cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4968186

Common China W

This is something I occasionally come across in Western media and also heard IRL from a Chinese émigré (very lib and hates China, so I take whatever they say about the country with a grain of salt) - that the Chinese internet (and by extension, society, though probably less visibly) has a problem with widespread chauvinism and racism, against black people and ethnic minorities in China in particular, and other things such as wishing genocide on the people of Taiwan (???) or Japanese people.

Now, I'm sure China has its fair share of fascists and generic reactionary nutjobs, but I'm wondering just how bad it is. Most studies/articles come from Western institutions, so I don't know how to feel about those.

I'm curious what studies there are in China about this, how widely discussed this is (i.e. have these sorts of internet trends ever gotten the same level of awareness that 4chan and the alt-right got in the West? What was the reaction? Is the CPC doing anything about it?), and what direction is this going in, e.g. looking back 10-20 years, has this improved or gotten worse?

• (Xinhua) CPC expels former Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu
• (Xinhua) CPC expels former Chinese defense minister Wei Fenghe
• (AP News) China expels 2 former defense ministers from its ruling Communist Party over graft allegations
• (CNN) China expels two former defense ministers from Communist Party as military purge deepens

Wei Fenghe was defense minister from 2018 to 2023, Li Shangfu held the post from March 2023 to October 2023.

"China's Ministry of Housing asked local governments in hundreds of cities to “vigorously” buy unsold commercial homes and convert units into affordable housing for the working class." -Ben Norton

"Isn't it ironic that the Chinese housing bubble was cited across the West as a "failure" of the Chinese gov when it was in fact created by runaway private enterprise, only now being resolved by Beijing's intervention...?" -Brian Berletic

From https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3263878/chinese-scientists-report-world-first-they-cure-patients-diabetes-cell-therapy

In a related topic, most of us never saw chinese blockbusters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_China (, and usually not movies from other countries)

But we're a democracy fighting for freedom while they're an evil dictatorship whose citizens are praying to be liberated.

Also(, it's (kinda )out of topic but on my mind currently), as Zak Cope pointed out in « The wealth of (some) nations », so called "communist" western political parties aren't internationalist/humanist :
And if the last communist countries can't realistically help other countries even more than they're currently doing because it may 'weaken them'&'cause their destruction', then they only have to make public declarations that, once certain metrics are realized ensuring their long-lasting survival, then measures of wealth equality among countries will then automatically be taken, it's not hard to do better than those/westerners/nationalists who aren't even trying(, on the contrary, i'm often remembering that Thomas Jefferson tried to prevent the publication of Ricardo's Principles in the u.s.a.(, Reinert 1996, p. 5) ; even if 'free trade'//protectionism and the principle of infant-industries is only a part of neo-colonialism, it's good to remember that « throughout the nineteenth century and up to the 1920s, the USA was the fastest growing economy in the world, despite being the most protectionist during almost all of this period »).

edit1 : « Important as tariff protection may have been in the development of most NDCs[, Newly Developed Countries, from XVIIIth-century Britain to XXth-century Korea], it was — I repeat — by no means the only, nor even necessarily the most important, policy tool used by these countries in promoting infant industries. There were many other tools, such as export subsidies, tariff rebates on inputs used for exports, conferring of monopoly rights, cartel arrangements, directed credits, investment planning, manpower planning, R&D supports and the promotion of institutions that allow public-private cooperation. ». Zak Cope talked about colonial tribute, monopoly rent, and unequal exchange(, and value transfer, e.g., « For every dollar’s worth of goods exported from the Philippines in 1961, approximately five times as many hours of labour had to be invested as in a dollars worth of goods exported from Canada. »), while other authors added other factors(, as an other example, Lenin's (old )view is famous and his 5 points were updated here by 8 authors starting from scratch at each chapter with their own view). Their description of the causes/consequences/context aren't incompatible, nor are Jason Hickel's arguments, or Samir Amin, nor is adding our nationalism/'lack of humanism/good-will' in the balance, etc.

