Flavius Aetass posted:

1. As I've looked into this more I've realized that there is a lot more disinfo about it in mainstream press from Western anti-communist sources than I first thought. I think that I've attributed a lot of denial to knee-jerk reflexive defense of actual existing communism and/or anti-imperialism without considering that it may be a more targeted and legitimate response to bogus claims.

Hairy Marionette posted:

If you don’t want a slap fight don’t start one. Instead, respond to people with respect and an attempt at understanding.

Zedhe Khoja posted:

I dunno I knew a bunch of Chinese History majors and pretty much all of them used the term chinaphile on their twitters/facebook/tinder.

I'm not sure what term I'd use for myself. Turanophile?

Hairy Marionette posted:

I was a Chinaphile though. It’s what motivated me to study China during college. I still really like China and wish the CCP wasn’t so evil, but their evil is approximately equivalent to America’s evil from what I can tell.

Anyway, what causes problems like the one we’re discussing in this thread is that we don’t treat each other with respect when we have different opinions on matters that we’re emotionally attached to. Instead we snipe each other and hold those with a differing opinion to a higher standard than we hold ourselves.

I’ll continue to be too honest in a vain attempt to bridge that gap.

Ferrinus posted:

Defense or even contextualization of the CCP's policies in various ethnic autonomous regions isn't a matter of "this genocide is good, actually" or "though this genocide is regrettable, it is a price we have to pay for progress", it's "this isn't a genocide." In fact, for many, the Soviet and Chinese models autonomy and targeted economic development for ethnic minorities is precisely an alternative and antidote to the flatly genocidal policies of such liberal capitalist states as Canada.

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

nope lol

commielingus posted:

Is this a serious question

commielingus posted:

Fact: american sinophobia is worse in 2021 than in 2008. I’m sorry you’re dumb

THS posted:

it’s because it seems really absurd on its face to not see that in the context of China starting to outpace the US economy, and questions of challenging US hegemony, that there isn’t a concurrent rise in the US going completely insane over this on a level it didn’t before. in 2008 China didn’t have a larger economy by some measures than the US. it really seems nuts to look at social media, traditional media, and public attitudes at this point in time, and try to argue that there hasn’t been a rapid increase in both the amount of reporting on China, and an increase in the tenor of how big a threat this is.

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1372203536579133443?s=20

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1372205044552986624?s=20

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1372209559117295619?s=20

Hairy Marionette posted:

China has been outpacing the US economically since the 1980s. They’ve just now gotten to the “arguably surpassed” state.

THS posted:

it seems like an extremely simple observation backed up by polls i posted that general attitudes toward china have been worsening well before covid, and it seems extremely obvious that an imperial power on the decline relative to a rising one is going to increase hostile rhetoric toward its competitor. am i really going insane? none of this seems the least bit controversial to me!

Gringostar posted:

it’s easy to assume that the us is somehow uniquely evil

THS posted:

spiderhyphenman was sharing his anecdotal thoughts that it has not risen aside from anti-covid racism (and that nothing has changed regarding “china will take over the world” rhetoric since his high school days) - and you similarly attributed the rise to only covid and trump, 1) despite the public perception going far south way before that, and 2) despite the fact that covid being politicized by the american ruling class being highly relevant and hardly worth pointing out as something that makes that increasing hostility less important

THS posted:

i really think the degree to which china has become public enemy number 1, as quickly as it has, is incredibly dangerous, incredibly bad, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t think it’s “surprising” or that “it’s how things go” or that “we are all doomed anyway”

THS posted:

THS posted:

well now they are public enemy number one, and if the media and government combined obsession with the perils and evils of china continue apace, we should pay very close attention this attempt to manufacture consent for conflict with china - and do our best to stridently oppose it however we can

THS posted:

and that includes pointing out when media narratives are being overblown, warped, manufactured, or whatever, as part of this attempt to increase public animosity toward china

Hairy Marionette posted:

China certainly deserves more latitude regarding healthcare than the US. That our systems are comparable says a lot more about the US than it does about China.

GoutPatrol posted:

I have a coworker who was in Shanghai from 2013-2018. Near where he lived there was a restaurant run by a Uighur family from Xinjiang. They had a little kid, around 8-9, who didn't go to school because she didn't have the right hukou. They seemed nice. In 2017 they were going back to Xinjiang during the New Year break, and said they would be back in about a month. Well a month came and went. And then another. And another. And then all of their stuff was taken out of the restaurant and put on the street. Not just like things for the restaurant, but their personal stuff. It got picked over, and then a cram school opened up in their place. He never saw them again.

Well that's my friend's story

Serf posted:

sounds bad. i could tell you a dozen stories just like it of refugees being put into ins (now ice) vans and disappearing forever

gradenko_2000 posted:

once you've gotten to the point where you're willing to acknowledge that "China isn't doing to the Uighurs what the media and the American government keeps insisting they are", the next step is to acknowledge that "whatever it is that actually is going on in there is not sufficient grounds for imposing sanctions on them, trying to form power blocs to encircle them, sailing ships close to their waters, and generally trying to provoke a hostile confrontation with them"

ram dass in hell posted:

You acted like I was a holocaust denier literally like yesrerday because I wasn't breathlessly emptyquoting whatever bellingcat bullshit you were reposting.

ram dass in hell posted:

almost certainly huh, well then I'm sure you can demonstrate that with evidence

Serf posted:

the united states is not committing genocide on the southern border.

a few DRUNK BONERS posted:

There are no existing communist countries.

Brain Candy posted:

The consensus is that the US has concentration camps. These have a long and horrible history in the united states and elsewhere, as most innovations of the British empire do. These are not extermination camps.

Gringostar posted:

forcibly removing children from their parents and putting them into homes from someone of a different culture is 100% a genocide and it 100% happened along the southern boarder

i think a lot of the confusion coming from people here is that genocide doesn't just mean death camps

Serf posted:

refute it


not that our opinions matter, but people should not be probed or banned for using the wrong terms or expressing skepticism, and terms should not themselves be banned (lol d&d). probes and bans should be reserved for active cheerleading of these efforts imo

ram dass in hell posted:

A thing that I'm interested in is using this entire conversation as a data point in the consideration of things like propaganda, overton windows, the scope of allowable possibilities, the default conceptual framework of ideology that biases us all to be receptive to certain ideas and dismissive of others. I think many of us if not most of us itt have had our beliefs on this issue changed at least a tiny bit. It's interesting to think about why we started where we started and what the process of change of belief entailed.

Serf posted:

its incredible that people who supposedly lived through 9/11 and the manufacturing of consent for war with afghanistan and iraq are so trusting of the government and people funded by it

Raskolnikov38 posted:

so just to summarize before i gently caress off to make lunch and play video games

things with broad agreement:
human right abuses are occurring in xinjiang perpetuated by the government of the PRC
uighur cultural identity is being corroded by a multitude of forces, some intentional some not
that efforts by the US government to end the human right abuses will only make things worse

things without broad agreement:
the degree of the human right abuses

correct? incorrect?