They do actually allow protests. Western media was having a fucking field day earlier this year talking about how China had bowed to pressure from protests regarding their covid policy.
Jesus titty fucking H Christ...
You mean the revolt that happened after people burned to death in their own homes when the state locked them in? The revolt that state censors still tried to remove from the internet? The one police cracked down on?
China has protests against covid policy that saved millions of lives, the government listens to and adjusts policy accordingly
western chauvinist: omg look at this revolt, proof that China is ebil!! im such a smart redditor!
amerika has protests against the police killing people for being black, government responds by vilifying protestors and ramping up police violence
western chauvinist: they’re rioting! they’re destroying their cities! omg we need cops to put them in their place!
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
Yeah those protests. Have you read that article? A lot of, ifs, buts, maybes and mights.
"Revolt". Fucking lol
dragged to the ground in handcuffs, while he was seen saying in another video: “Call the consulate now.”
Released a few hours later in perfect health btw.
yes the protests against government policy that caused the government to change the policy
I feel the zero COVID protests were the exception that proves the rule. The policy outlived its usefulness in light of less deadly strains, and the protests gave Xi an easy transition. Appeasement was the right choice, but one extremely out of character for the central government.
"the exception that proves the rule" doesn't just mean any evidence against your point is actually evidence for your point. it means that something is only notable because it's usually rare.
Did you know that Deng Xiaoping, the leader of China during the Tiananmen Square protests, resigned from all official positions shortly after the protests? I don't recall Nixon doing anything similar over Kent State, however.
they also repealed the hong kong extradition law in response to those protests. Although admittedly once they fulfilled the demands of the protest and the protest continued they then cracked down more
The Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
China has a 90%~ home ownership rate with 80% being mortgage free. 70% of millenials in China are home owners.
Wonderful houses they got over there. Tofu dreg houses are the best!
Shitty contractors happen. I've done remediation in affluent neighborhoods where the median home price was around 900k, almost every home was experiencing interior water damage in less than 5 years because the developer was looking at who had the cheapest bid and the stucco crews were paid by the square foot.
My dude, they showed city blocks of tofu dreg houses. That goes beyond "bad contractors"
My dude, the neighborhoods Im talking about encompassed a few hundred houses. I regularly tell customers to be really careful about buying homes built within the last couple decades because the chances of getting a McMansion that's glued and duct tapped together are high.
If you pay attention, you'll notice how many of these discussions will go like
"If you think China is a perfect utopia, then how do you explain that something bad happened there?"
"I don't think it's a utopia. Yeah that bad thing seems bad."
"So you accept that China is literally Mordor then?"
"What"
Are NEW Chinese buildings falling down? Idk here's a video from 5 years ago
love being a sponge brain-ed liberal who 1) just believes whatever YouTuber they like best and 2) doesn't even have the cognitive power to realize a shitty home is better than no home. Even in their worst fantasies, the Chinese government still provides for its people to a better degree than any government in the west, where people literally die on the fucking streets
Anyway i look forward to the mental rollercoaster you go on in the next few years as China continues to establish its dominance over the west as you try to pretend that 1) those evil orientals couldn't possibly build complex things like high speed rail or buildings that don't fall apart and 2) you're not an implicitly racist fuck for being prone to believing shit like that in the first place :^]
Did... Did you really just try to argue in favor of cardboard houses in danger of collapsing THREE years after they were built?
every home in china has collapsed twice since this video was posted. china will collapse any day now, I swear
fashI am generously assuming your propaganda for the purpose of this argument and just go with your orientalist view that the chinese can't figure out building shit based on some cracker's youtube spewing
I'd rather have a home that might collapse than no home at all like so many in other countries, yours included, with police who will literally beat me half to death for sleeping in the wrong place, who are in most places the primary instigators of homelessness as they throw people onto the streets at the behest of some petty landlord, while gleefully destroying their personal property in the process.
