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[Thad]

If you really want to push this argument, then I say that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land.

To which I respond, "No shit."

Hey, ideally, I wouldn't have this situation either.  There's no easy solution here.  But I do think that this kind of rhetoric doesn't help the situation even more with the Chinese government than the US government.  The Chinese one has a habit of crushing whoever cries the loudest, and I put people's lives above an ideal.  (What was the saying, rather a slave and alive than free and dead?)

We have sayings like that in America.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

And I assume Kazz and LD are familiar with "Live free or die."

Agreed that more nations need to put diplomatic pressure on China to change, but America, who is in the best position to do this, is too busy screwing itself over to really effect this kind of change.  Also, waaay too enamored with cheap Chinese goods.

Fair, though my recollection is you didn't believe in any kind of retaliation for mercury and lead in children's toys, either.

China has, at least on paper, the basic freedoms.  However, China also has experience of cults assembling and overthrowing the government (See: Yellow Turban rebellion, Tai-Ping rebellion, Boxer rebellion, the millions of small rebellions during the Song Dynasty, the ENTIRETY of the Ming Dynasty, etc).  So in order to keep stability, China takes a rather heavy handed approach in enforcing these things.  Think of it as learning her personal lessons before learning European Enlightenment values.

I think of it as choking off information, stifling speech, and murdering dissenters.

I'm not even sure who you're referring to.  China isn't a major issue in any race I know of this year, except as part of the larger issue of the economy.

I was speaking more of your state representatives and senators there.

All right, but my point stands; I don't know of any major candidate running on a "We need to crack down on China" platform.  We have more immediate concerns.  (I could, of course, be wrong; I don't keep up with every Senate or House race.)

But I realize most those votes are along party lines.  Yay for democracy.

Worse yet, incumbents almost always get re-elected.

Congress needs term limits.

I was thinking more like, these Old Generation people have to retire first because they have the most clout and are the hardest lined AGAINST deviation from Maoist ideals (every citizen a Soldier-Farmer-Scholar, self-sufficient agrarian economy, fuck the westerners and japanese).  Until then, it's damn near impossible for the party to change.

But there are already cracks in that armor.  (Guess which word I almost used instead of "cracks" and decided would be inappropriate in this context.)  HUGE cracks.  The old guard can plug their ears and scream that China's still Maoist, but reality has a way of intruding.

I guess that's why they do their best to prevent reality from entering their borders.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

During GDC, GFW Radio had an interview with American McGee, who now (ironically) lives in China. (Feburary 22nd.) There were some very interesting insights into the Chinese mind there, and I think it's important to understand the cultural divide about how this works.

Apparently the Chinese don't have such a thing as "politeness". They don't stand in line; they stand in a big human funnel, like so many cattle. If you politely wait your turn, you'll never get it; you need to be as pushy as everybody else. That's how it works.

So I suspect this is representative of China's foreign policy. They push people around, with the expectation that somebody will push back, but everybody else is in this different mindset where there's an assumption that it was inappropriate for anybody to do any pushing, so nobody ever pushes back and China tentatively starts pushing harder, expecting somebody to start. The irony, of course, is that because they've been pushing people around, they've got a lot of countries by the balls; the United States is going to dot its "i"s and cross its "t"s, because (as I understand it) China could call us up, say "We want our money back, please" and single-handedly cripple our economy. Would they do that? Hard to say. I'm hardly an expert on Chinese psychology. But Washington sure as hell doesn't want to find out.

The Chinese government's as reluctant to accept such basic Enlightenment ideals as freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly as it is to give up land.  It's trying to reap the technological advances of the twenty-first century without catching up to the European political advances of the eighteenth.  I realize that these are not changes that will occur overnight and must be chipped away at, but our government seems to be showing very little interest in even modest progress.  (That could be because Bush's economic strategy consists of "owe a bunch of money to China so that the richest 1% of America doesn't have to pay taxes".)  China needs to be challenged.  More pressure needs to be brought to bear..

Hate to say it, Thad, but I think there's some ethnocentrism here. The population of China isn't chomping at the bit to say what they want about the government; a police state is second nature to people who have concrete funnels instead of single-file lines. The Enlightenment is a phase of Western history; complaining about how China doesn't hold to 18th century European philosophy is in the same category as bringing Christianity to cultures with ancestral and shamanistic religions. Their old system is working just fine for them; they don't need our newfangled freedom of the press, because they don't want to fix what they feel isn't broken.

EDIT: To clarify, I don't mean to imply that we should just shut up and keep our noses out of China's business, but I do mean that we should leave them alone with regards to areas in which they don't be steppin'. (Actually, a great deal of my foreign policy philosophy involves the phrase "Don't be steppin'.") Freedom? I have no reason to believe that the population of China is seriously dissatisfied or troubled by the government restriction of freedoms we think are fundamental; they ain't steppin'. Tibet? From what I understand, they be steppin', and that ain't right.

[Thad]

Who the hell is "them"?  The journalists in jail, the dead protesters, the Tibetan government in exile?  The fact that the majority of Chinese aren't complaining doesn't mean that they're okay with the way the government's being run, it just means that they've seen what happens to people who stick their necks out.

