this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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The article you linked mentioned how that approval rating (for the central government - not the local ones) came to be for rural people: Censorship and propaganda combined with an attitude towards government similar to what you often see with religious people. If something good happens, the big guy far away did it. If something bad happens, it's due to the corruption of men (in this case the corrupt local officials).
Edit: From the article:
The US has the longest running, largest, and most expensive propaganda machine in the world. The evidence doesn't match the conclusion. The federal government of the US is very far away, the states are much closer. The evidence does not match the conclusion.
Further, claiming that 95.5% of a billion people are too incompetent to see through the ruse is laughably indefensible. It's almost like the propaganda machine in the West is so effective that it managed to make a Chinese expat into an orientalist.
Wait, so you think that 40% approval is a result of the largest longest running propaganda machine, but 95.5% approval is accurate because China is constantly doing a #1 bang-up gold star job?
I'm saying if you think that Chinese propaganda convinced a billion people for 15 years to love their central government, but US propaganda can't achieve even half that result for far fewer people, then you're engaging in mental gymnastics.
The 40% approval rating in the US is because the US is fucking their people and the world, because the ruling class in the US believe that the only way to build a sustainable society is for the elite to maintain their interests over and above the interests of the masses. The 95.5% approval in China is because the Chinese government actually attempts to meet the needs of its people because it is fundamentally based on the theory that this is the only way to build a sustainable society.
If China used propaganda to get that 95.5%, it couldn't have possibly used more propaganda nor more effective propaganda than the US has been putting out for over a century. Maybe the US doesn't think they need popular approval and therefore they don't propagandize domestically as hard, because they know the police will brutalize and murder anyone that tries to organize a resistance, but that is not the W you think it is.
Maybe... Just maybe... The media in the US is owned by capital, not the government. Profit based journalism is certainly different from government propaganda based journalism, no?
You're right, the US government doesn't give much of a fuck about public opinions so they don't need to force the media to run only pro-government stories to stay afloat. The politicians are incentives to care more about their constituents than the country as a whole, and it functions, in a way.
If you want to talk about police brutality, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre wasn't a China W. If you wanna go more recent, the Hong Kong resistance to CCP rule was a big inspiration to BLM.
Stop trying to sound smart, Godric. The US government is owned by capital. Profit based journalism is still 1/3 smaller than profit-based Public Relations. And that doesn't cover the defense budgets for propaganda, the State Department, and other government agencies.
They run constant pro-capitalist stories, orientalist stories, Russophobic stories, anti-Iranian stories, anti-south-american stories, and on and on and on. They've been manipulating their school curriculum across all grade levels for over a century. The West has been using manipulated narratives to justify invading foreign nations since at least the British launched the opium wars against China.
In a capitalist society, the government is literally the apparatus by which capital coordinates its global class warfare. You can't separate them by saying "oh, capital owns the media, the government doesn't", when quite explicitly it's both/and and also there is no difference between capital owning the media or the government owning the media.
The reason the ruling class needs to propagandize its own people is to prevent revolt. That's why people think China propagandizes its own people, right? To make them content with their situation? Capital, since the merchant class launched the first tri-color revolution, has also needed to suppress revolt in its people, and they use domestic propaganda for the same reason. However, they also use violence.
Princeton University demonstrated that there is no real way to construe the US as a democracy, that is, a government run by the people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6w9CbemhVY
In China, however, the politicians have incentives to care about all the people in the country. The indigenous populations in China are given autonomous zones, similar to how the USSR maintained autonomy for different nations. In the US, there are many indigenous languages with fewer than 10 fluent speakers, not a single institution uses those languages, and the people who are trying to learn these languages are mostly extremely educated. In China, Tibetans speak their native language from grade school all the way through university. There is no ability for the majority ethnic Han Chinese to impose cultural genocide on Tibetans the way the US does to its native population because the Chinese government understands that maintaining the interests of the state, the nation, and all of its peoples are required for a functioning society to eventually become sustainable.
