cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/863209
Archived version: https://archive.ph/5Ok1c
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230731013125/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-66337328
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/863209
Archived version: https://archive.ph/5Ok1c
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230731013125/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-66337328
What is with the China apologists in this thread? Wtf??
I found this to be a decent enough primer: https://medium.com/@bobbyarlan/a-case-study-in-racist-anti-chinese-sentiment-fuelled-by-american-bots-and-western-propaganda-f0a69978d568
A decent TLDR: The article argues that anti-Chinese propaganda spread by the U.S. and Western media is fueling racist sentiment. Claims of mass detention of Uyghurs are based on flawed studies and sources like Adrian Zenz, a far-right Christian fundamentalist. Atrocity propaganda is a common tactic used by the U.S. to justify wars. The U.S. is threatened by China’s economic rise and technological progress, so it is trying to portray China negatively and prepare public opinion for a potential conflict. However, most of the world sees China positively and as an economic opportunity, making a new Cold War against China unlikely to succeed
In short, a lot of information about China that has come out of Western news media has been proven to be based on known biased sources, known anit-China rhetoric, and/or outright lies. It’s difficult to prove/disprove of any information specifically, that takes time and reporting, but a lot of people see the anti-China pattern in BBC reporting, and tend to dismiss it because of known history.
I think this flies a bit too far in the other direction. China is totalitarian. It is not a democracy. It is also increasingly antagonizing nations abroad. I think it is valid to consider it a threat if you are any other nation, period.
Edit: Kinda like Russia
So… No, it’s not like Russia at all. But that nuance is too long for me to explain right now. Short answer is that Russia is capitalist, and China is 50/50 capitalist/socialist, depending on definitions, and yeah a lot of nuance.
But China is run by the people, their authoritarian politics keeps their billionaires and induatry in check. Their local politics is a negotiation with the national politics.
And… How exactly is China antagonizing nations abroad? Because a lot of countries are choosing to work with China because they AREN’T antagonizing them as much as America and Europe. So… The reality is the opposite.
I mean, if you haven’t been there or don’t know anyone from there you could pretend they are a democracy, but they are authoritarian like Russia is authoritarian. Long term they will seek a wider swath to be authoritarian over.
And the argument from ignorance continues.
All I have to say is read more and be online less.
It’s not from ignorance. It’s based on the people I know from China.
Newsflash, you can find people in any country who don’t like their government, and you’ll obviously see these people over represented in the population that left the country. The fallacy of your argument is to conclude that the people you know hold the opinion of the majority of people in China. I made plenty of friends who from China in university, and most of them went back after graduating. Vast majority of people in China support their government and are proud of their country. Even western polling admits this.
Cool story. China is still authoritarian.
China is a one party system with a “president” for life. Fancy that up all you want: still authoritarian with a dictator.
How many seats are in the highest legislative body?
What rights and responsibilities do autonomous regions within China have?
What is the most distributed government legislative committee type and what is their role in the government?
1, Xi Xinping and whatever he says, doesn’t matter how many show ponys you fill the room with.
In the end they all answer to the whims of the central government, which can change or remove and rights and responsibilities autonomous regions within China have.
See answer one.
So what I’m hearing is it doesn’t matter if you’re ignorant about the way China works because the US media told you Xi is an evil dictator who controls everything and you believed them. Got it.
Or you know, you could just listen to someone who was in an internment camp:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minority-teacher-50-tells-of-forced-sterilisation-in-xinjiang-china
(Also your summary sounds like ChatGPT)
Or the fact we literally have drone and camera footage of mass arrests. I’m not one to view Vice these days, but one of their reporters went there and saw some rather suggestive situations as well.
After Trump was so nice (dumb) enough to showcase just how clear US satellite photos are these days, one has to question why some here are so quick to cry in China’s defense. Especially after the very public take over of Hong Kong, you think an ethnic cleanse is out of the question?
I’m sure some pro-Chinese twit will come rushing in with some whataboutism or a crack on US history, as if that excuses things.
You’re projecting. China exempted ethnic minorities from the one child policy, that is how anti “han supremacist”(which itself is just white supremacist projection) they are.
And the people of Hong Kong are 90 percent Han.
Apparently there is a PRC smear campaign against Adrian Zenz - https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/pro-prc-information-operations-campaign-haienergy, including by creating what Mandiant describes as what they “suspect to be at least three fabricated letters based on obvious grammatical errors and typos” to smear him - so I’d take anything that is ad hominem attacks against him rather than debating his actual work with a grain of salt.
However, even if you don’t accept his writings, there are plenty of other people who have done credible research into the plight of the Uyghur people - e.g. resources contributed to https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/, such as articles like this one by Gene A. Bunin: https://livingotherwise.com/2021/01/04/the-elephant-in-the-xuar-ii-brand-new-prisons-expanding-old-prisons-and-hundreds-of-thousands-new-inmates/.
https://www.google.com/search?q=80+percent+iud+uyghur&oq=80+percent+iud+uyghur&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.6658j0j7&
One of those “fabricated” typos you mentioned, which shows the quality of reporting on the situation.
If the media is just eating up fabricated errors meant to smear someone that tells you a lot about the quality of journalism involved with this story.
(Also tbc this isn’t fabricated he published this, anti-china crusaders are just publishing misinfo that he didnt)
This, my friend, is the absense of neocon/neolib censorship and propaganda that you were so used to on corporate social media.
Isn’t it great?
Strange, I never had any trouble on Reddit talking about socialism.
As long as you don’t question that the enemies of US imperialism deserve it you should be mostly fine. The big geopolitical topics are more sensitive.
