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/

  • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    If you want to look at first hand footage of China's development, I recommend the following documentaries:

    • PBS - China in Revolution (CW: this is a very lib take on the history, especially once the Revolution occurs in 1949, so take with a massive grain of salt the interpretations).
    • How Yukong Moved the Mountains (one of my personal favorite documentaries).
    • West of the Tracks, by Wang Bing (one of the greatest documentaries I have ever watched).
    • Behemoth
    • Ascendance

    Literature (obvs just lib-gen this shit if you cant find free googling):

    • Jonathan Spence: Modern China; a decent, if very lib, general overview. Good intro but take with massive grains of sale
    • Maurice Meisner: Mao's China and After, The Deng Xiaoping Era
    • Cambridge History of Modern China
    • Joan Robinson - The Cultural Revolution in China
    • Charles Bettelheim - Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China ; Questions about China after the Death of Mao Tse-tung
    • Andrew Walder: China Under Mao ; Inside China's Cultural Revolution; A Decade of Upheavel (with Dong Guoqiang) ; The Beijing Red Guard Movement
    • Dongping Han: The Unknown Cultural Revolution
    • William Hinton: A Turning Point in China; The Great Reversal
    • Yang Jisheng - The Great Chinese Famine
    • https://www.qiaocollective.com
    • Wheelright and McFarlane - The Chinese Road to Socialism - The Economics of the Cultural Revolution
    • Mobo Gao - The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution
    • Kelly and Esch - Black Like Mao
    • Alejandro Russo - Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture
    • https://foreignlanguages.press/works-of-maoism/the-great-debate-i-documents-of-the-communist-party-of-china/
    • https://foreignlanguages.press/works-of-maoism/the-great-debate-ii-documents-of-the-communist-party-of-china/
    • Peter Nolan - China's Rise, Russia's Fall
    • Isabelle Weber: How China Escaped Shock Therapy
    • Wei Weig Zhang - Transforming China
    • Pao-Yu Ching: From Victory to Defeat ; Revolution and CounterRevolution
    • Yiching Wu: The Cultural Revolution at the Margins
    • Alain Badiou: Petrograd and Shanghai
    • Moufawad-Paul: A Critique of Maoist Reason
    • Xi Jingping: Governance of China
    • Blanchette: New Red Guards
      • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I mean they aren't theoretically impressive works, but they are very interesting from an external perspective on the ideological production of the current CPC, given that these texts are read by people in the CPC and in courses on Chinese Marxism. They appear establish the currently ideologically hegemonic party line within the state and party, which bureaucrats and party members are expected to know.