Did anyone see last night on Channel 4?
70'000 children kidnapped in China each year. Less than 1% of them found.
It made me wince.your response made me smile given purple's strapline....
They are stolen and sold. Young children are sold to couples that have no children or want a second and can afford to pay the second child fine that the Chinese government has in place. Because of the one child policy there is a huge shortage of girls in China (since girls go to live with their husbands family parents are left with no-one to care for them in old age). This shortage occurs because of the high proportion of abortions carried out on female foetuses. The net result is that many men cannot get a wife and so there is a thriving trade in kidnapping teenaged girls and selling them to the highest bidder in another province.what are the kidnapped for?
They are stolen and sold. Young children are sold to couples that have no children or want a second and can afford to pay the second child fine that the Chinese government has in place. Because of the one child policy there is a huge shortage of girls in China (since girls go to live with their husbands family parents are left with no-one to care for them in old age). This shortage occurs because of the high proportion of abortions carried out on female foetuses. The net result is that many men cannot get a wife and so there is a thriving trade in kidnapping teenaged girls and selling them to the highest bidder in another province.
The interviews with parents whose small children had been kidnapped were harrowing and for me it put the Maddie McCann case into context.
This is just one more mark against a country that executes criminals to order so that their organs can be sold for transplant and remains a vicious and un-reconstructed police state.
What kind of a petulant comment is this anyway?
That's a huge amount of kids - even for somewhere as populous as China.
Interesting how you can infer ‘petulant’ (meaning cranky: peevish: rude) from a 2-letter word followed by a question mark! I’m not for a moment condoning what’s happening in China but I find it hard to get exercised about it in the context of the following:-
To a cynical mind it would seem that the original two letter response was intended to provoke reply so that you could rattle off the vast figures regarding death in the world and try put people in their place, but maybe thats just me being cynical.
To a cynical mind it would seem that the original two letter response was intended to provoke reply so that you could rattle off the vast figures regarding death in the world and try put people in their place, but maybe thats just me being cynical.
Unfortunate as the outcomes from such practices may be in our eyes, it may well be that making an omelette cannot be done without breaking eggs.
I'm afraid not! I do believe however that the indignation expressed here is misplaced and here's why:-
In my opinion it’s a totally futile exercise to critically assess the human rights policies or indeed any other aspect of the culture of countries which are as ‘foreign’ to us as China is, which has never been a democracy and which was up to comparatively recently a feudal society. Context is all. To draw any inference from the fact that 70,000 missing Chinese children equates to 240 in Ireland is misguided, as such a scenario could not in any conceivable situation exist in a modern democratic state such as ours.
We cannot hope to fully understand the enormous challenges faced by China. Their response to them, logical as they see it, has led to for example the one-child family policy which in theory should curb China’s population, and so reduce the associated gigantic burden of trying to feed its people. Unfortunate as the outcomes from such practices may be in our eyes, it may well be that making an omelette cannot be done without breaking eggs. Similarly, huge numbers of people (probably at major human cost) had to be compulsorily displaced in order to instal hydro-electric power systems.
To condemn such practices from the perspective of comfortable, modern western democracies and worse, to attempt to do something about them, as in Iraq for example, leads to the kinds of solutions attempted there. How many people have died there in what will inevitably prove to be a failed strategy? To go further, how many millions around the world have died in our efforts to democratise or ‘christianise’ them? We see parallel situations in Africa where apparently beneficial but enormously costly strategies attempt, for example, to curb the spread of AIDs, but are doomed to failure because of endemic corruption, superstition and custom. Worse, we seem unable to grasp that ugly reality, that we cannot make them see the world as we do and so cause them to rush to embrace our perceived solutions to their problems.
Unfortunately this line of thinking does not fit well with the objectives of the so-called ‘media’, which are to sell their products and provide good careers for those who work in the business. There is nothing like a little bit of shock and horror to turn the paying customers on, particularly when children are the subject matter. There is nothing like the self-satified buzz produced by righteous but futile indignation!
In the mid thirteenth century Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty in Northern China, conquering Southern China over the next number of years. He abolished the death penalty for almost all crimes, abolished torture, introduced universal free education and allowed freedom of religious worship.
