The Nobel Prize winner
October 12th, 2010 at 12:00 pm by David FarrarI was delighted to see Liu Xiaobo win the Nobel Peace Prize. A much better pick than 2009, and what was especially pleasing is that it was granted despite the threats from China.
We need a bit more of this fortitude back home, as reported by NZPA:
New Zealand’s opposition MPs have congratulated the jailed Chinese winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, but Prime Minister John Key will not yet comment.
The Prime Minister should comment, should congratulate Liu Xiaobo, and should use the opportunity to politely state that our desire is for China to continue its path towards more freedom. Yes it will annoy the Chinese Government, and it may even lead to some sort of temporary sanction against NZ, but we must not let that prevent us from sticking up for what is right.
Opposition MPs can of course say what they want, without fear of adverse consequences for the country. I say this not to defend the lack of comment from the PM, but to point out a different PM could well do the same thing.
Mr Key said yesterday he would not comment about Mr Liu until he received more advice.
“I’m not aware of why he’s in jail and it’s not appropriate for me to comment on what is appropriate in terms of other countries putting people in those facilities.”
With all respect MFAT should have immediately given Ministers a briefing, once the winner was known. And it is entirely appropriate for the Prime Minister to comment on the jailing of political dissidents in other countries.
[DPF: The PM has now congratulated Mr Liu, and in fact did so before this post apppeared. It was time delayed from this morning, and Key congratulated him on the way into Caucus. Of course Liu won't know this as he is in jail.]
Related posts:
- The EU wins the Nobel Peace Prize
- Liberty Scott on Nobel Peace Prize
- Shock horror: SST turns on PM
- An accidential prize
October 12th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
This is the same “peace” prize that went to the global warming fraudster? The Afgan war mongerer?
The PM should ignore it!
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Pathetic response from Key.
If he can’t work out what to say when a totalitarian regime puts dissidents in jail, he should get another job.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
@Tinman
It’s not about the prize. It’s about the guy rotting in jail. And the principle of what he stands for.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Calling Zhumao.
Attention Zhumao.
Zhumao to attack in 10, 9, 8,……..
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
“Free Liu Xiaobo and Free China!” is all I can say.
Down with the CCP and up with free speech, free elections and constitutionally protected human rights.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
We need a bit more of this fortitude back home,…
Well, it would have been good had the so called free world all shown a bit more fortitude about, say, Olympic games in Peking or exporting all our manufacturing to China, or entering a “free trade” deal with a nation that doesn’t have the word “free”in its vocabulary.
Anything else is simply posturing.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
The Nobel Peace Prize has been so compromised recently that the PM should ignore it. Otherwise we’ll be expecting him to congratulate the winners of Australia’s Next Top Model, WWE’s Royal Rumble, and all sorts of foreign Dancing With The Stars competitions.
I’d be happy with Key sticking up for political prisoners. But there are a lot of them around the world and it is going to be a full time job.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
PM congratulates Nobel Peace Prize winner
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4222730/PM-congratulates-Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Meanwhile, a large section of the NZ population sings the praises (on Kiwiblog even) of those totalitarian scum, gangsters and tyrants who keep this man falsely imprisoned, and grovel to do business with them, and even fight fiercely to sell NZ land to them.i
But who is surprised by Key’s vacillation?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
With that attitude he’d never comment at all. At least with this there is a higher degree of symbolism attached.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Ah, once he finds out he can rest happy that his name is recognised as all therest of those acclaimed peace activists – like Yasser Arafat…..
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
“I’d be happy with Key sticking up for political prisoners. But there are a lot of them around the world and it is going to be a full time job.”
That the award has gone to Liu Xiaobo is actually quite a rare and surprising event. The politically compromised fuckwits who have worked so hard to destroy Nobel’s gift by giving it to drooling idiots and political favourites like Obama and Gore, have this time awarded it to someone who really has done something for world peace.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
MyNameIsLegion 12:51 pm,
I think hell just froze over – I agree with Legion.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Not without reason his nickname is Neville (cautious and timid to the extreme), but made good in the end. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4222730/PM-congratulates-Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
I think hell just froze over – I agree with Legion.
Don’t get fooled by his faux concern – if Labour still held the reigns of power, not only would the country be stone fucking broke but the tool would be very loudly declaring the only way to change China is open engagement, and lauding the FTA as well.
He’s only against it now coz the Nats are in power.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
and grovel to do business with them, and even fight fiercely to sell NZ land to them.
Oh, Redbaiter, you mean “fight fiercely for the right to do as one pleases with one’s own property”?
Yes, I plead guilty. I also plead guilty for hoping that the Chinese grant those same property rights. If you want to live in a place where the government can tell you whom to buy and sell assets to, you could always move there.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Sell it to them when they become a democracy then. That you prostrate yourself to do deals with these crooks and tyrants and murderers who are those keeping Liu Xiaobo in jail you debase our whole democracy. None of these fuckers from communist China should even be permitted off the plane in any part of the free world. That snivelling political cowards like you rush to lick their arses and do deals with them is a disgrace.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Untill china builds a statue of tank man in the square we should have nothing to do with them. Nothing.
This award rasies the value of the peace prize for a change.
All you need to know is that the state thinks it can tell other countries what to do and who to give prizes to.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Confusis says: Idealists are only prepared to lick the arses of those whose shit doesn’t stink.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Bevan (2,682) Says:
October 12th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
I think hell just froze over – I agree with Legion.
Don’t get fooled by his faux concern – if Labour still held the reigns of power, not only would the country be stone fucking broke but the tool would be very loudly declaring the only way to change China is open engagement, and lauding the FTA as well.
Unlike you Bevvie, I am consistent. If you care to go back over the kiwiblog archives you will find I was outspoken AGAINST an FTA with China PRIOR to it being signed.
Unlike you, my opinions are not based on a political party or which way the wind blows.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
With great interest I’ve been thinking over this.
It would very likely cause a great set back for both the effort to get Liu released, as well as the reform progress from within the CCP.
Taiwan didn’t get democracy from a nobel prize.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Here is Liu’s proposal for China: “(It would take) 300 years of colonialism. In 100 years of colonialism, Hong Kong has changed to what we see today. With China being so big, of course it would take 300 years of colonialism for it to be able to transform into how Hong Kong is today. I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough.”
What would Americans feel about a guy who called for the invasion and then occupation of the US for several centuries by a foreign power – say like the Chinese or Russians or Germans or Japanese?
What would New Zealanders feel about a guy who called for the invasion and then occupation of the US for several centuries by a foreign power – say like the Chinese or Russians or Germans or Japanese?
They would probably call such a hypothetical person a traitor.
Similarly the Chinese have every right to consider Liu Xiaobo a traitor (as most certainly do – even in Hong Kong), and do not give a toss about him. Let him rot in jail.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Get off the grass you nauseating loon. Since when have Communists ever told the truth about one single thing?? Spin your propaganda somewhere else. This is a free speech discussion forum in a Western democracy and you have a damn nerve even poking your head in here. You stamp these forums out in China.
If it was up to me, you’d be the one in jail. For the murders in Tienanmen square and other crimes against humanity.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
There are academics in Europe right now -who have languished in prison for several years, just because they question the veracity of just a little part of the official Holocaust account. These academics have in no way advocated violence. Yet they are imprisoned.
To many outsiders who know nothing of European history this would be considered completely outrageous (perhaps many Europeans also consider it outrageous – but nevertheless they have those laws and most Europeans care little about them). But if one understands the historical context and the possible political and social ramifications of not suppressing revisionism, then there is perhaps some justification for such laws.
Given China’s suffering under Western and Japanese imperialism for up to a century – which was most certainly of holocaust like proportions, the Chinese are completely within their rights to view Liu Xiaobo in the same way that Europeans view David Irving or other Holocaust ‘deniers’.
If the West can lock up those who offend their historical and cultural sensibilities, surely the Chinese can also?
To condemn one but not the other looks like hypocrisy to me.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
If you had one fucking milligram of morality you would recognise your own hypocrisy in using this forum to post your sickening attempts at moral relativity and your distortions of truth. Odious communist tyrant.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
“Untill china builds a statue of tank man in the square we should have nothing to do with them. Nothing.”
Whatever China has done in the past few decades, no leader has ever uttered any statement as cold blooded as this:
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.
So the US is perfectly OK even though it admits to the murder of half a million children in pursuit of her own foreign policy objectives – and says this is fine. Yet China should be a pariah for locking up a treasonous individual like Liu Xiaobo, an adult fully in control of his faculties, and aware of the criminality of his actions?
The facts speak for themselves. The US is a far worse offender against human rights than China.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Totally false analogy. You’re a coward and a liar and anyone who wastes time and effort giving your communist propaganda any serious response is an idiot. You’ve killed millions of children, and in fact in terms of barbarity, are a regime that makes Saddam Hussein look like Mother Teresa.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
He shoots.
He scores!
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
The most dramatic documented advance in life expectancy ever happened under Mao. In fact at the time of Mao’s death in 1976, China’s life expectancy of 64 years was already greater than what ‘democratic’ India’s is today. Both India and China started off from very similar conditions in 1949, with life expectancies in the early 30s.
These findings have been validated by a variety of Western authorities.
In fact there is a major Stanford University study being undertaken right now, to try and identify those features of China’s socialist system (unfortunately she is not socialist anymore) , which enabled such a dramatic rise in life expectancy in spite of terribly low material circumstances, and how these features can be adopted to the benefit of other poor Asian and African countries:
http://tinyurl.com/39xow94
http://tinyurl.com/2f7dmjr
Another major advance was literacy. ‘Totalitarian’ China’s is well over 90%, India’s about 60%. Most Indian women are illiterate. Again this is confirmed by a plethora of Western studies.
