(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!
To have a grievance with China I would need to be aggrieved by China. I don't think I or anyone in this comment section are aggrieved by China. Like what you bought a cheap imported toy and the quality was slightly lower than your preference?
I don't think that's really a fair point, you can hold a grievance against someone on other people's behalf. I hold a grievance against the US and Israeli over their treatment of the Palestinian people, I'm not Palestinian.
I think folks' behavior, particularly in the West, is to exaggerate their criticisms of designated enemies and personalize to an unhealthy degree, even just out of habit or common lexicon. So while it makes sense to condemn the US and the Zionist entity for their settler colonial genocide of Palestine (among other things), I don't think it makes much sense to say, "I have a grievance against the state of Israel" in this context. It has a strangely personal transformative impact that elevates one's personal feelings alongside genocide. Not that you are doing so, just the language itself insinuates it on your behalf, surely unintentionally - and some would probably not perceive it at all. Even as it suggests an exaggerated personal connection it ends up undermining the seriousness. Hopefully this makes sense, I think I'm repeating myself to try and explain better.
Stepping back from the wording, I think there is also a tendency among the Western left to feel entitled to opinions that weren't earned, and chauvinism towards other socialist projects, particularly in the global south, is a common venue for this. That entitlement leads to an exaggerated criticism, or a hypocritical criticism, or often just incorrect criticism. It's possible to have a well-earned criticism of China, a correct one, but that's rare even here. Most people know almost nothing about the nation-state, its governance or policies, nor can they correctly place it in the world context. Most Western leftists will call China imperialist and be unable to explain what imperialism is. That particular example is less common on this site but I don't think the depth of analysis usually goes much deeper. So then when asked to list a series of complaints I ask: what do you expect to actually get out of the exercise?
In the end it's a semantic dispute, for me personally I wouldn't really interpret someone having a grievance as someone being personally aggrieved by another party. That's more of a formal/legal interpretation that's not really appropriate in the given context.
Dialogue is an important enough reason by itself. If you are claiming that western leftist are too ignorant to form valid criticism, then I think this forum would be a great place to share your reasons why and add to the discussion.
I personally do not think it's beneficial to divide leftist against each other and claim one part of the hemisphere is particularly chauvinist. As someone who now lives in the West and is originally from the East, everyone is a bit chauvinist about their own locality, and everyone is going to be more familiar with their own locality. I think open communication between and about different cultures serves humanity a lot more than scolding.
I don't think I've ever heard an actual person say they had a grievance and it wasn't a personal one or otherwise part of their cohort.
Given the answers in the thread people range from taking this as an invitation to (usually lazily) criticize or to joke about criticizing. Did anyone actually get something out of this?
Oh definitely not. It's usually a big waste of time and that's part of my point: western leftists think they deserve to share opinions when they don't. This is because of how politics itself is presented and socialized in their cultures, the need to have and share opinions despite a lack of knowledge. We easily observe it those who don't agree with us while they just repeat whatever a talking head on TV said about respectability politics or how some judge is a secret deep state Obama plant etc etc. But we often overlook it in ourselves and each other - right until we try to do things and have some standards, then we find ourselves knee-deep in absolute garbage, wasting our time talking about things literally nobody in the room has investigated. Then we have to figure out how to make that not happen anymore, and then we all get to learn who is more in it for the feelings of validation from dunking and who's more interested in making correct informed choices.
As of this comment there are 136 replies. Only two cite at least one source to try and explain anything with any level of depth. Both are mostly just pushing back on the criticisms of OP or others. Most comments are a single sentence, maybe two, hastily thrown together to share an opinion that maybe occupied 30 seconds of thought. We can't even begin talking about validity, it's not a serious thread in the first place. But it does absolutely resemble every time-wasting exercise in western leftist discourse.
This is the Hexear Criticism of China post. lmao. This is my contribution to the post, directed generally outward: resist the urge to always have and share opinions. Spend that time reading or exercising or resting or really most other things are probably better.
It is entirely beneficial to correctly recognize chauvinist tendencies, but Western doesn't mean hemisphere in this context. I didn't make them chauvinist, that's just the historical and present reality, and it falls along lines similar to colonial chauvinism. To address this serious problem we must recognize that ie exists in the first place.
I will give some examples of this form of chauvinism in action:
This site is free of a lot of that but not 100% free and it can always backslide.
I do agree that of course others can be chauvinist, that's not exclusive to westerners or western leftists. Nationalism itself brings with it chauvinism and it's a price paid knowingly by many projects. But one indication for why I'm getting at this can be expressed with that example: there is a substantive difference between nationalism from an imperial core native, a citizen of a major oppressing country, and the nationalism of someone in a country in which there is an active struggle, knowingly or unknowingly, for national liberation from those oppressor nations. Both are nationalism, but one is in favor of imperialist oppression, the other opposed.
Again, it's a semantic dispute. You claim anecdotally you haven't heard it used a certain way, I claim anecdotally that I have heard it used that way. We end up in the same place we started. It's not an argument worth having.
Then why are you participating? If you do not feel you will learn or teach anything why are you engaged in the dialogue? Your participation is a rebuttal to your own claim.
Perhaps that is where the real benefits lay?
