pretty sure no one has an answer yet.
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Nov 24, 2023 22:25
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Bald Stalin posted:What are China's top 3 atrocities outside China? Just want to level set vs. the US's war crimes. Brutal occupation of Vietnam for a thousand years?
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Nov 25, 2023 00:41
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Didn't know the CCP had time travel tech and went back 2000 years to do their imperialism.
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Nov 25, 2023 00:48
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Bald Stalin posted:Didn't know the CCP had time travel tech and went back 2000 years to do their imperialism. They didn't ask about the CCP, they asked about China.
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Nov 25, 2023 01:05
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I was very much asking about post revolution China, for an apples to apples vs. the USA. Why would I care about what happened 2000 years ago in that discussion on US atrocities vs. China's indirect involvement in atrocities?
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Nov 25, 2023 01:08
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the punitive expedition to vietnam is probably the most obvious, as is their related solid support for the khmer rouge and the afghan mujahedeen you could count korea as well but imo that's rather iffy
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Nov 25, 2023 01:11
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Invasion, annexation, and then sustained genocide in Tibet is probably #1 and its timeline is entirely post-revolution.
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Nov 25, 2023 01:16
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Koramei posted:Invasion, annexation, and then sustained genocide in Tibet is probably #1 and its timeline is entirely post-revolution. ah, but there's the restriction that it be "outside china" which in tibet's case is known to be a matter of some controversy, especially to the chinese government
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Nov 25, 2023 01:19
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Bald Stalin posted:I was very much asking about post revolution China, for an apples to apples vs. the USA. Why would I care about what happened 2000 years ago in that discussion on US atrocities vs. China's indirect involvement in atrocities? saying that post-revolution china is apples to apples against the united states is a hard stance to substantiate. i don't think there are any good comparisons to the us in terms of their influence over the last ~100 years, the ussr and the british empire being the closest. the ability for a state to project that much power internationally is not the norm, and states generally do bad stuff to their neighbors or within their own borders instead. phrasing it as 'us atrocities' vs' china's indirect involvement in atrocities' also sounds a lot like you're begging the question to begin with, not helped by specifying 'outside china' when what's currently china is big and contains a lot of places that have been or not been china at various points, like Tibet as mentioned.
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Nov 25, 2023 01:27
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I think the posters' point is that nothing the CPC has done outside its borders comes even close quantitatively to the results of American Imperialism, as far as death, suffering and atrocities are concerned. Which imo is a fair point, two things can be terrible at the same time. Vietnam is a pretty interesting example, in that it has been "invaded" by both countries in the 20th century. With completely different outcomes.
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Nov 25, 2023 03:48
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Specifically, the point was to counter the claim that "China is probably indirectly complicit in plenty enough poo poo outside China too" Meaning that it's really not "enough" suffering and atrocities until you reach US levels. And the only reason US support for Israel was brought up was to (once again) deflect from discussion about Xinjiang and Xi being a dictator.
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Nov 25, 2023 04:34
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Dante80 posted:Vietnam is a pretty interesting example, in that it has been "invaded" by both countries in the 20th century. With completely different outcomes. This is true, but I wouldn't try and draw conclusions based on it. Both the USSR and China 'invaded' Cambodia, with completely different outcomes, and while both were bad, one was substantially qualitatively worse than the other. Proxy warfare is almost never any good at all for the proxies. (The part where the US did a stupendous amount of damage to the region didn't help either.)
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Nov 25, 2023 04:42
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V. Illych L. posted:ah, but there's the restriction that it be "outside china" which in tibet's case is known to be a matter of some controversy, especially to the chinese government That's like saying the Roman conquest and genocide of Gaulish tribes or the American conquest and genocide of native americans doesn't count, because it was successful. They all absolutely count.
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Nov 25, 2023 05:15
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Charlz Guybon posted:That's like saying the Roman conquest and genocide of Gaulish tribes or the American conquest and genocide of native americans doesn't count, because it was successful. The political development of native Americans is an internal matter of the United States, concerns America's fundamental interests and the national feelings of the American people, and brooks no outside interference
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Nov 25, 2023 05:35
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Vietnam is an interesting exemplar case where American intervention has been within living memory (to say the least); its current leadership are either Vietnam war veterans themselves or grew up during the war. This arguably includes the Chinese punitive invasion period, since Deng did so as an American ally to punish a Soviet one. And yet, curiously enough, popular sentiment in Vietnam is decidedly pro-American today. Two thousand years? Try forty. ronya fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Nov 25, 2023 |
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Nov 25, 2023 05:45
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Moderately apropos the current discussion I would love it if China was considerably choosier about who all they sell weapons to. That one hasn't really coalesced into a narrative that gets significant reporting yet afaict, but it's only a matter of time. Chinese weapons really get around.
