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OSMANLI | TURKEY << on "China-Turkey and Xinjiang: a frayed relationship"

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:19:57 +0000

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Tob.rob on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

Tob.rob — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:25:04 +0000

China is nowhere near the world's largest economy. It's the world's third-largest economy and the second-largest by PPP.

People who don't understand China tend to complain about it and draw the wrong conclusions. You, Mr. Brown, are one of them.

Get your facts right.

Donon on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

Donon — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:32:36 +0000

I agree with some of your arguments, but you're somewhat exaggerating your main point. China is not moving away from the rule of law, it is clearly approaching it. There are many people in the CCP who are genuinely interested in improving the well-being of their citizens -- be it to protect their power, but China is not an anarchist state ruled by mafia thugs. Other than in our Western metropolises, there are no areas in Chinese cities where you will feel seriously threatened. This is something you will come to appreciate when living in China. Of course, you will miss this parts of China if you're travelling the country for only one month. I respect your opinion, but you're not being objective.

lihlii on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

lihlii — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:38:35 +0000

Please watch a documentary produced by Mr. Weiwei Ai's Studio to find out what happened to him that caused this head injury.

https://sites.google.com/site/welovelaomatihua/en
http://j.mp/lmth

English and German subtitles are in process. This documentary will tell you how Mr. Weiwei Ai was beaten in darkness in China, and why he was beaten by the State Security Police (similar to STASI).

Best regards,

gw on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

gw — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:46:17 +0000

a glance at the author's role, and other publications reveal that he has clearly spent a great deal more than a month in China and is a recognised authority

Ma Bole on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

Ma Bole — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:38:46 +0000

Not so fast - China doesn't have the world's largest economy. At least not yet. According to the CIA World Factbook, the size of China's economy (in real exchange rate terms) is only US$ 4.2 trillion, while the U.S. economy measures in at US$ 14.2 trillion. Quite a difference. Even when measuring the Chinese economy in PPP terms, it still trails the U.S. by a considerable amount - US$ 7.9 to US$ 14.2. (It may be cheaper to eat and pay one's rent in China, but the Chinese must still import their oil, iron ore, weapons, etc.) Average GDP per capita (PPP) is just US$ 6,000 for China, while it is US$ 42,000 for the U.S.

The Chinese may be a world power, but they are far from outclassing the U.S.

As for the thuggish CCP - I don't disagree that China is essentially run by the same group of thugs that have run China for 60 years. It's part of the political culture. Convincing the CCP to stop behaving like thugs is like telling a great white shark to stop eating surfers. It's just what they do. The CCP wouldn't be the CCP if they stopped behaving like thugs. Changing China's political culture is a virtual impossibility.

smc on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

smc — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:11:27 +0000

I find it weird that you spend a month in a country of a billion people and now you claim to know everything about China??

tszsan on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

tszsan — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:15:31 +0000

The problem with transforming the CCP from a vanguard revolutionary party to a governing party is something that the CCP has grappled with for at least 20 years. It is one of the themes of Zhao Ziyang's recent memoirs, regarding the need for the CCP to embrace rule of law instead of rule by individuals. Zhao ultimately sees that only a western-style parliamentary democracy can secure accountability and rule of law. Not sure how that is ever going to be achieved. But one thing is for sure, the increased reliance on police brutality as a response to instability is the most worrying. If the party state cannot handle social instability in a civlised manner it is difficult to envisage it reforming itself

gelosgrapos on "China’s shadow sector: power in pieces "

gelosgrapos — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:25:54 +0000

Finally an article that addresses the reality and fragility of China.
I hope all those pundits that are claiming that the 21st Century belongs to the East - led by China - will take note.
One thing is economic growth another is to be sitting on a powder keg of social discontent, injustice and corruption that sooner all later will explode.
For all its faults - and there are many - the West at least still has the rule of law, justice and individual freedom of expression with sites such as this existing and contributing to the "work in progress" that is Western democracy.

claude-uk on "China-Turkey and Xinjiang: a frayed relationship"

claude-uk — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:58:01 +0000

Turkey attacked China purely on the ground of supporting their 'Turkic Kin' rather than on human rights, no matter what the actual truth is. While there is no proven evidence for genocide in Xinjiang, listening to any Armenia would expose the cruelty of what Turkey did. Even if the history could be denied by Turkey, how could they deny what they did and what they are still doing to Kurdish people? Be ashamed, Erdogan!

