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?
This is such an important part here and something that I think we often forget when criticizing countries. Individual accounts of abuse are bad, and certainly a flaw in the system that they are allowed to occur in the way they do but there's a large difference between systemic failure vs systemic empowerment.
I have absolutely no doubt that some of the Real People dealing in Xianjang were abusive in some shape and form. That's how people just are, there's always power hungry abusive assholes seeking roles of power and even the best attempts to weed them out perfectly is going to find that an impossible battle. You're always going to have to be some level of reactive with abuse of power because plenty of them are quite skilled at hiding themselves.
The question of Xianjang is not "Did any abuse at all occur?" but if it (particulary the more standout examples) was systemic and intentional at the higher levels. This question seems very largely to be a resounding no, but I would have no doubt believing that a few lower level officials certainly did some awful things.
Honestly even people here often fall for the same thinking, I remember feeling the same way about the border sterilization case. Was if a horrible thing? Yeah, but it doesn't seem to be drastically systemic as border policy. Was it a failure that it occured at all? Yeah to some degree, but no system can be perfect when the broken cogs disguise themselves.
And also of course you have to keep in mind that in any country on the planet, minds do differ. The degrees on which they differ and how often change based off cultures, but you and I wouldn't exist here to begin with if that wasn't true. There are lots of pro LGBT movements and party members too, and like the rest of the world this seems to be divided pretty heavily along age. And really, China as a whole isn't behind most of the rest of Asia.
Most of the criticisms made towards China on LGBT rights can be rightfully made towards Japan as well, and yet (many) pro LGBT westerners still seem capable of understanding that there are progressive Japanese movements and organizations too.
Yes, absolutely. And we should also remember that China, as a whole country, has highly sophisticated debates and decision-makers with power, so not only are these decisions where abuse could and did occur, but every policy is implemented knowing that there ia not full controp or safeguards, that they are working with the resources they have and are making difficult decisions that rely on the overall structures and material forces they have curated for decades.
It is not human nature to abuse, but we also do not have the conditions in which we don't create abuses or situations where abuse can occur. That is a goal we can all aspire to relative to our own communities and the power structures we foster or undermine or destroy. And it's one where we should have open minds on alternative paths and mechanisms of control, as we are often limited by the guardrails of the liberal carceral state, white supremacy, and settler logic. China's approach to Xinjiang shows one particular strategy, one that we do not regularly see in the West, and with its own cultural embeddings, advantages, and disadvantages. We tend to just kill and imprison and depower targets, marginalize them and propagandize until the populace thinks they deserve it. Leaving plenty of room for criticism and hope for better alternatives in the future, the approach in China is so much less harmful and measured, my main takeaway is, "thank fuck they didn't have the American approach".