I was permabanned from multiple subs for sharing this telegraph article for example:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230701133656/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
It differs from sub to sub but the bigger and more political the stronger the imperial narrative is enforced.
r/worldnews is one of the worst, and honestly suspect its astroturf and run by assets or a derivative of an imperial institution (council on foreign relation, think tanks, the likes)
There are literally pictures of bloodshed.
I legitimately don’t understand why Leninists are so keen on making folk heroes out of tyrants. Why exert the energy to defend this shit instead of learning from it and building a better class of socialist??
I’ll listen to western leftists when we actually take power and have to learn to use it to defend ourselves, currently we have a big fat 0 in the wins department
I’d take the study a lot more seriously if the people financing it weren’t literally tied to the US/UK governments…
We’d all take China a lot more seriously if it wasn’t literally interring people in reeducation camps and ruling over people’s lives like it’s 1984.
You need to catch up with the narrative, rheyre claiming the crackdown is over now that tourists are coming in and not noticing anything.
Man it’s almost like the vast majority of tourists stick to coastal cities and big urban areas where the Uighur population isn’t and not the vast desert that these camps and people’s exist in.
Wait, do you think there aren’t people who tour Muslim cultural sites, of which there are many? Do you not think that anyone ever goes to interior spots? In the US, the rocky mountains and the Appalachians are both used a lot for tourism.
Do you think there aren’t uyghurs in the cities in the region?
It sounds like you dont know anything about the situation and are trying to justify already held beliefs by making rhetoric that doesn’t really apply to the reality of the situation.
Lemmy was literally a tankie shithole before the Reddit influx, and even then not much changed
why are you here then, leave if it bothers you lol
What’s with all the conspiracy nutcases here? The fucking Uighur genocide… smh, are the space lizards making China do this or is it Sasquatch man?
… is mostly sourced from a far right German nationalist who’s been proven to mistranslate Chinese documents over and over again, and claims that God gave him a mission to destroy China.
… has been debunked by many Muslim countries visiting China to investigate
… is a media narrative connected to the US funding radical Islamic groups to destabilize east turkestan and failing miserably as the Chinese response was mostly improving economic conditions and funding uyghur cultural programs which actually is effective at deradicalization, which is what the US could have done in Iraq in Afghanistan if they were over there for altruistic or mutually beneficial reasons and not just to extract oil and opium while making some defense contractors very rich.
I’d appreciate sources on these points, please. I don’t trust western media blindly, but I also recognize that China has its own propaganda machine (as does every state). I’d like to learn more, but would need links for topics about which I’m unfamiliar else I’ll only be able to read the western media I mentioned above.
A well cited and factual pro-china article on Zenz that covers several mistranslations.http://english.scio.gov.cn/m/xinjiangfocus/2020-09/14/content_77200391.htm
You can look up a bunch of articles on uyghurs and follow the links for claims. They almost always at some point come back to “Zenz says” with a sprinkle of radio free asia, which is a front for the state department charitably, and a front for the CIA uncharitably. This tactic of circuitous citation was also used when the US wanted to make people believe that Iraq had WMDs.
Here is a right wing anti-china article that talks about 14 different Muslim countries investigating, claiming without any proof that it is all staged. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/01/20/2003792883
On poverty alleviation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01858-w
I dont have a source on reducing poverty decreasing radicalization but Im guessing you’d agree people with a secure economic future are less likely to throw their lives away. If you disagree I can go find some sources.
Zenz is a born-again Christian who lectures at the European School of Culture and Theology. This anodyne-sounding campus is actually the German base of Columbia International University, a US-based evangelical Christian seminary which considers the “Bible to be the ultimate foundation and the final truth in every aspect of our lives,” and whose mission is to “educate people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.”
Zenz’s work on China is inspired by this biblical worldview, as he recently explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I feel very clearly led by God to do this,” he said. “I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.”.
Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.
Zenz outlined these views in a book he co-authored in 2012, titled Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation. In the tome, Zenz discussed the return of Jesus Christ, the coming wrath of God, and the rise of the Antichrist.
The fact that this nutcase is being paraded as a credible researcher on the subject is absolutely surreal, and it’s clear that the methodology of his “research” doesn’t pass any kind of muster when examined closely.
They’re paid astroturfers and they don’t belong on Lemmy. Why the server admins refuse to police them, I just don’t know.
Imagine thinking there are paid astroturfers on a tiny niche platform with a few thousand users. We have some utterly insane people here after reddit migration.
Imagine thinking governments, fascists and PR agencies wouldn’t migrate to wherever people choose to hang out and continue their decades-long campaign to brainwash people into believing whatever is convenient for them.
I see you don’t understand the concept of niches. Governments, fascists, and PR agencies are going to spend their effort where it makes the most impact. Only a brainwashed person couldn’t comprehend that people could legitimately disagree with their world view, and anybody who thinks different from them must therefore be a paid troll.
And now you’re defending the practice.
How about, you and the rest of the dumbasses pushing your propaganda garbage go find another place to peddle it? Like hell?
The people you wish to dunk on built this platform. Feel free to leave…
First, I will take the compliment with grace.
Second, this forum deserves a better class of communist. This shit is just intellectually lazy.
Most socialists are people in the global south. Their projects that “tankies” support are actually being done. Most of this “you’re a tankie” shit stems from western chauvinist white man’s burden shit. Call us when you’ve done a successful socialist revolution, until then we’re going to be emulating the ideologies of successful socialist projects.
Edit: because lol “the US did a revolution” , read “the counter revolution of 1776”