With what happened in Hong Kong recently I imagine it can’t be too effective in the short term, but at the same time the slow trickle of disinformation and whataboutism and bots online preaching their BS can have a way of radicalizing and turning people.
And it’s not like the US’ trackrecord doesnt make it easy to show examples of us doing wrong around the world.
He compares democracy in Hong Kong and the USA by looking at who nominates who eventually rules.
The people in China are terrible, and the people in USA are terrible. The vast majority of them are greedy, omnicidal, mass-extinction causing monsters. One is worse than the other, but both are so amazingly terrible that we should be boycotting both, and all the other dictatorships and oligarchies.
Freedom has two components: Positive Freedom and Negative Freedom. Negative Freedom is a lack of restriction from doing something, while Positive Freedom is the ability to do something. For example, I am free to go to Mars through the lens of Negative Freedom but not through the lens of Positive Freedom.
Restricting Negative Freedom can enhance Positive Freedom. If a terrorist hate group is not allowed to exist, then those who would have been their victims can be free to live their lives without having them cut short by this disallowed association. This is a pro-freedom move in the direction of greater fairness and safety in Germany.
Zionism is one of those political terms that is assumed to have a universal definition agreed upon by all when in reality people are using the same word to argue completely different concepts in many cases. It’s a sensitive and inflammatory topic because of ongoing prejudice and atrocities committed in living memory so there are obstacles to overcome to have a good faith discussion.
Israel’s constituition establishes a secular state which does not privelege one ethnitcity or religion over another. Benjamin Netenyahu represents a far-right contingent of Israeli politics and has enacted policy which does real world harm to Palestinian people. Criticism of his administration can be motivated by anti-semitism, but if we’re seriously talking about geopolitics and apartheid on the left I think we’re more focused on making sure the human rights of Palestinians are respected. Netanyahu’s political opponents in Israel who do not wish to continue expanding settlements into demarked Palestinian territories are most likely not motivated by anti-semitism. Critics abroad making the same arguments against the actions of Israel’s secular government similarly are probably less motivated by anti-semitism and more motivated by some sense of universal human rights. Although there are some imperial-minded people that oppose Israel’s actions because they have some sense of not wanting their most hated group of people to grow more powerful, I honestly don’t think anyone in this comment section or from the linked article has that motivation. Anti-semitism is a very real problem which needs to be taken very seriously, but framing a left-wing political argument in favor of human rights as only possibly motivated by anti-semitism is completely bad faith which does no favors to anyone except the far-right.
As soon as I heard about the source of ignition I thought about a similar catastrophe that happened in the USA about twenty years ago. This is terrible, but it is probably good to share it widely and in as many languages as possible. I am not sure of the best words, but it would be good to help this tragedy save others.
This has been happening since the invention of fire. People will cut corners and use cheaper flammable material where they shouldn’t (e.g. Grenfell 2017) or some stupid with a flare gun will set it off inside (e.g. Montreux 1971).
Fire codes and building standards improve with time, but human stupidity is forever.
The article doesn’t mention air supply issue. But it says the women had no health problem.
The truck was just 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) inside, said Francart, Villefranche-sur-Saône’s prosecutor. The women were all wearing thick coats and had no health problems, she said.
It sounds like they called for help because they realized the truck was going in the wrong direction, not so much because of health concerns.
I read this ‘article’. There are zero references towards the so called ‘China Bashing’. If it is so rampant, how hard can it be to just link to a few mainstream offenders? It alludes towards a deliberate bashing, once again without any links or merit. I am fully aware that news is hardly unbiased but come on, this is ridiculous.
That’s not a defense. Opinion pieces can be fine, but if you’re claiming that something is off the charts you should probably have some charts (or any points of data) to prove the claim.
Do I need to? I haven’t had a visceral reaction to the article.
For what it’s worth, China’s affirmative action policies for minority groups put the US to shame. Significantly easier college admissions (despite using a standardized process), extremely generous business loans, proportional ethnic representation in government, vast infrastructure projects to bridge the salary gap, and celebrations of different cultures across the country. Not very capitalist of them, given that these infrastructure projects (while very beneficial to the endpoints) are not profitable.
Treating minorities better than the USA isn’t exactly a high bar.