There was literally a video like yesterday of some american cops destroying people's shit only to stop to salute for the national anthem
But yeah it's the EVIL SEE SEE PEE PEE putting people in TOFU HOUSES against their will. The horror! What evil authoritarianism, so unlike MY country, one of the GOOD ONES. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Go back to reddit, lib
My BOY how is that not better than sleeping on a piece of cardboard on the sidewalk??
Anyhow, what, is every single home in China a flimsy shack? Can you dredge up one single solitary study on what percentage of homes in China are of substandard construction? Can you do any goddamned thing but regurgitate half-remembered unsubstantiated talking points from youtube from lord knows how long ago?
If you can, have it. Give us a source and we'll have a talk about it. Otherwise, shut the FUCK up
the way you mfs type is so dramatic lmao. D-d-did... did you seriously... Gasp! It cant be.. you didnt really just defend.. 😇 Shut the fuck up 😇this is not an AO3 goth furry rp youre a boring ass liberal commentator on a forum
this is not an AO3 goth furry rp
Well maybe... maybe it SHOULD be!
Your understanding of Chinese infrastructure isn't rigorous if it's entirely based on some sensationalist viral videos of some places which look bad. Yeah, it's a massive country with a billion people, some of those places look bad in a video. I'm not happy about the bad construction you see there, nor the real estate speculation causing some of it (which isn't a communist feature).
You can find lots of videos of places in the US and Canada looking bad too, only it's like cops destroying the tents and property of unhoused people in the streets (of note, there's almost no homelessness in China). But in response to those we might say "oh that's terrible, they should fix that" and not the "we gotta overthrow the authoritarian government" when it's about China.
You have never worked in construction here in the US have you? I am renting a modern house and the granite countertops are great but when it rains my electricity shorts out and frankly it is kinda terrifying.
It takes me twice as long as it should to do any work on the toilet in my place because the slumlord-ass bathroom i pay a billion dollars a month for is so narrow that I don't have room to properly turn a wrench.
Anyway, the Maoist uprising against th
Would be pretty uncool not to want the proletariat there out of chains
The country where like over 90% approve of the government? The country where more proletariat actively engage in democracy than anywhere in the world? Hows that chains compared with anywhere else in the world?
"What do you mean you are repressed, we already allow you to be middle class" — capitalists somewhere probably
Sure, the largest democracy in the world and most successful AES state ever is bad for the proletariat because you and the US State Department say so
But you attack a place that is moving to full socislism by 2050 as if its worse than other places
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/023/021/e02e5ffb5f980cd8262cf7f0ae00a4a9_press-x-to-doubt-memes-memesuper-la-noire-doubt-meme_419-238.jpg
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/861e578e-af4b-46fa-a992-0f3e94f9a58c.png
your my finest soldier Jack. Don't ever let the tankies win
"libruls!"
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/d665aa46-7ce5-426f-9efa-9a9586cd0acd.png
listen up Jack. The libs, they're no good. Many people are saying this. And they're saying it more and more. I was telling uh, Raprock, uh my old boss, you know... look it used to be the tallest boy in school could climb the tallest tree in town, but its not like that anymore. oh, i shouldn't have said that.
It really never gives you pause to argue identically to neoliberal slime, does it?
We homies don't argue. Don't try capitalist culture war label tricks here
There's a time and place for debates elsewhere when participants consent. Meme post threads? Nah fam
I know you're just doing verbal diarrhea, but framing it as a "capitalist trick" when yours is the side with neoliberals is, uh, something. I'm not saying you should argue with them, no need to bother imo, I'm saying you should consider where your shitty ideology has gotten you that it puts you on the same side as the overwhelming neoliberal consensus. I forget what boutique brand of socialist you pretend to be but, whatever it is, it is the epitome of anarcho-bidenism when it leads you to side with neoliberals against "tankies".
