I’ve seen this picture used in some pro-China instances, I don’t think it’s a useful statistic in a slightest. It can just as well show how indoctrinated people are in China (and it in fact does by looking at a second graph, it’s comical to claim that China is a democracy)
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Riverside@reddthat.com 3 weeks agoPeople in China definitely don’t live scared to criticise the government, I’ve had plenty of Chinese exchange students and discussed openly politics with them and they have no problem doing so. In fact, people in China have a much better opinion of their system of governance than we do anywhere in the west:
Queer rights need improving but are not horrible, people are free to have a relationship with whomever they want (though older generations may not understand it and may show prejudice), and there are even well-known “gay hubs” like Chengdu, where you can find plenty of overtly gay clubs, and there’s increasing homosexual representation in media. The laws need to catch up, but the country has developed a lot faster economically than it’s realistic to change culturally, and thankfully China has no threat of a right wing party taking away the rights once they’re earned!
everyone knows they have the most invasive privacy system, they will even use it for things like knowing automatically that you paid for a train ticket wheb you walk in so it feels like a plus as long as you’re a good citizen.
You’re giving a botched description of the western media-manufactured conspiracy theory of the “social credit score”. Much in the same way that a criminal in Europe pending trial wouldn’t be allowed to board a plane, this applies to China in long distance trains, simple as that. I’m a Spaniard with a thick beard and face recognition didn’t work on me when I visited China (lmao), and it was never a problem because there are always helpful workers as an alternative.
Europe looks so so much better
Unfortunately, not most of Europe, you’re probably referring only to a few Nordic countries and possibly France or Germany, where wages are decent for highly trained workers. I’m living in Spain, and my friends with PhDs can’t afford to get into a mortgage, and everywhere in Europe there is continuous degradation of the welfare state thanks to neoliberalism imposed by the EU, and now it’s threatened even more due to far right parties rising because of the 20 years of economic decay without an end in sight + capitalist media conglomerates.
flyby@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Riverside@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
It can just as well show how indoctrinated people are in China (and it in fact does by looking at a second graph, it’s comical to claim that China is a democracy)
Of course, the real democracies are the ones people hate. I feel so democratic here in Spain, where we get to enjoy voting once every 4 years the colour of the party that will apply neoliberal austerity policy and progress in the erosion of healthcare, education and pensions! So democratic when every 4, at most 8 years, people hate-vote their way out of the existing government coalition and move to the other side of the isle which repeats exactly the same EU-dictated policy.
I feel so democratic knowing that, if you start a leftist party, the deep state will literally fabricate false evidence of funding by Venezuela and Iran and leak it to all capitalist media to discredit you and demolish your party (read about Podemos and the Informe PISA). So democratic that the institutions do nothing about the rise of the far right in Europe at the same time! God I love our democracy
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
China is democratic. The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
When looking at why people in China believe it’s democratic, it’s because policy in China consistently aims at satisfying the needs of the people and consistently achieves results. Democracy is rule by the majority, and in China the working classes are in power. “Indoctrination” doesn’t work that way, Chinese citizens are more than capable of understanding if rule by the majority exists or not, and trying to rely on a narrative of “indoctrination” just sidesteps the entire conversation.
heartpunk25@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Degradation of the welfare state. That does sound really familiar. A classic excuse politically is to say the immigrants and minorities are taking it, we have had it erode more and more so many times here. Back in the 90’s it was the (totally not black) welfare queens mooching off the child care income from her (totally not black) 4 kids she had in the inner city. Now it’s anyone from south of the border that is apparently taking it. There are countless examples of prejudice fueling keeping the poor poor here, the arguments were a lot more overt right after the civil war but eventually they just became a corporate co-opted smoke screen since they really stand to benefit more than anyone. It sounds really hard in Europe too I guess. It’s such a vicious cycle fascism and wealth inequality. Or even just scapegoats and wealth inequality. They do say polarization correlates with wealth inequality but the overton window especially in the US has shifted so far right that it’s hard to even beleive sometimes.
