These concerns also apply to China at least to a certain degree (or to a lesser degree from a Western centric perspective) and different emphasis.
The point is: whatever being asked for here is to advance a technology for the greater good of the society, and that's government's responsibility.
It has little to do with China or geopolitical tensions. At the end of day, everyone nation needs to choose the right path for their own. If they believe some other nations are threatening their own ideology, the should build defense or sometimes offenses to counter that.
In summary, this statement is about useless as a random chant of "communism is bad".
Kind of squirrely phrasing going on here. "If they believe some other nations are threatening their own ideology, the should build defense or sometimes offenses to counter that."
They "believe" their ideology is threatened--so it's okay to clamp down on their own citizens, representing over a billion human beings, censor and intercept all communications, edit out government atrocities and historical facts like Tienanmen square, and spy on every citizen on a profound and constant panopticon level? This isn't about western or eastern perspective. This kind of philosophy justifies the actions of any dictator or autocratic fascist. This whole obsession with a perceived national threat is the prod that pushes through all sorts of oppressive policies.
We in the west also have severe problems with this. The whole post-9/11 mentality has been all about yielding personal dignity and rights and basic privacy for the sake of assuaging some vague (and mostly imaginary) threat. We also are building a massive panopticon, we just aren't as far along as China is at the moment, and our machinations of totalitarianism are privatized instead of powered by the state. We should pay very close attention to what's going on in that culture, because we may need those lessons sooner than we think in our own future--even if they come in a slightly different form.
That relativism is preposterous. China's regime is one of the most repressive and overpowering in existence today, and its citizens some of the least free people in the world. You cannot trivialise this or chalk it up as "nations defending against believed threats", because then everything is okay (Hitler was only building defences against the Jews they believed to be a threat, etc.).
star-trek-fleet|7 years ago
The point is: whatever being asked for here is to advance a technology for the greater good of the society, and that's government's responsibility.
It has little to do with China or geopolitical tensions. At the end of day, everyone nation needs to choose the right path for their own. If they believe some other nations are threatening their own ideology, the should build defense or sometimes offenses to counter that.
In summary, this statement is about useless as a random chant of "communism is bad".
vertexFarm|7 years ago
They "believe" their ideology is threatened--so it's okay to clamp down on their own citizens, representing over a billion human beings, censor and intercept all communications, edit out government atrocities and historical facts like Tienanmen square, and spy on every citizen on a profound and constant panopticon level? This isn't about western or eastern perspective. This kind of philosophy justifies the actions of any dictator or autocratic fascist. This whole obsession with a perceived national threat is the prod that pushes through all sorts of oppressive policies.
We in the west also have severe problems with this. The whole post-9/11 mentality has been all about yielding personal dignity and rights and basic privacy for the sake of assuaging some vague (and mostly imaginary) threat. We also are building a massive panopticon, we just aren't as far along as China is at the moment, and our machinations of totalitarianism are privatized instead of powered by the state. We should pay very close attention to what's going on in that culture, because we may need those lessons sooner than we think in our own future--even if they come in a slightly different form.
andrepd|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
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