I live in Hong Kong, which by all accounts is a first world city. As I understand it, a salary of (USD) $15,000/year is median income, and there are jobs that pay less than $10k/year. And although obviously living conditions aren't going to be fantastic if you get less than $10k, nobody is starving.
How do we manage it? Well, one thing is that costs of living are lower (but not really much), because we are right next to the factory of the world. But what really makes it work is: low taxes, public transport, and family culture. that Low taxes - Salary tax is about 10%-15%. That's about it. Taxes in Hong Kong are so low that it was considered a tax haven (and sometimes still is). There is property tax, but if you own property then you're not in the sub-$10k league. So, what can USA learn from this? Make your government more efficient, and don't spend billions on stupid military spending.
Public transport - Generally speaking if you're travelling in the urban areas, it's more convenient using public transport than driving a car. You just can't find parking space in the more crowded districts. And then there are traffic jams. The metro here is excellent, only that it's really crowded in the busier hours. Cars are luxury items here, and is taxed as such.
Family culture - there is no social pressure to move out of your parent's house once you're grown up. In fact traditionally generations live together in the same place, but today the norm is mostly that you move out when you get married -- so you get to deal with housing problems when you're a bit further into your career, and hopefully you're not still making less than $10k.
Well, heh. At some point there'll be a movement calling for the right of women to transfer child bearing responsibility to husbands, to solve the maternity leave problem.
As a server admin I routinely see hacking attempts on our servers emanating from within China. Any attempt to follow this up with the owner of the netblock where the attacks originate from is usually just met with a bounceback from the abuse address or silence.
This has been the case for years as China have no interest in a clampdown on their own citizens hacking. I have long suspected that this was because they were actively recruiting hackers who broke the law if the hackers in question were pro-government and did not want to cut off their own recruiting stream.
Having seen what IT in China is like, I'll state an alternative reason.
The quality of "IT" people there generally sucks. It's like, if it works, then I don't care whether bad things are done with my connection/computer/whatever. Network administrators have other things to worry about (eg. complying with censorship laws). With sites like Facebook and Youtube periodically on and off the censorship list, they just expect things to break. Malware on the computer making things slow? Just another bad day, maybe it will be better tomorrow.
There simply is nothing of quality in IT circles over there. Complying with standards and protocols? Only if it's mandated by the state. Why would they care about this English speaking guy who talks about being hacked? It's not like they understand your English too well anyway, and it's none of their business.
Honestly, even being culturally Chinese, I still couldn't stand their tastes on choice of software and their tolerances of utterly crappy IT systems. (Well, their tastes in general, are really crap) It's no surprise that they're indifferent to requests from some random outsider like you.
People in the US argue and complain because quite frankly the government and corporations in the US are judged to impossibly high standards. Westerners tend to be idealists and when something doesn't approach their ideals, they complain, loudly over the internet.
I wouldn't say for example the Bush administration was judged to impossibly high standards. Honestly I was surprised at the impossibly *low* standards he and his administration was judged against.
However, Humans Rights are a Universal Truth, they come from our human nature, our instincts and the way our brains are wired, and China is a country that is committing gross violations towards it's own Citizens
Not all human rights are necessarily equal. It's not like you can't imagine a situation where the harsh reality is that you can't have one without violating the other. Realistically, could the Chinese government transform itself to a democracy tomorrow, and expect the transition to go smoothly without any blood spilt? No power hungry opportunists trying to use their newfound "freedom" to seize power and reverting the country into a military state? No mass protests ending up in riots?
I mean, I'm not claiming that those things *are* going to happen once the Chinese government loosens its grip. But it's still a possible scenario (it's happened to other countries), and hence your claim that "Humans Rights are a Universal Truth" is not really that black and white.
I have always been disturbed about the differentiation between "internal citizens" and "foreigners".
I'm aware that in America it's fine for the government to violate the right to life of "foreigners" for some stupid reason (WMD anyone?), as long as the government doesn't harm their "citizens".
But "foreigners" are people too? It's not like enemy combatants are monsters. From what I've read a lot of them had no clue and was just forced by their circumstances to fight as pawns.
