Ruzzia = Drunk bad Murika = stupid as shit bad, gun boom boom pan pan stupid and bad China = smart bad, but still very bad
I can’t know, so I choose not to decide one way or the other. I can’t know what is or isn’t propaganda, so I can’t tell you with full certainty.
I can know from firsthand accounts from Chinese people I know personally about the surveillance and militaristic state of things. I can know from reports from those on the ground.
However, I don’t think I’ve heard any worse about China than America, but I believe it to be more restrictive than the EU by a fair margin. Is China “bad”? To me, they aren’t “good” per-se, but moreover, China seems to only really care about China, as their actions seem to reflect.
They pay and support who they support and legitimize the same as any other large, powerful and untrustworthy nation, I give no quarter, but I impose none, all the same.
I think a lot of what I hear from western media is communism fear mongering propaganda. But I also think that there are kernels of truth in some of it. China is a large country that I have no doubt is doing a lot of good stuff and a lot of awful stuff. Just like the USA does good stuff and awful stuff.
What China is doing with the Uigurs is not merely Western propaganda. China is also obviously a dictatorship. No sane person would challenge that. The surveillance state is also hardening and Xi is aiming towards a neo-maoist trajectory in so some regards but without the stone age communism of the Cultural Revolution.
The West, especially but not only the US are moving towards a hardened dictatorship as well but that doesn’t change the situation in China.
All of that is quite distinct from the question if China is a benevolent dictatorship. I would say partially. Sadly a lot of what made China that is currently being dismantled. The previous safeguards of all the power consolidating in one individual have been broken. There are good reasons why those safeguards were previously created. So that development is troubling. Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. In those few cases where it doesn’t the reign can lead to a golden age. But if the guy at the top sucks it is incredibly hard to get rid of him (or her), much harder than in a democracy or even non absolute dictatorship.
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
Xi Jinping is not a “neo-Maoist,” he’s a Marxist-Leninist, same as all of the leaders of the CPC since Mao.
Funny how you forgot to list the results on the question of “impact of elections” or the one about political pluralism. But in either case. Comparing those results between entirely different countries and systems of government is rather difficult to begin with. After all, this is about perceptions, not reality. It would be interesting to see how many people would agree with “My country is democratic” in North Korea.
The claim that ethnic Uyghurs have absolutely equal rights before the law compared to a Han Chinese living in Xinyiang is pretty detached from reality. But even if they had, that doesn’t mean that the law isn’t biased against them to begin with.
But the clearest indication is a >90% satisfaction of people with the federal government. Such country is either utopia, in a massive economic uprise … or not a democracy. China on a Beijing level has a “congress” that is functionally as meaningless as a legislative could be. It is so large that it is by design already pretty impossible to be a functional parliament, and anything but a rubber stamping institution. And so the records also show that it isn’t much more than that. Power is increasingly centralised in one person, de facto. There is not much left of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms on preventing power the concentration of too much into one single person. Xi has increasingly hollowed out the system of Collective Leadership. Naturally, elections or citizen’s opinions on any of that had very little impact on any of that.
This doesn’t actually bear out concretely in reality. The fact that the government has high approval rates is directly related to the consultative form of democracy practiced in China, and the nature of a socialist state as governed by the working classes. Western states see less support because they are dominated by a tiny minority, whereas China is led by the majority.
If, over the next 10 years, your country became more and more like China, would you go along with the changes? Would you have any problems with the transformation?
I really don’t know what it’s like in China because I’ve never been there. I know some people who are from China but they’ve never really talked about anything other than visiting their families. All I hear comes from the US propaganda machine, so I can’t really have an informed opinion. This is probably how it should be for like 95% of Americans. We don’t need to have an opinion about everything ffs.
Given that I live in the US Empire, a number of things will go differently for socialist construction. The US Empire is de-industrialized, and is a settler-colony. Decolonization and re-industrialization will both be required. However, certain aspects of China’s experience with socialism will also be experienced by the socialist state replacing the US Empire in this hypothetical, and I support that as well.
