askchapo

the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry

child labor!

More of that in america mate, illegal in China.

internet/media censorship

You need to view this in the context of protecting the revolution. Let's say that you have a revolution in whatever country you're in tomorrow, are you just going to let the internet be a free space to foster and create fascist dissidents? Are you going to let foreign (capitalist) countries run your social media for you? Or are you going to limit various things in order to ensure that only domestic companies run your internet-media so that you can police them appropriately if they try to weaponise those forms of media as tools to overthrow proletarian rule and install bourgeoise rule?

I assume you've actually read some marx here, but if not, I want to just quote a small segment of chapter 2 of the communist manifesto at you.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

Pay special attention to what I've bolded here, the paragraph and bullet point 6. The point being that centralisation and control of all media is completely in-keeping with Marx's (and the other writers) views on the matter. Media is a tool of the bourgeoisie that costs a significant amount of money, it functions as a means of power exerted through wealth to control and influence outcomes in a state. Removing these from the bourgeoisie and centralising them in the hands of proletarian control is part of overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

The reason the bourgeoisie have propagandised you into disliking this is BECAUSE it massively harms and affects them. They wouldn't give a shit about it if it harmed the proles, they only give a shit because it affects them.

anti-LGBTQ

China practices a bottom-up system of power. Starting at the mass line via committees and polling. This does result in slower progress on social change than a top-down approach. With that said however, lgbt issues are progressing as younger generations age up, and this more or less guarantees progress as long as the system does not change as the overall population will exert its power over time. Boomers are the thing holding it back. It is also I think fair to point out that lgbt issues are not going great in the west, with a large push for reversal well underway.

uygher genocide

Literally didn't happen. An oppressive crackdown and re-education program? Yes sure. Genocide? No. A simple thought experiment that you should do here is to ask yourself how Israel, a country that is much much smaller with more resources to spend per population doesn't manage to stop evidence of its crimes from occurring(see /r/israelexposed), yet what have you actually seen of China's so-called genocide? Nothing. No refugees. No video evidence (in a country where people all have cameras). Fuck all.

What did happen was that China cracked down on islamic extremism that was being fostered through cia connections across the border with afghanistan, which the US was occupying at the time. China combatted this by undertaking an absolutely massive re-education program to raise the quality of living, jobs and prospects of susceptible people in the region. It turns out that people with good jobs don't want to do suicide bombings.

This is obviously a topic that needs more than 2 paragraphs to dispel. Feel free to question and dig deeper. There are certainly images you'll have seen without hearing the evidence against them, and there will be stories you've seen peddled from a false pov. I'm happy to go into them, I also recommend this report: https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang

positive and pro war relations with russia! (because fuck putin)

Geopolitically speaking it is essential for China to ensure Russia doesn't collapse or fall into the Western sphere. If it did then the result would be 50 nato bases planted on the border and China would be utterly surrounded, isolated, and any future of it as an influential power seriously hampered. It would be fucked quite frankly.

Not sure where you got the idea that they're pro-war. They are brokering for peace. Have been the entire time.

EDIT:

OH wait I can't believe I forgot to quote Lenin on freedom of the press

“All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.” -- V I Lenin, 1921

Freedom of media just means freedom of the bourgeoisie to buy and own all means of influence in society. None of them will be proletarian unless strictly controlled to be so, all of them will be owned by some fucking billionaire or fund that answers to many millionaires.

Okay, so I managed to not only forget my password but neglect to properly save it on my password manager so unless there's a way to reset your password without an email by commencing in some sort of secret orgy with the mods, my main account is effectively fucked.

