I live in China, Beijing to be exact. I believe that western media is again not really reporting what is happening here.
People here are not protesting for democracy, but for easing of lockdowns. That several people are shouting "We want democracy" means absolutly nothing, this is enormous country with 4.5 Population of US. You can find p…
I live in China, Beijing to be exact. I believe that western media is again not really reporting what is happening here.
People here are not protesting for democracy, but for easing of lockdowns. That several people are shouting "We want democracy" means absolutly nothing, this is enormous country with 4.5 Population of US. You can find people yelling "We want emperor back". Majority people are pissed, because they follow world cup and see that nobody is wearing mask. For example on protest in Beijing they were shouting that they are patriots, and want lockdowns to end.
As for protest, what I was surprised, is how fast have they worked. In less than week, they have starting easing measures. Guangzhou (big city in south) has removed all measures.
In West people were literally called Nazis, conspiracy theorist, anti science for over a year when they were fighting lockdowns. DeSantis was called crazy for opening Florida. Gavin Newsome in Commiefornia was decimating small business with lockdowns. In Europe (continent where I was born) protestors were beaten by the police. Australia had interment camps. Canada and their truckers not to mention (who were called white supremacist for wanting easier Covid measures).
I am not saying this to show how China is good, but how bad thing are in US. Government and MSM were absolutly out of control for 2 years, any descent was punished to same level as CPC is doing in China. Only ironically their protest actualy worked, and in US you still have idiots doing double masking an Dr Fauci is waking free man.
Raziel. I would love to hear more about what is really happening there and write about it on my Substack. You have made some very interesting points. Stay well
You have a poor understanding of Democracy. There is a BIG difference between the street demo in China in the US. The demonstrators in the US enjoy freedom of speech. They don't feel the threat of being harassed, arrested, abused and beaten up by the police. If they start acting illegally such as destroying properties, they get arrested. In China, people do NOT enjoy freedom of speech and they are arrested exactly because they are politically incorrect. They WERE indeed protesting for freedom. They want to have a say on the lockdown, and yes, that means they are protesting for democracy. Democracy means the can freely express their opinions without the fear of being arrested. Xi won't allow that.
Calling all sort of things to others with no consequence is exactly what democracy is about. People in the West call their political leaders all kinds of names all the time. Try that in China.
Correct. We won’t (shouldn’t anyway) get arrested for our speech. But here in America, we lose our jobs, families, tribes, and reputations (and endorsements) as a result of “free speech” and failure to obey (as in Covid vaccines). Our government is We the People and the people have no problem banishing certain members or supporting them losing their livelihoods. Of course not as bad - it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there.
You can stop with the hyperbole, Raziel. No one on the continent of North America during our time of temporary lockdowns was ever forced to stay in their apartments either chained in or with doors welded shut.
I do not think we can ever be compared to the dystopia now taking place ( and apparently has been for over a year) in certain Chinese cities, where an overzealous authoritarian regime is herding citizens into what literally are home internment camps.
Raziel, thank God you are still with us (in this comments family). I was wondering where you were. Thank you for your frontline reporting. Wow you are so correct. Eye-opening.
Of course people are protesting for democracy. It’s human nature to yearn for freedom. But those sufficiently informed of what democracy means know that full-on democracy is a pipe dream at this stage, so they’re trying for a tiny slice of that pie, i.e., the freedom to walk the streets and voice their opinions. The relaxing of lockdowns is a step in that direction.
I agree with you about the lunacy of lockdowns imposed by politicians in US and Canada (you can add New Zealand and Australia to that shameful list). They were rooted in perverse medical advice, which gave cover to the power-mad politicians and bureaucrats, of whom Dr. Fauci was most conspicuous.
How do we correct this now especially with an administration hell bent on keeping us restricted. We need to focus on getting all our students back in school without masks our population back to work, the focus from the Democrats and the MSM is everywhere else’s the moment.
I see the supply issues in the US as something which must be severely impacting China. The people who were producing these products must not be working today. Are they starving? I fear the worst. I hope you can reassure me that this is just civil unrest and not some horrific genocide happening in your nation.
You can live in Beijing and still not get the full picture because you don’t belong there - just a foreigner. When you have at least some people going from specific protest demands to openly shouting against the communist government, in an authoritarian regime you’ve gone over a critical threshold. You need to be born in this and absorb it every day to understand what it really means.
Kishore Mahbubani argues that most Chinese rate the CCP as highly competent. There were certainly frustrations with the draconian lockdowns, but as Raziel notes this isn't a mass protest movement agitating for democracy. In fact, I see little evidence that there’s a desire for Western style democracy on a mass scale in China today.
The irony is that most Chinese find the CCP to be reasonably competent, though of course certainly not perfect. On the other hand, Americans are the ones who are primarily advocating for the overthrow of the CCP and denigrating the brutality of Chinese governance. The disconnect reminds me of how liberal elites generally have a softer view towards crime than actual members of the Black community, many of whom live in high crime neighborhoods and have to deal with the consequences of rampant criminality daily.
As is now being reported, major cities are now shifting their lockdown policies in response to the protests. The Chinese government has generally shown a tendency to be responsive to the needs of the people. Post-Mao, the CCP has overseen the greatest uplifting of its citizens out of poverty in human history. This doesn't align with the picture of a vicious regime that only cares about its own survival at the expense of everything else. I believe it's more accurate to describe the CCP as paternalistic rather than despotic.
I agree with you, CPC is highly competent is several important areas that matter to ordinary citizens. That is they are very business friendly, not only to big business but also mom and pop shops, education, infrastructure and personal safety (violent crime is very low). This has created situation that every single Chinese lives vastly better than then he lived 10-20-30 years ago. On the other side they crack on personal liberties on every corner. For average Chinese this is great trade off, especially when we look what happened in West in same time period.
At same time US politicians have destroyed middle class, outsourced manufacturing, infrastructure has decayed that now many developing countries have better infrastructure than US. Healthcare not to mention. Cities in US every day look more like lawless cities from SF movies. School system has been degraded on every level. Opioid epidemic is destroying us. Majority of Americans now live worse of than their parents did.
And I am writing this not praise CPC just to point how our US politicians have failed America.
Sadly most people in US don't understand what happened in China and how US politicians have screwed the country, if they did, they would be up in arms. in 1990 China was one of poorest countries in the world. US was manufacturing powerhouse with vibrant middle class and largest trading partner to rest of the world. Today things have turned to be unrecognizable. Chinas middle class is growing, our is shrinking. They manufacture and export for the world. We on the other hand are drowning in debt, with little manufacturing left.
Do you REALLY want to argue that the average American does not live MUCH better than the average Chinese? Have you been to the United States?
And what is wrong with our infrastructure? Nothing, as far as I can see. Shouting about it is a way to get money allocated that is used in corrupt ways.
Yes, America has problems, but the best way of summing them up is if we don't get our act together, we might devolve into something like China.
And the Chinese economy is scarcely doing fantastic. From everything I read, the financial system is more wobbly than ours is. And obviously the lunatic and indefensible measures Xi is imposing on the people of China are hurting your economy a LOT. We do not suffer from this particular burden, and haven't for a year or more. It is true that lockdowns NEVER made any sense, and that we did them anyway, but over time I think that truth will get out to enough people that nothing like that will be politically impossible again--at least if we can figure out how to keep the Democrats from rigging elections.
Nobody is arguing that average Chinese lives better than average American. But that average Chinese has seen their life standard improve immensely for last 30 years, every single Chinese today lives better than he did 10 years ago.
At same time in America, middle class has been decimated, if you compare 1990, 2000 and today, country has taken significant downward trajectory in every single category. In 2000 our national debt was $5 trillion, today we are over $30 trillion with deficits out of control. This would be ok if money was invested in infrastructure and improving things at home. But we have no idea where it went, part of it was squandered in desastrus wars abroad.
Whats is wrong with US infrastructure => honestly where to begin, our infrastructure is terrible, nothing was done since 1980, and when compared to Europe we are 20 years behind, compared to China we are 40 years behind.
Our electric grid is falling, bridges have passed.
American society of civil engineers publishers report card every year
Currently they give us bearly C-. Before coming to China, I also thought US infrastructure is ok, now US looks like developing country.
Again, I am not saying this to praise China, but point out, that our politicians have been sleeping on the job, letting country come to this state.
As for Chinese economy, I work here. True things are not great, but compared to US, China is manufacturing and trading juggernaut, with enormous trade surplus. Things are not ideal, but compared to mismanagement that is going on in US, they are in much better shape. First thing you learn when you come to China, is to stop beliving majority of things written in Western media, because they simply dont align with reality.
Until we start taking our US politicians accountable, things at home will not improve. If people knew, what is really going on in China, and how fast they are catching up, we have uprising in US, because people would see how politicians have faild us
We are well aware how our politicians have failed us, but the Chinese and others seem to be preventing fair elections that would put a better crop in office. Joe Biden takes bribes, and then crafts policy to suit the people who paid them. This is obvious to me at least.
But you are also obviously pushing propaganda, and I seriously doubt many on this forum are ignorant enough to fail to understand that. Yes, Chinese standards of living have risen. But China also operates concentration camps, tortures people at will, and reserves the right as a government to arrest anyone at any time for any reason, and very certainly for publicly saying things they don't want to hear, protesting, or failing to accept life as a de facto slave.
The Chinese have large pictures of a psychopathic mass murderer plastered all over the country. This murderers picture is on the currency. This is shameful.
You fail to understand why Chinese today revere Mao. Mao isn't venerated because of the excesses of the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, which many acknowledge were grave errors, but because he finally managed to unite China after the Century of Humiliation, which saw an aging Qing dynasty succumb to imperialistic depredations by both Japan and the West and which witnessed warlordism and internecine warfare between the KMT and CCP for decades following the collapse of the Qing in 1912. Mao managed to unite modern China in 1949 and after a century of chaos allowed the country to once again become the arbiter of its own destiny.
Given the history of slavery in America and the genocide of the Native Americans and the people associated with those events, I’m a little surprised that you even tried making this argument. The progressive left loves trying to cancel historical figures because they don’t match up to modern 21st century standards of decency. Was Andrew Jackson a psychopath also? He helped perpetuate actual genocide through warfare and slaughter and yet we have him on our $20 bill.
I looked it up. Less than 20,000 people died in the Trail of Tears. And we have monuments and museums teaching about it. We are not proud of it, and there are many other reasons Jackson is on the twenty.
You have killed vastly more people in both Tibet and Xinjiang than we killed in all the Indian Wars put together.
And that was over 100 years ago. What matters is what China is foibg NOW. Today. December 2022.
And you know who else unified his country? Adolph Hitler.
Its funny you chose to respond. What is interesting to note is that Mao killed A LOT more Chinese than, say, Britain and Japan did. Yes, the Japanese committed large scale horrific atrocities in, say, Nanjing. They killed several hundred thousand Chinese after Doolittle and his men landed there and escaped.
But those crimes are NOTHING comoared to what Mao did. Our resettlement of the Indians is nothing.
And China has slaves NOW. We eliminated slavery 150 years ago. You kept it and if anything expanded it.
