The China Problem

[LC]

Biggest concern would be that China tries to re- annex Taiwan. That’s where the US needs to draw a line. It is only a matter of time until they try. The political pressures airlines etc. sets already a precedent.

China is already meddling in Taiwan:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-china-taiwan-whistleblower-intelligence-australia-a9214671.html?utm_source=reddit.com

[ValuePadawan]

China was always going to have a problem in Xinjiang as it is culturally and ethnically different than the Han population in the east. They have had several terrorist attacks where Uighur muslim extremists attacked and killed people in the east. The one that really focused the minds of the CCP was one really close to home in Tiananmen Square (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/islamist-china-tiananmen-beijing-attack)

The CCP saw the islamic extremist threat growing and had a few options they actually decided to "emulate aspects of America’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks" (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html) but with additional measures such as labor camps where they are attempting to brainwash or "reeducate" the muslim identity out of the Uighurs and make them loyal to the government instead of their faith.

One of the reasons why stability is so important in Xinjiang is it is a major thoroughfare for the Belt and Road Initiative. If there was an Islamic separatist uprising that would hinder plans to develop infrastructure links to Eurasia and a heavy military presence would have to be brought in to quell an uprising.

Beijing is trying to preempt these problems with draconian measures to try to stamp out these issues before they turn into an all out guerilla war within China.

Also a large amount of oil and gas are in Xinjiang and if China ever had issues getting oil delivered through the first island chain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_island_chain) due to military conflict in the region they would need a stable environment to quickly develop those energy resources.

A way I imagined this was what if Washington state was predominantly Muslim while the rest of the US was not, and these Washington staters wanted independence and had orchestrated terrorist attacks on Capitol Hill. Add in that there was a lot of oil and gas under this state. Would the US do something like the Japanese internment camps again or just spy on everyone's phones and put video cameras on every block. Whatever the response would be I have an inkling human rights groups wouldn't be fans.

None of this excuses the horrible first hand accounts of forced sterilizations, torture, rape and murder. (https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-million-people-are-jailed-at-china-s-gulags-i-escaped-here-s-what-goes-on-inside-1.7994216) I'm just trying to provide the forces and pressures pushing what is happening and why the government has decided down this dark path.

Is what they are doing terrible? In my view absolutely. If they didn't do this would there have been more terrorist attacks, probably. Would there have been a Chechnya like war that killed many thousands of people, I don't know, counterfactuals are very hard to evaluate. What is apparent is Beijing felt it worth abusing a million of its own citizens and being an international pariah so clearly they thought the other path of letting this fester would deal worse results.

What are your thoughts? Do you think I've made a mistake in my evaluation? All criticism is welcome.

[stahleyp]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-xinjiang-muslims-labor.html

Inside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of Workers
The Communist Party wants to remold Xinjiang’s minorities into loyal blue-collar workers to supply Chinese factories with cheap labor.

lc, help me understand your issue here. I really don't understand. The way I see it, there are two ways to look at this:

1) Your worldview (atheism) is accurate. Morality is just an illusion and no greater moral law truly exists. Therefore, your atheist brethren are no more in the wrong (or right) than the religious minorities they are "employing". A government can do what it likes because it is the ultimate judge of an action.

2) There is a greater moral law that each of us should try to reach. In which case, things like real human rights can exist. In this case, governments are not allowed to do this to people (citizens or otherwise) since the value of the human is determined at a level higher than the government. If this is true, then atheism is an inaccurate worldview.

Do you see an alternative here?

[writser]

Do you see an alternative here?

Yes: morality doesn’t require superhuman beings.

Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of 'good' is nothing other than 'what God approves'. Plato refuted a similar claim more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot be the gods' approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes divine approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbors, torture would have been good and helping our neighbors bad. Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved of by God?

[stahleyp]

Do you see an alternative here?

Yes: morality doesn’t require superhuman beings.

Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of 'good' is nothing other than 'what God approves'. Plato refuted a similar claim more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot be the gods' approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes divine approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbors, torture would have been good and helping our neighbors bad. Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved of by God?

As far as with the "dilemma," I agree. Morality doesn't require superhuman beings. A non-illusory superior morality does though. Otherwise one thinking think that China's moral actions are "wrong" is nothing more than illusion.

Let's look further at the euthyphro dilemma and a discovery that wasn't made in Plato's time - evolution.

Most common points of view either credit God or evolution as the source of morality.

Let's start with God as a source. As your post points out, let's look further into that assertion that "God is good." Why can't feature of God be morality? For instance, "God is love" an old book says. Or ""Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone."  So if one does what is morally good, they are with God. If they go against what is morally good, it is against God. Therefore, we have a real version of superior morality. So it makes sense to go against your best interest, because there is a moral good more important than yourself (I can talk more about this if you'd like).

Next let's look at the evolution as the source of morality. If evolution is the source, a superior morality is simply an illusion. Ultimately, the same source of the atheist's morality is the same source as the theist's - both are simply a byproduct of evolution. The way lc's morality(brain) is structured and his environmental sources (growing up in the Judeo-Christian influenced West) are different than the atheistic influences of China. Neither is better or worse - just different. Much like folks in China have a different culture or set of manners than the folks here. "Sophisticated" folks might consider their culture or set of manners as superior, but that's really an illusion. There is no superior set of manners. Just like there is no superior version of morality. There is no real reason to think one has a "superior" morality.