this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
46 points (94.2% liked)
Ask Lemmygrad
752 readers
52 users here now
A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This may sound kind of silly, but part of me wonders if geography is a component here. China is a distant, exotic state in the far-east. There is a definite ignorance of what is actually happening in China, but that might be a consequence of general ignorance of China's past. People know about eastern Europe and its history, so there's a point of reference for how things changed under socialism. China might as well be the moon.
We always hear about how great and perfect and wholesome pre-socialist China was, with the peaceful monks and what not. Could the West really sell this lie about the Soviet Union?
Orientalism definitely plays a role