I don’t buy that most Chinese would admire Mao in any way if you allowed honest history. He was a mass murdering psychopath. Tibet and Xinjiang have been raped in ways not at all different from what the Japanese did.
I'm not talking about the Trail of Tears specifically so much as the systematic genocide of the Native Americans over centuries as America expanded westward. The numbers are surely much larger than 20,000 for that, but in any case, comparing absolute numbers is pointless given that China has had a substantially larger population than most countries for much of modern history.
The Great Leap Forward probably resulted in anywhere between 15-45 million excess deaths, but that was the result of extremely poor economic decision making which led to mass famines. I wouldn’t equate that with the 1-2 million people who died during the Cultural Revolution as a result of direct persecution.
A lot of Chinese today, including my parents, were alive during both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. They may be part of the older generation, but it's not like these were events centuries ago that no one can remember. Xi Jinping's own father, the late Xi Zhongxun, was known for political and economic moderation and was purged multiple times during his career.
There was no "systematic genocide". That is what China is doing to the Uighurs and has been doing to the Tibetans for a long time. What we did is fight a series of wars, at the conclusion of which the defeated Indians were resettled in new places. It was not something anyone raised in the latter half of the 20th Century would condone, but it was common enough then.
By FAR most of the Indians died from disease. There was one case of a British officer intentionally infecting a fort with smallpox, but by and large the spread was organic, unplanned, and devastating.
And you keep saying "Great Leap Forward". It wasn't, was it? It was systematic regression, in which farming techniques that had worked for thousands of years were repudiated because Mao read something somewhere that roughly as well tested as these infernal "vaccines".
And when people started starving to death and dying in large numbers, he didn't believe the accounts. He thought they were hiding food somewhere.
So this was not just a mistake. A mistake you recognize and correct. Mao, sociopath that he was, could not be convinced a Great Man like him was CAPABLE of making mistakes.
And again, there is absolutely no equivalent anywhere in American history for the Cultural Revolution, for mass brainwashing, for psychological torture camps, and for the willful and massive destruction of thousands of years of human culture.
And yes, China is bigger than the US. So what? We have no mass famines on our record. We have never operated Laogai. Even in WW2, when we interned Japanese, conditions were as benign as we could make them.
Spare me your nonsense. I assume you were told to write all this, but please recognize I'm not stupid, and that is the sine qua non for you to make any progress making ridiculous comparisons.
Since it's founding, America has been the freest nation on Earth, and our failures are still vastly better than the successes of most nations, and very certainly China, which has reappointed itself a Mandarin, and has reempowered a court. What has changed in 2,000 years?
And most of your previous kings were nowhere as brutal as the Communists were in the latter half of the 20th century. They were brutal without reason. They were brutal to no purpose. The ideology you shoved down people's throats was ridiculous and only defensible through the violence and censorship that continue to this day.
Pretty amazing that the actual dispossession of the Native American tribes over centuries through both slaughter and disease wasn’t genocide, but what the CCP is doing in Xinjiang is even though there’s no evidence that anyone is being killed and given that some have already labelled the use of the term genocide as highly tendentious in light of that fact.
The moral justification that Americans offered for westward expansion was that the Reds lacked civilization and therefore European conquest of the continent simply reflected the triumph of civilization over savagery. I don’t see that as the embodiment of any sort of moral exceptionalism. If anything, I noted that it eerily resembles the paternalistic attitude that the CCP harbors toward the Uighurs today.
The problem with China Derangement Syndrome is that there's an inherent tendency to view ourselves only in terms of our most positive attributes and historical moments while viewing our adversaries through the prism of only their worst. It's not exactly what I would consider to be an enlightened philosophical point of view.
Oh... we in the US completely understand what has happened to the destruction of the working class here. I design and manufacture American OEM durable goods and our competencies cannot be matched by even China with their completely delusional labor rates.
We know that US politicians and their lobbyists offshored our competencies to their benefit - it is why we elected Trump and why THEY got rid of him. Mitch McConnell's wife owns a CCP shipping/shipbuilding business while he completely withdraws all RNC PAC from America First senate candidates that were chosen by the People in their states. The Biden family has taken millions from the Chinese.
Do we need a clearer picture of what our political class is there for?
Excellent commentary. I’m not praising the CCP either, only suggesting that it’s unnuanced to view it as some sort of demonic entity. In any case, the social contract between the Chinese government and its people should be something that they negotiate themselves. I don’t necessarily see it as something for Americans to worry about.
Many commenters seem to believe that competent and functioning government is totally irrelevant as long as individuals attain some abstract notion of freedom and no one can tell them what to do. This mindset strikes me as naïve at best. I don’t see many people here clamoring to live in India and if they did for any extended period of time I'm sure their viewpoint would become far more nuanced.
The whole point of the Constitution--which is the most brilliant political document ever enacted by a major nation in human history in my view--is that we need government. Nobody disputes this. Thomas Paine in Common Sense agreed with this.
He merely said that if we enact a government to protect us and it winds up ABUSING us, then we have the worst of all worlds, don't we? This means the government has to be fenced in, like a wild beast, or raging fire, and used for its appropriate uses, and otherwise forced into background irrelevance as far as most major life decisions are concerned.
Government cannot free anyone. It can prevent one set of individuals from being abused by another. But in China the government is used to ABUSE people who don't like it. I read you have death wagons where organs are harvested from Falun Gong members, for use in the bodies of senior Party members. You have cameras all over the cities of Tibet so that when monks set themselves on fire in protest you can have them off the street in less than five minutes. You gang rape female Tibetan nuns in Chinese jails. Up to a million Uighurs are being treated roughly like the Germans treated the Jews they didn't murder outright.
No, you should feel deep shame trying to rationalize all this. Your government is a model for psychopaths, and no one else.
Chinese Social contract is different than one we have in the west and is based on "Mandate of Heaven" (even atheist and religion-hating CPC claims to have the Mandate of Heaven). This concept is very different from concepts in west. Western Democracy is based on idea that people vote thus provide democratic legitimacy to the government. Western Royalty is based on Idea that Royalty has God given right to rule.
Mandate of Heaven on the other hands proclaims that heaven bestows mandate to just and capable Ruler to rule over China (Be it emperor or CPC or any other government). And as long as ruler is providing for majority people and treats them well, keeps stability. Ruler has right to rule over China. If government mistreats and abused people and not provides, it will lose mandate and people will rise and overthrow them.
It is very interesting concept and explains a lot, why China is the way it is.
When I first came to China, I was same opinion as you, but after learning about mandate of heaven and how it is important for China from historical context, many things become much more clear.
Here is amazing documentary about China and CPC, it has several parts, and brings enemies of CPC and CPC stooges to discuss China and engage in honest discussion, in one of parts they also touch topic of Mandate of Heaven
Thanks for the information. Which I both respect and accept except as to Uyghurs. And my solution to that is to not do business with companies that collaborate with China. My concern is not what China does for her citizens. My concern is for China's aspirations, if any, in the rest of the world.
Like a father ruling over his sometimes wayward children? As in censoring what they read and what they see? As in no right to free assembly if it is against the regime? As in no elections in deciding who will govern them? As in no right to write and publish freely? As in no right to criticize the government in print or online? As in no right to organize a political party to oppose the regime in power?
You are writing on a thread that would not exist in China, for Chinese.
Censorship and democracy are two different things. Personally I'm against the CCP's censorship but there's little to suggest that masses of Chinese people want Western style democracy. In any case, there are myriad ways to get around the censors in China. Oftentimes it's more of an inconvenience than anything else.
Japan is often held up as an erstwhile democratic ally, but apart from 1993-1994 and 2009-2012, the LDP has been in power continuously since 1955. Japan is virtually a one party state. No one in China is clamoring to live in democratic India. What Chinese people mostly want is for a government more responsive to its needs. The recent shift in Covid policy suggests that the Chinese government is recalibrating in response to the protests. For a supposedly despotic regime, the CCP post-Mao seems surprisingly attuned to the needs of its people.
I hate repeating myself but the attitude of many commenters here eerily mirrors the attitudes of the woke elite in America towards racial minorities. Somehow the woke always seem to believe that they know better than the people whose interests they supposedly defend.
The very concept of “western style democracy” is an absurdity, a fake promoted by communist propagandists. Democracy simply refers to the people having the final say on electing leaders, taking major decisions and punishing (at the ballot box) the leaders who fail to keep their promises. When Taiwan or S Korea became democracies, they didn’t do so at the request of the “West” or copied “western” mechanisms. They pragmatically adopted democracy because it’s the only way to guarantee the rule of law, and their countries could not continue to develop without this rule of law. Communist China is not an “Eastern-style democracy”, it’s an authoritarian regime on its way to reverting to its totalitarian roots. Tyranny does not know East or West, it’s the same everywhere.
Because the prevailing political authoritarian apparatus cannot allow free expression to exist - since the very existence of it could (and will) entail and encourage opposition to its regime. And that cannot stand.
You say that the Chinese mostly want a government responsive to its needs. It stands to reason that presently if they do not get what they want, they'll do what? What they're doing now. Protesting, the courageous ones at least.
You are an apologist for a society that does not and never will give its citizens an avenue through the voting box to exercise its frustrations and yes, grievances. Voting is the very antithesis of censorship. To vote is an act of free expression. It is the open desire of a certain intent. And that scares the hell out of the CCP.
Chinese may not want to live in democratic India or Japan for that matter, but does that preclude any engagement in how they are governed at home?
If these demonstrations do get out of hand, there will be casualties no doubt - whether we here in the West see them or hear about them or not.
They're protesting and the CCP is responding by changing its policies, according to people on the ground there. The social contract is working as expected.
I'd also suggest reading my comments regarding democracy and China. It's very naive to assume that a democratic China would be friendlier to Western interests. In any case the social contract between the Chinese people and their government is for them to negotiate. I'm not advocating for any particular form of governance, only pointing out that Americans fail to realize that there's reasonable overall satisfaction among most Chinese with respect to the competency of their government, Covid lockdowns notwithstanding.
Ironically I don't believe you can say the same for the American government. Isn't Congress one of the least trusted institutions in the country these days?
It’s really ironic you think democracy wouldn’t work in China, because it’s something “western”, that doesn’t fit the Chinese “history and culture”. Too bad that China has been ruled for more than seven decades by a western idea called Communism.
It’s not what I think. Read the chapter about China and democracy in Kishore Mahbubani’s book Has China Won. Data suggests that most Chinese view the CCP as competent and there’s little evidence suggesting a mass desire for Western style democracy.
You call this a “social contract”? Abject fear of their regime’s fall is the only factor that sometimes forces the CCP to moderate or at least temporarily change their policies; they couldn’t care less about the interest of the Chinese people. As to the brave Chinese who dared to defy the regime on this occasion, we all know they will end up in the vengeful grinder of the communist mafia.
The relationship of the CCP to its people mirrors the Confucian paternalism of Chinese emperors to their people as embodied in the Mandate of Heaven. I believe it’s incorrect to say that the CCP could care less about the people of China. Legitimacy is earned through competent and responsive rule.
