I disagree. They genuinely don't believe it is genocide. There's even international disagreement about the proper characterization of it. Most countries sufficiently propagandize their own citizens to inoculate them against the view that their own actions represent crimes against humanity, regardless of how they come to be viewed decades or centuries later.
I don't think the core of your idea is wrong though. The disturbing thing, to me, is that pro-China writers both in this thread and elsewhere think that disproving the charge of genocide (by linking to blogs or China's own view on the subject, mostly) they have cleared China of wrongdoing. It's obvious to me as someone with a modicum of moral intelligence that this is not really the case.
As an American, I am happy to admit that my understanding of the situation in Xinjiang is probably tainted by anti-China ideas being spread in my country. However, even if I take China entirely at its word about what it is doing, it's still quite obvious that this is horrifically bad and wrong. I would support boycotts entirely on the basis of China's own characterization of its actions.
That's really the sad, disturbing thing; people are supporting China by "showing" that Western media characterizations of the camps are inaccurate. I'm happy to admit they might be, but I believe it is a great moral failing to not denounce China's actions on its own terms.
What is uncontested: China is sending members (~1.3M per year) of a religious / ethnic minority (Uyghur) to internment camps for the purpose of preventing / deterring terrorism and to promote their social integration into China as a whole.
This is chilling to anyone who knows anything at all about the history of interning ethnic minorities. It was bad and wrong when the United States sent 125,000 Japanese people to live in camps during World War II. Anyone who protested or boycotted the United States for the purpose of ending that internment was, or would have been, justified. I am fully ready to apply the same standards to other countries, including my own, as I apply to China.
Likewise, whether it fully qualifies for the term "forced labor" or not, work done by people while imprisoned is inherently questionable and deserves heavy scrutiny. I believe that the conditions in prisons in the United States and the very-low-wage labor done by our prisoners are an abject moral horror, and it's important to turn the same critical eye to China's use of Uyghur labor.
Again, that's just looking at China's own view of it. The facts of the matter are likely to lie somewhere in between, which is even more concerning. It's hard not to see the shadow of some of the 20th century's fascistic horrors in China's discriminatory policies towards the Uyghur population, especially if anything in this piece turns out to be true: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...
The US incarcerates many, many more than China, as a much higher fraction of its population. Probably at least as many are on no better pretext, and are similarly exploited for prison labor.
Thus, a boycott-US movement would be (also!) justified, but better would be to check on practices and boycott specific companies that do not take particular care not to rely on prison labor in any country. That is more work, but supporting liberty everywhere is always going to be very hard work. However much, it is worth doing.
I type this posting on a phone. We are all almost as complicit as we can be.
In fact, there have been a great many Americans railroaded into prison for, essentially, being Muslim, for refusing to try to entice other Muslims to engage in attempts at domestic terrorism so that they can be imprisoned, just to burnish somebody's resume.
But mostly black people are railroaded into prison for being black. Do you imagine that is less bad?
A 'crime' is a legitimate pretext for putting someone in jail.
Being of a certain ethnicity is not a reason for putting someone in jail.
I can't believe I am reading this.
And your statements about 'putting Muslims in jail for being Muslim' and But mostly 'black people are railroaded into prison for being black' are completely false. People are put in jail for crimes, whereupon the justice system in some cases may not be fully equally applied and FYI if anything the Justice System is heavy in the US to the point whereupon supposedly privileged group face nearly equally excessive oversight from the system - which is altogether a different problem.
Your ability to believe is not salient. And, it is a fact that black people are overwhelmingly over-represented in the US prison population. It is not because they commit more crimes, but because black people are arrested more, convicted more, and sentenced more, for identically the same behavior as non-black people. If that is different from being incarcerated because they are black, the difference is too small for me to perceive.
You seem to be insisting that racism does not exist in the US. Noted.
I wonder how many people in China know facts about their country's labour camps and Xinjiang policies and still find that acceptable, not considering this a genocide.
I don't think the core of your idea is wrong though. The disturbing thing, to me, is that pro-China writers both in this thread and elsewhere think that disproving the charge of genocide (by linking to blogs or China's own view on the subject, mostly) they have cleared China of wrongdoing. It's obvious to me as someone with a modicum of moral intelligence that this is not really the case.
As an American, I am happy to admit that my understanding of the situation in Xinjiang is probably tainted by anti-China ideas being spread in my country. However, even if I take China entirely at its word about what it is doing, it's still quite obvious that this is horrifically bad and wrong. I would support boycotts entirely on the basis of China's own characterization of its actions.
That's really the sad, disturbing thing; people are supporting China by "showing" that Western media characterizations of the camps are inaccurate. I'm happy to admit they might be, but I believe it is a great moral failing to not denounce China's actions on its own terms.
What is uncontested: China is sending members (~1.3M per year) of a religious / ethnic minority (Uyghur) to internment camps for the purpose of preventing / deterring terrorism and to promote their social integration into China as a whole.
This is chilling to anyone who knows anything at all about the history of interning ethnic minorities. It was bad and wrong when the United States sent 125,000 Japanese people to live in camps during World War II. Anyone who protested or boycotted the United States for the purpose of ending that internment was, or would have been, justified. I am fully ready to apply the same standards to other countries, including my own, as I apply to China.
Likewise, whether it fully qualifies for the term "forced labor" or not, work done by people while imprisoned is inherently questionable and deserves heavy scrutiny. I believe that the conditions in prisons in the United States and the very-low-wage labor done by our prisoners are an abject moral horror, and it's important to turn the same critical eye to China's use of Uyghur labor.
Again, that's just looking at China's own view of it. The facts of the matter are likely to lie somewhere in between, which is even more concerning. It's hard not to see the shadow of some of the 20th century's fascistic horrors in China's discriminatory policies towards the Uyghur population, especially if anything in this piece turns out to be true: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...