The People's Republic of Cruelty?
I read the headline and actually thought Stephens was writing a column about Trump's regime of cruelty:
taking babies and small children away from their parents at the border as his choice as a deterrence to people seeking asylum in the U.S.
his horrendous neglect of the Puerto Ricans and lies about what Hurricane Maria did to Puerto Rico
his abusive insults to our European and Canadian allies, especially May of Britain and Trudeau of Canada, our closest allies
his claim to end abortion and a woman's right to privacy and to choose, backed up by his appointment of the hardcore Catholic and pro-corporate Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
his total lack of empathy and absolute destain for poor people and the disabled (never forgot Trump's mockery of the NYT reporter)
his incessant insults to women of stature, judges, heads of intelligence agencies
his nasty temper tantrums and cruel behavior toward his aides and staff, as described in Woodward's book and by "Anonymous" in the Times op-ed
and lots more besides
All of which Trump's supporters, whom he calls "My People," applaud and cheer.
Trump, who clearly has no interest in being the President of all the people in the U.S., has consciously chosen to carve out a niche for himself by creating his own loyal Trump Nation of bigots, white supremacists, misogynists, and fire-and-brimstone evangelicals, who clearly prefer cruelty to compassion and kindness.
6
"We should all be worried about the health of democracy. We should all work to repair the tattered fabric of liberal culture." What the heck are you talking about? Are you somehow blaming 'liberals' for the authoritarian tendencies of the current occupant of the White House and the Republican Party's abandonment of democratic principles in favor of maintaining power to force their repressive ideologies on the majority of us?
2
If you were a black man, would you still compare China's penal system unfavorably to America's? If you were a very poor American living in a tent, would you compare China's housing and military system unfavorably to America's?
If you were an Iraqi whose family was killed in the "shock and awe" war crimes, would you look at China as below the standard for international behavior?
Just asking.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
15
Mr. Stephens should be writing this column about the republicans.
2
I have to point out the obvious here. The Chinese government is officially atheist. You can't become a member of the Communist Party of China if you affiliate with a religion. You're wasting breath making an appeal to the enduring nature of the human soul when officially speaking souls don't exist in China. By extension, the Chinese government is incapable of violating human rights because there are no human rights to violate.
Bret Stephens makes a very common mistake in viewing Chinese administration through the prism of western values. The argument for protecting Chinese Muslims won't make sense to the typical Chinese reader because the argument can't make sense. Our specific cultural concept of a soul does not compute in the Chinese body politic.
4
China does have its citizens engaging in gun battles like we see in the US and mass shootings at schools. Who is the US to criticize anybody after all the terrible things we have done around the world?
1
The good news comes when the US hauls in millions of Republicans and their ilk for re-education about human rights and civil rights. Then we can celebrate a decent school system.
5
Bret,
Glad that you read the Atlantic! And Harari in particular.
Now, before you go on ranting about the People's Republic of Cruelty, have a look to what is going on closer to your ivory tower: The Republican Republic of Cruelty. Things in this country are getting really bad for hard working folk as fast as they are getting really good for the 0.01 percent, the Oligarchs.
Good that you are focusing on cruelty at least. Now tell me how the Koch Brothers, Mercer Pere et Fille fit in your universe? Are you willing to agree that what they are funding is nothing but the implementation of cruelty? Kill healthcare for the poor, unemployed, sick and old. Kill public education the way we have known it. Kill infrastructure that may disrupt the oligarchs interests, kill public unions (the private ones are already dead) so working people don't get ideas. Why? Because this way you can lower expectations of the 99 percent for good. That way they will look at even today as a fond memory.
PRC has many sins but compared to what we are doing to this nation of ours it is all so lame. The average person in PRC is almost infinitely better off than before China became PRC.
In any case, congratulations on your reading. Keep up the good work. And by the way, I strongly suggest theta you read Gordon Lafer's The One Percent Solution. Maybe you will re-write this column after you finish.
6
And thus it has always been......
The headline made me assume that the column was going to be about the United States under Trump
Perhaps the author should spend more time and write some articles about the US south of the Mason-Dixon line. Start with a visit around Lake Okeechobee in Florida to see the living conditions of that area. Take your pick. The southern part of this country doesn't win any prizes, particularly if you're black. Visit the reservations in South Dakota and Arizona to see how the Native Americans live. Visit areas of LA, Texas, and New Mexico to see how the Hispanics and other minorities live. It's great to worry about the world without seeing what's happening in your own country.
Mr. Stephens is a silver spoon Neocon. I seriously doubt he has ever experience any sort of mistreatment is his whole life. Ironic for him to provide ANY advice on matters of democracy and human rights.
The U.S. has the most pervasive surveillance system in existence. You use it every day. If you use email, browse the Internet, text on your cell phone or downloaded or installed an app on your smartphone, you are being monitored. Everything from your location to your content is being scanned by some company.
The system is so pervasive that people stop noticing it exists. It is like air. There is nothing since 9/11 that prevents the government from demanding from companies the information they collect on all Americans. NOTHING. If the data exists, it can be abused.
China did not invent this wonderful mechanism, Americans did! And as for other human rights issues: is America's electoral system that clean? What did the U.S. do to help the average American after the worst financial implosion in 70 years? How about its detainment of immigrants? What about its wars since 2000 that led to millions of refugees fleeing to Europe?
So unless America cleans up its own act, all it is doing is calling the pot black.
7
The leader of the current US regime is on the record complaining that innocent people are not tortured enough. So now a torturer from the Bush regime is the director of the CIA.
Birds of a feather.
I do believe that Mr. Stephens is possessed of the conviction that the United States of America is somehow in a position from which it can still claim some shred of moral indignation.
Don’t smoke crack rocks when you live in a glass house. That stuff will kill you.
1
. ''There are things that cannot be surrendered — your soul, above all — no matter what the regime’s power is to squash or suppress them.''
How can you look around in our own country and believe the above statement to be true?
And what has the U.S. been doing lately?
1
China Inc.
Is intent on ruling the world economically and militarily.
The idea of the individual having human rights is a
foreign concept.
China has always been and will always be about the
Nation of China, not the individuals.
While Americans bicker over "Transgender" rights,
identity politics, "racism" -
the Chinese build Airports,
Seaports throughout South Asia,
and continue to expand
their military presence around the world.
China sends its STEM students to the top universities
in the world.
In response we lessen the requirements to graduate from
High School, demand that College Professors give
warnings on what might offend in the assigned texts,
safe spaces, and require that they use the right pronoun
when addressing their students.
Perhaps all students should be required to learn
Chinese as that is the language their bosses
and over-seers will be speaking when they become
the Wage-Slaves of China Inc.
5
Amazing how China is currently in control of 1.4B automatons otherwise masquerading as real people with individual souls, individual thoughts, and individual feelings.
Yes, this government is going to lose the battle of total control over its population but the question is when. It won't happen until they all remove their chains like Spartacus.
1
"It is to say, however, that eventually the regime will fail... — slowing growth; corrupt officialdom; a declining birth rate; a trade war with the U.S...."
No it won't. China will not fail because its top economic competitor, the United States. has been neatly divided right down the middle, and conquered. That's right: conquered. We already have a chaotic, dysfunctional government. Our economy is haphazard and debt-ridden, with China as our largest creditor. Our national elections consistently produce minimal differences between opponents, an obvious demonstration of the schism among our voters.
Yes, our population has been neatly and expertly split into "right" and "left" ideologies by pedagoguery, hatred, intolerance,and garden-variety stupidity. We've already lost.
Ever hear of the term "divide and conquer"? It's one of the oldest military and political tactics in the book. It's also been inflicted successfully on us, and we let it happen. Unbelievable: we let it happen. It's all over except collecting a few new signatures here and there.
Thank you, left and right pundits, for aiding and abetting the enemy. Enjoy your civil war, while opponents like China wait patiently to take control of the remains.
6
You are correct. Contrary to the US, Xi Jinping knows exactly what he’s doing. China will not fold like Russia because it is now tasting the rewards of being a massive economic power, behind only the US (for now).
That comes at a price however, as many, many Chinese, not part of the political culture, want some prosperity for themselves. This will act as the best check against Chinese authoritarianism.
The US must clean up its own house. I don’t like what’s happening to Muslims in China, much like I don’t like what’s happening to minorities in the US. But the US is on the verge of becoming a minority-majority country. China is a long way from that, and so their leaders can get away with what they’re doing to Muslims. Don’t think for a moment that Trump wouldn’t follow suit if he could pull it off.
7
That despotic China is increasing its alignment with dictatorial Russia, witness their ongoing, massive joint military exercises, should give all democratic nations concern and worry. This union of like-minded regimes spans an enormous contiguous land mass besides bordering thousands of miles of sea/ocean access and resultant strategic shipping routes. Of course, our Fake President is recklessly doing everything he ignorantly can to withdraw American interests and influence from the Pacific arena while antagonizing China with his thoughtless, escalating tariff war.
2
As opposed to its oppressed minorities, China has been around so many millennia that maybe the Han culture has bred a type of docile individual that is happy with a highly centralized, surveillance state. Evolution works faster than we think, especially when it accompanied by catastrophic, bottleneck events like floods and famines which might favor a certain self-abnegating individual.
2
Now Playing: Mother (Music of Xinjiang: Kazakh and Uyghur Music of Central Asia) Kurmanjiang Zaccharia.
Gorgeous music examples of the region's rich musical voice.
Have all the commenters trying to draw an equivalence between America’s injustices and China’s, the ones who are not actual Chinese government agents, have you considered the emphatic verdict that is rendered everyday by the flow of feet?
7
China's current leadership is terrible. Autocrats intent on fear mongering is spreading across the globe.
What makes America Great is the example it sets and it's leadership in standards of behavior, government and law across the globe. What's going on in China along with Europe the ME and much of the rest of the world in terms of human rights is in fast decline. What's really tragic is unlike the 30's there is less starvation and more middle class people than in any time in human history.
It's up to us to change course in the USA in the upcoming elections and reset the example across the globe.
1
We are talking about a country that still enforces forced abortions if a woman goes over the legal limit for children (used to be one child, now it is two). The practices described in a 2012 NY Times Piece "Forced to Abort, Chinese Women Under Pressure" - have not changed. Add to this the issue of, and treatment of Tibet and it is then not surprising how China treats the Uighur. What is surprising is the speed in which global Businesses can forgive all this in the quest for money and profits.
45
@Here's the Thing: If I am not mistaken China has changed the birth limit policy, but in defense of them, they have too many people to feed...which is less humane? mandatory abortions or starvation due to overpopulation?
This article reflects the deep hypocrisy of the New York Times when it comes to scolding people abroad for failing to meet our high democratic ideals. At the hands of the American military, which receives an adulation in this country that reminds me of the militarism of 1930s Japan, hundreds of thousands of people, indeed millions, have suffered and died in Iraq and Afghanistan since President Bush initiated his "wars of choice" in those countries. Washington's disrespect and ignoring of the plight of Palestinians under President Trump has reached a historic high. Inside the country, millions of Americans fall into poverty while a handful of oligarchs grow richer and richer. Rampant gun violence goes unchecked - not only in middle class high schools but also inner cities - because politicians fear to alienate the NRA. And intolerance against non-Christian religious minorities grows, and occasionally breaks into violence as evangelicals exalt Trump as a part of "God's plan" for this country..
China's regime is far from perfect. But before we cast stones at Beijing, we should look to our own, plentiful sins.
29
@Donald Seekins
Give me a break. There is no "moral equivalence". China is involved in full scale ethic cleansing on the Uighurs and the Tibetans.
9
@Amy, Europe's refugee problem numbering in the millions that resulted from the Neocon policies since 2000 basically refutes your claim.
