We often hear a lot of 'information' (bordering propaganda), about China being an "authoritarian surveillance state". I don't mean to sound absurd, but is the US that much better in terms of authoritarianism or surveillance? If so, why?
Who knows? The last guy who touched upon it had to hide in freedom-loving Russia afterwards.
The PRC has it easy. They don't have to hide their actions behind contortions of "national security", which makes it difficult to compare the extent and pervasiveness of US and PRC surveillance.
On the other hand, people like Chomsky aren't being persecuted. Though all in all, I would also say they get ignored very efficiently, Chomsky still isn't exactly unknown either. Is there a Chinese author and speaker with decades of real harsh criticism of their government under their belt, who is living in China with their works being translated in all sorts of languages and also available in China?
This is only as I understand it, but technically, yes.
People like to think that the Chinese Communist Party is a single body with a single well-defined set of ideas.
It's not.
It's perfectly possible for academics and even party politicians to utter criticism of the current party direction. They can, for example, advocate the return of fundamental Maoism, or advocate free market mechanisms. As long as you can argue a point of view that lies within the party's tenets, there is usually no problem.
It's different when:
- you are a person of influence.
and
- you argue against the stability of the country (where, conveniently, the CCP is seen as the most important stabilising force in mainland China (by the CCP)).
I don't know if a Chinese Chomsky exists. I have the impression that if he would exist, he would be marginalised by the media, or some of his ideas would be adopted and used in some splintered minority faction of the CCP and hailed as a great but impractical thinker, and mostly ignored.
Secondly and much more fundamentally, even if they made such arguments, at no point could they get away with simply advocating for the full removal of the CCP's monopoly on political power.
That's a no-go and it's also something that defines a huge difference between China and, say, the U.S, where an academic or media personality or pretty much anyone can freely advocate all kinds of stuff against the political system without having to phrase it in any particularly careful way.
This includes being able to state that the Republican/Democrat duopoloy is a piece of ineffective garbage and needs to be removed. They might face some social backlash from fans of opposing views but they won't have their legal, financial or human standing destroyed by the government through literal punishments.
Reaction to criticism and dissidence not really a principled stand in the eyes of a state. The way the US clamped down hard on leftist political groups and organizations during the Cold War is rather the actions of a country believing itself to be threatened by instability and unrest. Political figures who fronted harsh criticisms against the government have routinely been assassinated or framed and arrested. COINTELPRO is a program which shows how political repression works the US when it feels politically vulnerable.
It is also unlikely they even know what happens in china to a good extent because china itself is not very communicative; they still report the same covid stats since march, for example, and their government websites are full of broken links. It is hard for me to get accurate info on china even from news sites, I wouldn't trust what most people say.
All that said I think China is worse, but Americans would have you believe the difference is gigantic.
China is in another league. They are using deep packet inspection to block services they don’t allow access to, they force some people to install apps on their phone that track them. The great firewall of China is far more visible and impactful than the real Great Wall of China.
There are three somewhat current reports on there. One comes from the US State department, one from an organization started by Eleanor Roosevelt with strong US ties, and one lists both China and the US as "enemies of the internet."
> The fact that if a piece of evidence is acquired against you in an unlawful way it cannot be used against you in court as a US citizen
The US has repeatedly manufactured and framed political dissidents when it has felt politically threatened historically. Those rights you're talking about were useless to them.
You can't be deemed "a dangerous criminal" without having actually been convicted in a court of law by a jury of your peers. And even then, there's appeals, pardons, etc.
> What good does the right to free speech do you if your speech is inconsequential?
Speech is never inconsequential. Even a one on one conversation can have a profound impact on another person. It's up to you to get your ideas out there and to compete in a diverse marketplace of ideas. That's the way it works.
> The US has repeatedly manufactured and framed political dissidents when it has felt politically threatened historically. Those rights you're talking about were useless to them.
Not generally, no. But sure, there are corrupt people in Government, no doubt. And that corruption has even been levied against a duly elected president of the United States (Trump vs the Obama FBI/CIA spygate). The existence of imperfection in the system is not proof of the system's uselessness.
"n December 2008, al-Awlaki sent a communique to the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab, congratulating them."
"In March 2010, a tape featuring al-Awlaki was released in which he urged Muslims residing in the United States to attack their country of residence."
Look I'm no fan of drone strikes in general, but if you leave the United States to go join a terrorist organization and incite violence against the U.S. and other innocent people in other countries like Somalia..you clearly have lost Constitutional protection. We don't give trials for foreign terrorists or armies, that's a given.
So if I accuse you of a bad enough crime due process doesn't matter? Seems like a pretty easy loophole to exploit. And even if you can justify stripping al-Awlaki of his rights, it's pretty hard to justify killing his US citizen 16 year old son.
Without a trial this can only be considered an accusation. The US government claims this, many other people claim he was never part of a terrorist group. Living in Yemen is not a crime.
>incite acts of terrorism against America and other civilians in Yemen and Somalia, yes, it doesn't fucking matter.
Not only are the claims that he "incited terrorism" overblown, his right to free speech allows him to make such declarations.