Censorship and brutality may be a reflection of the culture that spawns them, but so are preemptive war, teen pregnancy, and Uwe Boll movies.  That doesn't mean that they're cultural values.  Totalitarianism doesn't become okay just because you step over an imaginary line in the middle of a landmass.

That and, as I said, they want access to all the fruits of the Western world without accepting the meaning behind them.  They want access to the Internet, just so long as people can't access any information that isn't pre-chewed for them.  They want to be a major player on the world stage while trying to keep themselves culturally and intellectually isolated.  Even with a fifth of the world's population within your borders, you can't make a contradiction like that work in the long term.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

Even with a fifth of the world's population within your borders, you can't make a contradiction like that work in the long term.

So why can't we just let them figure that out for themselves the hard way? Seems like the simplest solution.

[Mongrel]

So why can't we just let them figure that out for themselves the hard way? Seems like the simplest solution.

Well, the self-interested response is "Because there's a good chance they'll take us all with them."

[Thad]

So why can't we just let them figure that out for themselves the hard way? Seems like the simplest solution.

Well, ignoring their abuses and letting them participate on the world stage by, say, hosting the Olympics is a pretty piss-poor way of doing that.

[François]

At least in part because the industry machine is irrevocably fucking up the land. I saw a documentary a few months back about the pollution caused by a mining complex; the river they use to get rid of their waste runs orange. And it's not like orangy water, it's like it's flowing with orange paint. The inhabitants of nearby villages have no other source of water to irrigate their crops or drink, and they're basically all dying of cancer and metal poisoning and such. They're really unhappy with this and would like this to change but the government won't listen.

If we let it keep going on there may not be a China left when the police state phase blows over.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

It'd serve as a hell of an argument for environmentalism everywhere else, though. 

[Classic]

I know you're just kidding and I know I'm not thinking straight. But god damn, burrito. That's fucking cold.

[Royal☭]

You people do realize that China's environmental problems our our problems, too, right?

[Büge]

I think the point was that it is better now than it would have been had there not been Chinese modernization.  Granted there are plenty bad elements to it, but the scientific literature seems to obliterate the argument that the Han Chinese are systematically destroying Tibetan culture through population replacement, enforced non-education, etc that Tibetan exiles like to claim.

That's the problem with reading history from a teleological viewpoint. Just because we have more technology doesn't mean things are better, nor does it mean things are efficient. The people are still being oppressed.

Furthermore, science can be skewed. Personal or institutional biases, getting fed wrong information, even just switching your average from "mean" to "median" can make the difference in a report.

[SCD]

Ainteer, lets take a step back.  My displeasure is based on a nation that has had the same government since the IOC's choice for the 2008 games reneging on their word; Simple as that.  As far as the protests go, those who planned the torch relay did not understand that those who first did a major torch run were the Nazis, who ran the course with their 40 odd-so "supermen" as if to flaunt to the world "look at us, we are one of the greatest empires of the world".  The ensuing replies from the citizens of the nations where Free Speech, Universal Suffrage and a Free Market Economy shouted out "No!".

Yes, comparing China with Nazi Germany goes too far and we should do what we can to avoid that argument.  China does not do genocide, and China does not seek to expand its borders as evidence of their trip to the Americas in past times has shown.  But there is still the fact that having this nation flaunt the torch in a global relay, not only while sitting or outright failing to engage on their promises, while surrounding the torch with elite thugs who would rip headbands off of female athletes due to "political inconvenience" makes a mockery of the entire procession.  This is not to say that we think we can change your ways.  Every intelligent government official in the offices of Foreign Affairs should have some understanding of every white western advisor in China for the last 400 years, and their lack of ability to change its systems. 

That being said, when the torch stops at Canberra, it will be a treat for the Chinese government to reap what it sows.  The last time it stopped there was 1936, and there was quite the prank that was pulled, in classy Aussie-Style.  Lets hope they can pull a high one off this year with the same levelheadedness, dignity, and humor.

[Brentai]

I'm starting to suspect that sitting back and letting China host the Olympics was actually a calculated move by the West to get the average schmo to become aware of all the country's problems.

[SCD]

I will be calling this a disruption, but a civil one at that.

Also, at least my provincial head of government doesn't have his head up his rectum,  shielded away in their own world of perfect happyland.

[Guild]

I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO OPINION ON THIS SUBJECT I AM JUST OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE ALSO NOTHING TO SEE HERE

[McFrugal]

Why are there countries there in the list of "Locations of Torch Ceremonies disrupted by Pro-Tibet/Human Rights activists" that have not been disrupted?

[SCD]

Guildenstern:  Fixed. 

McFrugal, the answer is stubborness.  The plan was to grey out the names of places that didn't count, so it could make a point down the road, rather than this black. 

[Mongrel]

Ah, so this is what the sound bites will sound like when they're dancing on our graves.

Also: SDC, did you mean nineteen-fifty-six rather than nineteen-thirty-six? All I know is the Melbourne prank where a student handed the mayor a fake torch that consisted of burning underpants in a can nailed to a chair leg. I don't see anything about a prank that the Oz-men pulled on Nazis.

[Guild]

This is getting big. Thank god: Someone else's poopy pants to talk about.

Nobody say Iraq for like a year.

[Kazz]

You just know that China's going to be the one to criticize America on Iraq, if it comes to it.

We'd be heading straight for war... if not for, er, Iraq.