Just one small point -- I wish we could stop seeing a declining birth-rate as a "problem." There seems to be no discussion anymore about the disaster that overpopulation already causes the world, and that disaster will only be exacerbated by climate change. A declining birth-rate should be welcomed, heralded, proclaimed as a good thing, since it could be viewed as a sign of a capacity for moderation and thinking beyond our own selfish wants. And it certainly is better to reduce our overall world population through family planning than through famine, disease, and war.
22
@Shartke Stagnant and declining populations lead to populism and autocrats. While the environmental effects of uncontrolled population growth are clear, I don't see any dictators taking climate change seriously.
1
What was the point of examining China's record of human rights abuses in this article when Trump never publicly addressed them in his initial meeting with President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in April 2017 and when he travelled to Beijing in November last year once failing to bring them up after his meetings with Xi and other world leaders in Beijing?
Either he doesn't understand the repercussions of human rights violations around the world, just doesn't care or prefers instead to pose in photo ops and play golf with foreign heads of state who are culpable of such atrocities?
In short, Trump has generally fallen short on human rights diplomacy as it relates to China and even countries like North Korea. This writer for one does not have a clear idea of the US policy to address these issues--sanctions, intervention or the silence of the president?
10
@Helen - We have evidence in our own backyard that Trump doesn't understand the repercussions of Human Rights abuse - just look at all the children separated from their parents at the border with many still remaining separated. He has also spoken positively about the use of torture. He has fallen short with China, N. Korea, and us.
8
“mass rallies, public confessions and ‘work teams’ assigned to ferret out dissent…’ Mass rallies seem to be a regular item in President Trump’s schedule. Public confession was expected by the White House from Anonymous, and staff assigned to ferret him/her out seems inevitable. “As with so much else in China, too, the government lies about what it’s doing…’ Not in the White House?
“Put another way, what stokes Beijing’s fears and stirs its fury, whether in the streets of Hotan or the house churches of Shanghai, isn’t political opposition in the ordinary sense. It’s the concept of conscience. It is the thought that good and bad, virtue and vice, fall beyond the scope of the regime’s rightful authority” I would have thought that all of that could be said about Trump and his followers.
I’m not suggesting China and America are equivalent. But in both countries, a majority or a very large minority are perfectly happy to live with leaders and governments who are not that different in their understanding of power and its reach.
14
@NYC Former Resident Churchill was born in 1870, his finest hour was 70 years ago. I don't see nations like aristocrats see their lineage, a great achieving ancestor blessing his descendants with superior qualities forever. Nations change all the time. The UK that produced Churchill now produced Brexit, a festival of xenophobia, racism, insularity and exceptionalism. I said China and America are not equivalent, but to believe that many many Americans would not be happy with a quasi-dictatorship that gives them what they want (certainly most the Republican party in present shape would) flies in the face of what we see every day. I grew up in Argentina under Peronism. Once you have a popular movement that sees the Constitution and the system it guarantees as enemies of the people, it's not that easy to put the genie back in the bottle. I hope to be wrong, but I'd say there will be Trumpism long after Trump is gone. The point is not that America is much better than China, of course it is, but that America today is in a much much worse political shape than it has been in living memory. Since that decline goes back to Nixon, it doesn't seem like a blip.
1
@NYC Former Resident
Technically you are quite correct, but if you look at who is in the WH, what his aspirations are and where his sympathies lie; and then consider he has a fairly solid following among about 30% of Americans - well, don't think it can't happen here. It can. The abuse of power doesn't necessarily require brute force, merely the corruption of democratic institutions - and that is already happening.
The only question is whether it can be reversed.
2
What ails China is also too many people, and too much pollution and contributions to global warming from trying to find something for these people to do that will keep them from rising up. Making stuff for us to consume gave them the pollution of producing the stuff, but now, increasingly, they get both the pollution of producing it and the pollution of consuming it.
Country by country, the world must find a way to deal with its problems other than more people and more stuff. With slowly dropping populations, Europe was on the way to doing this until mass immigration began from areas of the world unable to support their populations or live in peace with each other. Is it cruel or just realistic to want each area of the world to accept the main responsibility for its population?
Our country is not at war with the human soul the way China is, but we are at war with reality (the reality of global warming and overpopulation) in a way that China isnt. Which war is more destructive to the human soul in the long run is still an open question.
15
@sdavidc9
While there’s a lot of merit to the idea that there are problems to be solved, a country by country vision elides important truths. Is it realistic or just cruel to believe that arms sales, foreign wars, assisted coups and environmental degradation do not create enormous problems that spur waves of refugees all around the world?
3
You are making up your own narrative and it has nothing to do with the real reasons China does this. If you examine Chinese history in even a cursory manner what stands out are the episodes of regime change through grassroots rebellions.
One particularly dramatic upheaval was the transition from the short lived reign of the Mongols to the Ming dynasty. It began when a charcoal burner enlisted his family to rebel against the central authority. They started as a local group, unrecognized by the rulers of the Yuan dynasty, and slowly but inexorably became a regional and then a national force that conquered China.
The Chinese hierarchy, and the population, is/are very aware of this history. The ruling class will try to stamp out any hint of variation from acceptable group norms for fear of another populist uprising. Dissidents will subtly refer back to this history to suggest that the ruling class is not sufficiently concerned with popular will and might risk losing support. The idea of direct or representative democracy as a means of political expression by the populace is foreign throughout China's history.
The Muslim minority's group identity is so far removed from what the leaders consider "Chinese", and so potentially threatening to national stability, that they have no compunction about trying to reforge them into accepted patterns of thought and behavior. It has nothing to do with "the concept of conscience".
40
Bret Stephens with respect to China today: "A regime at war with the human soul will eventually lose".
I don't see the human soul or inalienable rights or any other nebulous concept about humanity having any say in any society today. A person taken in strict materialistic sense, and a purely calculative sense at that, meaning either with something about him or herself that can be translated into monetary terms or the person amounts to nothing, seems the only measure in society today, and even that measure is horribly inefficient, with many talents falling by the wayside and many people gaining their worth, their wealth, by unscrupulous means.
Environmentalists have dreamt that not only will all people be taken as valuable in their own right, with soul or inalienable rights or with something not reducible to money, but that we humans will treat the natural world in same manner, allow things to live and flourish in their own way, irrespective of any economic concern, but in actuality the reverse process seems well underway, that people and everything else is being treated in a purely economic manner. Even socialists seem unable to break out of this calculative mentality.
In such a world, contained in such a process as we are, it's inescapable that in any society the dominant question revolves around the worth of the people we come into contact with, whether they have anything to offer, whether they are useful to us, or whether we should consider them largely worthless.
8
Cynicism is fashionable and so the fashion mindred adopt it, but they have to ignore a mountain of evidence to the contrary. The Arab Spring, the Resistance, Iranian protests
When you look at China what you see is our future.
Government lies. Check.
One party rule. Check.
Persecution of minorities. Check.
Interment camps. Check.
Brutal policing. Check.
Personality cult. Check.
Leader above the law. Check.
We still have the Atlantic? That’s cold comfort, because they are working on it....
30
Detention camps? Family separations? And now a proposal of indefinite detentions for tens and tens of thousands?
The denial of healthcare and decent education for millions of its poorest citizens?
Give me a break, Bret. Remove the beam from your eye, first.
24
The economic growth of China after it loosened its grip on dissent, just for a brief decades(?), will soon decline under the autocracy of a committed Marxist, Xi JinPing.
He is following steadily, the path of Mao-Zse-Tung with his harsh suppression of the Uighurs, and also the rapidly growing Christian movement of the 'unofficial 'churches, by burning their bibles, shutting down their meeting places and putting in jail, their pastors.
The danger now is this economic growth (after stealing the technologies of the West) has led to a military power house , that could lead to world conflagration...
21
@Kenell Touryan
If you think that Xi is a Marxist, you are fighting last century's war. Xi and his family are extremely rich (as reported here many years ago) and has no interest in real communism (different from Marxism by the way). He wants wealth and power in no particular order. He is no different from all the autocrats, or autocrat want-to-be, anywhere like Putin, Erdogen and Trump, at home. The decline of democracy and the rise of nationalism are global. This universal nature poses an existential threat to the human race and should be countered with a clear-eyed analysis.
2
Bret, are you ready to address the policies of your GOP that undermine Democracy? Extreme Gerrymandering that allows elected officials to chose their own voters. Voter suppression disguised as Voter I.D.. Dark Money that flows from State to State to undermine Union Rights and undermines local politics and local control that your GOP was suppose to be a champion of. Racial and immigrant Dog Whistles and policies that undermine America as the Champion of the Underdog. White dominated GOP refusing to come to terms with America's responsibility to address African American oppression since Civil War from Jim Crow to Breathing while Black. Bret, your focus on China is nice, but what about Democracy here at home? Or do you prefer tRumpian Democracy, meaning for Wealthy White people only?
19
LOL. Was looking at NYT while on treadmill on phone screen and picture associated with Mr.Stephens article made me open it to read it because I thought it was a photo of ICE employees and about or current “government” and ICE. MY BAD
11
The title hint aside, I wonder how many readers thought as I did that this would be an opinion piece on Donald Trump's America.
22
I read through this article with great sorrow. Knowing that a liberal journalist will always believe what he wrote is right. My grandmother is a Muslim, Sunni Muslim to be exact. She explained to me in detail about why the belief of Islam can cause so many unrest and chaos around the world. The belief itself contribute no part of the mess we are seeing today, ISIS, al-Qaeda, these are the results of religion extremism, which take out the “Self-Defense” mentality in the Quran and transformed it into something aggressive and dangerous. This transformation is done through only a few people. They altered how Muslims perceived themselves, the others and their belief. That’s why the acceptance of ISIS’s map of Islam among Muslims is such a terrifying thing, it shows that Muslims have been misled and fooled by just a few extremists, it’s spreading like wildfire, which leads to terrorist attack across the globe. China wants to remove the aggressive and dangerous part of the Islam, and reteach them about their own religion. Maybe that’s not the most appropriate way of doing things in the hypothetical west, since your side of the solution was bombs and bullets. I guess putting them inside a classroom is far more humane.
5
@Oliver A 'classroom' you can't leave is not classroom anymore than children separated from their parents at US border crossings can be called daycare.
2
It's shocking, frightening and sad that China is still given respect in today's world. A country that has killed tens of millions of its own citizens. A country led by an ego-maniacal dictator (keep Trump of of this for now) that's now hell-bent on "soft power" to turn the world's poor nations into subservient states. A country that has been stealing territory in areas such as the South China Sea while threatening those who dare call foul. A country that "disappears" those who disagree with the all mighty Xi. A country who's "Confucius Institutes" and other Chinese propaganda outlets have infested Western universities and in some cases governments to spew forth the thoughts of Xi (and to "disappear" the nationals who disagree). A country that steals IP and plays a one-way street when it comes to investment and foreign investment.
Yep, the same country that locks up millions of non-Hans and the country that provides the greatest source of threat to open, liberal democracies around the world. That's China.
15
Over time they may become more Democratic but it is an Empire just now a communist one using capitalism to achieve Revolution. While those in charge may eventually lose sight of the original goal it will still remain an Empire.
We however seem seem to be losing our freedoms incrementally. Our Supreme Court nominee is accused of something he supposedly did in high school 30 years ago. A NY ballet company fires three of its male member's for juvenile pranks unrelated to their work place. Corporations since 1980 have policed their employees in ways the #MeToo's in the entertainment industry only dreams of. They have the power fire you for any reason they choose. If they don't have one they'll make it up.
4
@JoeG How have they “become more Democratic?”
The more I, 1.) read history and, 2.) listen to my fellow Americans, the better I grok that authoritarianism is the natural state of human governance. Democracy, in all its forms, is an aberration.