I honestly don't know what's more disturbing -- a government who freely violates the rights of its own citizens, and a government who freely violates the rights of non-citizens. What I know is disturbing is people who think one is definitely "better" than the other.
You're all "holier than you" on this issue, but I must ask: what happened to "all men (and women) are born equal"? Are some (eg. citizens) more equal than the others (the enemy)? Are political dissidents who defy the Chinese government more equal than Islamic terrorists who defy the USA government?
The most populous country in the world has reduced its population to a fraction of its old size numerous times in the past. And during those times, I honestly think it's possible that being a slave would be better off than somebody caught in the turmoil of war.
Do you know why Mao, despite all his flaws, was viewed as a hero by a sizable number of Chinese? He stopped almost 50 years of civil war in China -- i.e. the first half of the 20th century. Those types of strong leaders, ruthless they may be, are viewed as the greatest "heros" in Chinese culture. It's almost like, you can be a monster, but as long as you unify the country and stop those wars (and save our lives), you're the greatest person in the world.
You may disagree with this line of thinking, but you can't change the fact that there's a sizable portion of 1.3billion people who thinks this way.
I don't recall any other basic human right concerned with "what" the subject is about.
Let's try substituting censorship with other words...
It is not "that they are killing people", it is "who they are killing" that gets human rights violations involved
It is not "that they are discriminating", it is "who they are discriminating against" that gets human rights violations involved
It is not "that they are rigging elections", it is "what their political platform is" that gets human rights violations involved
When you add subjective judgments like that into human rights, it then becomes an issue of whether the ends justify the means.
I don't believe that human rights is 100% black and white, but the shades of grey must be clearly identified and a strict line must be drawn and ferociously guarded.
It's not really that unwritten. It's all over the constitution really.
Article 1. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.
Which basically means what you've mentioned. The party (who allegedly represents the people) is the dictator, and nobody is allowed to sabotage that.
The Chinese constitution isn't a constitution in the western, "constitutionalism" sense. It's definitely not a document to safeguard citizen's rights, and it's definitely not "enforceable" in the normal sense.
From what I understand, it's more of a general declaration of intention, and exceptions could be carved out of it. The obvious examples are freedom of speech and democracy.
If you actually read it, you'd have thought it was a preamble of the laws in China, explaining the ideologies of the Chinese Communist Party/Government, and factually describing the political system, instead of a legal document. As far as I know nobody has really succeeded in enforcing the constitution, and it's not bloody likely that anybody would succeed in the foreseeable future.
(This is a bit of a nitpick on Chinese traditional thought)
Traditional Confucianism actually prefers social customs and norms over laws. As such it puts much emphasis on moral "education" (or you could say brainwashing) and controlling the popular culture. In the ideal Confucian world, there is no need for laws. Everybody knows his/her own place in society and acts accordingly.
Legal theories in China actually arise from another school of thought called "Legalism". It was popular during the reign of the First Emperor (Qin). It fell out of popularity when the empire collapsed within two decades, but it's the basis of how the Chinese approached "law".
Basically, the idea is that law is a *tool* to rule the people. It originated as an effect "carrots and stick" system to reward good behavior and punish undesired behavior. The sovereign has the highest authority, and as such, is generally above the law (the exceptions arise only when he's politically defeated somehow). In short, "rule by law" instead of "rule of law".
Therefore even today, laws in China are to some extent tools to effectively implement state policy. Which is why strict, literal interpretations generally don't apply. Laws are often interpreted according to (perceived) state policy.
Your Confucian take on interpretation of law surely has a lot of truth to it, but generally those things are done via "announcements", "decisions" and "policy statements" or the like by related government bodies. Those are not law in the sense that they were debated and passed through legislature, but for most purposes have the force of law.
Anyway, you're absolutely right that "law" in China and in western countries mean totally different things. I just hoped to provide a bit more context to that statement:)
I can't find the link to the actual report in TFA.
I don't doubt that there's a strong suggestion that the Chinese government was somehow involved in the intrusion attempts mentioned by Google, and generally it isn't Google's habit to lie or deceive in these high profile matters.
But two days after the Google announcement a report comes out saying "yes it's the Chinese government, yes it's them!"? Without obvious links to the actual report?
