• gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    26 days ago

    china gets shit on because they don’t have political freedom; there’s no stuff like “you can speak your mind as long as you’re respectful”. it’s just one committee making all the decisions and you can go to jail for disagreeing.

    the problem with that is that it effectively creates a circle of yes-men around a central figure, which is very very bad. every sane government allows at least respectful disagreement and dialogue with critics because it’s an important tool to stay on track and sane long-term. critics can often have valid points and keep an empire from making a grave mistake.

    that being said, china did a lot for its citizens and deserves more recognition. especially that they invested in solar energy is a stellar example of good long-term thinking and the advantages that central planning can have.

    • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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      26 days ago

      because they don’t have political freedom. there’s no stuff like “you can speak your mind as long as you’re respectful”

      And the West definitely, absolutely has that

      • architect@thelemmy.club
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        25 days ago

        To be fair i speak my mind in a disrespectful way daily of the shit stained leader of the usa. They just let me do it.

        • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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          24 days ago

          Lol try actually activating against him. They let you speak until the instant they think you might change something and have gotten really good at gauging that.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          26 days ago

          Look at how many people have been arrested and jailed for saying “From the river to the sea”

        • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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          26 days ago

          Yeah, how amazing that I can see anti-US propaganda Lego movies whenever I want. That’s what will ignite the revolution that makes our lives better, really some serious dissent that can conceivably lead to real change here.

          Shitposts and memes about dissent to satiate the maases while all the real political discourse by activists with any real chance of accomplishing anything are censored and criminalised. It’s genius really.

        • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
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          26 days ago

          Guess you haven’t been following the news lately.

          Yet just as these creative expressions of national resistance reached peak global influence, YouTube jumped in. The platform suspended the Explosive Media channel under baseless allegations of policy violations, effectively silencing a powerful voice of dissent

          What followed was a transparent smear campaign by Western media outlets, led by the BBC, aimed at discrediting the creators and justifying the censorship. Their goal was clear: to silence any narrative that dared challenge the official US-Israeli framing of the aggression.

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      26 days ago

      p.s.

      Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

      but no again tell me about how the level of political freedom you have differs meaningfully between western societies and China

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      26 days ago

      FYI the thing about a central guy in charge has always been a myth, even since Stalin’s time:

      What happens with China is essentially you have local committees for things like small towns and villages, where anyone can run for office. Then those many small councils form the pool of candidates for promotion to larger regional and federal committees, forcing would-be bigwigs to work their way up from the bottom. I believe the DPRK uses a similar system.

      Hopefully this doesn’t come off snide, since I know these conversations can get contentious fast. But you seem like a refreshingly normal person rather than one of the ideologically motivated internet cold warriors we often get around here, so I figured I’d try and add constructively instead of tear down.

        • m532@lemmy.ml
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          25 days ago

          My system is clearly the best, and its a shithole of corruption and nepotism. Therefore all other systems must be even corrupter and nepotister, otherwise my system wouldn’t be the best Q.E.D.

          • Einskjaldi@lemmy.world
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            24 days ago

            It’s sad that if I literally see ml I assume the truth is inverted. But even then, you assume too much, it’s good advice to always assume you’re talking to someone smarter than you so you make your argument clear and simple.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              24 days ago

              Why do you immediately assume communists are the opposite of correct? Not to hyperbolize, but taken to the logical conclusion this is just a belief in fascism.

              • Einskjaldi@lemmy.world
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                23 days ago

                I don’t consider ml to be communists either, just boot licking imbeciles who don’t understand how obviously dumb they are

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  23 days ago

                  Why don’t you consider Marxist-Leninists to be communists? When people think of communists, they think of the ones that studied Marxism and established socialism in real life based on this study. How are the largest and most historically relevant communists secretly not communists? How are billions of people studying Marxism over the last centuries all wrong?

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          25 days ago

          The opposite. From here:

          Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Rome’s in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocrats–politician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassus–formed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elites’ endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britain’s general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ‘democracy’ is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former president’s wife competing with a former president’s brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, “U.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propaganda”. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, ‘the preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy’: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      25 days ago

      You know nothing about China’s political system except the white-supremacist tropes you’ve ingested about it.

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      26 days ago

      china gets shit on because they don’t have political freedom; there’s no stuff like “you can speak your mind as long as you’re respectful”. it’s just one committee making all the decisions and you can go to jail for disagreeing.

      what if actually it’s more like you need to know what the fuck you’re talking about in order to Be Political (which involves joining the party and by its nature excludes capitalist roaders and compradors attempting to bring back capitalist systems) and then democracy happens within that party

      instead of like a big nameless Committee made up of a hivemind AI like intelligence that just Dictates

      maybe that’d be better than having two bourgeois parties (or dozens of bourgeois parties in Europe/etc) owned by bourgeois interests effectively negating the existence of democracy by ensuring that all “democratic” institutions, by consequence of bourgeois influence over parties, operate at their pleasure

    • jankforlife@lemmy.ml
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      26 days ago

      china gets shit on because they don’t have political freedom; there’s no stuff like “you can speak your mind as long as you’re respectful”. it’s just one committee making all the decisions and you can go to jail for disagreeing.

      Not even true, common CIA talking point. They don’t disagree with their government because 99% of China’s citizens are extremely happy with their gov, not because they’ll be arrested.