7
All important points. Now let’s all go shopping and help support the economy of an authoritarian civilization that has no interest in the messy freedoms of the West.
7
Mr. Stephens may be correct on some of the harsh policies PRC utilize in Xinjiang. Did he read the book by Christ Hayes about Americans with liquor stores outside Sioux Indian reservation selling poison and perpetuating the gentle policy of genocide instead of clothes with small pox? It's easy to throw stone 10,000 miles away with bias reporting while ignoring lead in water supply of Detroit. If I am African American reading daily on police entering wrong apartment and shooting the resident inside because she feared blacks or dozens of stories of unarmed blacks getting killed by police I may not be that concerned that China didn't have habeas corpus against terrorist suspects.
8
I believe the article, however my guess is China has similar articles about how people are treated in the US, denied health care, political dissidents imprisoned, inhumane treatment in US prisons, people living in abject poverty without help from the government, attempts to stifle dissent as evidenced by presidents statements.
11
Now Bret wants to run China's internal affairs now isn't that marvelous. Bret wants to control China - funny isn't it.
4
Well, perhaps a regime cannon kill, conquer, eradicate or cure the soul. But it can buy one. Just look at our Republican led government.
4
I believe if a Chinese author wrote about America they would say we have attempted to imprison much of our black population, we have thrown immigrants into camps and we have separated children from their parents.
We have a leader who lies to us and a system that rewards the 1 percent while it takes away healthcare and education for the rest of the population. We do not pay our lowest class a living wage. Our government invests in polluting energy and deregulates industry so it can destroy our land. We are arming our citizens, turning them against each other and encouraging violence. Our government is allowing a corrupt form of Christianity to influence our laws. Our highest court is filled with partisan hacks who take away the rights of women and put a stamp on the Republican agenda.
I guess it’s just which rose colored glasses you happen to be looking through.
10
@Sherry Wacker
I think Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time.
We can continue the fight(s) to right all our domestic wrongs AND choose to not purchase made in China goods (though I recognize this is now extremely difficult).
6
"....that good and bad, virtue and vice, fall beyond the scope of the regime’s rightful authority and are not things it gets to define for itself and its subjects." Were you subconsciously talking about the Republican Party Brett?
6
The horror of it all is that almost all "civilized nations", including the United States of America, are locking people up with due process of law. The United Nations has failed to push a moral world order,or present a moral world order, to Mankind. We have children in concentration camps in America, civilians are being slaughtered in Syria, Myanmar, the Philippines, Turkey are imprisoning people without trials of any real meaning, or none at all. This is sad, and horrible time, for mankind. And we cannot find any good reason why it is this way.
4
Why does Chinese behavior surprise anyone! The whole system is built on the Chinese cheating. They cheat in pretty much anything that they engage in - trade, intellectual property, freedom of expression, .... Here in the US there is a culture of their students cheating in our Universities!
6
Excellent article. Of course, we also got the comments from the zealots: “Bret, how do you dare to talk about oppression in communist China, when we have to deal with the much worst oppression of Trump ?”
Besides the irony of the fact that Mr. Stephens has always been one of the sharpest critics of Trump, it just shows that while everybody is entitled to democracy and free speech, not everybody deserves them.
It reminds me of Robert Duvall playing Stalin in the early ‘90s; when he once mused about the atrocities unleashed by Stalin upon the Russians and the world, some young British actress replied casually that they, the British. also had a lot to suffer under Thatcher.
10
I hope the Chinese Colossus collapses but unfortunately new technologies strengthen the hand of authoritarians, not the cause of individual liberty. Ten years ago we thought that the world-wide communication brought about by the internet would make it impossible for an authoritarian regime to strait-jacket its populace. Now it's clear that the Chinese have successfully censored the internet and are strengthening the surveillance of their citizens with new technology. We need to stop thinking that the new technologies support the hand of those seeking more openness and liberty. They do not. Check out this chilling analysis: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-t...
2
I notice a broad swath of comments along the lines of "yeah, but what about America!" (which seem to come out of the woodwork when any NYT columnist, staff or guest, write about any problem outside the US).
Yes, yes, we're not perfect. There are many ills, past and present which must be addressed and rectified. Does that preclude us from lamenting bad behavior beyond our borders?
Further to the point, must we, as citizen consumers, continue to strengthen China's regime through our purchases?
The clumsiness of Trump's tariffs aside, shouldn't we be questioning our economic engagement with China writ large?
14
@trblmkr Shouldn't we be questioning the donors of the republican party that deal with anyone on the planet, regardless of their politics or treatment of their populace as long as there is a profit involved? Ask Rex Tillerson.
1
Recognizing the authoritative excesses and the suffering they have caused worldwide when faced with separatist, tribal, radical religion in whatever form,
we ought to recognize as well that these blind devotions represent one of our first and most unyielding
denials of truth and sanctification of alternate facts.
It's like acid rain, ozone depletion, and now global warming...
We need to put our humanity first, based upon our pure secular understanding of what we are as an evolved species, not what we are according to some Koranic or Biblical source.
Religion has caused just as much suffering throughout our history as whatever nationalist effort to eliminate it- seeing it as just one more anachronism- another dying, superstitious creed.
There have been thousands of them over time everywhere, gone, washed up, forgotten.
Those that dominate now will share the same oblivion.
Your soul?
You can't lose something you never had.
2
This article reminds me of the main newspaper in my country - Dagens Nyheter (much inferior to NYT) - which is obsessed with denigrating some specific countries: Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. (For some reason they spare "communist" countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, out of shame, maybe.)
The common denominator for these countries is (or was) their policy of elevating the living conditions for the poorest of their citizens.
Other countries with a long rap sheet but with the correct economic policy, like USA, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, The Arab Emirates, Egypt, Honduras, Israel, and so on, are seldom criticized at all, and if so, with nuance and understanding.
China has at least one quality that should be emulated: they don't interfere in other country's internal affairs, certainly not with violence. They conquer other peoples hearts and minds with aid and investments. That's why they will outlive the USA (which I challenge Bret Stephens with).
8
@Lars Schaff
That's a nice Party Line, but if you believe that, then please explain the total control by China of North Korea, Mongolia, Tibet, and increasingly Vietnam, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
1
I don't think we can get all smug and judgmental about China's treatment of its Muslims when we have Gitmo and thousands of innocent children locked up in what are basically prisons.
86
This article stands on it's own, despite many reader comments that want to deflect the criticism back toward the US. What is happening in China is extreme and its outcome of vast significance. The US, with all its faults, does not haul people into re-education camps, detain people arbitrarily, or censor free speech. There are already far more articles calling out US shortcomings, let the China discussion pass on its own merits.
6
"The US, with all its faults, does not haul people into re-education camps, detain people arbitrarily, or censor free speech."
Sad to say, there are some at the highest reaches of government, right here in the US, that would gladly allow such behavior. And yes indeed, some of that does happen here, thankfully to a much lesser degree.
3
I've long said that China's underlying dynamics are the very issues that will tear it apart. The problem with one party rule is that everything accrues to it. The party doesn't get to move out of power, make changes and return in the next election so the corruption, unabated, extends to every detail and element of society.
As Brett Stephens says. It is unsustainable. The only thing keeping the party in place is that it leverages what its people fear most of all; disorder. As long as the population equate change with disruption, they will opt for the devil they know.
In the meantime, the fake economy, the uninhibited lending, endless support of money losing industries, currency manipulation and repression across the board; the very elements that will ruin the country continue unabated and in the end, will ultimately deliver to the Chinese people, their worst nightmare.
2
Will the Chinese regime’s "war on the soul," as you put it, really fail? I wonder. As to the Uighur, although they are numerous, they are within China such a tiny minority that their suppression is akin to our vanquishing and ultimately cordoning off our Native American population in reservations. Given the scale of everything there I doubt these actions, whatever their brutality, will have much effect on Chinese political, economic, or social development going forward.
9
The funny thing about this article when I saw the title is that I thought it was about us. People can have very different perspectives depending upon whether they get pay checks from the Times. The vast majority of Americans would rather have financial security than free speech. But that, too, majority rule that is, seems to be something Americans are happy to be without.
3
Bret you may read such quality publications but I am afraid that today many or most Americans get their news, their commentary and their analysis from quick sound bites on TV or listening to some shock jock on the radio commuting to and from work.
2
Instead of the daily crying about Russia collusion, a "hostile power" "meddling" in our elections, "hacking our democracy" and "sowing discord", most of which are protected by the First Amendment anyway, and instead of decrying the absence of a "Chinese equivalent of the Atlantic", why don't the Atlantic and other self-appointed guardians of our society, people like you, Mr. Stephens, actually do something instead of just scribble, and help create methodologies to make sure the Chinese can read the Atlantic, and other ways for us to deliver the message to them, including the truth about their own societies? Why don't we meddle and sow discord in China? And why stop with China? Why just sit around and kvetch? Words are cheap.
2
And the Trump regime is not equally cruel? Bret, it's a bit rich criticizing the Chinese government for fear and cruelty while failing to denounce the GOP, the party of Trump, for its policies based on fear, cruelty and harm.
6
Bret, do you ever stop and giggle whilst writing your Op-Ed pieces about authoritarian policies and the travesty's perpetrated by them?
All the while being a Republican with all that baggage that pertains, along with writing for a corp. media outlet that shapes and manipulates what, why and who it stories, along with censoring and advancing certain comments and commentators.
Yes, a poor bothsiderism yet the analogy is there.
Degrees.
Just as we can knock China, so can we point fingers here at home.
3
"reminiscent of Mao's draconian rule- mass rallies, public confessions and 'work teams' assigned to ferret out dissent." Let's see mass rallies, check. Public confessions (I'll take a polygraph), check. Work teams assigned to ferret out dissent (directing the DOJ to investigate anonymous), check. All this time I was looking to Hitler, Mussolini, Nixon or Machiavelli for historical comparisons to what America is going through and, all along, it was Mao.
3
Thank you Bret Stephens for giving some ink for the victims of the Chinese government. Any organization that violates the rights to which we are all entitled is illegitimate. While not as horrific as the Vietnam or Middle East Holocausts, the Chinese government's brutality toward the powerless Uighurs shows us its evilism and illegitimacy. When we consider how many innocent people super-power governments have already exterminated, we must wonder how many will the Chinese government exterminate when, in a few decades, it creates the most powerful military in the world. Sadly, political scientists have been unable to solve the problem of government.
7
When I read the headline "The People’s Republic of Cruelty," I thought this article would be about America's recent treatment of the Palestinians . . . then I saw that this article is by Bret Stephens, and I knew better.
9
For those who live in America or in any western country and yet complaining about them, I suggest you live as an Uyghur in China for a while.....
What China is doing to Uyghur people is a stain that can not be erased easily...Leaders come and go, dynasties come and collapse, but people are not easily disappear, especially in this era, every good deed and every atrocity will be recorded, and remembered. They will be shamed for centuries.....
Thanks to those people who stand up for the weak and oppressed people, and shame on you those who sold their soul for money and fame....what goes around what comes around..it was innocent Jewish people in 20th century, and now innocent Uyghurs in 21st century.... expect that this vicious cycle to repeat itself in 22th century to another innocent ethnic group, if human soul corrupts as it did today....
6
Is it Beijing who is rounding up children and putting them into tent camps in Texas?
5
Sounds just like what Trump has in mind for our country. We'd better vote Republicans out of office before Trump's jackbooted base and Evangelical faithful start demanding ethnic cleansing of Mexicans, Muslims and other furriners "who come here to rape our women, take our jobs and ain't white like us." We may not have a wall yet but we already have internment camps along our southern border, though the private contractors running them with our tax dollars probably don't have the brainwashing skills of the Chinese.