I just sense it's just the "security companies" trying to ride the PR bandwagon. I mean, it's just on everybody's mind, and "somebody had to say it out aloud". So you cobble together related bits and pieces and make a grand pronouncement, making everybody happy. But does it prove anything? Not until we find the evidence. Until then it's all just hearsay.
Besides, would you really base your conclusions on findings from "VeriSign's iDefense security lab"? From the company who tried to f*ck up NXDOMAIN?
This is not the end of the story. I suspect more juicy bits will come through.
If they were any clearer then any Google employees still in China now would be in deep trouble. China has pretty tough laws to deal with those who openly defy the government, and then there's all sorts of dirty tricks the Chinese government could pull against Google.
Even with this (not really) "implicit" announcement, I somehow worry that some of the top figures in Google China would find themselves in a difficult mess.
You know what? The western powers came into China and royally fucked it up first. First by selling drugs to China (which the current generation Chinese remember vividly), and then outright invasion, which triggered government collapse, civil wars, and so on.
The Nationalists and the Communists fucked up too, but that alone is not a reason for drinking the western democracy koolaid.
I know Lee is the first "formally" democratically elected President, but then he was already president when he democratized the country. I mean, that just doesn't count, according to my definitions.
Democracy and freedom are desires and values universal to humanity. The people of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and others, representing almost every other non-Western culture, have adopted it with great success.
I wouldn't call all of those examples "great" success. Taiwan's first truly democratic elected president is now in jail, probably for life. Japan had what, 4 prime ministers in 3 years? Sure, that's not a failure, but it's not all roses either.
And not to count the unstable "democracies" in South East Asia - Thailand, Indonesia, etc...
China is signatory to the TRIPS [1] agreement, which is an international treaty on Intellectual Property rights. TRIPS is in turn a prerequisite requirement for WTO membership. In this case China really can't ignore copyright unless it's prepared to say good bye to the WTO -- which considering the amount of vested interests there, is close to impossible.
First, your view of Hong Kong is at least a decade out of date. There aren't many illegitimate CD/DVD stores around these days (compared with the old), since the authorities have been cracking down on the stores and (more importantly) BitTorrent has taken over. Most people if they bothered to buy physical media would buy a legit copy.
The reason why Hong Kong film industry flourished (note tense), I believe was the political and social mess in the mainland China for the better half of the 20th century. Not much art could be done in mainland China, and in a way that concentrated the talents into Hong Kong, which was a popular refuge.
And then with the relative lack of competition (back then) of Chinese films, I think the market was much wider than the local market. Given the number of overseas Chinese [1], the market was regional if not international.
These days though, the Hong Kong film industry basically sucks.
1. The latest Intel Core i7s 2. I bought a AMD Athlon x4 620 recently. Touted as the "$99 Quad Core Processor". If you can find a way to use up all the four cores it's basically the cheapest per clock. 3. Intel chips are generally more expensive. But Intel's high end stuff are hands down faster than AMD. But then considerations would include availability of supporting motherboards and the price of those too.
It wasn't that long ago when China was really an underdeveloped country, with the majority of the population without sufficient daily necessities such as food and shelter. Talk to them about freedoms and of course that will on deaf ears.
Today a sizable part of China is prosperous almost on par with the first world. It wouldn't be long until these people demand more freedoms and rights.
What I think the Chinese government is really concerned though, is not about its citizens having more freedoms and rights. Rather, it is the eagerness of the west to "help" the "revolution".
Honestly, we've all seen what happens when the righteous Uncle Sam and the west "liberates" a country. Iraq? Afghanistan? If you read up Chinese 19-20th century history, you'll realize that a lot of invasions were under various "nice" pretexts, notably the "Greater Asia" slogan used by the Japanese to "rid Asia of colonial powers".
I'm sure you don't have these ulterior motives, but please face the fact: your "help" to other countries "for their own good", is much more likely to make it a hellhole than achieving something positive.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Hong Kong, which by all accounts is a first world city. As I understand it, a salary of (USD) $15,000/year is median income, and there are jobs that pay less than $10k/year. And although obviously living conditions aren't going to be fantastic if you get less than $10k, nobody is starving.
