• Butterphinger@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 hours ago

    I can’t know, so I choose not to decide one way or the other. I can’t know what is or isn’t propaganda, so I can’t tell you with full certainty.

    I can know from firsthand accounts from Chinese people I know personally about the surveillance and militaristic state of things. I can know from reports from those on the ground.

    However, I don’t think I’ve heard any worse about China than America, but I believe it to be more restrictive than the EU by a fair margin. Is China “bad”? To me, they aren’t “good” per-se, but moreover, China seems to only really care about China, as their actions seem to reflect.

    They pay and support who they support and legitimize the same as any other large, powerful and untrustworthy nation, I give no quarter, but I impose none, all the same.

  • 52fighters@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    14 hours 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      13 hours 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        12 hours 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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          11
          ·
          5 hours 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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            edit-2
            4 hours 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.

              • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                3 hours 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        8 hours 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.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      5 hours ago

      The one recognized by 99% of the world’s population, except for a few tiny island nations / members of OAS (a US org) bribed by the US.

  • يا ليتني كوري شمالي @lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    52
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 day ago

    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.

  • calmblue75@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    82
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    1 day ago

    My god the comments. You are perfectly allowed to not know much about a country. I don’t know about PRC either. But I know to keep my mouth shut on matters I don’t know about. I don’t go on parroting propaganda for those things.

    • Einskjaldi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      22
      ·
      17 hours ago

      It’s all about geography , if China was on the map like Australia or more like the US they wouldn’t have any problems if they had plenty of space and no neighbors.

      • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        13 hours ago

        You say this as if the US didn’t have problems with it’s neighbours and as if that stopped them from invading and bombing countries abroad. China does none of that bs even by having thrice the amount of border neighbours.

      • KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        13 hours ago

        What no political theory does to a mf

        Geographical environment is unquestionably one of the constant and indispensable conditions of development of society and, of course, influences the development of society, accelerates or removed its development. But its influence is not the determining influence, inasmuch as the changes and development of society proceed at an incomparably faster rate than the changes and development of geographical environment. in the space of 3000 years three different social systems have been successively superseded in Europe: the primitive communal system, the slave system and the feudal system. In the eastern part of Europe, in the U.S.S.R., even four social systems have been superseded. Yet during this period geographical conditions in Europe have either not changed at all, or have changed so slightly that geography takes no note of them. And that is quite natural. Changes in geographical environment of any importance require millions of years, whereas a few hundred or a couple of thousand years are enough for even very important changes in the system of human society.

        It follows from this that geographical environment cannot be the chief cause, the determining cause of social development; for that which remains almost unchanged in the course of tens of thousands of years cannot be the chief cause of development of that which undergoes fundamental changes in the course of a few hundred years

      • m532@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        22
        ·
        15 hours ago

        “They shouldn’t have built their country near our military bases”

      • calmblue75@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        edit-2
        16 hours ago

        Can’t understand what you’re saying. Can you elaborate? The propaganda against China is not coming from its neighbours as far as I know.

        • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          edit-2
          13 hours ago

          He means the UwU occupied american subjects, Japan SK philippines, who make these statements from time to time to appease their overlord.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      19 hours 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.

    • Internetexplorer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      36
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      23 hours 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.

    • Internetexplorer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Because America are the thoughtful, non violent democrats, who represent the people, and never start illegal wars?

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      34
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 day ago

      “Simping” here meaning “viewing with anything less than total antipathy”

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      49
      arrow-down
      15
      ·
      1 day 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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        31
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day 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.

    • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      43
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 day ago

      authoritarians

      Thought terminating cliche used by the unintelligent and uninformed to avoid reckoning with reality beyond vibes.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          39
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day 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. See the Phoenix Program.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          34
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day 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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            22
            ·
            1 day 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
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              30
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 day 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
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              36
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              1 day 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?

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  28
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 day ago

                  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.

        • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          30
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          1 day 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.

            • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              19
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              19 hours 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
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                17
                ·
                19 hours 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
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  17
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  19 hours 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.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              21
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              20 hours ago

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

              • khannie@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                20
                ·
                edit-2
                20 hours ago

                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?

                • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  21
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  19 hours 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
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              32
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              1 day 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
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                7
                ·
                12 hours 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
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  12 hours 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.

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              5 hours 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
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              9
              ·
              11 hours 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
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              12
              ·
              12 hours 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
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                9
                ·
                12 hours 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
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  11
                  ·
                  12 hours 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”

          • GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            32
            ·
            1 day 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.

            • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              46
              arrow-down
              5
              ·
              edit-2
              1 day 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 dictatorships over workers, while the PRC is a worker’s dictatorship over capital.

              Here are some resources:

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              33
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              1 day 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

                • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  30
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 day ago

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

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  40
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 day 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 very clear wishes of it’s people in order to aid and abet a historically unpopular genocide?

                • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  37
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 day 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?

    • iByteABit@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 day 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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          13 hours 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.

    • square@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      28
      ·
      1 day ago

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

  • AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    1 day 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?

    • architect@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      15
      ·
      16 hours ago

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

      • m532@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        14 hours ago

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

      • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        11 hours 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)

    • for_some_delta@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 day 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.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      1 day ago

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

    • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      49
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      1 day 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        16 hours 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          3 hours ago

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

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        24
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        i mean yeah, literally, look at how the Iranian regime is allowed to post its anti-US propaganda lego movies on Twitter.

        edit: nvm that was a bad take.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          49
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 day ago

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

        • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          35
          ·
          1 day 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.

        • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          20
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day 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 mases while all the real political discourse by activists with any real chance of accomplishing anything are censored and criminalised. Look at what happens to journalists objectively covering Iran, Israel, ICE, you name it. Look at how the protestors against oil pipelines or police racial violence are treated. So much freedom of speech for those people.

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      ·
      1 day 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day 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.

      I hope this hasn’t come off as hostile, 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.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          13 hours 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

        • m532@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          16 hours 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.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        But you seem like a refreshingly normal person rather than one of the ideologically motivated internet cold warriors

        hehe thanks, i try to be.

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 day 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.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    21
    ·
    1 day 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
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    22
    ·
    1 day 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.

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      5 hours ago

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

      • architect@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        13
        ·
        16 hours 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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          16 hours 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        17
        ·
        1 day 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          5 hours 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.

        • fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          5 hours 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.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          23 hours ago

          It’s wild to me that grown adults still use “good” and “evil” as an actual heuristic

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              ·
              edit-2
              13 hours 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 why things happen.

              Children think in good and evil. Adults think in cause and effect. Be scientific.

                • 9skyguy0@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 hours 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.

        • EmmiLime@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          20
          ·
          1 day ago

          I have a question, what is your opinion on lesser evil? Is America the lesser evil in your opinion?

          • Dippy@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            12
            ·
            1 day ago

            America is evil. There are politicians who are lesser evils within the usa. They dont make the US not evil, just less evil.

            I don’t know individual politicians in china, but im sure there are plenty of lesser evil politicians there. That doesnt mean china isnt also doing evil things. I hope the evil reduces there. And in the usa. And everywhere else.

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      “China is actually not hell on earth”

      “You’re just brainwashed, everyone there is actually dead”

      Removed by mod

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          17
          ·
          13 hours ago

          China government official in the thread

          He is not affiliated with the CPC, but thank you for demonstrating how quickly “good” liberals devolve into conspiratorial racism as soon as their sense of nationalist superiority is shaken.

  • Mister Neon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    23
    ·
    1 day ago

    I’m an American. China might not be bad, but they ain’t going to be good to me. America isn’t good to me either.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      You’d be surprised, the worst thing that could happen to you while traveling to really any global south country is getting scammed (overcharging for a meal or taxi) and that’s about it. Most people are very welcoming and will be friendly even excited to see a foreigner. It’s pretty much just Europe and North america where people treat you rude or at best just indiffirently if they see you’re a tourist.

      Streamers ludwig and some other recently filmed a trip throughout mainland China and it’s pure good vibes.

      • architect@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        11
        ·
        16 hours ago

        You need to watch foreigners stream in America. They have the same lovely experiences (and with the worst people to boot). This idea you’ll get treated badly in the usa as a tourist is a lie.