I have met women in their 40s from SE Asia who do not know how to read and write. Yet women of the same age bracket from rural China are completely literate or numerate.
I think the right to not go hungry and be educated (albeit to a rudimentary level) is as much a human right as much as ticking a box for a candidate you probably know nothing about once every four years.
The Western democratic model is not the only way to develop, and in fact in most developing countries where it has been tried is a complete and utter failure. Look at the Phillipines, India, South Africa, Kenya, Thailand, Indonesia, ….the list goes on.
China by uplifting hundreds of millions out of poverty at a rate unprecedented in all of human history is actually a human rights champion, the imprisonment of a few social misfits notwithstanding.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
“These findings have been validated by a variety of Western authorities.”
Yeah, the authorities that are in your thrall. No statistic coming from a Communist country is worth a pinch of goat shit.
———————————-
Mikhail Gorbachev: Communism was `pure propaganda’
By VERENA DOBNIK
The Associated Press
3/11/02 9:30 PM
NEW YORK (AP) — Mikhail Gorbachev says the Soviet communism he served most of his life was “pure propaganda.”
The former Soviet leader told a Columbia University audience on Monday that by the time he rose to power, with Soviet satellites in space, the ruling politicians “were discussing the problem of toothpaste, the problem of detergent, and they had to create a commission of the Politburo to make sure that women have pantyhose.”
Speaking in Russian, Gorbachev offered his views a decade after he helped topple this “unreal system” with reforms dubbed perestroika.
Before that, he said, Soviet politicians operated with lies.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
“The most dramatic documented advance in life expectancy ever happened under Mao.”
I guess once he stopped murdering 10s of millions the life expectancy of the rest went up?
As to all the huffing and puffing about not trading with them, what arrant nonsense. If we left it up to every puffed up pressure group to tell us who we should trade with we’d be a pretty poor country. I spend a lot of time in China and like most things, actually seeing them helps give you a sense of perspective.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Taiwan didn’t get democracy from a nobel prize.
That is actually an excellent point. Taiwan was authoritarian first, and in fact prospered under authoritarianism. China now is where Taiwan was about 25 years ago.
And then in 1994, in Taiwan, when everyone was well fed and well educated, they had elections. And things have worked well for them since.
Again Taiwan became rich under authoritarianism. Not democracy. Democracy came after they became rich.
Having full democracy in a place without a well-established and educated and responsible middle-class, ie most developing countries, is just a recipe for disaster.
In South Africa, life expectancy has declined by 10 years, since the end of apartheid. Blacks are now materially worse off than they were in 1994. Similarly in Russia, the liberalization of the 1990s under Yeltsin caused huge suffering (they are faring better now under Putin).
And of course there is the case of Yugoslavia – an example of what could happen when central authority suddenly dissolves in multi-national states (which is what China is). China doing a ‘yugoslavia’ would mean massive extended wars and human suffering.
Looking at the aforementioned examples, China’s leaders would be fools to just follow the prescription demanded of them by ignorant Westerners.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
A Kiwiblog commentator, known only as LH, while recovering underneath the Grafton Bridge from what he described only as “a bit of a fall”, made the following statement from his fetal position:
Through the wisdom of Zhumao I have reformed my thoughts and look forward to becoming an accurate critic. I am humbled but also joyful and eternally grateful to the wisdom and forbearence of Zhumao’
Other Kiwiblog commentators have accepted the censure of Zhumao and and thank him for his criticism.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Rb, why head off on a Russian tangent? Do you dispute the claim that health and education have improved in China under a non-democratic government (casualties aside which should be condemned)?
Your approach to government reforms seem to be the opposite to Liu Xiaobo
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
“I spend a lot of time in China ”
Well then, no wonder you’re rushing to kiss this criminal’s commie arse.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Unlike you Bevvie, I am consistent. If you care to go back over the kiwiblog archives you will find I was outspoken AGAINST an FTA with China PRIOR to it being signed.
BULLSHIT
You are welcome to prove me wrong. I wont be holding my breath.
I do not the qualifier …PRIOR to it being signed – already trying to weasle out eh.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Rb, why head off on a Russian tangent? Do you dispute the claim that health and education have improved in China under a non-democratic government (casualties aside which should be condemned)?
How can it be verified, the communist tool hasn’t provided any evidence of his claims – he has only made them.
And don’t tell me you’d believe anything from the People’s Propaganda bureau without fact checking would you – Pete don’t be so gullible.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
“China by uplifting hundreds of millions out of poverty at a rate unprecedented in all of human history is actually a human rights champion, the imprisonment of a few social misfits notwithstanding.”
The above is an outrageous and unbelievable statement to make.
Vote:Undoubtly, Zhumao also professes great admiration and is proud of the human rights record of of Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Videla’s Argentina, Pinochet’s Chile, and Kim Il Sung’s DPRK.
October 12th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
jesusinaresthome, Bevan, are you thick twat or wot?
How is what I wrote trying to weasel out? Do you not underatand the meaning of “prior”?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Hey, I’m still waiting for him to provide some evidence to back up these unsubstantiated claims of China’s greatness.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
jesusinaresthome, Bevan, are you thick twat or wot?
How is what I wrote trying to weasel out? Do you not underatand the meaning of “prior”?
Well that all depends what underatand means….
Dude, you are weaseling by putting the qualifier on the end of your statement end of story! But hurry up, I’m still waiting for you to prove that you were consistent in your opposition to the signing – oh but thats right, only prior to the signing and then again after National was elected right?
Tool.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
A couple of jokes from China: Background: the internet in China is heavily censored. Many phrases are forbidden, and if appeared in a post would either be masked or the post won’t be able to be posted at all. Backgorund2: because of the heavy censorship, the Chinese internet users have developed this sarcastic sense of humour that I find quite amusing. Background 3: in the 08 Olympics a kid from a poor background won an important gold medal, and when interviewed said: I’m very grateful to my parents who have always supported me and believed in me. After that a government official came out saying: you should thank the nation and the party first. The internet users were outraged. And “thank the party first’’ has become a widespread joke. For example, a joke: Today I saw a pregnant woman on the bus, so I give her my seat (give the old/disabled/pregnant their seats on the bus is a common custom in China). The lady said “thank you very much”. I was shocked by her impoliteness, and immediately corrected her unearthly mistake “no, don’t thank me. thank the party first”.
Joke 1:
Congratulations to Chinese citizen *censored phrase* for winning the *censored phrase* prize
*censored phrase* should be grateful to our nation, to the lead of our *censored phrase* (communist party, ironically is a censored phrase in china)
Joke 2:
Post: Honestly, Liu should be grateful to the government. If he wasn’t arrested, him winning the prize purely based on his contribution and recognition would be nearly impossible.
Reply: I guess if he were to thank the nation and the party in his prize accepting speech, he must be truly sincere this time.
There are many others, but jokes don’t translate well, so…
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
BTW. I personally think this Nobel prize is decent. This guy (Liu Xiao Bo) is not a manipulative politician like the Dalai Lama, neither was he one of those who escaped to the US and claimed political asylum on other people’s blood with the true intention of seeking a better life for himself. This guy stayed in China all this time (he was involved in the Tiananmen square incident in 1989, so life was quite difficult for him after that), did not go overseas when he had the chance, and stuck with what he believed in.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
BTW2. How can people blame John Key for not congratulating this Nobel prize immediately? Key’s function should be the well-being of New Zealand people but not the Chinese people. So if playing lovey-dovey with the Chinese government is going to benefit New Zealand economically, I really don’t see why he should be doing otherwise. The opposition can do it, because the Chinese government doesn’t give a damn what the opposition is saying, but if the NZ prime minister says it, it may serious affect the relationship between the two countries — a thing we need the least in the current economic climate. And trust me, democracy in China is not going to be swayed one way or the other whatever John Key says. So if he came out condemning China, no one would win. I could totally see Labour do it though if it was in power, because the only thing they care about is to play saint and they don’t really care about the economic well-being of the New Zealand people. Losers lose because they always choose the lose-lose situation.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
This from the Nobel citation itself:
Over the past decades, China has achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal. The country now has the world’s second largest economy; hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6971XZ20101008
Also:
Obama praised China’s “dramatic progress in economic reform and improving the lives of its people, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.”
http://tinyurl.com/2bkdwut
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
“Rb, why head off on a Russian tangent? ”
You stupid time wasting fucked in the head band width wasting moronic fucking idiot. “Russian” is nothing to do with it. Its communism and lies that is the point. Jeezuz will you just fuck off you absolute knuckle dragging half witted gape jawed knock kneed hopeless retard.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
“Jeezuz will you just fuck off you absolute knuckle dragging half witted gape jawed knock kneed hopeless retard.”
Simply brilliant from a master.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
“Simply brilliant from a master.”
I might get demerits for that but honestly that rabbiting dull witted non comprehending moron would try the patience of a saint.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Zhumao, you’ve upset the master(baiter), Bevan, Manolo and numerous other tossers.
Bloody well done.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Redbaiter 5:15 pm,
He has tried the patience of this saint on more than one occassion
Pete G[e]orge – the man whose contribution to almost any debate is a fog of incomprehensibility.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Zhumao, you’ve upset the master(baiter), Bevan, Manolo and numerous other tossers.
And you are? Have you ever made a contribution worthy of comment by anyone until now?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
China has achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal.
You mean they did what they have always done – create a knock off of a successful product.
Although
lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty
Hundreds of millions? You mean the lucky few who get to enjoy the success? What about the unlucky 1.5 billion who don’t get to? I notice China never lets them near the front of a TV camera.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
“Hundreds of millions?”
Yep, their leadership has done so well and are so well regarded by the Chinese citizenry they’ll probably be a shoe in at the next elections…
Oh wait…
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
No wait! I get it now – the hundreds of millions he means are the ones from Hong Kong…
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Not exactly Manolo.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Zhumao is one of those minions of the Chinese Communist Party who have instructions to monitor prominent blog sites in various Western Countries and jump in with all the talking points of the party apparatus.
