I swear unanimous appreciation of china was a pretty common sentiment and now I'm consistently seeing upbeared comments about how china isn't and never was a socialist state, and how actually their use of markets is as bad if not worse than america. What's going on? IDK what to think or what side I'm on here but it just seems like opinions fundamentally changed so quickly, it's weird.

  • murro [any]
    4·
    4 years ago

    This is absolutely the right take.

    I used to work in China and I'll never forget one of my coworkers telling me the story of how she got mad at her six year old son for sharing his toys in preschool because it wasn't a "successful" mindset. On the other hand, I got to know some high level government officials who were truly committed socialists. It really is a deeply flawed country and its future is very opaque.

    • OgdenTO [he/him]
      6·
      4 years ago

      Sorry dude, this seems like a weird stereotype. And 6 year olds aren't in preschool. This seems made up.

      • murro [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        This was ten years ago in Shenzhen and it might not have been preschool, it could have been kindergarten, daycare or somewhere else kids play together. I know it sounds insane. It left a deep impression on me.

        Of course, this was the most extreme example I encountered and I'm absolutely not saying all Chinese people are like this. However, people here need to realize that before Xi, the CPC did very little to promote leftist ideas following Deng's market reforms. The promotion of unfettered domestic consumption in particular left a portion of Chinese society with no strong political inclinations, ripe for reactionary politics to take root. Since I left China in 2015, it seems like China is going in the right direction, but we can't uncritically support them just because they're anti-imperial. There is a very real possibility that China could devolve into ultranationalism, just look at some of the pro-China twitter accounts.

        • OgdenTO [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yeah, that makes sense - it just seemed like vague anti-China stereotyping and inaccurate details. But your explanation made sense.