1. Why does China, a socialist country, have mega corporations like Tencent and Bytedance? Are they collectively owned by syndicates or unions? If this is a transitionary phase to socialism, can we trust China to actually enforce Socialism after this stage ends?
  2. Child Labor in factories: Myth or Fact? I have a Chinese friend who said he personally never worked as a child in China, but obviously if this was true not every single kid would have worked in a factory.
  3. Surveillance and Social Credit: are these myths, or are they true? Why would China go so far to implement these systems, surely it'd be far too costly and burdensome for whatever they'd gain from that.
  4. Uighur Muslim genocide: Is this true?

Thank you to anyone who answers, and if you do please cite sources so I can look further into China. I really appreciate it.

edit: I was going to ask about Tiananmen Square, but as it turns out that literally just didn't happen. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html

https://leohezhao.medium.com/notes-for-30th-anniversary-of-tiananmen-incident-f098ef6efbc2

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/

  • half_giraffe [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Tried to keep the answers consise, I'm sure others will expand on your questions as well.

    1. China is a socialist nation because it's run by the CPC (which itself answers directly to the people of China), but it still uses the capitalist mode of production (i.e. the means of production are held by capitalists in order to generate profit). This is largely due to Deng Xiaoping's market reforms of the 80's. As a result, there are billionaires and corporations, but also unions, co-ops, and of course outright government-owned operations (think Sinopec or the Bank of China). Red Sails has a great article called China Has Billionaires for further reading.

    2. I'm sure child labor exists in China - they've gone from an isolated rural economy to a global superpower in 40 years, that's not enough time to be perfect liberators on every issue. But as with most aspects of Chinese life, the government is actually working on improving people's material conditions, so things like child labor will continue to be less and less common. Of course, if you live in the US, child labor is extremely prevalent especially in poor communities and illegal immigrants. And of course it's getting worse with red states racing to rip up child labor protections in the name of saving businesses when "no one wants to work". See Rueters about the Alabama Hyundai factory or Wapo about the kid killed in a Mississippi poultry plant.

    3. As with all western reporting on China, the surveillance aspect is hugely overblown. A lot of the claims end up being silly shit like how westerners will swear up and down that Winnie the Pooh is banned in China when you can buy his merch at Shanghai Disney. And social credit falls in the same boat as its pretty similar to credit score systems in the west - the main difference being that China won't force you into homelessness and poverty because your credit is bad lol. I don't have a good article to break it down, I think this subject would be best understand by people actually living in China.

    4. Big no on this one, and that's if you mean "genocide" as in "actually liquidating an ethnic group" or the recent pivot to "cultural genocide" via teaching Uighurs Mandarin. Qiao Collective has a great educational piece on this to deep dive, but the short of it is that the claims of genocide of any variety come from explicitly anti-communist westerners who fail to provide any actual evidence.