- modern electricity grid quickly moving away from fossil fuels
- high speed train network
- cheap fresh produce
- affordable housing
- transitioning to socialism via the development of productive forces
- strong investment in education and R&D
- quickly advancing tech in almost every sector that matters
- people-directed governance that is not subservient to capital (foreign or domestic)
- very low crime
- ecological restoration that won’t get cancelled by the next elected administration
- cheap and good quality healthcare
- bold long term vision and consistent achievement of it over time
objectively better than just about any other place
Your list should include pros and cons. Which is your country?
I wish my country became more like China over the next decade
but but have you considered the abstract values???
They’ve been around, as a civilization, for over 5,000 years. I’d like to think you don’t make it that long without doing a thing or 2 right.
Eh. The US has been around just as long as a civilization. If the Chinese get to claim credit for the radically different ancient predecessors to modern China, then the US can claim decent from both the ancient Native American civilizations as well as the ancient Middle Eastern civilizations that are ultimately the predecessors of many countries such as the US.
The US has been around just as long as a civilization. If the Chinese get to claim credit for the radically different ancient predecessors to modern China, then the US can claim decent from both the ancient Native American civilizations
The US is a settler colonial project that carried out an extermination campaign and genocide of hundreds of native tribes, and stole their land. Settlers have no right to claim descent from the people (they’re still) trying to exterminate. Unlike South America, there’s not even a genetic heritage; the US colonialist just killed every indigenous person they found, or put them into reservations.
Neither the PRC nor most ME countries are settler ones. The number of settler-colonial countries is tiny: the US, Canada, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, are the main ones.
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Kinda sounds more like you need other countries’ history to be described in the same terms that apply to the United States, so you can dismiss it all as “just the way the world is” without having to examine how that history informs our present.
The education is also non-competitive and crippling for the not-so-gifted students, yes?
Because I don’t hear about many student suicides (specifically due to stress and pressure) outside of the Asian countries.
Selective hearing, racist edition
incredible
I specifically mentioned Asian and including China.
So…Please give me now a comparison to western societies like EU countries (or US if it easier to find statistics)
C O P E
i would literally kill for half the amenities they have in China.
You forget the part where they hear China is bad from their friends
you mean their occupied subjects not friends.
I think they meant that we’re also propagandized by our peers
Westerners today have so much in common with their inquisition and crusades predecessors. They replaced Christianity with Western Liberalism and they fight for it with the same zeal. Either you adopt their values and systems or you are an evil heathen who must be destroyed.
Makes even more sense once you realize that the inquisition and witch hunts were deeply intertwined with the forceful establishment of capitalism
There’s an interesting blog that analyzes the transition of political economy from medieval europe to the rise of capital through a perspective of the mechanics of occult practices. It’s pretty well thought out and compares church occult practices and their relations to “capital occultism” via social relations and rituals.
This post is about how money aka capital is transmuted to embody commodified labor value in a similar structure of social relations (“occult magic”) as the holy cracker being consecrated and transmuted to embody the flesh of Jesus Christ.
https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2021/11/25/dark-eucharist-of-the-real-god/
The previous post is also quite good that covers the concept of Marx’s “real god” that is manifested via the capital imperative to continuously increase profit and accumulation.
My god the comments. You are perfectly allowed to not know much about a country. I don’t know about PRC either. But I know to keep my mouth shut on matters I don’t know about. I don’t go on parroting propaganda for those things.
It’s all about geography , if China was on the map like Australia or more like the US they wouldn’t have any problems if they had plenty of space and no neighbors.
“They shouldn’t have built their country near our military bases”
You say this as if the US didn’t have problems with it’s neighbours and as if that stopped them from invading and bombing countries abroad. China does none of that bs even by having thrice the amount of border neighbours.
What no political theory does to a mf
Geographical environment is unquestionably one of the constant and indispensable conditions of development of society and, of course, influences the development of society, accelerates or removed its development. But its influence is not the determining influence, inasmuch as the changes and development of society proceed at an incomparably faster rate than the changes and development of geographical environment. in the space of 3000 years three different social systems have been successively superseded in Europe: the primitive communal system, the slave system and the feudal system. In the eastern part of Europe, in the U.S.S.R., even four social systems have been superseded. Yet during this period geographical conditions in Europe have either not changed at all, or have changed so slightly that geography takes no note of them. And that is quite natural. Changes in geographical environment of any importance require millions of years, whereas a few hundred or a couple of thousand years are enough for even very important changes in the system of human society.
