ISTM that the PRC government takes the view that the Uighurs are Chinese residing in Chinese territory; therefore, there will be no mass departure from that territory making it look like a large number of Chinese are displeased with the government and thus the country. The government here has to show that there are millions of Chinese citizens quite happy living where they are under the current government. If that takes “reeducation camps”, well, then so be it.
Yeah, it sucks. But as another poster mentioned, the PRC is a nuclear power. Let’s not push them into showing they know how to use those things. Keep the issue at the diplomatic level and don’t start WWIII.
This sounds good, but there is no diplomatic method to get China to stop - at least no diplomatic method that the West is willing to use. Cut off all trade with China? It won’t happen - and even if it did, it might not stop the concentration camps. What are you proposing, in concrete terms?
We used to have some leverage when it came to trade to put pressure on China for it’s actions.
That’s all squandered now.
I don’t know that we have any leverage over China anymore that doesn’t harm or risk US interests more than them.
Lets say that the EU had a problem with us separating families of asylum seekers. What could they do about it?
That’s about the same situation where we are WRT China.
Unless it’s worth starting a war over, we can’t do anything. And I don’t know that a war would solve anything, just get lots of people killed and infrastructure destroyed on both sides.
Really? Seems to me that if we did have it we didn’t use it, and in fact we stepped pretty lightly around the CCP, catering to their whims and desires in our own policies. Right now we have a real opportunity to put pressure on the CCP with everything impacting them this year especially, but even now they aren’t exactly buckling to pressure, even while their system is on the verge of collapse. So, I’m a bit skeptical that we had this leverage in the past when they were in a MUCH stronger position.
Currently the CCP is hurting. Their food supplies are threatened with internal issues with the flood, their grain reserves are questionable due to systemic corruption in the folks supposedly stockpiling them, they have numerous trade wrangles with food supplying nations like Canada and Australia, their debt crisis is a cliff, the US is pressuring them on a lot of their technology initiatives, their Debt and Road…er, I mean Belt and Road…has hit a wall with a lot of the countries they loaned money too being close or already in default. Then there is the whole Corona Virus thingy. Then there is how countries have reacted to Hong Kong and to what’s come out about the Uighur’s. And then there is how unhappy their own people are with the party. Clearly, the CCP has bitten off more than it can chew, and it’s choking. So, I’m unsure of when you are thinking anyone had this sort of leverage over them in the past. They are wholly dependent on trade and running a trade surplus, and they have managed to piss off in an almost systematic way every major trade partner they have except for Germany…and I’ve even heard a few rumblings there, though not from the party in power. Nearly everyone else is on guard and putting increasing pressure on the CCP, and still they aren’t exactly caving to the pressure, though I’ve noticed that their wolf warrior types have backed off the heavy rhetoric lately.
True enough. But you don’t seem to realize that we never could.