Leave China alone

Submitted by Anon (United States), Sep 6, 2019 at 01:47

I disagree with the general view that China is brutalizing the Uighurs for no reason. There are other parallels too.

For instance the problem of Islamic terrorism forced Israel to quarantine Gaza leading to some severely bad conditions for Gazans indefinitely with no end in sight - and it is pretty much guaranteed that the living conditions in the Xinjiang province are way better than the living conditions in Gaza.

As pointed out in the interview not many Uighurs are radicalized and this must be true, but the problem is that even a tiny number of Uighurs turning to terrorism in China can snowball into a really serious problem for the Chinese. It took a little over a dozen Muslim men to perpetrate 9/11 that then triggered a couple of never ending trillion dollar wars and repercussions that include ISIS and mayhem in the greater middle east.

Chinese efforts to get a handle on this problem as early as possible is the correct thing to do. Israel tried being nice to Gazans and that backfired in a way that has led to the really brutal conditions that we now see in Gaza. China should avoid similar mistakes. There is no reason to see the Uighur situation through the same lens we use for Tibet or Hong Kong. Tibet and HK are very different situations with no implications of terrorism or violence and it is perfectly rational to side with Tibet and HK against China at the same time that one cautiously supports their Uighur policies.

So a humble request to Daniel Pipes - please lets not be too quick to judge China. The Chinese have lots of faults but at their core they are like societies in the West, people who want to get ahead in life, a belief in capitalism and so on and in the long run these fundamental impulses will moderate China. The same can't be said about restless Islamic societies whether Gaza or ISIS flag waving Kashmiri youth or the Uighurs.

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