Brother of Ling Jihua Reveals China's nuclear launch code and top secrets to US

[PanAsian]

...and those who think or act like that are bigots and racists. However that should not affect your identity and your affiliation. If you do, then you would've allowed them to dictate your live and give them what they wanted.
Racism and prejudice will always exist but we need to be better than that. Even at the height of racism like during WWII there are folks like the Tuskegee airmen and the 442nd Regiment who fought the Germans knowing full well that the very country they are fighting for are putting their fellow Japanese Americans in interment camps.

It's a moral testament of the sufferers of prejudice when they suck it up and do their full duty anyways, but that is exactly what should not be necessary if there was no prejudice against them in the first place. From a practical perspective that is a ripoff, it is akin to a societal hazing process which just like every hazing process does not necessarily lead to acceptance or equality at the end. Identities and affiliations are package deals, manmade, and malleable, sufferers of prejudice have the natural right to evaluate the situation for themselves and decide whether to try to change the external conditions of those identities and affiliations, or change their own identities and affiliations.

 

[PanAsian]

Based on what data?


Agreed. Ling is probably a traitor, just as Snowden is probably a traitor. I say probably in the legal sense, since they're innocent until proven guilty in the court of law. However, in the court of public opinion, both are traitors.


What a load of crap. If you're a US citizen, you're an American, regardless of your race or origin. Full stop. US already learned its shameful lessons from locking up Americans of Japanese ancestry in WW2, and it's extremely unlikely to repeat the mistake.

It may be to China's own advantage to study and then innovate for itself how America created the "melting pot" concept, grafted it into its DNA, because it's easier to keep the civilization-state unified if the Hans embrace the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and 52 other minorities China currently recognize as "Chinese."

Agreed with everything other than the last part.

First, the actual Chinese concept of "Wa" (often interchangeably used in Chinese with "Han" or "Tang", all translated in English as "Chinese") people is a socio- cultural affiliation "melting pot" concept that supersedes race or ethnicity. Just because the word "Han" is also used as an ethnic label does not negate the other meaning. Also just because the "melting pot" concept is new to the US doesn't mean it's new to others.

Second, it takes two to tango so the minorities have to embrace the majority as well. The PRC "Han"s as the majority group has the power and responsibility to accommodate others just as US "white"s have the power and responsibility to do the same, who says "Han"s don't embrace their minorities?

 

[Blackstone]

Agreed with everything other than the last part.

First, the actual Chinese concept of "Wa" (often interchangeably used in Chinese with "Han" or "Tang", all translated in English as "Chinese") people is a socio- cultural affiliation "melting pot" concept that supersedes race or ethnicity. Just because the word "Han" is also used as an ethnic label does not negate the other meaning. Also just because the "melting pot" concept is new to the US doesn't mean it's new to others.

Second, it takes two to tango so the minorities have to embrace the majority as well. The PRC "Han"s as the majority group has the power and responsibility to accommodate others just as US "white"s have the power and responsibility to do the same, who says "Han"s don't embrace their minorities?

Yes, it takes two to tango, problem is minorities in Tibet and Xinjing don't want to be part of the PRC, and given the choice both would most likely vote to leave.

 

[taxiya]

Let's look at how things are right now. About 92% of Mainland Chinese self-identifies as Han, not because they all took DNA tests, but based on culture and civilization affiliations. Some minorities get along with the Hans well, but others don't, and the ones that don't are, relatively speaking, few in number but large in geography. That's why if the ferry godmother waved her magic wand and instituted multiparty democracy today, there's a good chance Tibet and Xinjing would vote for independence, and if Tibet and Xinjing vote to leave today, we may have another Chinese civil war tomorrow, because the Hans probably wouldn't allow it.

I have no objections to your statement above, but I don't see the relation between your words above and my words you quoted.

Maybe you are suggesting China should continue the "melting" process be it in the name of Han (the old way) or in the name of Chinese civilization affiliation (the morden way), either way I agree that China should do it.

 

[weig2000]

Yes, it takes two to tango, problem is minorities in Tibet and Xinjing don't want to be part of the PRC, and given the choice both would most likely vote to leave.

Not everything is based on votes, nor should be. America South was not allowed to be voted out of the Union. In longer term, both South and North as well as the United States of America was in much better shape because of it.

A lot of people in the west, or those people not in the west but greatly influenced by the western thinking, turn to consciously or subconsciously think everything should be based on "votes" or "democracy," or simply "western/my way." The western way does not work for every nation or people; majority of Chinese do not think they can copy or model after the western or the US way even though they know there are a lot shortcomings with their own system, but it's an evolutionary process. Most American think their system is the best for the nation ("the best human mind can think of," "except for all other systems," blah blah...). And they're probably right. It's just that it doesn't mean its system is necessarily the best for other nation or people. It's not a very complex idea, but sometimes it's hard to get across.

 

[Blackstone]

Not everything is based on votes, nor should be. America South was not allowed to be voted out of the Union. In longer term, both South and North as well as the United States of America was in much better shape because of it.

