It's clear which of these two superpowers is a greater threat to the world.
It always blows my mind to look at that graph. Almost even in 2017 and then it just plummets 30 points over the next 6 years. Nothing even changed, I don't see any discernable reason for it, it was just that the media decided to start shitting on China and making them public enemy #1 for a bit (sparking a massive "unexplained" rise in anti-Asian hate crimes). Obviously they got all the blame for COVID to distract from all the domestic policy failures, but the shift in public opinion started before that.
If you ask people why they suddenly had negative views of China, they'd just cite things like "China has billionaires," or "China saber-rattles over Taiwan," or other stuff that's been true for decades. Those things were just as true in 2017 when China had 43% favorability among Americans, or in 2011 when it was 52-37.
That's the power of propaganda.
The mass detention and "re-education" of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China's Xinjiang region began in early 2017.
The yellow umbrella movement protests and crackdowns reached their peaks roughly in 2019/2020.
These are very discernible reasons.
The mass detention and “re-education” of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang region began in early 2017.
Right, and there was plenty of misinformation about that the media pushed as fact.
The yellow umbrella movement protests and crackdowns reached their peaks roughly in 2019/2020.
The umbrella movement was 79 days in 2014 according to Wikipedia. There was no noticable shift in American opinion of China in response to that.
Yeah, europeans too, I'm sure. At least relatively.
China's been doing a masterclass of "don't stop your enemies when they're fucking up".
WHY? China SPIES on their Citizens and Commits GENOCIDE!
-People OK with their Tax Dollars funding both Palantir and Israel!
Well there sure has been enough propaganda being pumped out by China to make that bit of a positive bump.
The Chinese government sucks and anyone who needs a reminder just look up what they did to the Uyghurs.
Just becuase the American government also sucks it doesn't make China's government suck any less.
What they did to the Uygurs according to america and their western lapdogs lmao
Yeah all China did was erase their culture "re-educate them" which is some Orwellian shit and as a bonus they steralized a fuck ton of them. I am not a western lapdog but you sure are deepthoatin China's dick ya troll!
China had a problem with violent Muslim extremism in Xinjiang 25-40 years ago.
China started reeducation camps for them.
The US has spent decades bombing and murdering Muslims creating more extremists.
Which one is a better response to violent religious extremism?
Found the human rights abuser!
Hey man it's not my fault my taxes have funded genocide for decades.
You are just here to deny human rights abuses as long as it is your team.
I don't have a team so I don't need to make excuses for fascist shit countries.
I'm not on any nation team. I'm on the human team. If humanity can do better, we should. I live in America, and I've read mostly American history so I'm more aware of our crimes. I don't trust anything our captured media says about the rest of the world.
But you will trust anything China says when it denies its long history of human rights abuses?
Something doesn't add up. I do appreciate your appeal to team human and I agree we can and should do better.
I have studied human rights abuses for over three decades now. I can confidently say no nation except perhaps in ancient history can compare to the US levels of human destruction. If you count environmental destruction then no country in history can come close.
But you will trust anything China says when it denies its long history of human rights abuses?
So the problem with that is that all the accusations of human rights abuses come from the United States, so who am I supposed to trust? I know I can't trust the US, so why should I take the accusations seriously in the first place?
I have studied human rights abuses for over three decades now. I can confidently say no nation except perhaps in ancient history can compare to the US levels of human destruction. If you count environmental destruction then no country in history can come close.
Oh that's cool. What do you do?
I think you are confusing propaganda from the US with numerous investigative reports by reputable journalists and organizations like Amnesty International.
I trust independent reporters who can verify their sources. This is why I believe China has committed numerous human rights violations. They even self admit executing political prisoners.
There really is no question about this and denial basically makes a person a useful idiot. I often see dischenfranchised US citizens looking to other fascist countries like Russia or China for answers. I think the song For What It's Worth about sums it up, "nobody is right if everyone is wrong."
I am a social worker by trade and I have spent my life helping people. I have fought long and hard for dischenfranchised people's rights at steps of my state's capital building. I helped secured the right to gay marriage in Washington State by lobbying my representatives as just one example.
I have been involved in local, state, and federal politics. I have conducted numerous letter writing campaigns that have resulted in political prisoners release. I have been a community organizer and I have gotten laws and policies passed in my city to protect people.
There are so many good ideas out there it isn't funny. There are numerous right ways to do anything and there are creative solutions we still have yet to think of.