    • jankforlife@lemmy.ml
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      26 days 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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      26 days 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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          25 days 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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            25 days 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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              25 days 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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          25 days 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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        25 days 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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          25 days 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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            25 days 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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              25 days 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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                25 days 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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          25 days 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.

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      26 days 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.

    • orc girly@lemmy.ml
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      25 days 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

  • Two_Hangmen@midwest.social
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    26 days 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.

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      26 days 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.

      • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        25 days ago

        Okay, I just got a great idea (or maybe I’m just way to tired to think straight). We should make a weekly (or daily?) lib bingo where everyone has a different bingo card and if you have a bingo you post in the weekly lib bingo thread (maybe with sources to the comments you found that give you a bingo). Oh and everyone who has a bingo just replies “bingo” to the lib comment (and maybe with a picture of the card).

        We need at least sixteen lib comment tropes for a four by four game or 24 for a five by five game with a free field in the middle. I’ll start to list some:

        • both sides / two things can be true (false equivalence)
        • lapping up CIA propaganda unquestioned (this covers most instances of comments on China, North Korea, Soviet Union, etc. it would be too easy, if we made separate fields for all of those)
        • selective scrutiny (suddenly very careful about sources when reality is biased against their prejudice, ready to believe in any conspiracy theory or to make one up to save their world view)
        • empathy gap racism (“I just don’t feel emotionally invested in bad things, when they happen to non-white people.”)
        • “That’s authoritarian! Why no, I can’t provide a definition.” (it’s code for anti-imperialism)
        • “violence against fascists makes you a fascist”
        • vote blue no matter who
        • having no memory at all
        • Nordic countries “social democracy” is the best possible system
        • colonialism is a thing of the past
        • the most radical political activity possible is pre-scheduled, non-violent, non-constructive protest, everything else is terrorism

        I could make a card, but I need more lib-tropes and shorter names for them.

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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      25 days ago

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

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      25 days 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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        25 days 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.

    • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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      25 days ago

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

        • m532@lemmy.ml
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          25 days 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.

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      26 days ago

      3 June 1989 I’m China

      on, tinyman square, lol

      it’s funny how the image of tanks crushing people is more solidified in the minds of westerners than what happened, which there is video proof of, which is none of that and also the tanks leaving

  • 52fighters@sopuli.xyz
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    25 days 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?

    • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
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      25 days 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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        25 days 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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          24 days 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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            24 days 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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              24 days 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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                24 days 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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        24 days 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.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      24 days 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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      24 days 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.

  • Westerners today have so much in common with their inquisition and crusades predecessors. They replaced Christianity with Western Liberalism and they fight for it with the same zeal. Either you adopt their values and systems or you are an evil heathen who must be destroyed.

  • AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social
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    26 days ago

    All states are bad, but if we’re talking about which ones are arguably better or worse on the world stage…

    “USA USA USA, WE’RE NUMBER 1!”

    Proudly colonizing for 250 years?

    • for_some_delta@beehaw.org
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      25 days ago

      Power for things like colonizing is the best indicator of a successful state. End state power. I like that the original was intended as a slight against anarchists. States keep projecting that vertical energy.

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      25 days ago

      Seems to be what people do. America isn’t the first or the only one. People are shit is that your argument?

      • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        That’s actually a statistical error.

        Most people are alright. Power-hungry individuals responsible for colonialism are outliers and should not have been counted (or allowed to reach/stay in positions of power)

      • m532@lemmy.ml
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        25 days ago

        “All people are colonizers. Those who aren’t colonizing aren’t people” - colonizer brain in action.

  • durably465@lemmy.ml
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    24 days ago

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

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    25 days 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.

  • Dippy@beehaw.org
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    25 days 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.

      • architect@thelemmy.club
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        25 days 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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          25 days 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.

      • Dippy@beehaw.org
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        25 days 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.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          24 days 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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          25 days 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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                  24 days 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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              25 days 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.

              • Dippy@beehaw.org
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                24 days 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

        • EmmiLime@lemmy.ml
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          25 days 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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          24 days 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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            24 days 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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      24 days ago

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

    • iByteABit@lemmy.ml
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      25 days 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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          25 days 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.

    • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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      25 days 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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          25 days 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.

          • khannie@lemmy.world
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            25 days 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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              25 days ago

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

              • khannie@lemmy.world
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                25 days ago

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

                • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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                  25 days 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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              25 days 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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                25 days 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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                  25 days 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.

            • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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              25 days 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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                25 days 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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                  25 days 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.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          25 days 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.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          25 days 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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            25 days 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

            • Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              25 days 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

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              25 days 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?

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      25 days 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.

          • GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world
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            25 days 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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              25 days 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

                • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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                  25 days 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?

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                  25 days 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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                  25 days ago

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

            • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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              25 days 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:

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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              24 days ago

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

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              25 days 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.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              25 days 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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                25 days 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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                  25 days 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”

    • square@lemmy.zip
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      25 days ago

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

    • Internetexplorer@lemmy.world
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      25 days 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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          24 days 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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              24 days 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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                24 days 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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                  24 days ago

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

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      25 days 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”?

      • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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        25 days ago

        they should’ve just prayed and cattered to the imperialists like India.

        As malcolm x once said “The West doesn’t not have any love for China but it respects it, while they love India but they do not respect it.”

        These very same jerks would love China if it was just another uwu Japan/SKorea hosting US troops.

  • null@lemmy.org
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    25 days 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.