Anti-China Rhetoric Is Off the Charts in Western Media (thediplomat.com)

submitted 1 year ago by muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] andscape@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago

This is just straight up true. Besides the belligerence and racism it pushes, it also makes it near impossible to have an actual, reasonable and critical comparative discussion of Chinese and Western societies. It closes any space that might exist for Chinese people to take part in any discussion of international affairs, since the attitude is so strongly against them. This pushes any open minded Chinese netizen back into the arms of their own government's propaganda, rather than inviting them into an open discussion of the good and bad sides of their and other societies.

[-] zephyreks@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

I mean, it's not like Chinese people are stupid. We know what's wrong with society in mainland China, but we also see all the benefits that it's brought. The fact that it isn't talked about doesn't mean that everyone's bought into government propaganda, it just means that people are on average happy enough to not bother with it.

Flipping the firewall is easy. Going to Taiwan or Hong Kong is easy. Emigrating is easy.

Just because someone isn't white doesn't mean that they're stupid ffs

[-] andscape@feddit.it 1 points 1 year ago

Oh sure, didn't mean to imply that Chinese people weren't smart enough to think for themselves. I was just making the point that neither western media nor Chinese media is helping at all to create space or goodwill for critical exchange and debate across boundaries and firewalls (which, to be fair, is not surprising).

Glad to see there are actually Chinese netizens on Lemmy, by the way.

[-] zephyreks@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I mean, that's the entire point, right? Media doesn't exist to show the truth, it exists to manufacture consent for some policy direction. If media was supposed to be factual, it wouldn't be funded by biased actors and it wouldn't have an incentive structure that rewards profits more than factual reporting.