How do we manage it? Well, one thing is that costs of living are lower (but not really much), because we are right next to the factory of the world. But what really makes it work is: low taxes, public transport, and family culture.
that
Low taxes - Salary tax is about 10%-15%. That's about it. Taxes in Hong Kong are so low that it was considered a tax haven (and sometimes still is). There is property tax, but if you own property then you're not in the sub-$10k league. So, what can USA learn from this? Make your government more efficient, and don't spend billions on stupid military spending.
Public transport - Generally speaking if you're travelling in the urban areas, it's more convenient using public transport than driving a car. You just can't find parking space in the more crowded districts. And then there are traffic jams. The metro here is excellent, only that it's really crowded in the busier hours. Cars are luxury items here, and is taxed as such.
Family culture - there is no social pressure to move out of your parent's house once you're grown up. In fact traditionally generations live together in the same place, but today the norm is mostly that you move out when you get married -- so you get to deal with housing problems when you're a bit further into your career, and hopefully you're not still making less than $10k.
Well, heh. At some point there'll be a movement calling for the right of women to transfer child bearing responsibility to husbands, to solve the maternity leave problem.
As a server admin I routinely see hacking attempts on our servers emanating from within China. Any attempt to follow this up with the owner of the netblock where the attacks originate from is usually just met with a bounceback from the abuse address or silence.
This has been the case for years as China have no interest in a clampdown on their own citizens hacking. I have long suspected that this was because they were actively recruiting hackers who broke the law if the hackers in question were pro-government and did not want to cut off their own recruiting stream.
Having seen what IT in China is like, I'll state an alternative reason.
The quality of "IT" people there generally sucks. It's like, if it works, then I don't care whether bad things are done with my connection/computer/whatever. Network administrators have other things to worry about (eg. complying with censorship laws). With sites like Facebook and Youtube periodically on and off the censorship list, they just expect things to break. Malware on the computer making things slow? Just another bad day, maybe it will be better tomorrow.
There simply is nothing of quality in IT circles over there. Complying with standards and protocols? Only if it's mandated by the state. Why would they care about this English speaking guy who talks about being hacked? It's not like they understand your English too well anyway, and it's none of their business.
Honestly, even being culturally Chinese, I still couldn't stand their tastes on choice of software and their tolerances of utterly crappy IT systems. (Well, their tastes in general, are really crap) It's no surprise that they're indifferent to requests from some random outsider like you.
People in the US argue and complain because quite frankly the government and corporations in the US are judged to impossibly high standards. Westerners tend to be idealists and when something doesn't approach their ideals, they complain, loudly over the internet.
I wouldn't say for example the Bush administration was judged to impossibly high standards. Honestly I was surprised at the impossibly *low* standards he and his administration was judged against.
However, Humans Rights are a Universal Truth, they come from our human nature, our instincts and the way our brains are wired, and China is a country that is committing gross violations towards it's own Citizens
Not all human rights are necessarily equal. It's not like you can't imagine a situation where the harsh reality is that you can't have one without violating the other. Realistically, could the Chinese government transform itself to a democracy tomorrow, and expect the transition to go smoothly without any blood spilt? No power hungry opportunists trying to use their newfound "freedom" to seize power and reverting the country into a military state? No mass protests ending up in riots?
I mean, I'm not claiming that those things *are* going to happen once the Chinese government loosens its grip. But it's still a possible scenario (it's happened to other countries), and hence your claim that "Humans Rights are a Universal Truth" is not really that black and white.
I have always been disturbed about the differentiation between "internal citizens" and "foreigners".
I'm aware that in America it's fine for the government to violate the right to life of "foreigners" for some stupid reason (WMD anyone?), as long as the government doesn't harm their "citizens".
But "foreigners" are people too? It's not like enemy combatants are monsters. From what I've read a lot of them had no clue and was just forced by their circumstances to fight as pawns.
I honestly don't know what's more disturbing -- a government who freely violates the rights of its own citizens, and a government who freely violates the rights of non-citizens. What I know is disturbing is people who think one is definitely "better" than the other.
You're all "holier than you" on this issue, but I must ask: what happened to "all men (and women) are born equal"? Are some (eg. citizens) more equal than the others (the enemy)? Are political dissidents who defy the Chinese government more equal than Islamic terrorists who defy the USA government?