There’s solid history for this sort of thing in numerous Communist movements, especially the USSR. In the old days it consisted of letters to the editor and “invited speeches” from supposedly “independent” people in the West, actively defending the indefensible actions of the Soviet Union and trumpeting the results of the latest five year plan as a way of demonstrating the inferiority of the Western capitalism and democracy.
The classic signs here include:
- multiple comments almost exclusively focused on threads dealing with China.
- the standard utlitarian rationale for dictatorial thuggery, focusing on literacy, healthcare and life expectancy. Thankfully we’re not being regaled with measures of the increase in annual steel and coal production. We are often told that the Chinese people care only about the practical aspects of life and not about democracy, which is a meaningless exercise. There’s always some funny gaps in the arguments too – note the reference to elections “every four years”, relevant to the US but not NZ. But then it is not necessary to know anything about NZ, merely to be able to defend the Chinese Communist leadership.
- the strange defence of Marxism/Lennism. Strange in light of it’s being dumped as the economic theory driving the country (hence all the hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty), but not when one realises the Chinese Communist party needs to have some theoretical construct upon which to justify one party control. Without the theory they’re just another in a long line of totalitarian Chinese Dynasties.
- the moral equivalences designed to silence Western critics, in many cases utilising none other than the hoariest old claims of the Far Left in the West. Hence the constant references to the “genocide” of North America, slavery, and the Iraq sanctions referenced in this thread. It’s why one could read the sad thread of last Friday night and watch Luc Hansen virtually orgasm at the keyboard as a real, genuine “Other” repeated back many of his favourite themes.
- the constant nuturing of past grievances over crimes committed against China combined with downplaying of the enormous crimes of the Chinese Communists against their own people.
- a focus on the crime rates here in the West, a classic retread of old USSR “documentaries” from the 1930′s and 1940′s that highlighted Al Capone and other “products of the Decadent West”.
- the comparisons with India. Given that India is rarely the subject of discussion here it might seem strange that Zhumao harps on this at every opportunity. But again it makes sense when you understand that the Chinese leaders regard India as their greatest potential rival and threat. To have a country like India succeed equally as well or better than China while being a gigantic democracy would be a direct attack on the Chinese approach. People in China might start asking uncomfortable questions – so it’s vital to keep denigrating India. I don’t know how many Indians based on NZ or in India read this blog but it would be fun to see their reactions.
About the only thing that might be different about Zhumao from other little Communist party servants is the racial superiority that suffuses his comments. The Chinese people are superior in all aspects of humanity – morality, ethics, criminal tendencies, business abilities, brainpower, everything – to Japanese, other Asians, and Europeans of course. He’s the Chinese Alf Garnett of this blog.
If you’re going to be disgusted with him ignore his silly claims and be disgusted with the cold-blooded cynicism of a traditional Communist toady doing the bidding of his masters and justifying their control of the country.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
As always, brilliant stuff Mr. Hunter.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Regardless of who Zhumao is – go ahead and refute his points! Even if he is a paid up shill for the CCP – which I doubt – there’s nothing here (except DPF, if he wishes) stopping people making an effective rebuttal, ie. without resorting to ad hominem.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Thanks Tom Hunter:
You have not been able to rebut me on a single point of fact.
That of course is an implicit admission of defeat.
Why not lay the facts on the table and let people decide for themselves?
To have a country like India succeed equally as well or better than China while being a gigantic democracy would be a direct attack on the Chinese approach.
I mention India not because it is a rival, real or perceived of China’s. But obviously because it is the one country which is most comparable with China in terms of population, number of years since independence, and poverty levels at independence.
It is like having two equally endowed competitors at the beginning of a race, giving one competitor system A, the other system B, and after 60 years, seeing which of the two has done better, across a raft of social indicators.
All the observers, Western, Chinese, and yes Indian (I will provide you with the evidence to back this up – but it is easy to find and the judgments pretty much unanimous), will call China the winner by a country mile.
I don’t know how many Indians based on NZ or in India read this blog but it would be fun to see their reactions.
In fact I have talked to many Indians about this and in fact this is how I have come to form my views. And more than a few agree with most of what I say. The Western prescriptions for development have been a horrific disaster for most developing countries.
I suppose however Westerners enjoy the picturesque poverty of third world hell holes more than those societies who get rich through political discipline.
Note also that China’s top leaders are probably the most competent group of leaders on earth. Every single member of the ruling politburo is a trained professional engineer, and this has been the case for almost two decades now. Li Peng was a civil engineer, Zhu Rongji an electrical engineer, Hu Jintao the top guy now a civil engineer as is Premier Wen. The next guy taking over next year is a chemical engineer. These guys understand about efficiencies and how to balance competing interests and make trade-offs.
These are exactly the type of people who will propel society forward. Compare them to that windbag Obama. I know who I would prefer to run a nation.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Sshhhh… hold your tongues we trade with China.. freedom of speech goes out the window because we trade with India.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
So Zhumao what exactly does China accuse Liu Xiaobo of doing and why is it bad enough to lock him up for it? Did he commit a crime? Did he damage people in some way through an evil intent? If so, how?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
The commentators of Kiwiblog bow before Zhumao and acknowledge his superior sense of humour with its delicate use of irony.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Yes. Really!
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Zhumao
Mate, you are my kind of pinko!
You are of course wrong but I do give you points for winding up dumb and dumber.
Don’t be a stranger.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
““The most dramatic documented advance in life expectancy ever happened under Mao.”
I guess once he stopped murdering 10s of millions the life expectancy of the rest went up?
That is brilliant!….
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
I’ve saved the best for last.
Zhumao can find help here at Auckland University Philosophy 101 Introduction to Logic.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
tom hunter (1,305) Says:
October 12th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
I’ve saved the best for last.
*******************************
Thats worth a glass of Savvie with dinner.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Zhumao (96) Says:
October 12th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Thanks Tom Hunter:
You have not been able to rebut me on a single point of fact.
*****************************************************
Given that you have been utterly selective on points of fact you choose to present, you should be thankful he has so far only chosen to make a critique on your modus operandi, comrade.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
“Zhumao can find help here at Auckland University Philosophy 101 Introduction to Logic.”
No it is you who needs a class in logic.
In the original post I pointed out to the underrepresentation of East Asians in most crimes, in fact 1/3 to 1/4 the mainstream rate (something that is replicated across other Western countries as well), does certainly mean that we can say they have less tendency to commit crime, as a whole, than whites.
Now of course those few Asians that do commit crimes, generally commit crimes which are rather large impact – like large scale drug trafficking etc, with large profit margins. This of course does not contradict my earlier point one iota, that Asians are less inclined to crime than whites. This is a statistical fact. Do your own homework.
And by the way I did wrongly put the ‘racial’ bit in – but this was in reply to highly racist remarks by other commentators prior to my own post. For the record I do not believe that low Asian crime rates are due to genetic factors.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Zhumao has made some excellent points, and if he is a paid Chicom apologist his English is excellent. I agree with adze: Refute the points properly without ad hominems (if you can).
The UN stats on world development show Mao did in fact increase the life expectancy in China (ironic given the millions who starved because of the “Great Leap Forward”), however perhaps improving was inevitable once Japan was off their backs thanks in no small part to the USA, but credit must also be made to the universal free healthcare that was provided. While Deng Xiaoping radically changed tack and took China towards authoritarian capitalism; a policy which has been responsible for Chinas meteoric rise in wealth and development since Mao died.
See Hans Roslings talks on TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html
He defines development as being based on two criteria – Health and Wealth.
Human rights is an end goal of development, not a means to develop. This is why China has been able to develop quickly without what we call human rights. This is explained simply and excellently in the talk by Rosling.
In this sense Zhumao is correct that the Chinese government has improved human rights for their people – in the development sense, lifting them out of poverty (See Article 25 of the UN charter). The other human rights in the Charter that we take for granted, but are not available in China, may not be required per-se for rapid development, but are desirable for all people.
As China progresses it is almost inevitable they will liberalise more and grant more human rights – the people will demand it, and they (the Chicom government) know it’s coming. The Nobel prize is encouragement for China to reform it’s approach to human rights, however it is still early days. I do expect in my lifetime to see it free-up but only when the people running the show see the benefits outweigh the costs.
Read some of Deng Xioping’s quotes to get a feel for the pragmatic approach China is taking to development:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/deng_xiaoping.html
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Zhumao,
“It is like having two equally endowed competitors at the beginning of a race, giving one competitor system A, the other system B, and after 60 years, seeing which of the two has done better, across a raft of social indicators.”
Indeed it is! One of those indicators is dissidence.
In India dissidents are treated with honour (e.g. Ghandi) or derided.
In China dissidents are treated with a 9mm lead pill.
Which has done better?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Glad to see Tom Hunter has shown such an obviously frantic interest in my posts. Thank you.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
In India dissidents are treated with honour (e.g. Ghandi) or derided.
In China dissidents are treated with a 9mm lead pill.
Where are these executed dissidents you talk of? Where. Even Amnesty and other organisations make few claims of this.
Liu Xiaobo has been sentenced to prison. Not execution.
And in any case yes, you can say in the freedom of speech ledger China does worse than India. But how many dissidents in the whole of China? Several hundred out of 1.3 billion.
What about the fact that China’s poverty reduction programmes are that much more successful than India’s?
In that column China would get plenty more ticks than India, of course with a multiplier for peoples lives improved.
So in the overall analysis, China, in spite of shortcomings in perhaps the freedom of speech, dissent area, gets an overall better score in terms of improving human happinness and thus logically, human rights.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
I think it pays to keep an eye on racial supremacists, particularly when they’re so well plugged in to China’s leadership.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Zhumao perhaps you missed my 7:04.