All of the protesters from the last days will end dead, in prison or at least at the bottom of the communist society for the rest of their life - you know it as well as I do, because it seems we’ve both lived under communist regimes. This response may be “competent”, in the sense that Chinese political repression works efficiently, but is this your idea of “responsive rule”? Your “Confucian paternalism” bears an impressive similarity to medieval western tyranny.
Andy, suffice to say that Yan does not (or does not want to) ‘see any evidence’ of anything different from the ideology he is already wedded to or what the Chinese are apparently complacent of.
Of course, apparent complacency does not constitute acceptance.
I don’t see any evidence that the Covid protesters are being imprisoned. These were protests against the lockdowns, not mass agitation against the legitimacy of CCP rule. Interestingly enough as noted by commenter Raziel, the protests appear to have worked. A number of cities are adjusting their Covid policies in response to the protests. That strikes me as good and responsive governance. All of us will end up dead one day, not just people in China!
Do you mean the one by which the CCP encourages a capitalist system allowing Chinese to make money? Lots of it. In return for the abdication of any say in who governs them? How do you know people in mainland China signed on to that?
They love making money, we both can agree to that, let's face it - they are the factory for the rest of the world. But how do we know they also enjoy not being able to participate in how their country works? In how their country is governed? We don't know. Why? Because Chinese are not allowed to speak freely (publicly at least..) to any outside (or inside) journalists.
We may think they are complacent and happy, as I think you do, but only because of their silence.
Sounds like Americans should make more of an effort to understand the people and culture of China. I'd recommend spending some time living or working in China and getting to know the people there, but that suggestion was dismissed by another commenter as a propaganda talking point.
As Americans we know so little about the history and culture of the Chinese people, but we seem so confident in projecting our own biases onto what we believe their mindset must be.
Stop hiding behind the “history and culture” of China, as if the Chinese would be from another planet - a favorite trope of Chinese Imperial and then CCP propaganda. The Chinese people want exactly what all people want: freedom and prosperity. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are not willing or able to provide either.
Can we ask them that? Or should we take it on faith that you know exactly what the rest of the world wants. The misguided idea that the rest of the world wants to be like America is laughable at best.
Laugh all you want, I’m not an American, I come from a country that kicked its communist regime in the behind and I’m sure the Chinese people will do the same. If you want to “ask them that”, start with the people who protested in the last few days, but do it quick, before the “responsive” communist regime puts them all in jail.
I suggest that you and me, Yan, let the Chinese people decide. In theory (because in practice, it ain't gonna happen..) Do you agree to that?
I think what you're attempting to tell me is that the Chinese living on the mainland do not want a democratic form of government and what comes with it - freedom of speech, of assembly, of a free press. That their 'history and culture' somehow make that untenable. That they chose to live under the Communist woke. Really? Is it our 'bias' to doubt that?
Do you think the majority of Chinese actually want the life they have - creature comforts and the fancy Buicks and Teslas but keeping their mouths shut, literally and figuratively?
There's little to suggest an appetite for Western style democracy among the masses in China. I do believe that censorship is counterproductive and I believe that most Chinese would rather not have to deal with the hassle of circumventing the censors online either through the use of VPNs or through creative ways of expression.
Look at Japan. With the exception of 1993-1994 and 2009-2012, the LDP has ruled the country continuously since 1955. Japan is basically a one party state. Even East Asian "democracy" doesn't look quite like its counterpart in the West.
If you want to present a sociological account of mainland Chinese attitudes towards the CCP, I'd be interested in your learnings. When I tell woke elites in America that most African Americans are actually in favor of policing rather than de-policing, I'm often met with the same consternation and skepticism that various commenters here express towards Chinese attitudes regarding the CCP.
There's a disbelief that the people whose interests the elites claim to be defending might actually feel differently on the issues than how the elites think they should or in fact do feel. There's this dismissal of the notion that people might actually know better when it comes to their own feelings and aspirations than what the elites know. China Derangement Syndrome has made even the erstwhile anti-woke among us incredibly woke.
The cause for the uplifting of millions of Chinese citizens from poverty is not the fact that it was overseen by the CCP, but the fact that the CCP has halfway lifted its heavy boot from the throat of the Chinese people. These days the boot is coming down again, because a truly modern China and rule by the CCP are incompatible (a modern China requires rule of law, not just shiny skyscrapers).
After having been there a few times you make a good point about the people there being ambivalent about communism because their point of reference is... state provided everything with a slice of caplitalism to keep people quiet(communism). What makes me far more nervous about world stability is that Western 'elites' are favorable to the Chinese model. Tim Cook of Apple just admitted such. I mean, that is an American company praising communism. Very unsettling for those of us who have lived communism or near it.
Obviously, Tim Cook has zero intention of living by the rules he thinks should apply to the rest of us. "Communism", per say, is just a means of reviving oligarchic elitism and class hierarchy using language that still appears to conform to Liberal standards. All the language is lies, of course. Tim Cook is a liar, a thief, and a bully. This is all latent in his abdication of the most basic principles of human decency.
I don't like Alex Jones. I can't watch him. But he and people like him have been talking for a long time about this global class of people who want a global government of us, by them, for them. And we now know that is pretty much exactly what the World Economic Forum is. They have gotten open about it, not least because their propaganda has made so many people so stupid that they can say things that would have infuriated everyone in the US, across the spectrum, just 30 years ago.
Agree, brother. Alex Jones... Don't care for his schtick, but he was right. So was Trump who did everything he could to put a stop to the 'Great Reset' and they took him out for it. They are still trying to.
So you work for the Chinese security and propaganda apparatus? I get it.
You know, Mao killed some 50 million Chinese through sheer incompetence, combined with a sociopathic indifference to their suffering. He also led an inter-generational mass murder of wise and decent human beings, in the name of an abstraction which mostly involved a narcissistic desire to promote himself and his agenda. Yet his picture is everywhere.
And even now the Uighurs would dispute the humaneness of the CCP. So would those in Hong Kong. So would the Falun Gong. So would ANYONE who fails to mouth the ridiculous lies that Communists force their prey to mouth everywhere they seize dictatorial power.
You may be right that they don't want American style democracy. But they don't want Xi for life, and they don't want social credit scores to determine the course of their own and their childrens lives. Only genuinely sick people defend this abusive and horrific regime.
At the risk of coming across as repetitive, data suggests that most Chinese view the CCP as highly competent. The recent protests against the lockdowns are more of an aberration than the norm for CCP rule post-Mao. And in this case it seems as if many cities are already starting to recalibrate Covid policies in response to the protests, which is suggestive of a government attuned to the needs of its people. The CCP may overtly crack down in many cases in order to maintain public order but it usually adjusts its policies behind the scenes in response to the needs of the people.
Mao is revered today not because of the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which many admit were grave errors, but because he finally managed to unite China in 1949 after the Century of Humiliation. The aging and decrepit Qing dynasty collapsed in 1912 after decades of increasing incompetence, with depredations inflicted on China by both Japan and the West. China went through periods of warlordism and internecine warfare between the KMT and the CCP in the ensuing decades. It wasn't until 1949 that modern China was finally unified again as a country in control of it own destiny.
Then and now, Chiang Kai Shek would have been a VASTLY better leader of China. Wherever you are now economically, you would have been there 60 years ago.
And you know, Saddam Hussein regularly polled quite well too. Nobody publicly opposed him. Everyone publicly loved him.
And the simple reason was that anyone who complained disappeared, and it was well known most of them were tortured and killed in a variety of ways. China operates to this day Gulags which are called Laogai. You know this. Don't act like you don't.
Please don't treat us as if we are stupid. Many Americans are, which is why your propaganda has ANY chance, but by and large not here. What you need are people who know nothing about anything.
Chiang Kai-shek ruled over Taiwan as the head of an authoritarian military regime that perpetrated the White Terror. Martial law wasn't ended until 1987 by his son Chiang Ching-kuo. The first democratic presidential election in Taiwan wasn't held until 1996.
Towards the latter stages of the Chinese Civil War, the American political establishment became increasingly dillusioned with Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, in particular over the KMT's perceived corruption and incompetence.
Comparing China today to Iraq under Saddam Hussein is asinine.
Formosa then Taiwan lived in perennial fear both of a Communist Chinese invasion, and of subversion from within by agents the lunatic Communists no doubt cultivated and where possible inserted. It was not without reason they feared that the brutal Red Chinese would do to them what they did to the Tibetans.
And despite all this, Chiang Kai Shek and the KMT were VASTLY, VASTLY less violent than the Communists. As you KNOW, Mao more or less forced most of the nation into an extended period of mass starvation, and most scholars estimate some 50 million Chinese died as a direct result. And the White Terror killed perhaps 18,000 people, probably most of them guilty.
The Cultural Revolution killed AT LEAST hundreds of thousands of people.
Here is the thing: you cannot be an honest Communist. That beast does not exist. What Communists do is break things and then lie about it. Here, you act as if you are in a position to be morally outraged about the actions CKS and the KMT undertook to prevent being overtaken by Communists, but ALSO free to ignore ENTIRELY the vastly larger crimes of the criminal regime you are even now defending.
And what is asinine about comparing the Fascistic government of China--where a small elite has grown immensely rich using the power of the State to compel what in millions of cases amounts to literal slavery--to Iraq? I think China is WORSE than Iraq in its worst days.
You tell me: what happens to people who criticize the regime publicly? Are they given a fair hearing? Nonsense. Depending on who they are, they either disappear, are publicly rebuked, risk retalIation against their families (EVEN OVERSEAS!!), and at a MINIMUM see their social credit score lowered, and access to basic human rights curtailed.
No, you are defending a brutal regime that is comparable to the worst of Franco or Mussolini, wit the difference that you are vastly more violent, much less tolerant, and utterly unable to EVER speak a word of honest truth.
They must retain some pride as a nation. If they lose that they will collapse. It's a real tightrope act criticizing your government while maintaining a semblance of national pride. We are having the same problem here, where patriotic acts are labeled as "insurrection".
If we do recover and finally humble the purveyors of socialism, will those dedicated to it ever recover their pride, or will they assume that their nation has failed?
Socialism is mostly driven by ignorance and thoughtlessness. Our nations honest history withstands scrutiny well. We have done many bad things and have had many flaws, but I would happily compare our worst moments with the average moments of most other nations.
So, assuming that recovery somehow consists in surmounting the propaganda apparatus through accurate information, and the stimulation of honest independent thought, I would say no. All tolerably intelligent people will realize we did them a favor.
And "patriotism as insurrection" obviously is a stupid idea that was crafted to make traps for fools. It has worked in many cases, but if and when we get full disclosure on FBI, Capital Police and other involvement, it will be untenable for all but the most psychotic.
And the prosperity only dates to the early 90's, when free market forces were eventually allowed to work relatively unimpeded. Communism was an absolute disaster in every possible way, and the CCP should now be renamed the Fascist Party of China. That is what it is. There is no Communism. There is an oligarchy which seeks its own wealth and privilege backed by a powerful internal military trained to beat, arrest, torture and murder dissidents who refuse to be silenced by the usual method of the social credit score and threats.
