Telling China to get over colonialism is like telling black people to get over racism.
These inhumane policies have been in place for centuries so after 3-4 decades of half-heartedly treating people as equals, "get over it" isn't going to fly.
Generally the victims decide when to move on, not the attackers.
How long is China going to put on the mantle of victimhood over events 160 years in the past?!
By that standard surely Korea can complain endlessly about China and Yuan Shikai lording it over their kingdom in the 1880s, and the Czechs can cry over their subjugation for centuries by Austria-Hungary, etc. etc.
In 1949 Mao Zedong famously declared "China has stood up." Apparently though he meant, "We're such a weak people that we cry to mommy everytime others demand reciprocity."
But hasn’t other people been treated worst? The country of India, the entire continent of Africa, and how about all the Native Americans? Do we need to hold grudges from our grandparents parents? According to that logic, the world forever would be in a mode of revenge seeking.
I always find this argument preposterous as someone ethnically Chinese hearing it from a nationalistic Chinese, 10 years younger, from China full of fervour. What exactly have they experience in life that is so full of hardship? To me, it seems like a convenient excuse to brush away any criticism of their actions. No one can criticise them because of what X and Y did to them 150 years ago. Seems like a cop out to me.
I suspect the Chinese government has something to do with this mentality.
I'm sure a majority of Chinese citizens support the PRC's Holocaust-scale campaign of genocide against the Uighur people in Xinjiang, but that doesn't make it okay to imprison hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps without trial (and there are now reports of extreme torture, killings, cremation of bodies to cover it up, etc.).
The U.S. and Germany (and many other countries) have learned from horrific experiences (e.g. internment of Japanese Americans) and I think that has yielded greater freedoms that make it less likely that these tragic and disgusting actions will be repeated in the future. Hopefully when China learns the same lesson, it won't be too late.
Huh? Have you just ignored the last decade of news? China is mostly certainly genocidal. They've put Uyghurs in concentration camps and sterilized them. The question, is why are you apologizing for them and pretending this didn't happen?
This is ignorant of both history and the present. Speaking as a three year resident of China they are a hell of a lot more racist than is common in the West. The only reason China doesn't have atrocity baggage in Africa is that they didn't have the opportunity. The Qing were all about genocide when it was useful. I'd say ask the Oirat or the Dzhungars except these groups no longer exist.
This. Thank you for being a voice of reason. Historical context is so important here, especially the lessons China learned the hard way. Like just what the U.S., U.K., France, and other countries can do to you if you show weakness.
The original point was that if a country is doing something now, that can be an excuse for another country doing the same thing now.
If you want to extend your excuse to "a country did something bad 50 / 100 / 500 / 1000 years ago (and later regretted it)" then you need to provide extra reasoning for why that still works as an excuse for what a country is doing now.
Edit: I'm guessing from the downvotes that I didn't make my comment clear enough (or I didn't understand the comment I was responding to). My intent was to point out the logical gap in an argument that could be seen as justifying China's genocidal policies.
What's your argument? That we shouldn't strive to be better today, because horrible things happened in the past? I guess it is also OK for china to genocide the Uyghurs, since the Holocaust happened.
Are you implying that the current Chinese government should be forgiven for abusing its citizens because the British did something similar 35 years ago?
I don’t mean to offend, but your comment is so short that I can tell what kind of context you are trying to add.
Well, yes, colonialism is a major issue in the modern history of China; China acts like a colonizer towards its border territories. There's something fascist about ethnic cleansing, about re-education camps, about disappearing citizens without habeas corpus, about killing religious prisoners and harvesting their organs.
We can have both truths; it can both be true that China suffered greatly under British colonialism, and also be true that China is committing dire human rights violations which, to the degree that they further a Han Chinese ethnostate, are fascist. Tibetans, Uighurs, and indeed the people of Hong Kong are suffering under China's policies.
>Which people has china committed genocide against? Don't say uyghurs as it would be an insult to the native americans, jews, armenians, etc who actually experienced real genocide.
What about good old fashioned Han Chinese? Mao's rule was devastating. Killed more than WWII killed /people/.
Also the kill number isn't the factor here. It's not call of duty. That's like saying people who died in Columbine should just stop whining because millions of Jews died.
It's funny because China seems to have the mentality that this must be so. And look over to the Japanese and at one time they were similarly minded. And yet look at them now, a pleasure to deal with both on individual and societal level. So it's simply a choice and a mentality which will lead you into all sorts of bad situations. Unfortunately Chinese don't have enough experience with this and instead looking to history to guide their actions, which is a mistake. We simply can't act this way in the world we have built, the consequences are too grave for everyone involved.
We have no quarrel here. As you’ve clearly demonstrated, these topics are touchy subjects in the West. China is unrepentant about its history and has no issues being exploitative if it gets them ahead. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not trying to make some cosmic moral comparison of all the various atrocities ever committed in human history and by whom.
We should forgive. It's not an easy thing to do. The notion of forgiving was a revolutionary idea 2000 years ago, and in spite of lying at the bedrock of western morality, it's still a revolutionary idea today.
The regime in China also brought 650 million people out of extreme poverty in span of a generation. Somewhat unprecedented in world history, and definitely not something that gets dredged up time and time again to reinforce a distorted narrative. Rip the bandaid off that one and there's no wound underneath to pick at :(
These inhumane policies have been in place for centuries so after 3-4 decades of half-heartedly treating people as equals, "get over it" isn't going to fly.
Generally the victims decide when to move on, not the attackers.
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