10
You and your republicans are traitors, Mr. Stephens. Try staying on topic and dealing with the ONE issue of our times.
Your defense of Kavanaugh and other republican treachery is not well-taken by us readers of the NYT. You do not deserve the podium that the Grey Lady has given you.
6
"That these denials are contradicted by the government’s own documents, some of them publicly available, is a useful reminder that repressive regimes are frequently incompetent, too."
it reminds us that power confers a certain contempt for truth. as if we needed reminding.
5
"It is to say, however, that eventually the regime will fail."
If it does, it will be despite the best efforts of American corporations. After all, it was and is US, European, and Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) that built China into what it is today.
Even the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable aren't stupid enough to mention "engagement policy" anymore when it comes to its support for continued FDI and "free" trade with China but it was THE major pillar in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Now they just mutter about "crucial supply chains" and "remaining competitive."
Americans were told that FDI would "change China from within" and "a burgeoning middle class will eventually demand political freedom" and "China will become more like us."
Now, we have whole issues of the Atlantic asking if Democracy is Dying."
Who's becoming more like whom?
Though I disagree with Trump's tactics (unilateral tariffs instead of presenting a unified front with the EU and Japan vis a vis China) I would indeed prfer to see our economy disentangled from a regime that, as Mr. Stephens points out, doesn't stand for what we (still barely) stand for.
Even under a theoretical President Clinton or a fantasy Obama third term, some sort of reckoning with China was destined to happen.
Fair trade and anti-globalization are still, hopefully, part of liberal Democrats' platform.
6
What is cruelty? Perhaps cruelty is locking up thousands of immigrants in tent prisons fleeing danger in their home countries. Perhaps cruelty is separating thousands of children from their parents to try to discourage their parents from fleeing danger. Perhaps cruelty is taking away medical care from thousands of people in Arkansas because maybe a few hundred didn't meet work requirements.
7
Bret Stephens is naive about the eventual collapse of China's repressive regime.
Look at the control China already exerts over much of Africa and its natural resources, through trade agreements and investment in infrastructure. This is happening in Latin America as well. The Chinese are already laying claim to the natural resources of Antarctica. China is on its way to controlling a large portion of the world's natural resources, is already an economic superpower and will end up being the world's number one economic superpower.
All of this makes it seem unlikely that a repressive regime would need to take the rights of its people into consideration.
Schoolchildren here and worldwide need to start learning Mandarin.
3
I wouldn’t bet on China failing because of few human rights abuses, this is nothing new.
You underestimate them.
5
The Chinese need to take their cue from the Republican party -- and not a few Democrats.
Say all is forgiven, spend billions establishing ruling party limits on discourse and nurturing consumer culture, institute voting rights, then privately finance elections and, when even that isn't enough, gerrymander the counter-votes into oblivion.
No need for camps or crackdowns, and when anyone complains, just point out, this is democracy. Don't like it, go to Cuba!
1
The repression of Muslims in China is terrible - but so is the repression of native Americans and African-Americans. I'd call the US a place of fear and cruelty, too. And not one word about the horrible cruelty to animals which is almost ubiquitous on the planet. Until we recognize our own faults - mass murder on a global scale, and racist violence at home - it seems a bit odd to throw stones at China. And how ironic, since so many repressive regimes (Saudi Arabia and so on) are mostly living on our money.
4
@Stephanie Wood
Yes, but only ONE country makes practically ALL the stuff we buy and it ain't the US and it ain't Saudi Arabia.
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you write but must we, as consumers, aid and abet what China is doing?
1
The Soviet Union collapsed because it's people totally lost belief in it. As for the future of democracy I am confident that the majority of human beings on the planet consider it the most favored and wished for form of governance and that will not be going away. China has never considered giving everyone equality and probably never will. Boo hoo for them and yay for us.
What's the better approach a) bombing, drones, targeted assassinations and fueling civil wars - essentially killing the people you disagree with - the current US approach to radical Islam or b) trying a form of "reeducation" negotiation to neutralise radical islam - the current Chinese approach. The Chinese see radical Islam as a disease to be quarantined and treated. What is more cruel killing these people or trying to change their thinking? (Note China has 11 million Muslims living outside Xinjiang and thousands of mosques - none of which are subject to these programs. It's not a war on Islam or the other drivel Stephens espouses.) Another question when will US foreign policy apologists like Stephens stop talking about democracy as if the US is currently operating as one. The US is currently, as has been established by many credible US studies (much underpublicised of course) - a plutocracy with domestic policy directed by the extremely wealthy and major corporations and a foreign policy run by it's military industrial complex. (See Princeton Gilens Page 2014 study etc.) Spare us the platitudes and your grief for the Uighurs. Let's see some grief for things America can change say - the fate of the millions in Yemen the US is at war with creating the largest humanitarian disaster on the planet according to the UN. That cruelty can be dealt with in an instant if the US foreign policy establishment had the will. No? No geopolitical propaganda value in raising that quagmire?
6
Even with all of our problems and the disinformation being broadcast from the odious minions of fox news,we still have a free press capable of informing us that our would be emperor has no clothes.
sorry about that visual.
The United States of America has not yet addressed and made reparations for its genocide and mistreatment of the native Americans who were first in this land, nor to the descendants of the slaves on whose labor the nation became rich, nor to the unpaid and underpaid labor of women who remain second-class citizens subject to rape, assault and harassment. Perhaps the USA should clean up its own house and serve as a beacon of justice.
2
Before getting to this article, I read about the white Dallas police officer who mistakenly entered a neighbor's house thinking it was her own, and promptly shot dead the home's legitimate occupant, who - quelle surprise - was black. Fear.
Then I read about the 1000's of migrant children who are still separated from their parents in the US of A, because the parent's had old misdemeanor charges on their records. Cruelty.
So it was with great relief and gratitude that I was able to read the NYT's fearless opinion piece about Fear and Cruelty Somewhere Else. America needs reminders of Bad People in the Rest of the World to forget what it has become.
15
I thought the title referred to the US. It certainly fits.
1
Equating religious dogmas and rituals with the “human soul” is of the same ilk as equating communism with “equality”,
or capitalism with “freedom”, or fascism with patriotism. Tragically, it seems that the authoritarian, dictatorial, theocratic and tyrannical forms of government are winning over humanitarian enlightenment. Maybe humans are just not egalitarian by nature and require strongmen to rule them. Or maybe the affiliative instinct easily become tribalism/nativism under stress.
I am a retired teacher. Back in the day, some of my students were from China. One of them was an evangelical Christian. Let's call him Lee.
Chinese students (by and large) are loyal to their country. Lee was no exception. So we had a class discussion once. Who (I asked) do you consider a great man? I got lots of responses.
One was from Lee. Presenting a picture of a celebrated leader who challenged the most powerful nation on earth--and turned back the armies of that nation. . . ..
. .. then the penny dropped. He was describing Mao Tse-Tung. And the Korean War.
But Lee was not blind to the failings of Chairman Mao. "Eventually," he said, "he thought he was a god."
But he had a prayer request. (This, you understand was a private Christian school.)
That the authorities in his native land. . . ..
. .. would come to understand: there is no real conflict between being a good Christian. . ..
. .. and being a good Chinese citizen.
But I saw a problem here. I still do.
A truly communist government cannot share loyalties. It is (in the full sense of the word) TOTALITARIAN. It demands all of you. No hold-outs. No exceptions. None.
Which goes far to explain--does it not?--these barbaric cruelties you speak of, Mr. Stephens.
Christian--Muslim--Buddhist--no matter. That part of me devoted to WHATEVER religion. . .
. is NOT devoted to THEM. To the State.
It must be dealt with.
I must be dealt with.
I will be.
3
This is what it feels like to me as corporations and people like the Kochs, enabled by the GOP and a fearsome ignorance on the part of huge numbers of FOX watching American deplorables attack everything that is good about the US and our better angels.
@Djt
Agree about the Republicans but how did the banks, investment firms, pharmaceutical and medical insurance companies do under Obama? Robbed us blind didn't they? Still are? Oh.
I don't know about you but this deplorable would like to see anti trust actions against monopolies, NATO countries paying for their own defence and the American workers getting better trade deal. You know things Democrats used to stand for.
What's happening in China is wrong, so very wrong. But let's stop being sanctimonious hypocrites. We are no better in the way we treat humanity. We are breaking humanitarian laws all the time within our country and abroad. Just ask the African- Americans, incarcerated and killed by police shootings. Just ask the parents forcibly separated from their babies and kids, Guantanamo. Just ask the Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani on the street, in fact every country we've walked into as saviors and do-gooders. Let's stop our sanctimonious preaching. Stop.Period.
2
At what point do a people who have been living in economic misery for hundreds of years abandon the prospect of living a more materialistic life begin clamoring for ephemeral things like freedom of expression and speech?
The oligarchs who rule China are banking their survival on the notion of every Chinese family having "a chicken in every pot."
Add to this the fact that China, an ancient and highly organized civilization, has been dismissed by the West since the early 19th century (until fairly recently) as backward and ripe for economic plunder. It isn't hard for China's ruling elite to make the case that the West's comeuppance is long overdue.
With a virtually limitless labor force of hopeful strivers, China is where the future of the planet lies. We will all sink or swim with that country's choices. Once again, it's a choice between guns or butter for this emergent powerhouse of a country. Place your bets.
The American Century is over with. We are now living in a Planetary Century in which fully 10% of Homo sapiens speaks Chinese.
3
Brett, I get it. The authoritarian regime in China can be pretty cruel.
It should be lost on no one, however, that the current regime we have here is Washington is not far behind.
We separate children from parents and lock up families, we refuse to make a living wage a fundamental right and the ruling party gleefully supports laws that robs 30 millions of their health insurance and raises taxes on the poor and middle class while cutting them for the wealthy and large corporations.
We are well on the way to one party authoritarian rule in the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’.
7
“Then again, is there a Chinese equivalent to The Atlantic, offering equally bracing analyses of the shortcomings of authoritarianism? That the answer to that question is so obvious — and its implications so far-reaching — should give champions of open societies confidence for the future.” Bret Stephens.
The conclusion which should be drawn by Americans from the absence of a Chinese version of The Atlantic is the polar opposite of “confidence for the future.”
There was a time after the death of Mao when the Chinese government did not meddle in every publication which called for improving the decision-making process to improve the lives of ordinary people.
That right of written expression in China was lost in recent years when leaders began to regard the press as “the enemy of the people.”
President Donald Trump refers to American journalists today with the same phrase to the cheers of his core supporters and to the acquiescence by silence of Republican in the Senate and House.
12
The big difference, the crucial difference, between China and the Soviet Union is that China delivers the economic goods. As long as the golden goose keeps laying, China's dictators will remain in fat city, and the victims of cruelty will simply have to take it. End of discussion.
8
@Fred White yes, this goes without saying, in any regime. the issue is that when the goose goes fallow, the chinese government has nothing else to lean on.
1
At the conclusion of Burning Man, the Black Rock Desert is picked clean of any evidence that 70,000 celebrants were just there. Nations come and go, with and without human rights. China has been around for 5 centuries. America, a mere 200+ years. There is no moral high ground, Mr. Stephens. Only false religious beliefs and religious wars mixed with some joy and much suffering.
No matter. Everything returns to desert with no trace of human artifacts, beliefs or presence. Swept clean.
4
No matter, indeed. What does matter, though, are numbers: China, for example, has been around for five millennia (not centuries). Its Great Wall, begun in 220 BCE, is visible from outer space. Though the current regime is only going on 100 years, it is hard to imagine Chinese culture and civilization being swept away as cleanly as a Burning Man festival.
