8ball
Decolonise colons!
Very much so.
Let's talk about China
- Thread starter not-bono-ever
- Start date
Very much so.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
To be honest I was a bit leery at first about the notion of calling the CPC regime fascist. I don't think they're quite there yet, but after further reading it certainly seems like they're heading in that kind of direction.
For all their power, the regime seems to me to act like it's utterly terrified of its own population, attempting to funnel them down very specific avenues that they control. No mockery of the Chinese elites, even though elites in the West have been openly mocked by the commoners for centuries without having their power toppled. That does not indicate to me a ruling class with great confidence in it's "right to rule".
For all their power, the regime seems to me to act like it's utterly terrified of its own population, attempting to funnel them down very specific avenues that they control. No mockery of the Chinese elites, even though elites in the West have been openly mocked by the commoners for centuries without having their power toppled. That does not indicate to me a ruling class with great confidence in it's "right to rule".
Frankly if we can't call modern China fascist, then does the word have any use at all? Short of officially identifying themselves as fascist, (and have no doubt, within the Communist Party intellectual elite there are no shortage of conscious ideological fascists) what exactly would they have to do differently to deserve the label?
If we can't call Xi's China fascist, then the word surely has such narrow applicability that it can't even describe Hitler and Franco, and must only refer specifically to Mussolini's National Fascist Party.
If we can't call Xi's China fascist, then the word surely has such narrow applicability that it can't even describe Hitler and Franco, and must only refer specifically to Mussolini's National Fascist Party.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
So the revolution didn't just die... it was murdered?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Depends how broad you want to be with your usage, but it has been picking up elements of fascism piece by piece since (arguably) 1979.
If it hasn't crossed the line of what we could sensibly call fascism, it's definitely close and moving ever closer.
NoXion 's point is quite persuasive. I don't get a sense of a real unifying purpose that the people are really engaged with. Racism is not a motivating force in any organised sense for the general population (though there is plenty enough of it). When you need violence doing in China, it's not at the behest of a charismatic leader but seems to involve paying people, much as with any corrupt country. Even their current genocide attempt has more of the look of technocracy in the aid of the Belt and Road project more than a commitment to ideological ethnic cleansing.
Also, their expansionism so far seems chiefly a matter of economic resource-gathering of the kind that you might expect of many a fast-developing country. That and an aspiration to correct what they see as one particular historical wrong.
More of muddy point this, but while I've never been there, I have colleagues in China who I talk with regularly about their life, what they get up to etc. It doesn't have the 'feel' of speaking to people who live under fascism. To be fair, I mostly have Nazism in mind when I say that.
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
based on your wide experience of same
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Well, I don't think your pedantry fulfils all of the tenets of fascism.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
I do think there is a potential for Han chauvinism to grow into outright Han supremacy, assuming that the ongoing cultural genocide of the Uighurs isn't a sign that it's already arrived. I'm not so sure that you can so easily untangle the resource acquisition activity from the ideological justifications of its brutalities. The ideological roots of modern racism are at least partially grounded in justifications for the slave trade.
Yossarian
⏭️
My friends in Hong Kong - the Chinese ones who can't readily move to another country, anyway - have gone from regularly, openly, and enthusiastically criticising the government on social media to not saying anything remotely political or even 'liking' any political posts, though they still post about other aspects of their lives, which isn't a million miles away from what I imagine it must have been like communicating with people who lived under fascist regimes in the 1930s.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
It would be really interesting to see what (very) recent Chinese emigrants think on this point.
You can have an authoritarian dictatorship without it being specifically fascist. Which China has been for many years.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Agree on first point, unsure whether second and third points are imputing something in my post that I didn't mean.
Will have another look and ponder later.
edit: Ok, I think I see what you mean. And (assuming I understand), I don't agree. China's motivation in gathering resources in Africa is the resources themselves. It's not gathering them in an effort to extinguish a particular people. Even the Uyghur business is down to them being in the way and that area needing tight control for their future trade plans.
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Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
It's not just the Uighurs. In Tibet, Tibetan university grauduates can't find employment because all of the public sector jobs go to Han Chinese. Testing for jobs and educational admission is now in Han, rather than Tibetan, essentially leaving Tibetans out of the pool of candidates in a country where they're still the vast majority of the population. That looks a lot like the literacy tests that the American south used to keep African Americans from voting.
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Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
I sincerely hope you are right. My worry, btw, isn't that the Chinese are rising, it's that the US is sinking under the weight of our own political and corporate class.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
I can believe that tests and examinations would all be in Mandarin, although I would have thought that the CPC would make teaching Mandarin in Tibetan schools compulsory, as part of the overall assimilation process.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
and you'd be right Tibetan Language Diminished as Schools Switch to Mandarin
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
Its articles like this that I have been seeing. This particular one is from the Tibetan point of view, but I've seen a broad array of sources report that Tibetan just don't stand a chance in being hired to public sector jobs:
Despite assurances of employment, Tibetan graduates are unable to find job.