I think you are confusing propaganda from the US with numerous investigative reports by reputable journalists and organizations like Amnesty International.
Cool I like to learn. Can you share a few of them?
They even self admit executing political prisoners.
Isn't that better than not admitting to it? Like the US and it's allies?
I often see dischenfranchised US citizens looking to other fascist countries like Russia or China for answers.
So you'll have to back up calling China fascist. That sounds like being a useful idiot for the CIA if you ask me.
I have been involved in local, state, and federal politics. I have conducted numerous letter writing campaigns that have resulted in political prisoners release. I have been a community organizer and I have gotten laws and policies passed in my city to protect people.
So not in China right?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/china/report-china/
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/china
I am not sure why you would deny China is fascist. Perhaps you are operating on fascism = bad instead of fascism = corporatism. The entire world is pretty much fascist at this point and denying it definitely makes you a useful idiot.
I really think you are being disingenuous at this point. You clearly have picked a side already and that is okay. Have fun with you choosen overlords.
It's very tiresome to see Americans turn a blind eye to concentration camps in their own backwards while claiming some moral imperative to liberate Xinjiang.
Or Venezuela. Or North Korea. Or Cuba.
TwO ThiNGS CaN Be BAd aT thE SamE TimE. Also iRan killeD 3000000000000 people.
The point of their deamonization of china is to make them less bad in comparaison. But guess who isn't led by a notorious pedophile? China. Guess who didn't kidnap a head of state? China. Guess who doesn't bomb countries for breakfast? China
let me preface this by saying I hate the direction the U.S. government has taken (both in general and more as of late), but
> "Guess who doesn’t bomb countries for breakfast? China"
[squints]
[looks over at China]
Well, not yet they don't, I guess. But hey, 2026 isn't even half over yet, we still got time to get this world war started proper.
This keeps coming up. Go Google search the last time China used military force to get something done.
Eventually you have to realize the only people who see potential war everywhere are Americans.
China is the fourth largest producer of arms now and sells weapons to war torn regions. Giving China the benefit of the doubt when they are now cranking out more billionaires than the US is a ship that sailed a long time ago.
Trumplethinskin, just like Pooh bear, has designs on neighboring countries. Mr. Pooh himself, "Taiwan independence is the chief culprit in undermining peace in the Taiwan Strait - we will absolutely not tolerate or condone it." Yeah, something an imperialist would say, reminiscemt of Russia and Ukraine.
Refusal to recognize Taiwan's unique culture and self-determination is just another nail in a very large coffin of Chinese Imperialism. While I do applaud them for not directly engaging in military conflict there is little reason to when they can control them politically much in the same way the US controls Mexico or Canada.
> “Guess who doesn’t bomb countries for breakfast? China”
[squints]
Sorry, I think they meant they don't bomb countries in the material world that actually exists. In the speculative fantasy world that exists in your head, I'm sure they do all kinds of absolutely horrible things.
In fact, I think it's high time that the imaginary world places imaginary sanctions on imaginary China.
Oh wow, you're all the way into the organ harvesting stuff, that's deep in the propaganda lore.
You know Falun Gong claims that the reason China is supposedly harvesting their organs is because they claim their organs have mystical powers? Do you believe that too, or is China just doing it because of some generic comic book supervillain motivations?
riiiight, Wikipedia, which lists multiple different sources you're free to follow, is "propaganda" now. 🤡
Though, now I'm confused. If Wikipedia is "propaganda", now, why do you link to it in posts as a credible source?
Lmao. Did you actually read beyond the title of anything you linked?
