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John_Anon_Smith posted:Thanks for this incredibly informative post. As someone who is second-gen and half-Chinese, most of my knowledge of China comes from my interactions and involvement with Chinese expats (mostly from Hong Kong). All people are required to learn and use standard mandarin, so even the big dialects (Cantonese, Hunanese, Shanghainese Fujianese) are officially verbooten in most public documents. In parts of Guangdong and Guangxi especially though, this shift is still slowly occurring, even in government offices and other official capacities. This mostly becomes important when you realize that there is very little private broadcasting in China, and what there is undergoes strict regulation. Except in Hong Kong, dialect based programming is largely prohibited or minimized, and in movies, regional dialects are rarely if ever heard. There are no "language police" who abduct 45 year olds or 60 year olds for never learning Mandarin, but there is a campaign to minimize the dialects and increase the common cultural identity felt by citizens across the PRC wherever possible, very similar to the slow eradication of traditional character writing. John_Anon_Smith posted:On a further note, do you have information that relates to Mao on a particular point? There was an argument I heard recently that part of the reason for Mao and the CCP's failure to properly institute a "properly" communist system was because they failed to keep control of officials in rural and poverty-stricken areas. So instead of instituting the regime's changes, these officials used local superstition and pre-existing social mores to establish their corruption and solidify power. The CCP, eager to create a new China, forgot that they were building on top of old China and not simply sweeping it away with their reforms. What would your opinion be on this subject and where could I learn more? This is only kind of true. Read The Spiral Road and Fanshen for two detailed and fairly thorough accounts of early and late Communist rule in agricultural villages and the problems that establishing and maintaining a rural commune or semi-commune system posed. BrotherAdso fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 18:18
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Typo posted:I'm literally going to Shanghai tomorrow, anyone know of any good way to bypass the famed great firewall? I'm planning on using my own proxy server but backups would be appreciated. VPN. Honestly, if you'll only be there a few days or weeks it won't be too bad - I lived there for a year and wasn't starved even though I had only very occasional access to Facebook and such. If your Chinese is good, you can even learn to use Weibo and Tudou, which I regret never exploring in depth. edit: Ah, I hadn't had time to read through he extensive OP carefully, and skipped to the questions. I'll keep an eye on the three Nos henceforth. BrotherAdso fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 18:19
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Cream_Filling posted:I think the biggest change in the role of the PLA in China was the movement in the 90s to divest the PLA of its enormous commercial and real-estate interests. Before, there was a literal "military-industrial complex" where the PLA directly ran the businesses that supplied it, from military goods to food. It also owned plenty of unrelated real estate and businesses as well. The idea was originally that the PLA would be a somewhat self-funded organization. Three more notes: 1) the PLA and military police are becoming increasingly important as class and social tensions continue to rise in cities and villages. This means that the social and political opinions and origins of high ranking officers in the PLA become increasingly important for analysis by party leaders, making the Army more overtly political. 2) As high-tech and high-profile defense policies and aquisitions increase with the modernization of the Air Force and the PLN, the role of the military establishment in the economy is likely to continue to alter, shift, and expand. There are few projects more expensive and expansive than a Navy, and fewer still that require as many special facilities, capital, and workers. 3) The convoluted relationship between the State CMC, the Party CMC, the National Defense Commission, the ex-PLA physical infrastructure and industries, and the state supply and manufacture infrastructure for the military leaves huge gray areas. As a result, the PLA retains huge amounts of power and influence from agriculture policy to commercial lending, but it goes through research, personnel, capital allocations, and shared-title ownership and so on. They're particularly important in the business patterns of some of the stuff the ICBC and especially the CDBC gets up to in terms of projects, assets, and lending. One thing I'd be very interested in is the relationship between the PLA and their financial assets and the Chinese stimulus infrastructure package, and how they interact with the building boom in coastal China. I don't have the research chops to do that, but I'd suspect that they are firmly on one side or another in the dance of disaster surrounding urban housing values and taxes. Can anyone else pick it up? BrotherAdso fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 23:34
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Nomenklatura posted:Good LORD lookit that OP. I've seen textbooks that do a worse job. Kudos. Thanks. French Lies did a fabulous job formatting and bringing in the great book list -- I did that post on the govt long ago now. I've also got one I did on Confucianism -- would that fit into the thread well, you or French Lies? It doesn't look like it made it into the LF Effortposts wordpress. I have a visual representation of the party/state relationships, let me dig it up. BrotherAdso fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 20:10
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sbaldrick posted:The most interesting thing about Confucianism I've recently found out is his decedents are still tracked in hereditary fashion, have been treated well by every ruler in Chinese history and are still involved in the government of the ROC Oh, yeah, it's a big deal. His hometown is a relatively large tourist draw (Qufu) and so is the mountain he was born on (Mt. Ni). Heck, his temples and stuff were so beloved they survived every damned purge and civil war campaign intact, unlike so many of China's ancient sites in that region, and are now some of the biggest UNESCO sites in China.