With Han Chinese saturating the labor market and public-sector jobs mostly out of reach, Tibetan university graduates are finding it difficult to find work in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. Authorities' promises to develop more opportunities for Tibetan graduates have gone unfulfilled in recent years.
www.tibetanjournal.com
It should be noted that Han Chinese are about 9 percent of the population of Tibet.
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8ball
Decolonise colons!
I think the media class can be added to that weight.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
interesting talk next week:
Dear colleagues,
Please join us in conversation with anthropologist Dr. Darren Byler to discuss his book In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony.
Wednesday 15 December | 5pm CET (4pm GMT)
For registration: Book Talk with Darren Byler
The event is hosted by The Anthropology of Surveillance Network (ANSUR) in collaboration with the Uyghur Colloquium at Palacký University Olomouc, as part of our ANSUR Network quarterly event series, Under Surveillance.
Follow ANSUR on Twitter here.
Dear colleagues,
Please join us in conversation with anthropologist Dr. Darren Byler to discuss his book In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony.
Wednesday 15 December | 5pm CET (4pm GMT)
For registration: Book Talk with Darren Byler
The event is hosted by The Anthropology of Surveillance Network (ANSUR) in collaboration with the Uyghur Colloquium at Palacký University Olomouc, as part of our ANSUR Network quarterly event series, Under Surveillance.
Follow ANSUR on Twitter here.
Its articles like this that I have been seeing. This particular one is from the Tibetan point of view, but I've seen a broad array of sources report that Tibetan just don't stand a chance in being hired to public sector jobs:
Despite assurances of employment, Tibetan graduates are unable to find job.
With Han Chinese saturating the labor market and public-sector jobs mostly out of reach, Tibetan university graduates are finding it difficult to find work in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. Authorities' promises to develop more opportunities for Tibetan graduates have gone unfulfilled in recent years.
It should be noted that Han Chinese are about 9 percent of the population of Tibet.
Just want to share my personal experiences with Tibetans in China.
There is a Tibetan Quarter in Chengdu. I first visited there in 2010 and it seemed OK, lots of Tibetan monks walking around and Tibetan restaurants, shops selling incense and so on. It even seemed to be promoted as a tourist attraction, and was advertised on a tourist map of Chengdu for sale in our hostel.
I went back there several times over 2015-2016. None of the hostels recommended it as a tourist attraction anymore, despite it being adjacent to Jinli Jie and Dufu's Cottage, two of the most popular attractions, so there's no way I would have found it without my prior knowledge from the hostel advertising it in 2010. I assume police told places to stop advertising it to tourists at some point. There also seemed to be a tension that I'd never noticed before. There were several armoured police cars on the street, and we were followed by some begging Tibetan children. We went into a Tibetan restaurant, and while it is quite normal for foreigners in small family restaurants to attract attention and surprise (people peeking at you from the kitchen etc and whispering), the Han Chinese girlfriend of my travel buddy seemed to attract just as much curiosity and surprise as we two foreigners. She commented to us, "is China like this for you guys everyday?"
Also in Chengdu, there is a housing complex near the train station where there are a lot of B&Bs and Guesthouses. I went to Chengdu once with some colleagues and they booked up accommodation for us inside this housing complex. However when we arrived, the security guard at the entrance to the complex refused us entry as we were foreigners. My colleagues told me is because they don't have a license to take foreigners or something, and can't register foreign passports.
However another time when I returned, my Chinese companion again booked accommodation in that same complex. However this time the owner of the B&B came to meet us outside the complex. She was unaware I could understand Chinese and explained that both foreigners and ethnic minorities are not allowed in the complex because they are considered to cause trouble. I had to hide in the back of her little van to smuggle me past the security into the housing complex to get to her guesthouse. So it wasn't anything to do with licenses at all, they were just racists, and also the same thing would apparently happen to ethnic minorities such as Tibetans. I have heard similar stories of Uyghurs being unable to find a single hotel to stay at in Beijing (ethnicity is written on all Chinese ID cards) for instance, and ending up spending the night on the streets or in a 24hr Internet cafe.
I haven't been to Tibet but I have visited rural parts of Western Sichuan which are traditionally populated by Tibetans, the area around the town of Kangding. Foreigners are/were allowed to visit the area around Kangding. Other regions were closed to foreigners. On the way there you pass through a checkpoint and people come on to check the IDs of all bus passengers, and there are numerous propaganda billboards about "unity of ethnicities."