And here everyone can see the trick in detail, thank you for the imaginative example
You tell him Jack
Can't fool us with their capitalist tricks
Love you but that's a rude picture to use against him AND he already tried to call biden on others
C'mon man! You've got nothing to lose but... you know... the thing
You learned to talk like us and that's the full extent of it. We're not "homies" lol - my first and only impression of you is a shady internet chameleon who tries to trick people into ancient recycled neoliberal beliefs but from a "new perspective" we've also heard before. I can tell what you might look/sound like in person, sure, but you give us no reasons to get along
Liberals be like: Yeah I love democracy.
The thing I love most about democracy is that I get zero choice or control over who represents me in government at all and I let them make decisions for me that hurt me. In fact I celebrate it when they make decisions that hurt me
Obviously the Chinese protesting continued Covid lockdowns last year were all sent to organ harvesting camps because those asians are different and probably evil not like us good heckin anglorinos that know how to do socialism properly where we vote for the same right wing party to keep the even farther right wing party from power for another four years.
Actually the Chinese government ending the lockdown after all of these large demonstrations were purely coincidence. See in my democracy I protest and my government does literally nothing to address why I protested. That's how you know democracy is working, when the government hears my concerns and completely ignores them. Unlike that authoritarian sissypee where the people protested and the government listened to them and changed course based on their demands. Listening to your people and making policy based on their concerns is authoritarian. Ignoring your people and making policy based on corporate donors is democracy.
I mean as someone of Chinese descent who is repulsed by the Chinese government's actions despite them looking like me, I think my existence alone disproves your argument. I don't doubt that there are some people who do think like that, but I do doubt that they make up anywhere near a majority.
You can internalize racism you know? And even if not, you can still be convinced that a group is bad by shitty American propaganda even if you look like those people. You're not unique in that way, but it's just not really relevant to the situation
Okay, fair point, the argument I made wasn't exactly a good one. I do still think that hating authoritarianism isn't exactly xenophobia.
They are super related though. Only non-white places are called authoritarian and based on just vibes (usually supported by racism and internalized racism). There is not a definition of authoritarian that encompasses china and doesn't encompass most of Europe and America also. If you have one, hit me up because I've heard a billion and the only way I've ever been able to understand it is either "yeah but they're bad so when they do it it's authoritarian" or "they are naturally more authoritarian [because of their race]"
Isn't Russia being criticised for similar authoritarian practices despite them being white (at least the people in power, anyways)?
Russia is an interesting case, and most scholars of race do not think that Russians are white in any sociological sense, because white supremacists don't consider them white and they aren't treated as "white people" by white people. They are "asiatic" to racists. Their skin is, on average, fairly white. But that was never what being white meant, or at least people who claimed so were never consistent about it in history (people whiter than many white people but with black ancestors weren't white for example, and fair skinned Asian people also aren't white despite being lighter in skin tone). Whiteness is a category of exclusion
"as someone of Chinese descent" hitting with that stretch from half court on this one. There have been people of Chinese decent in America longer than most white people.
Not the same event. It's rather like if someone was talking about the migration in response to the Homestead Act and you mention the Donner party as though it was part of that.
Not related to what you are responding to but just as an interesting symbolic link between the two things you mentioned, iirc the first people killed, butchered and eaten by the Donner party were their native scouts, afterwards mostly erased from the story in popular telling. Just as the homesteaders first ethnically cleansed the native Americans before hunger for more land turned them cannibalistically against each other
That is interesting! I didn't know they had native guides, though I suppose of course they would and of course those guides were the first sacrificed by colonizers.
Looked a little more into it, they weren't actually the very first eaten but were the first (and by some accounts only) to be murdered for the purpose of eating. They both refused to eat human meat before fleeing (they'd been warned their murder was being planned), but were caught up with down the trail a few days later. Shortly after they were butchered the group (a segment of the party that had been sent ahead) that did it were harboured and fed in a Miwok village (the guides having also been Miwok I think). A grizzly tale.
