China and stuff

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As far as protesting the company: the company -- or should I say "company" -- is state-owned (isn't everything in China?) so protesting the "company" would be protesting the government. And we all know what happens to Chinese citizens who protest the government.

The great irony is that China is supposedly a communist nation -- a worker's paradise where the evils of capitalism don't exist. A country where evil corporations don't suppress the rights of their workers, don't get away with polluting the environment and exploiting the local populace. Hmm... could it be China is "communist" in name only? Could it be that "communism" is only used as a means of keeping the population under the yoke of the government over there?

 

Crackdown of a few hundred associated with a CULT (supported by the west), or risk internal rioting and civil war where a few hundred thousand could be killed?

 

Sir Fink: China is sometimes called 'state capitalist' - in the sense that there is only really one corporation, and that's the state.

Tassadar: Er, what? A 'cult' is just a religion that you don't like. The 'cult' that I'm refering to are promoting nonviolence, morality, etc. Yeah, I'm seeing plenty of rioting from this...

On the other hand - if there were riots I'd be quite glad to see it. Sometimes violence is what makes changes, and in this case I could only view change as a good thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong

 

Hey, but christianity was just one of those cults promoting nonviolence, morality etc. and look where it got the christians.

Of course the violence part may have come to the scene after christianity was promoted as the main religion of the Roman empire...

In any way war, rape and torture commited with "God on our side" is extremely bad commercial for christians, and who's to claim that these people wouldn't be devout in their faith.

For all that we know, and it might be very little, the chinese are doing pretty well as anything claiming to be a communist nation. Of course we should be concerned about the chinese, or anybody polluting rivers and whatnot. But can anyone do anything about it? Moreover: wouldn't doing something about it be just too costly by all measures?

 

On the surface. There were a lot of underground movements associated with this. Not good.

Ehh... maybe it's a good thing you're not running a country, aye?

 

just like another big country I know

 

Yes, but we're America; we have a God-given mandate to flex our military muscle.

China does not.

 

Ichor: The thing about Christianity is that it's never really (or at least - only a small minority has) practiced its pacifist principles, these people seem to. Also it should be noted that registered Christian groups aren't suppressed in China despite this history, so it seems the government's fear isn't based on that they might be violent or something. Christians have proven that they can be violent, these 'cults' are doing well to prove their nonviolence.

Not that Christianity has much to do with this discussion anyway...


Tassadar: I'm curious - what's this about underground movements? I've visited several sites now (one at least of which I'm pretty sure is unbiased - religioustolerance.org) and none of them has mentioned anything of the sort.

To quote from Religious Tolerance:

I really can't see the danger of this.

And you're probably not familiar with my political beliefs - but I assure you, I have no wish to rule any country. 'The government is both unnecessary and harmful'.
Riots have been proven to be a very powerful tool for change - note, say, the Haymarket Riots, or even the riots in France recently. While I don't support a lot of what happened in it, it's clear that it worked seeing the new plans which the French government is bringing out.

Unless you're a pacifist - you have no leg to stand on here - how far can you be pushed until it's justified to push back?

To other peoples: Yeah, America sucks too - but there are plenty of America sucks threads - can't we have just one that's devoted to China bashing?

 

The christianity thing was only serving as a reference to similar situations, since christianity was a pacifistic cult in it's early phases and it was not approved by the Roman government at the beginning.

A similar kind of reference might be India's nonviolently achieved independence, Gandhi's ideals and the situation between India and Pakistan; hindus and muslims, soon after India's Home Rule.

My point was, that no matter how much an ideology would start as non-violent, it will soon enough become too large a movement, so that nonviolence could be factually possible and unless the violent elements are suppressed or assimilated into the ideology in some manner, the violence will become uncontrolled.

As long as pacifistic movements will stay in the minority, they remain pacifistic. So if Falun Gong will gain more followers, there will become a point when it will lose its pacifism.

One reason for this might be that as a minority movement it has no power to overthrow anything, and as such it has no value as a tool for anyone willing to use it in such manner. By keeping such cults as minorities, or by trying to control them in some manner, the Chinese government is trying to make sure that no upheaval will start.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4491026.stm

Report on the continued use of torture in China.