On a better note, I've read everybody's comments and have come to the conclusion that while China isn't perfect, it's sure as fuck doing better than America. (obligatory fuck America, should've added that in the original post)

Thanks for not treating me like a troll and instead as someone who was genuinely curious. Definitely gonna be frequenting this site more often. Also, Chris Dorner did nothing wrong

I'll bite:

CHILD LABOR: Yeah, it's bad, but China is working to reduce and abolish it. Like most Western nations it is illegal for children under 16 to work in normal jobs. However, they have exceptions for "special circumstances". This mostly leads to children in rural areas of China being employed on farms and such, not much unlike here in the US. It is important to remember China's meteoric rise from a nation racked by poverty and war in the 40s to the powerhouse it is today. That's not even 100 years. Took most everyone else a lot longer to get with the program.

CENSORSHIP: We all experience censorship all over the world. Here in the US certain views are censored from our media (our corporate media is part of the state). YouTube censors swear words. I can got on. China, like most Asian nations, cracks down hard on libel and slander. So defaming someone or spreading bullshit is censored and punished, unlike America. China is not alone in this. For instance, in Japan, you cannot even tell the truth about someone publicly if it would defame them. Like telling people your partner cheated on you. It has to be "in the public interest". The "censorship" in China reflects this value that is shared across many Asian cultures in that region and is nothing particularly special or heinous. Most people in that region are fine with these laws because they have different views on freedom than most Westerners.

ANTI-LGBTQ: This is not particularly special to China, sadly. The US has it's own issues here. The Arab world is a disgrace in regards to this. African nations struggle with this issue. South American nations struggle with this. Many Asian cultures struggle here as well. It is an awful truth that much of the world has a poor view on LGBTQ+ peoples and their rights and the struggle to protect the dignity of our LGBTQ+ comrades everywhere is ongoing. China is not exceptional in one way or the other here.

UYGHER GENOCIDE: Putting people in re-education camps is not good. As someone who has actually worked in corrections in the USA I can attest that in every correctional facility there are abuses that the average person would recoil from. It's why I did it for a short time and quit. It's why I'm an abolitionist. I am highly skeptical of the claims made about "organ harvesting" and nightly r*** because even in the most dire conditions these are particularly heinous. Remember that the guards in China are people, too, just as capable of good and evil as we are. It is also worth noting that the most vocal critics are all members of a weird cult in China and are generally only ever amplified by US propaganda outlets, for which the US media (our corporate state media) re-prints. So there is plenty of reason to be skeptical. It is also worth noting that for decades the US spent tens of millions trying to radicalize the Uyghurs into terrorists in China. So seeing our government officials here suddenly cry over their treatment while they previously wanted to turn them into suicide bombers really makes my blood boil. It is so disingenuous.

RUSSIA: Russia is a capitalist hell-hole now and the fall of the Soviet Union was one of the many tragedies of the last century. China does not have the "red scare" that the West has in regards to Russia. If you step back and look at things objectively, Russia is really no worse than many other nations, like the USA. Sure, they invaded a white nation. If only they were murdering brown people then our media wouldn't care. But I digress, Russia is bad. Ukraine also sucks. Ukrainian people don't deserve war. Well, nobody deserves it. China needs partners around the world that aren't antagonistic to them and Russia is one such partner. In fact, Chinese businesses are already filling the gaps in the Russian economy since they don't give a fuck about Western sanctions. China is looking at this from that perspective. Should they also let the average Russian suffer? Would that satisfy you?

One thing I’d suggest is looking at the state of China when the PRC was established (in other words, when the communist experiment there began in earnest, in 1949) and now. Look at things like life expectancy, education, infrastructure, hunger, poverty, quality of life in all manner of speaking between then and now and you’ll see that what communists have achieved in China is nothing short of a miracle. It’s possible that some of the things you mentioned (LGBT issues in China is something I myself would need to learn more about) may be legitimate criticisms but to feel “extremely negatively” overall about a communist project that has saved countless millions of lives from capitalism because of a few areas where they still have some room for improvement is likely just the result of western propaganda. It’s worth noting how the Chinese people themselves feel about their government as well.