I am pretty sure they mean the revolts from right at the start of the PRC. Wikipedia is a hostile source and I don't endorse it, but it explains well enough that the Land Reform Movement started before the end of the Civil War and mostly ended by 1953. Because the CPC/PLA only had so much manpower and China is huge, they had very little direct involvement, and instead just said in so many words "we aren't protecting the landlords' claim to their property, do what you will". The peasants then independently seized the land, usually either killing or driving out the landlord, and distributed it among themselves or sometimes held it in common.
There's an interesting relation between this approach and Mao's observations of peasant movements a few decades prior.
Is this trying to say people who support the most successful AES state and largest democracy in the world are not real marxists, but people who just believe western propoganda with rascist characteristics are the true marxists?
So, instead of rehashing the same old talking points for the upteenth time, would anyone be interested in discussing China's political project in a broader and more mature way? Like for example:
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Who do you think should've come to power following the fall of the Qing, through to the civil war (if not the CPC)?
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Do you agree with the direction of Deng's economic reforms and opening up to foreign investment? If not, should he have stayed closer to Mao's policies, or should he have gone further towards liberalization, or something else?
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What aspects or projects of the CPC have been good or successful?
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What aspects or projects of the CPC have been flawed or unsuccessful?
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What lessons can be learned from the successes and failures of the CPC?
Ngl I don't have high hopes for this comment but I'm tryin' over here.
i am once again relieved that
libs are too lazy and ignorant to investigate anything beyond the ccp bad that msm tells them, and that chinese libs hate themselves too much to think themselves worthy of educating their lib betters about cpc atrocity conspiracy theories.though tbf at least shit like tiananmen is falsifiable, i think i'd have an aneurysm if white people on the internet started telling me that mao never left his palanquin and ate the PLA's entire stock of chicken over the course of the long march. like big spoon stalin but in earnest
I have a friend from China who's a lib and he's probably one of the most racist people I know (specifically against Chinese people). Just the other day he said Chinese people have never invented anything and that good inventions can only come from the US or Europe. He also wants to look, sound, and dress like an Ivy-league country club dude. Dude regularly reminds me of a Chinese Uncle Ruckus. Is that kind of self-hating common or is it mostly because he's from a rich family?
in parlance, he's called an uncle chan.
it's an interesting exercise to map racism and self hatred against class interests, particularly in the context of america and china's antagonistic relationship. mao's perenially applicable class analysis has changed somewhat over the years, but the gist remains the same: the big bourgeois landlords/compradors have morphed into corrupt officials and bureaucratic monopolists, the middle bourgeois are now real estate/insurance/finance goons or factory owners and right wing petty bourgeois have added techbros to their ranks.
in my experience, the big bourgeois are largely past this level of ingroup status signalling, they're too busy hustling their stolen capital out of china and race for them only matters insofar as who lets them stash their cash where. meanwhile, the middle bourgeois and the upper rungs of the petty bourgeois are likely most prone to this sort of behavior. they don't have enough cash or clout to feel like they're above the party, but they have a big enough amount of ill gotten goods/chips on their shoulder to make them feel like they might be arbitrarily targeted (or maybe they feel like they deserve more but for the intervention of the party), and so they channel that resentment into hating other chinese people.
less rich people also ape western affectations for a wider variety of reasons, but i will say that western media penetration into china is very deep and pervasive and that the 90s/chimerica years resulted in at least a generation of thought leaders and public intellectuals that are extremely ideologically compromised and it is unclear how fast their influence might be dissipated, if ever.
Yeah it's like, typing this out really drew my attention to how much conversations about China are dominated by random noise that's largely insignificant or bullshit. It's always this 24 hour news coverage level of analysis, with no actual study of history or major trends and themes. Hell I realized myself the other day that there were two leaders between Deng and Xi who I couldn't name and know basically nothing about.
