Okay, so background: I'm your average pro-gun fuck-the-police, fuck-trump zoomer honed by years of unsupervised internet access and I've just discovered this community and started lurking for a while. But I still hold extremely negative views on China, which I still think are justified.
"Which views?" I'll throw them out real quick: child labor! internet censorship! media censorship! anti-LGBTQ! uygher genocide? positive and pro war relations with russia! (because fuck putin)
So I get really confused anytime I see people expressing pro-China sentiments. Have I been spoonfed by the media or are some of these points actually justified?
It's possible that it could be not that different from here, though. The US is an incredibly authoritarian state if you're black, for instance. And the state will take every change it gets to enforce its laws against you. If you commit financial crimes or wage theft, though, if you are prosecuted at all, it's with kid gloves.
It's entirely possible for a state to be inconsistent with its enforcement of the laws.
Entirely true, but that exposes the core of what I was getting at: China's contradictions and problems are really not that unlike us. They are painted as otherworldly authoritarian monsters; a system entirely separate and alien to ours. Yet, if you accept what you just said, you must reluctantly admit that they are not so different after all. If you can admit that they are like us in many ways then it starts to really become obvious to you when they are painted as so different. The veil of Western propaganda lifts slowly.
This is not to say the US is the same as China or whatever. Just that they are not as different as the imperialists say.