The man was charged with "violat[ing] state regulations and intrud[ing] into computer systems with information concerning state affairs, construction of defense facilities, and sophisticated science and technology." It's bizarre interpretations of the law like this, that don't even fit the "crime", that show that the underlying reason was to send a message instead of actually performing a legitimate arrest.
I remember seeing a documentary about China where a reporter interviewed a judge. When asked about the conflict between the law and the communist party, she said matter-of-factly, as if it were unthinkable for it to be any way else, that the party always comes first and the law second, because she is a judge appointed by the party and so she has to do what the party tells her. It was just so straight-forward; you're a member of the party first and the law is a secondary concern.
This is good advice, though it's really the sort of thing you need to get right first time if it matters to you - caches/archives will make "undoing" an edit possible a lot of the time.
China doesn't really have rule of law. If they want to make an example of you, they will find a way to do it. Judge's are completely deferrent to officials in that way, and there is no judicial review. It is just classic rule by law (laws are weaponized to serve whatever purpose vs. being fairly applied).
As a former law professor of mine explained, thirty years ago, if you visited a "law firm" in China, they resembled a back-alley bodega. This example serves to elucidate that the nation itself is a Party-based system, which is by definition entirely different than a nation based on the rule of law or a constitutional system.
It's not merely the enforcement that is arbitrary, but the defining, application, ruling and interpretation of "law" is actually simply just attempting to appease the enigmatic communist party and its policy agenda.
GP was describing more than just selective enforcement. And while that may happen elsewhere, it's particularly bad in China relative to their level of development and size.
At what point do we stop drooling over the market size and advocate for dignity and rights for 18% of the world's population? Not to mention the danger authoritarian regimes pose just by existing. An apparatus that powerful that could be structurally hijacked by a tiny number of people is a scary thing.
The 18%, Chinese people, do not want outsider's input on their governmental structure. On the whole (edit: "on the whole" means "most people"), they are perfectly happy with the way things are going. Standards of living increase year-over-year every single year. Until that stops, they don't want a thing to change. Now if that stops for a decade or so, maybe it will change. But that's unlikely to happen. So, it's futile to bring your western view to bear on their issues. A one party government is the way they want it here.
> Standards of living increase year-over-year every single year
I lived in China for a few years, and finally left early this year. Standard of living has been declining ever since I arrived, for me and for my local friends, many of them that were from other provinces that came to Shanghai. The declining factors included:
1.) Increasingly worse air pollution. It was not smart to exercise outdoors in the summer or winter.
2.) Increasingly worse water pollution (even reported by the state media). The frequency of diarrhea keeps going up.
3.) Increasingly worse food supply (there was a scandal of a company in northern China that used toxic industrial agents in common food items for 10!! years)
4.) Lack of jobs for migrants. Alot of them had to head back home to their farms.
5.) Censorship Censorship Censorship. Not a day went by that I wasn't frustrated with my VPN not being able to hit a western site.
6.) Inflation. Everything is more and more expensive, in tier 1, 2, 3, and even 88 cities. But standards haven't gone up.
7.) Anyone rich is trying to get out. Australia, US, Canada, anywhere.
Lastly, 8.) Chinese government regressing into a dictatorship, with the possibility of Xi Jin Ping taking a 3rd term.
I'm not saying it doesn't suck for westerners. What I am saying is that from my view, which is of course constrained by all kinds of limits, my best guess hypotheses that I am putting 100% of my money on in the form of all my investments, is that it doesn't yet suck for the vast majority of Chinese in their own minds. Like a drum roll, we've been forced to give 10-20% wage increases every single year to keep my talent. Engineers that worked for me four years ago started out riding the bus. Now, they've all bought a new car at some point. Several make more than I did at 25. They are not clamoring for democracy.
Someone else mentioned inflation. This is what I said to my wife recently on a trip to see her family in China.
