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  • Originally posted by Funtastic View Post
    It was only in recent years that Peking surpassed London in the number of CCTV. However london has more cameras per head of population. Where was the concern then for the use of CCTV in monitoring people?

    Oh thats right.The Uk is a defender of democracy and the cameras are there for saftey, while the ones in China are there for tyrannical purposes. ROFL.
    The privacy argument around security cameras has changed from the 2000s.

    Because today everybody on the street has a camera in their pocket.

    In other words the people have more cameras than the state in any given inhabited area.

    This acts as an effective counter.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
      This could have been India in a decade or more.

      Without the supreme court ruling Indians have a right to privacy. By throwing a spanner into the works of this aadhar project.

      Who do they fingerprint in the US ? Foreigners

      Who do they fingerprint in China ? Uighurs

      Who do they fingerprint in India ? Everybody (!) otherwise the state considers you a ghost, a duplicate or worse.

      Even the Chinese don't have some thing as comprehensive as we do.

      They didn't have face recognition tech yet so it stopped at iris scans and fingerprints.

      The ridiculous thing is how many thought this would be to the benefit of the country.

      The state said it was for disbursement of benefits, next thing we hear it soon becoming mandatory for more things.

      Once the means to oppress people exists then the temptation to abuse it can arise, in any country.
      Last edited by Double Edge; 16 Oct 18,, 14:03.

      Comment


      • Google still mulling a censored search engine in China: Sunder Pichai

        Stop being an enabler of oppression GOOGLE. Time to remember the freedom your company got, while building it up in the US.
        Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
          Google still mulling a censored search engine in China: Sunder Pichai

          Stop being an enabler of oppression GOOGLE. Time to remember the freedom your company got, while building it up in the US.
          China does not need the "Google" search engine anyways

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
            This could have been India in a decade or more.

            Without the supreme court ruling Indians have a right to privacy. By throwing a spanner into the works of this aadhar project.

            Who do they fingerprint in the US ? Foreigners

            Who do they fingerprint in China ? Uighurs

            Who do they fingerprint in India ? Everybody (!) otherwise the state considers you a ghost, a duplicate or worse.

            Even the Chinese don't have some thing as comprehensive as we do.

            They didn't have face recognition tech yet so it stopped at iris scans and fingerprints.

            The ridiculous thing is how many thought this would be to the benefit of the country.

            The state said it was for disbursement of benefits, next thing we hear it soon becoming mandatory for more things.

            Once the means to oppress people exists then the temptation to abuse it can arise, in any country.

            CCTV and Facial recognition has its pro's and con's,. It allows the police to concentrate on the more important matters,while CCTV can reduce the wastage of court time when the 'perp' purposely pleads not guilty.
            I see India with 42000 murders in 2016 , is the worlds second highest. How many of the offenders get caught and what is the remand time before the defendant is prosecuted in court?
            Anyway its not just CCTV that encroaches upon your privacy. Credit cards, Discount Cards/ Credit checks for loans, Airpoint Cards Facebook, are all profiling the user.
            Last edited by Funtastic; 16 Oct 18,, 21:57.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
              Thank Bush Senior for that. China still has a 3rd world military in terms of technological jump.

              The 'Tiananmen sanctions' should be strengthened, not lifted
              By your logic India must be 5generations behind then.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Funtastic View Post
                By your logic India must be 5generations behind then.
                Refer this page.
                Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
                  Refer this page.
                  Read my reply in the same thread.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Funtastic View Post
                    CCTV and Facial recognition has its pro's and con's,. It allows the police to concentrate on the more important matters,while CCTV can reduce the wastage of court time when the 'perp' purposely pleads not guilty.
                    A simple cctv can do that and has done so now for decades. How accurate this face recognition actually is in the field remains to be seen.

                    I see India with 42000 murders in 2016 , is the worlds second highest. How many of the offenders get caught and what is the remand time before the defendant is prosecuted in court?
                    You'll have to look up the govts stats for that. Some states are going to better off. As for absolute numbers, it means nothing. A billion+ is going to have more than others. Who's the highest ?

                    The police are a cost centre they don't generate revenue. So we have less cops per capita compared to other places.


                    Anyway its not just CCTV that encroaches upon your privacy. Credit cards, Discount Cards/ Credit checks for loans, Airpoint Cards Facebook, are all profiling the user.
                    I think CCTV has been quite useful for crime prevention as well as prosecution. More people are using them in their homes for the same reason.

