• 52fighters@sopuli.xyz
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    1 month ago

    If, over the next 10 years, your country became more and more like China, would you go along with the changes? Would you have any problems with the transformation?

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Given that I live in the US Empire, a number of things will go differently for socialist construction. The US Empire is de-industrialized, and is a settler-colony. Decolonization and re-industrialization will both be required. However, certain aspects of China’s experience with socialism will also be experienced by the socialist state replacing the US Empire in this hypothetical, and I support that as well.

    • epicshepich@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      I really don’t know what it’s like in China because I’ve never been there. I know some people who are from China but they’ve never really talked about anything other than visiting their families. All I hear comes from the US propaganda machine, so I can’t really have an informed opinion. This is probably how it should be for like 95% of Americans. We don’t need to have an opinion about everything ffs.

    • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 month ago
      • modern electricity grid quickly moving away from fossil fuels
      • high speed train network
      • cheap fresh produce
      • affordable housing
      • transitioning to socialism via the development of productive forces
      • strong investment in education and R&D
      • quickly advancing tech in almost every sector that matters
      • people-directed governance that is not subservient to capital (foreign or domestic)
      • very low crime
      • ecological restoration that won’t get cancelled by the next elected administration
      • cheap and good quality healthcare
      • bold long term vision and consistent achievement of it over time

      objectively better than just about any other place

      • SoloCritical@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        They’ve been around, as a civilization, for over 5,000 years. I’d like to think you don’t make it that long without doing a thing or 2 right.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Eh. The US has been around just as long as a civilization. If the Chinese get to claim credit for the radically different ancient predecessors to modern China, then the US can claim decent from both the ancient Native American civilizations as well as the ancient Middle Eastern civilizations that are ultimately the predecessors of many countries such as the US.

          • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            The US has been around just as long as a civilization. If the Chinese get to claim credit for the radically different ancient predecessors to modern China, then the US can claim decent from both the ancient Native American civilizations

            The US is a settler colonial project that carried out an extermination campaign and genocide of hundreds of native tribes, and stole their land. Settlers have no right to claim descent from the people (they’re still) trying to exterminate. Unlike South America, there’s not even a genetic heritage; the US colonialist just killed every indigenous person they found, or put them into reservations.

            Neither the PRC nor most ME countries are settler ones. The number of settler-colonial countries is tiny: the US, Canada, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, are the main ones.

            • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              BWAHAHA!

              China is absolutely a settler-colonialist state. How do you think 90% of the population ended up Han Chinese? Chinese cultural extermination goes back millennia.

              • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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                1 month ago

                Kinda sounds more like you need other countries’ history to be described in the same terms that apply to the United States, so you can dismiss it all as “just the way the world is” without having to examine how that history informs our present.

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        The education is also non-competitive and crippling for the not-so-gifted students, yes?

        Because I don’t hear about many student suicides (specifically due to stress and pressure) outside of the Asian countries.

  • FreeBeard@slrpnk.net
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    1 month ago

    This comment section is filthy! And all of that just to justify the chinese imperialistic ambitions. Looks really twisted to me.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      I appreciate the term “imperialistic ambitions,” because it acknowledges that China hasn’t actually done stuff that you could plausibly call imperialist, so all you can do is criticize stuff that they might possibly want to do someday.

    • iByteABit@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Aah yes unlike never authoritarian capitalist governments that totally don’t break in your house to throw you in the cold bitter streets to die because you couldn’t afford rent and made the property “unprofitable”. The West has no right lecturing anyone over human rights and liberty, they could just discard them from their dictionary if only it didn’t serve as great propaganda against their class enemies.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          That’s because a state is itself an instrument of class warfare first and foremost. In some places the rich wield the state against the people, and in other places the people wield the state against the rich.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Define authoritarian. The PRC spent decades of anti-colonial struggle defeating British imperialists, Japanese imperialists, feudal reactionaries, and then US imperialists. Do you know more than them about how to defeat vicious empires, “non-authoritarianly”?

    • square@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      They’re not even against capitalism. They only pay lip service to anti-capitalism.

          • GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            A state the exists as a servant to a citizenry that is not limited to class or ethnicity. A state served as a safeguard to the human rights of all humans within its sovereignty.

            It also serves as a mechanism to efficiently direct resources to human advancement as basic needs are automated.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              I meant like can you give an example of one

              Also:

              It also serves as a mechanism to efficiently direct resources to human advancement as basic needs are automated.

              So like China

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  Finland? Where despite years of protest by the people, the state continues to buy Israeli weapons and cooperate with the zionist entity in the development of military tech and spyware? The state currently ignoring the wishes of it’s people in order to aid and abet a historically unpopular genocide?

                • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  Jesus, at this point why don’t you just admit that by “non-authoritarian” you just mean “white”.

                • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  The country that was a Nazi ally and didn’t drop the swastika from their air force insignia until 2025? Finland the country currently implementing mass austerity while giving tax cuts to the rich? That Finland?

            • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              You just described the PRC, and notably not capitalist dictatorships, whose governments don’t represent their people / working class, but the interests of capitalists only.

              You desperately need to get past this poli-sci-intro-level understanding of what states are. States are organizations of force for one class (meaning in Marxism their relationship to production) to oppress another. The USA and other liberal countries are capitalist dictatorship over workers, while the PRC is a worker’s dictatorship over capital.

              Here are some resources:

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              The communist party is a working class party. What exactly do you think the purpose of a party is? And what do you think class is? You seem confused on each.

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              So then every country is authoritarian, because no country is controlled by a party that every citizen is a member of.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              No just one out of every 14 people, which you may notice is many thousands of times more democratic than any of the western so-called democracies by percentage.

              • GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                So 13 out of 14 people do not belong to the only political coalition (the 8 parties with 700,000 members total don’t really count as “opposition parties”) that is legally allowed in their country?

                In reference to my original post, we agree that authoritarianism is bad and you are arguing the case that China and the CCP is not authoritarian, correct?

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  They seem to be doing a pretty good job

                  we agree that authoritarianism is bad

                  No. We disagree that “authoritarianism” is a meaningful distinction when every government exists by authority. Might as well call it “badguyism”

    • Internetexplorer@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Lol America, land of the free, they literally arrested anyone who said they were a communist and confiscated your gold because they said it was illegal.

      Yet China is frowned upon.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          These things exist in degrees.

          Fuck Donald J Trump. I hope the rat bastard dies shitting himself inside out.

          Try talking like that about Xi on Chinese social media.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              Liberals believe hating something is critique. That’s why they claim Lemmy.ml bans people for “criticizing” socialist countries, when in reality their “critique” is just saying “fuck xyz.”

              • calmblue75@lemmy.ml
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                1 month ago

                Mostly their critique, as you said, is just plain insulting. Often it is not to an ideology or a system, but a person or people. Like the person above just insulted not the US, not capitalism, not western imperialism, but Trump, a single person. What is even the point?

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  It’s the type of unseriousness that results from not engaging with real political activism, and not engaging with socialist theory.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      The working classes use state authority for pro-social policy and to prebent capitalists from gaining political power, as opposed to capitalist authority for pro-profit policy and to prevent the working classes from gaining political power. Authority has a class dynamic, analysis without class erases the core distinction.

    • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      authoritarians

      Thought terminating cliche used by the unintelligent and uninformed to avoid reckoning with reality beyond vibes.

        • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          You clearly don’t understand the purpose of the firewall and the online surveillance is no more than any other country but at least our government is accountable to us as opposed to owned by capital.

            • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              To us. There’s a reason that even from Harvard’s research the government has a 95+% approval.

              Direct elections reach the township and county levels where voters choose deputies to local people’s congresses. These grassroots deputies constitute the overwhelming majority of all deputies nationwide. Advancement to higher levels requires proven service at lower rungs, ensuring every national deputy has worked up from local material conditions and remains accountable to the masses below.

