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this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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About 2,300 people have been arrested in the US this week.
About 10,000 people were arrested in the months of unrest in Hong Kong -- so the rate of arrest per unit time is much lower than in the US. On the other hand, three years later, about 7,200 were still in custody without charges yet being brought. (More statistics in the link) We can quibble about whether you want to call that, or someone getting renditioned back to the mainland, "disappeared," but I would define it as much worse than someone getting tackled or gassed in the US and then released a couple days later with either a misdemeanor or nothing but their injuries.
This isn't some whataboutism to excuse the US response; the US police do some fucked up things to people who try to protest their country's barbaric global policies and this week was more of the same. And they seem to be experimenting with ludicrously overcharging protestors, moving slightly in the direction of the system China uses, although still well short of it.
But comparing all of that unfavorably to what China does to people who protest is pretty silly IMO.
What does China do to people who protest?
inb4 tinyman square
About 10,000 people were arrested in the months of unrest in Hong Kong ... three years later, about 7,200 were still in custody without charges yet being brought. (More statistics in the link)
That article is from July 2022
As everyone knows, it was impossible to tell in 2022 what had happened in the three years since 2019.
However, there is a good point to be made there. It'd be nice to get more up-to-date information about what was the disposition of all these cases, and see if these people are still in prison years after they were allegedly part of a protest.
Since China unlike the US upholds a commitment to the basic norms of transparency in a democratically operated prison system, there's a web page where I can just look up who are all the people, where they're being held, and what the disposition of their charges is, and see records from the trial, or even go and be there in person and watch, if I feel like it.
Oh wait
I'm sure your cherry-picked website can find all those people who were picked up by unmarked vehicles during the chaos of 2020.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-use-unmarked-vehicles-to-grab-protesters-in-portland
Some transparency they have...
Yeah, and they let him go 90 minutes later instead of him being still in custody with still no trial after three years. And that was such a disturbing big deal that four years after that, the last time I brought it up and what a bad thing it was was was... yesterday. I saw another poster bring up the same incident earlier this week, too.
The US police does some fucked up stuff (and they accelerated it up to like 5% of a China level under Trump, including that exact thing you cited). Any level is bad; it's like not the China doing something excuses the US doing it, nor vice versa. But saying the two are comparable in the level of injustice in their prison and court system (let alone that China is superior in that regard) is transparently absurd.
my brother in christ, the US has the most people locked up out of any country currently, in history.
Yeah. And a lot of them get abused; it's more or less legalized mild-to-moderate torture for most of the time you're in. And if you don't have a bunch of spare money in the bank, trying to defend yourself against even bogus charges drops you into a Kafkaesque nightmare where your defending attorney is overworked and jaded, and the cops, judges, and prosecutor are generally all on the same team which has effectively infinite resources. It's the worst system of all the ostensible democracies, easily, by a clean country mile.
They just closed a women's prison in California that was more or less a legalized rape-playground for the guards, that everyone had known about for quite a while, but no one could really raise up the inclination to do anything about. Because hey, what the fuck, they're prisoners. So who cares.
So imagine what a bone-chilling nightmare the Chinese system must be, to manage to be worse than the US by quite a bit.
You can "imagine" anything you want, that doesn't mean that it's happening. Meanwhile there's documented evidence of prison abuses in the US.
The problem here is you inherently think China is bad but you have no evidence to support it other than what the US says. Are there things to criticize about China? Sure, no place is a utopia, but it's not some "bOnE-cHiLliNg" place that you imagine it to be.
Sure. What are some sources do you trust that I could cite?
Anything that isn't Western news? Like literally anything
Telesur, CGTN, hell, even RT or Sputnik, literally anything
Edit: How about this: use your common sense? The US has lied about WMDs in Iraq, so maybe believing what it says about one of the countries it hates the most isn't a good idea?
No you see, the US media is 100% trustworthy when it comes to the evil enemy these days, they got it wrong in the past, but you can trust them now, for realsies. They certainly haven't tried to deceive the public on law and order in China in the past. If that's not good enough, how about a smug "everyone knows it" when making some outrageous claim about China? After all, it's on wikipedia, which makes it true as well. It's not like the US government would manipulate wikipedia! It's certainly fine to trust the US government when it comes to China, They certainly wouldn't lie about things happening in China to further their geopolitical interests And even so, we can certainly trust the independent reporting from other five eyes countries. But hey, there's youtubers, regular people, just perfectly ordinary people who talk about how horrible China is. We can trust them! Indeed, if you don't think China is an evil authoritarian hellhole a million billion times worse than America, you're clearly brainwashed.
I'm replying to you with this tongue in cheek link dump because I want lurkers to see it, but I don't want to waste my time with this POS lib anymore.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Al Jazeera? That to me is a pretty good combination of, not real Western friendly but also a largely independent news organization. And it is, literally anything.