                    What i'm referring to is states keeping records and being able to link people's activities thoughout their lives. That's a scary amount of power for a state to have without suitable oversight.
                    Last edited by Double Edge; 17 Oct 18,, 22:28.

                    Comment


                    • 'Not sure he's alive': Wife of Interpol ex-chief fears for his survival and her own safety

                      The wife of fallen former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei has expressed fears for his life and her own safety, lashing out at what she called the "cruel" and "dirty" Chinese government that arrested him in mysterious circumstances.

                      The comments by Grace Meng in a BBC interview represent a rare and extraordinarily blunt level of criticism of China's government by the victims of Beijing's tough crackdown on corruption, in which cases are typically wrapped up in secrecy and with only the official version of events coming to light.

                      "I think it is political persecution. I'm not sure he's alive," Grace Meng said in the interview conducted in France, where Meng was based at Interpol's headquarters.

                      Meng Hongwei, also a Chinese vice public security minister, went missing on a trip to China last month.

                      He subsequently resigned as head of the international police organisation on Oct 7 after Chinese authorities announced he was under investigation.

                      China has since said he is suspected of accepting bribes.

                      "I tell (my children) daddy is on a long business trip," the sobbing Grace Meng said, appearing in the interview only in silhouette to hide her appearance.

                      Complaining that there is "no limit" to China's power to act against opponents, she claimed to have received threatening phone calls suggesting she was being "targeted" in France.

                      "They are cruel. They are dirty," she said.

                      "I must stand up and I don't want any other wives and children like me."

                      The body investigating Meng, the National Supervisory Commission, can hold suspects for as long as six months without providing access to legal counsel.

                      Xi's anti-graft campaign has punished more than one million officials and has wide support from citizens fed up with endemic corruption.

                      But some analysts say it also enables the Chinese president to eliminate rivals.

                      One of the most powerful officials to fall was former security ministry chief Zhou Yongkang, who promoted Meng more than a decade ago and was sentenced to life in prison in 2014.

                      The relatives of fallen officials are typically silenced, and Grace Meng's outspoken advocacy on behalf of her husband is unprecedented and no doubt seen as an embarrassment by Beijing.

                      China has pushed to have high-level representation in international bodies.

                      Meng's Interpol appointment was seen as a major success in that drive, but political experts say his downfall is now likely to set back that effort.
                      Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                      Comment


                      • The Pope Doesn’t Understand China
                        By Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun
                        Cardinal Zen is a retired bishop of Hong Kong.


                        HONG KONG — Last month the Vatican announced that it had come to a provisional agreement with the government of China over the appointment of Catholic bishops. Supporters of the deal say that it finally brings unity after longstanding division — between an underground Church loyal to the pope and an official church approved by the Chinese authorities — and that with it, the Chinese government has for the first time recognized the authority of the pope. In fact, the deal is a major step toward the annihilation of the real Church in China.

                        I know the Church in China, I know the Communists and I know the Holy See. I’m a Chinese from Shanghai. I lived many years in the mainland and many years in Hong Kong. I taught in seminaries throughout China — in Shanghai, Xian, Beijing, Wuhan, Shenyang — between 1989 and 1996.

                        Pope Francis, an Argentine, doesn’t seem to understand the Communists. He is very pastoral, and he comes from South America, where historically military governments and the rich got together to oppress poor people. And who there would come out to defend the poor? The Communists. Maybe even some Jesuits, and the government would call those Jesuits Communists.

                        Francis may have natural sympathy for Communists because for him, they are the persecuted. He doesn’t know them as the persecutors they become once in power, like the Communists in China.

                        The Holy See and Beijing cut off relations in the 1950s. Catholics and other believers were arrested and sent to labor camps. I went back to China in 1974 during the Cultural Revolution; the situation was terrible beyond imagination. A whole nation under slavery. We forget these things too easily. We also forget that you can never have a truly good agreement with a totalitarian regime.

                        China has opened up, yes, since the 1980s, but even today everything is still under the Chinese Communist Party’s control. The official church in China is controlled by the so-called patriotic association and the bishops’ conference, both under the thumb of the party.

                        From 1985 to 2002, Cardinal Jozef Tomko was the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which oversees the Church’s missionary work. He was a Slovak, who understood communism, and he was wise.

                        Cardinal Tomko’s position was that the underground Church was the only lawful Church in China, and that the official church was unlawful. But he also understood that there were many good people in the official church. Like the bishop of Xian, who for a time was a vice chairman of the bishops’ conference. Or the bishop of Shanghai, Jin Luxian, a Jesuit and a brilliant linguist, who had been interned in the 1950s.

