(Preferably with sources)
I've overcorrected from "China bad" to "China is infallible." I know that's incorrect, but it's hard to decipher US propaganda from actual issues.
In discussions in the past, providing a positive counterpoint is plenty, but since more folks are already realizing the narrative about China is incorrect I would like to have more nuanced discussions where I can present both praise and criticism. I think it's also important that we don't end up in a USSR situation where Communism is synonymous with the actions of a single country.
- I know they're trading with the genocidal zionist entity. Even if their policy is to be apolitical, that's very bad.
- I'm unsure of what the internal restrictions look like in general
- I saw that the "social credit score" was a small experiment in one province that got way overblown
- Great firewall...? I know it's a thing, iiuc you can use a VPN to get around it, but only ones provided by the state (which could easily backdoor them)?
- Limitations on speech? Do people get disappeared?
- Are they monitoring everyone? "You can't monitor 1.5 billion people" idk computers are pretty fast. Also you can def use big data to find the people you do need to monitor more closely
- Dengism? Reintroducing capitalism looks like a retreat at face value and has the obvious problems of capitalism, but I saw someone on here talking about it being a genius way of deindustrializing capitalist nations while building China's own capacity
Are there others? I'm happy if you also include justification for their policies, but I do want to know where you genuinely think they're making mistakes.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
It is a bad look in the short run yes, in the long run the stability is considered necessary to develop the productive forces and multipolarity. China needs the image of a stable, secure and long-term trading partner. Sabotaging trade or sanctioning others is not consistent with this image, sadly. We must not forget that China is hard-pressed by enemies even at their own doorsteps (US vassal states + US funded terrorists to their east), I have no doubt that as American power projection in the pacific continue to diminish and China reaches higher stages of development, their assessment will be different.
Probably one of the biggest long-term wins of the CPC. They now have an entirely domestic sovereign tech sector and are immune to american-controlled infrastructure and soft power. VPN is officially forbidden I think, but I've never talked with a citizen who didn't use one (apart from some grannies). State VPNs are mostly for international business I think.
Lol. This is just silly. The ones that are heavily censured are usually spies/billionaires who collude with western powers and try to coup the government (or in some cases travel to the US and practically beg them of nuking their homeland). Whats not allowed is unathorized organizing for systemic changes or attacking the legitimacy of the central CPC. (These systemic changes if valid are perfectly fine to push for internally; relative small fringes of reactionary groups have historically been used extensively by western powers to weaken or coup countries)
Somewhat, they prioritize collective public safety and social stability over western individual privacy norms. But I'd say this narrative probably also stems from westerners thinking that "us being heavily monitored in China" = "everyone in China is heavily monitored", as a Chinese citizen you'll also probably be monitored but not to the same degree.
In discussions with liberals who are horrified with this "authoritan reality" I have previously proudly exclaimed that I hope for atleast another 100 years where every westerner who sets their foot in Asia is heavily monitored. After what they've done in the region they should be happy to be welcomed at all imo.
Short semi-answer: https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
Long answer: https://roland-theodore-boer.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/roland-boer-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics-a-concise-guide-2021.pdf
Also you might want to look through https://substack.com/@arnaudbertrand/posts and https://nitter.net/RnaudBertrand. Some of your questions are also sourced in the FAQ to the right.
A personal grievance I have is the whole "Three represents" thingy Jiang Zemin was on about -- I personally think they could've continued their strong development without allowing the national bourgeoisie into the vanguard party. But I am not delusional to think I know better than the Chinese leadership (as some western marxists think of themselves), so this is not really a big issue for me.
Let's not minimise complicity in genocide to "a bad look in the short run". Is china more complicit than most of the rest of the world? No. Are they in fact significantly less complicit than much of the world? Yes. But it's still an ongoing genocide.
Oh 100%, I wrote this lazily but I didn't mean that I personally agree with all of these. I am very much for military intervention and the forced destruction of the Zionist state.
I was mostly trying to convey their current M.O of "working & trading with everyone regardless of where they stand". Obviously Chinese leadership has a different take than many of us...
Coming from places like the UK with the most CCTV cameras per square foot, and the US where the PATRIOT Act is more invasive than anything China is proven to do to its citizens
Or flock cameras everywhere just giving cops access so they can stalk you
Ring Cameras making a superbowl commercial bragging about how they can spy on your entire neighbourhood through other people's cameras
Spy?? how dare you the benevolent Ring corporation would only ever use them for finding lost dogs :)
Yeah no. You are being racist by attempting to legitimize any support for genocide. Honestly self crit.
If anyone really needs to give any support to genocide for their long term goals, humanity doesn't need them and they can go and die. I'm convinced, that China is making an honest mistake here. If I ever became convinced, they needed to support "Israel", for real material reasons, I would cease any support of China, critical or other. In fact I would support any reasonable effort against China, just like any effort against the West.
Imagine your family and everyone you love being brutally tortured and murdered and someone telling you they need to make profitable business with the murderer and enable them for some nebulous long term goals. Ever heard of "internationalism"?
I mean they appear to have shut up Naomi Wu for example and that wasn't for instigating regime change exactly. Of course her followers trying to bait her into inflammatory statements didn't help.
it wasn't clear to me what level of government that was, and i thought it was somewhat at the behest of some corporation because of product reviews they didn't like?
Not and better but I think she stopped posting shortly after complaining on twitter to Signal for not informing user about how Android keyboard might spy on them.
I know VPNs are not forbidden because of the user over in .ml from China uses one and taught me about the firewall. Wish I was better at names their avatar looks like someone on a tiny car?