Incidentally, speaking of figures, the average cost to attend that non-religious event in 2017 was over 2K. When a one-week spiritual experience requires this sort of expenditure, it appears fairly obvious the god being served is called Mammon.
Just sayin...
You see Stephens, for all its economic power, China is an empty shell. But that does not make the US immune to authoritarian tendencies: Democracy can vote itself into becoming an autocracy. We tend to think that democracy may swing and but it would eventually steady itself, but sometimes it can swing too hard and the guardrails can be too weak (read Congress). One has to be somewhat relieved that Trump is immensely incompetent at governing, but he did show that democracy in the US is fragile. Even if he goes to jail, that reality would have not changed.
9
Seeing the headline I expected this piece to be about Trump and the Republicans who seem to be determined to inflict as much cruelty on everyone but their donors as possible.
7
The liberal space, my native habitat though not yours, resounds with declarations of solidarity with Palestinians and condemnations of Israel, their oppressor. (I wish I could put that last word in ironic quotation marks, but it's too great a stretch with the Netanyahu government in power.) Concern for the plight of the Palestinians has become an appurtenance of leftist activism from Great Britain to Japan.
So, why not the plight of the Uighurs or the Tibetans? If the protest against oppression is a principled one, then why is it directed at Israel so fervently and at China so tepidly, if at all? If the concern is a genuinely humane one, and not a politically calculated one, then why is it reserved for Palestinians?
This comments section is as good a place as any to ask for enlightenment on that point.
7
@Longestaffe
" If the protest against oppression is a principled one, then why is it directed at Israel so fervently and at China so tepidly, if at all? If the concern is a genuinely humane one, and not a politically calculated one, then why is it reserved for Palestinians?"
Many of us know why.
@Longestaffe
For Americans, the answer is simple: we bankroll Israel and guarantee its security. Any American administrator could end its oppression of Palestinians in an instant, if it wanted to.
We have no such influence on, or responsibility, for, China.
1
@jrd
I beg to differ. Capital spending decisions made by thousands of American (and European and Japanese) corporations and consumer spending decision by millions of American (and European and Japanese) were and are directly responsible for making China what it is today.
The American “war on the soul” is equally distressing: anxiety over health care, oppressive student loan debt, failing schools, radical income inequality that leaves 90% of Americans struggling to pay essential household expenses, growing numbers of homeless on the streets of every major city with virtually no credible civic response, opioid addiction, alcoholism, anti-depressant medication handed out like parade candy. Life in the US presents stress at every level. Yes, political and civic rights are critical, but American democracy is dead if it cannot respond to the genuine social and economic needs of its citizenry.
20
China represents a big bread basket to US companies. That is all. Our involvement in China does not appear to be an endorsement of their autocratic dictatorship.
1
@DENOTE MORDANT
Wha? Every decision by US corporations to build capacity in China and every consumer decision to buy made in China goods (practically unavoidable now) is exactly "an endorsement of their autocratic dictatorship."
How could they be anything but?
1
>
"A regime at war with the human soul will eventually lose." NYTs
Yes, well, the Nazis eventually said Uncle.
"For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better."
T. Ligotti
2
@Prometheus
"...the Nazis eventually said Uncle"
I wouldn't be too quick to write off that zombie death cult. They have hung around like a bad smell beyond the 20th century.
Now, emboldened and coyly summoned by Trump, the Nazis and their minions in both Europe and America are once again gathering steam and proudly marching.
We scoffed at and underestimated them in the 1920s; let's not make that mistake today, especially in the light of their brazenness and ability to weaponize social media.
When Naziism and fascism, its bosom buddy, were ascendant in the 20th century, there were plenty of British and Americans who snuggled close. Their ilk persists, despite Germany's well-intentioned efforts to fumigate.
Submission to tyranny runs deep in humans; it's probably innate. Couple that with the accompanying drive to seek out and destroy the Other, and we have the ingredients for injustice, from discrimination to genocide --- with masses of the populace on board.
I fear that Trump has galvanized and aggregated this ugliness. Despite his demented dithering incompetence, he is putting it into police action, as with the migrants. Will Germany, Sweden et al be able to withstand its surge?
It seems Bret’s purpose unstated is to contrast Chinese failures with the US and imply the US camps for separating children from their parents and the middle class from their money are negligible by comparison.
Well we’re only starting down this road - the Chinese are long on the path. We’re behind but Trump and the GOP will assist us to catch up.
12
Is it these qualities of China and the Chinese, as described by Mr. Stephens, that so attracted American business interests for so many years? And do these American business interests yearn to bring these same authoritarian and soul-less qualities to the United States?
12
There has been little change in freedom from Mau to the present, The little change may be for the better. But I'm sure that most of your readers think that our regression in freedom since 9/11 is of more concern to us. Our attitude toward Muslims and travel restrictions from Muslim countries is unconstitutional. Our treatment of Immigrants from Hispanic America is barbaric. We break up families, remove children from their parents, attack those churches that attempt to protect them. Keep America great, not change it to return to a time of racial and gender discrimination. The midterms offer us a chance to reject our current policies. Resist and Vote.
10
Sometimes, it’s a GOOD thing that Trump doesn’t read. This could give him ideas, and not in a good way.
Seriously.
6
This is typical of Stephens’ sentimentality, which is typical of the right. “Eventually” is a long time to someone in a camp or prison, and is irrelevant in the scale of human lives. “Eventually” every nation will cease to exist. So what? Stephens wants there to be a long arc of history bending toward justice, but underlying his words is a self-satisfying impulse saying that the U.S. is morally superior. That’s jumping over a low bar, in this case.
7
Trust Bret Stephens to use someone else's reporting, to state the obvious, to find a straw man to attack and then to draw a conclusion that is either obvious or wrong.
6
Mr. Stephens' implication that the Soviet Union fell because of the weaknesses he lists strikes me as naive. The Russia of today remains as repressive and corrupt as the old Soviet Union. The Soviet Union didn't fall, it just was transformed into Russia and other oligarchic states where millions suffer as they always did.
8
The Chinese are very proud of their long history which is really just a series of top heavy regimes that impose harsh and unfair hierarchy on innocents which eventually self destruct in civil war. Didn't we just see the latest destruction of empire when the Communists rose? The only thing that has held true through all of it is the corruption of the government in every new rise which eventually leads to its downfall.
It seems that in those what is it 4 thousand years??? they have never landed on the idea of individual freedom, honesty and trust.
They seem incapable of changing the formula of rise and fall in large chaotic waves that destroys millions of lives.
3
@magicisnotreal Absolutely. But, as they say in mutual fund prospectuses: past performance is no predictor. But Bret Stephens' predictions, much like Thomas Friedman's in his op-eds, are often just wishful thinking. If I had to wager whether this regime in China will 1) liberalize 2) be overturned 3) eventually rule the entire planet for the next 1000 years, I'd probably put money on #3 (but w/o high confidence).
4
i hope you will excuse me, but when I saw the title of this op ed, I was sure it was referring to the U. S.
153
@Connie
Me Too, especially since 1980.
3
@Connie
Right on!
China did not export nor import and exploit enslaved black Africans to the Americas. China has not imprisoned and exploited the 40% of 2.3 million Americans who are in prison while black who are the carefully carved colored exception to the 13th Amendments abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.
God bless America? For what?
1
@Connie
Connie, your are excused. Sadly, that was my thought too.
I am glad that we in America still have good writing in defense of democratic values but it is a truly cold comfort.
The Atlantic, as well as the New Yorker, Mother Jones, Harpers and a plethora of other great outlets have been producing writing like this through the awfulness of the Bush wars, the rise of blatant racism since the arrival of Barack Obama, and through the insane occupation of the White House and congress by Donald Trump and his god-awful retinue.
But America has long since stopped reading such writing. Books, in America, are quaint and , with the decline of American literacy, our democracy has long since given way to oligarchy and, lately, to white supremacist vitriol. Our moral standing is so weak that we cannot even croak out a complaint of Chinese inhumanity to its own people let alone to our own inhumanity to our own people.
Cold cold comfort.
244
What rich and middle class white Americans don't realize is that the US has always sucked for anyone who isn't a rich or middle class white person. You don't have to read a book to see that.
6
@Michael Doane
Really? No one reads? I have subscriptions to the New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Economist in addition to the three online newspapers (Not the National Enquirer) and multiple scientific peer review journals and medical journals.
Right now in my berth are David Remnick’s “The Bridge” (the awakening of Obama by the New Yorker’s editor), “The Soul of America” by Jon Meachan, re-reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Too Big to Fail” plus listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Star Talk Radio” podcasts during daily walks with my service dog or when I take my 25’ sailboat out to sea.
I watch zero TV and go to no movies. There ARE other such readers and I see them in my branch library all the time. Many go to the Chinese section--advantage of living in a multi-cultural city such as Honolulu.
So please allow me to speak for my fellow bibliophiles when I say, reading quality essays and books are our lives’ blood. We’re just living quietly, engaging in learning ancient Japanese ink on rice paper drawings or learning to repair fishing nets at Kamehameha Schools (The private school for those with Hawai’ian blood.) There are very few Caucasians here. We connect by the books we read.
Don’t transfer your thoughts on the rest of us.
1
The idea that China's lack of a publication like the Atlantic Monthly helps define their authoritarian repressiveness seems true. As a member of the "opposing" camp I must say that our culture has norms and "rules" that falsify and abridge our own natural human rights and tendencies. Ours may be a more subtle and in some ways more lenient set of principles that direct our conduct, but it requires adherence all the same. And our penalties for breaking them are the same - banishment, and shame.
14
@Pat
Seems a part of the human species. Having a less oppressive environment has its good points. That was rather the whole idea behind the Enlightment. We are what we are but we can mitigate the worst and promote the best.
Sameness and Otherness, the constant struggle of human societies, large and small. I was going to use the word "humankind" first, but then recognized that our chief characteristic is hatred of the other and so decided on "human society" instead. Now I'm thinking that even this term is inapt as a society implies at least some tolerance of diversity. The species moniker of "homo sapiens" or "wise man" translated to English borders on complete nonsense. I seem to be at a loss for a word to appropriately describe...us.
32
@Tomas O'Connor
In order for people to understand humanity, we'd have to be smarter than ourselves.
1
"The People's Republic of Cruelty ". At first I thought this was going to be an article about America's treatment of minorities and immigrants!
55
@Gwen Vilen, I thought it would be about putting toddlers in cages in empty US Walmarts, with armed military guards.
2
Oh, the horror....of what the Chinese are doing. Ethnic cleansing... In the year 2018. We will sit over here and condemn this....But I think the musings in the oval office when hearing about this go....."Hmmmm. Why didn't we think of this?...We could...". "The damn Chinese have beat us to the punch again". Why, instead, we could just expel all the immigrants who have come here looking for a better life and send them back to their own countries and let our actions deprogram their thinking that America is the land of opportunity, a caring place, a safe place to live, work hard, and raise a family. Problem solved.
9
Look at your own backyard. Take care of Flint and Puerto Rico.
When you start to talk about human rights violations in other countries, we know what that actually means.
It's to start drumming up support for another war - somewhere, anywhere - Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, China, Russia - somewhere.
That's what the bogey of "human rights violations" actually means.
It's to make war for your donor class.
So - please look at your own backyard. Make jobs, get a living wage, medicare for all.
38
Not one media outlet has made the distinction between the 11 million Uighur Muslims who constitute half of the population of Xinjiang and the 11 million Hui Muslims who have lived throughout China since the seventh century.
For fourteen centuries, the Hui have practiced Islam while holding positions as military generals and soldiers, government officials and political leaders, traders and businessmen, scholars and artists - regardless of the dynasty, the Republic of China or Communist China.