What are the incentives that Chinese politicians have that US politicians don't? Chinese politicians know they are nothing without the support of the people, while US politicians know they are nothing without the political will to launch wars of aggression and starve millions of people to death with sanctions. So, will China use domestic propaganda to increase the support of the people? Absolutely! And the US will use domestic propaganda for the same reason, because if the people revolt they won't be able to continue war profiteering. And yet, despite the US having the most powerful and most effective propaganda in the world, they can't convince even a simple majority of their population to support the government, whereas in China 95.5% of people support how their federal government governs the country.
I don't know how much back bending you have to do to try to square this in your head. The Tienanmen Square incident is a classic study in US propaganda and if you actually read the news wires from the US reporters who were on the ground at the time you'll see that you have to choose between the propaganda and the facts. And no one should forget that Hong Kong was literally a British colony until 1997, and under colonial rule Chinese were second-class citizens while Brits were immune to Chinese to law. The protests were literally about whether or not criminals in Hong Kong could be tried under Chinese law and the youth who were fighting were literally fighting within the historical context of maintaining British colonial structures, which is why the parents of the youth who were protesting would literally kick them out of the house because the parents knew that life under British rule was absolutely terrible and that integration with the mainland structures is critical for establishing a stable society. The youth, however, have no context for this and only see that the UK turned Hong Kong into a global financial center that creates narratives about the freedom to become land-owning millionaire financiers and rentiers. Again, it takes a special kind of gymnastics to look at a youth protest seeking to maintain British colonial structures that were imposed after the British completely destroyed China by getting 40% of their population addicted to opium and then launching a devastating war after the Chinese tried to outlaw opium and seize the drugs at the port. The results of the war gave Hong Kong to Britain, as well as other territories, and in all of those territories Chinese law was suspended for all foreign merchants (literal immunity) and China was required to legalize the opium trade. The protests in Hong Kong were literally against the incremental dismantling of those colonial legal structures. But go on about how China is bad because they had protests just like the US had a BLM movement.
I just told you what the article you linked says. Now you tell me, it's wrong? Maybe read your own sources next time.
Yeah, maybe read it again. The researchers are attempting to offer possible explanations. They don't have any empirical evidence that domestic propaganda is the root cause or even a significant contributor to their actual empirical data. Further, they explain evidence later in the article that runs counter to that potential explanation - over the 15 years, the poor got more satisfied with the government. This tracks much more closely to economic and social progress in the country than it does to propaganda efforts, which were far stronger and more comprehensive in the early days of the revolution, necessitated by the presence of war both internationally and domestically.
Maybe don't just skim the article for sentences that sound like they might jive with your preconceived notions and instead develop some critical thinking skills.
Please explain how you plan to liberate workers by removing their basic political agency. "You are just brainwashed. Please try to keep up."
What are you talking about? You think the CCP has removed basic political agency from workers but in the US political agency of workers is retained? You're delusional. Communists are far and away more democratic than capitalists, in literally every communist project ever attempted. There is more involvement, more voting, more local agency, more ability to self-govern, more ability to solve local problems in Cuba, China, Vietnam, and Laos than in the USA, UK, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain.
Is that why the democratically elected Hong Kong legislators were arrested from the floor of their own legislative chamber for supporting democratic ideals? Is that why China still has non-public trials?
Also, China ranks poorly on democracy indexes, freedom indexes and human development index.
But yes, individual freedoms and civil liberties are foundational to political agency. You cannot engage freely with political issues you can't freely discuss. This should be self evident.
The US has non-public trials, with secret evidence, and even secret charges. China is nowhere NEAR the top offender on these issues. Not even close.
Hong Kong was a literal British colony and China has allowed Hong Kong, a city that was stolen by Europeans and completely changed, to have its own system of laws and politics based on the British colonial project, and the politicians on Hong Kong that demand that freedom have Euro-centric financial interests since the UK made it into a global finance hub. The idea that these politicians were "pro-democracy", but the Democratic People's Republic of China was arresting them for being "pro-democracy" is about as smooth-brained a take as "they hate us for our freedoms". It's propaganda and the fact that you parrot it demonstrates you know nothing of the history or present of China, Hong Kong, and like Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. The subversive activities of the "pro-democracy" politicians is primarily their alignment with a Hong Kong independence movement, which is effectively a secession movement led by a pro-European minority that wants to keep financial ties with London and the US. It would be like New York City trying to secede to maintain its ties to Holland.
