The Great Firewall of China is meant to keep the US out, not its people in. VPNs are perfectly legal, and the people can decide for themselves if they want to see the Western side of the internet. A lot of the people who do simply go back inside the Great Firewall to shield themselves from all the lies and hysteria of the West. In fact, that's something we all want. We're here on Lemmy instead of hostile places like Reddit, right?
China's censorship of the internet is mainly for things like pornography, and also speech aimed at destabilizing the country's political legitimacy. The point is to encourage healthy social trends and protect their people from US interference in China's internal affairs.
The latter I'm talking about issues like Taiwan, which is an island province of China and an inalienable part of its territory. There is only one China, and Taiwan is part of China.
There is only one legitimate government of all of China (Taiwan included), and that is the Communist Party of China headquartered in Beijing of the People's Republic of China.
The US has been trying time and time again to break up countries into smaller pieces using separatism, racism, religious extremism and various other insidious tactics to divide and destroy a people.
This happened in Hong Kong (separatism: 29 defendants in Hong Kong plead guilty to subversion: HK court), it happened in Xinjiang province (religious extremism), and it's currently happening in Taiwan (separatism).
The US wants to break up China into smaller pieces and destroy it because quite frankly, the US cannot possibly compete with the technological and industrial behemoth at this stage in the game. China is taking over the US as the world's most relevant country for progress in all respects, and the US is doing everything it can to undermine its legitimacy and all of its industry (sanctioning and trying to sabotage China's semiconductor industry) because it's trying to save its dying empire.
EDIT: wait I just realized, in a lot of places there is no visible homelessness because the police just kicks them out, I'm not sure if that's the same for China...
The US leverages and deliberately causes unemployment to increase employer leverage and decrease worker bargaining power. The homeless are indeed chased around by the cops endlessly, to both punish the poor and also maintain the facade that poverty isn't as bad as it is in reality (out of sight, out of mind). Homelessness is also basically fatal, especially with the increasing extreme heat causing more and more climate casualties.
China, on the other hand, has been actually helping people directly with tangible results and efforts to reverse and even eradicate the trend of poverty.
China is not only doing this for their own people, but expanding the development to other nations who want to benefit, in a mission to bring the entire world out of poverty in a shared future for humanity.
See this video here: 'Reality Check': China's BRI geopolitical gambit or project of the century?
The US empire has no clothes. It deliberately causes and maintains the highest possible levels of poverty not only within the US, but also outside the US in places like Latin America and Africa, because desperate people are much easier to exploit. It has no credibility, and no future on this planet. It will continue to decay and eventually die for the benefit of humanity and all life on this planet.
censoring porn is pretty regressive to me and doesn't really solve anything, as proved in Japan
This statement is made in a vacuum without historical context, so I will try my best to provide it.
Japan historically was an imperialist country, and colonized territories in East and Southeast Asia. Most notably China and Korea. The Japanese imperialists committed unspeakable acts against the Chinese and Korean peoples, but most relevant here is forcing the women of the two peoples into sexual slavery. They were called "comfort women", and were basically forced to service their imperial invaders as if they were their wives and girlfriends. This humiliation was devastating and extremely traumatizing, and Japan has a very grave responsibility to the peoples subjected to it. To this day, Japan hasn't apologized for their crimes against humanity. History books were re-written deliberately leaving out just how serious the offenses of Japan were in the Second World War.
You may not know much about China right now, which is why you'd say that you don't think censoring pornography would "really solve anything", but you should know enough about Japan for what I'm about to say next to make sense. Japan hyper sexualizes its women. Patriarchy is still a big problem in Japan, and women are not treated with the same level of respect as men. Japan also has some of the most horrendously abusive and outright disgusting pornography in existence, not to mention the age of consent in Japan has been 13 years old for a long time. You may not think much of this, but a nation's use of art reflects the characteristics of the nation itself, which should tell you something about how a lot of Japan sees its women.
Japan has also been under US dictatorship since the end of WWII after they dropped two nukes, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. A blatant flex at the Soviet Union, using Japan's own civilian population to make that statement. The ruling party in Japan right now is the Liberal Democratic Party, which was created by the US and remains subservient to it. All liberal parties, especially those under US dominance always trend fascist. Thus, the country is hyper-capitalist and worker exploitation is severe. People's living conditions continue to decay and people get less for their money the longer it goes on. Take a look at all the broom closet and school locker sized apartments in Japan. People don't have reliable opportunity to escape poverty because the working class have not been in power to develop the country to serve their interests. Thus, naturally, desperate people, especially women, turn to pornography to make faster money because sexual exploitation is immensely profitable.