The Japanese destroyed Nanking, they destroyed the mosques where Hui Muslims prayed. Mao Tse Tung's Cultural Revolution destroyed more mosques and Korans. Even so, there are more than 14,000 mosques remaining in China outside of Xinjiang where 11 million Hui pray today.
Why have Hui Muslims been treated differently from Uighur Muslims for over a thousand years? Because Hui Muslims are Chinese (five ethnicities are officially recognized as Chinese - Han, Mongol, Manchu, Tibetan, Hui); Uighur Muslims are Turkic. Hui speak Mandarin; Uighur speak a Turkic dialect. Physically and culturally, they are different.
To portray the crackdown on Uighur Muslims as oppression of the practice of Islam is wrong. Yes, the detention centers are human rights abuses (Cultural Revolution II) but it is not because Uighurs are Muslim; indeed the Uighurs are an ethnic minority (Turkic) with a separatist movement intent on re-establishing the nation of East Turkestan. It's history, Mr. Stephens.
40
@Mimi: Yes, the repression is nationalist rather than religious. There are people in the Han regions of China who practice Islam openly, but the Uighurs are separatists.
Similarly, there are plenty of Han Chinese who practice Buddhism openly, but the Tibetan variety is seen as nationalistic rather than religious, especially given the fact that Tibet was traditionally a theocracy with the Dalai Lama as head of state.
If there is one thing that Han Chinese agree on, even those who are critical of the current government, it is that Xinjiang and Tibet are part of China and will always be part of China.
This does not excuse China's repression of either the Uighurs or the Tibetans, but it does approach the problem from a different angle.
2
@Pdxtran - Yes, that's my point. It doesn't excuse China's human rights abuses, but because of ignorance or religious advocacy, the media spreads falsehoods. (So does Radio Free Asia, paid for by America.)
However, you also slipped. It is not the "Han Chinese" who "agree that" Xinjiang and Tibet are part of China" - that's not accurate either and also reflects a misunderstanding of China. The truth is Mao Tse Tung conquered Xinjiang and Tibet to make them part of Communist China which will fight their separation.
But not for ideological or religious reasons - strictly as border-states between China and Russia and China and India. (Much the way Israel will never give up control over the West Bank or Gaza.)
Sun Yat Sen, to reform China and to form a "Republic" of China, declared that five ethnicities were "Chinese" - Han, Hui, Mongol, Manchu, and Tibet. Conquests over millenia had formed the ethnic ruling dynasties and China was never united because of this.
The Uighurs are an ethnic minority and not Chinese. In this respect, Xinjiang is unlike Tibet.
If you look at this in the context of what's happening in other nations, you must conclude that repressing groups who stray from the mainstream is effective politics. Whether it's migrants in Europe, minorities in the US, non-Muslims in the Middle East scapegoating and persecution is effective.
Sometimes, the persecuted do things that feed the flames of bigotry. It might be protests or even violence, but futile gestures buttress the persecution.
China is authoritarian, but it also has its own traditional enmities. Telling China to stop using those to consolidate government power will not change things.
1
@Betsy S, all you've said by way of excusing China's repressions could've been said as well of the Germany of the concentration camps, or of Uganda's killing of homosexuals. You may be right that "telling them to stop" is futile, but making them stop, by refusal to trade, by pressure otherwise--I think here of the ending of apartheid in South Africa, among other cases--doing what is needful to stop the worst of power from the worst of its atrocities--is an imperative, not one we can shuck off with little shrugs and bows to realpolitik.
5
Some the commenters seem to feel that democracy is not in the cards for the Chinese given their history and past institutions.
Well, I’m writing this from Taiwan where I’m visiting my in-laws. The people of Taiwan seem quite pleased to have a democracy, messy as democracies always are (recall what Churchill said about the worst possible system except for all others.)
Oh, and they have nice high speed rail system too.
21
In theocracies, oligarchies, tyrannies and even some democracies, he who controls the army has and will hold power. History teaches us that.
For the moment, that control of the army will keep China's ruling class in place. But China is a vast nation with many internal divisions among competing cultures, many of whom would wish to separate and go their own way.
A time may come when the army fractures along those same cultural lines, and the central authority is unable to afford to keep it in line with high pay and special privileges.
China is headed for trouble.
3
So, in essence, muslims in China are like atheists in the U.S. They need to lay low and keep their thoughts to themselves, at least in the public square.
I would say, Mr. Stephens, that there is no such thing as a soul, and your opinion perfectly reflects the American presumption in favor of religion and, more specifically, Christianity.
The suppression of free speech and thought is dangerous because as a society we have determined that these freedoms are desirable. I support this view of society although clearly some, including some in power in the U.S., do not.
In any event, we shouldn't base our arguments about the relative worth of societies on religious fictions. We can have a good discussion based on observable facts.
17
What troubles me most about Trump and his administration is their relentless push---aided by Congress and the Supreme Court---to eliminate all opposition to their policies and ideology. Democracy thrives on a marketplace of ideas---when that marketplace becomes a monopoly of one idea, we lose that first principle of democratic rule which has made this country great. There is much in conservative political views I disagree with, but, at the same time, there are ideas/concepts that are worth considering and even better than more liberal ideas/concepts---The ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time is a strength of our democratic form of government, not a weakness to be eradicated.
5
Of all people fit to criticise the Chinese, Americans have the least rights to do so. It should look itself in the mirror before it goes on a highfalutin spree, mounted on its high horse, championing the cause of human rights.
30
Unfortunately, the world does not need a 'Beijing Spring'. For all its cruelty and repression, we've learned that, yes, things can be worse. Picture Syria times ten, twenty and you get a picture of the 'free' China.
China, an authoritarian state with unfettered capitalism. Is this not Trump's wish for America?
76
@BB Fernandez
For most of the past 2200 years China has been a socioeconomic political educational technological scientific demographic diplomatic military superpower. About 20% of humanity is ethnic Han Chinese.
Germany has been the European socioeconomic political educational technological scientific demographic power for less than a century. America has occupied that pinnacle for about the same time as a world superpower. The British royal family has been German since the American Revolution. America and Germany are the heirs of the British Empire. There are more German Americans than any other kind of Americans by ethnic national origin.
About 5% of humanity is American. And 7% is European.
Agreed, but when you begin finding a few dead rats on the landing, it is time to take precautions and resist complacency. I understand that this is an argument against cynicism. It could have been a bit stronger against complacency and heeding those who are pointing out the dead vermin showing up here and there.
Fear and cruelty are indeed prime aspects of the Chinese regime. That was true in Mao's time, and has been true for all the four decades following his death.
Knowing this, our government made a pet of this most murderous state in the world (40 million and counting) as a Cold War strategy. It didn't need to: the USSR collapsed on its own.
All we got from China was what had been a dying tyranny, nursed by us back to Stalinist health with a dose of capitalism and wide open access to the US market.
Along the way, we fawned on China by supporting Pol Pot and his killing fields regime for UN membership.
And how about this: The architect of our coziness with the Maoist butchers, Kissinger, supported the regime's slaughter of the Tienanmen protesters.
Following 9/11, the US was happy to comply with China's request to put the Uighur freedom movement on the Terrorist list.
Stephen's article is very good. However, he lapses into State Department slander when he writes:
"China has been the victim of terrorism, most notoriously when knife-wielding Uighur assailants killed 31 people..."
The Uighurs are the Native Americans of the twenty-first century. The Chinese have been engaged for decades in ethnic cleansing, which may recently have escalated to genocide.
We don't talk any more about Indians as terrorists. We understand their few massacres of whites as understandable responses in a racial war launched by Europeans.
We should do as much for the Uighurs.
9
“As with so much else in China, too, the government lies about what it’s doing. It flat-out denies the use of arbitrary detention, the targeting of an ethnic minority, or the existence of the re-education camps . . . “
This sounds like Trump’s vision of America. Our government kidnaps and imprisons the children of asylum seekers, we permanently detain immigrants, and target Muslims for harassment. So far the US doesn’t have re-education camps; it’s probably because Trump and DeVos don’t really believe in education.
50
What China is doing to the Uighurs is abominable, but no moreso than what Israel does to the Palestinians - something that Mr. Stephens' seems to fully support, every chance he gets. This moral and ethical inconsistency aside, I think that Mr. Stephens gets a number of things wrong. The idea of forcing assimilation and "re-education" is something that Western settler nations practiced against indigenous people to limited effect. Here in Canada, "residential schools" and other such efforts to assimilate native people to European culture really just ended up smashing the native culture and traumatizing generations. But the idea was justified which much the same logic that China is using now against the Uighurs. But this was more harmful to the people being subjected to the abuse, not to the government (representing the vast majority) doing the abuse. These gross sins have not undermined the American, Australian or Canadian states and they certainly have not made those states face up to the truth of their actions. There is no reason to think that similar actions will have any lasting effect on China. Beyond that, a lot of Westerners have been forecasting China's collapse for a long time, with something like glee. I suspect it won't happen. For all of their many, many flaws, China's leaders tend to be highly competent and, ironically, they are not bound by ideology.
7
And meanwhile we shower money on China (in the form of manufacturing contracts) while sanctioning Russia.
And why do we sanction Russia? Because it annexed the Crimea, which had been Russian for 300 years and has a population that's 65% ethnic Russian (13% ethnic Ukrainian) whereas we say nothing about China's reconquest of its former imperial possessions, which had very few Han Chinese inhabitants.
1
Why does the media brazenly criticize foreign countries, leaders, political parties, or regimes without proposing any better solutions? This is a country with far more than 1 billion people. Most of those people think that their lives have improved continuously over the last decades. Yes, there must be a lot of injustice, cruelty, corruption and more. But would you have done a better job? Did the US do a better job with all its vast power and money over last decades? Yes, probably minorities are not as protected as in US. Well, from a Swiss point of you, minorities in US are by far not as protected as in Switzerland.
I value sharp and courageous journalism. But please show a bit mor empathy for those other countries and systems. I dont want these 1 billion people falling into chaos because of a bunch of left super-liberal journalists and opinion writers who think they are always right without providing either some more context, empathy or proposals.
Im non-asian who has been living in China for 1 year.
6
Or, fear for the future that magazines like the Atlantic won't exist long, as the GOP attempts to bring the US closer to the soft authoritarianism of Hungary or the even rougher authoritarianism of China. The GOP wants to limit internet usage just like China. I'm sure the GOP would love to suppress Islam in America just like China. We need the Democratic Party to win seats in November, otherwise two more years of complete GOP power may put America at the tipping point, especially with Kavanaugh on the high court.
12
Most 'regular Chinese', 'most' being defined as significantly more than 50%, quite support the national governments actions, including the action discussed in this essay.
3
"Is Democracy Dying?"
A better question is, "Is America capable of or even deserving of democracy?"
I watched an in-depth economic segment on PBS this past week. Traveling through Maine, Paul Solman looked at how the financial crisis of 2008 has changed America.
Besides the fact that work-a-day Americans have not recovered (the main story), a takeaway for me was how working class Americans had no faith in, or expectations that Washington cared or would do anything to help them; and at the same time, these same working class Americans were totally uninformed about what was going on in Washington. Who is Robert Mueller? "Don't know." Who is Paul Manafort? "Don't know." Will they bother to find out who is on the ballot in November? We might all respond: Don't know.
Democracy only works when the public is informed and participates. Too many Americans are consumed with eking out a living to pay attention. Too many Americans pay attention to the Media of The Absurd: Fox. Too many Americans take our freedoms and rights for granted - no need to get involved, get informed, even to vote.
Meanwhile, Republicans have been diligently strangling democracy where ever they can. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, voter disinformation, abdication of sworn duties, disregard of the Constitution...
If working class Americans don't get woke, they will awaken to a Washington that is the American equivalent of Beijing.
121
Like Beijing without the infrastructure. It's fun to criticize China, and much of it is justified. But they take the long view while our Congress can't pass a budget.