That to me reads like propaganda. The lockdowns would not be so draconian if the population was armed, or if elections mattered. You cannot separate what the government does from what it is allowed to do.
And yes, a lot of stupid and indefensible things happened in supposedly democratic nations. But those were examples of unregulated authoritarianism, were they not, and not of the systems as they should have operated, on a basis of REAL science and the consent of the governed?
I came here to say the same and you said it better. This article is overly sensationalized. I was in Beijing in 1989. Today's protests are in different nature, organization (thanks Apple for working with the CCP), and scale.
Btw, they didn't loosen up in Guangzhou. They said they would, but when you ask people who actually live there, they didn't, just like they supposedly loosened up in Beijing - they didn't.
Finally, I wanted to point out that today's democratic party is closer to the CCP than you would imagine. I hope American voters are warned watching what's unfolding in China.
That's an odd thing to say. The Nazi's were explicitly a national socialist party and the fascists in Italy were an offshoot of Italian socialists (Mussolini get kicked out of the party so he started a new one).
Thanks for the observations. I believe the author's unwritten point is that demonstrations about the lockdowns and deaths can easily spark a much broader movement of resistance to the CCP. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but it does have precedent in other places.
I disagree that these protest will change anything, for simple reason in 2-3 months nobody will care and people will forget and go eitj their own lifes.
Cuomo & Democrats have send god knows how many people to their deaths to nursing homes in New York.
Did we see major shift in political spectrum in New York?
In Canada Trudeau was doing stuff that would make CPC blush, did we see major change was he voted out?
Gavin Newsom destroyed countless lifes in California, did he got recalled?
In all 3 cases there was desent, but no change in government (Cuomo had to resign for being sexual predator). In California and New York majority of voters voted like sheep to keep current regime.
Fauci lied for 3 years, everyone know it, trough his policie he destroyed countless lifes, and still majority of democrats treat him like hero (jist shows how powerful MSM brainwash on average democrat is)
These protest will die down very soon, because majority of people will forget and simply wont care, as soon as measures are eased
"Fauci lied for 3 years, everyone know it, trough his policie he destroyed countless lifes, and still majority of democrats treat him like hero..."
Fauci is a hero to the left because he demonstrated and applied POWER. He held the nation under his thumb with a combination of pseudo-science, celebrity worship and moral certitude amplified by 24/7 media hagiography. He slinks into history - his reputation destroyed by the facts.
Thanks for commenting, Raziel. Only Tucker via the Daily Mail is covering this that I can find; he is showing the video of tanks reminiscent of 1989. I remember seeing my counterpart guarding a minefield on his side of the fence in the same year. Pay attention, people.
Only if you live in Beijing can you tell the rest of us what’s happening there. I agree with everything you said about the USA and Canada. What we went through in the USA the last almost three years is unforgivable. Democrat politicians and media are fully to blame as they blocked our ability to have the freedoms that we expect. They loved seeing the fighting and division going on and counted it as a win for them. The doctors that were silenced by them are the ones who science has proven to be correct. Meanwhile Fauci, on his farewell media tour, is still talking about masks and school closures depending on viral load in local area. And now, because of all those mentioned, along with the head of the largest teachers union and the CDC, we’re stuck with the disaster our country has turned into.
February 2020 through to the end of that year Trump was in charge and allowed many of the lockdowns you blame on somebody else. The fighting and division - I think it suited him too, as he backtracked on the health measures he initially supported.
To his credit (not that you might think so) he had also the temerity to fast track a vaccine (imagine that!) that was available more or less by the end of the year.
You want to spread blame, go right ahead. Just include everybody..
Where is the ever senile Joe on all of this. He hasn't condemned China for its brutality. He did not condemn Cuba for brutally breaking up protests. He hasn't condemned Iran for murdering women and killing protestors.
I believe the latest revaluations on Hunter's laptop prove the ever senile joe is in the pockets of China. Could he also be the pockets of Cuba and Iran?
I doubt Cuba. They are broke. Maybe Joe just agrees with dictatorial regimes and won't condemn them. After all he tries to rule by mandate.
And to think Linda with “our free and fair election system” we voted for this twice 2020 and 2022. It beggars belief at times and this is America, it’s becoming rather unsettling to watch how this is unfolding. I agree the Democrats and the media are fully to blame for our story. My family are wondering how this is all going to end, I’m really nervous to say to them not well unfortunately
No, it's not the Dems and the media. It's weak uninspiring leadership (really the bereft leadership) of the RNC. There are so many things they could have done with aggressive truthful ads about the Dems. Joe, Hunter, AOC and her squad of radical antisemites/communists.
Ads saying don't turn our state into California, showing homeless defecating on the street, shooting up drugs and the government sanctioned lawlessness, no bail, not enforcing shoplifting laws, releasing thousands of pedophiles from prison I could go on and on. The RNC are wusses.
It wasn't the media that sunk the GOP, it was spinelessness.
"Democrat politicians and media are fully to blame"
No. If politicians were really to blame they would have been tossed 3 weeks ago. Instead, the vast majority of them retained their thrones. Newsome, Whitmer, Pritzker, Hochul, et el, and dozens of Congressmen were all given a thumbs up by their constituents.
Yeah.....can't believe they were ok with their kids being screamed at all day in school about how they're oppressors and watching their daughter's soccer team being taken over by trans kids.
I’m not sure I think the Democrats have got a stranglehold on the elections, they don’t care how they win them as long as they retain the power. Take Arizona for eg the same voting system as 2020 and the same county Maricopa as having the most problems. Going forward to 2024 I doubt very much will change. I’m sure by then we will probably be voting on Fakebook or MSM it’s a terrifying thought both ways.
It was the perfect opportunity for them to go against what Trump had wanted, and I’m no fan of Trump. Once the economy was shut down, it was a full road ahead for them to do what they did. I had to laugh at the comments I saw for two years…”Thank you, Gov Whitmer, for keeping us safe.” Uhh…you couldn’t keep yourself safe? I sure knew how! And the main reason why she won was bc of the Roe overturn. But I will partially agree…there are some very successful but stupid liberals who fell for her so-called Covid protection.
Those who didn't vote, allowed those who did vote to control the narrative. The 40% of conservatives who didn't bother to vote could have swung the election massively in favor of a pro-freedom, anti-socialism agenda.
This is what infuriates me. Those who endlessly complain about how things are, but did not vote, nor act in any way to make real change; these people make me want to censor them.
I don't know, but I read the other day that 55% of Republicans voted (actually, a higher number than Democrats this cycle). That leaves a lot of potential voters sitting out.
Right... so they didn't much care about that 2 years of treatment. Can't blame a politician when he/she's just doing the bidding of those who vote for them.
I would argue that the politicians are not doing the bidding for their constituents, but rather for themselves, the special interests, and the squeakiest wheels. I do blame the voters, but I also blame the politicians (on both sides of the aisle) for their greediness, lack of integrity, and failure to do what is right for their constituents and our nation.
No one in the US is protesting for less freedom, at least not ordinary people. Normal mechanisms of political response have broken down, and the people have lost collective control over basic policies and how their government functions. A once-free media is complicit.
We no longer have functioning, representative parties and instead look to personality cults to save us. Trump fits into this pattern, but the pattern started in 2008 with Obama.
That is nonsense. The SC gave the authority to the states for the "people" in the states to decide. The states, and people in the states, "get back" the power rightly belong to them. That is the full meaning of the SC striking down of Rowe. It was wrongly decided and unconstitutional.
Comprof is a troll, please don't feed the trolls. That account leaves divisive and insulting comments on every article. It's always to elicit a reaction and an argument, never productive or even respectful on a basic level.
Not a troll at all. Just someone who is concerned about all the freedoms that have been taken away from Americans. I feel....like I live in E. Germany in 80s.
Twitter is a private company. You don't have a constitutional right to use twitter. Free speech means free from government interference. As in men with guns won't come to your house, arrest you and/or beat the crap out of you.
In China people from the government will arrest you and beat you up for complaining about the government. Here in the US you obviously feel free to post here without that fear.
"Men with guns in US do come to your house and arrest you." Sounds like Hitler Youth. What do you think 20 FBI agents did at Trump's Florida house a couple months ago. If you are wrong politics in the US, you are not safe.
In the US a Maga hat character, unarmed was shot between the eyes in Denver at a legal protest, and no charges were filed. The FBI and Justice clearly changed the votes of US in 2020 according to pre and post surveys of likely voters and emails after two years divulged from Twitter, FBI and justice.
FBI agents came to Trump's house because he kept a whole lot of classified documents as well as other government documents that belonged to the national archivist.
That has nothing to do with free speech. Just Trump being Trump and thinking he could get away with whatever he wants
also
"The FBI and Justice clearly changed the votes of US in 2020 according to pre and post surveys of likely voters and emails after two years divulged from Twitter, FBI and justice."
ROFL. Except that there is no evidence of any of this. Just crazy conspiracy theories that constantly change. As soon as you disprove one, another one pops up.
I COMPLETELY agree and have been trying to explain that, just like you don't have a Constitutional Right to be invited to a college/university to speak.
I was being sarcastic and parroting the "party line" on this board.
I live in China, Beijing to be exact. I believe that western media is again not really reporting what is happening here.
People here are not protesting for democracy, but for easing of lockdowns. That several people are shouting "We want democracy" means absolutly nothing, this is enormous country with 4.5 Population of US. You can find people yelling "We want emperor back". Majority people are pissed, because they follow world cup and see that nobody is wearing mask. For example on protest in Beijing they were shouting that they are patriots, and want lockdowns to end.
As for protest, what I was surprised, is how fast have they worked. In less than week, they have starting easing measures. Guangzhou (big city in south) has removed all measures.
In West people were literally called Nazis, conspiracy theorist, anti science for over a year when they were fighting lockdowns. DeSantis was called crazy for opening Florida. Gavin Newsome in Commiefornia was decimating small business with lockdowns. In Europe (continent where I was born) protestors were beaten by the police. Australia had interment camps. Canada and their truckers not to mention (who were called white supremacist for wanting easier Covid measures).
I am not saying this to show how China is good, but how bad thing are in US. Government and MSM were absolutly out of control for 2 years, any descent was punished to same level as CPC is doing in China. Only ironically their protest actualy worked, and in US you still have idiots doing double masking an Dr Fauci is waking free man.
Raziel. I would love to hear more about what is really happening there and write about it on my Substack. You have made some very interesting points. Stay well
Smells like CCP.
You have a poor understanding of Democracy. There is a BIG difference between the street demo in China in the US. The demonstrators in the US enjoy freedom of speech. They don't feel the threat of being harassed, arrested, abused and beaten up by the police. If they start acting illegally such as destroying properties, they get arrested. In China, people do NOT enjoy freedom of speech and they are arrested exactly because they are politically incorrect. They WERE indeed protesting for freedom. They want to have a say on the lockdown, and yes, that means they are protesting for democracy. Democracy means the can freely express their opinions without the fear of being arrested. Xi won't allow that.
Calling all sort of things to others with no consequence is exactly what democracy is about. People in the West call their political leaders all kinds of names all the time. Try that in China.