Most of these are Eurocentric, meaning orientalist and anti-communist. None of them are unbiased. 95.5% of China's own people support how their government is serving them and supporting them. Whatever the fucking fascist Euro-colonists think "democracy" is, it's curious that includes apartheid states, genocidal states, and monocultural states but excludes incredibly happy, incredibly diverse nations that have managed to life 800 million out of poverty in 60 years.
Do you think that Chinese don't have individual freedoms and civil liberties? If they didn't, do you think they'd have a 95.5% approval rating over 15 years that was increasing among the most poor in the country while also managing 5 separate a distinct autonomous regions where unique cultures speak their own language in the millions? If individual freedoms and civil liberties are so foundational to political agency, then what's up with the entire Western hemisphere where the colonist have stripped everyone of their individual freedoms and civil liberties except the land-owning white people? How're those Nicaraguan Death Squads and Haitian assassinations and US trained coups, and US and Canadian genocidal policies against millions of natives - how are they doing? Do they impact those "indexes" you mentioned?
It is. And you'd be surprised just how much dissent there is in China that's open, written about, etc. There are protests, there are essays, there are factions. You're getting confused by the US media painting legitimate government intervention with universal oppression. The fact that 95.5% of people approve of the government should tell you this, alone. But even just doing a little bit of research on your own would disprove everything you believe about China. For example, Winnie the Pooh is not banned, nor are products bearing its visage, nor are websites with the content, etc.
It's really astounding how much projection you exhibit here. You say China does poorly on indexes, but you don't question why those indexes look good for genocidal mass murdering settler-colonial states. You say Chinese people lack individual freedoms and civil liberties but don't think about the binding arbitration epidemic, structural racism, deaths of poverty, the Princeton report demonstrating zero democratic influence in the USA, monocultural oppression throughout most of Europe, refusal of colonial states to repair the damage they did up to and including levying debt on all of Haiti for each black person freed because the slave owners need their money back (that debt is still generating profit through interests and fees and Citi is the one currently collecting that profit).
Just take everything you criticize China for, look at the North Atlantic, and you'll see the North Atlantic does this so often and so thoroughly that OF COURSE China has to do it worse, and then actually research China and realize that every single source you've ever believed on what's happening in China is just bald-faced lying to you, completely outright, shamelessly. It was fucking eye-opening when I did it. I'm sure it will be for you, too.
The US criminal justice system does not have closed trials. Almost all trials in China are closed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_trial#United_States - The USA has secret courts
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1991/us/ - and the USA has secret trials
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/09/us-secret-evidence-erodes-fair-trial-rights - and the United States has open trials with secret evidence
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-37515399 - The BBC, state-owned media by a country that launched multiple wars against China, got 40% of their population addicted to opium, then invaded them when they tried to outlaw opium and forced them not only to legalize opium but also make all Europeans completely immune to Chinese law, that colonized multiple parts of their country and only recently gave back their land holding but still operates a spoiler campaign against them and extracts as much wealth as possible from them, THAT BBC, the BBC even writes about the Chinese government live streaming trials.
You can select any Euro-centric standard you want and show that China doesn't meet your Euro-centric standard. It won't change the fact that China is serving its people far better than European countries ever have and ever will. You can always imagine that China is violating some inviolable ideal that makes it evil and terrible, but even closed trials are not seen by the Chinese people as a significant hindrance to their fulfillment, most likely because the court systems haven't actually been organized against the working class, against non-white people, and against women, like they have been in Eurocentric countries.
FISA courts don't convict people of crimes.
But sure, let's talk about why FISA courts are bad, and also why China should have public trials?
I'll start - though some consider them a national security essential, FISA courts represent a fundamental gap in oversight which has the potential to erode civil liberties. If it must exist at all then it needs a significant overhaul in the way oversight is handled, even mandatory congressional review.
Now you go. How would you improve China's legal system?