                        Back then, the Holy See had a cautious policy that it implemented generously. It was amenable to reasonable compromise but had a bottom line.

                        Things changed in 2002, when Cardinal Tomko reached the age of retirement. A young Italian with no foreign experience replaced him and began legitimizing official Chinese bishops too quickly, too easily, creating the impression that now the Vatican would automatically second Beijing’s selection.

                        Hope returned when Joseph Ratzinger, a German who had lived through both Nazism and communism, became Pope Benedict XVI. He brought on Cardinal Ivan Dias, an Indian who had spent time in West Africa and South Korea, to head the congregation of evangelization, and that internationalized the Vatican. A special commission for the Church in China also was set up. I was appointed to it.

                        Unfortunately, Cardinal Dias believed in Ostpolitik and in the teachings of a state secretary in the 1980s who had been a proponent of détente with Soviet-controlled governments. And he applied the policy to China.

                        When Benedict issued his famous letter to the Church of China in 2007, calling for reconciliation among all Catholics there, something incredible happened. The Chinese translation was released with errors, including one too important not to have been deliberate. In a delicate passage about how priests in the underground might accept recognition by the Chinese authorities without necessarily betraying the faith, a critical caveat was left out about how “almost always,” however, the Chinese authorities imposed requirements “contrary to the dictates” of Catholics’ conscience.

                        Some of us raised the issue and the text was eventually corrected on the Vatican’s website. But by then, the mistaken original had widely circulated in China, and some bishops there had understood Benedict’s historic letter as encouragement to join the state-sanctioned church.

                        Today, we have Pope Francis. Naturally optimistic about communism, he is being encouraged to be optimistic about the Communists in China by cynics around him who know better.

                        The commission for the Church in China no longer convenes, even though it has not been dissolved. Those of us who come from the periphery, the front lines, are being marginalized.

                        I was among those who applauded Francis’s decision to appoint Pietro Parolin as secretary of state in 2013. But I now think that Cardinal Parolin cares less about the Church than about diplomatic success. His ultimate goal is the restoration of formal relations between the Vatican and Beijing.

                        Francis wants to go to China — all popes have wanted to go to China, starting with John Paul II. But what did Francis’s visit to Cuba in 2015 bring the Church? The Cuban people? Almost nothing. And did he convert the Castro brothers?

                        The faithful in China are suffering and are now coming under increasing pressure. Early this year, the government tightened regulations on the practice of religion. Priests in the underground on the mainland tell me that they are discouraging parishioners from coming to Mass to avoid arrest.

                        Francis himself has said that although the recent agreement — whose terms haven’t been disclosed — provides for “a dialogue about eventual candidates,” it is the pope who “appoints” bishops. But what good is having the last word when China will have all the words before it? In theory the pope could veto the nomination of any bishop who seems unworthy. But how many times can he do that, really?

                        Soon after the deal was announced, two Chinese bishops from the official church were sent to Vatican City for the synod, a regular meeting of bishops from around the world. Who selected them? Both men are known to be close to the Chinese government. As I have said, their presence at the gathering was an insult to the good bishops of China.

                        Their presence also raises the painful question of whether the Vatican will now legitimize the seven official bishops who remain illegitimate. The pope has already lifted their excommunication, paving the way for them to be formally granted dioceses.

                        The official church has about 70 bishops; the underground Church has only about 30. The Chinese authorities say: You recognize our seven and we’ll recognize your 30. That sounds like a good trade-off. But will the 30 then be allowed to still function as underground bishops? Surely not.

                        They will be forced to join the so-called bishops’ conference. They will be forced to join the others in that bird cage, and will become a minority among them. The Vatican’s deal, struck in the name of unifying the Church in China, means the annihilation of the real Church in China.

                        If I were a cartoonist I would draw the Holy Father on his knees offering the keys of the kingdom of heaven to President Xi Jinping and saying, “Please recognize me as the pope.”

                        And yet, to the underground bishops and priests of China, I can only say this: Please don’t start a revolution. They take away your churches? You can no longer officiate? Go home, and pray with your family. Till the soil. Wait for better times. Go back to the catacombs. Communism isn’t eternal.
                        Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                        • With Vatican Talks and Bulldozers, China Aims to Control Christianity

                          BEIJING — Over the last two years, China’s estimated 60 million Christians have felt the power of a newly assertive government eager to bring their faith to heel.