Nobody gets any civil rights if the CIA coups you and installs a fascist. Which is what happens if you go against western interests and aren't willing to take necessary countermeasures. Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran is my favorite example (though there are so, so many to choose from) of a left-ish leader who went against western interests, but he was a true believer in democracy and free speech and all that jazz. The CIA infiltrated every newspaper in the country, they hired people to protest against the government and they hired people to march for the government but wreck shit, they bribed people in every sector of society, from politicians to religious leaders to vote counters and so on. When the country got blockaded by the UK, he didn't align with that naughty Soviet Union but kept trying to get into the good graces of the bastion of freedom and democracy, the United States. The US, which had remained neutral in their struggle against the horribly oppressive colonial rule of :ukkk:, sold them down the river in exchange for UK support for NATO and the Korean War.

Why? Because the UK had more power, and righteousness and moral authority are meaningless compared to that. And nobody attains geopolitical power without fucking somebody over. That's how the world works. Mossadegh didn't accept that, he wasn't willing to be the bad guy. And what happened? He got replaced by a fascist, who brutally suppressed Iran's left until he got overthrown by the current government. How long until Iran gets another chance at a leftist government? Will they ever? These are the stakes of failure, never forget that.

Now personally, I don't like that state of affairs. I'd like it if there was a true international community, where if there was someone like Mossadegh who was unambiguously in the right, but crossed the interests of a powerful country, they'd still have potential friends to turn to. That is to say, a multipolar world, where countries have options and can choose their own destinies. China has flaws, yes, they're not above criticism. But you have to be willing to look past some degree of ruthlessness if you actually want someone to be able to challenge power and change the present state of things. Tbh, I wouldn't want to live in China, and not just because I'm queer. But China is paving the way (especially with BRI) for other countries to develop and survive, without dictating their domestic policy the way the World Bank/IMF do. Much of the world is still very much under the boot of colonialism, resources like mines and oil fields that were seized through force were never returned to the people they were seized from, even while they live in abject poverty while the owners are multi-national corporations run by some of the richest people on the planet.

You don't like China's style of government? That's fine. Do you like any style of government outside of neocolonialism? Then you should support China's government. Because it is through China that other options are becoming possible. If you don't believe me, then you need to learn more about the history of US backed regime change.

Tl;dr:

"Say whatever you want about me, I'm the bitch that lived"

:xi-lib-tears: :speech-l:

(Also a lot of stuff about China is made up or exaggerated. There are valid criticisms, but Western media has a track record of running all kinds of tabloid-tier stories.)

Regardless of what you think about China, you need to realize that you, as an American, do not get to dictate to over a billion people about how they should organize their society. Chinese people can handle their own affairs, if they desired the overthrow of the CPC, they could make that happen. They by and large do not desire this, in fact the CPC is broadly popular with tens of millions of Chinese citizens. Do not even try to dismiss that fact with some foolishness like "propaganda" or "brainwashing" ect.

You know nothing about Chinese life or how an average citizen feels about their government there, reading foreign press doesn't offer any insight into that. The nation-state of China is one of the oldest and most influential human institutions in history, and they will not be ordered around by some imperialist anglos again. I suggest you find a way to reconcile that with your personal opinions about them, and recognize that 1.4 billion people do not and will never have to care about you or what you think about them. So either give up your leftist aesthetics and just accept you are an imperialist, or figure out how to treat Chinese people as an equal competitor if not a friend.

I'm glad OP is pretty thick-skinned and open-minded because Christ Almighty some of the comments here are unnecessarily hostile and snarky, despite the question coming in good faith.

Like it or not, plenty of Westerners hold those opinions and, unlike here, are far less likely to concede on them. So when an opportunity to educate and agitate presents itself, we should resist the temptation and bite back the snark.

@AverageBernieZoomer you see, the Capitalist have the Media , the Fascist have the Outfits and we have the Textwalls and the Future.

I'm happy to expand with context and Cool China Facts, but you're actually asking the wrong question and that's the most important issue.

Implicit in your question is a simple idea: is China Good or is China Bad? And further: if you were to rack up Good Things in China and compare them to Baf Things in China, would it end up with China Good or China Bad?