              Grassroots legislative liaison stations and community consultation channels ensure mass input shapes policy at every stage, making democracy a daily practice not a periodic (meaningless) ritual. Whole-process people’s democracy embeds consultation and pilot programs into governance: policies are tested locally, refined through mass feedback, then scaled nationally. This grounds decisions in what we want and need.

              All 55 ethnic minorities hold guaranteed representation in the NPC. Farmers and labourers comprise roughly 15% of deputies while professionals and technical personnel make up the remainder.

              Even besides all that if you just look at what the Chinese government does as opposed to those owned by capital. Mass poverty alleviation, anticorruption at all levels, massive investment in socially profitable but monetarily unprofitable public services, deflating the housing bubble. These are not the actions of a government only looking out for a select few.

              And also the CPC has over 100million members since 2024 that 1 in 14 people are party members not to mind those who aren’t but are active in consulting due to their position such as most engineers and scientists.

              • GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                You should be skeptical of any poll or survey that presents that level of agreement on anything with that breadth of societal implications.

                How do you square the whole Hong Kong protests in regards to the extradition laws? Or the aggression towards Taiwan?

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  Just because the anglosphere is a socioeconomic nightmare realm of genocide, immiseration and omnipresent propaganda where everyone is at each other’s throats doesn’t mean everywhere else is too.

                  What you’re saying is you want to be suspicious of data that paints other places in a better light than us, because it makes you feel bad. You then rationalize this desire as “wisdom” while continuing to apply it selectively against societies your government has told you to hate.

          • khannie@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            the online surveillance is no more than any other country

            Hahahaha. Spoken like someone who has never been there or lives in pure ignorance. You just try to use an encrypted chat app while there and see what happens. Or criticise the government.

            Oh, you can’t. That VPN…that’ll fix it though. Oh that’s right, they’re illegal.

            Just like everywhere else. Hahaha.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              You are literally talking to a Chinese person from China, smug liberal dipshittery knows no bounds

              • khannie@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Then they fit the second part, living in ignorance. Online surveillance there is measurably worse.

                Edit: just for clarity, I’m not “china bad” in my worldview but claims they their online surveillance is the same as elsewhere is utter nonsense and either from ignorance or indoctrination.

                You think they’re posting on Lemmy without a VPN?

                • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  The firewall was created to foster and protect China’s fledgling digital infrastructure and data sovereignty. Many countries regulate foreign platforms and data flows. China built its own ecosystem instead of depending on foreign companies. We have seen what happens when foreign platforms operate without local oversight: Facebook facilitating genocide in Myanmar, coordinated anti-vax disinformation campaigns in Southeast Asia, algorithm-driven radicalization. The firewall makes those kinds of external influence operations harder or close to impossible to run at scale. I support it and so do many others as the alternative is plain to see. Also everyone has a VPN we’re not living in ignorance it is in fact people like yourself who are massively ignorant about us and our country.

            • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              I was born and raised here. The VPN is for the firewall which has many reasons to exist and I support, also they’re not illegal. Criticising the government is super common but mostly over mundane stuff because that’s what people care about (there’s a reason the approval even according to Harvard is 95+%). You people are always so arrogant while being so uninformed it’s amazing.

              • khannie@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Making a statement that online surveillance there is no different from elsewhere will get you that kind of response tbh. It is measurably worse.

                • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  It simply isn’t. Remember snowden? The NSA? TAO? Pegasus? Our government is simply more open and honest with us (might be a side effect of having real democracy as opposed to a charade put on by bought candidates every 4 years). Also before you say that’s just America, Europe are American vassal states all of these and more (since this is just what has leaked) are deployed against Europeans too and intel is shared in deals like five eyes.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Literally every government with the capability to control information is doing that, and frankly the rise of bleach-injecting covid denialist flat earth tradwife inflluencers has proven China right to do so.

          • GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            From Merriam-Webster

            " of authoritarian

            1 relating to, or favoring blind submission to [authority].

            2 relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              So like, objectively not China? Because their ruling party consists of 90 million members and they’re constantly debating shit, and enjoy an incredibly high satisfaction rate among non-party members?

            • Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 month ago

              i love that it has the caveat in the second definition abt a constitution. like, no guys, totslly not us, look at this definition we created to show how we arent authoritarian

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Every country should be blocking the US surveillance giants, its extremely naive for countries to be letting facebook, twitter, reddit, and google operate unhindered.

          There’ no such thing as a “non-authoritarian” state or other myths like the tooth-fairy, but even if they existed, then it’d be hard to argue that letting the US surveillance state operate freely within your borders is somehow “non-authoritarian”. The US is more likely than any other country to use the intelligence they’ve gained learned to harm you physically.

    • jankforlife@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Lol lets worry about a CIA fake genocide op instead of the real ones happening like in Gaza amiright fellow zionazis? 😂

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      You are doing genocide denial when you claim that genocide can happen without being accompanied by mass death. Genocide is the crime of crimes because it always involves mass slaughter of innocent people, to bring about their end. The invention of “”“cultural genocide”“” without any of the accompanying mass violence effectively whitewashes genocide as a concept.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Downplay what? A reeducation/deradicalization program isn’t fucking genocide on its own, and when you say it is you are the one that’s donwplaying the crime of genocide as a concept. Even the boarding schools they used in the genocide in North America had mass graves, because genocide is always accompanied by mass death and to claim otherwise is whitewashing.

          It’s the crime of crimes because it’s the worst violence that can be inflicted on a group.

          • cmbabul@slrpnk.net
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            1 month ago

            So I’m not trying to defend the other poster but genocide by definition does not have to include mass death. And can include any of the following

            1. Killing members of the group;
            2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
            3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
            4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
            5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              In the real world there hasn’t been a genocide that didn’t involve mass death. 3, 4, and 5 all require a lot of killing to actually work.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          A): Hey what do you think about the Russian intervention in the Ukranian civil war, and

          B) The horrific treatment such as?

      • -☆-@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        I’m genuinely undereducated here, not an op…

        Accepting all that, that’s still essentially colonization, no?

        Is there nuance I’m missing here? China’s seemingly codified cultural repression genuinely makes it hard for me to consider supporting them, whether or not they advance the cause of the average worker

        • orc girly@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          They also don’t do cultural genocide, look at videos of random tourists visiting Xinjiang and you’ll see some locals speaking Uyghur, you’ll see mosques, museums, traditional Uyghur food, etc. The previous repression was meant to curve terrorism, it seems to have worked, and things have relaxed afterwards. I don’t see how any of this fits the picture of colonialism.

          • -☆-@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            I largely agree, though Israel has used many nonlethal methods for a long time. There is a lot of violence involved in the process that doesn’t require death. Forced relocation is a pretty classic tactic, for example, which Israe has made ample use of in their ongoing genocide

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              The violence requires death, is the thing. People don’t just allow themselves to be forcibly relocated (as per your example), they will fight to stay on their land unless they face the threat of death (and many do stay, and die). Behind every “nonlethal” process is a death machine that makes it possible in the first place. That’s why colonization is always accomplished through mass death.

              • -☆-@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 month ago

                I’m trying not to get too caught up in semantics here. It sounds like you’re saying that the relocation that the Chinese government puts Uygher people through cannot be comparable to the relocation that other cultures have been put through, and that the lack of a mass death toll is serviceable evidence for that claim. Do I have that correct?

                If so, it’s a good point! I think I had a presumption that the true nature of their (and any government’s) crimes was hidden. It does seem a bit far-fetched that it would be possible to cover up the kind of mass death that you’re saying would come with a colonization, so it’s a more reasonable metric than just making assumptions based on vibes I suppose. You’ve at least given me a less propagandizeable thing to research _

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          China isn’t preventing or discouraging intermarrying or intermixing with Uighurs, which is a key feature of apartheid. Neither do they have to use separate lanes of the road, carry special IDs marking their ethnicity, or forced to use different emergency shelters.

          I use those examples because the real-world example of apartheid, Israel, is currently doing all of those things today.

  • Dippy@beehaw.org
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    1 month ago

    If you can find me a governance representing more than 100 million people that is genuinely good, with no ifs ands or buts about it, I can prove that you are the brainwashed one.