                          The authorities have demolished hundreds of Protestant churches, knocking crosses off steeples and evicting congregations. Roman Catholics have faced similar measures, but the government took a different approach this past weekend, striking a diplomatic deal that Vatican officials said was a historic breakthrough — the first formal acknowledgment by Beijing of the pope’s authority in Catholic churches in China.

                          Beijing’s goal in the agreement, however, appears to be the same as with the church demolitions: greater control over the rapid spread of Christianity, which gained a permanent presence in China in the 16th century.

                          “We’re at a turning point,” said Ying Fuk-tsang, the director of the divinity school at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The administration feels that the government had been too lax in the past and now wants to increase the pressure.”

                          Under the agreement signed on Saturday, Pope Francis recognized the legitimacy of seven bishops appointed by Beijing in exchange for a say in how future Chinese bishops are named.

                          The ruling Communist Party sees the compromise with the Vatican as a step toward eliminating the underground churches where Chinese Catholics who refuse to recognize the party’s authority have worshiped for generations. With the pope now recognizing all bishops and clergy members in the official Catholic churches approved and controlled by the party, the underground church may have no reason to exist.

                          The move is part of a broader push by the government to clamp down on all aspects of society since Xi Jinping took power as the party’s leader in 2012. Mr. Xi has presided over a far-reaching crackdown on corruption, civic organizations and independent journalism, but his approach toward religion has been more selective.

                          With many Chinese searching for values and traditions amid a sometimes confusing and chaotic period of economic change, Mr. Xi has encouraged the growth of some religions, such as Buddhism and Taoism, even as he has taken steps to ensure that they toe the party line. Last month, China’s famous Shaolin monastery raised the national flag for the first time in its 1,500-year history.

                          Mr. Xi has taken a much harsher position on Islam, which the authorities associate with the challenge of governing ethnic minorities, some of whom have embraced separatist or terrorist groups in China’s far west. The government is detaining vast numbers of Muslims for re-education, its most sweeping internment program since the Mao era.

                          Christianity poses a different set of challenges. It has spread most quickly among white-collar professionals in China’s biggest cities and most prosperous regions, many of whom worship in underground churches outside government control, and the government’s tactics reflect the differing fates of its branches.

                          Catholicism gave China its first permanent Christian presence 400 years ago and benefited mightily after Western military forces required China to allow in missionaries. The global church poured in talent and money, opening churches, schools and hospitals across the land.

                          After the Communist takeover in 1949, however, Catholicism’s established hierarchy in China became a weakness. When diplomatic ties were cut in 1951, the government expelled hundreds of foreign priests and bishops. It took control of the church’s top-down structure and began appointing clerics loyal to its vision of a Chinese church with no foreign ties.

                          Since then, Catholicism has stagnated. The number of Catholics has tracked population growth, rising from three million in 1949 to about 10 million today, making it the smallest of China’s officially approved faiths.

                          Millions of these believers stubbornly resist government control. In some parts of China, the Catholic populations of entire counties attend underground churches, and the party-controlled churches stand almost empty, their clergy ignored.

                          All of this could change under the rapprochement between the Vatican and Beijing.

                          Several underground bishops in China, including two popular bishops in staunchly Catholic parts of the country, are expected to step down to make way for the bishops appointed by Beijing over the past decade whom the pope has agreed to recognize. In exchange, the pope is gaining some role in the appointment of new bishops. There are about 100 bishops and prelates in China, including underground and approved, and a dozen vacant positions.

                          Exactly how this will work is unclear. Both sides have described the agreement signed on Saturday as preliminary, and neither has released details. But some informal veto system seems likely. The Vatican could reject candidates suggested by the Chinese authorities, although mainly through quiet consultation rather than formal voting.

                          In the long run, diplomatic ties could be restored between Beijing and the Vatican.

                          Some Chinese Catholics see this as helping a church that has been unable to respond to changing times. China is rapidly urbanizing, for example, but many rural Catholics find little outreach when they migrate to take jobs in the cities. A unified church could address that.

                          “I think if it helps unite the church, then it’s a good thing,” said You Yongxin, a Catholic writer based in the eastern Chinese city of Fuzhou. “If the pope is convinced he can get good bishops appointed through this deal, then we have to trust that he will.”

                          Indeed, if carried out as advertised, the deal would give the church a formal role in appointing clergy members in party-controlled churches in China for the first time in nearly 70 years. That would be a significant concession by the government. By contrast, Beijing doesn’t give the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, the Dalai Lama, any say over the appointment of monks or abbots.

