I have a lot at stake here

there was a thread on r/wsb where somebody basically said this was a get-rich-quick scheme only for experienced traders on the sub, but that everybody else hopping on the hype train would get screwed over. i don't know anything about stocks, but if ur actual livelihood is at stake i would say pull out before it all inevitably explodes.

hello, thanks for your response! i agree with basically everything you say here, but

tbh just log off, its not worth the effort torturing yourself going through bad takes

posting this has taken a lot of alcohol based courage on my part bc i genuinely have bad experiences with leftists online, but i think it's important to have open conversations on contentious topics like this and i want to understand the perspectives of other leftists. i will probably log off if it gets too overwhelming and anxiety-inducing tho

I few years ago during the Left Forum, I listened to a talk by Chinese American activists who spent time in Mainland China,

i can see how that may have influenced your perspective, and in a similar vein my opinion is formed based on chinese dissidents i have talked to regarding the political machinations within china. they were not politicians and showed up to protests at great personal risk, and it was eye-opening to get insight from mainland chinese who have grown up there.

as for the comment on chinese people being victims of the regime, as far as i understand china is a state capitalist economy and that many outside of bigger cities such as beijing or shanghai are impoverished - i think that they are victims of capitalism the same as everyone else in the world.

Impossible? If you have the economic means it’s perfectly possible (at least when the pandemic is over and China issues visas again)

my parents believe that it is unsafe for me to visit hk or china due to the national security law, which i have violated many times. i on a personal level would love to visit again but i wouldn't risk it.

hi yes thank you for the nice comment! this was what i was hoping for actually, to be able to talk to leftists who are able to see the nuance in contentious political issues and talk abt it without being rude or disrespectful :D

Yeahhhhhh if we get “many” brownshirts at my protest movement i’m gonna sideye it a bit. that’s just me tho. I do agree ACAB. Thanks for taking the time to step into the hornet’s nest and make this post :)

i would generally agree, but i have also talked to many taiwanese people who are misguided about trump, including my own mother. there is a lot of pain involved in discussing political issues like this when to the everyday taiwanese (and probably hker as well), their interest in us politics is limited to how it interacts with regional/domestic politics. for taiwan, this is obviously the matter of us-chinese-taiwanese relations. i have tried to reason with my mom about how trump, despite being possible good for taiwan's political standing in the short term, is a menace to the world and needs to be removed from power asap. she doesn't understand this, because to her trump being in power means taiwan having more political standing on the international stage, and being able to have some semblance of self determination.

now, this applies more to taiwan ofc as i have met more taiwanese ppl than hkers, but i think the general sentiment is the same.

i have read theory as it is part of the degree i do, and yes i don't generally do long form political discussions in any space because it gives me massive anxiety and can often be triggering :)

yes i do!

hi, i'm afraid it is unsafe for me to visit china anytime soon as i have violated the national security laws many times through activism

Again, don’t listen to me but fuck landlords he can eat shit.

yes

hello, thanks for the advice! we have looked over the contract, but there aren't really clauses about our particular circumstance ie the pandemic and how it's affecting feasibility of finding a new tenant and idk if things are gonna get better tbh

yeah i figured he would do that anyway :/

yes he is, he actually called out his followers when they used racial slurs against me lol

hi, thanks for sharing! no i haven't read that, but i'll take a look when i have time. funny thing is my degree is actually eastern europe and russia focused, so that should be an interesting read.

i do question the numbers you get in the current literature regarding the situation in the XUAR, and i don't doubt they're inflated, but i do think the fact remains that there is something very wrong happening there, and it's distressing to me that it's nigh impossible to figure out what the hell is going on because of the censorship and propaganda, in china and in the west. if i could fly there and verify for myself what's going on i would, but again, that's impossible.

Additionally, when one compares the treatment of Uyghurs in China (or the treatment of Hong Kong protesters) to the treatment of black people in the U.S., or compares the Chinese approach to extremist violence to the American one, it puts things in a much different perspective. This doesn’t mean China’s approach is perfect, but it says something about how upset we should be with each situation, and it says something about how honest people are being when they’re foaming at the mouth over China but apologetic about the U.S.

i agree with this completely, and unfortunately i have witnessed firsthand how pro-hk people in online spaces can be around the blm movement - that is to say, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance and anti-black racism going on. i personally think that it is ideologically inconsistent to support hk but not blm, and vice versa. also pro-hk trump supporters are cancerous and i hold no sympathy for them.

hi, thank you for your detailed response, i would like to reply to it in detail as well but it's a bit late so i might follow up tomorrow!

i visited xi'an once as a secondary school student, it was a lovely place.

oh i've actually talked to him directly before! he's one of the few ppl i've found in the twitter leftist sphere who i can disagree with but still chat amiably with.

thank you for your very thorough and thoughtful reply!

Every second you spend writing a screed or attend a protest condemning China, you give western imperialists and their allies a free pass on their own crimes which you can actually influence. You take a bullet for your own imperialists while denouncing the actions of another nation.

i understand this of course, and being american and british educated i do care a lot about what's going on the us and the uk, but at this point in time i'm choosing my battles, and of course respect leftists who choose theirs. the toxic community i refer to on twitter is more specifically a reactionary group of leftists who for the most aren't chinese/hkers/taiwanese/from any other country or social group related to the chinese diaspora, who use their platform to amplify the chinese government's voice and positions.

May I ask, what is your stance on the territorial claims of the RoC and the KMT constitution in relation to the PRC’s own claims and current holdings which have been stable for decades? Do you believe that the RoC should control Xinjiang, Tibet, all of Mongolia, Hong Kong, and theentire South China Sea (which coincidentally the western imperialists roundly condemn the PRC for)?

i view the roc as a settler colonial state on the island of taiwan, though this is a more radical position i think than the average liberal/left-leaning taiwanese. i think the roc should be abolished, but as of now that's probably not happening any time soon. i think the claims are antiquated and imperialist, and the only reason that the roc government officially maintains it is probably more due to the 1992 consensus than anything else.

imagine being bri'ish

how abt the french? i'm not white so idk