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Feb 15, 2012 21:50
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karthun posted:How serious is the 4:2:1 problem in China? Depends. The one child policy was poorly and unevenly enforced, and had a variety of legal exemptions and loopholes to boot. Plus, the big exception was to let only children who married have 2-3 children themselves, reducing the problem. China does still face a huge population disparity, though, one which will cause a significant retirement insurance and health care problem in the next few decades. Because of all the exemptions, though, the average rate is more like 2 or 2.5 children per person in many geographic areas now and has been since the early 2000s, taking the worst edge off the problem.
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Feb 15, 2012 22:58
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eSports Chaebol posted:It seems like the opposite position would be more feasible for a final settlement of the issue though: for Taiwan to accede to being part of the PRC's One China in name, but not in deed, like some kind of Super-SAR. I see this as happening relatively soon, if Taiwan undergoes a major natural or economic disaster. China was already a huge player in helping with the series of typhoons a couple years ago, and it was only the close relationship with the China market that kept Taiwan even remotely afloat when the banking, currency and finance markets tanked in 1997, 2001, and 2008. Visas have been getting easier over time, especially business visas, too. So while it will never be lovey-dovey, I can see political independence with economic, military, and diplomatic co-dependence someplace in the middle-term future (30-50 years). So here's a timg of my representation of most of the major organs on the party-side and state-side of China's dual-track government:  and here it is on Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/81765973/China-Govt-3 For the folks who asked. In terms of coding: boxes that are red are party organizations, boxes that are green are state organizations. Green with a red border means most of the membership is Party, but policy is only indirectly made by the Party and some internal autonomy remains. Red arrows represent powerful controlling relationships within the CCP -- for example, the CCP Central Committee is represented through the Politburo and the Secretariat separately, but they're interrelated, with the Politburo doing policy coordination and the Secretariat administration and party business. Therefore the Central Committee is at the top, the Politburo Standing Committee (the 24 most influential people in the party!) just below it, with the Secretariat off to the side connected to both. BrotherAdso fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Feb 16, 2012 |
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Feb 16, 2012 01:55
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skysedge posted:... First of all, thank you for bringing a well thought out and well written opinion from the ground level to the thread. This is really valuable input. As far as the ROC viewpoint on the sovereignty issue -- do you feel like you are unusually politically involved and interested by virtue of being in the military or well educated? Because while you have a great deal of interest in independence and Taiwanese national pride, is your level of interest mirrored by the poor noodle-seller in the night market or the 7-11 clerks and managers or the native Taiwanese villagers? You do have to face the same question that the Chinese face with your hypothetical farmer in Shaanxi with the population of Taiwan, ultimately. Second, I absolutely agree that the HK experience with "one country, two systems" has been a disheartening, disillusioning failure for the Hong Kong political class and middle class. Do you feel like most Taiwanese see the same thing happening there in the event of closer administrative, social, and economic ties with the mainland? Or do you and others see a way forward that avoids the kind of political strangling that has gone on in Taiwan? Finally, how has cross straits exchange begun effecting Taiwanese? While Chinese folks may seem amazed at the things they see in more open media in Taiwan, are Taiwanese horrified/amazed when they travel to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other major commercial hubs? My opinion on the slow course of changing ties between the two entities is a couple posts up, and I would really like your commentary on it, too.
