COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

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Generation-X
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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Generation-X »

Politics is best for constructive purposes imho. Otherwise, it's a wasteland, humanity at its worst.

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Alphaville
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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Alphaville »

my contention is that at this point we are using china as an excuse and a distraction.

everybody knows that the chinese government suppressed information, punished whistleblowers, and sacrificed its own people to keep up appearances, as authoritarian governments do.

i am however not a chinese citizen, and do not have the power to influence their government.

as for how to influence their government, i have already expressed myself in this thread, i think it’s more effective to do so through engagement and leadership rather than retrenchment.

as for the excuse and distraction i mentioned above:

the chinese government suppressed information, our government discounted critical information and also spread misinformation.

the chinese government punished whistleblowers, our government discredits and dismisses whistleblowers.

the chinese government lacks accountability, our government is dismantling the mechanisms of government accountability.

while the chinese government is worse than ours, ours is heading in their same direction, and this direction is something we can actually do something about and correct, so that our government can deal more effectively with theirs.

“my clown has a bigger nose than your clown” is not how we’re going to win this one.

Jason

Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Jason »

Is the Chinese government being scapegoated. Yes. Is the Chinese government's role in this of concern. Yes. Rinse, wash repeat for US government.

Can I do anything to change the Chinese government? Not in a material sense, but trying to understand it helps me understand the situation better. Can I do anything to change the US government. Yes, and knowing what's going on geo-politically will inform what I can do. That's where I find the conversation relevant and how I impute meaning into "it came from China." Yes, it's nature's bat. But it certainly didn't fly out of my asshole.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Alphaville »

Jason wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 12:15 pm
But it certainly didn't fly out of my asshole.
i keep hearing conflicting reports about oral-fecal transmission

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Generation-X »

As if 2020 couldn’t get any more cursed, NASA scientists looking back through decades-old data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft have discovered a mysterious gas escaping from Uranus.

The data showed some mysterious force sucking the atmosphere straight out of the planet and into space.

Highly detailed and scientific NASA research can confirm that something massive is coming out of Uranus.

https://happymag.tv/uranus-has-started- ... s-confirm/


Clearly, our solar system has bigger problems than China at the moment - NASA seems confident about the transmission.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by fiby41 »

@horsewoman the link posted by @sky also said that during WW1 the participants were underreporting numbers so as not to reduce morale. Spain which was neutral had a free press which was reporting actual higher numbers without censorship.

As for semantics, causal form of verbs are generated from regular forms per 1.3.16.
Extreme use case is distinguishing between who was the murderer and who abetted the murder.
Batshit will take nominative singular case
If you mean the Chinese government, China will take accusative singular or
accusative plural if you mean Chinese people
Nature feminine gender genitive singular
prasar to spread/diffuse (on one's own accord)
prasaaraya to be spread intentionally/be facilitated in the spreading
Either of the verb will take same number as the number of China due to subject verb agreement.

Jason

Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Jason »

Generation-X wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 1:48 pm
NASA scientists looking back through decades-old data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft have discovered a mysterious gas escaping from Uranus.
Question for the scientists in the room: when disseminating such reports, is it a cultural assumption that one must keep a straight face throughout the process? Because if this news posed an immanent threat to life throughout the known universe and I'm the one whose job it is to run to some buzz cut, square headed five star General holding court in a situation room, you'd be better off sending a fourth grader on a Snickers high because I'm completely losing it before "escaping."

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by jacob »

Probably more a question for the journalists working for a website called happymag :lol:

Ionized gases (plasma) like to fall down under angular momentum conservation (typically along the equator) until the magnetic field gets strong enough to dominate. This shoots the plasma out along the field lines. Typically the magnetic field is more or less parallel to the axis for most planets, except Uranus which is a special misaligned case. If the plasmoid is flipped around fast enough it can reach escape velocity. The magnetic field lines will then close up (look like a blob). This is nothing unusual. I spent a couple of years calculating this as a postdoc for white dwarf stars. I never saw any five star Generals at any on the conferences. Uranus (I'm even sufficiently trained to say this without snickering. Also "black hole" and "Big Bang".) is a gas planet and thus has a lot of gas left to lose. A scientist would prob. classify this as "interesting" and worth a grant application. Maybe some grad student can turn it into a thesis.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by white belt »

I will attempt to steer this back towards the topic at hand.

thrifty++ wrote:However how do you champion your issues without boycotting?
I think personal boycotting is an option for the individual, and is probably the thing you can do that is easiest to implement, since it does not require involvement from any other parties. Luckily a low consumption lifestyle like ERE already means you can minimize the support of foreign regimes you disapprove of since your happiness is not tied to buying things like the average consumer. In practice, the biggest expense for most folks on here are likely housing, transportation, food, and health insurance. All of those should be relatively easy to cut ties to China, with the exception of maybe appliances in a rental home and components of automobiles (it's my understanding that on complex machines, components come from all over the world). I think electronics will be the trickiest products to fully disentangle from one country.