CGTN, RT, and Sputnik are all operated by the governments in question; it would be like me reporting something I found on the White House's web site. Telesur is a little more separated from China specifically, but still state-run, and it looks to me like they're sort of the mirror image of the New York Times or something. I don't really know them but looking right now it looks like they more or less just report whatever the Russian or Chinese governments are telling them.
Do you know of a non-Western non-state-operated outlet besides Al Jazeera? I'm happy with Al Jazeera.
The same people who profit off of the US prison system are the same people who tell you China is "worse" to justify their own atrocities. Jesus fucking Christ.
My neighbour is a bit of an asshole, so imagine how much more of a piece of shit you must be, you probably murder and eat babies. I have no evidence for this, but I can imagine it, which makes it true.
Dude, I didn't bring up China initially. They've both got very bad prison systems. I'm just pointing out that it's silly as OP did to hold up some positive example of what happens to you in China if you protest the government versus the (already pretty undemocratic) things that happen in the US. There's no comparison.
I mean, you can try. Are you Chinese or know someone in China? It's not that hard to just go out on the street with a poster talking about Tienanmen or overthrowing Xi Jinping, and report back about your experiences.
I'm happy to show evidence comparing the systems. What are some sources you trust that I could cite?
Shut the fuck up baby murderer. The fuck is wrong with you? Why do you love murdering babies so much?
Wikipedia? Reuters? TASS? Al-Jazeera? Something else?
Where do you get your news and world information from? Even if it doesn't say anything about Chinese prisons, I'd be interested to be exposed to the truth so I could start unlearning all these lies I've been fed from all the other baby murderers.
You clearly aren't interested in actually learning though. You're a sealioning debate pervert, I'm not going to dance for you, you piece of shit. You didn't approach this topic in good faith and aren't going to change your mind. Enjoy your fascist hellhole of a country getting worse and worse as you blame China for all of the ills caused by your own government.
You're actually pretty close to a realization, I think.
You know that these are simple questions that anyone who's being full and honest about what they believe and why would be okay with answering. I mean, tactically I think it's smart that you don't want to answer, because you know if you keep pulling that thread there might pop out some evidence that you want to be able to keep pretending isn't there.
I feel like that one day's one-off webcomic panel has been giving ammunition to bad faith debaters everywhere for years now, because it gave them an excuse to dismiss straightforward questions as "sealioning" and told them that it's perfectly reasonable to just angrily refuse to address questions that some little part of their brain knows they really should have answers to. Like somehow the person asking straight questions is the dickhead, and the person saying I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT WHAT I SAID, I JUST KNOW YOU'RE WRONG is the reasonable one.
All good. I won't try to make you talk about it if you really want to curl up into a ball and say no no no no no no no. Just remember, real honest points of view don't have these little gaps that people get mad about if someone starts asking questions about them. Have a good one, I guess.
Fuck off you smug piece of shit. You libs really don't get it.
Every socialist in the west was like you at one point, in the same smugly ignorant position they were trained to be in, with massive blind spots towards socialism, finding every excuse in the book to think you're "smart" despite not actually doing any effort to learn more or challenge your preconceived notions, to dismiss everything that challenges you out of hand, thinking this is "critical thinking" when it is actually just intellectual laziness.
We have challenged our preconceived notions about these places, we have actually looked, and actually investigated, we were the ones choosing not to be intellectually lazy and blindly support the status quo opinion, thinking it is intelligence. You're not willing to listen, or learn, and I'm not going to be doing your thinking for you. You have a brain, please use it for something other than being smug on the internet. Or if you can't handle that, at least go and be smug and unpleasant somewhere else.
IDK why you think I haven't read socialism.
But good luck. If you don't want me being rude to you, you probably don't want us to talk any more at this point.
It's fairly obvious you arent well read on socialism. The way you think about history, development of society and its transformations are clearly incorrect given the other stuff you've posted (for example, you don't understand how propaganda works). So we don't need to explore very much further.
You are not taught how to grapple with those topics properly in America and in fact are taught an older, outdated manner that is instilled into you since birth by everyday interaction with parents, friends, education, media, the list goes on. This is the true nature of propaganda.
What you should be concerned with is the scientific interpretation of history, since growing up in America, you do not learn this but rather the ideological one that, even when you say you criticize the US, often simply ends up supporting the US, who has been the biggest barrier in modern times to historical progress.
Have a good day and don't take it personally. I'd wager 90%+ of us here started out like you.
Why would I need to be well read on socialism to speak on objective facts about what happened to the Hong Kong protestors?
If your picture of reality can only be defended to people who’ve been “taught how to grapple with these topics properly,” and to someone who’s “incorrect” in their thinking you can’t say where you get your information and keep changing the subject or refusing to address basic questions, it’s a red flag that your view might have some problems. A lot of things sound really good if you get to do all the talking and any opposing viewpoint just sits and listens and isn’t supposed to ask any questions.
Lying