It follows from this that geographical environment cannot be the chief cause, the determining cause of social development; for that which remains almost unchanged in the course of tens of thousands of years cannot be the chief cause of development of that which undergoes fundamental changes in the course of a few hundred years
in the space of 3000 years three different social systems have been successively superseded in Europe: the primitive communal system, the slave system and the feudal system.
this is talking about the romans right?
Among others yes. The Greeks who invented democracy™️ also had a slave system.
Here’s the rest of the text (I see I missed the source)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
thanks.
Can’t understand what you’re saying. Can you elaborate? The propaganda against China is not coming from its neighbours as far as I know.
I was saying it’s just luck of the draw, like the US got a great position that makes it have simple easy borders.
How is it even relevant to my original comment?
He means the UwU occupied american subjects, Japan SK philippines, who make these statements from time to time to appease their overlord.
Oh no! You’ve poked the liberal hive now LMBO
I don’t care if they are against capitalism, I’m not simping for authoritarians.
The working classes use state authority for pro-social policy and to prebent capitalists from gaining political power, as opposed to capitalist authority for pro-profit policy and to prevent the working classes from gaining political power. Authority has a class dynamic, analysis without class erases the core distinction.
Lol America, land of the free, they literally arrested anyone who said they were a communist and confiscated your gold because they said it was illegal.
Yet China is frowned upon.
Flash news, America is authoritarian
But which countries are not authoritarian, and why?
These things exist in degrees.
Fuck Donald J Trump. I hope the rat bastard dies shitting himself inside out.
Try talking like that about Xi on Chinese social media.
That was supposed to be criticism?
Liberals believe hating something is critique. That’s why they claim Lemmy.ml bans people for “criticizing” socialist countries, when in reality their “critique” is just saying “fuck xyz.”
Mostly their critique, as you said, is just plain insulting. Often it is not to an ideology or a system, but a person or people. Like the person above just insulted not the US, not capitalism, not western imperialism, but Trump, a single person. What is even the point?
It’s the type of unseriousness that results from not engaging with real political activism, and not engaging with socialist theory.
Whataboutism.
Expecting others to adhere to your cultural and political norms is authoritarianism. Not willing to learn or tolerate differences is bigotry.
Because America are the thoughtful, non violent democrats, who represent the people, and never start illegal wars?
This is still happening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
So let’s play a game. The USA is bad, and China is bad. Your turn.
This is still happening
Yeah? Got any primary sources that aren’t a decade old?
I have not stake in this, but here you go: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-uyghur-uighur-turkey-oppression-rcna97238. I took one at random that was semi-recent and look somewhat relevant.
Just look at the date of the references on Wikipedia and you will find plenty.
This shit is so tiring.
NBC is pretty shit that almost every hyperlink is to another nbc news but one of those hyperlinks go to Safeguard Defenders and other go to Amnesty International and both direct to a report made by OHCHR which just cite Adrian Zenz and his propaganda made by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Holy shit is just impossible to find a source that doesn’t have bullshit propaganda. For any lib reading this, if a news source is citing a propaganda piece they are not writing news, they are writing propaganda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5j2GcWZEbM
here have an uyghur talking to a propagandized westerner that thinks they know more about their own people.
Thx for that lol. Incredibly satisfying to watch.
If the US is bad, why do you believe what they say about others?
Because I don’t live in a solipsism that concludes nothing is real?
Your assessment of China is based on state department propaganda
And yours is based on???
Are you saying you don’t believe in the treatment of wighurs
And you believe this is the truth.
You believe in a genocide with literally no single proof
The burden of proof is on you. I can only provide context for the claims that have been raised. If you look at the sources they’re all western
Are you saying you don’t believe in the white genocide going on in south africa right now?
Are you saying you don’t believe that Hamas beheaded 40 babies?
It’s spelled “Uyghurs”, by the way
Nice non answer
“Your argument doesn’t count because I have no response to it!”
It’s only a non-answer if you have a sub-canine ability to process patterns
Do you deny that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and had to be toppled?
Europe also bad?