Now I will caution that boycotting Chinese products at the individual level or boycotting Chinese products at a national level through sanctions might not have the desired effect. It's not clear that economic sanctions lead to regime change (source):
Dmitri Trenin wrote: The outcome of these geo-economic campaigns is not a zero-sum game. The stronger economy backed by other forms of power can incur more damage on the target country than it will sustain in return, but it does not always alter the political behaviour of the government to be “punished”. Sometimes sanctions can make that behaviour even more problematic. Ironically, the true winner may be a third party that jumps into the opening: European countries in the initial phases of US-Iran sanctions; China in the case of current Western sanctions against Russia; Russia in the case of the post-Tiananmen Western weapons ban on China; Turkey in the situation when EU pressure made Russia abandon its South Stream gas pipeline project.

Politically, sanctions are most effective against friends and allies; in the case of adversaries, they can stiffen their resolve – at least in the short term. The sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 during the crisis over Ukraine have contributed not just to a surge in Vladimir Putin’s popularity but, more importantly, to the growth of Russian patriotism and nationalism. In moments of bravado, the Kremlin even hopes that a long period of sanctions can guarantee political stability in the country for many years (although the downturn in the Russian economy might have the opposite effect).

Whether or not they achieve their objectives, sanctions have great economic impact on target countries: their technological development slows down and their populations grow poorer. This breeds popular resentment, to be sure, but “regime change” is not always the outcome. More liberal regimes, like Slobodan Milosevic’s in Serbia, may be swept away, but the harsher ones, like Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq, cannot be toppled from the inside. Western-headquartered multinational corporations, even the presumably stronger ones, lose their markets.
This begets the question, who will be the 3rd parties that benefit from the escalating US-China trade war? On this thread, some have suggested other countries in South East Asia while others have suggested Mexico.

At the moment I haven't decided to boycott any Chinese goods. The issues I highlighted earlier in the thread are certainly important, but I'm the type to use the ongoing events as a springboard to further study topics that I don't understand. For example, due to COVID19 I finally have cracked open the McConnell Economics textbook that had been sitting on my shelf for months because I wanted to better understand the economic implications of the virus and associated measures. If you want to better understand the threat of China, then I would recommend studying more on the subject. I think there's a Sun Tzu quote out there about knowing the enemy (but wait he's Chinese?!?). This could also lead you to further studying international relations and international economics.

Here are a few resources I recommend to better understand China:
-SupChina is a great site for reporting on contemporary China and I've already recommended the Sinica podcast as one of the best podcasts on contemporary China
-To Live (1994) is one of the most widely regarded films that shows the arc of China in the mid-late 20th century. I highly recommend this movie because it will provide some context to modern events.
-Here is a compilation of the best books about China from the NYT Book Review. I've read a few of Peter Hessler's books and I highly recommend them to provide some other perspectives on China (they are written more in a memoir format rather than as academic texts).

I'm also a huge fan of engagement from both an international relations perspective but also from the individual perspective. I found engagement very personally rewarding but that may be because I committed thousands of hours to studying Mandarin, interacting with Chinese people, living in the region, etc. Maybe I'm biased. As is the case with Mount Stupid, the more I learned the less certain I felt about what to do about complex issues.

One other thing I will note is that some on here seem to treat Taiwan and China as one in the same for the purpose of boycotting. That's a complex issue and you can spend years studying Cross-Strait Relations. I'll give my two cents on the subject based on talking to hundreds of Taiwanese and (mainland) Chinese people along with living in both regions. Taiwan is culturally close to China, however its modern society has a lot more similarities to South Korea or Japan. It has a representative democracy, freedom of speech, and a capitalist economy. It also just looks and feels much more clean and developed than mainland China. The CCP regime does not control Taiwan at the moment, although it would very much like to someday. In my experience a lot of the younger people have a strong sense of national identity with Taiwan and the Taiwanese independence movement has been gaining traction.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by fiby41 »

their technological development slows down and their populations grow poorer.
On yesterday's date 46 years ago the 'Laughing Buddha' was dropped.
One of the reason given for not selling supercomputer to India was it could be used for developing nuclear weapons.
In 1998 the Buddha laughed again anyway.
More sanctions followed yet domestic household savings jumped from 19% to 30%.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Alphaville »

ZAFCorrection wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 11:06 am
a PC way
Asian American doctors and nurses are fighting racism and the coronavirus

Across the country, Asian Americans have reported a sharp increase in verbal abuse and physical attacks

By
Tracy Jan
May 19, 2020 at 3:19 p.m. MDT

Lucy Li tries not to let fear dictate her interactions with patients as she makes the rounds in the covid-19 intensive care unit. But the anesthesiology resident at Massachusetts General Hospital cannot erase the memory of what happened after work at the start of the pandemic.