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Feb 16, 2012 04:16
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Ardennes posted:Taiwanese desire for unification is really slow, like around 5-8% or lower, so I don't see them being that interested in unification. I disagree! While there's no stupid Tom Clancy thriller stuff in the future, cross-strait relations will remain interesting because Taiwan represents a significant source of talent, technology, and contact/capital/investment streams to other Asian nations and the West for nascent companies and government agencies in the PRC. Stronger economic and social ties with Taiwan are not only a PR win for the People's Republic, but they also represent somewhat outsized economic/trade gains, making Strait relations an important area. Taiwan, too, has to delicately balance its policy and politics distance from the mainland while taking maximum advantage of their economic and cultural relationship to keep its own economy afloat. Ardennes posted:The government has talked about reinflating the property market to keep things moving, but that seems pretty insane at the moment. I agree China is facing a really thorny set of problems when it comes to economic growth and momentum. However, I think you're underestimating the depth of the Party's response plan to these challenges. The PRC is giving a try at implementing a half-dozen major policy initiatives aimed at curbing the impact of export downturns and soften the housing bubble. Now, like everything, they have corruption, bias, and other problems, but they aren't sitting painfully oblivious or crippled by regulatory capture the way the US was before 2008.
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Feb 16, 2012 04:26
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Throatwarbler posted:Taiwan has conscription. Yes, but a substantial number of draftees: 1) Don't take their twelve months (recently reduced) too seriously -- at least, that's the impression I have ancedotally, and I have no data to back it up. Their continuing push to go volunteer seems to support my idea though. 2) Have other options, just like in Korea. I'll let him contribute, but he either chose or got military service instead of the many other alternate civil service routes. If he wants to explain his background, I'll be curious if he went in at 19 or got a deferment for education.
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Feb 16, 2012 04:31
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Hong XiuQuan posted:Don't piss off the government or people in power or do something heinously bad and you'll be fine. The proliferation of internet access has made it much more difficult for the govt and local officials to exercise their power with impunity. The Li Gang incident mentioned above wouldn't have made any significant news 15 years ago. The government is juggling over exactly how to manage increasing education standards and information access which leads to some ridiculous - though to be honest not entirely dissimilar to our situation in the US/Europe - decisions like mandating real-name registration on social networks. The key difference of course is that you're not likely to be afforded much in the way of legal protection if you use a social network to do something verboten. Don't have time for a long post right now, but the distinction between types of police forces -- the PAP, MPS, MSS and the units of the PSB at various levels -- is really important. Local police in China seem and are much more "local" than those in Western countries -- they are more deeply involved in the small, 3-5 block precinct their station serves, from what I can tell. Your local PSB folks are more like rural sheriffs in the US used to be -- they know people's business and address and history, and the comings and goings of the area well. They can also be corrupt as hell, like local sheriffs used to be, but they're usually not directly politically oppressive unless they have a very unusual, specific reason to be.
