• kiagam@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I saw that protests are free as long as they are against the local government. People can complain online and in-person against local authorities and demand central government step in to save them, too. But if the rethoric starts going to “central government is wrong”, then it gets supressed

      • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Do you have a source that says that happens in today’s China? I know that Falun Gong is suppressed, but they are literally a CIA-funded group created to undermine the state.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Falun Gong have allied with foreign intelligence services, but they weren’t created by those services. Originally, the organization was allied with the Communist Party and on generally good terms. They only ran afoul of the Chinese Communists when Falun Gong leaders became embroiled in increasingly noxious financial and abuse scandals. Not unlike how the Catholic Church’s status soured across Europe and the US East Coast following the slew of child sex abuse allegations.

          That’s when Falun Gong officials started fleeing to the NATO block and issuing increasingly hysterical allegations about the conduct of the CCP towards its members.

          • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Thanks for the correction. The point remains that today’s CCP mostly limits itself to suppressing foreign actors. And why should it need to suppress its own citizens, anyways? The CCP has a 95.5% approval rate. The Chinese people are utterly committed to their socialist project, and rightly view it as a creation to be proud of.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              And why should it need to suppress its own citizens, anyways?

              The goal of the modern CCP is largely understood to be economic growth and steadily improving quality of life for domestic citizenry as a means of discouraging domestic upheavels (Tianamen and the Falun Gong lead movements being two classic examples).

              That’s going to come with some level of suppression due to friction between what any subset of the population believes/wants and what the central government believes/wants.

              But this isn’t - at it’s root - a Socialist policy. It is a Confucian policy, with Socialist Characteristics.

              The CCP has a 95.5% approval rate.

              I hope you’re joking.

              There’s no shortage of dissatisfaction with the CCP from within the Chinese polity. There’s no shortage from within the CCP.

              But what westerners don’t like to talk about is the Mass Line approach employed by Chinese political leadership, which legitimately seeks to minimize conflict in pursuit of maximum economic benefits.

              You don’t have gonzo gunmen storming Beijing in hopes of winging President Xi, right now, because you don’t have a public openly at odds with the mission of the chief executive.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  In 2016, the last year the survey was conducted, 95.5 percent of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with Beijing.

                  Compared to the relatively high satisfaction rates with Beijing, respondents held considerably less favorable views toward local government. At the township level, the lowest level of government surveyed, only 11.3 percent of respondents reported that they were “very satisfied.”

                  So, I am not going to dive into the raw numbers, but I’m already a little turned around at

                  • relatively satisfied

                  • highly satisfied

                  • very satisfied

                  I’ll simply note that local governments are also run by Communist Party officials. So claiming the CCP has 99.5% approval (even considering how this is a decade out of date and how “relatively” and “highly” satisfied suggest a bit of a gulf in opinion) is a serious fudge of the real public view.

                  That said, yeah. Much higher domestic view of the state than in the US/EU block. Definitely a problem for all those NAFO-heads who pine for Regime Change in Beijing.

      • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        I heard online that it’s illegal to be against Christianity in America, as well as it being illegal to be against fascism, or ‘anti fascist’ in the USA as you’ll be labelled a domestic terrorist. I heard in America that the cops won’t kill you if you are a white person walking at night but not if you are a black teenager. I heard in America that the government will allow your father to shoot you until you die if you disagree with him politically but ask to see his gun. I heard in America you will be killed by the government for being homeless poor and there’s nothing anyone will do about it.

        But America is where freedom is. If you live in any conditions freer than that, you are actually in a less free country than America because actually America is actually freer than any other country actually.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I heard in America that the government will allow your father to shoot you until you die if you disagree with him politically but ask to see his gun.

          I think this is a great illustration of the kind of propaganda we see online wrt any “Evil Foreign Country”. In this case, it was the British Press reporting hysterically about a father hosting his daughter’s family for Thanksgiving, bragging about being a Trump supporter, bragging about owning a gun, and then accidentally shooting his daughter (literally a room away from the rest of the family) because he’s the exact kind of dipshit that doesn’t know how to handle a firearm professionally. Grand Jury threw the charges out precisely because it was so obvious that he’d been negligent rather than willful. The rest of the family confirms it. But the Brits report it like it was an Honor Killing that the local government endorsed and facilitated.

