https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1737771585153499494
Lmao, not a piracy problem. Just the Yemenis carrying out legitimate naval interdiction operations and interference from Israel's allies. Mfkers pretending this is a piracy problem like off the coast of Somalia when it's just ships affiliated with Israel being interdicted.
Is it the non-existent genocide of uighurs, the non-existent genocide of Tibet or the crushing of a western color revolt in Hong Kong that got you all libbed up?
My main complaint is they are not yet funding my posting, despite repeated emails
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My understanding is that it's steadily improving, even if it's not universally free at point of service yet
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Comparing the flaccid improvement of the ACA to the genuine and steady progress that China is bringing to their healthcare seems disingenuous. Health spending has quadrupled in about a decade, see here (most articles seemed to link back to this one); and the state makes sure not to let srug companies throw their cock around (for example as seen in that video widely shared on this site showing state negotiators all but forcing foreign pharma company reps to accept basically selling at cost). And frankly their responses to and attempts to contain COVID were incredible from a public health perspective.
That's just a few examples but they're signs of forward and continuing progress. It is not a sign of government inaction and abandoning people to the whims and ravages of private healthcare as seen in the US.
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It's expensive. Xi can only hit so many buttons at once. They will get to it long before we do.
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I dunno. At this point I am not ready to say I am more of an expert than the CPC about how to do comunism in China. I assume they had a reason related to material conditions. They don't have unlimited time and resources.
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Well I am far from a lib if you read my other comments, though it seems like you are the type that might actually go through them all and find some hint of libness or something.
Anyway, off the top of my head, things I disagree with the Chinese state on include being mass surveillance society, and their long stated, and recently reiterated, position that Taiwan rightfully belongs under Chinese rule.
Oh right, I am also actually against the widespread standardization of the various different languages in different regions of China to 'Simplified Chinese'.
In my lifetime I have had the chance to speak with many different persons born in China. Some were wealthy, sent to America for college and spoke excellent English. Some were wealthy and sent to America for college and spoke basically no English whatsoever. Many, many others, working class, spoke little English but had great fun communicating to me via the aid of translation apps... I was about as bad at 'Chinese' as they were at English, but we always laughed about it.
I say 'Chinese' in quotes here me because different such Chinese people from different regions, if they do not know the common tongue of Mandarin / Simplified Chinese... they actually cannot understand nearly anything said, or even written, in the actual native 'dialects' of their regions. Canton/Hong Kong, Nanjing/Beijing, Shanghai... they are functionally entirely different languages.
For more on this:
https://asiasociety.org/china-learning-initiatives/many-dialects-china
To me this means that the standardization of the Chinese language into 'Simplified Chinese' functionally constitutes the erasure of the ancient and native tongues of huge portions of the population, and reminds me of what America has done to Native Americans, at least in terms of functionally making it so that very few grandchildren can speak the language of their grandparents.
Now, given how you have already established that you like to jump to the conclusion that I am a lib, I also now have to state what should be obvious but otherwise in this context would not be without specification:
America and basically all of the developed Western countries (UK really stands out) are also mass surveillance societies, as are others.
And no, I do not think that Taiwan is some kind of magical wonderland, it is a capitalist society and thus has all the problems that come with capitalism. And yes, I am aware that its modern government derives from basically the remnants of Chiang Kai Shek and his army, and more or less the basically just-out-of-feudalistic-nobility class of wealthy capitalists that managed to flee with him.
That being said, I do believe that now, nearly 100 years later, having been their own society for that long, it is at the very least not ethical for another state to assert their ability to govern a people who generally speaking seem to me at least to be fiercely opposed to that.
If I am factually wrong about any of this, I would appreciate it if you could correct any glaringly false things my views here are based on, or if you could point me to somewhere I could learn more.
China is not trying to erase those other languages. They are working harder to preserve them than any in the west ever did. However creating a unified language so everyone can communicate has obvious benefits. I see the pragmatism there.
As to Taiwan, I am under the impression most people are ambivalent the way any liberal citizen is about politics. However, they are a small island nation in a geologically active zone. Self determination is not an option. They are going to be in the US sphere of influence or the Chinese. It can only be obvious based on past performance. How poorly the US would end up treating Taiwan. So if you actually care about the future of Taiwanese people than you would hope China presses their legal right to govern the area.