I don't live there. The idea that I could improve China's legal system is arrogance on top of ignorance. Keep beating your drum and drowning out everything else. Your cognitive dissonance will eventually get the better of you.
Ah I thought you were interested in having a conversation perhaps instead of just vomiting geopolitical head cannon, so that's on me.
But just to clarify, you are or are not in favor of public trials?
I could go either way. In China, it seems as though each municipality has different rules for who's admitted and different criteria. I think whether trials are public is far and away less important than class warfare. For example, see all of the public trials that didn't do shit to stop the cash-for-kids travesty.
Also, you thought I wanted to engage you in trying to analyze the precise details of the Chinese judicial system vis-a-vis trial access in order to arrive at analytical conclusions about how to improve China? Yeah, that is on you. The idea that you think you're even remotely qualified to have that conversation is ridiculous.
As for spewing geopolitical headcanon, I know you're a lost cause but try going back to the beginning of this thread and look at your own words wherein you spew forth completely unfounded claims based in entirely Eurocentric cultural virtue signaling as though it's the standard from which to judge all societies and try to here the words "spewing geopolitical headcanon" while imagining the multiple ongoing cultural genocides that the Eurocentric world is actively maintaining to this day against indigenous people on multiple continents.
To recap, it seems like I'm the one here willing to engage in critical discussion about both the west and about China. Perhaps that's because I have a personal stake in both societies and wish better for both. You are just hiding behind unfounded and poorly defined accusations of "eurocentrism" and name calling to shut down discussion, without even realizing that it's the exact same cognitive bias you seem so critical of.
Obviously European enlightenment values are not above reproach. I have certainly never made such a claim. You, however seem to be actively asserting that the Chinese system is indeed above reproach, and you also seem to be under the impression that this is the less biased stance. I have not and will not remove your agency by declaring you brainwashed as you have done repeatedly.
This is how you began the engagement. This is not a critical discussion. This is you parroting Western propaganda and the rest of your comments are an attempt to back your way into a rationalization. The basis for your claim has shifted from complaining about separatists on a former British colony espousing secession being arrested to trials not being open to the general public. Neither of these intersect at all with "basic political agency". If you knew anything at all about what actually goes on in China, you would understand that citizens of China have far and away more political agency than citizens of the US have, it just looks different than Euro-centric democracies.
By the way, I use "Euro-centric" as a way of catching the entire history of the dominant European powers, the colonial powers, and the settler-colonial states that proceed from them, because it's the easiest and most accurate short-hand despite being imprecise. I could use "North Atlantic" but it doesn't capture the fact that the settler states all base their legal systems on British Common Law. As another aside, British Common Law is what Hong Kong operated under during colonization, except only the British were considered full citizens whereas the Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong were subjugated and marginalized by the law. In this way, Hong Kong is a great example to expose your Euro-centric bias, by saying that democratic forms of the European pedigree are somehow "more free" than democratic forms of the Chinese variety. This is clear bias because the democratic forms of the Chinese variety clearly address the largest form of European subjugation - structural racism - but somehow all the Euro-centric "Democracy Indexes" don't seem to be structured to capture this difference.
In the US, there are some native languages that have less than 10 fluent speakers, all of whom are in their 80s and will die soon. In China, there are native languages that are used throughout a citizen's entire educational process from grade school through university. China is not above reproach, it's above reproach by the North Atlantic. Europeans (and settlers) have no standing to reproach China. They gave that up during the century of humiliation when they subjugated the country, made themselves immune to the legal system, stole their land, poisoned their land, enslaved their people, created opium addiction in 40% of the national population and then invaded the country when the country tried to outlaw drugs and forced them to legalize the drug trade.
If the North Atlantic had atoned for their atrocities, MAYBE they'd have a standing to critique China. But then they kept Hong Kong until 1997 and did everything they could to foment unrest and rebellion. They established an East Turkistan radicalization project to create religious extremists to commit acts of terror in China, just like they did in Afghanistan. They trained Tibetan separatists in terrorism and airlifted into the country to fight China. They supported Chiang Kai-Shek when he lost the civil war and they supported the establishment of a separatist outpost on Taiwan, they armed them, they protected them with naval blockades.