Correct. We won’t (shouldn’t anyway) get arrested for our speech. But here in America, we lose our jobs, families, tribes, and reputations (and endorsements) as a result of “free speech” and failure to obey (as in Covid vaccines). Our government is We the People and the people have no problem banishing certain members or supporting them losing their livelihoods. Of course not as bad - it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there.
You can stop with the hyperbole, Raziel. No one on the continent of North America during our time of temporary lockdowns was ever forced to stay in their apartments either chained in or with doors welded shut.
I do not think we can ever be compared to the dystopia now taking place ( and apparently has been for over a year) in certain Chinese cities, where an overzealous authoritarian regime is herding citizens into what literally are home internment camps.
Raziel, thank God you are still with us (in this comments family). I was wondering where you were. Thank you for your frontline reporting. Wow you are so correct. Eye-opening.
Definitely eye opening!
Of course people are protesting for democracy. It’s human nature to yearn for freedom. But those sufficiently informed of what democracy means know that full-on democracy is a pipe dream at this stage, so they’re trying for a tiny slice of that pie, i.e., the freedom to walk the streets and voice their opinions. The relaxing of lockdowns is a step in that direction.
I agree with you about the lunacy of lockdowns imposed by politicians in US and Canada (you can add New Zealand and Australia to that shameful list). They were rooted in perverse medical advice, which gave cover to the power-mad politicians and bureaucrats, of whom Dr. Fauci was most conspicuous.
How do we correct this now especially with an administration hell bent on keeping us restricted. We need to focus on getting all our students back in school without masks our population back to work, the focus from the Democrats and the MSM is everywhere else’s the moment.
Brilliant post - all true!
I inquired upthread, but would like to know more.
I see the supply issues in the US as something which must be severely impacting China. The people who were producing these products must not be working today. Are they starving? I fear the worst. I hope you can reassure me that this is just civil unrest and not some horrific genocide happening in your nation.
You can live in Beijing and still not get the full picture because you don’t belong there - just a foreigner. When you have at least some people going from specific protest demands to openly shouting against the communist government, in an authoritarian regime you’ve gone over a critical threshold. You need to be born in this and absorb it every day to understand what it really means.
Kishore Mahbubani argues that most Chinese rate the CCP as highly competent. There were certainly frustrations with the draconian lockdowns, but as Raziel notes this isn't a mass protest movement agitating for democracy. In fact, I see little evidence that there’s a desire for Western style democracy on a mass scale in China today.
The irony is that most Chinese find the CCP to be reasonably competent, though of course certainly not perfect. On the other hand, Americans are the ones who are primarily advocating for the overthrow of the CCP and denigrating the brutality of Chinese governance. The disconnect reminds me of how liberal elites generally have a softer view towards crime than actual members of the Black community, many of whom live in high crime neighborhoods and have to deal with the consequences of rampant criminality daily.
As is now being reported, major cities are now shifting their lockdown policies in response to the protests. The Chinese government has generally shown a tendency to be responsive to the needs of the people. Post-Mao, the CCP has overseen the greatest uplifting of its citizens out of poverty in human history. This doesn't align with the picture of a vicious regime that only cares about its own survival at the expense of everything else. I believe it's more accurate to describe the CCP as paternalistic rather than despotic.
I agree with you, CPC is highly competent is several important areas that matter to ordinary citizens. That is they are very business friendly, not only to big business but also mom and pop shops, education, infrastructure and personal safety (violent crime is very low). This has created situation that every single Chinese lives vastly better than then he lived 10-20-30 years ago. On the other side they crack on personal liberties on every corner. For average Chinese this is great trade off, especially when we look what happened in West in same time period.
At same time US politicians have destroyed middle class, outsourced manufacturing, infrastructure has decayed that now many developing countries have better infrastructure than US. Healthcare not to mention. Cities in US every day look more like lawless cities from SF movies. School system has been degraded on every level. Opioid epidemic is destroying us. Majority of Americans now live worse of than their parents did.
And I am writing this not praise CPC just to point how our US politicians have failed America.
Sadly most people in US don't understand what happened in China and how US politicians have screwed the country, if they did, they would be up in arms. in 1990 China was one of poorest countries in the world. US was manufacturing powerhouse with vibrant middle class and largest trading partner to rest of the world. Today things have turned to be unrecognizable. Chinas middle class is growing, our is shrinking. They manufacture and export for the world. We on the other hand are drowning in debt, with little manufacturing left.
Do you REALLY want to argue that the average American does not live MUCH better than the average Chinese? Have you been to the United States?
And what is wrong with our infrastructure? Nothing, as far as I can see. Shouting about it is a way to get money allocated that is used in corrupt ways.
Yes, America has problems, but the best way of summing them up is if we don't get our act together, we might devolve into something like China.
And the Chinese economy is scarcely doing fantastic. From everything I read, the financial system is more wobbly than ours is. And obviously the lunatic and indefensible measures Xi is imposing on the people of China are hurting your economy a LOT. We do not suffer from this particular burden, and haven't for a year or more. It is true that lockdowns NEVER made any sense, and that we did them anyway, but over time I think that truth will get out to enough people that nothing like that will be politically impossible again--at least if we can figure out how to keep the Democrats from rigging elections.
Nobody is arguing that average Chinese lives better than average American. But that average Chinese has seen their life standard improve immensely for last 30 years, every single Chinese today lives better than he did 10 years ago.
At same time in America, middle class has been decimated, if you compare 1990, 2000 and today, country has taken significant downward trajectory in every single category. In 2000 our national debt was $5 trillion, today we are over $30 trillion with deficits out of control. This would be ok if money was invested in infrastructure and improving things at home. But we have no idea where it went, part of it was squandered in desastrus wars abroad.
Whats is wrong with US infrastructure => honestly where to begin, our infrastructure is terrible, nothing was done since 1980, and when compared to Europe we are 20 years behind, compared to China we are 40 years behind.
Our electric grid is falling, bridges have passed.
American society of civil engineers publishers report card every year
https://infrastructurereportcard.org/
Currently they give us bearly C-. Before coming to China, I also thought US infrastructure is ok, now US looks like developing country.
Again, I am not saying this to praise China, but point out, that our politicians have been sleeping on the job, letting country come to this state.
As for Chinese economy, I work here. True things are not great, but compared to US, China is manufacturing and trading juggernaut, with enormous trade surplus. Things are not ideal, but compared to mismanagement that is going on in US, they are in much better shape. First thing you learn when you come to China, is to stop beliving majority of things written in Western media, because they simply dont align with reality.
Until we start taking our US politicians accountable, things at home will not improve. If people knew, what is really going on in China, and how fast they are catching up, we have uprising in US, because people would see how politicians have faild us
We are well aware how our politicians have failed us, but the Chinese and others seem to be preventing fair elections that would put a better crop in office. Joe Biden takes bribes, and then crafts policy to suit the people who paid them. This is obvious to me at least.
But you are also obviously pushing propaganda, and I seriously doubt many on this forum are ignorant enough to fail to understand that. Yes, Chinese standards of living have risen. But China also operates concentration camps, tortures people at will, and reserves the right as a government to arrest anyone at any time for any reason, and very certainly for publicly saying things they don't want to hear, protesting, or failing to accept life as a de facto slave.
The Chinese have large pictures of a psychopathic mass murderer plastered all over the country. This murderers picture is on the currency. This is shameful.
You fail to understand why Chinese today revere Mao. Mao isn't venerated because of the excesses of the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, which many acknowledge were grave errors, but because he finally managed to unite China after the Century of Humiliation, which saw an aging Qing dynasty succumb to imperialistic depredations by both Japan and the West and which witnessed warlordism and internecine warfare between the KMT and CCP for decades following the collapse of the Qing in 1912. Mao managed to unite modern China in 1949 and after a century of chaos allowed the country to once again become the arbiter of its own destiny.
Given the history of slavery in America and the genocide of the Native Americans and the people associated with those events, I’m a little surprised that you even tried making this argument. The progressive left loves trying to cancel historical figures because they don’t match up to modern 21st century standards of decency. Was Andrew Jackson a psychopath also? He helped perpetuate actual genocide through warfare and slaughter and yet we have him on our $20 bill.
I looked it up. Less than 20,000 people died in the Trail of Tears. And we have monuments and museums teaching about it. We are not proud of it, and there are many other reasons Jackson is on the twenty.
You have killed vastly more people in both Tibet and Xinjiang than we killed in all the Indian Wars put together.
And that was over 100 years ago. What matters is what China is foibg NOW. Today. December 2022.
And you know who else unified his country? Adolph Hitler.
Its funny you chose to respond. What is interesting to note is that Mao killed A LOT more Chinese than, say, Britain and Japan did. Yes, the Japanese committed large scale horrific atrocities in, say, Nanjing. They killed several hundred thousand Chinese after Doolittle and his men landed there and escaped.
But those crimes are NOTHING comoared to what Mao did. Our resettlement of the Indians is nothing.
And China has slaves NOW. We eliminated slavery 150 years ago. You kept it and if anything expanded it.
I don’t buy that most Chinese would admire Mao in any way if you allowed honest history. He was a mass murdering psychopath. Tibet and Xinjiang have been raped in ways not at all different from what the Japanese did.
I'm not talking about the Trail of Tears specifically so much as the systematic genocide of the Native Americans over centuries as America expanded westward. The numbers are surely much larger than 20,000 for that, but in any case, comparing absolute numbers is pointless given that China has had a substantially larger population than most countries for much of modern history.
The Great Leap Forward probably resulted in anywhere between 15-45 million excess deaths, but that was the result of extremely poor economic decision making which led to mass famines. I wouldn’t equate that with the 1-2 million people who died during the Cultural Revolution as a result of direct persecution.
A lot of Chinese today, including my parents, were alive during both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. They may be part of the older generation, but it's not like these were events centuries ago that no one can remember. Xi Jinping's own father, the late Xi Zhongxun, was known for political and economic moderation and was purged multiple times during his career.
There was no "systematic genocide". That is what China is doing to the Uighurs and has been doing to the Tibetans for a long time. What we did is fight a series of wars, at the conclusion of which the defeated Indians were resettled in new places. It was not something anyone raised in the latter half of the 20th Century would condone, but it was common enough then.
By FAR most of the Indians died from disease. There was one case of a British officer intentionally infecting a fort with smallpox, but by and large the spread was organic, unplanned, and devastating.
And you keep saying "Great Leap Forward". It wasn't, was it? It was systematic regression, in which farming techniques that had worked for thousands of years were repudiated because Mao read something somewhere that roughly as well tested as these infernal "vaccines".
And when people started starving to death and dying in large numbers, he didn't believe the accounts. He thought they were hiding food somewhere.
So this was not just a mistake. A mistake you recognize and correct. Mao, sociopath that he was, could not be convinced a Great Man like him was CAPABLE of making mistakes.
And again, there is absolutely no equivalent anywhere in American history for the Cultural Revolution, for mass brainwashing, for psychological torture camps, and for the willful and massive destruction of thousands of years of human culture.