My country also treats minorities better than the USA, it’s easy to get into uni, celebrates diversity, has an alright social welfare system and socialised healthcare, does the occasional infrastructure project etc.
Thanks for teaching me that I’m actually living in a socialist paradise rather than a poor, neoliberal capitalist, physically isolated island where private corporations are free to wreck the environment for profit!
Significantly easier college admissions (despite using a standardized process), extremely generous business loans, proportional ethnic representation in government, vast infrastructure projects to bridge the salary gap, and celebrations of different cultures across the country. Not very capitalist of them
Sorry OP but basically none of this has anything to do with not being capitalist. I don’t even doubt that China is doing better in those departments than America, but that has more to do with how utterly shit America is at most things outside of building bombs than how communist China is. They should get some kudos for executing a couple billionaires, though, gotta at least give 'em that.
Nobody else has had a visceral reaction, we’ve just pointed out bad journalism 🙂 Using big negative words might make you feel better, but it doesn’t make them accurate. You’re using them to be dismissive of our points
I have been following media intensively. I am not saying that news about China is unbiased in the western media. I am calling out the lack of any sources in this weak ‘article’
1 I don’t know this outlet, nor am inclined to use perceived pedigree to determine the quality of news. I’d like to see sources, not news dresses as opinions. 2 Opinion pieces that try to be credible need sources or else I will disregard them as petty trolling. The title makes a bold claim, I want sources backing up that claim. 3 that ‘source’ is also an opinion peace without any sources.
Just show me where mainstream media is deliberately bashing China. If it’s that rampant it can’t be that hard right?
that ‘source’ is also an opinion peace without any sources.
?
The source of that article are the authors. One a professor at Oxford, the other a lecturer at MIT. The professor's also written a book about China which is mentioned at the bottom of the article. Pretty weak argument to say that isn't a valid source. A bit like an anti-vaxxer saying an article about vaccination written by a doctor isn't a valid source in an internet argument.
Just show me where mainstream media is deliberately bashing China. If it’s that rampant it can’t be that hard right?
I googled myself, because I was curious. Not necessarily bashing, but plenty of sensationalism. For example, NBC at the time of the balloon incident:
Spy balloon likely sent extensive intelligence to China, experts say. The Pentagon said Thursday it 'acted immediately' to counter a collection of sensitive information
U.S. president Biden ... however stated that it was "not a major breach", and that he also believed that the Chinese leadership wasn't even aware of the balloon. ... On September 17, 2023, in an interview with CBS news, General Mark Milley, the retiring 20th US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn't transmit any intelligence back to China." Technical experts had also found that the balloon's sensors had never been activated while it was travelling over the Continental United States. The general also touched on a leading theory that the reason that it was flying over the United States, was probably because it was blown off-track, where the balloon had been heading towards Hawaii however winds at 60,000 feet simply came into the equation. Miley said, "those winds are very high.. the particular motor on that aircraft can't go against those winds at that altitude."
Media: the Chinese are spying on us. Are you ready for WAR?
Reality: the wind blew a balloon of course and by now most of us have already forgotten what turned out to be a nothing burger of a story.
I think that the concern was not that the articles like the ones you link to do not exist. Instead the complaint is that the posted piece did not itself link to them to back up the claim. These were likely quite easy for you to find and it’s poor journalism that the author did not put in the same effort.
U.S. president Biden ... however stated that it was "not a major breach", and that he also believed that the Chinese leadership wasn't even aware of the balloon. ... On September 17, 2023, in an interview with CBS news, General Mark Milley, the retiring 20th US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn't transmit any intelligence back to China." Technical experts had also found that the balloon's sensors had never been activated while it was travelling over the Continental United States. The general also touched on a leading theory that the reason that it was flying over the United States, was probably because it was blown off-track, where the balloon had been heading towards Hawaii however winds at 60,000 feet simply came into the equation. Miley said, "those winds are very high.. the particular motor on that aircraft can't go against those winds at that altitude." c
TLDR: Unbeknownst to China's leadership, one of their balloons blew off-track (hardly a rare occurence). It didn't collect or transmit any intelligence.