The civil war the USA fought was child's play.
The most populous country in the world has reduced its population to a fraction of its old size numerous times in the past. And during those times, I honestly think it's possible that being a slave would be better off than somebody caught in the turmoil of war.
Do you know why Mao, despite all his flaws, was viewed as a hero by a sizable number of Chinese? He stopped almost 50 years of civil war in China -- i.e. the first half of the 20th century. Those types of strong leaders, ruthless they may be, are viewed as the greatest "heros" in Chinese culture. It's almost like, you can be a monster, but as long as you unify the country and stop those wars (and save our lives), you're the greatest person in the world.
You may disagree with this line of thinking, but you can't change the fact that there's a sizable portion of 1.3billion people who thinks this way.
Sounds like slippery slope to me.
I don't recall any other basic human right concerned with "what" the subject is about.
Let's try substituting censorship with other words...
It is not "that they are killing people", it is "who they are killing" that gets human rights violations involved
It is not "that they are discriminating", it is "who they are discriminating against" that gets human rights violations involved
It is not "that they are rigging elections", it is "what their political platform is" that gets human rights violations involved
When you add subjective judgments like that into human rights, it then becomes an issue of whether the ends justify the means.
I don't believe that human rights is 100% black and white, but the shades of grey must be clearly identified and a strict line must be drawn and ferociously guarded.
It's not really that unwritten. It's all over the constitution really.
Article 1. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.
Which basically means what you've mentioned. The party (who allegedly represents the people) is the dictator, and nobody is allowed to sabotage that.
The Chinese constitution isn't a constitution in the western, "constitutionalism" sense. It's definitely not a document to safeguard citizen's rights, and it's definitely not "enforceable" in the normal sense.
From what I understand, it's more of a general declaration of intention, and exceptions could be carved out of it. The obvious examples are freedom of speech and democracy.
If you actually read it, you'd have thought it was a preamble of the laws in China, explaining the ideologies of the Chinese Communist Party/Government, and factually describing the political system, instead of a legal document. As far as I know nobody has really succeeded in enforcing the constitution, and it's not bloody likely that anybody would succeed in the foreseeable future.
(This is a bit of a nitpick on Chinese traditional thought)
Traditional Confucianism actually prefers social customs and norms over laws. As such it puts much emphasis on moral "education" (or you could say brainwashing) and controlling the popular culture. In the ideal Confucian world, there is no need for laws. Everybody knows his/her own place in society and acts accordingly.
Legal theories in China actually arise from another school of thought called "Legalism". It was popular during the reign of the First Emperor (Qin). It fell out of popularity when the empire collapsed within two decades, but it's the basis of how the Chinese approached "law".
Basically, the idea is that law is a *tool* to rule the people. It originated as an effect "carrots and stick" system to reward good behavior and punish undesired behavior. The sovereign has the highest authority, and as such, is generally above the law (the exceptions arise only when he's politically defeated somehow). In short, "rule by law" instead of "rule of law".
Therefore even today, laws in China are to some extent tools to effectively implement state policy. Which is why strict, literal interpretations generally don't apply. Laws are often interpreted according to (perceived) state policy.
Your Confucian take on interpretation of law surely has a lot of truth to it, but generally those things are done via "announcements", "decisions" and "policy statements" or the like by related government bodies. Those are not law in the sense that they were debated and passed through legislature, but for most purposes have the force of law.
Anyway, you're absolutely right that "law" in China and in western countries mean totally different things. I just hoped to provide a bit more context to that statement :)
I can't find the link to the actual report in TFA.
I don't doubt that there's a strong suggestion that the Chinese government was somehow involved in the intrusion attempts mentioned by Google, and generally it isn't Google's habit to lie or deceive in these high profile matters.
But two days after the Google announcement a report comes out saying "yes it's the Chinese government, yes it's them!"? Without obvious links to the actual report?
I just sense it's just the "security companies" trying to ride the PR bandwagon. I mean, it's just on everybody's mind, and "somebody had to say it out aloud". So you cobble together related bits and pieces and make a grand pronouncement, making everybody happy. But does it prove anything? Not until we find the evidence. Until then it's all just hearsay.