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Feb 17, 2012 14:31
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Cream_Filling posted:Eh, it depends. In plenty of areas, for natives, you can get shaken down by the cops for bribes, protection, etc. It's certainly no worse than any other developing country with corruption issues, but it's definitely a different sort of interaction than what most Americans are used to. The law enforcement structure of China looks something like this:  Here, the body of a box indicates who controls it, while the border indicates who staffs it for the most part and arrows represent aid and control between agencies in practice. For example, the PAP is controlled by the CMC and MPS jointly, but mostly staffed by CMC/PLA personnel, and helps out the on-the-street law enforcement fairly often with heavy lifting. Therefore it is a red box with a red border (effective CMC control and CMC personnel), a green arrow of control from the MPS on the ground, and a red arrow to the PSBs on the ground. The State Council is technically the endorser of all law enforcement. Under the State Council, there are two main agencies, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is a foreign and domestic espionage, political intelligence, and sensitive missions ministry. They have authority to do domestic law enforcement in the nation, too, but don't do much. Think of them as a combination of the CIA, FBI, and the House Un-American-Activities Commission -- the only exception being they don't actually have the kind of personnel and firepower the FBI does in the US, but they have all the listening equipment and intelligence gathering and stuff. The MSS is connected to both the PLA and the CMC, but also to the State Council, making it a very powerful but also very politically sensitive organization. Within the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), there are three or four big distinctions. There is the People's Armed Police (PAP). These are the ATF and SWAT and FBI heavy units of China's domestic police force. They enforce the law in politically sensitive areas of the country and act as the most effective riot police available. Often, they are the ones acting in major drug busts and border enforcement. They are literally The Goddamn Army In Disguise -- they even share command with the Central Military Commission without being part of the PLA. There are at least a million PAP troops in China on active duty. If you want a rough analogy, it would be as if we had the National Guard mobilized at all times to do a lot of our law enforcement work. They're technially under the control of the MPS, but in reality a lot of their control and power is with the Central Military Commmission (CMC), the high command of the PLA and one of China's paramount Party leadership bodies. The second is the Public Security Bureau. This is the overarching term for the general law enforcement offices in every city, town, county, and neighborhood and all their central offices. It's worth distinguishing between different offices in the PSB, though. There are Domestic Affairs offices of the PSB -- they do everything from visa processes, visitor tracking, traffic control and planning, to 'public security' functions like making sure no one is living in abandoned buildings and so on. These folks tend to operate out of big, centralized offices in one city or district and are more administrative than law-enforcement. They can be notoriously corrupt, because they control so many important functions and privileges. Then there are Local Offices, which are very small stations with between 6-30 (usually) uniformed PSB members that act like I mentioned earlier in the thread -- community police, like the good and the bad parts of the local sheriffs of rural American lore. They're often the real focus of corruption protests -- and in situations where the local administrative/domestic affairs offices are in cahoots with the PSB, you're in trouble. The PSB is also often the go-to for other domestic security functions, like firefighting, though sometimes the PAP help with that because of their greater access to money and equipment through the CMC connection. Also in the MPS' purview is law enforcement policy, economic crimes and fraud, and even information censorship and policing policy. The folks who work in these divisions are basically separate from the PRC, and act like an extended "justice department" at a national and provincial level. BrotherAdso fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 17, 2012 |
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Feb 17, 2012 20:48
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Throatwarbler posted:A more apt comparison of the PAP would be something like the armed forces of the Russian MVD or Ministry of the Interior. One thing that Most of the FSU states retained such a force and it's common in many authoritarian countries, like Iraq, and the German Bundespolizei or French Gendarmerie Nationale are a bit more distantly similar. It wasn't that long ago when the French Army tried to launch a coup, after all. I tend to assume I'm writing for an American audience, which is why I had such a kludged together analogy for the PAP. The MVD are a good analogy, so are the Bundespolizei for sure.
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Feb 17, 2012 21:20
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:Yes? Obviously a democratic system would need to be tailored to China, but the idea of some one-size-fits-all 'western' democratic system is already a strawman employed by the CCP. Of course it's going to be different in China- China itself is ringed by Asian democracies employing vastly different designs. OK, look, the Chinese have already done a lot of thinking about this. In the early part of the 20th century, it was clear to the sophisticated and forward-thinking intellectual class that China's cultural emphasis on education and government officials had produced that much of the Imperial System was bankrupt, and it wasn't obvious to anyone that the replacement would be a system modelled after the Marxist school of western thought. Particularly interesting and important are the works of people like Liang Qichao (most importantly), but also of Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu, whose leadership of the May 4th movement insisted that China was a perfectly good place for Western-style liberalism and democratic values to take root. In particular, they siezed on the writings of Pragmatist philosopher and educator John Dewey to format and create a kind of democratic idealism they felt appropriate for the China they knew and loved. The argument about suzhi feels, to me, like a rehash of the same argument that was elaborated at the start of the twentieth century in everything from Rickshaw to Diary of a Madman, about to what degree Chinese social orgnizaton and priorities are compatible with traditional Western democratic methods and ideas, or even with individualism as conceived by Western liberalism. There are two very productive strains of argument you're not exploring -- the first is the May 4th and Xinhai one, the second is explored by contemporary scholars writing on the topic of Confucian Democracy. Why dismiss the whole thing out of hand as an unproductive argument?