5
China today, and is the West a better alternative?
I'm extremely pessimistic about the human future, not to mention because so many place science and technology at the heart of our salvation. Science and technology in so many respects seem not to be wrenching us away from our worst instincts, in fact getting humans to somehow transcend the chemical/biological process of life of often horrifying energy transfers (what is life that we have to eat another living thing?), but rather augmenting these instincts.
Notice we have no technological equivalent to our feelings of love, but we have atoms potentially splitting to fulfill our impulse of hatred. Notice how no matter how much we advance the frontiers of medicine we have instead of decisive cures on the bacteriological/viral front increased ability for biological warfare. Take a look at psychology/psychiatry: Instead of increased methods to get humans to transcend themselves we have instead technique after technique developed to gaslight, manipulate, control humans.
Take communications technology. The entirety of it now threatens to be not increased communications and development of nobler impulses but rather a vast system of surveillance and control in hands of power. At this point I have pretty much placed my hopes entirely on biology, genetic understanding, somehow breeding a more worthwhile human being. But of course many will hold this to be the greatest evil of all.
A good question: What will CERTAINLY save us?
5
What China is suppressing, more than religion or conscience, is identity. If you center your identity around a religious affiliation, or Tai Chi, or an ethnic and religious identity as have the Uighur and the Tibetans, you can count on being fiercely repressed.
The only allowable identity is mainstream, loyal to the -upper class oligarchy? the Party? the powerful leading familial clans? - group who rule the politics and economy.
I'd argue that our own politics are pushing us to emulate China, granting more power to moneyed interests, and suppressing the interests of individual power. In China, social security is mandated to be be a legal obligation of offspring to support parents; the Right would love that here. For a communist nation, they are pretty tied up in individual responsibility for healthcare, education. The assets are commonly owned; the rewards are a lot less common.
We haven't set up reprogramming internment camps and are unlikely to do so; we marginalize economically. But in this current regime? I get the feeling that they wish they could.
17
I live in China, I have for some time now. Not in the western province. I am not going to comment on the content of this article. I would suggest, however, that the writer spend some extended period of time in China - which is a very large country - before making such sweeping statements.
8
Knowing denial of important reality is a dangerous thing, whether that be China's oppression or Americans peddling deliberate deceit about climate science.
3
It would helpful to address an issue that sets China apart from all other great states: their Mandate of Heaven which is specific to the Chinese. China did not have hereditary dynasties! Throughout its millennial the rulers were given the task of keeping national affairs stable (Legalism, or meritocracy...). When stable the ruler kept ruling but when not the mandate was called and rulers replaced, quite often in violent ways following internal and often external causes. This alone has entered the consciousness of the Chinese and has never failed to repeat itself.
A second issue is the colossal destruction and constant threat the Turco-Mongol people represented. Beginning with the Xiongnu, the Proto-Turkic hordes that started to maul China beginning with 5th century BC, the Turkic and Mongol invasions did cease for over two millennia. It was the very reason why the Chinese built over 60,000 kilometers of walls (yes, that much) and had to unify itself against the northern invaders. Just one revolt during Tang Dynasty started by the Turkic leader An Lushan claimed 36 million lives. And by the way, the Uighurs did invade Xinjiang middle of ninth century AD which was Chinese territory.
I do not excuse the Chinese abuses in the least. I am only stating that within Chinese consciousness lie a complex of traits that are deeply anchored in their history and psyche which are not easy to change, even when the ruler resorts to extreme measures such as we now see happening.
16
What worked with the Soviet Union can work with China.
Bankrupt them.
They - will - respond tit-for-tat on defense spending. Their faux reticence regarding expansionism now exposed, they have no choice but to match our spending or lose face, and lose power.
3
@Objectivist
We are far more likely to bankrupt ourselves first! And how has Russia ended up? As an Oligarchy. And where is the US headed on its current course? To an Oligarchy, as the 1% own more and more of the assets and the rest of the population struggles to survive day to day, with the safety net removed and medical care less available to ordinary people.
6
The Uighurs were once autonomous. But ethnic Chinese moved into the area causing conflict and hostilities were consistently resolved in favor of the Chinese. Internal ethnic provinces governed for the benefit of the ethnic majority are most similar to the former Soviet republics, Kurdish sections of Iraq, and the Rohingya of Myanmar.
Palestine is not a republic of Israel and never was. As long as the two state solution is out there they are enemy neighbors. If Israel were to force a single state on the Palestians, then you would have a Uighur type situation. Right now they are enemies seeking separation and exclusive control over separate and distinct lands. Those equating the Uighurs with the Palestinians are saying that both are treated as ethnic inferiors. That is true, but the similarity ends there. No Palestinian wants to be viewed as a foreigner in his own land. So the Uighurs are a whole different story.
3
@michjas This is no longer true, and has not been true for a long time. Israel's right wing, for decades, has done all it can to make a separate Palestinian state impossible. Israel's gradual theft of all Palestinian land has almost accomplished this goal. Thus, the Palestinians have become (and have been for a long time) an occupied people living under the control of the foreign nation occupying their land. In that sense, their situation is very similar to the situation of the Uighurs, as you describe it.
5
While communism and totalitarian government have failed (USSR, Eastern Bloc), or are dying (Cuba, Venezuela), an adaptive form of Communism has survived in China because of China's distinctive and ancient Confucian ethos: from the bottom up, dutiful trust in and obedience to authority figures and structures; and from the top down, a deeply ingrained sense of unity and duty to the Chinese nation and people (the "Mandate of Heaven"). Neither obligation is fulfilled perfectly--protests periodically erupt online and on streets over government corruption--but so far both ends of the hierarchy have served the social agreement well enough to preserve "harmony" in the People's Republic. If the Communist party loses the trust and acceptance of the Han Chinese majority it will be because of some runaway economic or medical catastrophe, not because ethnic and religious minorities on China's geographic and social margins are being abused just too much.
We in America want to believe that the arc of history curves toward justice in China as well as the West, but I am not so sanguine. Long-lived, far flung societies can be crushed or driven out of their historic homelands: remember that in spreading from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the United States decimated the Native American people and culture. I'm not sure how successfully China's rulers will subjugate the Tibetans, Uighurs and others; but appeals to justice and the enduring human soul do not convince me that they will fail.
13
Since the beginning of their existence China has been a hierarchical, top down, society. It has worked well for them, albeit with the occasional periods of chaotic political management, for over two thousand years. So I don't see them changing it. I imagine, as a society, their logic is simple. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Their current political system, the Communist Party, is simply a facade masking this structure. It is a political delusion of "the People" holding power when the truth of it is that Xi is their latest Emperor.
When you juxtapose this fact of their structure against the equal one whereof that structure exhibits periods of paranoia (legitimate or otherwise), which manifested in such diverse fashion as the Great Wall, or the sunken fleet that attempted to take Japan, then it becomes clear you shouldn't be surprised by this latest bit of rabid paranoia.
In their system all paranoia is practiced from the top down so if you want to see it change then Xi must initiate it. And I don't see this happening though I do agree it will probably burn itself out.
By the way, Bret Stephens mentions the concept of "benign dictator," but isn't this a contradiction in terms? Regardless China will survive, though thoughts of it robing itself in some form of Democratic process is probably the West's most popular and enduring delusion, too.
John~
American Net'Zen
5
Don't you feel like the US was founded as a top down society? Rich white male merchants, tax evaders and slaveholders who suckered the working man into thinking he had rights. And when we protested, they called in the troops against us. Both countries have one thing in common: they live a lie about social progress and social justice.
Not the main point of the op/ed, but Mr. Stephens keeps slipping it in as an obvious truism: "... what ails China - ... a declining birth rate ..."
So, an exponentially expanding population will cure some of China's ailments? Presumably that goes as well for the rest of the world as well. Will the US be so much better if we can just get our population up to 600 million or 1 billion?
11
There is an argument to be made for a benign dictator as an effective and satisfactory form of government. If a majority of people support it, what is the problem? The recent authoritarian regimes of China seem draconian in their policies from a western perspective, yet both the aim and the result in the last couple/three decades has been remarkably positive, overall, for China and the well being of its people. I don't see how that is deniable.
I would not want to live in China, having been inculcated in our Western Liberal culture. Yet, overall, the Chinese people prefer to be there. And we have our own oppression problems that are comparable though in different form, format and proxies. The abuse of the Uighurs is appalling. So is the abuse of the Palestinians and Lebanese, Syrians and Afghans. So is abuse of Non-NorthAmericans. Of those in poverty, in shocking numbers, in our supposedly wealthiest nation in the world.
I'm not excusing or applauding China's abuses. It's not a whatabout. And I am agreeing with the existential threat to democracy in the US brought on by the Libertarian fifth column infiltration of the republican party and from there the ongoing methodical destruction of the US government. That MUST end. The comparison to make is that China's ruling elite seem to be working to improve conditions in China for its people overall. Our ruling elite are working to degrade conditions for US citizens and enrich themselves. Is one better? Delete the elite.
14
@Trebor
'If a majority of people support it, what is the problem?'
I think you've hit at the root of issue there: what holds true in a democracy does not necessarily hold true in an authoritarian state. I am content (if not currently overjoyed) in my democracy to acknowledge that if the majority has expressed contentment with or desire for something, then that this is legitimate. However, even if I am in the minority, I enjoy constitutional protections and the robust rule of law. If the majority support something which is against my rights as a citizen, I have legal recourse to say that they cannot enact their desire.
In an authoritarian state, there is no such protection. Your right to legal recourse in China is, at best, a convenient bureaucratic nicety and an indicator of favoured ethnic status in the eyes of the regime. It is the nature of authoritarianism that should either of those things change - the convenience of the rule of law, or your status as a desirable person - then all that stands between you and a concentration camp is literally luck.
I certainly don't think that you're wrong about the abuses perpetrated by the West. However, the CCP is only improving the lives of middle-class, urban, Han, secular/Buddhist Party members. If you are not those things, IE Uighurs, Tibetan, Christian, etc, life in China is rapidly becoming an Orwellian hellscape. Simply put, life is better when you can't be sent to a concentration camp for eating breakfast at 5am.
2
China is terrible, the Chinese have been leaving China for centuries. It was repressive, like Europe. People will be leaving the US now for the same reasons.
... going where? People left Europe and came to the New World Which is now older than the Old World. Where next? Off the planet. But the driving force for that ( Science, Knowledge, Confidence, Hope , Truth)
is under attack. To quote the Beatles "Help!"
A recent issue of Foreign Affairs magazine ran multiple essays addressing whether China’s political authoritarianism could coexist with an innovative capitalist system. Most writers foresaw a future crisis. But most believed that it would be possible to channel personal ambition into economic matters and to rule autocratically for a good long time. I found those arguments convincing.
5
The US has had a repressive and cruel capitalist regime for 200 years, why not China?
The region is occupied and hostile, with terrorists supplied from and hiding outside.
Compare it to a comparable, someplace occupied by the US, with terrorists supplied from outside. Say Iraq. Or compare it to our good buddies in Israel, how they treat the West Bank and Gaza. If anything, the Chinese are slightly less horrible.
49
@Mark Thomason good point, but throw in Communism and you've got poison.
Bret strikes the right tone: this is a regime VERY alien to the West, FAR more alien than Russia could ever be.
Joe Biden once offered Barack Obama highly intelligent advice about how to specifically handle Afghanistan, but really more generally about how to handle the most extreme exponents of an Islamism that was as alien to Western thought, and far more immediately inimical to it, than China: place a cordon sanitaire around it and let these Saturns devour their OWN children. When they showed clear intent and actions to develop capabilities to harm the West, send in the bombers, the drones and, surgically, Special Forces. If they deploy asymmetrical weapons, such as cybernetic ones, sequester their funds in the West and shut off all forms of trade – not just a cordon sanitaire but an active embargo. But don’t assume that we can “save” them, and don’t wage general and traditional wars there. Just cease to engage.