China, as I have hopefully helped you to understand, has been following the exact opposite trend of Japan. They've pulled over 800 million people (more than twice the population of the US) out of poverty with their government's policies and guidance under the CPC, which is a working class party. People actually have much more plentiful and healthy opportunity to be prosperous because the CPC, with the support of its people, has cultivated the most advanced, most educated and most upwardly mobile society on planet Earth. They did this in no small part to resisting unhealthy social trends like hedonism. Pornography causes addiction, and lowers the quality of cognitive function massively over time. The Chinese people treat pornography just like a drug, and China actually was a victim of opium thanks to the British Empire and other Western powers, which came to be known as a big player in the century of humiliation. China does not tolerate drugs because drugs were forced on and crippled their population. For pornography, it's the same, in addition to the historical scars and trauma and humiliation of its people being sexually exploited as "comfort women" back then. Because opportunity is so plentiful in China, especially so in the STEM fields, it makes little sense to pursue a career in sexual exploitation. They even dress a lot more conservatively, in a conscious effort to not sexualize their people. Women would rather be engineers and do something productive that helps build up the country than make their living on their backs. Who would've thought.
China's censorship of pornography makes sense, given the historical context provided. Porn isn't just censored in terms of mosaics, it's outright banned and illegal in the country. This is why I say history matters and does not expire. They have arguably the healthiest population on Earth, and are by far the most productive given the national conditions of their country.
Like in my other response, I urge you to go back through and watch all the videos I provided you.
Did you patiently watch all the videos I provided in my response? If not, I strongly encourage you to make time to do so as much of what you had trouble grappling with was already addressed therein.
I would like to have constructive conversation, but there are things you just need to see for yourself to really get the full picture, hence providing those video resources. They are all information dense and provide much needed context to why I said the things I said. What we absolutely must understand is that concepts of "independence" and technological competency and literacy do not exist in a vacuum. They are not neutral in the world of geopolitics. History matters and, more importantly, history does not expire. We have a responsibility to know how we got here, so we can make an informed and responsible decision about where to go from here.
I urge you to go back through and watch every video in order, and then re-read the text part of my statement. The videos themselves can also be considered intertwined with the rest of my comment.
It's all right, I understand. I know you're here in good faith and just trying to learn. I checked your profile and its description early on, so I'm doing what I can to accommodate your needs.
When you feel ready and have caught up on everything I provided, I look forward to speaking with you again. In the meantime, take care of yourself
because realistically speaking only very few people relative to everyone else will even know what a VPN is.
You spend too much time talking to techies who think they're super special people who are the only ones smart enough to touch computers. Everyone knows how to use a VPN. A working VPN is was the first result on Baidu when I tried to use one last time. Boomers who are afraid to update their computer know what Tor is. And even besides that there are plenty of times I've seen articles from western news media posted in China, usually consumed by the local libs. Who do you think the NYT Chinese version is for? Chinese diaspora don't read the NYT enough to justify them having a Chinese version of like half their articles, it's for Mainland Chinese liberals. Chinese people know about and complain about DW, BBC, NHK, CNN etc because we can read the articles and see the shit they pull (for example a big meme is when DW published some article about China and the title said "human fork" instead of "human rights" in Chinese, or the time the BBC published an ominous photo of the WIV (with a grey filter) and another photo of the BBC photographer having to to lay in a ditch to take the photo came out).
Ultimately in the 21st century access to information doesn't matter as much as having a population that actually is capable of consuming information. In the west people are trained to ignore everything that goes against the narrative as propaganda. The average westerner can not name a single Chinese social media site or news publication. They cry shill and propaganda followed by some racial slurs any time they encounter Chinese people online.
I have to say, from what I understand it's the nations themselves that petition US bases
Okinawa/Ryukyu has regular protests against US military bases. The people there do not want a US military base. It's so bad I even saw a Ryukyu nationalists cringily try to cozy up to China.
this is probably a really intense issue here but I honestly just don't really agree... I don't think a country is entitled to invade land just because it previously held it
You do realize that Taiwan officially considers itself the "Republic of China" and the legitimate government of not just China but also Mongolia right? Even Tsai Ing-Wen calls herself Chinese when giving campaign speeches. The whole Taiwanese identity thing is an idpol ruse by the DPP. Those same "taiwanese" will go on long rants about how they're the only real Chinese and all mainlanders are "yellow russians" right after yelling slurs about various northern Chinese minorities/Taiwanese aboriginals. If you can read Chinese they're all over social media. This also ironically leads to the 2% aboriginal Taiwanese population voting for the pro-China party. The funny thing is these people drop the act immediately when they sense they're about to get hatecrimed abroad. I personally knew a guy who went out of his way to call himself Taiwanese and make fun of mainlanders until Asian hate crimes started happening, then he started posting about how he was Chinese and had Chinese flags all over his social media.