Riverside@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
A classic excuse politically is to say the immigrants and minorities are taking it
In Spain the scapegoats are usually Latin American immigrants, Moroccan immigrants, Romanian immigrants and south-Sahara immigrants, together with ofc the extremely violent racism against the Roma people prevalent in all of Europe. Ofc all these people are the backbone of the economy with their hard labor.
It’s such a vicious cycle fascism and wealth inequality
It really fucking is. Europe can’t compete internationally against China’s economy and increasingly can’t maintain control over its neocolonies, so the only way to increase corporate profits is by destroying our salaries and lowering their taxes, and the capitalists pull out the far-right in response to this, as a tool to discipline us in case we get too creative with worker rights and unionization.
Hisse@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
People in China definitely don’t live scared to criticise the government Oh yeah. Ask them to say so in front of a cop. There’s a difference between arguing about politics during lunch with your friends thinking that you’re not being surveilled, and going on the streets protesting about stuff.
Queer rights need improving but are not horrible
That’s true. There’s a lot of discrimination but I wouldn’t say that the government is to blame here. There’s this internet meme that goes “if you dont do xxx you are gay” and gay here supposed to be a negative word. This isn’t just some homophobic people’s thing, it’s young people’s common language that’s pretty widespread.
You’re giving a botched description of the western media-manufactured conspiracy theory of the “social credit score”
Social credit scores don’t exist, but the privacy system is invasive. Literally all social medias and games are required to have ID verification. The first thing that appears after you have logged to most (if not all) online mobile app (for games, even offline ones) available legally through ways that the government expects (like app stores) is an ID verification popup requiring real name and ID. For games they are legally required to limit children’s game times during weekdays and all nights. It isn’t even effective as most children just input their parents’ ids. At the cost of the whole nation’s onlined, socialable people’s anonymities. Its really painful because WeChat is on the list of verification demanding apps, and people cannot live without wechat.
Hisse@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
People in China definitely don’t live scared to criticise the government Oh yeah. Ask them to say so in front of a cop. There’s a difference between arguing about politics during lunch with your friends thinking that you’re not being surveilled, and going on the streets protesting about stuff.
Queer rights need improving but are not horrible
That’s true. There’s a lot of discrimination but I wouldn’t say that the government is to blame here. There’s this internet meme that goes “if you dont do xxx you are gay” and gay here supposed to be a negative word. This isn’t just some homophobic people’s thing, it’s young people’s common language that’s pretty widespread.
You’re giving a botched description of the western media-manufactured conspiracy theory of the “social credit score”
Social credit scores don’t exist, but the privacy system is invasive. Literally all social medias and games are required to have ID verification. The first thing that appears after you have logged to most (if not all) online mobile app (for games, even offline ones) available legally through ways that the government expects (like app stores) is an ID verification popup requiring real name and ID. For games they are legally required to limit children’s game times during weekdays and all nights. It isn’t even effective as most children just input their parents’ ids. At the cost of the whole nation’s onlined, socialable people’s anonymities. Its really painful because WeChat is on the list of verification demanding apps, and people cannot live without wechat.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
People in China definitely don’t live scared to criticise the government, I’ve had plenty of Chinese exchange students and discussed openly politics with them and they have no problem doing so. In fact, people in China have a much better opinion of their system of governance than we do anywhere in the west:
I think it’s kinda a more complicated subject than anyone’s presented in this argument. There are plenty of people who are afraid of criticizing the government, but they make up a tiny minority of the actual population and are more than likely ethnic minorities.
The overwhelming majority of Chinese nationals have very positive views of their government, which makes sense considering the advances this government has made over the last 50 years.
In my experience if you have talked to exchange students who are critical of the Chinese government, they are typically from Hong Kong, or from very wealthy families who would prefer a more hands off approach when it comes to the government’s involvement in economics.