A man followed the Chinese American doctor from the Boston hospital, spewing a profanity-laced racist tirade as she walked to the subway. “Why are you Chinese people killing everyone?” Li recalled the man shouting. “What is wrong with you? Why the f--- are you killing us?”
full article continues here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... imination/

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by slowtraveler »

There was a lot of propaganda on this but travelling with an Asian woman has shown me absolutely 0 racism. None of my Asian friends reported it and the beauty is that in SF, a group of veterans gathered to patrol for racism but found none.

Meanwhile, in prc, Africans are getting forcibly evicted from their homes to quarantine in expensive hotel even after they test negative and have been quarantined for the duration.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/05/chi ... t-africans

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Alphaville »

slowtraveler wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 8:17 am
travelling with an Asian woman has shown me absolutely 0 racism. [...]in SF, a group of veterans gathered to patrol for racism but found none.
i’m glad to hear that your lady is safe, but latin american racism is different from usa racism because that part of the continent did not have segregation, but had intermarriage instead.

hence there is little history of “let’s eradicate racial group (x)” because that would have meant mass suicide.

exclude the xix century indian wars in chile and argentina which were “inspired” (terrible word choice there) by usa policy towards native tribes, and because the people in the more remote regions had remained unconquered, and the availability of repeating firearms changed that in a horrible way.

so, in latin america racism works more towards the maintenance of social status, where “yes sir how can i help you” turns into “hey buddy the help’s entrance is at the back,” not a lynching.

the caribbean region in particular, being a trading hub for centuries, has been a true melting pot of africans, natives who survived the plagues, chines immigrants, arabs, dutch and indonesian pirates, french colonists, you name it. e.g., look at the area’s writers: gabriel garcía márquez had arab ancestors, severo sarduy was a chinese cuban, alejo carpentier had a french last name, etc.

besides, native people, having crossed the behring strait, are genetically closer to asians than any other group, and there are some physical similarities. there’s the famous case of an ethnically japanese man running for president in peru who received a large portion of the popular vote because people felt there finally was someone running for the highest office that looked like them- especially when he wore traditional garb

Image

so, this is all to say you’re in a different sociohistorical context.

and then good luck picking on the asian contingent in san francisco. i’ve heard different from people like, say, georgia. and then the article is linked there for your perusal.



anyway, the reason i posted the article is because a fundamental role of a social body is to keep the peace among its members. rhetoric goes a long way towards keeping the peace, especially when there is a segregationist sector of the american public who can’t or doesn’t want to distinguish between “the prc” and anyone else featuring an epicanthic fold.
Last edited by Alphaville on Wed May 20, 2020 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by slowtraveler »

Some similarities? I was told I look like a Thai with a big nose in Thailand. I have friends who are Latin but look very East Asian. More than a little.

A Japanese Peruvian for president in Peru, I never knew.

I also read that Native Americans were a unique mix of different Asian groups cross the Bering Strait. Always fascinating to learn about that story and your stories regarding Latin America. Post them all day on my thread, seriously, I'll read it all.

I agree that it's tragic. Especially considering how wildly different cultures are in Taiwan, Hong Kong, coastal prc, inner prc, Mongolia, and Tibet. All places in some way tied to the China storyline but they are their own worlds in other ways. Look at Uighur food Vs Beijing food for a clear example. I'd be very comfortable living in Taiwan for a few years, it's actually an intention of mine, but not in Beijing. I hear Taiwan is the warmest culture in East Asia towards foreigners and all of my friends who went there loved it. It'd be a great place to learn Mandarin and experience a new world.

The prc government is currently more racist but this oscillates. From what I understood, they were much more welcoming 15 years ago. It's just the government, but the government tries playing to Western pc culture but trying to equate the whole country as the ccp rather than separating government from the people. The Chinese people are the biggest victims here.