This is in contrast to places like Singapore, which are majority ethnically Chinese but have an actual legitimate national identity, instead of whatever crazy shit the DPP does. Again if you can read Chinese you can easily see the difference between well adjusted Singaporean vs. Deranged DPP supporters on social media(look up 1450 army, every liberal accusation is an admission of guilt).
because realistically speaking only very few people relative to everyone else will even know what a VPN is.
people living in taiwan don't want to be a part of china
About half of them vote for the pro-reunification party(KMT), the other half are the Chinese equivalent of white supremacists(DPP) who champion the Taiwanese identity stuff. They don't legitimately believe in Taiwanese identity, they hate the mainland because there's too many ethnic minorities/ the culture and language is "tainted" by ethnic minorities. You act as though thinking they are the real China is some facade, it's not, that is their core belief, especially the ones who talk loudly about Taiwanese identity because the whole point is that Taiwanese are the real Chinese and everyone else is impure.
I'm sorry but I honestly don't care for the DPP's Southern Han Supremacist bullshit. I personally believe peaceful reunification is inevitable as the KMT gain power again, but it is immoral to allow the DPP to remain in power. I would hope that if there was a white supremacist confederate holdout next to America that Americans would be against its existence.
Nobody really cares about land. That's some weird projection. Mongolia used to be a part of China but the only ones who want to invade it are the Taiwanese(guess why, hint hint.). It's about having a bunch of weirdo fascists who believe they're the rightful inheritors of China and that everyone else is culturally/ethnically impure. The DPP could be floating in a shipping container in the middle of the ocean and it would be the same calculus.
The KMT has pivoted to pro-reunification once it became clear they wouldn't be able to retake the mainland. Obviously a party that calls itself the "Chinese Nationalist Party" are Chinese first and anti-communist second. The irony is that if they were able to reign in the racist tendencies of the DPP most mainlanders wouldn't care about reunification in the first place.
Facebook Targets Cambodia's Prime Minister: A Lesson in Securing Information Space
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The Great Firewall of China is meant to keep the US out, not its people in. VPNs are perfectly legal, and the people can decide for themselves if they want to see the Western side of the internet. A lot of the people who do simply go back inside the Great Firewall to shield themselves from all the lies and hysteria of the West. In fact, that's something we all want. We're here on Lemmy instead of hostile places like Reddit, right?
China's censorship of the internet is mainly for things like pornography, and also speech aimed at destabilizing the country's political legitimacy. The point is to encourage healthy social trends and protect their people from US interference in China's internal affairs.
The latter I'm talking about issues like Taiwan, which is an island province of China and an inalienable part of its territory. There is only one China, and Taiwan is part of China.
There is only one legitimate government of all of China (Taiwan included), and that is the Communist Party of China headquartered in Beijing of the People's Republic of China.
The US has been trying time and time again to break up countries into smaller pieces using separatism, racism, religious extremism and various other insidious tactics to divide and destroy a people.
This happened in Hong Kong (separatism: 29 defendants in Hong Kong plead guilty to subversion: HK court), it happened in Xinjiang province (religious extremism), and it's currently happening in Taiwan (separatism).
The US wants to break up China into smaller pieces and destroy it because quite frankly, the US cannot possibly compete with the technological and industrial behemoth at this stage in the game. China is taking over the US as the world's most relevant country for progress in all respects, and the US is doing everything it can to undermine its legitimacy and all of its industry (sanctioning and trying to sabotage China's semiconductor industry) because it's trying to save its dying empire.
A well known effort to try and smear China as this totalitarian bogeyman is the infamous "social credit system". You can see a video about it here: China's "Social Credit Score System" - Fact or Fiction?
You can watch this video here to learn more about the Taiwan issue: What is Behind the Growing US-China Crisis Over Taiwan?
Even nations around China are being targeted because the US wants to establish more and more military bases and an ever-increasing military presence around its borders to destroy the country.
See this video here: US-backed Terrorism Targets Vietnam & Myanmar in Wider War on China
Searching for HOMELESS People in China 中国的流浪汉在哪？Unseen China 🇨🇳
Apartment Tour in China | What can $300 a month get you? 🇨🇳
President Xi inspects poverty alleviation achievements in SW China (2019)
The secrets to China's poverty alleviation success (2023)
The US leverages and deliberately causes unemployment to increase employer leverage and decrease worker bargaining power. The homeless are indeed chased around by the cops endlessly, to both punish the poor and also maintain the facade that poverty isn't as bad as it is in reality (out of sight, out of mind). Homelessness is also basically fatal, especially with the increasing extreme heat causing more and more climate casualties.
