A funny thing is when I was talking to a lot of friends in China recently, while they like america in general, they believe the Chinese system is superior to the western "democracy". Do not get me wrong, they blame the Chinese government for many things rather fiercely at the same time.
I somehow feel like they are overly optimistic but could not find any proof to refute their point (talking about the current US election clearly did not help...). They are mostly upper middle class who worth more than me. So I guess they may be biased? However the taxi drivers seem to have the same view.
An anecdote: none of them want to immigrate (at least to US) and their only major concern seems to be the air quality. Since they can buy everything else from overseas anyway.
>An anecdote: none of them want to immigrate (at least to US)
I think your sample is skewed. Chinese people from all social classes are immigrating to the US at record rates. The US gets about 25% of all Chinese emigrants each year, a number that's been growing not decreasing. China recently overtook Mexico as the top source for new immigrants in the US.
Look at the number of Chinese students, the number of H-1Bs, and the number of Chinese green card applications for evidence of middle class highly educated immigration.
For less educated immigration, visit any Chinese restaurant in any backwater town in the country. You'll find that the front of house is staffed by an endless supply of new immigrants.
My sample is definitely skewed, since it is just like a dozen of upper middle class friends. However, your argument may be flawed as well :)
It is possible that Chinese immigrants are on the rise, but it is not like a Chinese person can easily immigrate to US, legally or not. Comparing the number of Chinese and Mexican is a bit silly, because of the "undocumented".
The number of Chinese students is meaningless as not every student wants or can stay. The number of H-1b may mean something but my feeling is that Chinese are getting less in recent years. Do you have actual data? The green card applications is more direct evidence, but some real data showing the trend would be useful.
Anyway, I think if there is no pacific in the middle and there is no wall at the border. At least 100 million Chinese people would love to move to US...
In the end every form of government is democractic, simply because it's not possible to maintain a stable government over a population that is not satisfied to some degree, you get revolutions otherwise and this is how democracy or at least regime changes happen.
Democracy makes sense because governments make mistakes and those need to be dealt with. Democracy is able to deal with that very nicely.
At the moment the Chinese government does a very good job and have the benefit of pretty much everyone else in the world who matters being highly interested in seeing China succeed. As longs that doesn't change - and I find it very hard to imagine a scenario where it does - China won't become democratic.
I suspect that no one would care unless you do something evil (but nowadays people use the thing called internet). I found an active forum www.hellocq.net via a quick google search and there are >100 posts today.
There're quite a lot parts in Xinjiang has converted to Islam in last few decades. Also, there is an effective executive order making laws easier for minority[1]. For those who don't know, eastern Turkestan is always trying to take the land. It looks more like a wartime regulation than regular censorship in peace time to me.
Uyghurs have always been Muslim. Infact their genetic makeup is Turkic as opposed to Han/Hui Chinese.
I'm aware of the PRC's attempts to remove any sign of self-identity by force-feeding them during the Islamic month of Ramadan, and banning beards, etc.
First : can we stop conflating ethnic makeup and religion ? It is an ugly, racist ideology that muslims keep pushing. Race and religion have nothing to do with eachother.
Obviously Uighurs have not "always been muslim" (aside from the obvious: the ethnic group is far, far older than mohammedanism). They "converted" when they were conquered by a foreign state, who called themselves "the black Khans", supported by other foreign states. In practice, few doubt that it was the muslim way : convert, slavery or die.
Since muslims force people to convert, and have the death penalty for conversion out of islam, it seems extremely hypocritical to criticize the imposition of foreign culture. What is your argument against it ? It's not nice when others do it ?
Well "the outside world" includes stuff like Wikipedia, Gmail and services that people want to use and have access to, even in Chinese but hosted outside of China.
Thats simply not true. They sold lots of cars to Greece before that country went into crisis. Money is not actually a real measure, and very much can be created on demand. There is also a big difference between money spent by a growing middle class versus money spent by corrupt officials. So you need better data than number of BMWs bought.
You right. For instance, before huge drop in value of Ruble, people rushed to buy all kinds of goods (Big TV's, Apple products, Cars) to capture value of currency. It can be argued that sudden increase in purchases can signal anticipation of economic downturn.
I agree. My university had a Chinese full professor who was leading a large center with multi-million funding. My roommate was his student. FBI knocked his door because he had talked about something sensitive over the phone. I guess there was nothing serious because nothing happened except that FBI agents gave a talk to all the faculty members about keeping secrets. The professor, after a couple of years, took a job offer from a Chinese university.
"This week, contractors removing old chalkboards at Emerson High School in Oklahoma City made a startling discovery: Underneath them rested another set of chalkboards, untouched since 1917."
So, presumably, the "old chalkboards" being removed by contractors have been there since 1917, or approximately 100 years.
I am not in the area but Xiaoou is not nobody in the area. He used to work (or visit) at MS Research Asia and Chinese Academy of Sciences. He had best paper award from CVPR and served as chair of ICCV. That all being said, we all know how research goes... I am just curious why they put it on arxiv. Is this a common practice in the CV area or is it because someone else is working on a similar approach?