It seems we agree on the majority of our perspective, albeit, we approach from different angles.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Alphaville »

yeah, he won actually, ruled for something like a decade, and did some good and some terrible things, and after he was ousted and later prosecuted for human rights abuses he went into exile in japan. then he got extradited from chile? i don’t know every detail. his birth certificate was the subject of the original birther conspiracy btw, although i don’t know much about it tbh, but you can do a search for it.

and yes, there were several waves across the strait, some ancient and some recent, and going both directions. e.g. you can find dené-yeniseians spanning from central siberia to texas. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dené–Yeni ... nd_Na-Dene

anyway, i’m more into the satisfaction of constructive dialogue than into agreement per se, and constructive dialogue seems to require a) tact, and b) understanding and acceptance of complexity, so i appreciate the display of both traits on your part.

also, great posts from white belt, if i might mention them here.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Jean »

@jacob
I understand what your goal is. But China and the "chinese people" aren't a player in the soccer game that this discussion is. They are a part of the field. I agree that we should avoid using insulting clichee so that a chinese person would feel welcom to participate in the discussion, but I don't understand why "can y group of people maitain an acceptable standard of living without eradicating x group of people" , or "are x pursuing y's eradication" aren't valid questions?
Humans tend to group as the biggest number of people they can feel safe about having concordant goals with, and then treat outsider as a ressource (trade partner) or a threat. I feel like you are convinced that "entire humankind" is the ideal grouping to the point that you see any display of not sharing this position as "playing the man". Is that correct?

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by jacob »

@Jean - China and the Chinese people are part of the game in this discussion, not the field. We can certainly have a discussion about "x eradicating y" but this would then have to be a discussion about whether [eradication] is an acceptable rule of the game or not. What we can not have (on this forum) is the cheer leading style in which we talk about the other team being terrible for violating the rules as we think they should be while at the same time ignoring our own violations of the same rule. In that regard, I am convinced that the entire humankind need to play by the same rules.

This means that generally we don't get to say that China or some other country is a terrible country when we condone such behavior whenever we do it ourselves. I do understand the need for realpolitik---the soccer equivalent would be Neymar acting in the World Cup---but such should be openly acknowledged as part of the the game. E.g. we can talk about how US sanctions against China over the Uyghur situation is part of geopolitical maneuvering, but we can't say China is horrible w/o getting pushback for similar things the US has done in the past and is to some degree still engaged in.

I'm not convinced that the entire humankind is the ideal grouping. There can be several groups on the field but they need to be acknowledged as such groups as not as part of the field. (Perhaps something was lost in the translation.) Treating other humans (or any humans) as part of the field is what leads to dehumanization and ultimately violent conflict. As others have mentioned tact and acknowledgement of the complexities and similarities and differences go a long way towards preventing that. Rhetoric, memes, and other simplistic one-sided thinking tends towards closing the mind(s) and making things worse.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by jacob »

10+ years ago, I wrote about people's various aims for engaging in discussions http://earlyretirementextreme.com/simpl ... havio.html ... perhaps this helps explain it better or at least differently.

Some of the descriptions from that post haven't aged well. For example, I do think that "ignorance" is now a goal in some corners of the internet with troll farms, meme creators, and gaslighters deliberately trying to make people dumber. However, the "agreeing" goal very much reflects the "fanclub" goal, while the "winning" reflects the "hooligan" goal. The truth goal is about playing the game on the field which is where I try to moderate and steer this forum towards.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Jean »

China is not a member on this forum and will never be one. I thought you were talking about the forum, not the world, the world being a object of the discussion taking place on the forum.
I understand that you endgoal on this forum is truth. But what is the place that "rules that country should follow between themselves" has on your forum that makes it outside of the field of possible discussion.
Do you make a difference, regarding forum rules between those to sentences?:
-We y should eradicate x because this is in our (y's) interest as x's actions might lead to our eradication and we could still afford not taking the risk
-X should be eradicated because they are evil, and we'll do it because we are good.

Memes and other cheerleading are a way to bumb the moral within one group while demoralizing the other one, not a way to seek truth. Wether the meme says the truth or not isn't relevant, only that people seeing it believe that it's true. It's a way of playing the soccer game. From how you used the soccer analogy, it seems more like this forum is not a place were the soccer game is played, but a place were we discuss wether player follow the rules, how good they play the game, and how the weather affects the ball movement. This is very fine for me and exactly why I come to this forum. But then, I don't understand why it's not ok to say that x's best interest is to eradicate y.

I don't even think we should eradicate any group of people.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by ertyu »

Jean wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 12:49 pm
We y should eradicate x because this is in our (y's) interest as x's actions might lead to our eradication
sounds exactly like the wwii rationale did you not make it into art school by any chance? :lol:

i mean, seriously, jean, do you even hear yourself

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