The scenery in Kangding was beautiful, the town is a relatively small linear settlement surrounded by snowcapped mountains and built around river rapids, which you can hear constantly at any location in the town, giving it a rather dramatic feel. However, almost the entire town is Han, and the Tibetans all lived in the surrounding rural areas. There was a Tibetan monastery in the town, with a military police base directly overlooking it and there was an outpost for an armoured car just down the road. Inside the monastery, pride of place was given to a large mural showing Qing era officials visiting the monastery, apparently a reminder that it is historic Chinese territory.
The only Tibetans we saw in the town, aside from in the monastery, were people around the bus station trying to pick up passengers for "black car" unregistered taxi rides out to scenic spots.
We went out away from the town and visited a Tibetan village with a monastery. Something that struck me was how I would be greeted with friendliness and smiles when the Tibetans saw me alone, but if they saw me with my Chinese companion there'd be noticeably more wariness.
We later stayed in a B&B/Guesthouse deeper in the mountains in a scenic area. I chatted to the owner for some time, an attractive young Han Chinese woman from Shanghai. She wanted to know why we foreigners were so interested in Tibetan culture which was so backwards and uncivilised, when there are so many better things in Shanghai. My impression is that she felt annoyed that foreigners seemed more fascinated by Tibetan culture than the materially more prosperous Han Chinese culture. It did make me wonder what she was doing out there in the Tibetan regions if she had such contempt for them.
At the time, the area around nearby Larung Gar Buddhist Academy was closed to foreigners. In China I generally would play a Louis Theroux-esque role of ignorant confused foreigner to ask questions about sensitive issues and pretended not to know why we couldn't go there. She told me it was for safety, as it was very dangerous. She said it was a horrible ghetto, like barrios in Brazil, and too dangerous for foreigners. She seemed to think it was insanely chaotic because many people there didn't even have ID cards.
Larung Gar was founded in 1980, developing from a Buddhist mountain retreat established secretly in an uninhabited valley during the Cultural Revolution. Over the years it grew into a fairly large settlement as local Tibetans moved there.
Here is a photo of Larung Gar:
I later learned that while I was in Kangding, Larung Gar was in the process of being demolished. Religious festivals were cancelled, thousands of homes destroyed, and 1000 nuns and monks had been arrested and sent to re-education camps.
Shortly after, at least one Tibetan farmer in the district I was visiting had set himself on fire in protest.
That is the extent of my limited firsthand experience with Tibetans in China.
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planetgeli
There's no future in England's dreaming
A friend told me today he's teaching Chinese students from Wuhan. He's been told they have a 'minder' but hasn't been told who it is!
8ball
Decolonise colons!
The one with the earpiece?
JimW
支那暗杀团
XI Jinping made a speech on religion the other day where he specifically called for the "Sinicisation" of religion again and he's said it about Tibetan Buddhism speaking there last year and about Islam when in Xinjiang; basically, they can't tolerate any sort of organisation that isn't a belt feeder to the centre, hence the break with the Vatican for Catholics. Fits with the corporatism Unger and Chan described some time ago and I think that's still where we are personally, IIRC fascism was also seen as a version of corporatism and I prefer that lens rather than the other way, largely because the ethnic/nationalist thing is cultural rather than blood and soil, but it's literally a bit academic.
Mongolians haven't got off either despite being a bit of a "model minority" - been a shift there to Mandarin medium primary education which caused a social media storm that eventually got quashed.
Mongolians haven't got off either despite being a bit of a "model minority" - been a shift there to Mandarin medium primary education which caused a social media storm that eventually got quashed.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Does that mean something like a sanctioned version of "Islam with Chinese Characteristics"?
JimW
支那暗杀团
Any formal organisation rolling over and delivering an ethnically coloured version of Party messages on loving the country and moral behaviour first and foremost rather than whatever centuries old inquiry into the human condition and spiritual matters they used to waste their time on
So we'll have sufi masters and tulku lineage holders taking their cue from dullard functionaries of a formally atheist ruling party. Should be inspiring.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Any formal organisation rolling over and delivering an ethnically coloured version of Party messages on loving the country and moral behaviour first and foremost rather than whatever centuries old inquiry into the human condition and spiritual matters they used to waste their time on
So we'll have sufi masters and tulku lineage holders taking their cue from dullard functionaries of a formally atheist ruling party. Should be inspiring.
Interesting times ahead...
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Just want to share my personal experiences with Tibetans in China.
There is a Tibetan Quarter in Chengdu. I first visited there in 2010 and it seemed OK, lots of Tibetan monks walking around and Tibetan restaurants, shops selling incense and so on. It even seemed to be promoted as a tourist attraction, and was advertised on a tourist map of Chengdu for sale in our hostel.
