How are China’s stringent lockdowns explained in this conspiracy theory? Also, where do I sign up as a member?
Comment on Jet Fuel
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I once heard of a pediatrician who successfully convinced a concerned mother that anti-vax ideology was likely a psyop by the Russians to weaken the health of the American populace starting with our children. Doesn’t hurt that it’s probably true.
overcast5348@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Well you can’t not do that, especially not if you’re already known for doing that kind of thing anyway for other things.
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
A repressive regime that becomes less repressive during a global pandemic is highly suspicious. Gotta keep up appearances.
ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml 1 week ago
just trust me bro
overcast5348@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Okay, I’m convinced. 😂
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I remember reading somewhere that while a western audience would perceive this as utterly farcical, a Chinese citizen is at least more likely to perceive it as the government taking their safety and security seriously enough to be thorough about it. Meanwhile in the US, the government is more successful in hiding abuses by “protecting freedoms.” Powerful people all around the world have basically the same playbook, but a big part of that strategy is knowing their audience.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Half-done virus got out per accident?
rbits@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Can confirm this is true because the same was true for my mum. She was against the COVID vaccine, but then she started believing that the theories were started by the Chinese government to target people who don’t listen to the authorities.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
…she wasn’t wrong tho!
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
The one child policy has been abolished a good while before covid.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 1 week ago
That doesn’t change the distribution of demographics by itself. Even assuming the birth rate skyrocketed after the nixing of the one child policy, it takes ~20 years before those people are working age.
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
The big problem China faced and why the one-child policy was abandoned after all is that there was a staunch focus on having a male child to “keep the bloodline alive” (cultural reasoning) which led to a stagnation in the 0-14 years age group.
Covid was most deadly for the age group of 65 and above and in 2019, they had proportionally less people aged 65+ than the US (13.50% in China vs. 16.4% in the US). Either China’s scientists failed immensely or the virus stemmed from bad health care practices in livestock markets selling bats.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
…you realize generations are longer than a few years…right?
bloubz@lemmygrad.ml 1 week ago
The Chinese government has not persecuted Uighurs, tin foil hat person
F04118F@feddit.nl 1 week ago
I understand your desire to defend communism.
But really, how far does an authoritarian regime have to go, while calling itself communist, before you judge them?
What evidence would change your mind about the CCP?
kureta@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
I was banned from /r/latestagecapitalism for not loving China. Anytime I tried to explain why I do not unconditionally love everything about China, they said “but USA?” Dude, I don’t care about USA. It’s thousands of kilometers away from where I live. Everything I said was interpreted as defending USA. I say “China does this” they hear “USA doesn’t do that”. There are other countries in the world, you know, not everything is about USA. End of rant :)
bloubz@lemmygrad.ml 1 week ago
Where did I defend the CCP or communism?
(I do fully support communism and have critical support for China, but that’s not the question here)
What evidence would change your mind about […]
Show me evidence that the Uyghur are being persecuted
Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml 1 week ago
Where did I defend the CCP or communism?
You’re a Lemmygrad user, they’re going to assume that’s your intent by default
F04118F@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Thank you for answering.
I am not sure where to start, but let’s take the easy way: At the moment of writing, the wikipedia page “Persecution of Uyghurs in China” has 585 references.
They’re probably all written by seemingly independent institutions, journalists and scientists who somehow have a McCarthyist-like fear of communism that they’d risk their credibility just to add a bit of damage to communist China’s moral standing?
Or are they all factually incorrect through some other mechanism?
Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
My personal conspiracy theory is that the Chinese government did engineer (or at least selectively cultivate) COVID
The theory I’d believe more is that the U S of A govt or one of its agencies engineered and released it in China.
China and India are growing economies, with decent populations and a pandemic would seriously delay their growth and help the U S of A keep it’s top place for a bit longer or destroy its competitors.
The US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on civillians, so them using biological weapons on civillians would not be a big moral barrier for them or a big stretch to think about.
They probably didn’t think it’d spread this much and their own citizens n president would be idiotic enough to be against vaccines and masks, even when people were dying.
MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 5 days ago
The US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on civillians, so them using biological weapons on civillians would not be a big moral barrier for them or a big stretch to think about.
That’s such a small stretch that it’s actually a confirmed fact that the US has repeatedly used chemical and biological warfare. Korea and Vietnam are merely two easy examples.
Vilian@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
The theory I’d believe more is that the U S of A govt or one of its agencies engineered and released it in China.
They did a stupid ass job them, killing the older only gonna help China, and it didn’t even killed enough people to make a difference and it backfired in the US, the conspiracy that China was engineering with it and shit escaped make more sense
Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 6 days ago
They did a stupid ass job them
They probably didn’t expect their president to be idiotic enough to be against vaccines and recommend stuff like bleach.
They’re a developed nation and could’ve had better control.
They were able to hinder Chinese trade a bit.And didn’t they try and fail to kill Castro in many stupid ass ways?
I think them doing it is more likely than China doing it to their own, considering the trade issues that the virus caused for China at the time.
MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 5 days ago
You forgot the anti-vaccine campaign they ran in countries near China saying their vaccine contained pig parts. Not the US state dept’s first anti-vax campaign btw.
US vaccines were made available first and foremost to Western citizens, and only then were made available to purchase. China released their vaccine worldwide, so countries without a vaccine program had access earlier and cheaper than they could acquire vaccines from the US. Their anti-vax campaign was meant to prevent other countries from accepting China’s offer, thus preventing goodwill towards China, protecting the profits of US companies, and leading to the deaths of millions who could have been saved in “US Allied” countries such as the Philippines.
If you were going to buy into one of these two conspiracy theories, first you should have some actual evidence, and then you should look at the behavior of these countries and ask yourself: which behavior is more consistent with releasing a virus that could act as an economic weapon meant to shut-down a country, but not kill everyone?
MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 6 days ago
Citations needed or all citations point to unreliable sources (Adrian Zenz).
EleventhHour@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The reason I absolutely believe this to be true? Because I’ve used this on my little brothers since we were kids. I’m 45.
It’s called “reverse psychology.”
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 week ago
It’s a bizarre and (afaik) unfounded conspiracy theory, but I don’t think this reasoning works as a refutation. It’s still very possible that the experiment got out, and even if not they still needed policies to protect all the people they didn’t want to be affected because the targeting isn’t perfect.