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Feb 22, 2012 03:48
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My Chinese is much more limited than Barto and French Lies -- I can only translate with a good deal of time and effort and a good dictionary -- but I'll throw in a few cents to the argument. The problem with pinyin-based literacy is less about the future of the language, to my mind, than the past of the language and culture. It is entirely conceivable that after a massive shift to pinyin, modes of writing, expression, colloquialism, and so on would adapt in a decade or two to create a coherent and effective langauge. I'm familiar with your argument, Barto, that many highly complex modes of writing or terminology would become extremely difficult to distinguish from one another in a pinyin-only environment. However, people are naturally inventive as writers and thinkers, and neologisms, abbreviations, colloquialisms and so on would spread quickly to alleviate that initial problem. This happened and is happening in other places where there is linguistic standardization -- Mexico's slow abandonment of regional dialects, the Napoleonic standardization of French, the post-unification imposition of Standard Italian and so on. But to my mind another, harder to deal with, problem emerges when you think about historical, social, and cultural studies. Even if new modes of expression develop after a pinyin shift, those who grow up or are educated after it will have to work a great deal harder to understand character-based media, especially classical and Imperial poetry and fiction (something I love). The sheer amount of pre-existing character based media that a post-character population would have to master a separate set of skills to enjoy and participate in is troubling. In addition, Chinese is not a nation-state language like, say, Turkish is. If any governing body in the PRC were to make the decision to move to pinyin-only or pinyin-centric literacy, the cultural and social continuity of ties between mainland China and the overseas Chinese communities across the world would likely become strained with time. I'd be curious to see how those two arguments filter into the great discussion you all are having on this topic.
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Feb 23, 2012 19:18
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Al-Saqr posted:Here's a Question I've always had. Why does the chinese government choose to treat it's muslim population like crap? ( I am referring to poo poo like THIS)Is there a racism towards muslims in Chinese society or is this a leftover of communist fanaticism they haven't bothered to fix yet? or is it some sort of revenge over the fact that some of the more important generals and forces of Chang Kai Shek were Muslims? There are three very distinctly different Muslim populations in China. The Hui, Uygher, and Turkic populations have extremely different takes on Islam and its relation to China, Chinese culture, and the modern PRC. They also have radically different histories within China. Which one are you curious about? For a moment of pure silly anecdote, it seems to me on the PRC/North China "street" the most common association for Islamic groups is tasty food, not Civil War generals. For a 10-second overview to help you refine your question: Hui are ethnic Chinese with a Chinese dialect descended from early converts and travelling merchants. They have a long history in Chinese politics and society, and, though they have some troubles in the modern PRC, these are really few and far between. Uyghurs live in far Western China (Xinjiang province), speak a dialect of their own language in addition to Chinese, have a shorter history of participation in the Chinese political sphere and a more troubled one. They are a regional near-majority with some ethnic nationalism and ties to other Central Asian peoples, and have been in for the most trouble and repression of all the Muslim groups in modern China. Turkic and other peoples are related to the nomadic and sparse populations that invaded China in its distant past, or to other nonviolent migrations or foced resettlements. They are rarely numerous or active enough to encounter the same levels of repression as Uyghurs, but are generally not as inegrated by any means as the Hui. They speak their own languages and have unique traditions, though.
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Feb 23, 2012 19:26
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Xandu posted:Possibly stupid question, but why aren't the Uighurs considered Turkic? They are a Turkic people linguistically and ethnically, but the Chinese government treats them differently and their demographic and cultural situation is pretty different from, say, Uzbeks, so it's good to treat them as a separate category. Good point though - Kazakhs are only slightly distinguishable in many ways, but since they're a more scattered smaller population (like 2 million?) they have slightly different issues.
