China’s government is showing us what '1984' looks like

nivek

As Above So Below
China’s government is showing us what 1984 looks like

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The Chinese communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens, but to the world at large.

China is currently in a dangerously chaotic state. And why not, when a premodern authoritarian society leaps wildly into the brave new world of high-tech science in a single generation?

The Chinese technological revolution is overseen by an Orwellian dictatorship. Predictably, the Chinese Communist Party has not developed the social, political or cultural infrastructure to ensure that its sophisticated industrial and biological research does not go rogue and become destructive to itself and to the billions of people who are on the importing end of Chinese products and protocols.

Central party officials run the government, military, media and universities collectively in a manner reminiscent of the science-fiction Borg organism of “Star Trek,” which was a horde of robot-like entities all under the control of a central mind.

Thirty years ago, American pundits began gushing over China’s sudden leap from horse-drawn power to solar, wind and nuclear energy. The Chinese communist government wowed Westerners. It created from nothing high-speed rail, solar farms, shiny new airports and gleaming new high-density apartment buildings.

Western-trained Chinese scientists soon were conducting sophisticated medical and scientific research. And they often did so rapidly, without the prying regulators, nosy elected officials and bothersome citizen lawsuits that often burden American and European scientists.

To make China instantly rich and modern, the communist hierarchy — the same government that once caused the deaths of some 60 million innocents under Mao Zedong — ignored property rights. It crushed individual freedom. It embraced secrecy and bulldozed over any who stood in its way.

In much the same manner that silly American pundits once praised Benito Mussolini’s fascist efforts to modernize Depression-era Italy, many naifs in the West praised China only because they wished that their own countries could recalibrate so quickly and efficiently — especially in service to green agendas.

But the world is learning that China does not just move mountains for new dams or bulldoze ancient neighborhoods that stand in the path of high-speed rail. It also hid the outbreak and the mysterious origins of the deadly coronavirus from its own people and the rest of the planet as well — a more dangerous replay of its earlier effort to mask the spread of the SARS virus. The result was that thousands of unknowing carriers spread the viral plague while the government covered up its epidemic proportions.

China, of course, does not wish to have either its products or citizens quarantined from other countries. But the Chinese government will not allow foreign scientists to enter its country to collaborate on containing the coronavirus and developing a vaccine.

No wonder internet conspiracies speculate that the virus was either a rogue product of the Chinese military’s bioengineering weapons lab or originated from bats, snakes or pangolins and the open-air markets where they are sold as food.

It is hard to believe that in 2020, the world’s largest and second-wealthiest county, which boasts of high-tech consumer products and gleaming cities, has imprisoned in “re-education camps” more than 1 million Uighur Muslims in the manner that Hitler, Stalin and Mao once relocated “undesirable” populations.

China seems confident that it will soon rule the world, given its huge population, massive trade surpluses, vast cash reserves and industries that produce so many of the world’s electronic devices, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods.

For a year, the Chinese government has battled massive street demonstrations for democracy in Hong Kong. Beijing cynically assumes that Western nations don’t care. They are expected to drop their characteristic human rights advocacy because of how profitable their investments inside China have proven.

Beijing was right. Few Western companies complain that Chinese society is surveilled, regulated and controlled in a nightmarish fashion that George Orwell once predicted in his dystopian novel “1984.”

All of these recent scandals should remind the world that China got rich by warping trade and stealing technology in much the same way that it deals with epidemics and dissidents. That is, by simply ignoring legitimate criticism and crushing anyone in its way.

If the Chinese communist Borg is willing to put millions of its own citizens at risk of infection and death, why would it care about foreigners’ complaints that China is getting rich and powerful by breaking international trade rules?

The truth about President Trump’s decision to call China to account over its systematic abuse of international trade norms is not that Trump’s policy is reckless or ill-considered. It’s that at this late date, the reckoning might prove too little, too late.

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Standingstones

Celestial
We in the Western World have allowed ourselves to fall under the Chinese way of doing business. Most countries get their manufactured goods and parts from China. When their country grinds to a halt everyone suffers. As the article states, the Chinese government won’t allow outsiders to come into the country to help find solutions to the Corona virus.

If anyone thinks this crisis will be ending anytime soon they are sadly mistaken.
 
Their social credit system is nightmarishly orwellian and i fear some will propose or start to implement something similar in the west at some point too.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
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Chinese workers are facing a backlash across Africa over the Guangzhou racism incidents

The diplomatic race scandal sparked by the treatment of Africans residents in China last month has mostly died down but its reverberations on the otherwise strong relationship between African governments and China continues to be felt.

At the beginning of the crisis, Chinese ambassadors were hauled over by foreign ministers and other government representatives to explain the horrid scenes that had gone viral on social media, and to offer immediate remedies. For their part, officials in Guangdong province, the epicenter of the events, have since introduced new anti-discrimination measures in a bid to deal with racial discrimination.

But weeks after, Chinese migrant workers and their businesses seem to be bearing the brunt of those incidents in Nigeria as they increasingly come under the spotlight of local law enforcement.

Over the past month, up to 27 Chinese nationals have been arrested along with their local accomplices in incidents across three states. In another high-profile case, two Chinese men were also arrested for allegedly trying to bribe an official of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency with nearly $130,000 in cash. The arrest, complete with a mugshot of the men next to the bundles of cash, predictably made headlines in Africa’s largest economy.

The arrests have come on the back of a unanimous motion to censure China passed by Nigerian legislators. As part of its response, legislators urged relevant agencies to “check the validity of all immigration documents of every Chinese person in Nigeria” and repatriate undocumented Chinese migrants.

Collectively, these moves are winning populist support amid a wave of anger from citizens and civil society towards China following the viral videos showing the mistreatment of Nigerians and other Africans in Guangzhou by public authorities, landlords and local businesses.

China has also faced push-back in other African countries in the aftermath of the racist incidents. In Uganda, whose citizens were affected by the evictions, a group of 14 Chinese nationals have been arrested and arraigned before a court in Kampala for the illegal possession of wildlife including tortoises, pangolin scales and organs of elephants. While in Kenya, members of parliament have warned of possible retributions, including evictions of Chinese nationals.


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Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
China has installed a video surveillance system that, with the help of AI, can recognize any face on a street in less than 1 second. Practically, from the moment you leave the house the Chinese government has a record where you've been and where you went.
 
One of the scariest things is that China might become the preeminent world power if US declines further.
 
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Standingstones

Celestial
If and when the Corona virus calms down I hope we realize that we depend on China far too much for all the products we consume. Do I think we in the West will learn any lessons? No I don’t.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
So dependent much of the western world is of communism now (communist china), yet wasn't this the whole point of the Cold War, to stop communism from being a dominant force in the world?...

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Standingstones

Celestial
Every empire has a rise and a decline or fall. If the US didn’t have all this military might, I wonder how things would look around the world.
 
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