Besides, would you really base your conclusions on findings from "VeriSign's iDefense security lab"? From the company who tried to f*ck up NXDOMAIN?
This is not the end of the story. I suspect more juicy bits will come through.
If they were any clearer then any Google employees still in China now would be in deep trouble. China has pretty tough laws to deal with those who openly defy the government, and then there's all sorts of dirty tricks the Chinese government could pull against Google.
Even with this (not really) "implicit" announcement, I somehow worry that some of the top figures in Google China would find themselves in a difficult mess.
Historically speaking, nobody is as proficient as the Chinese in staging regime changes.
Sometimes it's laughable that people suggest "regime change" casually like it's no big deal. You guys just have no frigg'n idea.
You know what? The western powers came into China and royally fucked it up first. First by selling drugs to China (which the current generation Chinese remember vividly), and then outright invasion, which triggered government collapse, civil wars, and so on.
The Nationalists and the Communists fucked up too, but that alone is not a reason for drinking the western democracy koolaid.
It still is "banned". The censored stuff in google.cn was similarly "just not legal" in China.
We already do almost that (except the inside body part). It's called agriculture :)
If you're an American I understand why you say so :)
But at any rate a "great" system should weed out the nut jobs before they are even close to getting the top job in the government.
I know Lee is the first "formally" democratically elected President, but then he was already president when he democratized the country. I mean, that just doesn't count, according to my definitions.
Democracy and freedom are desires and values universal to humanity. The people of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and others, representing almost every other non-Western culture, have adopted it with great success.
I wouldn't call all of those examples "great" success. Taiwan's first truly democratic elected president is now in jail, probably for life. Japan had what, 4 prime ministers in 3 years? Sure, that's not a failure, but it's not all roses either.
And not to count the unstable "democracies" in South East Asia - Thailand, Indonesia, etc...
Last I checked, truth *is* a defense for slander in England.
From what I've heard this is a fairly common business model in China.
Also, I'm pretty sure at some point #1 s/Get/Bribe/
China is signatory to the TRIPS [1] agreement, which is an international treaty on Intellectual Property rights. TRIPS is in turn a prerequisite requirement for WTO membership. In this case China really can't ignore copyright unless it's prepared to say good bye to the WTO -- which considering the amount of vested interests there, is close to impossible.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights
First, your view of Hong Kong is at least a decade out of date. There aren't many illegitimate CD/DVD stores around these days (compared with the old), since the authorities have been cracking down on the stores and (more importantly) BitTorrent has taken over. Most people if they bothered to buy physical media would buy a legit copy.
The reason why Hong Kong film industry flourished (note tense), I believe was the political and social mess in the mainland China for the better half of the 20th century. Not much art could be done in mainland China, and in a way that concentrated the talents into Hong Kong, which was a popular refuge.
And then with the relative lack of competition (back then) of Chinese films, I think the market was much wider than the local market. Given the number of overseas Chinese [1], the market was regional if not international.
These days though, the Hong Kong film industry basically sucks.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese
1. The latest Intel Core i7s
2. I bought a AMD Athlon x4 620 recently. Touted as the "$99 Quad Core Processor". If you can find a way to use up all the four cores it's basically the cheapest per clock.
3. Intel chips are generally more expensive. But Intel's high end stuff are hands down faster than AMD. But then considerations would include availability of supporting motherboards and the price of those too.
It wasn't that long ago when China was really an underdeveloped country, with the majority of the population without sufficient daily necessities such as food and shelter. Talk to them about freedoms and of course that will on deaf ears.
Today a sizable part of China is prosperous almost on par with the first world. It wouldn't be long until these people demand more freedoms and rights.
What I think the Chinese government is really concerned though, is not about its citizens having more freedoms and rights. Rather, it is the eagerness of the west to "help" the "revolution".
Honestly, we've all seen what happens when the righteous Uncle Sam and the west "liberates" a country. Iraq? Afghanistan? If you read up Chinese 19-20th century history, you'll realize that a lot of invasions were under various "nice" pretexts, notably the "Greater Asia" slogan used by the Japanese to "rid Asia of colonial powers".
I'm sure you don't have these ulterior motives, but please face the fact: your "help" to other countries "for their own good", is much more likely to make it a hellhole than achieving something positive.