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Priorities
(lemmygrad.ml)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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I say this as someone who would be happy to advocate for China if I thought they were advocating for a proper socialist alternative to liberalism but sees things (propaganda?) that turn me off.
the Uyghur genocide: is this just Western propaganda that's totally fabricated? Are there no "reeducation camps" and no ethnic cleansing happening?
standard anticapitalist takes: landlordism, bourgeoise rule, both things I oppose and seem to be alive and well in China. I see sometimes the State pushes against these forces, but so do European liberals. Walmart couldn't even expand into the EU when they tried due to government regulating their shitty corporate practices so hard (undercutting at a loss to push local businesses out is illegal for example)
authoritarianism: children being banned from video games. This one hits close to home for me since I spent easily 40-60 hours a week as a kid some weeks playing video games. My childhood would've been vastly different, and I'm still a programmer who is employed by Alphabet so I'm "successful" and wasn't ruined by video games. Is the idea that video games are a cancer that ruin kids and they should be studying instead? That seems dystopian, I made a bunch of longtime friends playing games growing up (10+ years at this point). I had a lot of fun as a kid. That seems important.
Essentially China seems like a European country that also happens to be an authoritarian dictatorship. Arguably better than living in the U.S still, no doubt, but when compared to Europe I think China falls short (but socialism doesn't). Europe/China are both incredibly far from where we need to be. Massive liberal exploitation of the masses occurs in both places.
Does this look like ethnic cleansing to you?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DABhjZjPJDA&pp=ygUOa2FzaGdhciBJbmRpYW4%3D
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dpmaeIaZM&pp=ygUOa2FzaGdhciBJbmRpYW4%3D
Xinjiang had a terrorism problem. There terrorist attacka happening until 2012. The government's crackdown is in response to that and at worst it can be described as overpolicing. Can you name one person who was confirmed dead in this ethnic cleansing and genocide?
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
I'm just using the international definition of genocide. Not a single person needs to be killed for it to be a genocide, depopulating an ethnicity from a region by destroying birth rates fits the definition too. By the Chinese government's own statistics, birth rates in Hotan and Kashgar fell by 60% from 2015 to 2018. If that was done intentionally, it's genocide.
I think that is really stretching the practicality of the term in order to label something genocide on a technicality based on ideological dogmatism. It is really hard to imagine a genocide where a single person is not killed. Even ignoring that, genocides always lead to a refugee and emigration crisis which also did not happen in the case of the Uyghur.
Is that enough to determine genocide? What were the birth rates after this drop? Were they in the red, leading to population reduction or stagnation? There are explanations to this drop that are not genocide. For example, ethnic minorities in China have always been lenient targets of China's family planning policies. It is possible that the Uyghur were subjected to stricter family planning post the terrorism crisis for reasons other than genocide.
Many of the "china-watchers", like Adrian Zenz, are anti-abortion, white-supremacist christian evangelicals. They view any reduction in birth rates as a genocide, even if that reduction is caused by more access to birth control. Birth rates in liberal countries, especially in countries like France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, are tanking. Do you agree with the birthers that this constitutes a genocide? (they would call it a white genocide).
We also see lower birth rates in countries that have higher economic development in general.
I'll have to look into the Uyghur genocide more. Are the figures about 1 million people being put into camps complete bull shit?
Even if the West is exaggerating the number by an order of magnitude, I still doubt there are 100,000 "terrorists" that needed to be put in camps. Why are the kids put into camps? Are they terrorists too?
Chinese government official statistics said birth rates in Hotan and Kashgar fell by 60%. If that was done purposefully, it does fall under the international definition of a genocide (which includes preventing some or all births to depopulate a region).
you'll need to provide some sources for all of those claims, including the government statistics, before I can comment
I think you're dismissing the limits on video games far too fast. Maybe to someone that doesn't engage in that as a hobby it might not seem important, but to people in the space it literally redefines our entire childhood. That's not something to just entirely ignore.
As for bourgeoise rule, there are mega corporations in China. It seems weird to say it only exists on local levels. And even if we just accept that, I don't see how this impacts average workers. Are the workers no longer getting the surplus value of their labor stolen? Do they have proper cooperatives with worker ownership?
My understanding is they essentially just exist with European-style regulations. Decent minimum wage, some labor protections, and the bourgeoise still steal massive amounts of wealth and exploit workers for 40-60 hours a week without any democratic input on workers about working conditions.
The note about landlords not truly owning land is how every liberal state functions. Deeds are handed out by the state and can be revoked (eminent domain). And I would still say landlords are a problem in the U.S, even though the government can just take the land back. Same with China.
I do enjoy video games as a hobby, and as I said, using a proposed limit (IIRC it's optional) on how much time children can spend playing online games to condemn a government as "not socialist" is bizarre. I don't have to agree with every single relatively minor decision made by the CPC (and it is minor, compared to the immense improvement in living standards -- including the eradication of extreme poverty -- for roughly one fifth of the world's population) to support their immensely successful project.
Please read the article "China Has Billionaires".