And yes, China is bigger than the US. So what? We have no mass famines on our record. We have never operated Laogai. Even in WW2, when we interned Japanese, conditions were as benign as we could make them.
Spare me your nonsense. I assume you were told to write all this, but please recognize I'm not stupid, and that is the sine qua non for you to make any progress making ridiculous comparisons.
Since it's founding, America has been the freest nation on Earth, and our failures are still vastly better than the successes of most nations, and very certainly China, which has reappointed itself a Mandarin, and has reempowered a court. What has changed in 2,000 years?
And most of your previous kings were nowhere as brutal as the Communists were in the latter half of the 20th century. They were brutal without reason. They were brutal to no purpose. The ideology you shoved down people's throats was ridiculous and only defensible through the violence and censorship that continue to this day.
Pretty amazing that the actual dispossession of the Native American tribes over centuries through both slaughter and disease wasn’t genocide, but what the CCP is doing in Xinjiang is even though there’s no evidence that anyone is being killed and given that some have already labelled the use of the term genocide as highly tendentious in light of that fact.
The moral justification that Americans offered for westward expansion was that the Reds lacked civilization and therefore European conquest of the continent simply reflected the triumph of civilization over savagery. I don’t see that as the embodiment of any sort of moral exceptionalism. If anything, I noted that it eerily resembles the paternalistic attitude that the CCP harbors toward the Uighurs today.
The problem with China Derangement Syndrome is that there's an inherent tendency to view ourselves only in terms of our most positive attributes and historical moments while viewing our adversaries through the prism of only their worst. It's not exactly what I would consider to be an enlightened philosophical point of view.
Oh... we in the US completely understand what has happened to the destruction of the working class here. I design and manufacture American OEM durable goods and our competencies cannot be matched by even China with their completely delusional labor rates.
We know that US politicians and their lobbyists offshored our competencies to their benefit - it is why we elected Trump and why THEY got rid of him. Mitch McConnell's wife owns a CCP shipping/shipbuilding business while he completely withdraws all RNC PAC from America First senate candidates that were chosen by the People in their states. The Biden family has taken millions from the Chinese.
Do we need a clearer picture of what our political class is there for?
Excellent commentary. I’m not praising the CCP either, only suggesting that it’s unnuanced to view it as some sort of demonic entity. In any case, the social contract between the Chinese government and its people should be something that they negotiate themselves. I don’t necessarily see it as something for Americans to worry about.
Many commenters seem to believe that competent and functioning government is totally irrelevant as long as individuals attain some abstract notion of freedom and no one can tell them what to do. This mindset strikes me as naïve at best. I don’t see many people here clamoring to live in India and if they did for any extended period of time I'm sure their viewpoint would become far more nuanced.
The whole point of the Constitution--which is the most brilliant political document ever enacted by a major nation in human history in my view--is that we need government. Nobody disputes this. Thomas Paine in Common Sense agreed with this.
He merely said that if we enact a government to protect us and it winds up ABUSING us, then we have the worst of all worlds, don't we? This means the government has to be fenced in, like a wild beast, or raging fire, and used for its appropriate uses, and otherwise forced into background irrelevance as far as most major life decisions are concerned.
Government cannot free anyone. It can prevent one set of individuals from being abused by another. But in China the government is used to ABUSE people who don't like it. I read you have death wagons where organs are harvested from Falun Gong members, for use in the bodies of senior Party members. You have cameras all over the cities of Tibet so that when monks set themselves on fire in protest you can have them off the street in less than five minutes. You gang rape female Tibetan nuns in Chinese jails. Up to a million Uighurs are being treated roughly like the Germans treated the Jews they didn't murder outright.
No, you should feel deep shame trying to rationalize all this. Your government is a model for psychopaths, and no one else.
I don’t think this ‘social contract’ you continue to refer to is negotiable.
Do you?
Chinese Social contract is different than one we have in the west and is based on "Mandate of Heaven" (even atheist and religion-hating CPC claims to have the Mandate of Heaven). This concept is very different from concepts in west. Western Democracy is based on idea that people vote thus provide democratic legitimacy to the government. Western Royalty is based on Idea that Royalty has God given right to rule.
Mandate of Heaven on the other hands proclaims that heaven bestows mandate to just and capable Ruler to rule over China (Be it emperor or CPC or any other government). And as long as ruler is providing for majority people and treats them well, keeps stability. Ruler has right to rule over China. If government mistreats and abused people and not provides, it will lose mandate and people will rise and overthrow them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
It is very interesting concept and explains a lot, why China is the way it is.
When I first came to China, I was same opinion as you, but after learning about mandate of heaven and how it is important for China from historical context, many things become much more clear.
Here is amazing documentary about China and CPC, it has several parts, and brings enemies of CPC and CPC stooges to discuss China and engage in honest discussion, in one of parts they also touch topic of Mandate of Heaven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCwibvjj0jE
It is amazing watch, because you get Dissidents and CPC people talking and discussing.
Again I am not defending CPC, I just believe that we Westerners would benefit allot if we understood Chinese and their way of thinging little better.
Thanks for the information. Which I both respect and accept except as to Uyghurs. And my solution to that is to not do business with companies that collaborate with China. My concern is not what China does for her citizens. My concern is for China's aspirations, if any, in the rest of the world.
Really, Yan? Paternalistic?
Like a father ruling over his sometimes wayward children? As in censoring what they read and what they see? As in no right to free assembly if it is against the regime? As in no elections in deciding who will govern them? As in no right to write and publish freely? As in no right to criticize the government in print or online? As in no right to organize a political party to oppose the regime in power?
You are writing on a thread that would not exist in China, for Chinese.
You might want to keep that in mind..
Censorship and democracy are two different things. Personally I'm against the CCP's censorship but there's little to suggest that masses of Chinese people want Western style democracy. In any case, there are myriad ways to get around the censors in China. Oftentimes it's more of an inconvenience than anything else.
Japan is often held up as an erstwhile democratic ally, but apart from 1993-1994 and 2009-2012, the LDP has been in power continuously since 1955. Japan is virtually a one party state. No one in China is clamoring to live in democratic India. What Chinese people mostly want is for a government more responsive to its needs. The recent shift in Covid policy suggests that the Chinese government is recalibrating in response to the protests. For a supposedly despotic regime, the CCP post-Mao seems surprisingly attuned to the needs of its people.
I hate repeating myself but the attitude of many commenters here eerily mirrors the attitudes of the woke elite in America towards racial minorities. Somehow the woke always seem to believe that they know better than the people whose interests they supposedly defend.
The very concept of “western style democracy” is an absurdity, a fake promoted by communist propagandists. Democracy simply refers to the people having the final say on electing leaders, taking major decisions and punishing (at the ballot box) the leaders who fail to keep their promises. When Taiwan or S Korea became democracies, they didn’t do so at the request of the “West” or copied “western” mechanisms. They pragmatically adopted democracy because it’s the only way to guarantee the rule of law, and their countries could not continue to develop without this rule of law. Communist China is not an “Eastern-style democracy”, it’s an authoritarian regime on its way to reverting to its totalitarian roots. Tyranny does not know East or West, it’s the same everywhere.
Hear! Hear!
Nicely said..
Censorship exists in China why?
Because the prevailing political authoritarian apparatus cannot allow free expression to exist - since the very existence of it could (and will) entail and encourage opposition to its regime. And that cannot stand.
You say that the Chinese mostly want a government responsive to its needs. It stands to reason that presently if they do not get what they want, they'll do what? What they're doing now. Protesting, the courageous ones at least.
You are an apologist for a society that does not and never will give its citizens an avenue through the voting box to exercise its frustrations and yes, grievances. Voting is the very antithesis of censorship. To vote is an act of free expression. It is the open desire of a certain intent. And that scares the hell out of the CCP.
Chinese may not want to live in democratic India or Japan for that matter, but does that preclude any engagement in how they are governed at home?
If these demonstrations do get out of hand, there will be casualties no doubt - whether we here in the West see them or hear about them or not.
And we are not woke when we condemn that.
They're protesting and the CCP is responding by changing its policies, according to people on the ground there. The social contract is working as expected.
I'd also suggest reading my comments regarding democracy and China. It's very naive to assume that a democratic China would be friendlier to Western interests. In any case the social contract between the Chinese people and their government is for them to negotiate. I'm not advocating for any particular form of governance, only pointing out that Americans fail to realize that there's reasonable overall satisfaction among most Chinese with respect to the competency of their government, Covid lockdowns notwithstanding.
Ironically I don't believe you can say the same for the American government. Isn't Congress one of the least trusted institutions in the country these days?
It’s really ironic you think democracy wouldn’t work in China, because it’s something “western”, that doesn’t fit the Chinese “history and culture”. Too bad that China has been ruled for more than seven decades by a western idea called Communism.
It’s not what I think. Read the chapter about China and democracy in Kishore Mahbubani’s book Has China Won. Data suggests that most Chinese view the CCP as competent and there’s little evidence suggesting a mass desire for Western style democracy.
You call this a “social contract”? Abject fear of their regime’s fall is the only factor that sometimes forces the CCP to moderate or at least temporarily change their policies; they couldn’t care less about the interest of the Chinese people. As to the brave Chinese who dared to defy the regime on this occasion, we all know they will end up in the vengeful grinder of the communist mafia.
The relationship of the CCP to its people mirrors the Confucian paternalism of Chinese emperors to their people as embodied in the Mandate of Heaven. I believe it’s incorrect to say that the CCP could care less about the people of China. Legitimacy is earned through competent and responsive rule.
All of the protesters from the last days will end dead, in prison or at least at the bottom of the communist society for the rest of their life - you know it as well as I do, because it seems we’ve both lived under communist regimes. This response may be “competent”, in the sense that Chinese political repression works efficiently, but is this your idea of “responsive rule”? Your “Confucian paternalism” bears an impressive similarity to medieval western tyranny.
Andy, suffice to say that Yan does not (or does not want to) ‘see any evidence’ of anything different from the ideology he is already wedded to or what the Chinese are apparently complacent of.
Of course, apparent complacency does not constitute acceptance.
I don’t see any evidence that the Covid protesters are being imprisoned. These were protests against the lockdowns, not mass agitation against the legitimacy of CCP rule. Interestingly enough as noted by commenter Raziel, the protests appear to have worked. A number of cities are adjusting their Covid policies in response to the protests. That strikes me as good and responsive governance. All of us will end up dead one day, not just people in China!
What social contract are you referring to, Yan?
Do you mean the one by which the CCP encourages a capitalist system allowing Chinese to make money? Lots of it. In return for the abdication of any say in who governs them? How do you know people in mainland China signed on to that?
They love making money, we both can agree to that, let's face it - they are the factory for the rest of the world. But how do we know they also enjoy not being able to participate in how their country works? In how their country is governed? We don't know. Why? Because Chinese are not allowed to speak freely (publicly at least..) to any outside (or inside) journalists.
We may think they are complacent and happy, as I think you do, but only because of their silence.
They are silent for a reason.
Sounds like Americans should make more of an effort to understand the people and culture of China. I'd recommend spending some time living or working in China and getting to know the people there, but that suggestion was dismissed by another commenter as a propaganda talking point.