                          Still, the deal came as a shock for many Chinese Catholics.

                          Paul Dong Guanhua, a self-ordained bishop in the underground church in the northern Chinese city of Zhengding, said it made no sense that Beijing would sign on to any deal that could strengthen the church.

                          “Well, if there’s an agreement, there’s an agreement,” he said in a telephone interview. “But I find it absurd, and I wonder how many other Catholics can agree with this decision.”

                          Other prominent underground clergy members, like Guo Xijin, one of the bishops who reportedly would have to step down under the deal, could not be reached for comment. In an interview earlier this year, Bishop Guo told The New York Times that he would step down if asked by the pope.

                          Rome will also have to win over skeptical Catholics in Taiwan and Hong Kong, said Lawrence C. Reardon, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire who studies Beijing-Vatican relations.

                          Many, like Hong Kong’s retired Cardinal Joseph Zen, have vocally opposed a deal with Beijing, arguing that the Communist Party cannot be trusted.

                          “This is the first step in a dance that they’re going to continue,” Professor Reardon said. “It’s also the reconciliation of the greater Chinese church.”

                          The situation is quite different for Protestants in China, whose numbers have climbed from an estimated one million believers in 1949 to upward of 50 million now, in part because the absence of church hierarchy allowed for rapid growth even in times of persecution.

                          Without a diplomatic partner with which to negotiate, the Chinese authorities have employed a different tactic: knocking down a fraction of churches to send a message to many others.

                          The campaign began in 2014, when the province of Zhejiang demolished a big Protestant church and began removing spires from hundreds of others. By 2016, more than 1,200 mainly Protestant churches had been decapitated in Zhejiang, part of an effort that appeared aimed at reducing the religion’s visibility.

                          The pace seems to have accelerated this year, with several churches in other parts of the country shut down or demolished, including the Golden Lampstand church in Shanxi Province and the Zion church, a large unregistered church in Beijing known for its Korean- and English-language services.

                          The government has also banned online sales of the Bible and called for the development of a Chinese-style Christian theology.

                          The goal appears to be to push Protestant churches to register with the government. “The message is that they can’t be independent,” Professor Ying said. “The question is control.”
                          Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                          • Almost 9 months old, Why the Pope Is Genuflecting to China

                            On Feb. 1, the same day that new repressive regulations of religion went into force in China, the Vatican took a deep bow before Beijing. After long resisting, it finally agreed to recognize several hack bishops designated by the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.), even sidelining two of its own long-serving appointees for the occasion.

                            Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the outspoken, blogging, 86-year-old retired archbishop of Hong Kong, had recently flown to Vatican City to personally plead the case of the two bishops to the pope himself. How nettlesome. He was shoved off, and has since been called an “obstacle” to a deal between the Vatican and Beijing.

                            The reasons the Holy See is caving to the (atheist) Communist government are not entirely transparent, but it appears to be hoping for a historic thaw. Diplomatic ties were severed in 1951, not long after the Communists came to power in China, and relations have since been testy at best.

                            Catholics in China are thought to number between 9 million and 12 million today, with about half of them adhering to underground congregations loyal to the pope in Rome and refusing to recognize a state-sanctioned version of the Church called the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association or, more informally, the “patriotic church.”

                            One major conflict between the two governments has been the method for appointing bishops: Traditionally a prerogative of the papacy, Beijing has steadily tried to usurp it in China. The deal that the Vatican currently seems to be seeking would likely formalize some joint vetting procedure.

                            The Vatican justifies its conciliatory stance toward Beijing as an attempt to overcome the schism that has divided the Catholic community in China for nearly seven decades — as “a balm of mercy,” it has said, for the pain caused by the barriers that have prevented Chinese Catholics “from living in communion with each other and with the Pope.”

                            Rapprochement could also give the pope, nominally at least, ultimate authority over all the Catholics in China — a standing, however symbolic, that may well matter to a Vatican that is losing ground to other Christian denominations among Chinese converts.

                            The total population of Christians in China has grown considerably, from about 4 million in 1949 to perhaps as many as 100 million today. In relative terms, however, Catholics are falling behind. By some estimates, whereas Catholics in China outnumbered Protestants by 3 to 1 in 1949, today Protestants outnumber Catholics by 5 to 1.

                            A major explanation for the increasing differential is that the Roman Catholic Church wields not only religious and moral authority, but also political and diplomatic power.