Everyone is as complaining about inflation. Inflation has gone crazy for over a decade, but since I first went there average wages in China have gone up by about 8x. The thing is they can't have high wages without High inflation. If wages go up then the workers in the factory making stuff get paid more, the truck driver that takes the goods to the shop is paid more, the shop assistants get paid more, the shop owner pays more rent. Therefore they have to charge more for their goods. But this is not a bad thing.
Meanwhile the exchange rate has made foreign goods twice as expensive. But if wages are up 8x then those foreign goods are actualy 4x more affordable. Hence all the foreign cars. It's all just the Chinese economy converging on global norms. When I first went, cars were an impossible luxury for most Chinese and in my wife's city the streets were bare except for taxis, busses and bicycles. Now there are traffic jams everywhere.
The problem is China has already almost reached international norms. The disparity that has allowed it to grow so fast is almost equalised. Factory wages are increasing because most of the untapped rural labour has been tapped. Within 10 years Chinese will be much better off, but China will have all the same problems every other advanced economy has and its economic miracle will have played out.
EDIT: Wolfram says bigger multiples than I thought. Wow, things change fast.
Actually, there are plenty of propaganda posters for "democracy" (民主). You just can't go and demand actual input beyond electing your local party official.
It sucks for Chinese also. To know their life expectancies are being sacrificed for cheaper exports...really sucks. That under the dome video was censored very quickly for a reason.
That's a strange claim, given that you are not allowed to ask the Chinese people, en masse, if they like their government or not, and they are not allowed to tell you.
Until they are allowed to speak on the subject, we will not know. But the near-daily peasant uprisings around the country would tend to indicate dissatisfaction.
You are correct in that I cannot canvass the 1.4 Billion population "en massee". I'm constrained to navigate the world and form opinions based on incomplete information. But, given I run a company here in China and have been here for 8 years, I'm a bit skeptical when I hear all the hyperbolic pitch fork raising from westerners who likely haven't spent much time here and had long term exposure to the culture and the people. I can tell you that your assertion "they are not allowed to tell you" is a very strange claim itself to me. I've had plenty of conversations about this with my employees. As a westerner, yes you'd better watch your words. But it's common for them to hear me rail about internet issues and they just snicker and move on. But make no mistake, the people are rabid Nationalists. They've been living under single party rule for thousands of years. Their economy will be the strongest on the planet, #1, eventually and that time will be soon. Anyone that thinks they are going to start a movement to force China to change, better not hold their breath. Yes, it is strongly moving more authoritarian here regarding the internet and free speech. That sucks for us westerners but the extreme vast majority of Chinese people I am exposed to, they could not care less.
I think where we're likely to agree is that, if popular dissatisfaction does lead to fundamental change, it's not likely to be the dissatisfaction of middle class folks demanding Western-style freedoms. It's much more likely to come from the bottom layers of society, who are fed up with gross inequality and horrible injustice.
That said, it is useful to constantly remind yourself that your point of view on China is only ever a tiny corner of the picture. I lived there for 15 years (not to make this a pissing contest) and speak Chinese fluently, and my peer group there was mad as hell about the government. But I know that hanging out with writers and journalists is going to give me a pretty skewed point of view on the country as a whole.
Lastly, about "thousands of years of single party rule", I think Chinese history over the past 150 years makes it abundantly plain that Chinese people have absolutely had it with single party rule. From the Xinhai Revolution, to May Fourth, to the early 1950 political participation, to 1989, to the Charter '08, the history of China in the modern period is the history of a people who are doing their goddamn best to throw off authoritarianism, and who keep getting crushed by the authorities. And then, twenty or thirty years later, they get up and do it again. It's fucking heartbreaking, to be honest. Each time it's led by an educated elite, not necessarily "the masses", but that's how change usually happens.
The big difference now is that the educated elite has been numbed by consumerism, and the pissed-off folks are on the bottom. That's also a bad place to be, though, as far as the government is concerned.