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        1 month ago

        I need it to stop doing evil things first. I am all for reducing the evil, less evil is always great and ill always vote for a lesser evil. But dont expect me to a government structure good if it is still doing evil things. Ill call a politician good if they want to decrease the evil. But I will not call a country good if its still evil.

        • EmmiLime@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          I have a question, what is your opinion on lesser evil? Is America the lesser evil in your opinion?

        • fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Awww, baby’s first analysis! Do the good guys wear the white hats (and the bad guys the black hats) so you know exactly who they are?

          Good grief. You presumably have a brain, please try and use it. This is no way to have an adult conversation.

          • Dippy@beehaw.org
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            1 month ago

            The world is super complicated and nuanced and im sick of people pretending that china is this bastion of good governance and im sick of people pretending that Harris would have been just as bad as trump. If you cant get on board with that, block me

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Ok. So all you’ve done is come up with a definition that means every country is evil, making it pointless to even talk about.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          It’s wild to me that grown adults still use “good” and “evil” as an actual heuristic

                • 9skyguy0@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  If anything, done by people like them. A ML user posted this in ML itself, some of the folks from other instances come in with bad faith and/or bullcrap arguments, other ML users come in to defend and debunk, and we’re apparently the ones brigading in our own space.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              It’s a useless heuristic, because it’s a fuckin magical metaphysical one. If you’re not a christian who believes in a spirit world, then stop letting the church define reality for you. Good and evil as concepts have no more valence on physical reality than karma or sin, and have no power to explain things that happen.

              Children think in good and evil. Adults think in cause and effect. Be scientific.

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                1 month ago

                Does River think their special for calling an unspecified murder a cause and effect instead of an evil? I dont think in a Christian way. I still think its fucking normal to call shit evil instead of explaining how the effects of murder are painful for the following litany of reasons

      • architect@thelemmy.club
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        1 month ago

        Hmm, must be an llm, they never said the word perfect. They never said anything had to be perfect.

        How does that feel?

        • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Well kind of funny because it’s not at all comparable to what you’re trying to compare it to. Also I never called anyone an llm I asked if they used it as it left an artefact.

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Absolutely wild to try and assert that westerners who think China is good are “brainwashed”. Like literally you are doing the meme.

  • Two_Hangmen@midwest.social
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    1 month ago

    It’s possible to simultaneously think there are issues with the Chinese government and U.S. government.  You could mention 3 June 1989 I’m China or Epstein files in the U.S.

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      1 month ago

      If you have to go back forty years to find an issue with China, that’s incredibly complimentary.

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Sure, and most communists do have their issues with the CPC. The important thing is that those issues are based in fact rather than the wild and lurid stories that the Epstein empire tells about the people it’s afraid of.

    • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      What exactly did happen in tianimen square that is equivelent to the epstien files?

        • m532@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Having acquired the knowledge that all the enemies to the empire weren’t serious, the protagonist of reality went back to brunch. The end.

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      1 month ago

      Clearly not here! Apparently only praise for China allowed!

      Not allowed to dislike all governments! Only western ones!

      • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        Western chauvinists are so fragile that a simple insistence on facts over propaganda makes them feel like they’re in a dire civilizational struggle, and in a way they are. Just on the wrong side.

    • orc girly@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Most people here were taught the same bs about China and we broke away from that by sitting down, reading and looking at the (lack of) evidence for everything they’re accused of. China isn’t perfect, none of us claim it is, it also isn’t at all what state department propaganda claims

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      You actually are experiencing the propaganda being turned down, it’s just that a fish doesn’t notice the water until it’s gone. The anti-China orthodoxy that is the default in western ruling class political thought is the astroturfed position, not the other way around.

  • Butterphinger@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    I can’t know, so I choose not to decide one way or the other. I can’t know what is or isn’t propaganda, so I can’t tell you with full certainty.

    I can know from firsthand accounts from Chinese people I know personally about the surveillance and militaristic state of things. I can know from reports from those on the ground.