So Zhumao what exactly does China accuse Liu Xiaobo of doing and why is it bad enough to lock him up for it? Did he commit a crime? Did he damage people in some way through an evil intent? If so, how?
P.S. “how many dissidents in the whole of China? Several hundred out of 1.3 billion.”
How many dissidents would there be if you didn’t lock them up so much and just left them alone, to surf the internet etc. Why is the internet so subversive you need the Great Wall?
P.P.S. Answer my first q first if you could. Thanks.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Zhumao,
In unmarked graves for the most part. Their families working to pay for the cost of the bullet. (Very efficient system that, charging them for consumables.)
BTW, I’ll correct your error for you – I think you meant “Several hundred million out of 1.3 billion”
“…better score in terms of improving human happinness…”
Hang on. Just did a quick check on ‘number of Indian workers who killed themselves in iPhone factories’. Came up with zero. What’s the current body count in yours Zhumao? I guess they were really happy.
The only reason Liu Xiaobo has escaped execution is that there is too much international attention on him for you to get away with it.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
“Where are these executed dissidents you talk of?”
Mostly dead and buried in mass graves, but those that were able to escape your murdering fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek.
Leaving aside your relatively recent military assault on the people protesting in Tienanmen square. 1100 killed wasn’t it? With such amoral liars in power, how would we ever know?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
China’s life expectancy in 1976, at the time of Mao’s death, was already higher than what India’s is today (Mao doubled Chinese life expectancy). Today China’s life expectancy is 73. India’s is 63. Literacy in China is well above 90%, in India it is about 50%.
About 40% of Indians live on less than a dollar a day. In China it is about 10%. China’s per capita GDP is 2.2 times that of India’s.
India’s child mortality rate is 2.5 x that of China’s.
Again on life expectancy, refer link below.
http://tinyurl.com/29g8gyd
One could calculate the ‘excess’ deaths from India’s so called ‘democratic’ experiment from not adopting socialist model. The results would be in the hundreds of millions.
Almost all the world experts on hunger praise China’s efforts and slam India’s neglect. Here is just one article from the BBC.
There are many many others:
“China is also praised for cutting the number of hungry by 58 million in 10 years through strong state support for smallholder farmers. But the report criticises economically liberal India where, it says, 30 million people have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid-1990s and 46% of children are underweight. It says hunger exists in India not because there is insufficient food, but because people cannot access it, and that the exploitation of natural resources has led to ‘horrific displacements’ of people, pushing many into poverty. When people are already on the brink of starvation this is simply unacceptable”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8309979.stm
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
bhudson’s response is pathetic and woefully illogical. Go back to primer school.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Zhumao perhaps you missed my 7:04.
After dinner, OK, mate. I’m enjoying this.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Zhumao has no response to the undeniable truth.
How many of the gloriously happy in the enlightened socialist workers paradise top themselves in the factories because they are so happy Zhumao?
And as compared to India?
But by all means explain how my earlier response was “illogical.” Or scurry off to your masters and get your next sound bite on the workers paradise.
Drone
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Given the incredible amount of “facts” that you spew forth from your assigned position versus my status as someone leading a free and busy life here in the West I think I’ll just have to deal with your “facts” one at a time.
So let’s start with this doozy, which you’ve now repeated multiple times as part of your moral equivalence tack:
This nonsense served the anti-American left very well in the 1990’s, when not even they imagined that a US President would actually use military force to overthrow a guy seen as his “pet thug”. It had three sources.
The first was from 1995, when the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) gave officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Health a questionnaire on child mortality and asked them to conduct a survey in the capital city of Baghdad. On the basis of this five-day, 693-household, Iraq-controlled study, the FAO announced in November that “child mortality had increased nearly five fold” since the pre-sanctions era.
Richard Garfield, a public health specialist at Columbia University, (and a crtiic of the sanctions and embargos) wrote in his own comprehensive 1999 survey of under-5 deaths in Iraq:
…and a decade later by propagandists like Zhumao.
Then, in 1996, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its own report on the humanitarian crisis. It reprinted figures — provided solely by the Iraqi Ministry of Health — showing that a total of 186,000 children under the age of 5 died between 1990 and 1994 in the 15 Saddam-governed provinces. According to these government figures, the number of deaths jumped nearly 500 percent, from 8,903 in 1990 to 52,905 in 1994.
But then the fun really started. Based on these two reports — a five-day study in Baghdad showing a “five fold” increase in child deaths and a Ministry of Health claim that a total of 186,000 children under 5 had died from all causes between 1990 and 1994 — a New York-based advocacy group called the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) concluded in a May 1996 survey that:
Impressive. CESR not only doubled the Iraqi government’s highest number and attributed all the deaths to the embargo, but they also came up with a very creative comparison:
Finally, an actual figure of 500,000 was arrived at by UNICEF in a 1999 report that took the Iraq infant and child mortality reduction trendlines of the early 1980’s, calculated (e.g. guesstimated) what they should have been in the 1990s, and then noted the difference. Very sophisticated extrapolation. But even they got annoyed later with the way the claim was being used, to the extent that they began issuing regular press releases stating that:
An ignorant, leftist American journalist accepts a claim at face value because it’s a good “gotcha” question, and an ignorant and moronic left-wing Secretary of State also accepts the premise of the question – that’s Zhumao’s basis, and of course it connects the circle back to the likes of the Western Left.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Tom Hunter:
You have still not rebutted me on a single point of fact. Where is your capacity for logical thought?
I attributed the statement to Madeleine Albright and said it was cold blooded. Which it is. When Albright was asked the question she did not argue against the figure of 500,000. So we must assume that she thought it to be true.
So the US did admit to the murder of 500,000 Iraqi children. That the figures, according to you, have been proven wrong does nothing to controvert my original point.
The statement does betray the horrific mindset of this evil witch – that to her the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children were inconsequential when opposed to US foreign policy objectives.
Whether the actual numbers were 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 or even a million does not change this fact.
(remember the interview was in 1998 I think. Since then the number of excess deaths in a relatively small country like Iraq must be quite mind-numbing).
And by the way the techniques used which you claim to be dishonest – would be no more dishonest than the ones used by Western researchers who claim tens of millions of deaths in the former Soviet Union and China.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
“An ignorant, leftist American journalist accepts a claim at face value because it’s a good “gotcha” question, and an ignorant and moronic left-wing Secretary of State also accepts the premise of the question – that’s Zhumao’s basis, and of course it connects the circle back to the likes of the Western Left.”
Exactly right. Madeline fucking Albright. FFS.
The right answer- “it never happened”. America did NOT embargo “medicines for children.” Actually, Iraq was able to sell huge amounts of oil for “humanitarian uses.”
Of course, much of that oil was actually sold in the UN’s “oil for food” scandal, where Hussien bought off the UN and many other countries, while enriching himself, and passing much (if not all) of the remaining funds into his military.
If there was ever any excessive amount of infant deaths, (highly doubtful) they occurred because they were victims of Saddam himself.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
If some dimwit in NZ admits to the police that he was smoking dope that later turns out to be oregeno he’s only guilty of being a dimwit.
Still, I can see how useful your mindset would be when it comes to signed confessions before the bullet to the back of the head. You have learned well from your masters.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
bhudson:
I’m not going to do your research for you. The facts are India has significantly more child labourers than China, and a huge number of bonded labourers, most horrifically bonded child labourers. http://tinyurl.com/2b2y75d
I remember reading about the iPhone suicides – terrible as they were, apparently the suicide rate among that group of workers was no higher than the general population, and also the suicides may have had something to do with the compensation for death paid out to the poor families of these workers is equivalent to 10 years in salary. For the filial chinese that is a lot of money to support your family back in the countryside. You google it and prove me wrong.
There are many labour abuses in China, but less so than other developing countries. That of course is still unacceptable, and just as importantly illegal. People who abuse labour, especially child-labour deserve the death penalty in my view.
There is now a strong ‘new left’ movement developing in China – those who want to return to the socialist road. Some of these Maoists are imprisoned by the government. Personally I have a lot of sympathy with these types of dissidents. I wonder why this does not draw much attention in the west?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
tom hunter (1,307) Says:
October 12th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Given the incredible amount of “facts” that you spew forth from your assigned position versus my status as someone leading a free and busy life here in the West I think I’ll just have to deal with your “facts” one at a time.
************************************
Lies, damn lies and Statistics, eh?.
While one can certainly be awed by China’s apparent progress, one should always be reminded, when in debate with our Chinese friend, of that old Russian smokescreen of the Potemkin Village.
Even if Chinese statements recently about moving towards democracy do hold true, its worthy of remembering the warning that Japan issued recently about the danger of nationalism. This is doubtless as a distinct memory of their own past, but we have seen it, above all, in Germany 1935 when a small man with a silly mustache………..
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
“should use the opportunity to politely state that our desire is for China to continue its path towards more freedom. Yes it will annoy the Chinese Government, and it may even lead to some sort of temporary sanction against NZ, but we must not let that prevent us from sticking up for what is right.”
As long as we don’t push for “democracy” as that would be hypocritical. We sit in glee thinking we are so much better than China but in reality we aren’t democratic… we just hold elections. We don’t believe in liberty, we just believe that you are free to think, say or do what the noisiest people want us to. And even when we do get numbers together and push back against the noisiest, our politicians do nothing… the smacking law is an example of this.
Our politicians are either hypocritical, power hungry wankers or idealistic politically correct fascists.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Zhumao: So the US did admit to the murder of 500,000 Iraqi children. That the figures, according to you, have been proven wrong does nothing to controvert my original point.