> I think where we're likely to agree is that, if popular dissatisfaction does lead to fundamental change, it's not likely to be the dissatisfaction of middle class folks demanding Western-style freedoms. It's much more likely to come from the bottom layers of society, who are fed up with gross inequality and horrible injustice.
This is not how revolutions work. Revolutions are always and everywhere the work of frustrated elites, people who have the education and skills to be the ruling class who aren't. The only successful slave revolt in history was lead by the educated creoles of Haiti. Revolts never come from those at the bottom of society because they're too poor and weak to riot and demonstrate. Social unrest happens when things have been getting better and then they get worse. The Party-State is secure as long as the economy keeps growing.
Here's where Chinese history diverges from "everyone else's" history. In China, dynasty-ending revolutions have nearly always begun with peasant uprisings.
Brexit is a good example of this. There was a lot of grassroots discontent, but it took educated elites to organise and focus it into something they wanted.
The people at the bottom just simply don't have much experience in organising politically.
Talking about any massive group of people as if they all share the same belief is never useful. Its one thing to suggest that some, or a majority, of Chinese support the current system, and quite another to suggest that they all do. I'm pretty sure "tank man" and countless other Chinese would disagree with your characterization of "what they want".
I get your point on "all" vs. "most" vs. "some". Let me clarify, I'm drinking my morning coffee from China and just typing a stream of thoughts here. I read the first sentence in your response here, and I'll point out your own logical fallacy. "Talking about any massive group of people as if they all share the same belief is never useful."
Well, from my decade as an entrepreneur, I can assure you, it is sometimes quite useful to generalize. One skill required to survive is to form opinions based on limited access to information under conditions of uncertainty. So I'd caution against your own use of the word "never". Anyway, my original comment did state "on the whole". This means "most".
If that was really true and the Party believed it, and also actualy cared what the people wanted, then they would have no objection to democratic elections. After all, the people would just all vote for the Party right?
The people I know in China are perfectly well aware of how corrupt, oppressive, arbitrary and immoral their government is. They simply believe there is nothing they can do about it. It affects everybody. For example recently in my wife's home town all holiday for all policemen for the rest of the year was cancelled with no compensation. If officials want to do something, they just do it.
Just because people can't protest about it doesn't mean they like it. They know other countries have free press and democracy, a real say and voice in society, and of course most of them want that. What kind of person wants less say and fewer basic freedoms, especially when they can see plenty of very prosperous and safe countries that have them? They just can't see any practical way to get it.
As if the CCP's "miracle" of economic development hasn't already been done in South Korea, Taiwan, etc. without the authoritarians who also brought the wonders that are The Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution.
Or as if India isn't already basically replicating the same feat with a democracy, but 10 years delayed.
It isn't a "Western view" to understand that governments that respect human rights generally lead to happier civilizations in the long run. It's simply observable from empirical data.
What are you talking about? South Korea and Taiwan may not have had those stand out moments of mass murder, but saying they didn't go through an authoritarian period is just not true. It may not have been on the same scale, but it still involved mass oppression, murder, blackmail, kidnapping, and other unsavory methods.
South Korea and Taiwan did do it with authoritarians. They were absolutely authoritarian governments, and they each had their own mini-revolution once their societies reached a certain level of affluence.
The difference is that China's mini-revolution (June 4, 1989) failed, where theirs succeeded.
True. Rule of law is just an ideal, western developed governments are setup to help realize it, but abuses still occur.
In china, rule of law is not even an ideal, its system is not setup to support it, it is considered a western imperialistic concept that does not fit china.
"Rule of law" is really a spectrum. China may be toward the arbitrary end, but maybe not as much as we'd like to believe. Prosecutors in the US have enormous power, which is why 98% of US federal cases are pled out.
