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China using families as 'hostages' to quash dissent abroad
(www.bbc.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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What is with the China apologists in this thread? Wtf??
I see it all over Lemmy unfortunately. I think it is because Lemmy is still relatively fringe and it is where lots of pro communism communities emerged. Normally, I find it actually pretty refreshing to see more left wing stuff but the pro China (or at least the kneejerk reactions to anything anti China) to be exhausting.
To be fair, I used to see a lot of it on Reddit as well. I think they are just a bigger proportion percentage wise on Lemmy so you see much more of it.
It's a bit of a mixed bag. There are a lot of pro-China comments that are just... Well they either drank the kool-aid or are dishing it out. Especially when it comes to social policies.
On the other hand, China has been making significant technological accomplishments that you just don't hear about in Western media. They've made a lot of advancements in spaceflight and manufacturing processes that humanity as a whole could benefit from if we were more cooperative. And that's not even mentioning Nuclear Power.
China is WAY ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to new nuclear power. They're the only ones with Gen 4 reactors, the only ones working on Thorium reactors, and are on track to build over 100 new nuclear plants over the next few years. China is to nuclear power as the US is to weapons; sure other countries might be tinkering with some stuff, but there's really no comparison when they're doing more than the rest of the world combined.
I wish there were more unbiased sources. Unfortunately, there's usually only one of two sides. Either you get news from China which usually boils down to "We're amazing and nothing we do is ever bad or wrong. Anyone saying otherwise is just lying because they're jealous/afraid of our wild success!" Or you get news from the US/West that's basically "China is a totalitarian poo-country that's on the verge of collapse. They contribute nothing to global advancement and the only thing they're good for is making cheap, poor quality, crap."
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
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.
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.
Our you could just listen to someone from Kuwait who saw Iraqi invaders remove babies from incubators:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
Oh wait, they made that shit up as a pretext for furthering US foreign interests.
Nah they have a typo ("anit-China") in their summary I think they're fine.
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.
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.