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Nov 25, 2023 06:14
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je1 healthcare posted:The political development of native Americans is an internal matter of the United States, concerns America's fundamental interests and the national feelings of the American people, and brooks no outside interference
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Nov 25, 2023 15:25
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Collateral Damage posted:A genocide is a genocide, regardless of the victims being inside or outside a nation's established borders. And it's the duty of the civilized world to react when it happens. I think they're making a joke where they replace "China/Chinese" with American.
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Nov 25, 2023 15:43
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Oh I realize that, but there are way too many people making the same argument in absolute sincerity and my response was more directed at them. Sorry je1. 
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Nov 25, 2023 16:18
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I think the aggressive border expansion and repression of the people living there by China is so especially galling to US and EU observers BECAUSE it bears such a resemblance to the historical atrocities that the US and Europe (would like to think they've) moved past. To some degree it is fair to say it's hypocritical, somewhat of a ladder pull, to declare a global rule about borders and self-governance after you've been the one drawing the lines and stealing natural resources for centuries. On the other hand, I would say that kind of expansionism has been pretty consistently decried wherever it happens in the modern day with the exception of Israel (at least, the US has not decried Israel sufficiently, many parts of Europe have decried those moves to greater or lesser degrees). China is pretty unique in terms of just how many square miles they have added to their claimed territory, with only the USSR having anything on par since WWII (at least that I can think of, keeping it to "added to an existing country" rather than "establishment of a new country that was previously a colony or region of a larger country" or "successor state to a state that existed within the lifetime of the populace"). Even with the USSR, the major border changes were prior to the end of the war, plus East Germany as part of the resolution. To some degree I think there's inertia to it, where the largest countries by land area have a tendency to continue going wide, but I really don't think it actually pays off, and it's pretty telling that the US has not tried to add any more of Canada or Mexico in a VERY long time, despite being viewed as the warmongers of the world internationally at several points in that span It honestly feels like a pretty iffy decision in retrospect for China to be so adamant about expanding to maximalist historical borders. I understand why it was done as part of the national story of historical China, Han supremacy and all of that, but it seems like a through line to a lot of the conversations that happen here about China loving up soft power with their "Wolf Warrior diplomacy" in recent years and pissing all their neighbors off constantly. It feels like the choice to annex was based on cargo culting prior empires rather than any sort of strategic or tactical necessity. In the same way that people have been discussing the Soviet periphery, it seems to me that those regions come with a lot of costs - both to maintain order in them and to deal with the international condemnation that comes with them. I guess what I'm saying is that, even separate from the moral aspect, it just feels so pointless to me. Tibet and Xinjiang could have been junior partners or puppet states or lendees or whatever other neo-colonialist structure without China loving up their religious traditions and making work camps. Whatever value the natural resources in the area represent, they could be had cheaply enough in trade; they are land-locked regions with few obvious potential trade partners, the mere act of building the same railroads would have cemented it. The people in these regions have to suffer because of the national myth of "historical China". BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Nov 25, 2023 |
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Nov 25, 2023 17:54
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Party policy in Tibet dates to the pre-Sino-US reappochement, but the pivot in Xinjiang is well within living memory: from post-Deng nationalities policy promoting varying degrees of Islamism and co-option to palliate post-Soviet ambitions, to responding to "China's 9/11" by committing to not only eliminating any sign of separatism but also forcing believers to continually publicly choose between religious tradition and Party orders. I think it's a mistake to take claims to historicism at face value. After all, the party does not question the existence of Mongolia, even though it's a liberal democratic multi-party state sitting on historic 1911 Qing territory. ronya fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Nov 26, 2023 |
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Nov 26, 2023 08:46
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ronya posted:Vietnam is an interesting exemplar case where American intervention has been within living memory (to say the least); its current leadership are either Vietnam war veterans themselves or grew up during the war. This arguably includes the Chinese punitive invasion period, since Deng did so as an American ally to punish a Soviet one. There are ships currently in the Vietnamese Coast Guard provided by the US that were taking part in naval interdiction efforts during the Vietnam War.
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Nov 26, 2023 11:25
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ronya posted:Party policy in Tibet dates to the pre-Sino-US reappochement, but the pivot in Xinjiang is well within living memory: from post-Deng nationalities policy promoting varying degrees of Islamism and co-option to palliate post-Soviet ambitions, to responding to "China's 9/11" by committing to not only eliminating any sign of separatism but also forcing believers to continually publicly choose between religious tradition and Party orders. I think it's a mistake to take claims to historicism at face value. It's not that I think they believe it so much as they feel they have to maintain it. The actual reason why Mongolia is immune to "historical borders" is because of the support of the USSR over the main span of time when China was making those sorts of moves. Obviously, "historical borders" is cynically deployed just like any other justification for aggression, but the bigger issue is what "historical borders" symbolizes - the idea that more territory means a stronger nation, giving up territory is a sign of weakness. Obviously that is a pretty common way of thinking, and certainly losing territory IS a bad sign for the core of an empire most times, but that's a symptom of weakness, not a cause of weakness. If China had never re-annexed Tibet and Xinjiang they wouldn't miss them at all, but the most important historic borders are the most recent, and since PRC has held them since basically the start, there is no way they will ever be given up until the current era of governance falls apart I think you've alluded to an analogous problem in some of your of your other posts about there being too many "core interests" that the government considers non-negotiable. I think a big part of the modern era for Europe (and the US to a lesser extent) came about from cutting loose colonial holdings to reinvest in the population in the core, and China right now seems to have too many boondoggles, between Belt and Road, the South China Sea, Taiwan, and unnecessary and inefficient real estate projects.