“Simping” here meaning “viewing with anything less than total antipathy”
Define authoritarian. The PRC spent decades of anti-colonial struggle defeating British imperialists, Japanese imperialists, feudal reactionaries, and then US imperialists. Do you know more than them about how to defeat vicious empires, “non-authoritarianly”?
they should’ve just prayed and cattered to the imperialists like India.
As malcolm x once said “The West doesn’t not have any love for China but it respects it, while they love India but they do not respect it.”
These very same jerks would love China if it was just another uwu Japan/SKorea hosting US troops.
What’s an authoritarian?
State > people
The people control the state in China, though.
The communist party controls the state, and not everyone is a member.
So then every country is authoritarian, because no country is controlled by a party that every citizen is a member of.
No just one out of every 14 people, which you may notice is many thousands of times more democratic than any of the western so-called democracies by percentage.
So 13 out of 14 people do not belong to the only political coalition (the 8 parties with 700,000 members total don’t really count as “opposition parties”) that is legally allowed in their country?
In reference to my original post, we agree that authoritarianism is bad and you are arguing the case that China and the CCP is not authoritarian, correct?
They seem to be doing a pretty good job
we agree that authoritarianism is bad
No. We disagree that “authoritarianism” is a meaningful distinction when every government exists by authority. Might as well call it “badguyism”
The communist party is a working class party. What exactly do you think the purpose of a party is? And what do you think class is? You seem confused on each.
So what’s a non-authoritarian state?
A state the exists as a servant to a citizenry that is not limited to class or ethnicity. A state served as a safeguard to the human rights of all humans within its sovereignty.
It also serves as a mechanism to efficiently direct resources to human advancement as basic needs are automated.
You just described the PRC, and notably not capitalist dictatorships, whose governments don’t represent their people / working class, but the interests of capitalists only.
You desperately need to get past this poli-sci-intro-level understanding of what states are. States are organizations of force for one class (meaning in Marxism their relationship to production) to oppress another. The USA and other liberal countries are capitalist dictatorships over workers, while the PRC is a worker’s dictatorship over capital.
Here are some resources:
So, China
I meant like can you give an example of one
Also:
It also serves as a mechanism to efficiently direct resources to human advancement as basic needs are automated.
So like China
Finland
Finland is an imperialist country governed by capitalists.
those right wing warmongering Russophobe US bootlickers?
Finland? Where despite years of protest by the people, the state continues to buy Israeli weapons and cooperate with the zionist entity in the development of military tech and spyware? The state currently ignoring the very clear wishes of it’s people in order to aid and abet a historically unpopular genocide?
Jesus, at this point why don’t you just admit that by “non-authoritarian” you just mean “white”.
The country that was a Nazi ally and didn’t drop the swastika from their air force insignia until 2025? Finland the country currently implementing mass austerity while giving tax cuts to the rich? That Finland?
authoritarians
Thought terminating cliche used by the unintelligent and uninformed to avoid reckoning with reality beyond vibes.
“non authoritarian governments are known to implement mass firewalls and online surveillance”
Every country should be blocking the US surveillance giants, its extremely naive for countries to be letting facebook, twitter, reddit, and google operate unhindered.
There’ no such thing as a “non-authoritarian” state or other myths like the tooth-fairy, but even if they existed, then it’d be hard to argue that letting the US surveillance state operate freely within your borders is somehow “non-authoritarian”. The US is more likely than any other country to use the intelligence they’ve gained learned to harm you physically. See the Phoenix Program.
Literally every government with the capability to control information is doing that, and frankly the rise of bleach-injecting covid denialist flat earth tradwife inflluencers has proven China right to do so.
From Merriam-Webster
1 relating to, or favoring blind submission to [authority].
2 relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people
i love that it has the caveat in the second definition abt a constitution. like, no guys, totslly not us, look at this definition we created to show how we arent authoritarian
So like, objectively not China? Because their ruling party consists of 90 million members and they’re constantly debating shit, and have an incredibly high satisfaction rate among non-party members?
104 milliion last I checked.
consists of 90 million members
It’s been over 100 million since 2024
Would a non-aurhoritarian government be able to institute a one-child policy like China?
Given the vagueness of your definition, yes absolutely.