Totally, though that most cases are pled out says nothing about the cases that never are. An overzealous prosecutor can be beat down by a judge in the USA at least. In china, there is no real difference between prosecutor and judge, someone makes a decision somewhere and that's it. The only recourse is bad publicity. Rule of law is a spectrum, but we are talking about drastically different ends of it. What's more, rule of law is not even a goal for the Chinese government, who think an independent power-checking judiciary is unnecessary given that the CCP only consists of wise and uncorrupt officials.
Just remember that, as with The Great Firewall and the (commercial) development and initial sales of its technologies, so too with this: China is the prototype.
I would really recommend setting up a VPS in Hong Kong or Singapore (good fiber connections to mainland) and using Shadowsocks as a proxy.
Can be as cheap as 3€/month. You can even put OpenVPN on top of that (SOCKS) if you need to use your company network.
I have an impression Beijing doesn't care so much about restricting IP blocks of small hosting companies from the region.
It'd probably change if millions of people went this road.
It is unlikely that it would be blocked in China since eavesdropping is easily possible.
(Vanilla) OpenVPN is blocked in China, likewise is IPsec and L2TP. SSTP can also easily be detected via Active Probing but I'm not sure if the GFW currently does that.
It's iffy for Chinese nationals to run VPN services. But then, it's similarly iffy for American nationals to run other sorts of services. Such as online gambling. Or money transfer businesses that don't respect KYC regulations.
That's just how it is. Each country gets to choose its policies. I mean, that's one of the fundamental points of being a country, isn't it?
> That's just how it is. Each country gets to choose its policies. I mean, that's the fundamental point of being a country, isn't it?
Yes, but that’s not what’s happening in China. The fundamental point of being a country is to serve the common good, and to protect the life and liberty of your citizens. In China the ruling party doesn’t care about any of those things.
A policy such as this would be a lot less horrible if ‘the country’ actually chose their own rules and rulers instead of a small handful of permanent party appointees. 1.3(?) billion people who have no say in these policies or in those who make them should be a tragedy no matter how cynical you are.
>The fundamental point of being a country is to serve the common good, and to protect the life and liberty of your citizens.
Important to recognize that this is your worldview, and one I agree with, but it is not the only view available! There are other motivations for government to maintain the existence of the state which they govern.
For example, for some governments the motivation is to maintain the current lifestyle of them and those around them, at the expense of the populace.
They did. China's communist party was chosen by popular support mid last century. The people wanted it, they fought for it, they got it. Why not respect their wishes?
Do you also think it's a tragedy that most of the world can't vote for the US government? They're affected by it but have no say in it. Especially countries that get invaded - which never stops happening.
> The fundamental point of being a country is to serve the common good, and to protect the life and liberty of your citizens.
China values the first more than the other two and so if it has to choose those will be compromised on. America used to value liberty over the common good, but that is slowly turning.
In China, there are elections and anyone can vote. The only restriction is that only party nominees are on the ballot. Is this really so different from the US, where in many states the only people on the ballot are party nominees?
Right. People used to criticize the former Soviet Union in the same way. And it's true that there are two major political parties in the US. However, in many states, candidates must declare for one or the other to get on ballots. Even candidates of long-established "third parties". Also, in living memory, no third-party candidate has won the Presidency. Or indeed, ever received substantial funding from monied interests. There are some third-party members in the House and Senate, but not very many.
So yes, the distinction between China and the US is fuzzier than typically claimed. And in both, the asserted justification is limiting the field to candidates who are competent and experienced.
That's a rather simplistic characterization of the Chinese political situation. Or at least, it seems so to me, to the extent that I know enough to have an opinion.
> That's just how it is. Each country gets to choose its policies
But without democracy, it is in no sense "the country" that chooses the policy, it's just whatever group of thugs happens to be in control of the capital city.
Very true. Some of us believe that all governments are kleptocracies. And that some just bullshit about democracy better than others.
Democracy doesn't mean anything, if systems are rigged, and voters are effectively manipulated. And with modern software, it's getting much worse. Elections are becoming clashes of voter-manipulation systems.
