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/

  • GaveUp [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    Everybody can likely answer these better than I can but I'll give you a rare answer for 1. that I hardly see for some reason

    Among many reasons, one of the most important ones is that China needed to reform their markets from wholly state owned to allow private property, which of course is why there's megacorps right now

    The reason is that the US (and thus, the entire world by extension) had sanctioned China when all their industries were still state owned. China was cut off from trading with the entire world and even when they had a famine, the US would not let up sanctions or trade food with them

    Thus, Deng reformed markets and allowed foreign capitalists to invest money in the country and exploit Chinese labour so that they could in exchange and acquire goods, resources, and knowledge from the rest of the world

    If you wish to read more about this from an academic standpoint, the USSR also did something similar

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm

    • temptest [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      Someone on another website made a hobby of posting quotes about the need for working alongside capitalists for resources and knowledge. Then when people started complaining about Dungi$ts ruining M-L, they would reveal it was another NEP quote from Lenin and the picture of deng in a cowboy hat was unrelated.