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.
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.
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”?
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. See the Phoenix Program.
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.
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
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?
Yes, of course they could. Individual people make the decision to practice birth control every day, and a vast democratic assembly of millions voted in by their peers can make that decision as well. Meanwhile in the US, reproductive policy is dictated by nine unelected ministers: an objectively far less democratic process, yet our media never describes the US government as “authoritarian.” Because it’s not a term meant to usefully delineate important differences in form and function, it’s a vibes based epithet meant to be wielded against geopolitical enemies of capitalism. It’s a thought-terminating cliche, deployed highly selectively against anti-imperialist societies to artificially cast proletarian authority as uniquely evil while tacticly normalizing the authority of billionaires and corporations.
In practice, authoritarianism is when you are objectively more democratic in function and policy than western countries, but commit the cardinal sin of using that authority to safeguard your sovereignty, people and resources from the inhumanity of global capitalism.
Yes, but those are entirely voluntary. The point is that a government should have no say in reproduction whatsoever. That is why campaigns to change the cratering birthrate have failed.
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.
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.
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.
Then they fit the second part, living in ignorance. Online surveillance there is measurably worse.
Edit: just for clarity, I’m not “china bad” in my worldview but claims they their online surveillance is the same as elsewhere is utter nonsense and either from ignorance or indoctrination.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, I assure you, I have no red tinted glasses for my home. We are run by a decaying orange pedophile and his fascist sycophants.
That means I’m less inclined to trade one set of unaccountable “elites” for another just because they don’t like each other.
China is a state capitalist society that has the very same problem the US does. Overproduction of a group of “elites (parasites)” that need more and more power and wealth so they can get more power and more wealth.
Chinas actions towards the HK protestors and towards Taiwan indicates they are imperialist, which is a non starter for me already.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 dictatorships over workers, while the PRC is a worker’s dictatorship over capital.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “C___k c___k c___k” By 1968 you can’t say “c___k”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, authoritarianism, tiny guy square, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about social credit scores and the seven dash line, and all these things you’re talking about are totally distorted fever dreams and a byproduct of them is, Chinese people get treated with inherent suspicion.… “Chinese propaganda” is much more abstract than even the Russian bot thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “C___k, c___k.”
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 very clear wishes of it’s people in order to aid and abet a historically unpopular genocide?
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?
The Finnish Air Force swastika is such an interesting case to me, because the moment you do a google for “Finnish air force swastika”, you are blasted with rationalizations: “predates nazism”, “good luck charm”, “innocent”, “unrelated to Hitler”. You get blasted with rationalizations before you can even see the history: which is that the innocent wholesome chungus dude who brought the swastika was Hermann Göring’s brother in law lol.
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.
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.
I’m honestly impressed at the effort you put into this comment. It’ll be a while before I read through all these links, so I’m just gonna save this comment and come back to it occasionally.
What not reading anything Deng, Jiang, Hu or Xi wrote will do to a mf. Genuinely amazingly arrogant. Socialism is not Communism and due to living in reality pressing the magic communism button is unfortunately not possible thus we are stuck working through the transitionary period. I wish I had the confidence like you do to be so arrogant on something you know so little about.
I don’t care if they are against capitalism, I’m not simping for authoritarians.
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.
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.
Flash news, America is authoritarian
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.
That was supposed to be criticism?
But which countries are not authoritarian, and why?
Whataboutism.
Because America are the thoughtful, non violent democrats, who represent the people, and never start illegal wars?
This is still happening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
So let’s play a game. The USA is bad, and China is bad. Your turn.
Yeah? Got any primary sources that aren’t a decade old?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5j2GcWZEbM
here have an uyghur talking to a propagandized westerner that thinks they know more about their own people.
Thx for that lol. Incredibly satisfying to watch.
If the US is bad, why do you believe what they say about others?
Because I don’t live in a solipsism that concludes nothing is real?
Your assessment of China is based on state department propaganda
And yours is based on???
Are you saying you don’t believe in the treatment of wighurs
https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang
And you believe this is the truth.
You believe in a genocide with literally no single proof
The burden of proof is on you. I can only provide context for the claims that have been raised. If you look at the sources they’re all western
Are you saying you don’t believe in the white genocide going on in south africa right now?
Are you saying you don’t believe that Hamas beheaded 40 babies?
It’s spelled “Uyghurs”, by the way
Nice non answer
“Your argument doesn’t count because I have no response to it!”
It’s only a non-answer if you have a sub-canine ability to process patterns
Do you deny that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and had to be toppled?
Europe also bad?
Expecting others to adhere to your cultural and political norms is authoritarianism. Not willing to learn or tolerate differences is bigotry.
“Simping” here meaning “viewing with anything less than total antipathy”
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”?
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.