A lot of people in the west, or those people not in the west but greatly influenced by the western thinking, turn to consciously or subconsciously think everything should be based on "votes" or "democracy," or simply "western/my way." The western way does not work for every nation or people; majority of Chinese do not think they can copy or model after the western or the US way even though they know there are a lot shortcomings with their own system, but it's an evolutionary process. Most American think their system is the best for the nation ("the best human mind can think of," "except for all other systems," blah blah...). And they're probably right. It's just that it doesn't mean its system is necessarily the best for other nation or people. It's not a very complex idea, but sometimes it's hard to get across.

Tell me something, do you believe the people of China has the right to determine who governs them and how their leaders govern?

 

[Blackstone]

I have no objections to your statement above, but I don't see the relation between your words above and my words you quoted.

Maybe you are suggesting China should continue the "melting" process be it in the name of Han (the old way) or in the name of Chinese civilization affiliation (the morden way), either way I agree that China should do it.

I'm saying China is not the melting pot in US sense; it's culture isn't inclusive like the US and probably wouldn't be anytime soon.

 

[taxiya]

I'm saying China is not the melting pot in US sense; it's culture isn't inclusive like the US and probably wouldn't be anytime soon.

Ok I see where you are. I will not continue the discussion whether China is or is not as it is drifting away from the subject of the thread and you are not extending your assertion with analysis or explanation.

But I do wish you had made your point (China is not in the US sense) clearer backed with reasoning in your original quotation, after all the reasons are what we are all here for, not just assertions.

 

[Blackstone]

Ok I see where you are. I will not continue the discussion whether China is or is not as it is drifting away from the subject of the thread and you are not extending your assertion with analysis or explanation.

But I do wish you had made your point (China is not in the US sense) clearer backed with reasoning in your original quotation, after all the reasons are what we are all here for, not just assertions.

To be clear, what original question do you wish me to address, vis-a-vis your post quoted here:

On the contrary, China is a 3000 years old "melting pot", and that melting is really biologically in DNA. Many DNA test across Chinese mainland shows that, for example, northern Han is genetically closer to their minority neighbor (than southern Han) such as Tibetan to the west, and Mongols to the north or Manchus around Beijing and Manchuria. While southern Han shows closer link with southern minorities. This is due to the thousand years of migration and intermarriage. Together with the genetic infusion, comes the culture infusion. During the last 3000 years, there have been many nomadic invasion and migration from the northern stepps and central asia, and enormous Han's southern expansion. There have been many northern nomadic people amounted hundreds of thousands who ruled northern China at some points of time but disappeared in the history. No, they are not killed off, they simply fused into the Han identity becoming Han (Chinese in western term).

The Han is not a "pure race", but an ongoing mixing group, it has been embracing other people since its birth, Xiongnu (related to Hun as west knows according to some), Turks, Mongols, Qidan (Khitan), Jurchen (Manchu), Xiabei etc. In a sense, Han is a snowball.

I do not agree with the idea of Han being a homogeneous people held by many westerner and Chinese. The homogeneous concept about people or ethnity is really a mordern western concept from the early 17th century during the nation state building. China was only exposed to it in the late Qing era (1890s up) which was then picked up by the early republicans (such as Sun Zhongshan/Sun Yat-sen) to rally people overthrowing the Qing empror (Manchu).

The negative impact of the introduction in China stopped the naturally "melting" process by emphasizing the ethnic difference of two people and locking each other in their distinct catagories. It turns many economical conflicts into an ethnical matter that only worsen the relationship. There is an ongoing louding voice among Chinese to abolish the ethnity identity in legal and adminstration framework, such as removing the entry of ethnity in the civil registration and personal id card.

 

[weig2000]

Tell me something, do you believe the people of China has the right to determine who governs them and how their leaders govern?

Short answer is yes, a resounding yes. The ultimate test of the system is whether it works, in the longer term, for the collective good of the people and society.

Do you believe the American has the right to determine who governs them and how their govern? Hillary or Trump or a few others who are now running? Are they all the choices I can cast my vote on? Can you determine how they govern or how Obama governs once they're elected? If you're thinking through, you will start to realize how delusional that you think they can determine how the leaders are selected or how they govern. Sure in theory they may have the right (actually not even in theory, just think about all the voting schemes out there), in reality, people often find them powerless in an electoral vote system. In the vast majority of the developing countries, it could even get worse.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not picking on the US or even assailing its system. It's incredibly difficult to govern a country of continent size with hundreds of million people. America has been among the more successful representative democracies in the world despite its various weakness. I'm just using it as an example.

This is an old subject, and it would be off topic if we dwell on it too much. All I want you is to think more broadly and from different perspectives, and don't automatically assume you're on a moral high round and have won all the arguments just because you utter the word "vote" or "freedom/democracy."

I recommend you, or whoever interested in the subject, read the political scientist Francis Fukuyama's latest books:

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,

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. Francis Fukuyama is a well-known American political scientist, once studied under the late Samuel Huntington of "Clash of Civilizations" fame. Fukuyama's thinking on different political systems has certainly evolved from "

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" that he published and became famed for immediately after the end of Cold War. He expounds on the strengths and weaknesses of both American and Chinese political systems, and their origins. The Chinese system has a lot of resilience and continues to evolve, and in some ways it continues its long tradition of central governance with obviously many modern adaptations. I'll leave it at that.

By the way, My Fukuyama was invited to China for a discussion with Wang Qishan last April on the very subject. Xi Jinping also invited him for a private conversation (probably based on the recommendation from Mr. Wang) last November when he was in Beijing again.