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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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There is a reflexive need among Americans to assume every other country is significantly worse than their own.
China is an authoritarian state that had a literal one-child policy until recently
My guy, I'm living in a state that tried to arrest a woman for removing an ectopic pregnancy. The border towns of my state are rapidly developing the largest per-capita prison population on the planet, thanks to the number of migrants being snatched up and forced into ~~concentration~~ detention camps combined with our already prodigious home-grown prison population. A full third of my city budget is dedicated to funding an enormous do-nothing police force and our new mayor spent his first day doing ride-alongs with cops while promising even more money. You can get arrested in my state for simple vagrancy. You can get arrested and jailed for days at the age of 6 years old for stealing a crayon. You can get arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for submitting a provisional ballot on election day>
Until as recently as 2010, US prisons had a policy of sterilizing inmates.
China's One Child policy boiled down to withholding financial benefits after the second kid, which is no different than the American EITC refundable tax credit that caps benefits at 3 dependents, along with numerous other state benefits that are capped at between two and four children depending on the state.
If you want to talk about authoritarianism, you're going to have to put more on the table than a vaguely referenced policy you know very little about. Nevermind how you're speaking about this in a state that has been caught engaging in outright genocidal conduct towards its native, african american, female, and LGBT populations within the last few news cycles.
Yep, and your state voted for that. My state amended it's constitution to prevent this situation, also through voting.
In China, you don't get that option, because China is an authoritarian state.
Authoritarian doesn't simply mean "bad" even though authoritarianism is bad.
You know what's not a sign of an authoritarian state? An appeals court overturning a bad verdict.
You should really click the links you use as evidence.
Gerrymandered districts mean 40% of the population picks 60% of the legislators.
In China, I can get an abortion any time I want. The cost is trivial, the facilities are clean, and the doctors aren't legally required to guilt trip me with far-right propaganda just for asking. I don't need to block walk for ten years, canvasing uninterested men and begging them to support some Ivy League prat (D) over Local Car Dealership creep (R), in hopes that I maybe get the supermajority of democrats necessary to repeal an ill-conceived trigger law passed before I was even legally allowed to vote. I just get to do the thing, because it has been considered a fundamental human right since the 1950s.
An unelected body of bureaucrats green-lighting a state campaign of hyper-policing aimed at a vulnerable group, for the purpose of instituting an unpopular morality code, is a textbook example of state authoritarianism.
Even then, as you note
I could at least live with a certain amount of authoritarianism (because hey, that's hierarchies for ya, and whatchagonnado?) but the current hierarchy has produced a local authoritarianist tendency that is also absolutely shit.
China's authoritarian government gets people super fast trains and world leading hospitals and salt-fusion nuclear reactors.
My authoritarian government gets people daily multi-vehicle traffic fatalities and medical bankruptcies and big holes in West Virginia where we mine burnable rocks that clog our air and waterways and fill our fish food with mercury.
I can't vote the authoritarianism out of Texas any more than I can vote the authoritarianism out of China. And since I don't speak mandarin and I've got something of a large, well-established community of friends and loved ones in Texas, I'm stuck here for the time being.
You can move within your country and your experience will be entirely different. You can't in China, because it's an authoritarian hellstate.
I agree that Republicans are authoritarians, and that sucks. I also acknowledge that you likely view hierarchies as inherently authoritarian and that we'll likely not see eye to eye on where to draw lines. Also fine - that's what liberal ideologies want, is that disagreement.
But to compare China positively with the US in terms of authoritarianism is, frankly, a bit silly.
In the US, you can move within the US whenever you please and arrive homeless if you can't afford market rents. In China, you can put out a request to move and get on a waiting list for available housing, then move when a spot opens up. China, you get arrested and returned home for moving without a permit. In the US, you get arrested and incarcerated indefinitely for living without a house.
The Authoritarian Hellstate of China is one in which state agents try to accommodate the demands of the population at-large in order to avoid the socially destabilizing effects of mass unemployment and homelessness. The Freedom-burger Utopia of America is one in which state agents simply assault and imprison anyone who steps out of line, with the expectation that we all make the consumer choice to remain in bounds.
I wish it was just Republicans. Houston and California and New York Democrats are more than happy to pile on the conservative-inspired panics, when they see these mass-media hysterics as politically convenient. Whether you're Mayor Eric Adams or Governor Gavin Newsom or Sylvester Turner, you're on the side of the police in a war against the ugly masses.
It is definitely silly to compare the Chinese Communist Party to the American Republican Party.
None of this really disproves their claim that the Chinese government is authoritarian. It just shows they aren't the only authoritarian government in the world.
Lolbruh. Would you rather live in America or China?
If I was fluent in Mandarin? Chongqing is an absolutely gorgeous city with fantastic food and amazing transit. I'd take it over Houston in a heartbeat.
You write as if your microcosm republican shithole is your only option for living in a country with vast cultural, economic, and political diversity (let alone geography, climate, demographics, etc.). You’re arguing in bad faith. Fuck’s sake, move to Austin and it’s night-and-day compared to Houston.
Western in general really. I remember seeing here once Europeans dunking on the US for lead water pipes, and it turned out lead pipes are just as bad in the EU and actually worse in the UK.
One defining feature of Western philosophy and mythos is individualism, which explains why it's common for each Western country to think it's the best/least worst.