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does sh.itjust.works allow criticism of CCP?
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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The Chinese Communist Party is absolutely not above criticism, but I always found the China obsession on reddit to be odd. While I don't think it should be banned outright, I think y'all ought to consider what is motivating such a weird fetish (because frankly that is) for a specific government.
Exactly. Chinese capitalism is currently threatening American capitalism, so American media and american society more generally demonizes it. China is willing to offer cheaper loans to 3rd world countries than any western countries and banks like the IMF. Of course, this is still exploitative imperialism, but it is slightly less bad than the west. China. Of course, China treats its workers terribly, but it at least tries to reinvest the surplus it takes from those workers into domestic production and infrastructure. Tankies love to depict China as ontologically good because it opposes american hegemony and has a rapidly growing economy. They ignore its imperialism and domestic exploitation. Redditors, American exceptionalists, and their ilk depict China as ontologically evil, a threat to world peace, the most totalitarian country imaginable. They of course ignore the comparably bad conditions of America's puppet states and its domestic prison system. The reality is much more boring. Two capitalist nation states are fighting over their shares of the world market.
I'm not an American but it's hard to equate these two countries. While I don't love the US, you can't deny that the CCP literally runs concentration camps...
What would you call the places where the US detains immigrants? What would you call the enhanced interrogation techniques the US uses in guantanamo bay and CIA blacksites? What would you call the prisons where the US forces people to work without pay?
The US has used heavily militarized police and even tanks to crush civil unrest. The US doesn't just threaten to invade a neighboring island (like china threatens to invade taiwan), the US actually has invaded neighboring islands such as Cuba, Haiti (multiple times), the Dominican Republic, etc. None of this justifies any of China's actions, but it is important to know that nominally democratic nations can also act authoritarian.
I tentatively agree. The key to avoiding whataboutism is to make clear that you're willing to call out abuses and human rights violations for both sides.
The US also runs concentration campus, has slave labor, forced sterilization, torture, genocide, violently repressive police, persecution of religious minorities, etc. etc. etc. Hence why it's a red flag (no pun intended) when people in the west have A Lot To Say about China and just China.
::slaps top of any country:: you can fit so many human rights violations in this bad boy
(I have a lot more complaints about the US than China, but that's because I live in the US, not because I think other imperial powers are exempt from criticism.)
We do too. I'm sorry, but just because ours are callous and depressingly bureaucratic instead of passionate and angry, not having the intention of reeducating anyone, it doesn't excuse the fact that even though Trump is no longer president we have refugee children dying in cramped cages, women and children being violated by ICE agents, and other human rights violations constantly and ongoing.
Guantánamo...