SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Chinese state media has urged authorities to take a "tougher line" against protesters in Hong Kong who vandalised state-run Xinhua news agency and other buildings at the weekend, saying the violence damaged the city's rule of law.
[...] In an editorial, state-backed China Daily newspaper criticised the "wanton" attacks by "naive" demonstrators, adding, "They are doomed to fail simply because their violence will encounter the full weight of the law."
Police fired tear gas at black-clad protesters on Saturday and Sunday in some of the worst violence in the Asian financial hub in weeks, with metro stations set ablaze and buildings vandalised.
Violence also erupted on Sunday after a man with a knife attacked several people and bit off part of the ear of a pro-democracy politician. Two of the victims are reportedly in critical condition, according to reports.
The past five months of anti-government protests in the former British colony represent the biggest popular challenge to President Xi Jinping's government since he took over China's leadership in late 2012.
Protesters are angry at China's perceived meddling with Hong Kong's freedoms, including its legal system, since the Asian financial hub returned to Chinese rule in 1997. China denies the accusation.
The widely-read Global Times tabloid on Sunday condemned the protesters' actions targeting Xinhua and called for action by Hong Kong's enforcement agencies.
"Due to the symbolic image of Xinhua, the vandalizing of its branch is not only a provocation to the rule of law in Hong Kong, but also to the central government and the Chinese mainland, which is the rioters' main purpose," it said.
On Friday, after a meeting of China's top leadership, a senior Chinese official said it would not tolerate separatism or threats to national security in Hong Kong and would "perfect" the way it appointed the city's leader.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:50AM (3 children)
Of course you are. Much like during the Red Scares anybody who said 'Guys, perhaps we're kind of freaking out a bit...?' would immediately be labeled at minimum a 'sympathizer' and likely an overt communist himself. Deport 'em! It's even similar to the various witch trials throughout history. You must remain vigilantly ignorant and zealous against the witch, lest you yourself risk being labeled the next witch. This is precisely how such stupidity spreads. People become afraid to learn about the 'enemy' for fear as being seen as one of them.
And in this case I think there's something people don't really want to consider. About 50 years ago we put a man on the moon and were a united nation making unimaginably rapid progress. At about the same time Chinese were literally starving to death by the tens of millions in their 'Great Leap Forward.' Today? Outside of more toys (all of course made in China as a completely government endorsed means of bypassing our labor/environmental standards), it's hard to say we've advanced much. We are certainly becoming much more divided, and our government has become not only much less representative but also increasingly incapable of achieving things on a big scale. This is particularly important as we enter into the space era of humanity. We can turn to private industry, yet there's no guarantees there. What if China offered Elon Musk effectively unlimited funding and support to become the technical lead in China's space program? The chief architect [wikipedia.org] of our Apollo program was literally a key Nazi scientist we recruited. Led to some amusing satirical quotes, "I am at the stars, but sometimes I hit London."
On the same time frame China has gone from mass starvation to becoming an established superpower. And they've improved the quality of life for their citizens to an unimaginable degree. They are also rapidly advancing in all scientific fields where they are very much capable of achieving 'big picture' progress. They're now running experiments about growing food on the moon while we struggle to get back to the moon at all. Do you think these trajectories are suddenly going to change? If not imagine how the world might look in 50 more years along these lines. One must consider possibility that perhaps China is doing something right, as well as the possibility that we are doing something wrong. I think ignoring this possibility, let alone condemning it, because they are 'bad guys' is the epitome of jingoism, and real jingoism - not the irrelevant divisive rhetoric now regularly published by our lovely media.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:14PM (2 children)
You certainly built an impressive straw man out of a single sentence, have a lot of time on our hands don't we? And what an incredibly biased reading of recent (and not so recent) Chinese and American history. The American government, and society in general, seems quite capable of "achieving things on a big scale"; the amount of innovation coming out of that country in the last 20 years has been impressive, much more so than China. Yes, as you say, China is doing much better after making significant free market reforms (people are in the main, no longer starving, yay) but there is no guarantee this will continue without reducing the high levels of corruption, corruption being one of those things that happens when you can only elect your leaders from a well vetted list of candidates (and voted on only by a select group of citizens - did't mention that before did you?).
BTW I'm also not an American :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @07:01PM (1 child)
I've obviously had this debate before and the regularity with which one is declared a 'secret China spy' or whatever simply for being a mixture of reasonably informed and not rabidly opposed to any and everything from the 'bad guys' is remarkable. Hey China, if you're listening and willing to pay me for my regular rants - please do get in contact. I type fast + come with experience! ;-) But more seriously, I think it indicates some degree of deterioration of our culture that's aiming to prove Orwell right: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." How many people who declare e.g. Jinping a dictator, have even the vaguest understanding of the Chinese political system? And I would not understate China's successes. Yes, people are no longer starving. And they now also have the fastest growing middle class in the world, more billionaires than any other nation in the world, and are achieving a slew of technological and scientific successes. The nation once starving while we put a man on the moon is now learning how to grow plants with a lander on the moon while we try to figure out how to get back to the moon...
I agree there's no guarantee it will continue, but that is always true. I see no reason to believe it won't. A big part of the reason for Jinping's popularity is specifically because he's been quite brutal [wikipedia.org] on corruption and has taken down corrupt officials at the height of Chinese politics. And the consequences there are real. You have politburo members serving life sentences in prison. In past corruption cases, the death penalty has been utilized. Ultimately I think the Chinese system offers a lot to consider -- I do not believe that the extremely positive results they're having are just some coincidence. It's similar to our past. The United States went from a poorly developed backwoods outpost to absolutely dominant world leader in less than 200 years. To not deeply consider how we achieved such would be foolhardy for any student of politics or history. At the same time, I think it would be equally foolhardy to not consider why we seem to be stalling out in more recent decades.
---
Two questions for you though:
1) What do you think are some of the "much more impressive" government driven achievements of the US in the past 20 years?
2) What do you mean on only select people being able to vote in China? My Chinese handler hasn't given me a sufficient instruction in their political system yet, so I'm still left to to use the interwebs like a pleb. From the page [wikipedia.org] I referenced earlier:
And that law was adopted in China, as mentioned, in 1998.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 10 2019, @04:21PM
I would point out the massive expansion of global trade (among other things, making the possibility of turning the entire world into the developed world) and development of the internet as examples. They aren't government-driven, but the same is true of the massive development of the Chinese economy which grew more by the absence of government influence than its "driving".