But if you watched the media coverage of that incident, you'd likely come to a different conclusion. For example:
Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from sensitive U.S. military sites, despite U.S. efforts to block it
So funny how that all got memory holed and now you have people who genuinely still think it was a spy balloon of some kind (even in these very replies!) because they just never read anything past the headlines and never followed up on it after. Just completely lacking any curiosity or news literacy but will still scoff at the thought of them being victims of very obvious propaganda haha
A Chinese corporation openly tested those spy balloons over my country a decade ago (allegedly just for monitoring livestock), why is it so unbelievable that they’d use a more polished version on their biggest geopolitical rival?
Countering this in international media by offering more balanced views for a global audience is near impossible as censorship is rife. There almost seems to be a global compact to control the narrative, a propaganda war powered by today’s digital technology.
International sentiment generally negative about country actively committing genocide.
More at 11.
Jokes aside - yeah? Of course there’s propaganda about China. I would wager its hard to find a big international power that doesn’t have some level of propaganda being spread about it by the other big international powers. But between the propaganda you still find a bunch of real reasons to have negative views toward China’s leadership and actions.
Uyghur genocide (ongoing)
authoritarian rule with huge censorship of outside media I really don’t need to go on
What reference do you have then, though? You’ve basically eliminated every country of reasonable size: India, China, America obviously, but also Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Mexico and Nigeria, Bangladesh are in similar states.
Yeah and? I don’t want to live in an oppressive shithole, doesn’t matter to me if they became oppressive because they were copying China, the USA, Nigeria, the UK or whatever - they’d still be oppressive!
I honestly didn’t think that saying “I don’t like authoritarian capitalism” would be such a controversial statement…
I’ve legitimately got no idea how they can fix their countries (or if they can even be fixed) as I’m more focused on my own country. I do not want my country to copy either the USA or China, and I resent the close relationship my government maintains with both of those oppressive states.
The USA pressured our government into performing illegal searches/arrests to favour their corporations, and the CCP has repeatedly been caught infiltrating our parliament. Those big authoritarian countries just bully smaller states to get what they want, and we need to stop pretending that it’s morally justified and normal. It’s not okay.
Actually I’m not from the Americas (though one of my ancestors did decide to leave Florida in the 1830s or 40s cos he had very dark coloured skin).
And I disagree that there’s a need to “pick a side” - both “sides” will stomp on smaller countries no matter what because that’s what authoritarian imperialistic powers do.
It would be off the charts in Chinese media too if they had things like free press and didn’t arrest their people for posting things critical of the Chinese government.
Yeah, like Naomi Wu, famous in the maker community, who tried her best to provide a nuanced view of China before pissing off the wrong group of people and going radio silent for good.
Thanks for displaying your ignorance. You obviously don’t know her story, because she’s never been openly critical of China. Rather, she’s always tried to be an ambassador for China within her community. Unfortunately, some of her actions pissed off the wrong people.
And the fact that she was able to operate for years without issue
I used to watch ADVChina, which was a youtube series by an American and a South African who married Chinese women and decided to live in China with their families. For years they rode motorbikes around China, filming “day in the life” type content and occasionally saying something mildly critical.
Eventually the CCP decided they didn’t like them and they had to flee the country. The way they told it they had to lie their way through the border to HK to get out because the government put an exit ban on them. Now they live in California post angry anti-CCP rants.
Point being, the fact that Wu or the ADVChina guys were able to operate in China for a little while isn’t proof that the CCP tolerates independent media. It is proof that the CCP can be slow sometimes to shut down people who grow a foreign audience organically using information channels the CCP doesn’t yet fully understand.
You do realize that the CCP isn’t some top-down monolith… Right? If it takes years to crack down on independent journalists, that sounds more like “freedom until you say overstep some line.”
Which, sure, isn’t entirely free, but it’s not even close to as bad as what people suggest.
Better tell that to literally every government on the planet, then.
Jailing dissidents is government oppression, but it’s a type of government oppression that happens in every major government, democratic or not. Welcome to the real world.
China is the one county that could just tell Russia to get out of Ukraine. Same with North Korea. Just look at who they hang out with and you know quite a lot.
Why would they? The Global South is completely unaligned with the West on the Russia-Ukraine issue. It’s an issue between Russia and the West, not a global issue.
Most of the global south is aligned in staying out of it as much as possible. Their self interest is to play nice to all sides and play all sides.