Putting aside the facts that others have brought up about the Oil for Food program being a mechanism for Iraq to import medical supplies, and the fact that Saddam Hussein was the actual cause of the sanctions – you know, a result of that little excursion into Kuwait…..
And last I checked, China has veto voting rights on the security council, and could have used it to stop not only the initial invasion that repelled Saddam’s troops, but also the sanctions that were subsequently imposed on Iraq – therefore by your logic China is as much liable for the deaths of those 500,000 children as the US could ever be.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Oh dear – more facts
In fact the worst atrocities of the largest Marxist/Lennist regimes occurred a decade or more after their revolutions, when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was fully embedded in power and able to exercise it limitlessly.
The peak periods of deliberate famine and outright mass murder in the USSR came in the 1930′s – over a decade after the 1917 revolution.
In Chine of course the worst murders came with the Great Leap Forward – a stain so large an ugly that it’s amazing to me that you would have the chutzpah to write such a brazen statement as the one above. Perhaps your masters budget could stretch a bit further and allow you to buy Mao’s Great Famine – in order to make better arguments in favour of Mao than your woeful attempts above.
But the piece that I think is most relevant here is the following:
That’s you Zhumao, in 2010, the “official memory” of the Chinese Communist Party. A human for whom, as long as the caloric intake has increased, the shack is waterproof, and the production line runs – can see his fellow Chinese as mere “digits”.
I’m not noted for ad hominems on this blog but really – what a disgusting human being you are.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Zhumao,
“Foxconn to stop compensating families of suicide workers” – http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/293142
I guess it was just costing too much.
You have sympathy for the Maoist ‘dissidents’? Are you advocating another Cultural Revolution Zhumao? Burn all the books? Destroy knowledge? Another Cultural Revolution?
“our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road…and to transform education, literature and art, and all other parts of the superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist economic base…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
And you claim a forward looking nation, open to ideas and peoples… Yeah right
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Y’know, that’s interesting. The last time that made the news in NZ, I did a little maths: divide the number of suicides in Chinese factories by the number of workers in Chinese factories. You get a result of 2.2 suicides per 100,000 population. That’s better than every developed country (New Zealand’s rate is 13.2 per 100,000).
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Repton (691) Says:
October 12th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Y’know, that’s interesting. The last time that made the news in NZ, I did a little maths: divide the number of suicides in Chinese factories by the number of workers in Chinese factories. You get a result of 2.2 suicides per 100,000 population. That’s better than every developed country (New Zealand’s rate is 13.2 per 100,000).
Vote:**********************************
Is that NZ figure for NZ factory workers? If not then its false comparison.
October 12th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
“Foxconn to stop compensating families of suicide workers” – http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/293142
I guess it was just costing too much.
You see. Have caught you out. Your response is so transparently dishonest. Or is it you are incredibly unintelligent?
The article makes clear that the 10 years compensation was perhaps a cause of some of the suicides – which is certainly a plausible proposition. It then goes on to say that because this high amount of compensation could likely be the cause of suicides, that is why they have stopped these payments. To discourage suicides. Not because they suddenly got stingy.
Note that those workers who die of causes, other than suicide, still get the compensation.
bhudson’s comments are not just silly and fatuous, but also, sadly, dishonest.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
The Kiwiblog commentariat acknowledges the superior mental health of the Dragon and humbly apologises for our woeful attempts at reducing this via the degraded and reactionary disease of democracy.
The commentariat applauds the honourable Repton and wishes him well in the bosom of Zhumao where he may learn much wisdom. We have declared this to be a thread of Double Happiness.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Thank you Repton. It was also reported somewhere behind the headlines, that the suicide rate among Foxconn workers was actually lower than that among the Chinese population at large.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Repton,
That IS sad. You apply suicides in factories in China against the total per capita suicides in NZ.
How many NZ workers committed suicide in our factories last year Repton? What is that per head of population working in factories?
If you are going to be disingenuous you could at least go to some effort to try and disguise it.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Oh dear – more facts. The worst atrocities of the largest Marxist/Lennist regimes occurred a decade or more after their revolutions, when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was fully embedded in power and able to exercise it without limit.
The peak periods of deliberate famine and outright mass murder in the USSR came in the 1930′s – over a decade after the 1917 revolution.
In China of course the worst murders came with the Great Leap Forward – a stain so large and ugly that it’s amazing to me that you would have the chutzpah to write such a brazen statement as the one above. Perhaps your budget could stretch a bit further and allow you to buy Mao’s Great Famine – in order to make better arguments rationalising ‘mass murderer’ Mao (your quote marks of course) than your woeful attempts above.
But the piece that I think is most relevant here is the following:
That’s you Zhumao, in 2010, the “official memory” of the Chinese Communist Party. A human for whom, as long as the caloric intake has increased, the shack is waterproof, and the production line runs – can see his fellow Chinese as mere “digits”.
I don’t usually comment directly on other commentators here – but you really are quite a disgusting human being.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Zhumao,
“The charge [that suicides were to gain compensation for families] has been controversial and has received strong protests from international labour organizations.” [Same article]
Not everyone agrees with you (or Foxconn.) Hell, even the non-Chinese Left don’t agree with you!
The fact remains that your happy workers paradise is not all that you paint it to be.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Zhumao,
“It was also reported somewhere behind the headlines, that the suicide rate among Foxconn workers was actually lower than that among the Chinese population at large.”
So there are more people killing themselves in greater proportions outside of Foxconn, and you think that is a GOOD thing? Is it a natural culling process for you? A bit like employee attrition over here, only permanent?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
I want to answer Reid’s question in a general sense:
While the scope of ‘inciting subversion of state power’ is broad, and perhaps vague, it is a useful measure for capturing those who are obvious troublemakers, and who would otherwise get away with their troublemaking on a mere legal technicality, should the crime be more specifically defined. Liu Xiaobo is a troublemaker and one who would overthrow the current socialist system in China.
There is little doubt about this. His utterances have included wishing that China was invaded and occupied for several centuries by the West, and numerous anti-government activities over the course of at least two decades. If China was as evil as so many think, he would have been done away with a long time ago.
Liu Xiaobo, while lionized in the West, has little support among Chinese. Even in Hong Kong, scene of frequent mass demonstrations against mainland China, protest has been muted. Liu Xiaobo as my earlier post pointed out is considered a traitor by many Chinese – in the way New Zealanders would consider someone who begged Russia, Japan, or China to invade and occupy NZ would be.
While the niceties of procedure may be well affordable and non-destabilising in developed countries like the US, the UK, and Canada, China at its current stage of development simply must put poverty reduction and national unity as its main goals. All other matters are simply subordinate to these two, at least for now.
Poverty reduction and national unity are also the priority of the vast vast majority of the Chinese people. Simply by reducing poverty, vast gains in human rights are achieved for vast numbers of people. And without national unity, China would descend to the type of chaos we see in Somalia today, and indeed was the case for almost a century up until 1949. Perhaps some Westerners would prefer to see China go the way of the former Yugoslavia with the accompanying appalling suffering, only played out on a far greater canvas.
Furthermore it is only with poverty reduction and the establishment of a numerically strong, well-educated middle class, imbued with good civic virtues, that there will ever be any hope of running a well functioning ‘democracy’ in the sense you currently have in Western Europe and the US (if indeed this is a desirable goal).
Without this we get the basketcases of India (simply the fact that almost half of its population goes hungry every day is a crime against humanity), the Philipines, and South Africa (where life expectancy of the black population has actually dropped by 10 years since 1994), and perhaps even Russia during the Yeltsin years, when there was similarly a huge drop in living standards, and life expectancy (things have improved now for them under Putin).
So for the moment, yes, there may be the occassional dissident locked up, which may in future years be judged as unjust. China simply cannot worry about that now. The exigencies of this very moment simply have to take precedent over the wishes and privileges of a vanishingly numerically small number of so called intelligentsia.
Polls have confirmed that the overwhelming majority of Chinese people support the government, and are optimistic for the future (the most optimistic in the world) apparently. Google “pew china optimism”
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
bhudson. Go away. You are dense.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Zhumao,
So what your response to reid says, when it is all boiled down to it, is:
Socialist China considers it acceptable to lock up anyone indefinitely and without due legal process if it doesn’t like what they are saying.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Thank you Zhumao, I enjoy your wisdom.
Can I ask though why national disunity is almost assumed to flow from a moderation of your current strictures against dissidents?
I mean, if there really are so few, why is it necessary to do anything but leave the populace to laugh at their crazy ideas and words?
A one-party government does often seem to have a one-eyed view and in a country so vast with so much potential and future ahead of her, how can this govt expect itself to survive, long-term, unless it allows her people freedom both to think what they like but also to say it?
What has the govt got to fear?
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
“A one-party government”
You pathetic lamer. They’re a gang of crooks thugs and murderers who hold power by means of arms and the threat of death or imprisonment to anyone who might oppose them. You call them a “government”…?? I give up on you Reid.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Reid – I suppose it has something to do with nipping things in the bud.
As far as I know they may be overparanoid. I have never said there are no injustices.
But it is a risk thing. The consequences from social instability are so horrendous, that they may err on the side of harshness.
But one thing. The ordinary Chinese do not feel unfree in China. You can say what you want. You can diss communism, communists and people will laugh. You can say Hu Jintao is a shit and noone will care. One guy living in Beijing has published a book in Hong Kong attacking the premier (2nd highest leader in China) calling him a fraud and a crook. The authorities in China are trying to bribe him to desist from further publications. He has refused thusfar. He has not been arrested. Of course to Western eyes noone should be arrested at all. But to say a little dissent will cop you a bullet is a huge distortion of reality. So the ordinary folk do not feel this oppression from a lack of free speech.
Only those few people who go out and repeatedly write manifestos and get them published have anything to fear – and they are generally only punished after many warnings. And the death penalty is not applied for political crimes – even in the aftermath of Tiananmen it was not.