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Nov 27, 2023 07:20
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Mm, that I agree - by design or accident the core interests have expanded from Tibet, Taiwan, and dissident-rights-for-economic-concessions (which were the 1990s WTO accession/GHWB/Clinton-period US concerns). This evolution was actually really recent; as late as the mid-2000s the list is as follows:quote:老挝党和政府在台湾、西藏、人权等涉及中国国家主权和核心利益的重大问题上一贯给予中方坚定支持。中方对此表示感谢。 So that's the list, which exactly corresponds to US lobbying pressures of the 1990s. Xinjiang does not even make the list. Neither does the SCS. Nor does Hong Kong. For why China does not see an East Turkestan puppet state as a possible option and instead attempts Han settlement - well, Russia did successfully put down Chechen secessionism. This showed that such movements can be crushed and that the 1989 tide (counting the Afghan Taliban victory in 1996 as one of them) could be stopped at a highwater mark. The bloody Yugoslav disintegration also cut into European enthusiasm for rolling back the remnants of the Soviet sphere further. The mid 2000s was a different world. All of those were short-termist considerations though. ronya fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 10:43
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https://twitter.com/DoubleEph/status/1729094960908222660 Whole report is actually pretty interesting: quote:MethodologyTo track the spread of the Chinese government’s policy of sinicization, we wanted to identify changes to mosques that had once had minarets, domes, and other external Arabic features. We built a dataset of 4,450 reported locations of mosques across China by combining search results from Baidu Maps, Google Maps, and OpenStreetMap, as well as mosques in Xinjiang(opens a new window) from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. We inspected each location using Google Earth satellite imagery, identifying mosques and comparing changes with their architecture over time. quote:In an exhibition off the main courtyard, a large panel urges worshippers to “promote unity” and “oppose division”, quoting both the Koran and traditional Chinese thinkers. Passages of the Koran can still be seen inside the mosque, and the prayer hall is unchanged. quote:“The mood is very despondent,” says Ruslan Yusupov, a Cornell University fellow who did fieldwork in Gejiu, Yunnan province, where authorities have started demolishing the dome of the Shadian Grand Mosque — one of the largest mosques in China. “People feel that the government is slowly decreasing the difference between the way it handles Uyghurs and the way it handles [other] Chinese Muslims.” quote:For centuries, Hui Muslims have built mosques in a variety of architectural styles, reflecting the period in which they were built. Many mosques and other religious buildings were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. But following the death of Mao Zedong, there was a push for more Arabic-style buildings.  Incidentally, it's worth appreciating that a sensitivity to perceived excessively Arab/Wahhabi architecture is not unique to China; even some Muslim majority countries also have developed some aversions (e.g., adding tall, slender minarets, which hardline Wahhabis oppose, or other local flourishes entirely). This said, China is also nervous about the Barelvi Islam promoted by Pakistan so baroque stylings and Indo-Saracenic touches are not a comfort there either. The main difference is that China has both the means and political will to actually reify such conservative reaction on a massive scale, which might in another country only impact a couple of especially prominent mosques, or maybe only some new ones under construction. (government control of sermon content, however, is par for the course in authoritarian states) ronya fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 20:02
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BougieBitch posted:It's not that I think they believe it so much as they feel they have to maintain it. The actual reason why Mongolia is immune to "historical borders" is because of the support of the USSR over the main span of time when China was making those sorts of moves. comparatively, iirc the east turkestan governments, despite ongoing and friendly-ish relations with the USSR, hit a combination of weakened relations from trying to play both sides and unlucky timing re central leadership changes in the USSR
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Nov 28, 2023 09:17
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https://www.ft.com/content/eace699c-ce75-485b-ac14-e6c10375fdcc How does this work in practice?
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Nov 28, 2023 14:36
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You drop by IT before your trip and pick up a phone/laptop/etc. that has the corporate VPN intranet rights of the visitor lobby wifi.
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Nov 28, 2023 15:47
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i fly airplanes posted:https://www.ft.com/content/eace699c-ce75-485b-ac14-e6c10375fdcc
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Nov 28, 2023 20:05
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