Author here. Thank you for your earnest concern. I'm a pretty risk-averse person and I take lots of pains to address those contingencies for all of my digital services.
If you really care, reach out directly to the merchants you buy from. Tell them you used to be a loyal customer, but you won't buy from them again until they stop carrying products made in China. Get your friends and coworkers to do the same, and keep the pressure on. If they go for it, follow through by rewarding them with your loyalty, and broadcast that win as publicly as possible. Talk about it, hashtag it, whatever. Organize.
Changing individual consumption habits rarely amounts to much more than virtue signalling.
And don't toss your existing stuff. You already paid for it, so it's not helping China anymore, and throwing it away doesn't hurt them. If anything, selling it to someone else reduces demand for new products (by exactly 1 unit).
Gandhi protested against the British by spinning his own fabric, making his own shoes, and being completely independent. It made no difference to the British companies, but it sent a powerful message to the nation that Indians can be independent.
Do not underestimate or discourage people from doing what they principally object, even if practically it makes no sense or has no objective benefit.
Anything else sets up a perverse incentive to execute more undesirables.
For the other part, I have trouble understanding why a dead person would care about anything after their death ...although I can understand them having wishes before death, but any such wishes should be weighed in context for their reasonableness given all factors.
You may say you wouldn't care if your dead carcass was, say, grotesquely abused for someone else's amusement—after all, you're dead and no longer around to have any feelings about it—but how would your children feel? How would you feel if that was the fate awaiting your life partner?
The shared endeavor of human society entitles people to dignity even in death. That includes the right to bodily integrity.
Yeah that would be disrespectful. Kind of moving the goalposts though to use that example when talking about organ transplant, something that helps people who might otherwise die. Obviously I am not saying execution is worth it for that. Just more that if someone is dead already for whatever reason, it's hard to see it as a bad thing to help the living, if that can be done.
I mean if we're going to fashion extreme examples for dramatic effect, that can be done on the other side too. Imagine if the relatives have racist objections to donating an organ, and let someone die because their own feelings would be hurt if they saw a person of the "wrong" race being helped. How do you weigh their racist feelings, versus the life being saved? It's not that clear to me that their feelings should be at the forefront when other factors are considered.
I agree that dignity in death is a good thing. Just not so certain as you that there is only one way to get there. And none of this is to claim that China does what they do with dignity... I highly doubt that. But organ transplants are not such a terrible thing.
> I have trouble understanding why a dead person would care about anything after their death
Examining the unstated implications of your argument, taken on its face, is not the same as moving the goalposts. Saying "I don't care what happens after I die, so no need to even ask if you can take my organs... except hang on, no, don't abuse my body in weird ways, I'm not okay with that"–THAT'S moving the goalposts.
> it's hard to see it as a bad thing to help the living
except to the extent that 1) harvesting organs from political prisoners is just about as close to a bad thing as you can imagine, and 2) even if we're not talking about China in particular, involuntary organ extraction harms the dignity of living kin.
> Imagine if the relatives have racist objections to donating an organ, and let someone die because their own feelings would be hurt if they saw a person of the "wrong" race being helped. How do you weigh their racist feelings, versus the life being saved?
The right to bodily integrity, to the choice about how your body is used, is unaffected by your motives. A right does not cease to become a right once you disagree with how someone wishes to exercise it.
You don't want your organs to go to a black man? Exercise your right to bodily integrity by not agreeing to be an organ donor.
Including things that harm others or infringe on their rights.
So if that is guiding policy, policy is going to be a mess at worst or severely hobbled at best.
China doesn’t generally hold religion in high regard when formulating policy. They are more guided by practicality and expediency.
That puts them in conflict with many western values but it’s interesting to look at it from their perspective.
For those people who believe that organ donation is a grotesque abuse, that is bad but it should be weighed against other bad things. People dying is also bad. Which is worse? Grotesque abuse of a corpse, or letting someone die? China appears to have made a decision on this question.
That's a part of the problem here. People speak their mind, disappear into a black bag and end up donating their organs to a Party member's daughter five months later.
The other major part being that there's very little due process, or fair justice, not in the way that you or I would expect it. Certainly not with lives on the line.
Worrying about wasted organs misses the point by an absurd distance.
BTW, I'm Canadian but was from mainland. There are also a lot of debate inside WeChat groups which include oversea Chinese who have access to all information.