Yes, of course they could. Individual people make the decision to practice birth control every day, and a vast democratic assembly of millions voted in by their peers can make that decision as well. Meanwhile in the US, reproductive policy is dictated by nine unelected ministers: an objectively far less democratic process, yet our media never describes the US government as “authoritarian.” Because it’s not a term meant to usefully delineate important differences in form and function, it’s a vibes based epithet meant to be wielded against geopolitical enemies of capitalism. It’s a thought-terminating cliche, deployed highly selectively against anti-imperialist societies to artificially cast proletarian authority as uniquely evil while tacticly normalizing the authority of billionaires and corporations.
In practice, authoritarianism is when you are objectively more democratic in function and policy than western countries, but commit the cardinal sin of using that authority to safeguard your sovereignty, people and resources from the inhumanity of global capitalism.
You clearly don’t understand the purpose of the firewall and the online surveillance is no more than any other country but at least our government is accountable to us as opposed to owned by capital.
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I was born and raised here. The VPN is for the firewall which has many reasons to exist and I support, also they’re not illegal. Criticising the government is super common but mostly over mundane stuff because that’s what people care about (there’s a reason the approval even according to Harvard is 95+%). You people are always so arrogant while being so uninformed it’s amazing.
Making a statement that online surveillance there is no different from elsewhere will get you that kind of response tbh. It is measurably worse.
Source: it is known
It simply isn’t. Remember snowden? The NSA? TAO? Pegasus? Our government is simply more open and honest with us (might be a side effect of having real democracy as opposed to a charade put on by bought candidates every 4 years). Also before you say that’s just America, Europe are American vassal states all of these and more (since this is just what has leaked) are deployed against Europeans too and intel is shared in deals like five eyes.
You are literally talking to a Chinese person from China, smug liberal dipshittery knows no bounds
Then they fit the second part, living in ignorance. Online surveillance there is measurably worse.
Edit: just for clarity, I’m not “china bad” in my worldview but claims they their online surveillance is the same as elsewhere is utter nonsense and either from ignorance or indoctrination.
You think they’re posting on Lemmy without a VPN?
The firewall was created to foster and protect China’s fledgling digital infrastructure and data sovereignty. Many countries regulate foreign platforms and data flows. China built its own ecosystem instead of depending on foreign companies. We have seen what happens when foreign platforms operate without local oversight: Facebook facilitating genocide in Myanmar, coordinated anti-vax disinformation campaigns in Southeast Asia, algorithm-driven radicalization. The firewall makes those kinds of external influence operations harder or close to impossible to run at scale. I support it and so do many others as the alternative is plain to see. Also everyone has a VPN we’re not living in ignorance it is in fact people like yourself who are massively ignorant about us and our country.
Are they accountable to you or to party members?
To us. There’s a reason that even from Harvard’s research the government has a 95+% approval.
Direct elections reach the township and county levels where voters choose deputies to local people’s congresses. These grassroots deputies constitute the overwhelming majority of all deputies nationwide. Advancement to higher levels requires proven service at lower rungs, ensuring every national deputy has worked up from local material conditions and remains accountable to the masses below.
Grassroots legislative liaison stations and community consultation channels ensure mass input shapes policy at every stage, making democracy a daily practice not a periodic (meaningless) ritual. Whole-process people’s democracy embeds consultation and pilot programs into governance: policies are tested locally, refined through mass feedback, then scaled nationally. This grounds decisions in what we want and need.
All 55 ethnic minorities hold guaranteed representation in the NPC. Farmers and labourers comprise roughly 15% of deputies while professionals and technical personnel make up the remainder.
Even besides all that if you just look at what the Chinese government does as opposed to those owned by capital. Mass poverty alleviation, anticorruption at all levels, massive investment in socially profitable but monetarily unprofitable public services, deflating the housing bubble. These are not the actions of a government only looking out for a select few.
And also the CPC has over 100million members since 2024 that 1 in 14 people are party members not to mind those who aren’t but are active in consulting due to their position such as most engineers and scientists.
You should be skeptical of any poll or survey that presents that level of agreement on anything with that breadth of societal implications.