You said it yourself that this site is not in real danger of participating in this kind of chauvinism, and based on the majority of the responses that seems to be true. Why lable people within the community with the burdens of people outside the community?
My main criticism of your rebuttals are they seem to be made with little faith in your own community. At the end of the day communism/socialism is supposed to bring people together and it doesn't benefit the community or the greater movement as a whole to be so antagonistic. If you believe the original reason for the post is inherently antagonistic in nature than state why. But blanket accusations about anyone's participation based on people's actions outside the community do not seem helpful imo.
Surprised you'v eheard it that way but okay.
I explicitly said what my contribution is and why I'm making it. And it is definitely not just having dialogue because dialogue is inherently good.
I don't think so. I think a lot of the informed folks have simply left this site and there is increasing traction for chauvinism and SocDem tailism. In both of the cases I mention there's substantial pushback. Note that the pushback doesn't take much time or space to explain themselves or cite anything, mostly just grandstanding.
It actually is I just don't feel like vagueposting about it. It just doesn't have much of those exact examples.
I haven't tallied them up but I saw a good number of fairly lazy and incorrect criticisms drawn from liberal misconceptions, orientalism, and extremely limited hearsay/anecdotes. It does go the other way a bit as well, with folks treating China with utopian lenses based on vague internet hype.
This is not my community. This isn't a community at all it's an internet forum that's mostly shitposts and posts making fun of liberals/current events. My community is in-person.
I am not being particularly antagonistic. And what I am sharing - the idea that one should be more informed before sharing opinions, and be more self-critical about sharing opinions without knowledge, is actually a fairly basic recommendation made by many socialist and communist leaders. It has been a common point of friction, particularly bringing one's unfounded biases to a serious question, or feeling the need to speak when nothing helpful can be said.
This kind of criticism is the bread and butter of organizing as well, though normally you would make it within a leadership circle and forward it as norms to adopt and educational programs to create and participate in. Orgs that spend their time on the uneducated feeling entitled to take up most of the space end up wasting everyone's time, adopting wrong and harmful positions, and becoming demoralized. But this is a website, not an org, so there is no wy by which I can affably guide discussion away from a topic or have a private conversation on norms. That would be odd. So I have to simply present the case.
I don't know the original reason for the post and it doesn't really matter. Intentions matter less than results.
I don't think that's a fair characterization of my point or what I've laid out.
Why make your contribution in the first place.....? Still sounds like a waste of time based on your own claims.
On hexbear?
Pushing back on the chauvinism or pushback on criticism of China?
So you are contradicting your last post, okay.
I'm sure you're just as bright of a ray of sunshine in-person.......
Maybe practice what you preach? You seem to be pretty opinionated, and there isn't really any way to verify your experience or knowledge about anything.
This is the inherent problem with telling people to not have opinions without being knowledgeable, how do you determine if someone is knowledgeable without them first sharing opinions on an internet forum.
Uh I just responded to this. Just... read the thing you quoted? I'm happy to repeat things but I'm confused about what you want.
Yep
Pushback on the defense of China.
I'm not actually you just incorrectly described it in the first place. I didn't see a point to correcting it at the time when I could just elaborate with a different phrasing.
Yep I'm great thanks for the compliment.
Oh? What have I been talking about that I haven't investigated?
If there was I would be a bad organizer, sharing sensitive information publicly on the internet. But you're not noting any hypocrisy, my criticism was not requiring verifiability to have a position.
You're wondering how someone could realize whether they've done enough investigation aside from just throwing their opinions out there on an internet forum, no matter how well-studied?
What you said was still contrary to your overall argument.
What does it matter if the pushback is of poor quality compared to the defense. If the defense is well made then people unfamiliar with the subject can still learn.
Sure....
You have no way of proving your opinions on the matter outweigh anyone elses. So why voice you opinion?
Convenient..... "You see my lack of evidence is the evidence"
Your whole argument is hypocritical.
Unless you are reading peoples minds..... Yes, claims must first be made to be investigated.
At the end of the day, this is a forum made to spread information. Yes there is pushback to leftist theory on here but that doesn't invalidate that plethora of good theory that people are introduced too.
No it isn't.
The upvote patterns and participation suggest the opposite trend.
So you're uninterested in discussing that further?
First, recognize that this is not the point I made. Then I'll happily answer your question once you've gotten over your misperception of hypocrisy.
That's not what I said at all.
It isn't at all. You can't even name a hypocrisy. You're just belaboring a straw man that I implied you shouldn't forward an argument without evidence - something that is not my position nor what I said.
???
I'm saying people who haven't investigated shouldn't feel entitled to speak. That doesn't require reading minds it's really just basic practical humility. I raised it in this context because of Western leftist tendencies to be hypercritical of others' revolutions despite not knowing much about them, or acting aggrieved when they are not, in fact, aggrieved.
How generous are we being in terms of what counts as information? By a wide definition, someone could call Stormfront a forum made to spread information. I don't think this statement means anything.
Who said it did? What does this have to do with me being wrong in telling people to be okay not saying anything about China if they aren't taking it seriously and investigating - or in the example I led with, questioning the degree to which they can be personally aggrieved?
I was agrieved when they didn't let me drive the train.