    However, I don’t think I’ve heard any worse about China than America, but I believe it to be more restrictive than the EU by a fair margin. Is China “bad”? To me, they aren’t “good” per-se, but moreover, China seems to only really care about China, as their actions seem to reflect.

    They pay and support who they support and legitimize the same as any other large, powerful and untrustworthy nation, I give no quarter, but I impose none, all the same.

    • Soapbox@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      I think a lot of what I hear from western media is communism fear mongering propaganda. But I also think that there are kernels of truth in some of it. China is a large country that I have no doubt is doing a lot of good stuff and a lot of awful stuff. Just like the USA does good stuff and awful stuff.

      • Jiral@lemmy.org
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        1 month ago

        What China is doing with the Uigurs is not merely Western propaganda. China is also obviously a dictatorship. No sane person would challenge that. The surveillance state is also hardening and Xu is aiming towards a neo-maoist trajectory in so some regards but without the stone age communism of the Cultural Revolution.

        The West, especially but not only the US are moving towards a hardened dictatorship as well but that doesn’t change the situation in China.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.

          I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.

          Xi Jinping is not a “neo-Maoist,” he’s a Marxist-Leninist, same as all of the leaders of the CPC since Mao.

          • Jiral@lemmy.org
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            1 month ago

            Funny how you forgot to list the results on the question of “impact of elections” or the one about political pluralism. But in either case. Comparing those results between entirely different countries and systems of government is rather difficult to begin with. After all, this is about perceptions, not reality. It would be interesting to see how many people would agree with “My country is democratic” in North Korea.

            The claim that ethnic Uyghurs have absolutely equal rights before the law compared to a Han Chinese living in Xinyiang is pretty detached from reality. But even if they had, that doesn’t mean that the law isn’t biased against them to begin with.

            But the clearest indication is a >90% satisfaction of people with the federal government. Such country is either utopia, in a massive economic uprise … or not a democracy. China on a Beijing level has a “congress” that is functionally as meaningless as a legislative could be. It is so large that it is by design already pretty impossible to be a functional parliament, and anything but a rubber stamping institution. And so the records also show that it isn’t much more than that. Power is increasingly centralised in one person, de facto. There is not much left of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms on preventing power the concentration of too much into one single person. Xi has increasingly hollowed out the system of Collective Leadership. Naturally, elections or citizen’s opinions on any of that had very little impact on any of that.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              This doesn’t actually bear out concretely in reality. The fact that the government has high approval rates is directly related to the consultative form of democracy practiced in China, and the nature of a socialist state as governed by the working classes. Western states see less support because they are dominated by a tiny minority, whereas China is led by the majority.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Its like comparing the Federation and the Empire from elite dangerous lol.

    Empire elitists always talking about how bad the Federation is because of the insane capitalist abuse of power, and billions of humans subjected to horrific conditions.

    And then Federation liberals talking about how the Empire literally has legalized slavery and a monarchy that runs on the death of humans.

    Although technically there’s also the stereotypical Asian CEO who has a 15% discount on all ships and modules in his systems, so I guess that’s probably the successor to Ali Express lol.

    That all being said, the post above this is an article trying to explain how China plating 78 billion trees was a bad idea lmao.

  • durably465@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Ruzzia = Drunk bad Murika = stupid as shit bad, gun boom boom pan pan stupid and bad China = smart bad, but still very bad

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      “China is actually not hell on earth”

      “You’re just brainwashed, everyone there is actually dead”

      Removed by mod

      • architect@thelemmy.club
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        1 month ago

        I’m not sure your point. What’s removed in your example? It’s clear that normal comments are being removed as our China government official in the thread has nicely quoted removed comments proving nothing bad was said at all.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          China government official in the thread

          He is not affiliated with the CPC, but thank you for demonstrating how quickly “good” liberals devolve into conspiratorial racism as soon as their sense of nationalist superiority is shaken.

  • null@lemmy.org
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    1 month ago

    China can have products that are great and cheap. China can also have stolen designs and inhumane labor practices. They’re not mutually exclusive.