It is not the entire global south. I think Australia and Taiwan would both feel differently. Very convenient of you to forget that. From the original UN vote it showed that the Russian invasion was widely condemned through out the world including global south with some notable exceptions too.
Many countries included in the Global South are in the northern hemisphere, such as India, China and all of those in the northern half of Africa. Australia and New Zealand, both in the southern hemisphere, are not in the Global South
Time Magazine
It was generally agreed that the Global North would include the United States, Canada, England, nations of the European Union, as well as Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and even some countries in the southern hemisphere: Australia, and New Zealand. The Global South, on the other hand, would include formerly colonized countries in Africa and Latin America, as well as the Middle East, Brazil, India, and parts of Asia.
I know all this. The global south is just pretty inaccurate name for the developing countries aka the third world. It is not at all clear that China should be included. It is also a collection of some pretty much despotic countries though that varies widely. There are also some very questionable trade policies too including cartels, trafficking of all sorts, bribery, corruption, often high population growth, you name it.
Everyday people need to remember the difference between the general Chinese population and the CCP. The Chinese people are wonderful. The CCP is horrific, and working tirelessly to create their own version of hell.
I second this. I love Chinese people and culture, hell, I’m even learning Chinese to be able to communicate with my Chinese gf’s parents, however CCP ≠ Chinese people.
However, when you travel in China, you don’t have to travel far before you realise that broadly the Chinese support their government because things are getting better and in many places are on par or better than the west.
I love how you start off by saying you’ve never been to China and you never intend to go, then immediately discard the claims of someone that’s been there a lot.
Yeah: mass transit (transit) into camps (housing) for “re-education” (education), with the chance to get forcefully married to a real Chinese man (social mobility), or end up having your organs harvested (healthcare)
Do people really need to know more? I don’t think there are any virtues that could make up for China’s treatment of Uyghurs and the people who try to save them.
Uyghur’s aren’t one big monolith and treating them as one is reductionist and frankly a little racist.
Up until 2017-2018 the US was striking ETIM training camps on the border with China… But by 2020 “ETIM no longer exists.” It’s not like extremism in the region is entirely unexpected, and similarly China’s response has taken the dragnet approach for catching extremists. It hits a good chunk of innocent people, yes (give me a perfect response to terrorism), but it’s not systematically targeting all Uyghurs and it’s trying to do so without killing the human capital that China relies on for economic growth (particularly because ethnic minorities are the only ones reproducing above replacement rate in China).
That’s why Muslim countries are pretty much unanimously in support of China’s actions in Xinjiang.
A lot of stuff. But that your point basically boils down to “not all of China is about genocide!” is more than enough to know that it’s not worth my time arguing with you.
“affirmative action that China takes on its minority groups” good god, have the balls to call it what it is dude. China is doing a genocide. If that doesn’t bother you, that’s your deal, but at least own up to what you are defending
Chinese healthcare makes American healthcare look good by comparison. It is mostly private and you’re expected to bribe the doctors, nurses, orderlies and have a family member stick around the hospital the whole time pestering them or you won’t receive care. Same with Education, which is like the American Ivy system times 1000. Housing in China is… well, just try googling Evergande. Upwards mobility involves either climbing the party hierarchy or “leveling up” from being a rural peasant to being an urban migrant worker with bad hukou.
You got me on transit though, the Chinese have built some amazing trains.
Nobody would deny this. On the other hand, it’s the same argument as “not all Russians support Putin” or even—dare I say—“not all Germans were Nazis.” It’s true that when you live under a despotic regime there’s not much you can do about it, individually. And most people would not willingly be complicit in the regime’s crimes except to the extent that they have no choice.
But it’s true that these regimes do have lots of internal support. They wouldn’t exist without that support. And to the extent that this support is manufactured by internal propaganda, people within that message-space will not be able to resist having their own perceptions shaped by it.
So while it’s undeniably true that the CCP is not the Chinese people, and that the Chinese people are the principle victims of the CCP, they also are complicit in a collective sense.
I’m being generous. I tend to think that the Chinese people (or people of any country, really) are victims of propaganda. We’d all be less supportive of our various governments if we weren’t constantly told that we’re the GOOD guys, and our enemies are BAD and EVIL.
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