A 2006 report by a U.S. congressional research staffer questioned the credibility of Kilgour-Matas's first report and stated that American officials in China were unable to verify organ harvesting allegations at a hospital in Shenyang.[12] Dissenters have cited the allegations' inconsistency with other data, rejection by lawyers representing Falun Gong practitioners, and implausibility of the numbers.[13]
A 2017 article by The Washington Post disputes that China secretly conducts 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants per year.[13] Data compiled by Quintiles IMS show China's share of global demand for immunosuppressant drugs, which are necessary to prevent the bodies of patients from rejecting transplanted organs, was approximately in line with the proportion of global transplants China said it performed.[13] The journal also reports that lawyers who had represented Falun Gong practitioners rejected organ harvesting allegations and quotes a lawyer had "never heard of organs being taken from live prisoners" after defending 300 to 400 adepts of the movement.[13] According to health official Huang Jiefu, who has been working with an American surgeon to transform China's transplant practices, a total of 13,238 organ transplant operations were performed in 2016.[13] Xu Jiapeng, a Quintiles IMS account manager in Beijing, said it was "unthinkable" to operate a clandestine system that the data on immunosuppressants did not pick up.[13] An Australian surgeon and vocal critic of China's past transplant practices said it would not be plausible for the country to have more transplantations per year than the United States without that information leaking out.[13]
Oh cool, now we both agree Wikipedia isn't propaganda again? Super, I'm glad we've established that. :D
I did in fact read it first. There are a total of four, count 'em, four paragraphs under the "Counterarguments" section (one of which isn't actually a counterargument but we'll get to that). That's almost the length of an acceptable fourth grade book report. I'm very proud, as well as at your restraint at only directly copy and pasting one of them (and the other from the article lead -- now I know the only two sections you actually bothered to read). Most of that entire section cites that same source, the Washington Post article.
I wonder how many subsections there are under the "Evidence" section?
... Hmmmm. Well, okay, okay, maybe they're all really really short and poorly sourced! How do they stack up against the refutations?
Ahhhh. Golly, dozens of sources, lots to read -- they've even got helpful diagrams for the slow tankies. Well, since you clearly went and picked out the quotes you liked best, now's my turn. :3
Bo Xilai was governor of Liaoning province, which researchers believe was a major center for organ harvesting.[who?] The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong made phone calls to mid- and high-level officials with prior connections to Bo, posing as members of the Communist Party's discipline and inspection body that was building a case against him. They asked questions about the chain of command involved in procuring organs from prisoners, including Falun Gong practitioners. When asked about Bo's involvement in organ harvesting, one senior Politburo member reportedly told investigators that Standing Committee member and security chief Zhou Yongkang "is in charge of this specifically. He knows it."[72]
A city-level official in Liaoning province was asked by investigators what instructions Bo Xilai may have given on organ removal from Falun Gong prisoners. The official replied: "I was asked to take care of this task. Party central is actually taking care of this... Bo was involved quite positively. At that time we mainly talked about it during the meetings within the Standing Committee."[verification needed] The official ended the call after realizing that he had not confirmed the caller's identity.[72]
Emphasis mine.
And oh, hey, the very next paragraph after the one you quoted about that Washington Post article, that's a good one too.
Kilgour, Matas, Gutmann, and experts in fields such as medicine wrote to the Post saying that drug prices can be 2.5 to 4 times cheaper in China than in the U.S., making sales data an unreliable proxy for dosage, and that a country's global share of immunosuppressant sales does not need to match its share of transplantations, citing Japan and the U.S. as counterexamples.[144] Their letter also states that most Chinese hospitals have an unofficial pharmacy whose "significant" amount of business data are not included in IMS figures.[144]
"If you don’t believe that, there’s multiple different sources for you to follow."
Oh cool, now we both agree Wikipedia isn’t propaganda again? Super, I’m glad we’ve established that. :D
No, actually, I never said that. You seem to be very confused about how sources work on a fundamental level.
If a king commissions a history book that heaps praise on himself, but that book also talks about the king's ugly, crooked nose, then even if everything else in the book is unreliable propaganda, we can reasonably treat the part about the nose as credible, because it goes against the work's overall bias, meaning that the only reason for its inclusion would be if it were true. It would be the same way if a source biased towards China admitted to things that reflect negatively on China. That is why I can cite Wikipedia or other Western sources while still considering it biased. Another reason is that you presented as a source which means you accept it as a source. I don't have to accept it as a source in order to point out that it contradicts your position. If you cited Infowars and that source contradicted the claims you were making, I would be well within my rights to point out the contradictions, regardless of the fact that I obviously don't consider it a reliable source.
There are a total of four, count 'em, four paragraphs under the “Counterarguments” section. That’s almost the length of an acceptable third grade book report
So much of your comment is just talking about length as if that had any relevance whatsoever. I assure you that I can find extremely long sources peddling all sorts of nonsense conspiracy theories. You don't seem to understand how to evaluate sources at all.
The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
That sounds like a reliable, unbiased source.
This is no different than when US conservatives go into like a Planned Parenthood with a secret camera and cut the footage up and take things out of context to make it look bad.
