I think the million+ uighers in concentration camps are a precise analogy for death camps run by you know who in the 20th century. The u.s. should tell China, hey you hid your concentration camps really well, we totally just found out like today, but the thing is we can't let this go on so you have to free all your concentration camps in 18 months or we come invade. Sorrrry. We totally didnt know you were doing this. Take your time.
What's China going to do? Keep up its million people in concentration camps?
It'll totally say "hahaha that's funny we dont have any concentration camps though" and then free its concentration camps by deadline.
I think that's how it should play out.
Of course it is not what's happening. Everyone is turning a blind eye including me and people in this thread. The last time I suggested this course of action I was downvoted.
Guys, a million people is SO MANY. I mean ignoring fifty or a hundred thousand people is one thing. But a million?
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Edit: this is not a hawkish sentiment. Obviously the suggestion is absurd.
I don’t think the US alone has any appetite for a land war in China, nor does the rest of the world. They have such a huge population, it would be very, very hard to win a war like that.
If they were to confront China directly, I would guess the US and the west are much more likely to take a containment approach like they did with the USSR.
Fighting an adversary like the PLA in occupied areas like Tibet, Xinjiang, HK and maybe Taiwan someday plays to the strengths of the US armed forces. It would be an embarrassing disaster for the PRC that would very likely lead to a collapse of the party and force them into some type of hermit kingdom, like NK.
The US has been in near constant war for almost 100 years, having big parades with uniforms doesn't make up for that.
A thing of note - this "near constant war" has always been fought against weaker nations, which the US military industrial complex has been able to outproduce utterly.
China is a completely different kind of adversary and has historically proved that it can match the US - again I refer you to the Korean war, where China was able to check and drive back the US forces.
Yea war is a terrible idea. Even if we “won” it would come at great cost. The best strategy is to contain them and wait for the inevitable communist collapse. Also, breaking the great firewall would do wonders in encouraging Chinese citizens to stand up for themselves. Hopefully Elon doesn’t kowtow to the CCP with Starlink.
"It depends". Last year in September they had the 70th anniversary of Communist Rule, and a few weeks before that connecting to VPN was a pain. For some reason there's also less restrictions e.g. if you're close to an airport, WhatsApp would work.
> breaking the great firewall would do wonders in encouraging Chinese citizens to stand up for themselves.
Not too sure. There are obvious fake negative news about China and racism comments from Fox News/YouTube. For Chinese people, it’ll be quite a mixed feeling to see toxic content on China, e.g. Wuhan virus, China must pay, etc. I’d say those content might come first to hurt their feelings.
As a native Chinese, it’s still emotionally tough for me to browse China related topic even on HN which is a much more principled forum. Let alone other media
Regardless of what Elon Musk does, very few SpaceX Starlink ground terminals will ever make it into China. Dissidents might smuggle in a few but that isn't going to crack open the Great Firewall on any widespread basis.
I’m taking part in this discussion from inside China. I teach 16 year olds who have Astrill subscriptions (It’s a VPN). The point of the GFW isn’t to stop information getting in or out. It’s to maintain control over what gets discussed and to ensure that all Chinese language cultural interchange of any importance is controlled by the CPC.
Yea you are probably right. But it makes it so that the CCP can’t actively control the ISP directly. Perhaps people will hack together ground terminals or something? Where there is a will, there is a way. In any event, just standing up to China and telling them that we won’t block out service to those who can access it is better than nothing.
You don't have to have any appetite for a land war to say you gotta free your concentration camps within 18 months or we have to come invade. It's a million people.
If it isn't a credible threat it won't be very effective. Gathering a coalition to embargo China would be a more credible threat, but even that requires some legwork to develop an alternative set of trading partners.
The US had no problem with dead 500,000 Iraqi Children, why should they care for a million uighurs?
What if China says they will release them if we take them in?
Then suddenly there wouldn't be any uighurs but only Muslims and we "know" they are all "terrorists".
This statement smelled fishy to me as there are only 40M or so people in Iraq to begin with, so I Googled around a bit.
Despite politicians and talking heads claiming for years that either Desert Storm, UN sanctions, or both caused half a million child deaths, evidently most studies found that the child mortality rate in Iraq was unchanged throughout the 1990s.
While this apparently fake statistic has mostly been used to criticize the US and UN, it seems Tony Blair used it to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, claiming the dead kids were Saddam's fault.
I guess this is why I don't read the papers much anymore.
Whether or not there really were so many dead children or not does not change anything in Albright's statement.
If it serves the goals of the USA, they are willing to let 500.000 children die.
Which lie?
I refer only to her statement, which illustrates her character and that of the USA.
The correct answer from her would have been, "it's not 500,000, but every dead child is one too many".
They didn't care about 500.000 dead Iraqi children, period.
If the children really died, is important to the children and their families not for the characterization.
> The u.s. should tell China, hey you hid your concentration camps really well, we totally just found out like today, but the thing is we can't let this go on so you have to free all your concentration camps in 18 months or we come invade.
The US isn't going to invade China; I mean, it fought North Korea to a draw and could stomach Vietnam, and you think it's going to make a credible threat to invade China over internal policy?
And, if it did make such a threat and China believed it, that would just drive things into high gear. When someone's already doing a plan that is basically forcibly assimilate or exterminate, a timeline just pushes it to expedite the latter.
Korea ended in a draw b/c the soviet union was entering the conflict in support of mostly defeated NK/PRC forces and the fear was it could escalate into a nuclear war.
Vietnam is more interesting but I think it's very unlikely that a conflict with the PLA today would unfold in the same way.
Figuring out what type of conflict would force China into a nuclear exchange is probably the only question worth asking. would liberating Tibet and Xinjiang do that? Probably, but it also could be the case that Beijing wouldn't risk being vaporized themselves for a people and place they deem so inferior.
How is invading China rational? America can't even bother to decouple financially. In what world is it rational that a country lets its allies commit genocide in Afrin and Yemen, yet boldly stands against someone else.
Good luck invading China when your planes melt in the rain and your boats are constantly running into each other.
What's China going to do? Keep up its million people in concentration camps?
It'll totally say "hahaha that's funny we dont have any concentration camps though" and then free its concentration camps by deadline.
I think that's how it should play out.
Of course it is not what's happening. Everyone is turning a blind eye including me and people in this thread. The last time I suggested this course of action I was downvoted.
Guys, a million people is SO MANY. I mean ignoring fifty or a hundred thousand people is one thing. But a million?
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Edit: this is not a hawkish sentiment. Obviously the suggestion is absurd.