Queer rights need improving but are not horrible, people are free to have a relationship with whomever they want (though older generations may not understand it and may show prejudice)
Thats a bit of an understatement. As an Asian dude I can attest this isn’t an issue unique to China but, it’s a problem in any Asian country where Confucianism was prevalent in their history. You may be “free to have a relationship with anyone you want”, just so long as you are not loud about it. You will face discrimination in things like employment and housing, and more than likely be disowned from your family. Though the only time the government will really get involved is if you participate in activism.
and thankfully China has no threat of a right wing party taking away the rights once they’re earned!
I think this is a common misconception held by westerners, who typically associate cultural conservativism with economic liberalism. While there may not be a party representative of the economic right, that’s really detached from the cultural mores promoted by the government.
All Eastern countries are more culturally conservative than most all western nations. And the values that the west associates with leftism are not typically aligned with what a country like China views as leftist policy. In fact, I would say the current make up is more culturally conservative than they were in the late 90 and 00s when they decriminalized thing like homosexuality. They are currently going through a bit of a nationalist streak, and with that are more culturally involved with promoting ideologies like Confucianism.
While I don’t think they will recriminalize the LGBT community, their engagement with more typical leftist economic policy is no real indication of that. In fact, I think the more they utilize nationalism to promote their economic policy, the more likely they will emphasize their traditional cultural values, making it harder for lgbtq citizens to thrive within their communities.
heartpunk25@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I honestly kind of wondered where the whole social credit score thing even came from tbh. I know US media paints such a horrible picture of China and everybody here parrots it. I think with the being afraid to speak out thing I was more talking about the media walking on eggshells as just an unwritten rule and people still feeling a little wary saying things on social media against the government. That is what I kind of heard was one of the small downsides in China after watching a video of someone who moved there 10 years ago. I have heard that Europe is a bit of a mess right now, but I honestly think the US is worse, aren’t we half the cause of it anyways? With this war, and Trumps policies, and corporations funding politics and MAGA propaganda encouraging nationalism in places getting a lot more immigrants. It probably sounds really America-centric but I talked to somebody else that said we had a huge influence so I’m not really sure how much of this is our country’s fault abroad.
Riverside@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
If you’re interested on a video about how the social credit thing actually works, explained by a Chinese, you can watch this one, it’s clear and concise enough.
Hmmm, I think there’s a part of truth to this. There is a more active state censorship in China than there is in, say, Europe, though I don’t think it takes a punitive form except in extreme cases. In Europe it’s private sector censorship: a journalist cannot write explicitly socialist opinions in a newspaper at risk of being fired, and the few journals that allow for this are fringe, heavily criticized, and don’t receive any funding (most media here are unprofitable by themselves and survive by cash infusions from other parts of the private sector with vested interests in controlling the public narrative). On the other hand, the censorship in China makes it so that there aren’t big crowds of far-right reactionary conspiracy theorists: imagine how many thousands and thousands of lives saved by the lack of vaccine denialists, facemask deniers, or fake natural cancer therapies.
I mean, the US is worse for a fact right now with Trump, we still have a measure of social welfare, but it’s only been disintegrating and never so much as recovering a bit in the entirety of my adult life, and this applies to all of Europe. In Spain, a leftist party called Podemos recently became hugely popular trying to change this, and got an orchestrated smear campaign consisting of manufactured false evidence of funding by Iran and Venezuela which was fabricated by a reactionary corps within the national police under direction of the minister of interior affairs, and leaked to all capitalist media (we have two big media groups in Spanish Television, and one of them belongs to far-right Italian politician and pedophile Silvio Berlusconi, rest in piss fucker). This all but destroyed the party in a matter of a few years.
Something similar happened in Greece, they elected a leftist party called Syriza to government and they won the elections under the premise of reverting neoliberal policy. The EU intervened through the infamous “Troika” and told Greece that if it stopped cutting the budgets of healthcare and education it would be kicked out of the EU and the Euro. It’s truly sad and disgusting.
heartpunk25@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The video’s editing was a little obnoxious, but I think I get the idea of how it got twisted and overblown.