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Feb 24, 2012 00:55
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french lies posted:At this point this thread seems to have devolved into me just posting links, but I really felt I had to share this after seeing it. It's a long (three hours!) and excellent Frontline documentary about the Tian'anmen protests made in the late nineties. I thought it captured perfectly that moment in history, the arrogance of both sides and the pure but often naive idealism of the protesters. You really feel how things turn to poo poo as they fight among themselves and eventually get helplessly crushed by the machinery of the state. I'll start chipping in again soon -- does anyone have Chinese govt structure questions or similar stuff I can try to answer? I'm on a glide path as far as work and stuff goes for the next week, so I'll have time to post some analysis and links. On another note China Elections has an interesting analysis of the Hong Kong elections here: http://chinaelectionsblog.net/hkfocus/?p=355 Though I think it's a little bit alarmist. I am sure there will be immediate calls for resignation, but I don't know that it will be so powerful a choir as her analysis puts up. A great deal of Hong Kong politics depends on keeping the wheels greased, and Leung will be able to do so, limiting strong protests to a handful of pro-democracy or anti-Beijing activists.
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Apr 6, 2012 20:48
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Arglebargle III posted:My classrooms have similar Lei Feng stuff, but one of my smartest classes has a big block of text about him in English that says he was made up by the Chinese government. There's a bunch of errors in the English so it might not actually be copied from Wikipedia either! I think it's pretty funny that they have this anti-propaganda up but nobody who might care to have it taken down can read it. Is this a new thing? I was teaching in the public schools in 2009-2010 in Dalian, and my rooms had propaganda but no Lei Feng (though my kids did know about him). I heard there was some effort to revive Lei Feng as a more central role model recently, but has it reached the level of a full fledged campaign?
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Apr 7, 2012 12:47
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Ardennes posted:The issue is "gradually slowing" gdp growth which honestly isn't specified and almost certainly is in no way accurate. It's a little more fair, but it does bury the most important stuff in the last three or five paragraphs. The article's research (with the exception of that dumb chart) isn't awful -- China is trying to mechanize and informatize their warfare, China is trying to keep out American direct deployment in local waters, there are some pretty strong war plans and policy language in place around the two-Chinas issue, yep. But the real issue is laid out in the last three paragraphs. In these, we learn in rapid succession that China's capacity is hard to measure, it's still tiny compared to the US, a gigantic and historically central player in the region is justified in wanting a strong military presence on the world stage, there are few options for China in the world of the US' alliance network, etc etc etc. By burying that information at the end of the article, they misinform the reader not strictly by wrong information (though theres a little bit of that), but also by analytic misweighting. Unless the reader is really really careful, he'll leave with a much stronger impression of the power and threat of China's military than is borne out even by the actual information in the article.
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Apr 9, 2012 05:14
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Typo posted:If you are in a first or second tier city or talking to one of its residents (which most westerner interaction with China is going to be) then Social unrest is very limited as is political participation. Because life for them is very good (pretty much on par with western standards for many) and some of them either believe the line that China's political process is needed for China (the Suzhi thing) or because they don't really think anything can be changed anyway. Also, party membership is relatively high (more teachers and other employees who need political approval) and the state and party apparatuses can be less tightly tied together in large cities. In a small town, there's one school, three roads, etc etc -- all closely tied to the local party boss and mayor, and their three best friends. If you live in, I dunno, Wenzhou or something, the government's services and structure are a little more neutral, complex, widespread, and less closely tied to specific party leaders. I don't think it's fair to dismiss city residents as somehow more lazy, misinformed, pampered, or whatever. Their context makes personal contact with highly disruptive and malicious political corruption less likely. But on the other side, they're actually more likely to have the media exposure and education to make in-party critiques and bring perspective to a desire for change, even though they are much less likely to participate in direct social unrest.