How do you square the whole Hong Kong protests in regards to the extradition laws? Or the aggression towards Taiwan?
Just because the anglosphere is a socioeconomic nightmare realm of genocide, immiseration and omnipresent propaganda where everyone is at each other’s throats doesn’t mean everywhere else is too.
What you’re saying is you want to be suspicious of data that paints other places in a better light than us, because it makes you feel bad. You then rationalize this desire as “wisdom” while continuing to apply it selectively against societies your government has told you to hate.
Aah yes unlike never authoritarian capitalist governments that totally don’t break in your house to throw you in the cold bitter streets to die because you couldn’t afford rent and made the property “unprofitable”. The West has no right lecturing anyone over human rights and liberty, they could just discard them from their dictionary if only it didn’t serve as great propaganda against their class enemies.
I haven’t seen a single country that doesn’t love to divide by class.
That’s because a state is itself an instrument of class warfare first and foremost. In some places the rich wield the state against the people, and in other places the people wield the state against the rich.
They’re not even against capitalism. They only pay lip service to anti-capitalism.
This must go so hard if you know literally fucking nothing about China.
👍
Wrong.
Is China State Capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
I’m honestly impressed at the effort you put into this comment. It’ll be a while before I read through all these links, so I’m just gonna save this comment and come back to it occasionally.
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What not reading anything Deng, Jiang, Hu or Xi wrote will do to a mf. Genuinely amazingly arrogant. Socialism is not Communism and due to living in reality pressing the magic communism button is unfortunately not possible thus we are stuck working through the transitionary period. I wish I had the confidence like you do to be so arrogant on something you know so little about.
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Go back to Reddit
Which china does this refer to?
The one recognized by 99% of the world’s population, except for a few tiny island nations / members of OAS (a US org) bribed by the US.
ROC doesn’t claim to legitimately rule China anymore. That was just KMT’s delusion, and they’re no longer in power.
Isn’t it in their constitution?
All states are bad, but if we’re talking about which ones are arguably better or worse on the world stage…
“USA USA USA, WE’RE NUMBER 1!”
Proudly colonizing for 250 years?
Seems to be what people do. America isn’t the first or the only one. People are shit is that your argument?
“If I don’t steal it, someone else will”
“All people are colonizers. Those who aren’t colonizing aren’t people” - colonizer brain in action.
That’s actually a statistical error.
Most people are alright. Power-hungry individuals responsible for colonialism are outliers and should not have been counted (or allowed to reach/stay in positions of power)
Power for things like colonizing is the best indicator of a successful state. End state power. I like that the original was intended as a slight against anarchists. States keep projecting that vertical energy.
China is bad, just not nearly as bad as the US anymore.
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source:
because they don’t have political freedom. there’s no stuff like “you can speak your mind as long as you’re respectful”
And the West definitely, absolutely has that
To be fair i speak my mind in a disrespectful way daily of the shit stained leader of the usa. They just let me do it.
Lol try actually advocating against him. They let you speak until the instant they think you might change something and have gotten really good at gauging that.
i mean yeah, literally, look at how the Iranian regime is allowed to post its anti-US propaganda lego movies on Twitter.
edit: nvm that was a bad take.
Look at how many people have been arrested and jailed for saying “From the river to the sea”
yeah the UK is going downhill very quickly and it’s evident in how nervously they respond to that saying.
Who said anything about the UK?
Guess you haven’t been following the news lately.
Yet just as these creative expressions of national resistance reached peak global influence, YouTube jumped in. The platform suspended the Explosive Media channel under baseless allegations of policy violations, effectively silencing a powerful voice of dissent
What followed was a transparent smear campaign by Western media outlets, led by the BBC, aimed at discrediting the creators and justifying the censorship. Their goal was clear: to silence any narrative that dared challenge the official US-Israeli framing of the aggression.
i indeed only found out about that rn
Yeah, how amazing that I can see anti-US propaganda Lego movies whenever I want. That’s what will ignite the revolution that makes our lives better, really some serious dissent that can conceivably lead to real change here.
Shitposts and memes about dissent to satiate the mases while all the real political discourse by activists with any real chance of accomplishing anything are censored and criminalised. Look at what happens to journalists objectively covering Iran, Israel, ICE, you name it. Look at how the protestors against oil pipelines or police racial violence are treated. So much freedom of speech for those people.