China, on the other hand, has been actually helping people directly with tangible results and efforts to reverse and even eradicate the trend of poverty.
China is not only doing this for their own people, but expanding the development to other nations who want to benefit, in a mission to bring the entire world out of poverty in a shared future for humanity.
See this video here: 'Reality Check': China's BRI geopolitical gambit or project of the century?
The US empire has no clothes. It deliberately causes and maintains the highest possible levels of poverty not only within the US, but also outside the US in places like Latin America and Africa, because desperate people are much easier to exploit. It has no credibility, and no future on this planet. It will continue to decay and eventually die for the benefit of humanity and all life on this planet.
deleted by creator
This statement is made in a vacuum without historical context, so I will try my best to provide it.
Japan historically was an imperialist country, and colonized territories in East and Southeast Asia. Most notably China and Korea. The Japanese imperialists committed unspeakable acts against the Chinese and Korean peoples, but most relevant here is forcing the women of the two peoples into sexual slavery. They were called "comfort women", and were basically forced to service their imperial invaders as if they were their wives and girlfriends. This humiliation was devastating and extremely traumatizing, and Japan has a very grave responsibility to the peoples subjected to it. To this day, Japan hasn't apologized for their crimes against humanity. History books were re-written deliberately leaving out just how serious the offenses of Japan were in the Second World War.
You may not know much about China right now, which is why you'd say that you don't think censoring pornography would "really solve anything", but you should know enough about Japan for what I'm about to say next to make sense. Japan hyper sexualizes its women. Patriarchy is still a big problem in Japan, and women are not treated with the same level of respect as men. Japan also has some of the most horrendously abusive and outright disgusting pornography in existence, not to mention the age of consent in Japan has been 13 years old for a long time. You may not think much of this, but a nation's use of art reflects the characteristics of the nation itself, which should tell you something about how a lot of Japan sees its women.
Japan has also been under US dictatorship since the end of WWII after they dropped two nukes, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. A blatant flex at the Soviet Union, using Japan's own civilian population to make that statement. The ruling party in Japan right now is the Liberal Democratic Party, which was created by the US and remains subservient to it. All liberal parties, especially those under US dominance always trend fascist. Thus, the country is hyper-capitalist and worker exploitation is severe. People's living conditions continue to decay and people get less for their money the longer it goes on. Take a look at all the broom closet and school locker sized apartments in Japan. People don't have reliable opportunity to escape poverty because the working class have not been in power to develop the country to serve their interests. Thus, naturally, desperate people, especially women, turn to pornography to make faster money because sexual exploitation is immensely profitable.
China, as I have hopefully helped you to understand, has been following the exact opposite trend of Japan. They've pulled over 800 million people (more than twice the population of the US) out of poverty with their government's policies and guidance under the CPC, which is a working class party. People actually have much more plentiful and healthy opportunity to be prosperous because the CPC, with the support of its people, has cultivated the most advanced, most educated and most upwardly mobile society on planet Earth. They did this in no small part to resisting unhealthy social trends like hedonism. Pornography causes addiction, and lowers the quality of cognitive function massively over time. The Chinese people treat pornography just like a drug, and China actually was a victim of opium thanks to the British Empire and other Western powers, which came to be known as a big player in the century of humiliation. China does not tolerate drugs because drugs were forced on and crippled their population. For pornography, it's the same, in addition to the historical scars and trauma and humiliation of its people being sexually exploited as "comfort women" back then. Because opportunity is so plentiful in China, especially so in the STEM fields, it makes little sense to pursue a career in sexual exploitation. They even dress a lot more conservatively, in a conscious effort to not sexualize their people. Women would rather be engineers and do something productive that helps build up the country than make their living on their backs. Who would've thought.
China's censorship of pornography makes sense, given the historical context provided. Porn isn't just censored in terms of mosaics, it's outright banned and illegal in the country. This is why I say history matters and does not expire. They have arguably the healthiest population on Earth, and are by far the most productive given the national conditions of their country.
Like in my other response, I urge you to go back through and watch all the videos I provided you.
Did you patiently watch all the videos I provided in my response? If not, I strongly encourage you to make time to do so as much of what you had trouble grappling with was already addressed therein.
I would like to have constructive conversation, but there are things you just need to see for yourself to really get the full picture, hence providing those video resources. They are all information dense and provide much needed context to why I said the things I said. What we absolutely must understand is that concepts of "independence" and technological competency and literacy do not exist in a vacuum. They are not neutral in the world of geopolitics. History matters and, more importantly, history does not expire. We have a responsibility to know how we got here, so we can make an informed and responsible decision about where to go from here.