As Americans we know so little about the history and culture of the Chinese people, but we seem so confident in projecting our own biases onto what we believe their mindset must be.
Stop hiding behind the “history and culture” of China, as if the Chinese would be from another planet - a favorite trope of Chinese Imperial and then CCP propaganda. The Chinese people want exactly what all people want: freedom and prosperity. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are not willing or able to provide either.
Can we ask them that? Or should we take it on faith that you know exactly what the rest of the world wants. The misguided idea that the rest of the world wants to be like America is laughable at best.
Laugh all you want, I’m not an American, I come from a country that kicked its communist regime in the behind and I’m sure the Chinese people will do the same. If you want to “ask them that”, start with the people who protested in the last few days, but do it quick, before the “responsive” communist regime puts them all in jail.
I suggest that you and me, Yan, let the Chinese people decide. In theory (because in practice, it ain't gonna happen..) Do you agree to that?
I think what you're attempting to tell me is that the Chinese living on the mainland do not want a democratic form of government and what comes with it - freedom of speech, of assembly, of a free press. That their 'history and culture' somehow make that untenable. That they chose to live under the Communist woke. Really? Is it our 'bias' to doubt that?
Do you think the majority of Chinese actually want the life they have - creature comforts and the fancy Buicks and Teslas but keeping their mouths shut, literally and figuratively?
There's little to suggest an appetite for Western style democracy among the masses in China. I do believe that censorship is counterproductive and I believe that most Chinese would rather not have to deal with the hassle of circumventing the censors online either through the use of VPNs or through creative ways of expression.
Look at Japan. With the exception of 1993-1994 and 2009-2012, the LDP has ruled the country continuously since 1955. Japan is basically a one party state. Even East Asian "democracy" doesn't look quite like its counterpart in the West.
If you want to present a sociological account of mainland Chinese attitudes towards the CCP, I'd be interested in your learnings. When I tell woke elites in America that most African Americans are actually in favor of policing rather than de-policing, I'm often met with the same consternation and skepticism that various commenters here express towards Chinese attitudes regarding the CCP.
There's a disbelief that the people whose interests the elites claim to be defending might actually feel differently on the issues than how the elites think they should or in fact do feel. There's this dismissal of the notion that people might actually know better when it comes to their own feelings and aspirations than what the elites know. China Derangement Syndrome has made even the erstwhile anti-woke among us incredibly woke.
You say there's little to suggest that there's an appetite for Western democracy in China?
How do you know that?
I suggest there is an appetite, because the CCP knows it and thus does not offer it.
The cause for the uplifting of millions of Chinese citizens from poverty is not the fact that it was overseen by the CCP, but the fact that the CCP has halfway lifted its heavy boot from the throat of the Chinese people. These days the boot is coming down again, because a truly modern China and rule by the CCP are incompatible (a modern China requires rule of law, not just shiny skyscrapers).
After having been there a few times you make a good point about the people there being ambivalent about communism because their point of reference is... state provided everything with a slice of caplitalism to keep people quiet(communism). What makes me far more nervous about world stability is that Western 'elites' are favorable to the Chinese model. Tim Cook of Apple just admitted such. I mean, that is an American company praising communism. Very unsettling for those of us who have lived communism or near it.
Obviously, Tim Cook has zero intention of living by the rules he thinks should apply to the rest of us. "Communism", per say, is just a means of reviving oligarchic elitism and class hierarchy using language that still appears to conform to Liberal standards. All the language is lies, of course. Tim Cook is a liar, a thief, and a bully. This is all latent in his abdication of the most basic principles of human decency.
I don't like Alex Jones. I can't watch him. But he and people like him have been talking for a long time about this global class of people who want a global government of us, by them, for them. And we now know that is pretty much exactly what the World Economic Forum is. They have gotten open about it, not least because their propaganda has made so many people so stupid that they can say things that would have infuriated everyone in the US, across the spectrum, just 30 years ago.
Agree, brother. Alex Jones... Don't care for his schtick, but he was right. So was Trump who did everything he could to put a stop to the 'Great Reset' and they took him out for it. They are still trying to.
So you work for the Chinese security and propaganda apparatus? I get it.
You know, Mao killed some 50 million Chinese through sheer incompetence, combined with a sociopathic indifference to their suffering. He also led an inter-generational mass murder of wise and decent human beings, in the name of an abstraction which mostly involved a narcissistic desire to promote himself and his agenda. Yet his picture is everywhere.
And even now the Uighurs would dispute the humaneness of the CCP. So would those in Hong Kong. So would the Falun Gong. So would ANYONE who fails to mouth the ridiculous lies that Communists force their prey to mouth everywhere they seize dictatorial power.
You may be right that they don't want American style democracy. But they don't want Xi for life, and they don't want social credit scores to determine the course of their own and their childrens lives. Only genuinely sick people defend this abusive and horrific regime.
At the risk of coming across as repetitive, data suggests that most Chinese view the CCP as highly competent. The recent protests against the lockdowns are more of an aberration than the norm for CCP rule post-Mao. And in this case it seems as if many cities are already starting to recalibrate Covid policies in response to the protests, which is suggestive of a government attuned to the needs of its people. The CCP may overtly crack down in many cases in order to maintain public order but it usually adjusts its policies behind the scenes in response to the needs of the people.
Mao is revered today not because of the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which many admit were grave errors, but because he finally managed to unite China in 1949 after the Century of Humiliation. The aging and decrepit Qing dynasty collapsed in 1912 after decades of increasing incompetence, with depredations inflicted on China by both Japan and the West. China went through periods of warlordism and internecine warfare between the KMT and the CCP in the ensuing decades. It wasn't until 1949 that modern China was finally unified again as a country in control of it own destiny.
Then and now, Chiang Kai Shek would have been a VASTLY better leader of China. Wherever you are now economically, you would have been there 60 years ago.
And you know, Saddam Hussein regularly polled quite well too. Nobody publicly opposed him. Everyone publicly loved him.
And the simple reason was that anyone who complained disappeared, and it was well known most of them were tortured and killed in a variety of ways. China operates to this day Gulags which are called Laogai. You know this. Don't act like you don't.
Please don't treat us as if we are stupid. Many Americans are, which is why your propaganda has ANY chance, but by and large not here. What you need are people who know nothing about anything.
Chiang Kai-shek ruled over Taiwan as the head of an authoritarian military regime that perpetrated the White Terror. Martial law wasn't ended until 1987 by his son Chiang Ching-kuo. The first democratic presidential election in Taiwan wasn't held until 1996.
Towards the latter stages of the Chinese Civil War, the American political establishment became increasingly dillusioned with Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, in particular over the KMT's perceived corruption and incompetence.
Comparing China today to Iraq under Saddam Hussein is asinine.
Formosa then Taiwan lived in perennial fear both of a Communist Chinese invasion, and of subversion from within by agents the lunatic Communists no doubt cultivated and where possible inserted. It was not without reason they feared that the brutal Red Chinese would do to them what they did to the Tibetans.
And despite all this, Chiang Kai Shek and the KMT were VASTLY, VASTLY less violent than the Communists. As you KNOW, Mao more or less forced most of the nation into an extended period of mass starvation, and most scholars estimate some 50 million Chinese died as a direct result. And the White Terror killed perhaps 18,000 people, probably most of them guilty.
The Cultural Revolution killed AT LEAST hundreds of thousands of people.
Here is the thing: you cannot be an honest Communist. That beast does not exist. What Communists do is break things and then lie about it. Here, you act as if you are in a position to be morally outraged about the actions CKS and the KMT undertook to prevent being overtaken by Communists, but ALSO free to ignore ENTIRELY the vastly larger crimes of the criminal regime you are even now defending.
And what is asinine about comparing the Fascistic government of China--where a small elite has grown immensely rich using the power of the State to compel what in millions of cases amounts to literal slavery--to Iraq? I think China is WORSE than Iraq in its worst days.
You tell me: what happens to people who criticize the regime publicly? Are they given a fair hearing? Nonsense. Depending on who they are, they either disappear, are publicly rebuked, risk retalIation against their families (EVEN OVERSEAS!!), and at a MINIMUM see their social credit score lowered, and access to basic human rights curtailed.
No, you are defending a brutal regime that is comparable to the worst of Franco or Mussolini, wit the difference that you are vastly more violent, much less tolerant, and utterly unable to EVER speak a word of honest truth.
So who controls that data?
They must retain some pride as a nation. If they lose that they will collapse. It's a real tightrope act criticizing your government while maintaining a semblance of national pride. We are having the same problem here, where patriotic acts are labeled as "insurrection".
If we do recover and finally humble the purveyors of socialism, will those dedicated to it ever recover their pride, or will they assume that their nation has failed?
Socialism is mostly driven by ignorance and thoughtlessness. Our nations honest history withstands scrutiny well. We have done many bad things and have had many flaws, but I would happily compare our worst moments with the average moments of most other nations.
So, assuming that recovery somehow consists in surmounting the propaganda apparatus through accurate information, and the stimulation of honest independent thought, I would say no. All tolerably intelligent people will realize we did them a favor.
And "patriotism as insurrection" obviously is a stupid idea that was crafted to make traps for fools. It has worked in many cases, but if and when we get full disclosure on FBI, Capital Police and other involvement, it will be untenable for all but the most psychotic.
And the prosperity only dates to the early 90's, when free market forces were eventually allowed to work relatively unimpeded. Communism was an absolute disaster in every possible way, and the CCP should now be renamed the Fascist Party of China. That is what it is. There is no Communism. There is an oligarchy which seeks its own wealth and privilege backed by a powerful internal military trained to beat, arrest, torture and murder dissidents who refuse to be silenced by the usual method of the social credit score and threats.
That to me reads like propaganda. The lockdowns would not be so draconian if the population was armed, or if elections mattered. You cannot separate what the government does from what it is allowed to do.
And yes, a lot of stupid and indefensible things happened in supposedly democratic nations. But those were examples of unregulated authoritarianism, were they not, and not of the systems as they should have operated, on a basis of REAL science and the consent of the governed?
Agree with you. The 89 protest was for democracy, and more forward looking, this one is more of a reaction to the lockdown policy.
I came here to say the same and you said it better. This article is overly sensationalized. I was in Beijing in 1989. Today's protests are in different nature, organization (thanks Apple for working with the CCP), and scale.
Btw, they didn't loosen up in Guangzhou. They said they would, but when you ask people who actually live there, they didn't, just like they supposedly loosened up in Beijing - they didn't.
Finally, I wanted to point out that today's democratic party is closer to the CCP than you would imagine. I hope American voters are warned watching what's unfolding in China.
That's an odd thing to say. The Nazi's were explicitly a national socialist party and the fascists in Italy were an offshoot of Italian socialists (Mussolini get kicked out of the party so he started a new one).
Two of them succeeded.
What does an ad campaign by a private company trying (and failing) to be edgy have to do with politics?
Ask the NYT.
The pedophile Joe Biden probably bought a dozen of these purses.
Thanks for the observations. I believe the author's unwritten point is that demonstrations about the lockdowns and deaths can easily spark a much broader movement of resistance to the CCP. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but it does have precedent in other places.