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Apr 15, 2012 13:26
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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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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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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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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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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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iceaim posted:The write up you posted is excellent for the most part, but it's totally DEAD wrong as far as Hong Kong is concerned. I live in Hong Kong, and none of the quoted above is true at all! Thank you very much for the information! I appreciate this kind of input a great deal. All my two years were spent in the North and I wrote all my papers on Confucianism, so HK is not an area of great expertise for me. However, I do wonder about the degree of freedom the HK government has, more than its people. I guess I mischaracterized -- I know that individual people from HK are usually pretty free to protest, express themselves, and so on, and that intra-HK governance has its own complex politics. But what about the "lines" the Party and outside government draw on the nature and type of activity that the HK government can get up to? Or the ability of the HK government to not fear an "override switch" from Beijing on some matters? I would really appreciate some more clarification on how things like Beijing-based anticorruption operations, media control for things going to the mainland (like the radio broadcasts I mentioned) fit into the great picture you painted of the more democratic and open side of HK public and civic life.
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May 16, 2012 01:04
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iceaim posted:Can you clarify what you mean by "Beijing-based anticorruption operations"? "Anticorruption operations" means when the government and the party apparatus decide to crack down on (usually to make an example of someone) a business that's been bribing officials or breaking laws with its mainland operations. Otherwise, great info. I knew HK was much freer, socially and politically, than the mainland, but I had overestimated the control Beijing could really exert.
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May 16, 2012 02:11
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PrezCamachoo posted:http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Rape-Nanking-Weatherhead/dp/0195180968 I have actually read this book (or some of the scholarly reviews of it?), in grad school so back in 2007-8. It's a serious and thoughtful work of history but it is about a specific topic in the modern discipline, that is, the study of historical memory and cultural consciousness. That is, the book is not about the actual Nanjing Massacre itself any more than The Holocaust Industry is about the Shoah itself. The book examines how people have shaped their memory and the public perception and symbolism of the event since it happened, which is a really neat subject in its own right.
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Sep 19, 2012 04:46
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Effectronica posted:Actually, this is what history education boils down to in the American school system as well- it presents a jingoistic and nationalistic view of American actions in the past, treats history as an inevitable process to deny students any sense of agency or power, and a host of other sins. There's really very little difference between the two nations on this matter. I have taught secondary education in both nations and this is absolutely untrue. While American school systems do have a nationalistic or doctrinal function, it has been in no way as well enforced, unified, or consciously cultivated as it was when I taught in China. It is late, but it you have specific questions about how the experiences compared re: dogmatism I would be happy to answer them from an ancedotal standpoint in the case of my experience in China or a more informed education policy standpoint in the case of history education in the United States.
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Sep 19, 2012 04:49
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I hate to be trite, but isn't it possible that this is not about a clear, legal, universally recognized conclusion based on the value of historical precedent? The whole issue -- and its outcome -- is a measure of the ability of Asia's diplomatic players to bully, meddle, beg, whine, and threaten. The real value of the outcome here - whichever side gets recognized as 'real' claimant - is to establish the relative level of clout of players in Asian diplomacy for the next few years. Can the two arguing sides here agree on that before they get back to the various interesting historical and cartographic asides they're on right now?
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Sep 19, 2012 14:00
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Arglebargle III posted:I'm still of the opinion that this is about giving the Chinese people a bone to gnaw to keep them busy while the masters decide who will rule them. This is definitely part of the popular protest and domestic side of it, my post above was more about the international law and diplomacy side most of the conversation on this page seems to have been focused on.
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Sep 19, 2012 14:15
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VideoTapir posted:What's a good book on Confucianism, particularly in a modern context, with some historical background, and looking at it as an ethical system? I like the Rosemont and Ames translation of the Analects, but it definitely tries hard to make the Analects into a modern philosophical system, with attention to its original context. That means it really peeves people who want to learn about Confucianism-in-context as a historical moment an cultural movement through Chinese history.
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Dec 17, 2012 05:33
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Whoops. Actually, on point, was there any particular speech Xi made when he was formally installed this week? Or was all the symbolic stuff done at the Party Congress?
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Mar 16, 2013 19:20
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