Since when is Iran a western country?? LMBO! Sounds like you just proved their point
You know nothing about China’s political system except the white-supremacist tropes you’ve ingested about it.
p.s.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
- Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
but no again tell me about how the level of political freedom you have differs meaningfully between western societies and China
FYI the thing about a central guy in charge has always been a myth, even since Stalin’s time:
What happens with China is essentially you have local committees for things like small towns and villages, where anyone can run for office. Then those many small councils form the pool of candidates for promotion to larger regional and federal committees, forcing would-be bigwigs to work their way up from the bottom. I believe the DPRK uses a similar system.
I hope this hasn’t come off as hostile, since I know these conversations can get contentious fast. But you seem like a refreshingly normal person rather than one of the ideologically motivated internet cold warriors we often get around here, so I figured I’d try and add constructively instead of tear down.
Do you have a source for this that isn’t an easily-generatable png? I’m having trouble finding it.
But you seem like a refreshingly normal person rather than one of the ideologically motivated internet cold warriors
hehe thanks, i try to be.
But a soviet style system like that is ripe for corruption and nepotism.
The opposite. From here:
Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Rome’s in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocrats–politician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassus–formed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elites’ endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britain’s general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ‘democracy’ is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former president’s wife competing with a former president’s brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, “U.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propaganda”. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, ‘the preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy’: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
My system is clearly the best, and its a shithole of corruption and nepotism. Therefore all other systems must be even corrupter and nepotister, otherwise my system wouldn’t be the best Q.E.D.
It’s sad that if I literally see ml I assume the truth is inverted. But even then, you assume too much, it’s good advice to always assume you’re talking to someone smarter than you so you make your argument clear and simple.
Let’s try this: The sun is not blue.
Why do you immediately assume communists are the opposite of correct? Not to hyperbolize, but taken to the logical conclusion this is just a belief in fascism.
You did the thing
china gets shit on because they don’t have political freedom; there’s no stuff like “you can speak your mind as long as you’re respectful”. it’s just one committee making all the decisions and you can go to jail for disagreeing.
what if actually it’s more like you need to know what the fuck you’re talking about in order to Be Political (which involves joining the party and by its nature excludes capitalist roaders and compradors attempting to bring back capitalist systems) and then democracy happens within that party
instead of like a big nameless Committee made up of a hivemind AI like intelligence that just Dictates
maybe that’d be better than having two bourgeois parties (or dozens of bourgeois parties in Europe/etc) owned by bourgeois interests effectively negating the existence of democracy by ensuring that all “democratic” institutions, by consequence of bourgeois influence over parties, operate at their pleasure
china gets shit on because they don’t have political freedom; there’s no stuff like “you can speak your mind as long as you’re respectful”. it’s just one committee making all the decisions and you can go to jail for disagreeing.
Not even true, common CIA talking point. They don’t disagree with their government because 99% of China’s citizens are extremely happy with their gov, not because they’ll be arrested.
Well that’s impossible. There will always be around a 25% of a population that is not happy with the current state of things. That’s been true for all of history. 99% of people are not happy with their government—ever—unless they (the unhappy ones) are being threatened forced or killed off.
After primitive communism, all of history has been the history of a small ruling class over vast working classes. Socialism is class society, but with the working classes, the majority, on top. You’re treating the subject metaphysically and dogmatically assuming true what only in actuality applies to certain contexts.
Maybe engage with the western sources assessing figures of most Chinese people being happy then? Look at the evidence to see instead of claiming a comically evil government forcing or killing everyone?
Its like comparing the Federation and the Empire from elite dangerous lol.
Empire elitists always talking about how bad the Federation is because of the insane capitalist abuse of power, and billions of humans subjected to horrific conditions.
And then Federation liberals talking about how the Empire literally has legalized slavery and a monarchy that runs on the death of humans.
Although technically there’s also the stereotypical Asian CEO who has a 15% discount on all ships and modules in his systems, so I guess that’s probably the successor to Ali Express lol.
That all being said, the post above this is an article trying to explain how China plating 78 billion trees was a bad idea lmao.