          We see this kind of manipulation of events in US media - wrt China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, France, Mexico, Antifa, Immigrants, Brown People, you name it - any time national news organizations decide they need to flog a particular government or demographic group.

          Hardly unique to the US. But when you’re getting the full Clockwork Orange, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be an outsider looking in.

        • kiagam@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I understand the parallel, but all you said can be confirmed or denied by several sources I have access to. I don’t have alternative sources for most of the claims about China. Could you provide them? When I read about these things, it seemed trustworthy.

          Also, I’m not even american, chill. I am not chinese either, I don’t have a horse in this race. Both can burn in nuclear winter as far as I care

          • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 days ago

            by several sources I have access to

            Does your government limit your access to any sources?

            But also all of those things are true and verifiable. That’s freedom in America baby—free to be rich and if you’re not filthy rich and just middle class or above you’re good as long as you’re white and male. Not so free for many other people.

            • kiagam@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              What I mean by “have access to” is that information about china is scarce unless you are reading in chinese and talking to chinese people. I will be visiting there later this year btw and have family that goes frequently for business, but that doesn’t really show political reality

            • kiagam@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              No, third world country that doesn’t give a shit and isn’t technically capable of doing anything to that scale (maybe I saw a DNS block once? And only on the ISP DNS)

          • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            There are some hardcore pro-china people on lemmy. I made a joke about disappearing someone for re-education (like what happened to Jack Ma, co-founder of Ali-baba) and people downvoted shit out of it and said my American media is lying, idk what I’m talking about, etc etc.

            I’m not saying the American media is a beacon of journalistic integrity or anything but it’s telling they won’t even admit these things happen in China.

            • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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              I just spent 5 minutes googling and didn’t find a single source that says Jack Ma was disappeared for re-education. Not even right-wing sources like Business Insider and Forbes.

              • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Wait wait wait. I wanted more info on where I might have heard that “misinformation” so I Googled it and this is literally the AI summary that popped up before I could scroll what are you talking about “didn’t find a single source” lol

                  • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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                    1 day ago

                    Read my comment for once. You claimed you couldn’t find a single thing to suggest this “re-education narrative” and it was literally the first thing that popped up. But I guess your Chinese internet isn’t the same with your governments “great firewall”.

                • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  Also, literally nothing in that says anything about Jack Ma. Stop relying on AI, it’s frying your brain.

                  • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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                    1 day ago

                    Never said it was trustworthy. Try not to be so disingenuous next time. Dude said there wasn’t anything anywhere that said people get disappeared and it was literally the first thing that popped up. Tank harder ig

              • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                You mean the state didn’t report what honestly happened to him? :O I’m shocked i say, shocked. You know epstein definitely killed himself and worked alone too, our government said so. As if Forbes is gonna report on that lol good try

                  • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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                    2 days ago

                    No official reports, no.

                    Jack Ma, critic of the Chinese government. Falls out of contact for a few days, then comes back and loves the Chinese government oh my gosh! :O

            • vagrancyand@sh.itjust.works
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              …You spread a conspiracy theory not even supported by mainstream US outlets and people reacted badly?!

              Jack Ma was not ‘disappeared.’ He was, in fact, brought up on charges that were later dismissed due to his cooperation. This was public news. Because Jack Ma attempted to bribe members of the CPC in order to gain political support for his incredibly unpopular and stupid idea of lessening safety regulations to bring Chinese markets closer to the ‘freedom’ of the US market.

              His political movement failed, his bribery attempts were exposed, and unfortunately, he was not punished for them beyond having to issue an apology. Honestly it’s a shame China didn’t actually punish him like your conspiracy theory suggests, given the amount of damage he attempted to do to the Chinese economy and integrity of the People’s congress.