I urge you to go back through and watch every video in order, and then re-read the text part of my statement. The videos themselves can also be considered intertwined with the rest of my comment.
deleted by creator
It's all right, I understand. I know you're here in good faith and just trying to learn. I checked your profile and its description early on, so I'm doing what I can to accommodate your needs.
When you feel ready and have caught up on everything I provided, I look forward to speaking with you again. In the meantime, take care of yourself
deleted by creator
You spend too much time talking to techies who think they're super special people who are the only ones smart enough to touch computers. Everyone knows how to use a VPN. A working VPN is was the first result on Baidu when I tried to use one last time. Boomers who are afraid to update their computer know what Tor is. And even besides that there are plenty of times I've seen articles from western news media posted in China, usually consumed by the local libs. Who do you think the NYT Chinese version is for? Chinese diaspora don't read the NYT enough to justify them having a Chinese version of like half their articles, it's for Mainland Chinese liberals. Chinese people know about and complain about DW, BBC, NHK, CNN etc because we can read the articles and see the shit they pull (for example a big meme is when DW published some article about China and the title said "human fork" instead of "human rights" in Chinese, or the time the BBC published an ominous photo of the WIV (with a grey filter) and another photo of the BBC photographer having to to lay in a ditch to take the photo came out).
Ultimately in the 21st century access to information doesn't matter as much as having a population that actually is capable of consuming information. In the west people are trained to ignore everything that goes against the narrative as propaganda. The average westerner can not name a single Chinese social media site or news publication. They cry shill and propaganda followed by some racial slurs any time they encounter Chinese people online.
Okinawa/Ryukyu has regular protests against US military bases. The people there do not want a US military base. It's so bad I even saw a Ryukyu nationalists cringily try to cozy up to China.
You do realize that Taiwan officially considers itself the "Republic of China" and the legitimate government of not just China but also Mongolia right? Even Tsai Ing-Wen calls herself Chinese when giving campaign speeches. The whole Taiwanese identity thing is an idpol ruse by the DPP. Those same "taiwanese" will go on long rants about how they're the only real Chinese and all mainlanders are "yellow russians" right after yelling slurs about various northern Chinese minorities/Taiwanese aboriginals. If you can read Chinese they're all over social media. This also ironically leads to the 2% aboriginal Taiwanese population voting for the pro-China party. The funny thing is these people drop the act immediately when they sense they're about to get hatecrimed abroad. I personally knew a guy who went out of his way to call himself Taiwanese and make fun of mainlanders until Asian hate crimes started happening, then he started posting about how he was Chinese and had Chinese flags all over his social media.
This is in contrast to places like Singapore, which are majority ethnically Chinese but have an actual legitimate national identity, instead of whatever crazy shit the DPP does. Again if you can read Chinese you can easily see the difference between well adjusted Singaporean vs. Deranged DPP supporters on social media(look up 1450 army, every liberal accusation is an admission of guilt).
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Sorry for the misgendering.
About half of them vote for the pro-reunification party(KMT), the other half are the Chinese equivalent of white supremacists(DPP) who champion the Taiwanese identity stuff. They don't legitimately believe in Taiwanese identity, they hate the mainland because there's too many ethnic minorities/ the culture and language is "tainted" by ethnic minorities. You act as though thinking they are the real China is some facade, it's not, that is their core belief, especially the ones who talk loudly about Taiwanese identity because the whole point is that Taiwanese are the real Chinese and everyone else is impure.
I'm sorry but I honestly don't care for the DPP's Southern Han Supremacist bullshit. I personally believe peaceful reunification is inevitable as the KMT gain power again, but it is immoral to allow the DPP to remain in power. I would hope that if there was a white supremacist confederate holdout next to America that Americans would be against its existence.
Nobody really cares about land. That's some weird projection. Mongolia used to be a part of China but the only ones who want to invade it are the Taiwanese(guess why, hint hint.). It's about having a bunch of weirdo fascists who believe they're the rightful inheritors of China and that everyone else is culturally/ethnically impure. The DPP could be floating in a shipping container in the middle of the ocean and it would be the same calculus.
deleted by creator
The KMT has pivoted to pro-reunification once it became clear they wouldn't be able to retake the mainland. Obviously a party that calls itself the "Chinese Nationalist Party" are Chinese first and anti-communist second. The irony is that if they were able to reign in the racist tendencies of the DPP most mainlanders wouldn't care about reunification in the first place.