There is no position anymore from which the North Atlantic can levy criticisms of China. Any critique is immediately tainted by the attempts to completely undermine and subjugate China that have been occurring non-stop for over 2 centuries now. Non-stop. Unbroken. The North Atlantic in 200 years has never stopped trying to subjugate China, lie about China, propagandize about China, and dominate China. It has literally never stopped. So, no, I have no interest in having an uninformed conversation about theoretical comparative liberty comparing China and other societies with someone living in the North Atlantic that has zero issue regurgitating claims that are easily dismissed through basic research.
I have literally never called you brainwashed, because I know what the term means and where it came from. I was raised in America. I was indoctrinated in my country's cultural belief system. I am now brain washed, that is to say, I have washed my brain from that indoctrination. This is the original meaning of the term, and it refers to the way that Mao managed to keep the war effort going - when the PLA captured KMT soldiers, it had a program of pairing those soldiers up with PLA soldiers and letting them have conversations. The KMT was run like a feudal military, and the soldiers were treated poorly by their commanding warlord. They have no power and or influence over their lives, their tactics, etc. The PLA, on the other hand, was much more egalitarian. The KMT troops had been indoctrinated to believe terrible things about the PLA. But then the KMT troops actually spoke with PLA soliders, and saw how the PLA operated, many of them joined up with the PLA. Some units in the PLA had a greater than 100% death rate (counted against the number initially deployed to the field) and still operated because they converted so many KMT troops to their side. That's what brain washing is. It's washing away false beliefs that were placed there through indoctrination.
I was not indoctrinated by China, I was indoctrinated by the US (a continuation and collaboration of European power projection). I believed the same things about China that you believe. I recognize your beliefs, because I used to have them. I don't believe those things anymore, because I did engage in critical thinking, and I critiqued my indoctrination. And it's a lot fucking harder than the alternative. It's easier to not challenge this indoctrination, not the least of which because family, friends, and coworkers all believe the indoctrination, too, and my critique of that indoctrination is met with suspicion, derision, anger, and even risk of various forms of harm.
So ask yourself, why would an American, indoctrinated by America, previously believing the same shit you believed, why would I go through the discomfort, the difficulty, and the risks inherent with changing my beliefs when literally all of the media, all of the peer pressure, and all of the structure around me is replicating American ideology?
It's because the facts don't match the message, and critical thinking requires it.
Right, the entire point is that democracy is when you have real conversations about issues . Not when you call them brainwashed and ignore them.
Your truth seeking methodology is "US bad." I am skeptical of that methodology. If you want to realistically engage with that, then I am fully there. But until then, "you are brainwashed and I am enlightened" just isn't a super interesting conversation
You have no fucking idea what my "truth seeking methodology" is. I studied history. You should too.
That you have to believe I'm so moronic as to start from the assumption that "USA bad" shows how weak your position is. I already told you, I was born and raised here. I was indoctrinated like you were. My truth seeking led me to the realization that the US is doing worse than what it lies about other countries doing.
Also, if you have to keep redefining democracy to make your point, try examining that.
Also, get some reading comprehension. I never called you brainwashed not did I say I was enlightened. I said I used to believe what you believe because I was raised in the USA and educated the same way everyone else was. But I spent a lot of time and effort studying and fighting against my indoctrination and now I believe the opposite of what you believe.
You have not gone through that. You believe the same things you believed when you were in high school. And you think other people are being influenced by some strange and powerful external force but that the force is weak and terrible and obviously evil but some people are weaker than you and succumb to their influence?
Just seriously engage with history. Your indoctrination won't survive the encounter.
I don't think you believe the opposite of what I believe. I don't think you can articulate any criticism of China, no matter how inconsequential. The opposite of what I believe would be if you could not muster any criticism of both the US and China.
I understand the criticisms you levy against China and could articulate them, because, again, your criticisms are predominantly Western talking points. I just don't agree with them.
As for your criticisms of the US, it's clear that you don't understand the depth of the criticisms levied against the US (and Europe) or you wouldn't be adopting the positions you take nor make the comparisons you make.