To suggest or imply that China is unable to allow its citizens to enjoy basic human rights because of some nebulous historical tradition of barbarism is utterly bogus. The reason that it’s citizens live like they do is because they are ruled by a dictatorial cabal who have long since jettisoned any real pretence of communist ideals and are simply unwilling to surrender power.
The reason that Africa is in the state it is now is to a large part due to colonialism, postcolonial interference and the cold war being fought by proxy as a hot war with the USSR, USA and China up to their necks in it. Most of Africa is still not economically independent and those few countries that are have only been so since the early 1990’s.
Your arguments are sweeping, your comparisons are misleading.
and your conclusion that in effect we should just leave them at it ignores the culpability of most if not all developed countries in the mess that Africa finds itself in.
Nobody here is suggesting that China, of any other country should be “Christianised” just that no one is suggesting that we should try to make them “see the world as we do”.
Every country has periods of discord and periods of peace. I do not think that democracy is the be all and end all. A sovereign constitution, a civil police force and a independent supreme court all need to be in place or else democracy will just elect the next dictator. My point is that there is nothing inevitable about Chinas current situation. It could be worse but it could be a whole lot better. Even within it's current political and economic constraints there is no good reason why the level of human rights abuses there should be so high. Dismissing or minimising what it does to it's own people on the grounds that we just don't understand the complexity of the situation is utter rubbish?And they all lived happily ever after, in peace and harmony? You make it sound like Shangri-La. I’m surprised at you Purple that you, obviously knowing something of China’s history, choose to gloss over the Qing dynasty and the enormously turbulent period from approx 1911 to the present day, the period which above all shaped the modern China.
No communist country ever practiced communist ideals but China doesn't even offer a pretence any more. Yes, I am aware of China's recent history.Did they in fact ever actually practice ‘communist ideals’? Also is it not the case that the process of democratisation is still in its infancy, beginning as recently as the 1970s? That was my contention. I did not use the term ‘barbarism’, but rather ‘feudalism’ which is an entirely different matter. You do of course know that warlordism was still being practiced up to WWII?
These are two different points. The first is valid but still doesn't explain why the kidnap of 70'000 children should be dismissed with "So?" because, as was pointed out, is does not make it into the current top ten list of overwhelming human tragedies in the world.Let me set the record straight at this point. I deplore all crimes against humanity, whether it’s the murder of a 17-year-old student in Galway or the mass slaughter caused by Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin or any other despot. I stand over my view however that attempting to change a country’s practices without taking cognisance of the underlying culture and history inevitably leads to a lot more damage being done. I categorically did not suggest that they be ‘left get on with it’ but rather that the process of influencing change is a highly complex matter and should not simply a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the international community, more especially when the real reasons why it chooses to become involved are generally far more self-serving (think middle-eastern oil for example).
So evangelising by, for the most part US backed Baptist, churches in Africa is reason not to engage and try to help Africa sort out it's AIDS problem? Is that the point you are making? Are you using this as an example of where the West has screwed up and extrapolating that we should therefore keep out of it? If that's not what you are saying then what is your point? Did you just feel a compulsion to state the obvious?I fail to understand what relevance this has. You seem to miss my point about AIDS or the severe consequences of evangelization (however unintended). It has nothing to do with why Africa is in its current state. It was once again an example of how well-meaning people’s attempts to resolve problems in the way they do, can go so drastically wrong.
No you didn't, you didn't even touch on it.I have just addressed this.
So they were just off topic comments that again stated the obvious?Nor did I, nor did I. I used the first as an example of how meddling can have unfortunate consequences and the second is what I was cautioning against!
So why the first comment and the subsequent "wall of sound" type post that does nothing to answer why you posted your first comment?Let me also say that I remain extremely sensitive to the fact that behind all the sound and fury this thread is about unfortunate children being abducted in China and that I have significant family reasons why it’s a matter that’s very close to my heart. I do take it very seriously indeed.
Context is all. To draw any inference from the fact that 70,000 missing Chinese children equates to 240 in Ireland is misguided, as such a scenario could not in any conceivable situation exist in a modern democratic state such as ours.