Frederico on "China-Turkey and Xinjiang: a frayed relationship"

Frederico — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:11:01 +0000

Seferian and Dreppwn's responses were disturbing. They have made genocide conclusions and now tell us Turkey has no right to take a stance on human rights. (Because in the case of the Armenian matter, the state that Turkey overthrew, the Ottoman Empire, is accused of committing genocide. ) It is as though today's Gemany should be shorn of the right to take a moral stance, because a previous German regime had committed a proven genocide.

The fact is, the Turkish nation has never committed genocide. Centuries ago, the Ottomans were powerful enough to challenge Christian Europe, and as a result, Muslim Turkey has earned the disdain of today's west. Many Greeks and Armenians, raised to hate Turks, love to spread their hatred in the western countries they have settled in, and westerners, with their built-in anti-Turkish bias, simply accept whatever terrible things that are said about the Turks.

The Armenians prospered for centuries in the Ottoman Empire. Trouble started when their leaders started terror groups in the late 19th century to get a share of the threatened nation, once the "Sick Man" was taken down for the count. Any Armenian dying of any cause, even combat, was reported as having been "massacred" in the Western press.

Come WWI, the Armenians joined their nation's enemies, as verified by their own leaders, such as Boghos Nubar. They took a gamble, and they lost. Once the Ottomans were in for the fight of their lives, they decided to resettle their treacherous Armenian population, temporarily. This is what has come to be known as a "genocide," much as there is absolutely no evidence to support an intent for extermination. (As the British discovered when they conducted their early version of Nuremberg, the Malta Tribunal, 1919-21.) Most of the half-million Armenians who died were victims of causes such as famine and disease, which also claimed the lives of the majority of the Turks -- even their soldiers. The ones who conducted the comparatively incidental massacres were not connected with the government (other than the rare examples of corrupt local officials); the culprits were often opportunistic Kurdish and Arab tribes.

But evidence does not matter. Prejudiced westerners are quick to accept the obsessed Armenians' word. A whole dishonest genocide industry has sprung up, financed in good part by wealthy Armenians, and the zealots from this industry who pretend to be "scholars" (few come from the field of history) are intolerant of views other than their own. The charge of "denier" springs up, in an effort to stifle debate. Liberals, who should know better, both in the media and academia, are quick to take the genocide industry's side. The situation is a travesty.

The fact is, the Armenians, when they occupied large stretches of Eastern Anatolian territory from 1914-1919, with their allies (and later without) systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, but Jews and others as well. (Verified, for example, by a pro-Armenian U.S. team, Niles and Sutherland, in 1919; there are also many firsthand testimonies from their allies, Russian and French officers. Internal Ottoman police reports also provide a range of detail.) The Armenian motive was rooted in hopes for a new state, as well as the Armenians' cultivated racial hatred. The nation of Armenia conducted a second campaign of extermination, when they nearly wiped out their new nation's sizeable Muslim (mostly Azeri Turks) population, from 1918-1920.

The irony is, if any people condcuted a genocide that follows the rules of the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide, it was the Armenians. The dishonest genocide industry won't speak of the Armenians' terrible crimes, and most Westerners are ignorant, because the Armenians have succeeded in getting their version of events wholly accepted. (That is what their worldwide terrorism spree in the 1970s-80s was all about.) And Westerners are still so prejudiced, adding to their being brainwashed with all of the destructive and overwhelming Armenian propaganda, people don't care, nor do they question.

It is a deplorable situation that ultimately will change, as it's difficult to keep the truth under wraps forever. In the meantime, bigoted statements as the ones we have encountered from Seferian and Dreppwn, will unfortunately be prevalent.

Dreppwn has raised the specter of Cyprus, another topic where the "Christian" perspective has been accepted in the biased West. For decades, the Greek Cypriot minority, under the leadership of Makarios, oppressed and massacred the Turkish Cypriots. The situation got so awful, in 1960, a Treaty of Guarantee was established, so that the respective mother countries would have the right to step in and protect their own Cypriots, if the threat of ethnic cleansing should surface. In 1974, Greece sent in thugs to take over Makarios' government, and to wipe out the Turkish Cypriots, as the coup leader (Sampson) confessed in a Greek newspaper (that he would not have left a single Turkish Cypriot alive). Turkey was within its legal right to intervene, as even an Athens court found. Yet Turkey has been made out to be the aggressor of this episode, in a western world where the Turks are always given the short end of the stick. Greece was the aggressor, and if Turkey hadn't stepped in, Cyprus today would have no Turks left -- a situation that was familiar regarding the Armenia of 1918. (Today, Armenia is 99% ethnically pure -- after all of their criminal bloodletting that goes unknown.)