If anything people are angered more by local corruption, police abuse of power, and income inequalities – themes that are common across all the developed world.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
What I mean Zhumao is that I live in a country that let’s you say anything, and so have all my friends, family and just about, nearly, everyone else here and in the world I live most of time in. We ALL know, all of us that while our countries do stupid counter-productive sometimes even evil things, we’re still allowed to say anything we like about it and this doesn’t weaken the stability of the nation, by one little bit.
I know you have problems with education, over-population, crime and corruption and those problems are, in China, vast and difficult and to a large extent we don’t have those hardly at all, relatively speaking. One thing however you do have is an ancient sophisticated culture and this will give all of you, does it not, an anchor through which you all pull the same way. With or without a central one-party govt.
Perhaps I just don’t understand the enormous scale of your issues.
“The ordinary Chinese do not feel unfree in China.”
Yes I know. Western propaganda also exists, to some of us.
Vote:October 12th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Last sentence of previous post should read: If anything people are angered more by local corruption, police abuse of power, and income inequalities – themes that are common across all the developing world.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 1:02 am
The simple contrast for China is to look at both Taiwan and Hong Kong, both the ROC and HKSAR truly have freedom of speech, people can organise protests against the administration, can publish pretty much whatever they like and challenge the political system. Both Taiwan and South Korea have progressed from authoritarian regimes (not dissimilar to China today) to open civil societies in the 1980s and continue to thrive.
Until China can separate party from state (so that the party is NOT above the law), can have an independent judiciary (so the state is not above the law) and allow complete political free speech via all media, then it will continue to face problems of corruption and abuse of power by authorities, because the authorities are fundamentally not accountable. Government should be created by the people to protect their rights and government should not act in ways that would be illegal if private citizens did the same.
China’s one party state has progressed from treating the entire population as children to treating them as teenagers, it is about time they were treated as adults – like adults in the rest of China are treated.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Oh well – moderation rules. But I did say this was a thread of Double Happiness
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 9:52 am
A good read for “moderates’…
http://www.amazon.com/DUPES-Americas-Adversaries-Manipulated-Progressives/dp/1935191756/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286709546&sr=8-1
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 10:29 am
I have no idea what the suicide rate is amongst NZ factory workers.
My point: it was reported that 12 (I think?) people had committed suicide in Chinese factories over a year. This seems like a terrible indictment of Chinese labour conditions. But if you read further, you learn that the working population of these factories is something like 600,000. If you sampled a random 600,000 New Zealanders, you would almost certainly get more than 12 suicides in a year.
I realise that the populations are different. And I don’t seek to defend Chinese factory conditions. But is there any population in the world where you can take a sample of 600,000 and expect no suicides in a year?
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Repton,
“You get a result of 2.2 suicides per 100,000 population. [refers only to suicides in Chinese factories] That’s better than every developed country (New Zealand’s rate is 13.2 per 100,000).”
No Repton, your attempted point was that there are fewer suicides per capita in China than any other developed country. But your data comparison was flawed and identified as such.
BTW – Zhumao, in response to you, pointed out that suicides are higher in China at large outside of Foxconn, so the problem is worse than you thought.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 11:22 am
No, I never said that. I was comparing suicides per capita in Foxconn factories (I think it was Foxconn) with per capita in developed countries. I restricted to developed countries because I distrust the figures for other places (there is a list of suicide rates per capita on Wikipedia).
I’m not sure what you mean by “the problem”. Maybe I’m not being clear.
The headline was something like: “12 suicides in a year in Chinese iPhone factories!!!”. It was clearly intended to shock people like me who imagine a factory with, perhaps, a couple of thousand workers. But if you look at the number in context the story is very different.
The best context we have is the number of workers in the iPhone factories, plus the suicide rates per capita of other countries. In this context, 12 in a year is very good.
I’m not jumping in to defend all that China does as good and great; I just wanted to inject a little more data into the debate. Always look beyond the headlines!
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Another timely article in The American Spectator.
Readers who give this odious propagandist Zhumao any respect need to read it and understand fully the thugs and cowards and gangsters he is a front for-
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/10/12/party-animals/
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
The thing that’s really sad about this thread is not the mindless defence of the Chinese Communist leadership by Zhumao – that’s to be entirely expected – but the willingness of commentators here to go along with it or stay silent.
There have been a number of comments about dealing with “the facts” – but the issue should never be about arguments over the relative decline in child mortality, increased literacy or worker suicides. To fall into such arguments is to be diverted from the key issue, which is freedom.
For what it’s worth I’m quite willing to accept the claims about China having better stats than India on these measures. But, like the claims over European genocides made above, the point of debate should be whether such improvements are worth the price of having government authorities exert such incredible control over the everyday life of millions of human beings and whether such authoritarians can ever have the ability to accept the critiques of ordinary citizens and thus improve. They’ve demonstrated some ability in the economic world so there is hope.
However, when I see the comments of MT_Tinman, adze, and mavxp, I realise that we have, living in our societies here, people who would willingly yield enormous amounts of their own freedom (and more pointedly the freedoms of their fellow citizens) if they too could squeeze out a slightly improved child mortality rate or lower accident rates on the highways. Because such measurements must be applied against necessarily arbitary standards there is no limit to the degree of coercion that can be applied – and people such as these will not only accept that they will, in Zhumao fashion, rationalise it.
It reminds me very much of the PJ O’Rourke short story, Ship of Fools, where he went to the USSR with a bunch of US leftists. When these people finally get a chance to meet the representatives of their idol they pepper them with questions such as What is the percentage of workers in state housing? How much has steel tonnage increased?. They actually keep blurting the same questions out until even their Russian hosts tire of them, preferring to get drunk with O’Rourke and a couple of loud Texans.
The only reason that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty has been because the Chinese Communists gave up on the economic aspects of Marxism/Lenninism – meaning that they were forced by circumstance to provide economic freedoms to ordinary people. Eventually they will be forced to acknowledge that other freedoms will also have to be given, but it would be preferable if they could intellectually process that change rather than simply abandoning the old ways. Listening to the likes of Liu Xiaobo rather than clapping him in jail would be a good start.
In the meantime our society will have to continue arguing against its own internal Zhumao’s.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Since Mr Hunter and others have resorted to a bit of cut and past I will do likewise, and also play their game of “competitive body counting”
“A closer look at modern death tolls suggests the record of the British Empire is at least as deplorable as China’s. Under the Raj between 1896 and 1900, more than ten million people died in avoidable famines out of a population little more than one third the size of China’s in 1960. In the Bengal famine of 1943, between three and seven million died, out of a population of 60 million. The 1943 famine was just one of a series of crises in colonial India that together resulted in millions of avoidable fatalities. ….Winston Churchill himself famously blamed them on the people’s tendency to ‘breed like rabbits’ and historians attribute the severity of the crisis to British indifference and incompetence (Churchill thought the Indians ‘the beastliest people in the world, next to the Germans’). Needless to say, a proportionately far greater number died in Ireland under British rule in 1845–46. On an even larger scale, the Aboriginal population of Australia and the American Indian population were wiped out in many areas. In any case, the Great Leap deaths were unintended: any equation of them with colonial and racist genocides would be preposterous and indefensible.”
http://tinyurl.com/353o25c
Also let’s look at New Zealand’s bit of ‘genocide’ in Samoa:
“New Zealand authorities knew a ship, the Talune, which had arrived in Samoa was carrying Spanish influenza, but they still let people ashore. In the resulting epidemic more than 22% of the country’s population died“.
This of course means, using the childish reasoning of Mr Hunter, that Churchill and the incredibly, almost willfully, negligent NZ authorities, are as bad as Hitler.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Tom Hunter brings up the GLF. The claims of deaths during the Great Leap Forward just become more and more ludicrous, incrementing about 10 million each time a new anti-communist author decides he or she wants to earn a buck or two.
Frank Dikotter, the author of the book you referred to, is sponsored by the Chiang Chingkuo foundation no less, a man who is an arch defender of Japanese and British imperialism, a man who says drugs like opium and heroin should be legalized and never hurt the Chinese anyway, and a man so dishonest that he misrepresents a famine image from 1946 (under Chiang Kaishek – a regime he praises) http://www.life.com/image/50863592, as from the Great Leap Forward, by using it on the cover of his new book. Obviously not a mistake – because even Dikotter admits that no photographs of the Great Leap famine exist -to his knowledge. It is a calculated act of intellectual dishonesty on Dikotter’s part.
http://web.mac.com/dikotter/Dikotter/Maos_Great_Famine.html
Most of the books by Western authors on China are basically not worth their value as toilet paper –the sheer mind reading that goes on is absolutely laughable. Roderick MacFarquhar’s book on the cultural revolution is a classic example of this.
Note the arrogance – Westerners only read books on other cultures and countries written by fellow Westerners. Yet how much authority would they attach to a hypothetical ‘History of New Zealand’ written by say Wen Jiabao, born, bred, and raised in China, even if Wen Jiaboa had spent five or six years in New Zealand, and could speak halting English? Very little, I would assume.
Yet Chinese are supposed to bow down and accept whatever history the West wishes to dictate to them, that history of course written to cast the Chinese (and socialism) in a bad light, unfit for self-rule (that is the real agenda of these people) ,and the West on the side of angels.
(It is similar to the case with Russia, where Westerners get all outraged whenever a new textbook comes out praising Stalin, or rather not condemning Stalin hard enough. Or there is a poll which shows significant admiration of him. By the way, the Russians were close to voting him as their greatest historical figure a couple of years ago, until the organizers of the TV show panicked and rigged the poll – Stalin finally came in third).