When asked about Bo’s involvement in organ harvesting, one senior Politburo member reportedly told investigators that Standing Committee member and security chief Zhou Yongkang “is in charge of this specifically. He knows it.”[72]
A city-level official in Liaoning province was asked by investigators what instructions Bo Xilai may have given on organ removal from Falun Gong prisoners. The official replied: “I was asked to take care of this task. Party central is actually taking care of this…"
This is your smoking gun? Lmao.
There are legal avenues for organ donation in every (afaik) country in the world. They called up two people who are not involved in that field and don't know all the details and they were tricked into directing them to other officials who would know more. Wow, amazing.
Kilgour, Matas, Gutmann, and experts in fields such as medicine wrote to the Post saying that drug prices can be 2.5 to 4 times cheaper in China than in the U.S., making sales data an unreliable proxy for dosage, and that a country’s global share of immunosuppressant sales does not need to match its share of transplantations, citing Japan and the U.S. as counterexamples.[144] Their letter also states that most Chinese hospitals have an unofficial pharmacy whose “significant” amount of business data are not included in IMS figures.[144]
Sorry, let me clarify something. Are you trying to argue that it's theoretically possible that China could be engaged in organ harvesting, or are you claiming that there's actual evidence of it, that it's a proven thing? Because this is arguing that it may be theoretically possible, despite evidence pointing in the direction of it being impossible.
If you want to say that it's theoretically possible China may be involved in organ harvesting, then I will return to what I said originally, that I'm sure the China in your head is doing all sorts of horrible nasty stuff, and I fully condemn imaginary China, which has nothing to do with the China that actually exists.
No, actually, I never said that.
actually you did, where I posted a link to a wikipedia article (several actually but who's counting, this is the one you wanted to bitch about) and you responded by dismissing it altogether as "deep propaganda lore". Was all of fourteen hours ago.
Since you're clearly having trouble keeping up -- or, let's be honest, willingly choose not to -- I'm gonna stop reading right there at your "helpful explanation" about how sources work. I got better shit to do than listen to tankies trying (and failing, badly) at condescending to me; and it's been funny watching you flail, but I'm bored now. You're boring me now. Better luck next time!
I really hope you're young.
actually I just like jabbing tankies who post shitty bait with a stick and then giving them the argument equivalent of a ruined orgasm. It's nice to know they're tilted over it enough to ask you to come give moral support after getting blocked lmao
Are you here to get tilted too?
You're honestly based for this, keep it up. They get very mad and then get angrier when you call out how mad they get.
well, if you never push back on these morons, they'll just continue shitting up the place with their imperialist propaganda, and I'm about as keen to hear how great China is as I am to hear about how great the US or Israel is. Keep Lemmy a nice place by keeping blindly obedient imperialists from getting too comfortable.
Yep, I agree. They say China is a saint because of what America does, and then say if you think two things can be bad, you're brainwashed. While they say wikipedia is filled with lies and had to make their own with sources they approve of. Like Grokpedia and conservapedia.
Yeah everything is a conspiracy and we're all coordinating with each other on secret chatrooms, I didn't just happen to see your argument in All and get mad that you're acting like a child.
You know, good point, I'm sure none of you ever talk to each other or have friends, as you all seem to vastly prefer infecting other communities and instances to spread Chinese propaganda far and wide. It's a shame I can't block every one of your comments all at once, just the posts with the instance block; but I'll get there one tankie at a time if I have to. You make #2 for the day!
Heaven forbid you ever interact with anyone you disagree with.
Again, really hoping you're young.
actually I just like jabbing tankies who post shitty bait with a stick and then giving them the argument equivalent of a ruined orgasm.
I can assure you that running off with your tail between your legs while trying to act smug does not ruin anything for me lol.
actually you did, where I posted a link to a wikipedia article (several actually but who’s counting, this is the one you wanted to removed about) and you responded by dismissing it as “deep propaganda lore”
I'm well aware. What I never said was the part where you claimed "we both agree Wikipedia isn’t propaganda again?"
I’m gonna stop reading right there at your “helpful explanation” about how sources work. I got better shit to do than listen to tankies
You either should have, or should listen to your teachers in high school. Do they let you cite Wikipedia as a source? Maybe they're "tankies" too!
I’m bored now. You’re boring me now. Better luck next time!
Convenient that you suddenly "got bored" right as your claims fell apart.
Both the US and China are awful for their own shared and distinct reasons. Anyone who disagrees is either a tankie or a MAGA asshole. That said, no country on the planet is morally perfect.
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