So first off, I am by no means purporting to be some kind of expert on China, especially as I cannot read or speak any Chinese dialect to be able to actually experience their media, news, culture etc.
That being said:
If the entire European union /somehow/ decided to standardize language to... I dont know, Esperanto, or Interlingua, and as a matter of policy, forbade schools generally accessible to the vast majority of public school children from teaching the language of the country they are from, would you consider that 'erasing languages'?
Well, I think there is a large difference between self determination and being in a sphere of influence.
Ukraine is now very, very much more obviously in the NATO sphere of influence militarily, and the EU's sphere of influence economically. But they still have self determination. They can elect leaders, vote, blah blah liberal democracy, but the self determination does functionally exist.
True they are not an island, but they were considered to be a weak, liberal democracy, contested by two powerful spheres of influence... should the ideal situation for be either loss of self determination and formal annexation/absorption into Russia, or perhaps Poland?
Conversely, (though also not an island) the Palestinians have barely had any real self determination since the Nakba, as they have been made, and are still, so totally beholden to Israel economically that even though they do have their own government, its decisions and goals are constantly rendered functionally void as they have no real effective means to alter their situation meaningfully on their own.
They have even less functional power to use their self determined leaders and government and quasi governmental organizations to meaningfully act on their own, and are basically totally economically beholden to Israel, and basically in military terms are caught between Israel + US, and various other Middle Eastern states and organizations.
Should they give up what little self determination they have left, and formally just join Israel (who certainly will not let them do this as they are currently busy genociding them) or a nearby Arab state (all of whom will nearly certainly also not do this?)
You can go even further with your logic here.
Should the Kurds give up their struggle to carve out a formal right of self determination and simply acquiesce to being ruled, divided, by autocrats who claim the territories where most of them live, or simply all migrate their territory within one bordering autocratic state and just hope to not be oppressed there?
The point I am trying to make here is that I do not believe that the general principle of a small, relatively weak people should simply acquiesce to a total loss of self-determination simply because they are massively influenced by larger nearby powers.
If, as another commenter mentioned to me somewhere in this thread, the Taiwanese people actually use their self-determination to voluntarily integrate with the PRC, I would respect that.
But just using the logic of 'they have powerful neighbors so they must obviously give up their autonomy to one of them' is not compelling to me at all.
It is my understanding that in China they do schooling in local languages and have a policy of respecting local culture. Maybe we are talking about diffrent things but you can see in Tibetan schools for example they go to great lengths to preserve the culture and language there.
Ukraine is the perfect example. The average citizen would live much better if the were annexed by Russia. The local government is weak, corrupt, and infiltrated by the US. The other example you give is Gaza. Implying that China is an inherently hostile and exploitative alien power. Which doesn't fit observable patterns at all. So yes, it does sound scary if you think of things without context that is not real life. In real life things have history and context you can observe. So just kinda guessing at what things could be like is silly when there are real examples of how it has gone to observe. So I don't care if you like it or not, they are pawns in a great game. We can be liberals and pretend material circumstance don't exist. Or we can observe reality. Will a small Asian nation between empires get left alone? No. Does the US treat small Asian territories under it's influence well? No. Will the people's voices be heard in a liberal democracy? No. The two options are the Chinese people work together for common good or America uses the threat of violence to enforce a liberal marketplace. Which is better for the average person on the island?
Where is your evidence that China is doing this? I've read that it's teaching Mandarin in schools alongside the local language. It's more like, you know, schools in the EU teaching English while also teaching German or French, etc
Damn that's crazy cuz I heard Ukraine cancelled its election, banned opposition parties, and keeps a kill list of foreign and domestic journalists, is this the new model of liberal democracy?
Edit: also is self determination when your new government is chosen by Victoria Nuland, then a few years later you elect some literal joker to put an end to the civil war, then he fucks around with multiple treaties and ceasefires, then finds out, then gives a standing ovation to an Original Vintage Nazi, lol lmao
Ah so the non-existent oppression of Chinese Taipei and the “surveillance” that’s less strict than most western nations like Britain
Very cool 😎
I didnt say anything about whether or not Taipei is or is not oppressed by China.
I am curious as to how you determined that the UK's surveillance is more strict than China's though.