                            The Catholic Church has a relatively unified command structure, a well-defined ideology and a disciplined organizational backbone. It has global reach and mass appeal, commands great loyalty and has long demonstrated the ability to survive and expand, all on the merits of peaceful soft power. In each of these ways, it rivals, perhaps even bests, the C.C.P.

                            And so, naturally, the C.C.P. sees Chinese Catholics’ allegiance to the pope as a direct challenge to their allegiance to the party. Vatican City is also, still, among the 20 states, all small, that recognize Taiwan diplomatically.

                            Many Protestant churches, although deemed suspect as well, are on better terms with the C.C.P. After a visit to Beijing in 1983, the archbishop of Canterbury gushed about liberalization in China and reportedly praised the emergence of “a church with Chinese characteristics.”

                            Like his predecessor, the current Anglican archbishop overseeing Hong Kong and Macau is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a body including luminaries that supposedly advises the C.C.P. but often promotes the party’s interests informally or clandestinely. Both men have tended to support Beijing’s restrictive reading of democratic freedoms in Hong Kong and opposed the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement of 2014.

                            Representatives of other faiths have gone further. A vice president of the Buddhist Association of China called President Xi Jinping’s speech to the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Congress last fall, “the Buddhist sutra of the current age.” Buddhists in China — who are variously said to number between more than 100 million and more than 240 million — have been treated with a relatively light hand by the party, at least if they are not of the Tibetan kind.

                            Yet even if brown-nosing seems to pay off, the Vatican’s appeasement of the Chinese government would have great downsides, for itself and for the rest of the world.

                            By recognizing China’s so-called patriotic church, the Vatican could harm the wholesomeness of Catholic teachings in the country. Sermons given in government-sanctioned churches already have been known to exclude passages of the Bible deemed politically subversive (like the story of Daniel) or to include Communist Party propaganda.

                            Millions of faithful Catholics in China might also soon feel abandoned, perhaps even betrayed, after having suffered decades of oppression. Worse, the government, emboldened by the deal, could well come down even harder on them. In fact, the religious regulations that recently came into effect include much stiffer fines on underground churches and penalties for public-school teachers who give Sunday-school lessons on their own time.

                            And then, rapprochement might augur the Vatican’s readiness to eventually stop recognizing Taipei and instead recognize Beijing as truly representing China. Such a shift would alter the delicate balance of power across the Taiwan Strait, as well as harm Taiwan’s vibrant democracy. It would also confer legitimacy — and with the pope’s imprimatur! — on authoritarian regimes throughout the world that crack down on churches and sects.

                            The Catholic Church already has a checkered record dealing with fascist or totalitarian states. Pope Pius XII was criticized for betraying the Jews of Europe during World War II: Hewing to what he described as a position of neutrality between the Nazis and the Allies, he never denounced Hitler’s Final Solution. After Soviet forces violently repressed the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Vatican sidelined the outspoken anticommunist Archbishop József Mindszenty in favor of a deal with the new puppet regime.

                            The Vatican’s eagerness to play catch-up in China today may do it no favors either.

                            Beijing doesn’t have much of a reputation for honoring commitments. Just look at its application of the “one country, two systems” arrangement it promised Hong Kong, which was supposed to guarantee the city a large degree of autonomy until 2047.

                            Even under the deal the Vatican seems to want, the Chinese government could eventually come to control the Catholic Church in China — by, say, simply delaying nominating anyone for bishop or repeatedly rejecting candidates presented by the Vatican until all the bishops previously selected by the pope have retired or died out. Bishops ordain priests and so without bishops, in time there could be no priests, or very few, and Catholicism in China would have died a silent death.

                            Four decades ago, when a destitute China was emerging from deep Maoism, Western companies got tipsy at the mere notion of selling deodorant to two billion Chinese armpits. Now that average Chinese have much more disposable income, major international corporations are willing to hand over proprietary technology, stoically endure violent xenophobic outbursts and take on members of the Chinese Communist Party as senior managers rather than risk losing out on the business prospects.

                            No one, it seems, can resist the lure of the great market of China, for deodorants, cars — or congregants. Not even the Vatican.
                            Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                            • Print from an iron brother's press, Inside China's Xinjiang internment camps: tear gas, Tasers and textbooks
                              Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                              • Now I would call this a concentration camp where China tries to modify your behavior, modify your thoughts, among other things related to an ethnic group that is now in the minority in their own historical land. So it seems China will try to eliminate the Uighur identity through those methods rather than through more drastic methods common in another countries concentration camps. So far that is...


                                https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources...a_hidden_camps

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