Tom Hunter, I guarantee you this. Go to the worst hit provinces during the GLF – say Sichuan. Put on a Mao badge, put on a Mao T-shirt, and walk around. Do you think you will offend people because supposedly a third or quarter of them died under Mao, and the rest apparently near death –ie the whole province purportedly like Belsen or Dachau?
You will find they will not be offended at all, and that many will grin and shake your hand.
Most Chinese take great pride in Chairman Mao, the founder of new China.
Even Fox news admits this:
http://tinyurl.com/25v85yl
Now do the same with a Hitler badge and travel through Israel. What type of reception do you think you will get?
Mao is in fact so popular in China that people make shrines to him and erect temples treating him almost as some sort of deity (admittedly not a healthy phenomenon). And the areas Mao is most popular? Those same rural areas which were supposed to have the highest death rates during the GLF.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Zhumao,
So nice of you to use British Empire statistics from the 19th century – when we know the Brits had a lot of maturing to do – and contrast them against China from only 65 years ago. Are you trying to tell us that the Chinese have been slower to mature as human than the British Imperialists???
Zhumao, most of us here have a greater respect for the traditions, inventions, innovations and teachings from ancient China. We owe a great deal to the understanding that various civilisations have learned from your ancestors – trade, medicine, art, architecture, politics, warfare.
And yet you seem to think that people have only started maturing since 1946 – and that it’s taken a few million body bags to get there.
Speaking of which – that is another thing you clearly excel at over Britain. Look at the figures here…
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.2.GIF
35 million – that’s quite some effort Zhumao. You couldn’t quite snatch the gold for democide from the Soviet Union, but the (tarnished) silver is yours. (one also presumes that no performance enhancing substances were required to reach those extraordinary numbers.)
You certainly took a Great Leap Forward ahead of the West with that effort.
And quite a fine form half-pike follow up with the Cultural Revolution – to transform education, literature and art, and all other parts of the superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist economic base
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
But you were perfectly happy with “competitive body counting” when you were throwing around estimates of 15 million dead in the African slave trade, 20-100 million Native American dead, 10-15 million Congolese dead, etc. Apparently you had no real intellectual interest in exploring where those numbers came from – you just took the highest possible estimates and ran with it in your usual propaganda fashion.
I’ll steadily make my way through that Western Left nonsense when I have time but for the moment I’ll note that I was directly addressing not a body count but your outright lie that the excesses of socialist crimes only occurred when the regimes were new.
As I pointed and as is not disputed by anyone outside of communist party toadies like yourself, the most evil and wicked socialist atrocities (have to a have a bit of fun with your boilerplate terminology) of Stalin and Mao occurred years after the revolutions occurred. That was yet another of your “facts” Zhumao, and it proved to be as solid as your theories of Chinese racial superiority and dead Iraqi babies.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Bloody hell, I almost missed this:
So the survivors of butchered, starved and terrorised populations worship Mao today do they? With that sort of history and a dedicated little Zhumao ready to inform on them in every village I’ll bet they’re erecting shrines to the Great Leader as fast as they can.
Russians wept in the streets when Stalin died too – for you a “fact” demonstrating the love of ordinary Russians for the man – for everybody else (including almost all modern Russians), a source of much black humour which I’m sure lies far beyond your comprehension.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Zhumao at some point in the future, would you care to make a comment on GD someday about Sino-Japan recent relationship in the origin of the recent dispute and what it means re: potential futures.
I’d be very interested in your perspective.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
35 million? – how kind of you- -apparently they claim 70 or 80 million now. Next year it will probably be 100 million. And five years hence they will have ratcheted it up to 150 million. LOL
“one also presumes that no performance enhancing substances were required to reach those extraordinary numbers.
Even if the claims were true, it is rather unintelligent to refer to ‘performance enhancing’ substances. Obviously with a large population, a badly conceived policy will hurt or even cause the deaths of huge numbers of people, a good policy will benefit huge numbers of people. How can you fail to see something so obvious? (its like those who constantly go on about China being the No 1 executioner. In fact she is number 3 or 4, and the numbers executed are the equivalent of about 10 to 15 executions in NZ yearly. Singapore is actually the most prolific executioner – on a proportionate basis)
Why not talk then about the proportional kill rate out of a group of people targeted – you do the homework. You will find that the kill rates of the colonial powers makes them at least if not more murderous as is claimed for the Soviet Union or China.
Rummel’s numbers of course are ludicrous but he has been honest in one area. He originally claimed only 870,000 victims of 20th century colonialism in Africa and Asia, but has recently revised his figures to a staggering minimum of 50 million. Note that colonial deaths were victims not of mismanagement or incompetence – but of pure exploitation. Colonialism of course ended in the 1950s/60s – and the atrocities continued right up to its end. I refer you to the excellent book by Caroline Elkins on the . The British interned 1.5 million Kenyans in the 1950s, out of a population of 7 to 8 million. Up to 300,000 died. This is the equivalent of 20,000,000 deaths in China – but over an incredibly short period of just five or six years.
http://tinyurl.com/3x7k4zl
Add these numbers to the previous famine statistics and the imperialist West is right up there. As Rummel said:
….These colonizers turned Africa into one giant gulag, with each colony being like a separate camp…..Based on this research, I’m willing to estimate that over all of colonized Africa and Asia 1900 to independence, the democide was something like 50 million. This is way above my original 870,000. Even 50 million may be too conservative.”
http://tinyurl.com/2cf8sfp
Mao’s intentional killings are probably only a little higher than that of George W Bush’s (and yes starting illegal wars is the equivalent of intentional killing).
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
“Apparently you had no real intellectual interest in exploring where those numbers came from……”
Given the relatively small populations of the time, not of just victims, but also perpetrators – the enormity of European colonial crimes are only enhanced, not diminished.
I was directly addressing not a body count but your outright lie that the excesses of socialist crimes only occurred when the regimes were new.
10 or 15 years is, I would put it, rather ‘new’. If you consider the later part of the 1930s to be a benign environment for the Soviet Union -you are either deluded or ignorant.
Mao’s executions happened in the early 50s. Deaths from the GLF are of a different nature – morally equivalent to New Zealand causing the death of 22% of Samoa’s population after WWI – tragic as they were. They were not intended deaths. Death rates during the GLF approached those of pre-revolutionary China, and the tragedy is amplified by the incredible progress China had made up to this point in reducing death rates. After the GLF disaster ended – death rates once again continued to decline.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Zhumao,
You think being number 3 or 4 [your words, not mine] for executions is a good thing? Quite some aspirations you have.
By the way – proportionality is misleading if you try to compare vastly different populations sizes. For example, kill 5 people out of 10 and you have killed 50%. Kill 50 out of 1000 and you have “only” killed 5%. And yet you have killed 10x the number of people.
“Mao’s intentional killings are probably only a little higher…”
Of all the dead, you mean Mao killed most of the people unintentionally? Not much of a leader if the population was dropping like flies when he didn’t mean to, now was he???
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Come in Tom…10…9…8…
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Luc,
Beat him to it…
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
“Come in Tom…10…9…8…”
What, run out of sycophantic praise for your commie thug mate Luc?
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
By the way – proportionality is misleading if you try to compare vastly different populations sizes. For example, kill 5 people out of 10 and you have killed 50%. Kill 50 out of 1000 and you have “only” killed 5%. And yet you have killed 10x the number of people
That is a good point – there is certainly a point at which the comparisons break down and become invalid (yes the Samoa example tends towards that – but I brought it up to illustrate degrees of culpability). But I think the information I have provided above more than proves that European imperialism was equally as murderous, if not more, than even what is claimed by the West in respect of the Soviet Union and China.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
I would like to take tom hunter October 13th, 2010 at 12:17 pm to task later tonight. Please be sure to check back Mr Hunter. I can sense your wailing and gnashing of teeth! Will be back after dinner.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Zhumao wrote:
Not quite: there is still one ongoing colonial project, Palestine, with its accompanying atrocities.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Ah yes….good old Luc.
The terrorists can do no wrong, it is all the work of the nasty Jews and their equally nasty pals the Seppo’s.
You really do need to go out and buy the biggest chip you can find Luc, when you do stick in on your right shoulder, that may help you develop a balanced view of the world.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Pardon me, where did I say all that? Who are the Seppo?
The original fault lay with the British, and although people outside of Britain have trouble believing this, their support for Zionism was based on anti-Semitism of the highest order. The overwhelming majority of Arabs wanted a pan-Arab state after WWI, but were denied that by the victorious allies. For many, the reward for supporting the allies was treachery.
Then the Holocaust occurred, and many European nations were complicit in that atrocity, and understandably it gave a new impetus to Jews fleeing the centuries old persecution they had endured in Europe.
Now, it’s just the US who stand between a just settlement and the continuation of the violence, thei dispossession, the oppression and the basic denial of human rights to the Palestinians.
And when I mentioned the atrocities of colonialism, it cuts both ways, as the colonised fight back with their own atrocities. But the number count, of course, that Tom is so fond of, is terribly skewed in favour of the colonisers, as is the case in historic Palestine.
The selectivity of European apologists on here is truly stunning.
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Luc,
“Jews fleeing the centuries old persecution they had endured in Europe.” And going back to their homeland Luc. In fact I think it might have been their promised land.
In any case, this response is not about that…
Seppo? Is cockney rhyming slang – Septic Tank, Yank (shortened to Seppo)
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Than you bh, I had Googled it. I wouldn’t use the term myself. I have enjoyed the company of every Yank I have ever met.
Palestine is not the homeland of European Jews. You should read “How and Why the Jewish People was Invented” by Shlomo Sand. Even if it was, how on earth can you justify “return” after supposedly 2000 years?
And no doubt you resist Maori claims after only 170 odd years of expulsion from their tribal lands?
And you supported the justification of the genocide in Bosnia as being the reprisal for the successful colonisation by the Ottomans 600 years previously?