Thought terminating cliche used by the unintelligent and uninformed to avoid reckoning with reality beyond vibes.
“non authoritarian governments are known to implement mass firewalls and online surveillance”
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. See the Phoenix Program.
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.
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
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
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?
104 milliion last I checked.
It’s been over 100 million since 2024
Would a non-aurhoritarian government be able to institute a one-child policy like China?
Given the vagueness of your definition, yes absolutely.
I don’t see how “blind submission to authority” could be any more clear cut than it is.
Yes, of course they could. Individual people make the decision to practice birth control every day, and a vast democratic assembly of millions voted in by their peers can make that decision as well. Meanwhile in the US, reproductive policy is dictated by nine unelected ministers: an objectively far less democratic process, yet our media never describes the US government as “authoritarian.” Because it’s not a term meant to usefully delineate important differences in form and function, it’s a vibes based epithet meant to be wielded against geopolitical enemies of capitalism. It’s a thought-terminating cliche, deployed highly selectively against anti-imperialist societies to artificially cast proletarian authority as uniquely evil while tacticly normalizing the authority of billionaires and corporations.
In practice, authoritarianism is when you are objectively more democratic in function and policy than western countries, but commit the cardinal sin of using that authority to safeguard your sovereignty, people and resources from the inhumanity of global capitalism.
Yes, but those are entirely voluntary. The point is that a government should have no say in reproduction whatsoever. That is why campaigns to change the cratering birthrate have failed.
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.
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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.
Making a statement that online surveillance there is no different from elsewhere will get you that kind of response tbh. It is measurably worse.
Source: it is known
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.
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You are literally talking to a Chinese person from China, smug liberal dipshittery knows no bounds
Then they fit the second part, living in ignorance. Online surveillance there is measurably worse.
Edit: just for clarity, I’m not “china bad” in my worldview but claims they their online surveillance is the same as elsewhere is utter nonsense and either from ignorance or indoctrination.
You think they’re posting on Lemmy without a VPN?
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.
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Are they accountable to you or to party members?
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.
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?
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.
Oh, I assure you, I have no red tinted glasses for my home. We are run by a decaying orange pedophile and his fascist sycophants.
That means I’m less inclined to trade one set of unaccountable “elites” for another just because they don’t like each other.
China is a state capitalist society that has the very same problem the US does. Overproduction of a group of “elites (parasites)” that need more and more power and wealth so they can get more power and more wealth.
Chinas actions towards the HK protestors and towards Taiwan indicates they are imperialist, which is a non starter for me already.
What’s an authoritarian?
State > people
The people control the state in China, though.
The communist party controls the state, and not everyone is a member.
So then every country is authoritarian, because no country is controlled by a party that every citizen is a member of.
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.
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.
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?
They seem to be doing a pretty good job
No. We disagree that “authoritarianism” is a meaningful distinction when every government exists by authority. Might as well call it “badguyism”
Why do you believe the “democracy perceptions index”?
Take a look at their supporters… like Palantir and Microsoft.
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So what’s a non-authoritarian state?
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.
So, China
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 dictatorships over workers, while the PRC is a worker’s dictatorship over capital.
Here are some resources:
I meant like can you give an example of one
Also:
So like China
Finland
Finland is an imperialist country governed by capitalists.
When was the last time Finland invaded someone?
those right wing warmongering Russophobe US bootlickers?
Didn’t Russia start a now 4 year long conflict in Ukraine
Jesus, at this point why don’t you just admit that by “non-authoritarian” you just mean “white”.
What?
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 very clear wishes of it’s people in order to aid and abet a historically unpopular genocide?
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?
The Finnish Air Force swastika is such an interesting case to me, because the moment you do a google for “Finnish air force swastika”, you are blasted with rationalizations: “predates nazism”, “good luck charm”, “innocent”, “unrelated to Hitler”. You get blasted with rationalizations before you can even see the history: which is that the innocent wholesome chungus dude who brought the swastika was Hermann Göring’s brother in law lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_von_Rosen
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.
I haven’t seen a single country that doesn’t love to divide by class.
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.
They’re not even against capitalism. They only pay lip service to anti-capitalism.
Wrong.
Is China State Capitalist?
I’m honestly impressed at the effort you put into this comment. It’ll be a while before I read through all these links, so I’m just gonna save this comment and come back to it occasionally.
They have a much larger one here.
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What not reading anything Deng, Jiang, Hu or Xi wrote will do to a mf. Genuinely amazingly arrogant. Socialism is not Communism and due to living in reality pressing the magic communism button is unfortunately not possible thus we are stuck working through the transitionary period. I wish I had the confidence like you do to be so arrogant on something you know so little about.
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Go back to Reddit
This must go so hard if you know literally fucking nothing about China.
👍