This is a liberal approach to understanding states, nations, the people within them, and the factions among them, and usually conflates all four: is the entire country, as if it were a person with agency, good or bad?

The reality will actually be that all of these categories have different facets and interactions. As an entire country in the real world, there will be good things and bad things and nuanced things and things that are bad but not as bad as elsewhere and things that are good but not as goof as elsewhete. And, most importantly, how is it positioned within the global geopolitical context, what is its trajectory, and what influence does it have on other nations and the overall system of capitalism. Because if you look at it that way, you will find that the forces opposed to China have been dominant white supremacist colonizers responsible for historical and ongoing monstrosities far beyond what a China Watcher will exaggerate and simplify and get racist about, and that China is offering a path to multipolarization that will and does shield other countries from the horrors of American (capital) hegemony.

So, this is all a preview to say that you should expect these things:

• Bad Things can happen in China. It's a country of over a billion people grappling with its own challenges and development. It's a country with peoplr and history, not a fantasy world of exactly how some Westerner thinks everything should be.

• Don't forget that a lot of those Bad Things are mostly propaganda.

• Don't forget to contextualize the bad things in relation to what other actors are doing. A common propaganda tactic in the US, the most propagandized country, is to criticize and sanction other countries doing far milder versions of horrors repeatedly carried out by US Empire. The US killed off millions of Iraqis through sanctions and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure and a Yemeni child dies from deprivation every minute due to the US-driven Saudi campaign. Keep that in mind when you hear Western critiques of their enemy's alleged islamophobia.

• Don't forget your own context. What purpose does being vocally negative about China serve? Thay is the actual intent of the propaganda. You're not going to make China better by getting a bunch of Westerners to hate it. You're going to help manufacture consent for sanctions and war, both of which are actually intended to maintain US hegemony at the expense of common people that you woulf supposedly being sympathizing with. It's fine to develop internal critiques, buy if you aren't aware of the propaganda or your audience, you will simply reinforce the violent xenophobic status quo.

As an example of the propaganda, every single example you mentioned is tied up in a military-state-industrial complex of propaganda sources, which you might not be aware of, and beyond that, are all fed to us through a lens of maximization of sinophobic angles and false attributions inherent to our media system. For example, most things that you "know" about the treatment of Uyghurs, if you follow Western sources, are curated by one homophobic, antisemitic weirdo that can't read or speak Chinese (Zenz) and some CIA cutout cutouts (two layers) of weird nationalists who in no way represent common opinions among Uyghur people, but are propped up by US State Department funding. So you must contend with the reality that your information here, that you used to form strong opinions, is probably garbage, and you will have to start from scratch with a media critical lens.

And what you should discover is that China's approach to extremism in Xinjiang is indeed heavy-handed and has negative aspects to it. It is also a reaction to increasing Wahhabist extremism and terrorism in the region where hundreds were being killed. Wahhabism is not traditional, in any way, to Uyghur culture, which is a unique turkic culture with a relation to islam and cultural practices that is very different from Western stereotypes. You'll also find that the destabilization of Afghanistan and weaponization of Wahhabists against China, in Xinjiang, has been on the US' radar for over a decade. The Chinese national-level government's response to this was to (1) directly combat non-traditional Wahhabist practices that oppress women and promote terrorism, and (2) promote economic development to support increasing urbanization and generally improve quality of life, as people with prospects are less radicalizable. This did mean, for example, compulsory attendance of courses to improve folks' understanding of Chinese, to develop practical skills, to get placed into jobs and industries where they can gain experience and bring that back to their own communities. There was monitoring of activities and behaviors for Wahhabist activity. There were some officials (remember, we are talking about real people) who engaged in abuse. There were indeed bad things, mixed in with a program that successfully reformed ascendant non-traditional violent and oppressive forces and improved the economic standing of the targeted group. And remember, both Uyghur and Mandarin are taught, not just one or the other.