See it really feels like we are finding common ground. The US, as the defacto leader of the world in the past century, deserves a considerable amount of criticism. The US model is a tested hypothesis, as such it should endure the highest level of scrutiny. At times it has been barbaric and cruel, and autocratic and it enslaved entire generations.
The thing is that we hope to avoid making these mistakes again by talking about them. If you don't talk about your mistakes, how can you ever learn?
You really gotta stop putting words in my mouth. The US is actively engaged in an ongoing genocide of the native peoples of both the North and South America. The US is not unique in this regard, as Canada and Australia are also doing this. If the US was concerned about genocide, inuding cultural genocide, it would marshall it's forces to stop itself and its own people from the currently active ongoing process happening on its own soil.
Instead it marshalls it's forces to commit global atrocities, every single year. It never stops. No amount of conversing is stopping it. Because they aren't mistakes. They've never been mistakes. Even saying that they are mistakes demonstrates how much of an orientalist you are. White Europeans make mistakes but the Asiatic hordes are evil? Seriously, fuck off.
The US model is a tested hypothesis for what? Mass murder, genocide, apartheid, oppression, environmental devastation, global domination, enslavement, capitalist hegemony, selective law enforcement at the global level, working class oppression?
It's certainly not a tested model of democracy, Princeton University showed us that.
No. The US is just the continued evolution of violent white cis het patriarchal capitalist supremacy that started in Europe 600 years ago and hasn't stopped. The US is the most powerful for a very specific reason - land. If the North America continent didn't exist, the US system could never have emerged on mainland Europe nor on Africa. It required a completely defensible content with no competitive neighbors and a massive amount of natural resources and slave labor to create. But the US political system? The US political system literally inspired Hitler to build the Third Reich and strike out to enslave the Slavs. He literally wrote about it in his book.
The US system inherited all of the deliberate oppression from the European project. It IS the European project, which is founded on might makes right. When the US demonstrated it could manage colonial holding better, and could defeat Europe militarily, Europe realigned it's project with the US at helm, just like they had countless times before when Spain, France, or England at various times were the mightiest.
The evidence of all this is so ponderously big that you have to be willfully ignorant and resistant to information to believe the alternatives. Consider the opium wars.
Europeans sold opium to China as the best way to make a profit. England forced India to produce opium so they could sell it to China. 40% of China's population became addicted. When China outlawed opium, the European merchants, who owned newspapers back home, made up stories to push the English crown to launch a war against China. They did. The Chinese had not yet had an industrial revolution, so the British gun boats easily dominated China. The English forces the Chinese government to legalize opium. Then, they carved up Shanghai and established total immunity to Chinese law for Europeans. Each portion of Shanghai was governed by the laws of a different European colonizer.
The money that was made from the opium trade made it's way back to the US. The Forbes fortune started from the opium trade. That money was invested in the rail roads.
Decades later, the Obama administration pushes the TPP. One of the main parts of that treaty establishes an arbitration board of corporate governors. The treaty gives this boars the power to sue any country (party to the treaty) that has a law that has an effect of hurting profits or potential profits. Literally the same model as the British invading China for banning opium.
It's never been a mistake. It's never been something that requires dialog. The US is the current torchbearer of the longest running and most violent social phenomena ever in human history - Eurocentric white supremacy.
You and I only have a sliver of common ground in that you see evidence for some US atrocities. And that's it. Everything beyond that we are still in contention about. Like I said, I used to hold your position. I abandoned it in the face of overwhelming evidence.
"Democracy" in China is significantly more democratic than in places like the USA. In the USA, you're presented with a false dichotomy in the two-party system, where both parties are parties for wealthy interests. Neither party is a party of the people. In China, for example, elections are "non-politicized". Paraphrasing Richard Boer,
When your vote is between candidates based on their qualifications and is not some charade of us-v-them where neither choice actually benefits the people, that is a more democratic system.
The USA is democratic in name only. People in the USA have little to no real political agency, but have been lead to believe their superficial interactions with the political system are real agency.