(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!
The media censorship of queer relationships is reactionary and does not befit a modern socialist state. LGBT+ representation and acceptance has grown over the years in China, especially among young people. More queer content creators have popped up as a result, but because of these dumb restrictions some content has to be toned down or shared on Western social media instead. There's a bunch of interesting Chinese queer TV shows, from BLs to lesbian dating shows that seem to get around the censorship issue by moving production to another country, like for example Thailand. (has Visa free travel for Chinese citizens)
This shit has also made it so much more difficult to talk to the average queer liberal in the West about China. If you're in a vacuum, and all you read in the media is le evul SeeSeePee censoring yet another piece of gay content, you get the impression that it must be some sort of oppressive hellscape where queer people have to hide underground for fear of being hunted down by Xi himself.
In reality, there's a vibrant queer culture in the country, especially in major cities like Chengdu (often called the gay capital of China) and Chongqing. Plenty of gay bars and people being openly queer. Also a huge furry culture. An acquaintance of mine who regularly visits China for business, always brings up up how he feels much safer as an openly gay guy in China, because of the low crime rate and not having to worry about some random homophobe assaulting him when walking alone at night. There's a cultural aspect to it as well. Older people tend be less progressive, but they generally consider it someone else's private matter and none of their business. I guess it also helps when the people ruling the country have better things to do than blame queer people for every problem.
All that is not to say that China hasn't made any progress in that area over the years. A few years ago they even began opening gender clinics for trans kids. Courts have also repeatedly sided with queer people in various cases and considers them protected under Chinese law. But the laws regarding LGBT+, whether it's codified protections, marriage rights, etc. are behind the times and should be modernized. If other socialist countries like Cuba and Vietnam can shift to embracing queer rights, then so can the PRC. Especially with China's ascendancy as the new superpower, this would be a major win for queer people worldwide.
I completely share your grievances. I remember a few years ago when Naomi Wu was still posting on Twitter, where she talked about a recent, at the time, hate crime against two lesbians that were not reported properly in China as the hate crime that it was, save from the place where it happened where it was actually being reported correctly. I still remember the footage of the aggressor stabbing them both, that shit was horrifying.
I was still a lib at the time and I didn't search further, so I don't know what came of it, but I hope that's something that have been addressed ever since and that the killer got what he deserved.