I went back there several times over 2015-2016. None of the hostels recommended it as a tourist attraction anymore, despite it being adjacent to Jinli Jie and Dufu's Cottage, two of the most popular attractions, so there's no way I would have found it without my prior knowledge from the hostel advertising it in 2010. I assume police told places to stop advertising it to tourists at some point. There also seemed to be a tension that I'd never noticed before. There were several armoured police cars on the street, and we were followed by some begging Tibetan children. We went into a Tibetan restaurant, and while it is quite normal for foreigners in small family restaurants to attract attention and surprise (people peeking at you from the kitchen etc and whispering), the Han Chinese girlfriend of my travel buddy seemed to attract just as much curiosity and surprise as we two foreigners. She commented to us, "is China like this for you guys everyday?"
Also in Chengdu, there is a housing complex near the train station where there are a lot of B&Bs and Guesthouses. I went to Chengdu once with some colleagues and they booked up accommodation for us inside this housing complex. However when we arrived, the security guard at the entrance to the complex refused us entry as we were foreigners. My colleagues told me is because they don't have a license to take foreigners or something, and can't register foreign passports.
However another time when I returned, my Chinese companion again booked accommodation in that same complex. However this time the owner of the B&B came to meet us outside the complex. She was unaware I could understand Chinese and explained that both foreigners and ethnic minorities are not allowed in the complex because they are considered to cause trouble. I had to hide in the back of her little van to smuggle me past the security into the housing complex to get to her guesthouse. So it wasn't anything to do with licenses at all, they were just racists, and also the same thing would apparently happen to ethnic minorities such as Tibetans. I have heard similar stories of Uyghurs being unable to find a single hotel to stay at in Beijing (ethnicity is written on all Chinese ID cards) for instance, and ending up spending the night on the streets or in a 24hr Internet cafe.
I haven't been to Tibet but I have visited rural parts of Western Sichuan which are traditionally populated by Tibetans, the area around the town of Kangding. Foreigners are/were allowed to visit the area around Kangding. Other regions were closed to foreigners. On the way there you pass through a checkpoint and people come on to check the IDs of all bus passengers, and there are numerous propaganda billboards about "unity of ethnicities."
The scenery in Kangding was beautiful, the town is a relatively small linear settlement surrounded by snowcapped mountains and built around river rapids, which you can hear constantly at any location in the town, giving it a rather dramatic feel. However, almost the entire town is Han, and the Tibetans all lived in the surrounding rural areas. There was a Tibetan monastery in the town, with a military police base directly overlooking it and there was an outpost for an armoured car just down the road. Inside the monastery, pride of place was given to a large mural showing Qing era officials visiting the monastery, apparently a reminder that it is historic Chinese territory.
The only Tibetans we saw in the town, aside from in the monastery, were people around the bus station trying to pick up passengers for "black car" unregistered taxi rides out to scenic spots.
We went out away from the town and visited a Tibetan village with a monastery. Something that struck me was how I would be greeted with friendliness and smiles when the Tibetans saw me alone, but if they saw me with my Chinese companion there'd be noticeably more wariness.
We later stayed in a B&B/Guesthouse deeper in the mountains in a scenic area. I chatted to the owner for some time, an attractive young Han Chinese woman from Shanghai. She wanted to know why we foreigners were so interested in Tibetan culture which was so backwards and uncivilised, when there are so many better things in Shanghai. My impression is that she felt annoyed that foreigners seemed more fascinated by Tibetan culture than the materially more prosperous Han Chinese culture. It did make me wonder what she was doing out there in the Tibetan regions if she had such contempt for them.
At the time, the area around nearby Larung Gar Buddhist Academy was closed to foreigners. In China I generally would play a Louis Theroux-esque role of ignorant confused foreigner to ask questions about sensitive issues and pretended not to know why we couldn't go there. She told me it was for safety, as it was very dangerous. She said it was a horrible ghetto, like barrios in Brazil, and too dangerous for foreigners. She seemed to think it was insanely chaotic because many people there didn't even have ID cards.
Larung Gar was founded in 1980, developing from a Buddhist mountain retreat established secretly in an uninhabited valley during the Cultural Revolution. Over the years it grew into a fairly large settlement as local Tibetans moved there.
Here is a photo of Larung Gar:
I later learned that while I was in Kangding, Larung Gar was in the process of being demolished. Religious festivals were cancelled, thousands of homes destroyed, and 1000 nuns and monks had been arrested and sent to re-education camps.
Shortly after, at least one Tibetan farmer in the district I was visiting had set himself on fire in protest.
That is the extent of my limited firsthand experience with Tibetans in China.
Fascinating and sad. Thanks for posting it.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Former Urbanite smashes centrist reactionary “comedy”:
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