Thread by @TimNissen1

@jacklhasa
@language_arts
@EclecticRadical

I meet a lot of Chinese people in my travels & always ask them where they're from as a way of learning the provinces of China. I also try to practice Mandarin. But recently I started talking to these people about politics, and Xi.

As those of you who've been listening to me talk about this subject know, most of the people who I talk to are students, many postdocs, and of those most are happy with life in China, and a few are actual members of the Communist Party, which apparently about 1 in 20 Chinese are.

These people on the whole have made me think of a verse of advice to leaders about the people from the Tao Te Ching:

Keep their minds empty and their bellies full.

The party appears to have succeeded in this in many cases.

Another bit of advice is that leaders be invisible.

So anyway. I talk to a lot of people from China visiting the US study, and most of them are very upbeat about China and trust the government.

But my friend the former physicist who has lived in the United States for 30 years
does not share in that assessment.

Gong says that Xi is getting ready to do away with term limits & maybe become Chairman for life. Gong thinks China will likely become more repressive 4 years 2 come. He says men like Jack Ma tho rich cannot criticize the gov at all.

But folks are content if they accept.

China has clearly accomplished a lot in the past century and apparently most Chinese are pleased with the progress and see their lives as getting better. The government does not reverse course wildly every 4 to 8 yrs as we do and many of its policies are farsighted and rational.

But all of this is a preamble.

Today I met my first member of the Chinese inteligencia, a man who doesn't wish to be named, who lives in the US & is a professor a high ranked University.

He is bitter & passionate in his denunciation of the current totalitarian Chinese regime.

He insisted that the two states to the far West, Xinjiang & Tibet aren't really part of China, or not by choice. I knew about Tibet but not Xinjiang

Xinjiang is where the Uyghurs
live--the Muslims we have heard about but whose travails are for the most part unknown inside China.

images.app.goo.gl/HJpL734zpoF9vw…

What my acquaintance told me, when I began with my usual round of questions, and this within 5 minutes of meeting him, is that the horrors that are happening inside China now are comprable if not worse than anything that happened in the Third Reich.

He told me there are concentration camps in Xinjiang & Tibet where many r imprisoned & murdered.

He was passionate about the horror of the genocide, & kept repeating the phrase totalitarian regime.

I asked him if he'd come on Twitter & he said he did not want 2 be published & tho he gave me his phone # he did not give me his last name, because he is afraid.

"The organs of Uyghurs are being sold to rich Arabs," he said. "Do you understand? Because they are Muslim."

The Chinese've made great strides in the last century. They encourage their folk 2 use electric cars & r developing solar tech & other alternatives & even aspire to end poverty in China by 2020. They have managed to maintain something like 6% annual growth for 40 yrs.

But peeps r graded morally, surveilled by cameras, & lose points if they commit
infractions & r carefully monitored & punished 4 dissent & apparently hundreds of thousands if not millions r being imprisoned & murdered.

He kept saying: totalitarian regime. 1984. Do u understand?

My conversation with this man lasted perhaps five minutes.

But I have his number and I am going to call it and interview him and take notes.

Any who wish to be included in this thread let me know.

Updates will be forthcoming.