Now consider the wider context. How have Western countries responded to (and promoted) Wahhabism? And, distinctly, how have they treated muslim people? We could spend all day discussing this, but consider that the response to a single terrorist attack was two wars of aggression where millions were killed or exiled (the people to be "liberated"), widespread islamophobia targeted at all brown people, a global system of sanctions and surveillance. Incomparable. The systematic destruction of peoples and cultures. And the weaponization of the reactions to those "interventions": Wahhabism itself, and related extremist islam-adjascent movements, are fostered by US proxies and used to destroy populations and designated enemies. ISIS emerged and thrived with US consent and was used against Syria and Kurdish breakaways. These situations were used for global recruitment, to provide real combat experience for extremists to take home for their own protects. This very much did happen re: Uyghurs in Xinjiang, there were active recruitment efforts to merge turkic and Wahhabist views to export folks to train in war against Syria and Kurdish breakaways, then return and carry out terrorist attacks to promote the creation of "East Turkestan", an invention of this group pf extremists with basically zero grounding in traditional Uyghur culture. These are the groups that carried out terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, these are the groups fostered by off-the-books US activities, these are the groups China responded to: a deliberate and funded attempt to break off an entire province of the country through the misery of its population and at odds with the vast majority of the people's positions and interests. Wings of these extremist groups were on the US' official lists of terrorist groups, only taken off so that they could be funded by the NED to push propaganda at Westerners.

And so we get to the intended impact of the Western response and propaganda. What have they pushed through, these people who "care" about Uyghurs?

• Sanctions targeting the development of civilian industry in Xinjiang. Agricultural and textile products, mostly. If successful, these would impoverish Uyghur people, not help them, and the propagandists are well aware of this. Victims of the propaganda are just their useful idiots who think they are helping human rights despite, in effect, contributing to a plan to make the targeted population miserable. Lies about slavery are projected onto "picking cotton", which the US actually did use chattel slavery to do, whereas Xinjiang is largely mechanized.

• Turning sentiment against China within the West. China is a competitor. US hegemony needs your consent to undermine China and these are planks in its platform.

• Promoting the aforementioned Wahhabist and related violent and oppressive groups, again with your manufactured consent. You have probably believed several lines that came directly from those odd ethnonationalist-with-transplanted-ideas groups funded by the NED. They are part of the same complex that killed a bunch of Uyghurs.

So, in summary:

• Reconfigure the scope of your view towards an entire country, as the simplistic narratives you've been told are sinophobic, orientalist, anticommunist propaganda that work primarily by telling you how to frame the question rather than informing you.

• Do media criticism if you want to have any chance of an accurate view of "enemies" designated by the West.

• Remember your own role in not contributing to manufacturing consent for war and deprivation, especially against the people you're supposedly sympathetic to. The situation in Ukraine has a corrolary here, where the West has been pushing hard to create the conditions of war for decades and is currently telling you to support a prolonged war effort at Ukrainians' expense, but characterizing it as support for Ukraine. It is very easy to do the exact opposite or your intent if you don't consider your position and audience.

It's important to note that when it comes to LGBT issues, China is getting better.

How is America progressing on that front?

internet censorship! media censorship! positive and pro war relations with russia!

I came to the realization a year or two ago that, we've seen what the CIA and the USA is willing to do to its own country. MKULTRA, Tuskeegee, endless examples really. But countries that we're openly hostile toward, I can't imagine how much worse the shit is we're trying to do to them. Of course there's known examples like Agent Orange and the comical amount of assassination attempts against Castro :fidel-cool:, but really, it's not my place to judge a country for doing what they have to to defend against having the CIA up their ass. I can't see the attack and of course the USA's gonna paint their defense as completely baseless evil shit done for no reason.

Obviously I take issue with a lot of stuff on an ideological level, but I also try to keep in mind that these are countries under siege.

High speed rail in China in 2008 vs 2020

High speed rail in China now

High speed rail in California in 2008

High speed rail in California now

Give me a reason not to randomly hate a billion people

Wah wah wah