As far as this article's theme, the question is, why should it be only Turkey that (very reluctantly, given the economic and political realities) sounds off on the oppression and displacement of the Uyghurs? (An "East Turkestan" link above, http://www.unpo.org/content/view/7872/107/, provided insight as to the country's history.) The Chinese first invaded in the 18th century, and the Uyghurs finally managed independence again for a short spurt in 1864-1876. The Chinese nationalists then kept up their criminal domination, as much as the Uyghurs were successful in setting up an independent East Turkestan Republic twice (in 1933 and 1944). Finally, the communists under Mao muscled their way in, to a country that did not belong to them, much as they did with defenseless Tibet. China has no right to either of these nations that they are slowly displacing with ethnic Chinese, which certainly sounds like a slow road to genocide.

While westerners have been sympathetic to Tibet, why have we rarely, if ever, heard of their objections regarding East Turkestan? It is because the people involved, the Turkic people, don't count, in the minds of prejudiced Westerners.

abuelita42pj on "China-Turkey and Xinjiang: a frayed relationship"

abuelita42pj — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:50:47 +0000

Turkey may have some of its own problems--mostly historic through the 20th Century. But that doesn't mean it's wrong in criticizing China's actions against the Uyghurs. Just because the Uyghurs are smaller in number doesn't justify making them kowtow to China's demands of taking all they work for and giving little in return. Being part of geographic China also means China has a responsibility to treat ALL its citizens well. Sending Han peoples into Uyghur area and having taken their jobs and homes from them would make most groups of people upset. Some one needs to stand up for the "minorities" also. Treating everyone well so they can have a job with money to care for their families and education, good health care etc. all make people more obliging and respectful. China will have to learn to do this to more of their groups, not just Uyghurs. Since Uyghurs have Turkic blood and the ancient Turkic people are those that settled in what is now Turkey, Erdogan is right speaking up. The other "stans" would do well by doing the same since they too have numerous Uyghurs in their countries. Diplomacy trumps military time and again. China should try it.

dreppwn on "China-Turkey and Xinjiang: a frayed relationship"

dreppwn — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:44:48 +0000

Erdogan's hypocricry is indeed beyond tolerance. His country has a long record of human rights violation and genocide that he chooses not to remember. Let us remind him his people's atrocities in Cypus, rewrite his statement and adopt it as ours:
"No state, no society that attacks the lives and rights of innocent civilians can guarantee its security and prosperity. Whether they are Greek Cypriots or Turkish Cypriots we cannot tolerate such atrocities. The suffering of the Cypriots is ours."

Nareg Seferian on "China-Turkey and Xinjiang: a frayed relationship"

Nareg Seferian — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:05:30 +0000

As an Armenian, the Turkish reaction to the Uyghur events in China recently can only come with a great deal of irony and some disgust. That Ankara can refer to the Chinese as having committed "some kind of genocide" can only resonate in its full hypocrisy when one considers the nearly-century-long Turkish policy of discrimination, extermination and denial of the Armenian people, specifically the Armenian Genocide which started in 1915.

deteodoru on "China-Turkey and Xinjiang: a frayed relationship"

deteodoru — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:47:18 +0000

Not since the Great Khan have the Han and Uyghurs been so at crossed swords. This is the Shanghai Copperative Accord's greatest challenge yet. The Turkik nations are like the Islamic meat in the sandwich (betwen Russia and China) coming back to life. Common grounds are begining to wedge through the Muslim Republics' differences. Like the Soviet Union, China will not tolerate a greater Turkiik union of sorts, not to speak of losing Sinkiang. Wealth will make up for no technology and we must look carefully to how these republics deal with their common interests, played against China by Russia and against eachother. Though ahistoric, such concern over Central Asian congelation could deviate from the past because of technology, so easily bought today.

I cannot challenge the feeling of the Uyghurs, given what their lives as minorities have been like under the two Communist states. But the greater the unity, the greater the violence that Russia and China will face from the awakening content of this sandwich.

Is there not a warning here to the US that it better get out of Afghanistan before it is swallowed up in a conflict that goes far beyond 9/11?