I think that most people fall into certain ideological traps that allow them to simplify narratives to the point of never really feeling the need to study anything, in part because the world is just so big that it's hard to actually be informed about things. You never have to decide how you feel about specific events in China's history if you just scream "CHINA BAD" every time it comes up, and that's a whole lot of history you never have to bother learning now.
Hell I realized myself the other day that there were two leaders between Deng and Xi who I couldn't name and know basically nothing about.
Oh well that's easy, before Xi Jinping there was Hu Jintao, who was a kind of moderate technocratic kind of guy. Always about plans and numbers. And before Jintao there was a magic toad wizard who wore George Romero glasses and would yell at journalists when they asked him stupid shit
I don't think we even have emotes for those guys, and we have a million emotes!
My impression was both of then were fairly boring technocrats but I'm interested to learn more about this magic toad wizard.
This is the only thing I know about Jiang Zemin and I think I might be okay with that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kGPJzusNPA
Omg that's like straight out of a movie. I've seen that "too young, too simple, sometimes naive" quote before but I had no idea that's where it's from. I love it.
I'll offer my own answers as well.
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The CPC
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I agree, though I think it may have gone too far. Allowing billionaires is a dangerous gambit due to the possibility of them gaining political influence, and allowing landlords was a mistake. However, these reforms have helped lift 800 million people out of extreme poverty and were necessary at the time.
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Land reform, the Barefoot Doctors program, Deng's reforms, and the Belt and Road initiative have all been very successful and increased the standards of living for an enormous number of people. The CPC has had a focus on improving the economic conditions of their poorest people, and in that regard they've done a very good job.
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The Great Leap Forward, the Sino-Soviet split, the Cultural Revolution, LGBT rights, and past China's foreign policy such as supporting Pol Pot/the Khemer Rouge and invading Vietnam. A lot of the blame for the Sino-Soviet split lies with Khrushchev, but I think there's enough blame to go around. I think the Soviet policy of "peaceful co-existence" was more correct, and more in line with what China ended up doing anyway (libs will roast me for that, I'm sure). Some positive things did happen during the Cultural Revolution (such as the above-mentioned Barefoot Doctors program), but generally it was a chaotic mess and I'm not sure it accomplished very much. The GLF had a lot of factors, including the Sino-Soviet split, but there's plenty of blame to ascribe to Mao (the sparrows did not, in fact, deserve it)
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Kind of trite but one take-away is "seek truth from facts." When Mao was successful, it was because of his experience living among rural Chinese, and looking at what they needed. Where he was unsuccessful was when he got too caught up in theory, sometimes assuming something would work without paying close enough attention to whether it actually was. I consider the overall political project successful due to the improvements made in people's lives, but how the devil's bargain with the capitalists will ultimately play out remains to be seen.
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I wonder what happened to MLK and all the people who started the BLM protests in America which guarantees freedom of protest and speech. It really sucks that they all were either murdered or committed suicide and the police were never able to do anything about it.
Oh well, gotta let go and let god. Btw, did you hear that the evil Chinese Government sent someone who threw a firebomb to jail? Nasty stuff, glad I live somewhere civilized.
You think the assassinations of black civil rights activists is funny?
The point is bullshit. But that's not my problem with you. ...
This is not a meme. If I knew how to report ... or read the comm rules I would probably report you.
Go back to hexbear instead of forcing politics onto general communities on the non-political instance lemmy.ml
I lost a parent to antvaxx stuff. A drop of her blood is on the hands on of every free speech absolutist who pushes that garbage and creates space for the worst people possible.
Lemmy.ml get mad at people who don't like the Democracy Party. We must all support Prime Minister Biden Robinette or else the Party of the Republic will win the next Voting.
there's a cool website called myspace where you can chill with friends
We just defeded from sh.ts.fullofnazis (aka shitjustworks). you might enjoy that place
Pawb.social and Blaj are defederated if you want other instances are that are still mostly LGBT+, but liberal/anti-communist.
don't they ever talk about anything else?