Vote:October 13th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Luc,
Given your general comments re: America, you can’t have met many.
Israel is the home of all Jews – as far as the Jews are concerned. The Palestinians have another view of course.
I guess the Israelis have a stronger claim than the Maori Luc. They have neither beads nor guns gifted for their ancestral lands. (And the guns they have now they have to buy.) They also inhabited their land for far far longer.
But given you put a timeline on claims Luc, the local Maori aren’t going to be that thrilled with you. I think they are a little peeved that their grievances have to be dealt with according to timelines.
In any case, how many years does it take to weaken the claim as far as you are concerned? May as well give the Israelis a timeframe to aim for. Year x when Luc (or descendents) will drop Palestinian claims.
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Ouch!! And touche`….
Good bit of writing Tom Hunter. But alas, the Borg are not so easily dissuaded.
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I would like to take tom hunter October 13th, 2010 at 12:17 pm to task later tonight. Please be sure to check back Mr Hunter. I can sense your wailing and gnashing of teeth! Will be back after dinner.
Must have been a long dinner…..
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Must have been a long dinner….. hahahaha – yes – ate too much, got tired, and went to bed early.
”There have been a number of comments about dealing with “the facts” – but the issue should never be about arguments over the relative decline in child mortality, increased literacy or worker suicides. To fall into such arguments is to be diverted from the keyissue, which is freedom.”
Marx was somewhat right when he said that it was largely material circumstances which governed the way people viewed the world. Obviously Mr Hunter puts overriding emphasis on his own idea of ‘freedom’ because he thinks that the choice is simply between what people have here NZ and what people have in China. Mr Hunter enjoys political debate, enjoys writing his blogs, little realising that he is part of a very small percentage of people in the world who not only have the political freedom to do this, but just as importantly the economic freedom.
The choice for the vast majority of China’s people was simply one of ‘freedom’ or ‘totalitarianism’. It was a choice between being indefinite slaves or at best indentured labourers to a small rural elite class, or the political discipline of socialist rule. It was not a choice between material wealth like there is in NZ, or the poverty of the Chinese countryside. It was a choice between poverty where one faces famine every few years with zero medical care, zero education, under a merciless and cruel social system, or one where there is material poverty, but basic medical care, a rudimentary and solid education, and yes just as importantly an enhanced social status (at least in Mao’s time). It was a choice between allowing a small aristocratic elite to enjoy the benefits of the labour of their serfs for generations on end, or instead the wealth going to the central government who instead could use this wealth to lay the foundations of China’s future industrialisation.
And of course for China as a nation, it was a choice between its continued status as a semi-colony of the West, with British warships patrolling her waters, with the humiliation of ‘no dogs or Chinese’, of foreigners completely exempt from the laws of the land, the violent chaos of disunity and regionalism, or a tight, unified, and increasingly powerful unit who no one dares to f$#$ with anymore.
Of course for someone in the position of Mr Hunter, it is quite easy to say “the issue should never be about arguments over the relative decline in child mortality, increased literacy….” Well let us consider what these ‘relative declines’ really mean to real flesh and blood human beings (economic units probably to people like Mr Hunter). India has about 2.1 million child deaths a year, more than five times the number in China. One could thus say that China’s system saves 1.68 million children per year. Political freedom means nothing if you can’t even survive into early adolescence. On general life expectancy the eminent Indian economist Amartya Sen has said: “compared with China’s rapid increase in life expectancy in the Mao era, the capitalist experiment in India could be said to have caused 4 million excess deaths a year since India’s independence…India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame, 1958-61”
That decisive lead of China over India in life expectancy has continued right up to the present day. That’s 4 million x 60 years = 240 million excess deaths in India. Of course if I applied the immature reasoning of Tom Hunter to these matters , I would then say ‘democracy’ = Nazism.
Mr Hunter has never been hungry before, I mean really hungry. That is why he dismisses gains in child mortality and increased literacy etc, as not the ‘key’ issue. Rather it is all about his own idea of ‘freedom’ is .
And by the way if one has the political freedom to write a blog, that means absolutely nothing if one is illiterate. China’s literacy is over 90%. India’s is about 68%. Almost half of India’s women cannot read and write. Massive gains in school enrolments and literacy actually occurred under the Mao era, not just after the reforms.
Why these differences between China and India. A very strong case can be put that it was the social revolution which happened in China after liberation, but not in India, after independence which is the main factor. This can be discussed in detail at a later time.
And in fact China is really not all that un-free at all. Anyone who has visited the place can tell you that. It’s vices, and yes some horrors, are common to all developing countries, socialist and non-socialist.
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Zhumao, frankly your statistics don’t mean shit as every single figure you trot out is controlled by your government and filtered so that China is never seen in a bad light.
Everything you type is nothing but communist controlled propaganda.
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
The irony of that site, is the first commenter to post in the comments section blamed the US….
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Bevan: so I take it that if you accepted the quoted statistics, you would agree with the main points of my post? Yes or No?
Vote:October 14th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Zhumao,
Obiovusly you missed this in the General Debate seciton so I thought I’d repost here for you. It would seem the ‘modern’ workers paradise is slowly catching up to the civilised West (in terms of the call for justice anyway)…
It would seem that there is an awakening in China.
“A group of eminent Chinese Communist Party elders has issued a bold call to end the country’s wide-ranging restrictions on free speech, just days after the government reacted angrily to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/4231406/Chinese-elders-call-for-free-speech
“Our current system of censoring news and publications is 315 years behind Britain and 129 years behind France,” the letter said.
The censorship and Human Rights revolution is beginning in China Zhumao. Isn’t that great news?
Vote:October 15th, 2010 at 9:55 am
Now here I was yesterday enjoying the sun and then time with my kids, a movie with my wife and all the other accoutrements of a busy life in our freely speaking capitalist democracy – when all that time I could have been taunting a sad little communist apologist. Tough choice!
Anyway, I’m glad some commentators were able to arouse Zhumao from his well-fed slumber in order to get him to fulfill his word. It certainly would be an advance on the last time he made the same speech:
Note the similarity with his parting line to me on this thread. Hes been well-trained, but more on that later in the Zhumao Humour section. The only difference is that the one above is from five months ago – and I still have not heard from him.
Sheesh – a guy who can’t produce a good counter-argument in over 140 days sounds like someone who has basically shown that you do not have an argument. (more boilerplate language humour).
Anyway, here’s his original “fact” and my response. Maybe we’ll get something out him this time.
And what follows is my response from months ago:
Let’s be really honest and address the following questions. Have the rich economies of the world actually become richer, faster in the post-WWII world – even as all these colonial possessions, wage slaves and cheap resources have been taken out of their hands, often by nationalist revolutions? Australia? New Zealand? Did Holland and France become poorer after they lost their colonies? Are the Scandanavian countries poorer than their European counterparts because they lacked colonies? Did any of them grow less quickly after the WWII (lacking colonies) than before WWII?
Of course not.
Western countries have stumbled when they’ve forgotton how to have an internal capitalist economy – Spain and Portugal being the obvious examples – with other Western European nations steadily following them down the hole over the last few decades. In the case of Britain its global set of colonies, full of supposedly cheap labour and resources, actually helped set it on a downward spiral well before it lost any of them.
Or look at it from the other point of view, using your favourite examples. Has Japan done worse since it became a capitalist democracy with no colonies to exploit, unlike it’s previous period? South Korea? Taiwan? And what of China itself since it started down the capitalist road in 1980? Can we attribute China’s tremendous economic growth to hidden sources of exploited foreign labour and resources made cheap through Chinese colonial control?
Of course not.
In fact these last examples answer the questions Zhumao posited about Europe: yes, previously poor Europeans did become rich before they pushed out from their homelands. Yes, capitalism did work for Europe for quite a long time without mass access to China and India. You’ve got the cause and effect backwards – and not just that:
….. you can pay little or nothing to the people from whose lands they are extracted. And it goes without saying that you’re paying the semi or fully-enslaved peoples of those lands very little money for their few goods and services. And the end result is that they are really poor. That’s the argument. But wait:
So you’ve created a captive market of poor people for all your really groovy expensive manufactured goods. But we can solve this by lending them the money to buy the goods, thereby keeping them in debt –permanently. That’s the theory right? Ignoring the usual question of any lender – how can your poorly paid resources and services and goods support the loan you need to buy all the more complex, expensive Western stuff. Maybe Western bankers were kinder to colonials subjects.
The whole theory really does collapse when these questions are asked, which is not surprising since it is really just warmed over Marxism, specifically the Wallerstein/Baran/Singer variation, where an international class of exploited colonial workers are substituted for the local exploited working classes. The latter theory was shown by capitalist development to be wrong as long ago as the early 20th century – which is partly why the Wallerstein rubbish had to created (This wealth must be coming from somewhere?)
Oh right – this is used to explain the economic success of the USA, a largely non-colonial power throughout it’s history (unless you want to argue that owning the Phillipines from the 1890’s on is responsible for the majority of US economic growth).
But even this sad little excuse of a theoretical patch is being superceded by the speed at which the global economy is developing.
None other than China and India appear to be refuting the theory by using those same ‘unjust’ political, trade and financial structures, not to mention other countries.
Vote:October 15th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Welcome to the Zhumao Humour thread. Two entries:
Courtesy of bhudson, noting the call from Chinese Party Elders for more free speech:
Sadly, it’s always the little apparatchik minions like Zhumao who are the last to know.
And from the Little Helmsman himself:
Snap!
Zhumao shifts the goalposts again. Glorious. A tribute to his training in dialectical argumentation.
It’s possible that he was just channeling Zhou Enlai’s comment on the impact of the French Revolution: It is too soon to say” – but more likely he was clawing for any angle to save him from his nonsensical statement about the worst communist atrocities occurring when the regimes were “new”. Sad.
Vote: