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China using families as 'hostages' to quash dissent abroad
(www.bbc.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Can't you guys just stop using Adrian Zens? Is no one else able to make up unhinged nonsense about China? Literally all it takes is for him to adopt a pseudonym and the credibility of the propaganda increases entirely for free.
He's a credible source, you're just mad that China is shit and Marxism is shit and he's making it look bad.
How could you possibly believe this? Which part of his work do you find well reasoned? Is it the work he does with VoC where he says Covid-19 is a communist weapon? Is it Worthy to Escape where he says that if you abuse women, homosexuals or children, you're always morally in the right because those actions repel the Antichrist?
What does he have to do with this story? His name isn't mentioned in the article.
I'd like to draw attention to how every tankie who commented in this thread actually looked at the sources whereas the liberals mostly read the headline.
Hey, tbf some of them probably read it without looking at any sources for their claims
Did you really look at the sources? Because the first source in the article links another BBC article (which links to another article) that ultimately sources research from the Uyghur Human Rights Project. That project does not appear to have any connection to Adrian Zenz. So my original question still stands what does Adrian Zenz have to do with this?
You say every tankie who commented actually looked at the sources but, as far as I can tell, they are just parroting propaganda talking points that they are accusing everyone else of falling for.
Look, I get being skeptical of what the West says about China but I don't think anyone can deny that anything anti China gets quickly astroturfed on Lemmy. I'm seeing lots more knee jerk reactions from tankies that obviously did not read the article and are accusing everyone else of just falling for Western propaganda without doing some real introspection that they are basically just doing the same thing.
Adrian Zens is integral to the Uyghur Human Rights Project. I suppose I don't do new research, I just follow links until I find something I've judged as untrustworthy before. He's not directly credited as a contributor, but Uyghur Human Rights Project uses him as their source for all their publishing, and invites him to their events.
Well, I don't know what else to tell you. I couldn't find anything about him on their site or him being used for any of research that I looked into. Now, I didn't go over everything so it is possible he's worked with them in the past but I don't think that would be a reason to discredit all the work the UHRP.
What am I seeing is anything critical of China getting downvoted and a bunch of people congrating themselves for not falling for the propaganda when I literally looked and could not find anything they were claiming as part of the article.
I encourage anyone seeing all these comments discrediting this story and look into the details yourself. I could not find any evidence for all the claims they are making to discredit this. There has been some good thoughtful discussion and I appreciate that but lots of knee jerk reactions that people not doing proper research when even just a cursory check doesn't back up what they are claiming.
Okay. I think this is a very fair and good comment. So this is their most recent published work. https://uhrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/UHRP-Humanitarian-Needs-Report_2023-02-01.pdf.pdf
Ctrl F, RFA 7 matches, RFERL 6 matches, radio free 7 matches, uhrp.org to see how many times they source themselves. There are 23 matches but only 19 instances of them using circular sourcing. ASPI 1 match. Jamestown 2 matches. There are some better sources in there, like Human Rights Watch, but the HRW article in question uses Adrian Zenz as their source. The only source I'm seeing quickly that isn't directly with zero steps of separation tied to a NATO member spy agency or propaganda agency is NY Times.
For the New York Times article though be careful following their Tinyurl link because it goes through a Viglink reroute that is unlikely to be safe. I can't imagine why else they'd find it appropriate to use a tinyurl link in their paper if not to attack readers. You can use an extractor service. But anyway if you read that article you'll see that their source is only Uyghur Human Rights Project so it's a circular citation again. No I don't check stuff like this every time. But by now we should know that Uyghur Human Rights Project is an untrustworthy front for Adrian Zenz and stop when we encounter it.
That's not their most recent published work. That was published in Feb 2023 and they released a more recent report on Jul 2023 (and I believe it has less troublesome references but I'll admit I don't have the time to go through them all):
https://uhrp.org/statement/uhrp-submits-comprehensive-report-for-un-consideration-of-chinas-human-rights-record/
Regardless, your point still stands, there's likely more circular referencing than I originally believed. I'm still not convinced it is as much of a conspiracy as others have claimed, but it is food for thought. I appreciate the less combative tone and a willingness to discuss in good faith.
Two things about this:
It doesn't require "conspiracy" on the scale of dozens of different international organizations conspiring and then working in lock step. What you have is a set of media entities (following the governments who they have a vested interest in getting along with) following their individual interests of publishing bullshit, and when another company publishes bullshit of the same genre you are publishing, there's a good chance you will find it worthwhile to recycle their reporting (as many do with AP and BBC articles, for example). There is no need for these groups to "conspire" to produce this result, there is only need for common interests that are observably true to us. Circular citations making spurious claims again, say, China is the natural result of media outlets being aligned with an entity like NATO because of a number of factors like funding and access journalism. That's the market for you.
The view that conspiracy is an epistemic hazard (though it does certainly happen) is correct and important. I encourage you to keep that in mind next time you read an article about North Korea calling basically every observed part of the country a potemkin village, or all the flimsy claims of subterfuge by China when they do things that are normal for other states but blown up into world-domination catastrophizing when the BBC puts it through its very filtered lens.
I apologise for linking the wrong report. I genuinely had trouble with their website, because some articles aren't original research.
Anyone reading the above comment, simple Google "Uyghur Human Rights Project Adrian Zenz" and investigate how involved he is with the links on their own website that show up. It will be obvious how full of shit this poster is.
Literally follow every citation and you'll find him a lot
Well I followed the citations in this article and he did not come up so I'm not sure what you are talking about.
Adrian Zens is integral to the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
This is honestly pretty dismaying. This isn't meant as a put down because it is outside of your control but we've got to work on investigative literacy as a country if so many people are having a hard time doing simple stuff like this.
How is he so integral? I've looked all over their site and at a few of their reports and there's nothing about it him or his findings? Look, I'm willing to hear people out but I've looked and I can't find anything that backs up what people are claiming here so I don't think it's me that needs to work on investigative literacy.
I encourage anyone on the fence about this to do their own research. His Wikipedia article has some interesting points:
"As a result of his work on Xinjiang, Zenz has become a target for coordinated disinformation attacks from pro-Beijing and Chinese state-run media, as well as other state-affiliated entities. Zenz and his work on Xinjiang have been criticized by the Chinese government, which, according to The Globe and Mail, "has called his findings 'lies'—even when it confirmed them."
"During an interview with The Daily Telegraph published in May 2021, Zenz defended himself against allegations of fabrication, noting that 95% of documents he has analyzed are publicly available government records."
Plus his findings have been corroborated by lots of reputable reporters. I've seen a lot of claims that people need to stop believing the lies and look at the sources. I've done that and not found what they are claiming so what exactly am I missing here?
Did you google "Uyghur Human Rights Project Adrian Zenz" before replying to my previous comment?
Also did you look at who funds the org? Because it is the US government through NED through only one shell, it isnt hard to look up.
As hopefully your high school librarian has explained to you already, Wikipedia is not a good source.
Yep, I googled it and I encourage everyone else to do it too. There was nothing. I did see a few Chinese sources calling him out as fraud but nothing unbiased. I did see lots of other credible organizations backing up his findings too.
The Wikipedia article was simply a good starting point that I encouraged people to check out. There's tons of citations in there that back up their points.
Okay, here are the top Google results from my search in order
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://uhrp.org/statement/uhrp-submits-comprehensive-report-for-un-consideration-of-chinas-human-rights-record/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://uhrp.org/news/chinas-human-rights-abuses-xinjiang-and-us-response/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://uhrp.org/news/understanding-continued-persecution-chinas-uighurs/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://uhrp.org/report/mass-dentention-hotan/
The Google questions thingy
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://victimsofcommunism.org/leader/adrian-zenz-phd/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://amp.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220525-adrian-zenz-the-academic-behind-the-xinjiang-police-files-on-china-s-abuse-of-uighur
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting
The Wikipedia article on Zenz.
Did you find where Adrian was used in each of these articles? Can you tell me the extent that he is relied on by the organization, based on how he is used?
I encourage everyone to look into the links provided and see for yourself what I'm talking about. In the very first link, out of 32 citations provided, Zenz was used 4 times. I'd hardly say his research was a critical part of their research or regardless there's plenty of other sources provided if you don't like him as a source. Don't listen to all the others saying and look for yourself. There's very little to back up their reasons for dismissing everything as some kind of anti China conspiracy.
That is incredible because I intentionally made them invalid URLs. I get redirect errors when I click on them, and I assume folks who actually bother to click on them should get similar errors.
You should ask yourself why you're so committed to intellectual dishonesty.
Uhh, what? The links work perfectly fine and are not "invalid". You do get a redirect notice but that doesn't make them invalid links?
I'm not the one being intellectually dishonest here, man. I haven't even accused other people of being dishonest. I'm just saying that I looked into what people have claimed and I can't see what they are saying. People should check for themselves and I think they'll see quickly who's really spreading BS here...
You're right here actually. Some devices give a redirect warning without letting you go to the site. That's my bad.
Still, 4 of the 32 links directly reference zenz. If you read all of the links sources however, you will note that they overwhelmingly have zenz somewhere in the citations. This is why I'm not willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Because I keep telling you to vet the citations, and when you go to check, you do not properly vet the citations.
This institution is also funded by the NED (through a shell org) which is a US government tool for regime change.
Also, if 1/8th of the citations are directly from a Christian fascist why would you assume the rest are credible? Even following the logic of your shoddy research I really don't get that.
OK fair enough. I'll admit that I first didn't see any connection to Zenz at all, but then I noticed you have to click on each citation individually to see all of the sources (I assumed all the citations would be listed at the bottom so I could just search for his name and when it didn't pop up I assumed he wasn't there at all).
I fully admit that I don't have the time to look through and vet every citation (who does?) and I never claimed I checked everything. People were just claiming that Zenz was the source of all of this info and that was clearly not true based on just a quick check. Lots of this information is corroborated by lots of reputable organizations so I don't think it is appropriate to just dismiss it all.
I think at least the thing we seem to agree on is that people should do some research into this stuff themselves rather than blindly believe what everyone is shouting. I fully support that. I took a look and what I saw didn't convince me of the claims people are making here. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
Except Aria just walked you through how there were no reputable citations for this specific article.
You are assuming that there are plenty of reputable organizations that support this with quality evidence, but Im assuming this is the most in depth you've ever gone on looking at sources for claims here and all of them were not trustable.
There is evidence of a crackdown in response to terrorism(the US government funded Islamic extremist groups in the area) and some excesses from that crackdown, but every time a claim rises to the level of genocide, you're going to go back into Adrian Zenz or the state run media says lala land.
To the best of my research, the counterterrorism program is primarily focused on improving economic prospects and reassuring folks that their culture will be respected. And they have used very heavy handed methods, such as involuntarily throwing people who are only marginally connected to extremists in vocational training centers -where abuses do happen- in order to do the former. And they very much deserve to be criticized from an informed place about that. But you know what, the US would just kill them or black site them, as we've seen play out over and over again in the middle east the last 20 years, which just created even more insurgents.
I am this thorough whenever something new comes out because I care about being informed about this as China is the largest socialist project in the world and as a socialist I think its flaws need to be very carefully studied so as not to be emulated.