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I feel these statements at least partly stem from contrarian origins. We have a huge supply of facts as to why China indeed is a fascist totalitarian state - look at what happened to Hong Kong as an example. Pooling these facts into ”US propaganda” is borderline intellectually dishonest.
>People in China are generally happy
In happiness, China ranked 82nd out of 146 countries in 2023.
You mean the violent breaking off of it from China by the imperial "enlightened" United Kingdom? Its massacre of Chinese protesting UK imperialism in the 1960s?
What a hilarious joke it is to see the westerners finally kicked out of their imperial colony taking some self-righteous posture of supposed concern about the Chinese there. What a laugh.
Sandwiched between posts complaining about African "vagrants" begging for food in San Francisco.
Of course theirs plenty of evidence. There's also plenty of evidence that the US is a nation of violent psychopaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes. That's just one example of the bad things in the US.
The US is far from great and when viewed through the right lens there's tons and tons of stuff. The Chinese are fed this stuff and all of it is true. All of it. The problem here is that this information isn't a full characterization of the US. It's a small slice of the pie.
What I'm saying is that the information you are being fed is also a small slice of the pie. It's nearly impossible to prove this to both you and your Chinese counterpart being fed anti-American propaganda. So I can only tell you about my perspective and hopefully you can at the very least consider the fact that your universe of information is limited.
I'm a Chinese American. Meaning I was born in the US to immigrant parents from China. I have many immigrant friends from China, many friends that were born here and lived in China (myself included) and I can only tell you that if you lived in China and it's not what you think. It's quite normal living in China, it's not some imagined fascist dystopia so many misinformed Americans fantasize about.
It's unlikely you'll change your opinion based off this one post. But perhaps this post can be a seed for the future where you might become more informed about what it's really like.
Perhaps I can convince you to at least mistrust western propaganda. Western propaganda is highly, highly sophisticated because it's fed to you under the guise of Freedom of the press. It's more sophisticated then Chinese propaganda because the Chinese on a certain level are aware of lies and censorship. It's actually not violating any freedom of press policies. Government sponsored lies in the press is still technically freedom of the press. Take a look at these sources:
https://graphika.com/reports/unheard-voice https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/sio-aug-22-takedowns https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7z77m/facebook-twitter-take...
I guess the best way to break out of that mode is to have several Chinese friends from china here. Ask them what it's like.
>In happiness, China ranked 82nd out of 146 countries in 2023.
If you lived in China you'll know it's not because of the government. It's actually because of capitalism. China is a dog eat dog competitive society. People are overworked there. The unhappiness is the same sort of unhappiness that corporate drones feel here for their 9-5 job but 1000x worse. The Chinese aren't unhappy because of "lack of freedoms" or anything like that.
The majority doesn't really care about censorship because it doesn't effect peoples daily lives. Most people aren't protestors or part of organizations with an agenda.
Not to mention free speech isn't something that's available on HN too. Watch if this thread becomes too heated, dang will swoop in and shut it down. You're not free to say whatever you want. The government in China is much the same way except it's global law. You think if you have a huge problem with the administration here on HN you're free to talk about it openly? This almost never happens because everyone knows free speech isn't available on HN, it's a private forum.
Some things are worse in China other things are worse in the US. Think about it. A chinese guy is telling you like it is right to your face but you stubbornly refuse to even consider it. How is this different then say Big Oil denying climate change or Big Tobacco denying the addictiveness and health effects of tobacco? At the very least none of what I said should flip your beliefs but a wise person should begin to question it.
Have you considered that the majority aren't protestors _because_ of censorship?
HN is not a country, I don't have to use it.
I am from Russia, and many people were telling me the same thing, but they are fools. After the last February most of them got their senses though.
Conflict to resolve a dispute when one party is coerced is justified.
If a slave killed their master, they are resolving the dispute of whether a slave is a person or property. If Russia says Ukraine is not a country and Ukraine says yes we are, Ukrainians are not in the wrong for asserting themselves. If someone taxes you but doesn't give you the benefit of that tax money, then conflict to stop the theft is justified (revolutionary war).
So where you see conflict and think conflict is bad, I see conflict as a possible force for good. I don't want the US to become a corporate dystopia, but we are most definitely headed in that direction and that is a good conflict to have. I don't want China to be an ethno fascist state, but china is headed in that direction (and I personally believe they are already there), and putting a stop to that is a good conflict to have.
You have the privilege of saying china is not a villian, but if you put yourself in the shoes of Uighurs, people from Hong Kong, Tibetans or Taiwanese citizens rather than in privileged shoes, I think you would come to a different conclusion.
> People in China are generally happy
And that is the point. When you say people, you are referring to Han people. That's the ethno in ethno-fascist.
> The arsenal democracy is absolutely insane. The world doesn't need this.
I absolutely disagree. Sometimes your only choice is fight or submit, and I would rather live free than die a slave.
Sometimes that is the only choice. On that we can agree.
Unfortunately when it comes to China that is clearly not only Not the only choice, but also the stupidest and most harmful choice to both sides.
Think about it.
>Conflict to resolve a dispute when one party is coerced is justified.
Whatever did China do to you? And whatever did you do to China? Mostly nothing. Just a trade war. I think China's biggest crime is attempting to get a GDP per capita bigger than the United States. Or stealing and copying technology being a big second. But China has been stealing tech since before the US-China rivalry so I think most of it spawns from the economic rivalry. These aren't legitimate coercion's, it's all dick size comparisons.
>And that is the point. When you say people, you are referring to Han people. That's the ethno in ethno-fascist.
What is this? That's obviously bullshit. So when it says "We the people" on the declaration of independence it's only referring to White males? That makes the US a ethno-sexist-corporate dystopia. Come on man.
Although the "All men are created equal" part of the declaration literally, refers to white males. It's written on a historical document. If I used this to argue with you to make the claim that the US is a white supremacist country of males it'd be disingenuous and lacking nuance. I am telling you that's exactly the kind of arguments you are parroting from the US propaganda machine.