Tibet was formally incorporated into what can be considered imperial China during the Qing dynasty. FF about three hundred or so years, and a fledgling Chinese republic at the helm of a certain warlord named Yuan Shikai is struggling to win international recognition. Yuan signs Tibet as an autonomous territory away in a deal with the UK, who wanted a buffer zone for their India. This is the most recent, and only manifestation of official national independance for Tibet since perhaps the Ming dynasty. The problem is that Yuan's little treaty never even made an appearance in the actual Chinese legislature, and his own legitimacy as head of state was more than questionable. The fact that the man was ousted sometime later and generally agreed upon to be an illegitimate usurper of the early republic by both the nationalists and the communists calls the legitimacy of Tibet's move into de jure independence into question. The story's not nearly as simple as the Tibetan lobby and their groupies claim to be.
On the first point, that is not true. You hear stories of how airtight China's police state is. This is emphatically not the case. For every dissident that gets front page coverage and flees to the US to sign a book deal, there are several more in-country fighting the good fight. They don't get much press, but they're there. Crackdowns in China tend to be for the purpose of making examples, making press, sowing fear, etc. Most of the people guilty of "crimes" aren't even on their radar.
And the CCP itself is far from a monolithic entity. The reformers are clawing their way up the power structure. It's agonizingly slow, to be sure, but by no means is the country in complete lockdown. Sometimes I wish that it could all come crashing down. But afterwards, what would be left, and how many lives would be lost?
What many overseas Chinese such as myself fear is that misguided foreign pressure will end up being detrimental to the democratic movement. No one wants a foreign government dictating to them, even if it is for supposedly altruistic reasons. Am I a reactionary to what is a common sentiment in the west regarding China? Yeah. That doesn't make me any less of an individual who wants to see his people free and prosperous.
If the people in the camps were genuine criminals and not poitical prisoners, what's wrong with making inmates help pay for their cell?
It's whose in jail that's the problem in China, not what they're doing there. The former is authoritarianism, but the latter is being tough on crime.
You can get Slashdot in China, and anyone who knows how to look for porn can get that, too. They filter out pages with specific words mentioned like falun gong, and fake a 404.
Recent rural uprisings, most notably in Guangdong, have involved civilians armed with rifles. Of course, most what you probably know about China comes from Slashdot threads, no?
...it seems the discussion devolves into one of indiscriminant China bashing. I say indiscriminant because it usually ends up including not only comments on the government (justified, most of the time), but also attacks on the people and culture that would get one's faced punched in if they said it to a Chinese person's face. Some of the things I have read here are as bad if not worse than what is described in the article.
From an overseas Chinese student who is sick of borderline racism disguised as concern for human rights, I hope that some of the masses here never gain the power to smash China's hope of becoming a strong, democratic country.
I found this thread so disturbing I registered an account just to post a response.
It seems that every time a Chinese company is brought up here or anywhere else, the response is the same. All the assumptions being thrown around in these that Legend Computer, and any other Chinese company for that matter, is a crap-peddling puppet of the government that abuses its workers are founded on pure ignorance.
Lenovo, for one, is Asia's biggest PC manufacturer (non-Japan, that is) because it sells products people can actually afford. They've done more to help get the average Chinese citizen computer literate than any other private firm. Their machines are far from "crap." In fact, for the price, their machines are a far better deal than most American brands. (They also have spiffy "idiot" keys that reverts the machine to factory settings, which is pretty darn useful)
This move is just an attempt to break into foreign markets as well. Instead of automatically assuming that the IBM brand is going to crap, I see Legend using the assets from this deal to at least attempt to start producing more high end products. Given the fact that most PC's are manufacturered in places like China anyway (the Compaq I'm typing this on was made in Shanghai), such a move up wouldn't be difficult. One more company competing in the desktop market isn't a bad thing, especially given the threat that Dell sees in Lenovo as a potential rival.
The "ties" with the government amount to nothing more than some exclusive government contracts (just as Kosher as that "buy American" nonsense they have here). The company is also owned (65%) by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but it began as and has always acted autonomously as a private firm based on western business models (specifically, it's modeled after Dell). Buying IBM isn't Chinese expansionism, it's a company trying to gain a competitive edge.
It's also likely that the biggest shareholders in a company such as Lenovo just happen to also hold government positions, thus making the company technically "state-owned." Another example is that one of the owners of a startup ISP in China was a proffessor at Hangzhou University (family friend) who used his dual position to make business arrangements (SOP over there); the ISP is considered state-owned but certainly doesn't operate that way. The whole question of what is considered state-run and what is private in China is a lot more complex than just who has how many shares in what.
Many of the labour problems associated with Chinese companies are the result of this privatization and lack of regulation and not some arbitrary government oppression like many people seem to think. If anything, the government needs to be more involved (and it's trying) in regulating private enterprise.
That an article dealing with a business decision undertaken by a private Chinese company could spawn comments on the government's human rights problems is disgusting. It's equating the economic progress, the one positive hope for prosperity that the Chinese people could grasp in over a hundred and fifty years, to the shortcomings of the state.
If Legend brand ever comes to the states, I'm buying one.