Well not even Chinese Taipei believes they are not Chinese. That’s a purely westoid division. All Chinese and nearly all Taiwanese Chinese all believe they are all both Chinese.
For starters, the UK has some of the most intense digital surveillance laws in the world, for example:
The snooper's charter
DRIP (although this one was repealed by EU courts, it's back on the table again post-BREXIT)
On top of that, UK laws around protests severely restrict what can he deemed a legal protest. And police can arrest you on suspicion of protesting in a "disruptive" way. During the king's coronation, six people were detained on suspicion that they might possibly strap themselves or their signs to something.
In the wake of those Just Stop Oil ones gluing themselves to stuff, glue was added to the list of items a police officer can "stop and search" for with no restrictions (take one guess at the sorts of people the cops like to target with this).
You're probably aware of the "spy cops" scandal, well a bill a coupla years back was put into place to prevent any legal recourse to people targeted by spy cops and gave protections to secret service types caught torturing people.
This isn't an exhaustive list, just a few examples.
Also, this should in no way be interpreted as a defence of China's surveillance state. Just that the UK is currently even worse about it.
"Simplified Chinese" is a spelling orthography dipshit. One derived from cursive shorthands and variants that people have used from literally the 2nd century BC. Mandarin is the common dialect since centuries before the CCP took power. In fact there was consideration for making Cantonese the common dialect at one point. No native speaker of any dialect of Chinese considers them seperate languages. The only people making this claim are dumbass anglophone r*dditors like you and your equally braindead gusano friends. The fact that you can't even tell basic terms like "Simplified Chinese" or "Mandarin" apart shows that you know literally nothing about Chinese and should shut the fuck up and stop talking out of your ass.
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I am tired of dipshit neoliberal drones who don't speak my language making statements about my language. Whatever basic ass mutilated cantonese you learned does not give you any right to make any statements aboht our language. Your friend is obviously some illiterate gusano raised in America otherwise they would've just written a note to the Mandarin speaker. I have both Cantonese and Mandarin speaking relatives, I'm tired of dipshits like you who can't even grasp the basics of Chinese declaring that because your illiterate linguistically stunted ass can't figure out what someone is saying then nobody can. Honestly the situation described is so stupid I imagine your entire circle of friends consists of the type of insufferable neoliberals who have the shallowist grasp of any non-english language.
And you still haven't addressed the fact that you're such a dumbass that you thought "simplified chinese" was a dialect.
one guy I follow on tiktok (who is from taiwan) said that the most difficult part of the conflict with Taiwan is that both consider themselves China. the difficulty comes from navigating the political situation, not so much from internal resistance. I might be wrong, but it sounds like they aim for reunification not conquest.
If a peaceful, amicable reunification is possible without war, and is genuinely supported by the Taiwanese people, then that seems vastly preferable to a military take over.
Though, I would expect if such a thing looks likely to occur in the near or medium term, the US would probably do some shenanigans/bullshit/assassinations/subterfuge to prevent that from happening.
They do manufacture something like 80% of the worlds microprocessors, and that is just a bit important to modern economies, militaries, etc.
Don't more people speak Mongolian and use the Mongolian script in the PRC province of Inner Mongolia than the actual Mongolian nation?
I do not know, but that does not seem implausible.
China (the state) certainly can be commended for building a whole lot of infrastructure and making new cities amd expanding old ones... it would not surprise me if the Chinese province of Inner Mongolian has been developed so much that it has attracted Mongolians from Mongolia proper as well as other parts of China to live and grow there.
Maybe instead of hypotheticals out of your ass you could spend ten seconds doing actual research. The majority of ethnic Mongols have always lived in China, they didn't immigrate there.
Maybe there is nothing wrong with doing reasonable hypotheticals. Communism, for example, is a hypothetical, at least as Marx described it.
Sorry that you are so angry that I admitted I didnt know something and tried to make a reasonable educated guess. I'll be sure to never make reasonable educated guesses about anything ever again, and research every thing that can be known so that I can never be uninformed about anything, ever.
We're hitting levels of smug redditor never before thought possible
Either do the research or shut up. We don't need to hear your uninformed speculation on every topic.
This is also the Taiwanese position.
Taiwan has never claimed independence, they're called the Republic of China because they see themselves as the rightful Chinese government in exile. They don't want a small isolated island, they want to take back the mainland.