I disagree that these protest will change anything, for simple reason in 2-3 months nobody will care and people will forget and go eitj their own lifes.
Cuomo & Democrats have send god knows how many people to their deaths to nursing homes in New York.
Did we see major shift in political spectrum in New York?
In Canada Trudeau was doing stuff that would make CPC blush, did we see major change was he voted out?
Gavin Newsom destroyed countless lifes in California, did he got recalled?
In all 3 cases there was desent, but no change in government (Cuomo had to resign for being sexual predator). In California and New York majority of voters voted like sheep to keep current regime.
Fauci lied for 3 years, everyone know it, trough his policie he destroyed countless lifes, and still majority of democrats treat him like hero (jist shows how powerful MSM brainwash on average democrat is)
These protest will die down very soon, because majority of people will forget and simply wont care, as soon as measures are eased
"Fauci lied for 3 years, everyone know it, trough his policie he destroyed countless lifes, and still majority of democrats treat him like hero..."
Fauci is a hero to the left because he demonstrated and applied POWER. He held the nation under his thumb with a combination of pseudo-science, celebrity worship and moral certitude amplified by 24/7 media hagiography. He slinks into history - his reputation destroyed by the facts.
Brilliant and succinct. Need to put this away for future use
And the ever senile Joe issued mandates, not law, mandates. Isn't that what dictators do?
Thanks for commenting, Raziel. Only Tucker via the Daily Mail is covering this that I can find; he is showing the video of tanks reminiscent of 1989. I remember seeing my counterpart guarding a minefield on his side of the fence in the same year. Pay attention, people.
Only if you live in Beijing can you tell the rest of us what’s happening there. I agree with everything you said about the USA and Canada. What we went through in the USA the last almost three years is unforgivable. Democrat politicians and media are fully to blame as they blocked our ability to have the freedoms that we expect. They loved seeing the fighting and division going on and counted it as a win for them. The doctors that were silenced by them are the ones who science has proven to be correct. Meanwhile Fauci, on his farewell media tour, is still talking about masks and school closures depending on viral load in local area. And now, because of all those mentioned, along with the head of the largest teachers union and the CDC, we’re stuck with the disaster our country has turned into.
Not sure, Linda.
February 2020 through to the end of that year Trump was in charge and allowed many of the lockdowns you blame on somebody else. The fighting and division - I think it suited him too, as he backtracked on the health measures he initially supported.
To his credit (not that you might think so) he had also the temerity to fast track a vaccine (imagine that!) that was available more or less by the end of the year.
You want to spread blame, go right ahead. Just include everybody..
Michigan was locked down quite strictly. Believe me, I blame republicans for plenty!
Did you get welded into your house?
Well....make sure you mention Republicans, too. I know this is a MAGA board, but let's at least try and have the pretense of intellectual honesty.
Though they weren't mentioned in your post.
Stop, Lee.
Please....for the love of God....don't bring up all the "Red State"/GOP Governors, etc. who imposed lockdowns, etc.
You're being too factually accurate/reasonable for this board.
You are a Communist, woke, leftists.
Where is the ever senile Joe on all of this. He hasn't condemned China for its brutality. He did not condemn Cuba for brutally breaking up protests. He hasn't condemned Iran for murdering women and killing protestors.
I believe the latest revaluations on Hunter's laptop prove the ever senile joe is in the pockets of China. Could he also be the pockets of Cuba and Iran?
I doubt Cuba. They are broke. Maybe Joe just agrees with dictatorial regimes and won't condemn them. After all he tries to rule by mandate.
Because Joe is right in line with Xi and his communists.
Yeah....and what "revaluations"....were those exactly.....
And to think Linda with “our free and fair election system” we voted for this twice 2020 and 2022. It beggars belief at times and this is America, it’s becoming rather unsettling to watch how this is unfolding. I agree the Democrats and the media are fully to blame for our story. My family are wondering how this is all going to end, I’m really nervous to say to them not well unfortunately
No, it's not the Dems and the media. It's weak uninspiring leadership (really the bereft leadership) of the RNC. There are so many things they could have done with aggressive truthful ads about the Dems. Joe, Hunter, AOC and her squad of radical antisemites/communists.
Ads saying don't turn our state into California, showing homeless defecating on the street, shooting up drugs and the government sanctioned lawlessness, no bail, not enforcing shoplifting laws, releasing thousands of pedophiles from prison I could go on and on. The RNC are wusses.
It wasn't the media that sunk the GOP, it was spinelessness.
I can't believe AOC met with Nick Fuentes and Kanye. Sad.
That Hunter Biden laptop is totally like a major something.
Can't believe the GOP, who gets their asses handed to them, in every popular vote count for every POTUS election isn't super popular.
The way you put it I think I’m leaving America, to go where I have no clue.
I have thought of the Channel Isles, like Jersey or Guernsey. Switzerland is too expensive.
"Democrat politicians and media are fully to blame"
No. If politicians were really to blame they would have been tossed 3 weeks ago. Instead, the vast majority of them retained their thrones. Newsome, Whitmer, Pritzker, Hochul, et el, and dozens of Congressmen were all given a thumbs up by their constituents.
The people are to blame so it will happen again.
Yeah.....can't believe they were ok with their kids being screamed at all day in school about how they're oppressors and watching their daughter's soccer team being taken over by trans kids.
I agree and have said so in former posts, that Californians must love tip toeing around feces because they reelect the same hard left idiots.
You don't live in CA.
YIP - It’s almost like Bari keeps writing the same b/s different article or interview.
I’m not sure I think the Democrats have got a stranglehold on the elections, they don’t care how they win them as long as they retain the power. Take Arizona for eg the same voting system as 2020 and the same county Maricopa as having the most problems. Going forward to 2024 I doubt very much will change. I’m sure by then we will probably be voting on Fakebook or MSM it’s a terrifying thought both ways.
If you have a few minutes, visit my Substack article titled "Doubt Relief" and tell me what you think. I'm seeking opinions on an idea.
It was the perfect opportunity for them to go against what Trump had wanted, and I’m no fan of Trump. Once the economy was shut down, it was a full road ahead for them to do what they did. I had to laugh at the comments I saw for two years…”Thank you, Gov Whitmer, for keeping us safe.” Uhh…you couldn’t keep yourself safe? I sure knew how! And the main reason why she won was bc of the Roe overturn. But I will partially agree…there are some very successful but stupid liberals who fell for her so-called Covid protection.
Lol. Dumb ho. Couldn't stop people from trying to kidnap her.
I thought overturning Roe would be super popular. I was shocked.
Those who didn't vote, allowed those who did vote to control the narrative. The 40% of conservatives who didn't bother to vote could have swung the election massively in favor of a pro-freedom, anti-socialism agenda.
This is what infuriates me. Those who endlessly complain about how things are, but did not vote, nor act in any way to make real change; these people make me want to censor them.
But Terry why would 40% of conservatives not vote.I just don’t believe that
I don't know, but I read the other day that 55% of Republicans voted (actually, a higher number than Democrats this cycle). That leaves a lot of potential voters sitting out.
Hmmm.....maybe might have to do with someone telling everyone that U.S. Elections are completely fraudulent unless he, or the GOP wins?
Or maybe someone in AZ, telling "McCain Republicans" to "get the hell out." of her rally/campaign?
Right... so they didn't much care about that 2 years of treatment. Can't blame a politician when he/she's just doing the bidding of those who vote for them.
I would argue that the politicians are not doing the bidding for their constituents, but rather for themselves, the special interests, and the squeakiest wheels. I do blame the voters, but I also blame the politicians (on both sides of the aisle) for their greediness, lack of integrity, and failure to do what is right for their constituents and our nation.
It's like the Chinese are protesting for more freedoms while the Americans protest for fewer freedoms. What a world.
Sorry, that is pure nonsense. Americans do NOT protest for fewer freedom.
No one in the US is protesting for less freedom, at least not ordinary people. Normal mechanisms of political response have broken down, and the people have lost collective control over basic policies and how their government functions. A once-free media is complicit.
We no longer have functioning, representative parties and instead look to personality cults to save us. Trump fits into this pattern, but the pattern started in 2008 with Obama.
I think the protests after the Dobbs decision is an example of this, considering how the states gained more power due to the striking down of Rowe.
Just a quick correction. It’s Roe (as in John Doe), not Rowe. Roe of course was the “identity” of the plaintiff for privacy purposes.
That is nonsense. The SC gave the authority to the states for the "people" in the states to decide. The states, and people in the states, "get back" the power rightly belong to them. That is the full meaning of the SC striking down of Rowe. It was wrongly decided and unconstitutional.
Agreed, we're not actually protesting for freedom so much as voting our freedoms away and attacking anyone who won't.
Yes. The oppression and lack of freedom in America is stifling. Worse than China.
Bullshit
Comprof is a troll, please don't feed the trolls. That account leaves divisive and insulting comments on every article. It's always to elicit a reaction and an argument, never productive or even respectful on a basic level.
Not a troll at all. Just someone who is concerned about all the freedoms that have been taken away from Americans. I feel....like I live in E. Germany in 80s.
No. I had to wear a mask going to the grocery store and on a plane. My kid took online classes/Zoom classes last year. Unacceptable.
Twitter won't let everyone participate. I have a Constitutional right to free speech
We are losing all our freedoms in America.
Don't confuse a right to speak with a right to be heard.
Twitter is a private company. You don't have a constitutional right to use twitter. Free speech means free from government interference. As in men with guns won't come to your house, arrest you and/or beat the crap out of you.
In China people from the government will arrest you and beat you up for complaining about the government. Here in the US you obviously feel free to post here without that fear.
There's no comparison.
"Men with guns in US do come to your house and arrest you." Sounds like Hitler Youth. What do you think 20 FBI agents did at Trump's Florida house a couple months ago. If you are wrong politics in the US, you are not safe.
In the US a Maga hat character, unarmed was shot between the eyes in Denver at a legal protest, and no charges were filed. The FBI and Justice clearly changed the votes of US in 2020 according to pre and post surveys of likely voters and emails after two years divulged from Twitter, FBI and justice.
Uh.....the FBI and Justice Dept. changed the votes?
That's a new one.
FBI agents came to Trump's house because he kept a whole lot of classified documents as well as other government documents that belonged to the national archivist.
That has nothing to do with free speech. Just Trump being Trump and thinking he could get away with whatever he wants
also
"The FBI and Justice clearly changed the votes of US in 2020 according to pre and post surveys of likely voters and emails after two years divulged from Twitter, FBI and justice."
ROFL. Except that there is no evidence of any of this. Just crazy conspiracy theories that constantly change. As soon as you disprove one, another one pops up.
Is this the dude?
https://www.denverpost.com/2022/03/21/denver-protest-shooting-charges-dropped-matthew-dolloff/
Thank you, Matthew! Finally!
I COMPLETELY agree and have been trying to explain that, just like you don't have a Constitutional Right to be invited to a college/university to speak.
I was being sarcastic and parroting the "party line" on this board.
Always want what you don’t have.
Yeah....you're at a 10....need you at about a 4.