In a recent video on Twitter, he compared the China of today to 2019 and was completely shocked at the speed to progress and change. Says it’s like stepping into the future.

1 - Automation: From trains to taxis to purchases - everything is done seamlessly with super Apple Pay.

2 - EV: 30%-40% of the cars are fully electric. You can get Teslas but you have Chinese brands that offer sedans for $10k.

3 - The air is much cleaner. Partly due to EVs.

4 - People are more respectful of societal norms. There is better service everywhere you go.

5 - Less foreigners, even in touristy areas. Most white people are actually Russian.

6 - In factories, robots do the work in contrast to the perception people have in the US of China just throwing cheap labor at every problem. Factories set up their own e-commerce platforms and sell directly on China’s TikTok.

7 - It feels like over the past 5 years, everything by in China just got better, while everything in the US just got worse.

xigma-male

  • Dirt_Possum [any, undecided]
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Chinese are jailed/imprisoned if they speak critically about Mao Zedong or Xi.

    I call bullshit, because some of the people I know who live in China are critical of Mao and Xi and have never expressed any hint of a fear of reprisal for the things they've said to me as well as to other Chinese people. But the US? Civil rights leaders in the US are murdered in their beds and burned alive in their cars. Whistleblowers and journalists are either imprisoned & tortured, "suicided," or forced to flee the country to hopefully find asylum in order to avoid those other fates. Musicians and artists critical of the regime can have their entire careers destroyed for the most mild criticism (see Dixie Chicks saying a mean thing to poor little war criminal dynastic ruler Bush junior).

    Chinese children were taught Mt Everest is owned by China.

    Part of Everest is in China? "Owned?" American children are taught Hawaii is "owned" by the US. If they are taught about Puerto Rico's existence at all, it is that it's "owned" by the US even though it doesn't even get the pretense of benefits that states get. US children are taught huge swathes of the south west section of the north American continent are "owned" by the US even though it was stolen from Mexico. I could go on, but since you mentioned below how the US supposedly teaches that it did steal land, see my response to that.

    Chinese children were taught Genghis Khan was Chinese.

    doubt Even if that's true, it's nothing compared to the jingoistic historical revisionism US kids are taught. US children were (and are) taught Columbus "discovered" the Americas and only very recently and only in some more "progressive" states it's being lightly touched on that he was actually a deeply evil genocidal mass murderer driven entirely by greed. Children in the US are taught to worship their wealthy, white "founding fathers" who were slavers and (CW) r*pists. US history class is more lies than reality, so it's funny to me you would harp on this as an example of China being worse than the US with such weak tea nonsense like China claiming Genghis Khan.

    Beijing completely threw out the 50 year agreement they had with U.K. regarding Hong Kong.

    I'll defer to other people here who know more about that because I admittedly don't. However, if I started to list the ways that the US has reneged on its agreements with other countries, its countless outright betrayals of even its supposed allies (see the famous Kissinger quote about how it's dangerous to be an enemy of the US but fatal to be its ally), then I'd quickly exceed the text character limit for comments. The US constantly lies in all its agreements and treaties. Since the genocide of the indigenous peoples is something brought up in this comment thread, consider the well known fact that the US would make and break treaties with indigenous tribes all the time as a casual way to genocide them and steal their land. That shit never stopped.

    Want your driver's license without passing the exam? Bring the instructor.

    wut ? So I guess the implication is that you can buy your drivers license by bribing the instructor in China? I can believe that kind of thing happens sometimes, as it does in any country. But is it actually something rampant in China or is it just a cherrypicked example pulled from your ass? Something that is rampant in the US is kids with rich parents passing their driving tests when they shouldn't by virtue of their having rich parents. And not just driving tests, but literally any test or barrier to entry you can imagine, if you're rich, you will likely get an easy pass that average people don't get and that poor people are never even given a chance to participate in. This is something so well known in the US that it's commonly joked about. But to keeping focused on driving, rich people in the US are known for buying (bribing) their way out of DUIs all the time, and even when they are penalized, it is the tiniest slap on the wrist for them while it can mean the end of a poor person's ability to earn their already measly livelihood. Even if every entry on your list here of things that exemplify how bad China is were true, it still wouldn't come close to the things I could list about the US that are so much worse.

    Beijing regularly hides images en masse such as Tank Man

    No it doesn't. I've seen Chinese memes with "Tank Man" that make fun of the Western obsession with it. And once again (since this whole discussion is based on how China is supposed to be worse than the US) the US hides controversial shit all the time. One of a million examples, I was recently looking for articles and images discussing/showing the prevalence of full on naziism in the Ukrainian military and leadership before Feb of '22, back when that could still be openly reported on. I found a bunch in archive sites but the original articles had been scrubbed from the original news outlet sites where it had originally been reported. Articles that were considered fine and simple reporting done by mainstream news media are now erased and referencing them is called "Russian disinformation." It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. Of course China does censor things, but it openly acknowledges that it does so and doesn't try to hide behind the notion of "free speech" a joke and a lie that the US tells its citizens.

    In China? Try Googling Tiananmen Massacre. Google and the massacre are both blocked.

    Google is blocked for good reason, and even in western countries, it's recognized how google is a tool for people with wealth to spread their viewpoint and suppress dissent in all kinds of ways, with one of the more obvious ones being that they simply pay to have search results that benefit them at the top and results that are bad for them buried under pages of other results or never even getting served at all. In the US, even my virus scan sofware kept trying to block (blacklist) Yandex. lol. As for Tienanmen square, where unarmed Chinese military were lynched, no it is not blocked. Certain propaganda about it may well be blocked by China, but this event and talk about what happened is not blocked. It is referred to as the "June 4th incident" or something like that (because a massacre of students didn't even happen, Tienanmen Square 'Massacre' is a name made up by US agencies for propaganda spin) and it is openly discussed in ways both critical and supportive of the CPC, which you should know if you really did live in China for 4 years.

    Americans are taught we stole land,

    When they are taught that (which is rare and totally understated) it is also taught that it was generally for the greater good, that either it had to be done or that it would have happened anyway, and most importantly, it's taught that "it happened a long time ago and we're better about that now" which is a complete lie because they are not better about it now and even if they were, it's not taught that the people of the stolen land are still oppressed and systematically kept from reclaiming their nearly-erased culture let alone the land and wealth stolen from them, and while the descendants of the people who stole that land and genocided the people there, are still benefiting from that theft and genocide. Funny how that just isn't part of the curriculum in the US.

    bribing is not common for average citizens,

    "Average" citizen? Maybe not, but only because the average citizen doesn't have the means to bribe anyone, since they're barely avoiding homelessness (which is de facto criminalized in the US) and living paycheck to paycheck. But bribery for rich citizens in the US? It is more than common, it's so prevalent that the entire economy, which is based on finance capitalism and rent seeking, would screech to a halt if there was a real crackdown on bribery.

    and everyone is critical of the government here.

    And they should be. The government of the US is a sick joke that doesn't represent or support people at all. Most people in the US realize this even though a big chunk of them misunderstand the reasons why.

    But sure, keep to your simple insults.

    Lol, keep my "simple insults"? You referred to an entire country as an ugly woman. I called you a misogynist. Can you really not see how much of a hypocritical clown you are?