Excellent advice that President Obama ignored. If he’d had the vision and found within him the intestinal fortitude to accept the advice, how much better a West would exist today than does?
Similar advice today about China is tempting, but the sheer weight of humanity involved is sobering; and the issues are FAR less crisp. We can shudder at treatment in China of the Uighurs, but do we ignore Detroit, Southside ol’ Chicago or the worst neighborhoods of St. Louis? Do we ignore the Muslim ghettos surrounding Paris or London? Is willful abandonment better …
12
… than concerted effort to bend a minority to a majority will in the interests of a hive-mind?
We have some cogitating to do about ourselves before we consider how what we regard as the civilized world might sensibly confront China. And it’s not a trivial thing to do to resolve NOT to engage meaningfully with 20% of the world’s population of human beings.
7
@Richard Luettgen
What's really too bad is that G.W. Bush didn't get advice from Joe Biden. HE was the reason we got into these quagmire's to begin with.
But having said that, the advice given here does seem pretty wise indeed regarding the Middle East. But you're also right that we cannot completely disengage from China. The West has never been able to do that. And today isn't it closer to 25%?
10
@Bryan
Actually, I suppose it's under 20%. China's population is 1.379 billion, while global population is at about 7.6 billion. Just over 18%.
"...not to mention Tibet," which Mr. Stephens almost didn't. Really, if you are going to take on China's horrendous totalitarian surveillance state, it's rather petty and distracting to be playing political favorites among the oppressed. And it is misleading, because China's regime subjects its own ethnic Chinese populations to whatever is deemed necessary to control them, no holds barred. Ethnic and religious persecution are icing on the cake. The Chinese state is far more the problem than the endemic prejudices on which it periodically acts.
11
China has a long history dating back centuries of somewhat spontaneous and then growing armed revolt by the lower classes caused by rampant corruption in the central authority.
Of course what China is doing is morally wrong and probably doomed to failure but there is historical precedent for their behavior.
The most destabilizing factor in Chinses society is the abnormal ratio of men to women caused by decades of the one child policy. There are too many men unable to form families that help to stabilize a society.
6
Bret Stephens would disagree, but the theme of this column could also apply (with the same eventual outcome) to Israel in, not only its illegal occupation and subversion of the Palestinians, but its unequal treatment of non Orthodox Jews living within the 1967 borders.
125
The Israelis are doing one wrong thing
and the Chinese are doing another. The Palestinians and the Uighurs have next to noting in common except that they both got a raw deal.
Why does everything become the fault of the Jews?
1
The subtitle of this article is: "a regime at war with the human soul will eventually fall." A treacly piece of rhetoric. But China has had regimes like this since the First Emperor of Qin burned subversive books in the 3rd century BC. No doubt the communist regime will fall, someday, sooner or later. But it will be replaced by another Chinese-style regime, which will not be a replica of an idealized American democracy but a state in which order and social harmony are prized above all else.
From the perspective of Beijing, America's impressive array of social problems is convincing evidence that their system is best.
Which leads me to wonder: what is it, really, that the human soul contains? And does our system of government REALLY nourish the human soul while the Chinese regime kills it?
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@Donald Seekins Yes, I believe that democracy is better.
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@Donald Seekins
The point is that in our system, you are free to nourish the human soul, whatever that may entail for you. In China, that is not the case.
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The solution that democratic nations could be putting forward is simple: trade and do business only with other democracies. Worldwide, autocratic governments are enjoying the material benefits of business with developed economies, and using that material success to bolster authoritarian rule at home. China is not the only example. To that list, you can add Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Vietnam and now Hungary and Poland. The trick is convincing businessmen and women from democratically governed nations to go along.
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@RS
To businessmen and businesswomen from the West its all about the profits. They can't even treat their own employees decently in most cases.
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In the long run, the Chinese regime’s "war on the soul" will indeed fail.
The long run will be a lot shorter if America and too many other liberal democracies weren't so busy undermining what Beijing fears most:
A working example of better a way. A freer way. One not rooted in cruelty and bigotry.
Perhaps when Trump is done waging his own war on the soul of America, we can once again set a better, if imperfect, example.
"As flawed as our foreign policy can be, and whatever blind spots we have, we really are the indispensable nation”
- Barack Obama
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Cruel yes as you detail
Crueller than ours? Why there you fail,
No children ripped from family
or poisons in the air set free.
Bad as it is and it is bad
The truth about our Land is sad
A POTUS unprepared to lead
A Congress who his crimes won't heed.
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@Larry Eisenberg. Priceless, once again.
A great example of the wonderful openness and diversity of opinion we enjoy in America (unlike those beastly authoritarian regimes) are the many shades of opinion one finds regularly expressed in our media on the subject of the People's Republic of China. Sure there are a few hostile attacks on China like this article, but so what?--Are they not more than balanced by all the learned commentators delivering a mixed verdict on that complex society? Or even the many positive, friendly views of the world's most populous nation one regularly sees published?
Right. That'll be the day.
One view and one view only is permitted in the mainstream American media: hostility to China and attacks on its government and its Socialist economy.
Without any formal censorship, the ideological line of imperialism is enforced with a strictness that would amaze any authoritarian censor with its efficiency.
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@Red Allover When a society is run by big, privately owned corporations in league with the government, and the government insists on dominating civil society as well, that's fascism, not Socialism and we do have some historical examples of it. The firm belief in the superiority of the dominant ethnic group over others, the interest in seizing adjoining lands as that country's "historical territory" and camps for ethnic minorities to, oh, train them for job opportunities or somesuch completes the picture. The military is built up while the rest of the world is accused of plotting to attack them. They can also count, for a time, that many will consider possibilities of commerce with that nation far more important than anything that nation may be doing to its own citizens or planning to do to those in neighboring countries.
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Bret,
Authoritarianism unfortunately does not come packaged with a social conscience. Countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia etc. have none. The current horrors being perpetrated on the Uighurs pales in comparison to the excesses in Tibet. China got away then and will get away this time. Unfortunately, the primitive notion "Might is Right" is still well and alive. It is the same filthy attitude that enables the Trump administration in the US to hold thousands of innocent children against their will or that which enabled Australians to commit excesses on the Aborigines.
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China has developed an ingrained hypersensitivity to religion and drugs. In the case of the former, a militant Christian uprising covering large parts of south and central China known as the Taiping Rebellion, which coincided with the US Civil war, is believed to have resulted in as many as 20 million dead. (Compare that figure to the 620,000 to 750,000 deaths in the Union and Confederacy combined.) Then there were two wars with Britain over opium from the 1840s, which led to a century of shame, leading to the collapse of the Qing dynasty, more invasions by foreign powers and prolonged civil war. One needs to understand that events of the 19th century which relate to religion and drugs still exert a strong influence on China's modern leaders.
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"... eventually the regime will fail."
Maybe not, maybe this time is different. Maybe the Han overlords have read their Orwell, studied the failures of fascism and the Soviets, learned from the unrelenting lies of Fox & Trump; and will perfect the social control tools being sold them by the West (and steal what they can't buy), continue to trap third world "democracies" with Trojan-horse infrastructure, continue to intimidate students and politicians in developed countries like Australia—until we too have acquiesced to their dominance.
Yes, Bret, history has crushed all previous dystopias, but maybe this time is different.
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What China has resisted all along is not Islam per se, it is competition for loyalty to the State. Likewise for other religious and cultural identities. Perhaps the government's insecurity will ultimately be a self-fulfilling prophecy, or possibly they will strong arm too many citizens. Time will tell.
While we cannot stop the heavy-handed and anti-Democratic policies in China, or any other authoritarian country, we can check ourselves. How does our highest leader talk about Muslims? About cultural diversity? How does he treat his power and its curbs? If we are to be a beacon of hope to the world, we have to take a long hard look at home before setting our gaze at anyone else.
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I've spent some time in Xinjiang, including in Hotan, and felt much as I did when traveling in Tibet: the heavy hand of Beijing is ever-present and always poised to come crashing down on anyone who is thought to be challenging the authority of the state. You see very few happy faces there, especially on the indigenous Uighurs and Kazakhs. This leads me to wonder yet again where the world's jihadists are when those who are killing and tormenting their fellow Muslims are not the "infidels" of the West. Why is there not a peep heard from the upper echelons of ISIS and al-Qaeda when the enemies of Islam are Han Chinese or Burmese or (on occasion) Thai or Filipino or Hindi? Or, for that matter, Russian (given the massacres that Putin staged on the Muslim inhabitants of the northern Caucasus)? For that matter, why is there no outcry from the Saudi royal family (the ostensible defenders of the faith) or from the leaders of any Muslim-majority nation in the Middle East or Asia or Africa? Why do they expend all of their wrath on the U.S. and western Europe (not that we don't deserve some of it) even as Beijing practically forces its Muslim subjects to abandon their religion in order to claim the same (minimal) human rights as their Middle Kingdom countrymen?
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@stu freeman
Stu you raise some fair points but more democratic Muslim countries like Turkey have denounced oppression of Muslims in Burma and China as they have done in Israel and by the US. As for Saudi Arabia, that oppressive despotic Wahabi regime backed by the West and much beloved by Trump/Kushner/Bannon is a leading violator of the human rights of Muslims and others within the country and the wider region. The same duplicity is seen in the book by Netanyahu's leading foreign policy advisor Dore Gold who accurately labeled the Al-Saud regime which distributed the Czarist forgery titled the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and fostered anti-Shia sectarianism as "Hatreds Kingdom". A few years later the same Dore Gold was extolling the "moderate" Saudis as a force for good along with Elliot Abrams at the Council on Foreign Relations because of their anti-Arab Spring collaboration with Netanyahu.
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@stu freeman
You’re forgetting that the reason Bin Laden waged holy war against the U.S. wasn’t for ideological reasons, he got into the fight because he wanted our troops out of Saudi Arabia. He believed (rightly) that we were propping up the weak Saudi regime and were it not for US troops, the (then) regime would fall. He then morphed that philosophy into a bigger battle and stage than just Saudi Arabia, as he saw the potential to lead all Muslims exploiting religion.
Who knows where terrorism would be if (1) our troops weren’t physically present in Saudi Arabia; (2) we hadn’t been so partial towards Israel (remember suicide bombings were revived by the attack in Lebanon in early 80s). Both of these foreign policy positions turned out to be rallying cries for Jihadis.
Bin Laden was the biggest hypocrite of them all. He laid claim to global leadership of Muslims by waging “holy war”. In reality he was as bigoted as they come. I remember reading an interview of his when someone had inquired of him that he’d taken an Afghan wife. He scoffed and responded that “by grace of god, all my wives have Arab blood”... this was his belief in the superiority of Arabs over non-Arabs. What to talk of his hypocrisy to speak for all Muslims...
It’s all about consolidation of power. By any means. Religion (and its prominence in tribal societies with low literacy) is just the most convenient ideology to appropriate and rally disaffected and unemployed hotheads to serve your interests...
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@Patrician: You're absolutely correct but your comment really has little to do with what I wrote. Bin Laden was a mass murderer and al-Baghdadi is, if anything, even worse, but if they and their ilk are purporting to stand up for all oppressed Muslims they haven't exactly demonstrated a whole lot of credibility. The Arab governments (whether elected or not) as well as the ones in Iran, Turkey, Indonesia and so on are also pretty feckless on this issue. It's hard to expect much from Trump or other, more enlightened, Western leaders if the international Muslim community is going to keep silent as their coreligionists in China continue to be persecuted.