Slashdot Mirror
Tibet was formally incorporated into what can be considered imperial China during the Qing dynasty. FF about three hundred or so years, and a fledgling Chinese republic at the helm of a certain warlord named Yuan Shikai is struggling to win international recognition. Yuan signs Tibet as an autonomous territory away in a deal with the UK, who wanted a buffer zone for their India. This is the most recent, and only manifestation of official national independance for Tibet since perhaps the Ming dynasty. The problem is that Yuan's little treaty never even made an appearance in the actual Chinese legislature, and his own legitimacy as head of state was more than questionable. The fact that the man was ousted sometime later and generally agreed upon to be an illegitimate usurper of the early republic by both the nationalists and the communists calls the legitimacy of Tibet's move into de jure independence into question. The story's not nearly as simple as the Tibetan lobby and their groupies claim to be.
On the first point, that is not true. You hear stories of how airtight China's police state is. This is emphatically not the case. For every dissident that gets front page coverage and flees to the US to sign a book deal, there are several more in-country fighting the good fight. They don't get much press, but they're there. Crackdowns in China tend to be for the purpose of making examples, making press, sowing fear, etc. Most of the people guilty of "crimes" aren't even on their radar. And the CCP itself is far from a monolithic entity. The reformers are clawing their way up the power structure. It's agonizingly slow, to be sure, but by no means is the country in complete lockdown. Sometimes I wish that it could all come crashing down. But afterwards, what would be left, and how many lives would be lost? What many overseas Chinese such as myself fear is that misguided foreign pressure will end up being detrimental to the democratic movement. No one wants a foreign government dictating to them, even if it is for supposedly altruistic reasons. Am I a reactionary to what is a common sentiment in the west regarding China? Yeah. That doesn't make me any less of an individual who wants to see his people free and prosperous.
I apologize. A misguided response to a misquote. I don't think the point is misguided, however. This line of reasoning is akin to blaming the victim.
If the people in the camps were genuine criminals and not poitical prisoners, what's wrong with making inmates help pay for their cell? It's whose in jail that's the problem in China, not what they're doing there. The former is authoritarianism, but the latter is being tough on crime.
You can get Slashdot in China, and anyone who knows how to look for porn can get that, too. They filter out pages with specific words mentioned like falun gong, and fake a 404.
Because blacks did in fact deserve a government that treated them like commodities and second class citizens.
Recent rural uprisings, most notably in Guangdong, have involved civilians armed with rifles. Of course, most what you probably know about China comes from Slashdot threads, no?
...it seems the discussion devolves into one of indiscriminant China bashing. I say indiscriminant because it usually ends up including not only comments on the government (justified, most of the time), but also attacks on the people and culture that would get one's faced punched in if they said it to a Chinese person's face. Some of the things I have read here are as bad if not worse than what is described in the article. From an overseas Chinese student who is sick of borderline racism disguised as concern for human rights, I hope that some of the masses here never gain the power to smash China's hope of becoming a strong, democratic country.
I found this thread so disturbing I registered an account just to post a response.
It seems that every time a Chinese company is brought up here or anywhere else, the response is the same. All the assumptions being thrown around in these that Legend Computer, and any other Chinese company for that matter, is a crap-peddling puppet of the government that abuses its workers are founded on pure ignorance.
Lenovo, for one, is Asia's biggest PC manufacturer (non-Japan, that is) because it sells products people can actually afford. They've done more to help get the average Chinese citizen computer literate than any other private firm. Their machines are far from "crap." In fact, for the price, their machines are a far better deal than most American brands. (They also have spiffy "idiot" keys that reverts the machine to factory settings, which is pretty darn useful)
This move is just an attempt to break into foreign markets as well. Instead of automatically assuming that the IBM brand is going to crap, I see Legend using the assets from this deal to at least attempt to start producing more high end products. Given the fact that most PC's are manufacturered in places like China anyway (the Compaq I'm typing this on was made in Shanghai), such a move up wouldn't be difficult. One more company competing in the desktop market isn't a bad thing, especially given the threat that Dell sees in Lenovo as a potential rival.
The "ties" with the government amount to nothing more than some exclusive government contracts (just as Kosher as that "buy American" nonsense they have here). The company is also owned (65%) by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but it began as and has always acted autonomously as a private firm based on western business models (specifically, it's modeled after Dell). Buying IBM isn't Chinese expansionism, it's a company trying to gain a competitive edge.
It's also likely that the biggest shareholders in a company such as Lenovo just happen to also hold government positions, thus making the company technically "state-owned." Another example is that one of the owners of a startup ISP in China was a proffessor at Hangzhou University (family friend) who used his dual position to make business arrangements (SOP over there); the ISP is considered state-owned but certainly doesn't operate that way. The whole question of what is considered state-run and what is private in China is a lot more complex than just who has how many shares in what.
Many of the labour problems associated with Chinese companies are the result of this privatization and lack of regulation and not some arbitrary government oppression like many people seem to think. If anything, the government needs to be more involved (and it's trying) in regulating private enterprise.
That an article dealing with a business decision undertaken by a private Chinese company could spawn comments on the government's human rights problems is disgusting. It's equating the economic progress, the one positive hope for prosperity that the Chinese people could grasp in over a hundred and fifty years, to the shortcomings of the state.
If Legend brand ever comes to the states, I'm buying one.
Rant over. Going back to work.