Star Wars and other movie tropes. This is theory for some people. Absolutely infantile.
No you see the USA is Snape, China is Voldemort
I’m dying
If you can find me a governance representing more than 100 million people that is genuinely good, with no ifs ands or buts about it, I can prove that you are the brainwashed one.
Absolutely wild to try and assert that westerners who think China is good are “brainwashed”. Like literally you are doing the meme.
Why does it need to be perfect to be good?
Hmm, must be an llm, they never said the word perfect. They never said anything had to be perfect.
How does that feel?
How does that feel?
Embarassing in a secondhand way?
Well kind of funny because it’s not at all comparable to what you’re trying to compare it to. Also I never called anyone an llm I asked if they used it as it left an artefact.
I need it to stop doing evil things first. I am all for reducing the evil, less evil is always great and ill always vote for a lesser evil. But dont expect me to a government structure good if it is still doing evil things. Ill call a politician good if they want to decrease the evil. But I will not call a country good if its still evil.
Ok. So all you’ve done is come up with a definition that means every country is evil, making it pointless to even talk about.
Awww, baby’s first analysis! Do the good guys wear the white hats (and the bad guys the black hats) so you know exactly who they are?
Good grief. You presumably have a brain, please try and use it. This is no way to have an adult conversation.
The world is super complicated and nuanced and im sick of people pretending that china is this bastion of good governance and im sick of people pretending that Harris would have been just as bad as trump. If you cant get on board with that, block me
Ha, still angry you sold your soul to a genocidaire who lost
Trump accelerated the genocide 1000 fold. I didnt sell out for shit, I was trying to save lives.
It’s wild to me that grown adults still use “good” and “evil” as an actual heuristic
K.
Of course evil is an actual heuristic - what point are you trying to make here?
It’s a useless heuristic, because it’s a fuckin magical metaphysical one. If you’re not a christian who believes in a spirit world, then stop letting the church define reality for you. Good and evil as concepts have no more valence on physical reality than karma or sin, and have no power to explain why things happen.
Children think in good and evil. Adults think in cause and effect. Be scientific.
Does River think their special for calling an unspecified murder a cause and effect instead of an evil? I dont think in a Christian way. I still think its fucking normal to call shit evil instead of explaining how the effects of murder are painful for the following litany of reasons
This whole post is brigaded. No where on the internet is safe.
Brigaded by whom?
If anything, done by people like them. A ML user posted this in ML itself, some of the folks from other instances come in with bad faith and/or bullcrap arguments, other ML users come in to defend and debunk, and we’re apparently the ones brigading in our own space.
If you don’t like seeing commies don’t come to spaces where we hang out lol
That’s right, we’re everywhere and we’re coming for you👻
Muhahahaha
I have a question, what is your opinion on lesser evil? Is America the lesser evil in your opinion?
America is evil. There are politicians who are lesser evils within the usa. They dont make the US not evil, just less evil.
I don’t know individual politicians in china, but im sure there are plenty of lesser evil politicians there. That doesnt mean china isnt also doing evil things. I hope the evil reduces there. And in the usa. And everywhere else.
What are the evil things that China is doing? And on that note, what are these “lesser evil” politicians? Are you equating China as on the same level of evil as the US?
The Uyghurs genocide that’s ongoing was shoved down our throats for years yet you people forget? Uh huh.
Do you deny the white genocide in south africa?
Do you deny that Hamas beheaded 40 babies?
was shoved down our throats for years
I wonder why!
Here’s two examples of evil things that China is doing:
Persecution of Uyghurs in China
Internet censorship in Chinalol did you just google “evil things china does” and paste the first wikipedia links you find?
https://lemmy.ml/post/46090169 - A good article on Uyghurs.
Or if you want you can ask Cowbee and they’ll happily give you walls upon walls of information and sources of actual facts on China that you can then proceed to ignore.
"China is good!’
“I disagree.”
Removed by mod
“China is actually not hell on earth”
“You’re just brainwashed, everyone there is actually dead”
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
China government official in the thread
He is not affiliated with the CPC, but thank you for demonstrating how quickly “good” liberals devolve into conspiratorial racism as soon as their sense of nationalist superiority is shaken.