edit2 : (ITT : International Trade Theory)
« According to Maddison's estimate, throughout the nineteenth century the ratio of per capita income in PPP terms between the poorest NDCs (say, Japan and Finland) and the richest NDCs (say, the Netherlands and the UK) was about 2 or 4 to 1. Nowhere is this as big as the gap between today's developing and developed countries.
(...)
When in the late nineteenth century the USA accorded an average tariff protection of over 40 per cent to its industries, its per capita income in PPP terms was already about three quarters that of Britain ($2,599 vs. $3,511 in 1875).
(...)
Compared to this, the 71 per cent trade-weighted average tariff rate that India had just prior to the WTO agreement — despite the fact that its per capita income in PPP terms is only about one fifteenth that of the USA — makes the country look like a veritable champion of free trade. Following the WTO agreement, India cut its trade-weighted average tariff to 32 per cent, bringing it down to a level below which the USA's average tariff rate never sank between the end of the Civil War and the Second World War. »

i.d.k. but it's at least suspicious

And Israel can still bomb defenceless civilians under the absurd impossible goal of "destroying" anti-zionists, after oppressing them for almost a century, and being the main/only obstacle to (the unilateral palestinian loss of )a two-states solution(, along the 1967 borders obviously). It's apparently easy to switch from victim to tormentor when given the opportunity, i think that they're acting out of greed(, for more territory), not self-defense, they're not victims ; and, 3 generations later, we don't owe the current awful beings any "free pass" for the victims of ww2, nor do we owe anything to the current russians for the many soviet deaths. If they don't trust that allowing a palestinian state will ensure their safety, then they have a problem and need to find a solution, a world army is less far-fetched than overthrowing every neighbor that is still pro-palestinian, but are they even searching for a way to ensure their safety, and is it the real reason for their refusal ? A first step would be to publicly explain why they're refusing a "two-states solution" instead of assuming(, in secret like a good head of state, westerner or not,) that there's no answer to their objection, most of the world want to help them to make peace, it's not like in the case of Russia-Ukraine where the n.a.t.o. refuses to 'change their mind'/'abandon (the anti-russians/pro-western in )Ukraine'(, which would solve everything,) and nobody can 'do anything'/'force them', here there're more than one solution and it's mostly Israel that is refusing to go back to the 1967's borders among other things for reasons that can be solved if they share it with (tens of )thousands of researchers ready to debate and offer innovative/new options to solve their preoccupations/'causes of refusal'.

From "Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China":

"Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below US$1.90 per day has fallen by close to 800 million, accounting for close to three-quarters of global poverty reduction since 1980. At China’s current poverty standards, the number of poor people in China fell by 770 million. By any measure, the speed and scale of China’s poverty reduction is historically unprecedented."

With 30% of its total energy consumption coming from electricity (vs about 18% for the rest of the world) and electrifying "nine times faster than the rest of the world", China is becoming the world's "first major electrostate".

Source: https://rmi.org/insight/x-change-the-race-to-the-top/

A selected list of Chinese billionaires who have been ordered arrested or sentenced over the last decade:

Xu Jiayin, billionaire chairman of the Evergrande Group, lost 98% of his personal fortune after the government insisted he use it to help pay Evergrande’s debts, and was arrested last year and (so far) banned from China’s financial markets for life.

Xiao Jianhua, who was placed under house arrest for corruption and was made to “[cooperate] with the government as it restructured [his] conglomerate.” He was eventually sentenced to thirteen years in prison.

Miles Guo, a billionaire who has appeared prominently in the Western press due to his connections with Steve Bannon, fled China after he was accused of bribery and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Real estate billionaire Ren Zhiqiang, who was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for embezzling millions in public funds.

Sun Dawu, billionaire owner of a private agricultural corporation, also sentenced to eighteen years for a variety of crimes including “coercive trade, illegal mining, illegal occupation of agricultural land [and] illegal absorption of public deposits.”

Despite this large drop in wealth at the very top, the Chinese economy has continued to grow significantly, and income has continued to rise at the very bottom, during this time. All these things cannot be said of “developed” Western countries.

You don’t see a lot of U.S. billionaires enter the U.S. criminal justice system (the case of Donald Trump is very high-profile, but an outlier). Moreover, over the same period (2021-2024), the wealth of U.S. billionaires INCREASED by 26%, from $4.5 trillion to $5.7 trillion.

China's economy is bigger than official GDP statistics indicate, because it uses a measurement system based on manufacturing production, under-counting services. US GDP data, meanwhile, is distorted by expensive "services" like imputed rent and legal fees.