New thread as max thread length reached.
Let’s move on.
How does holding China accountable for what it currently lacks look like to you?
What do you mean by “holding them accountable?” How can any of us do so, if we aren’t Chinese, and aren’t in any position of power? We should support positive movements where they happen, and focus on improving where we lack.
I mean taking into account and consideration where the country is lacking or has flaws.
This does not require one to be a member of the same ethnicity as the nation one is critiquing.
This is just about views so being in a position of power isn’t relevant right now.
You mention focusing on improving where we lack, but where does China lack in your view?
I’m not talking about ethnicity, I mean neither of us live in China. Neither of us can hold them accountable. If you mean what problems China is working on that I consider to be pressing, there’s the rural/urban development gap, the continuing improvement and struggle for better queer rights, the importance of electrification and energy independence, and more.
I don’t frame this as “lacking,” because again, China is the fastest developing and improving country in history, and all of these areas are being actively worked on. They are not regressing. They still have areas to improve, but framing them as “lacking” implies a regression.
The same applies; if one must live in a country to critique it that means everyone can only critique one country and no other countries at a time.
Also, you are framing it again as “problems China is working on” and not just “problems in China” which is narrower and filters any issues China may not be working on. The result would be a more positive outlook on the country than could be warranted by reality.
What evidence exists that the state of china is actively working on queer rights? Specifically the state.
Fastest developing, in what regard?
There’s a difference between critique, and “holding accountable.” One is a matter of judgment, and the latter is not possible without control. As for judgment, it’s important to actually have an all-sided view, not just those of foreigners looking in. As for problems in China, the positive is that the CPC is working on the pressing problems in China as seen by the Chinese people.
As for China working on queer rights, here’s a video from CGTN talking about the progress of queer rights, and here’s one from Jin Xing on CGTN talking about the progression of trans rights. The state controls media like CGTN, the purpose here is to gradually improve public perception of LGBTQ rights and bring the people upward on it, as in China policy generally comes from below, not above.
As for fastest developing, in terms of economic growth, life expectancy, literacy rates, you name it. Compare the China of today with 10 years ago, 20, 50, and 100. It’s an incredible feat.
By “holding accountable” I meant balanced critique that doesn’t exclusively focus on the positives of the country.
If the state is accepting of queer people (or tries to project that image), it seems hypocritical that the police don’t act in accordance to this, given that the police is an instrument of the state.
We’ve had police raids on queer events and censorship of gay couples on TV in recent times (as recent as 2023).
More elaboration on China’s state-sponsored censorship of queer populations in media from equaldex:
Since 2016, China censors LGBT content, including LGBT-themed films, TV shows, and media, under the General Principles for the Production of TV Drama Content which took effect in March 2016. According to The Guardian, the Chinese government has “banned all depictions of gay people on television,” calling it “vulgar, immoral and unhealthy content.” The popular “boy love” (BL) TV drama “Addicted” was banned in 2016.
A Chinese broadcaster, Mango TV, which broadcasts Eurovision blurred a rainbow flag during the semi-final of the show.
In April of 2022, a few lines of dialog were removed from the Chinese release of the film ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.’ The dialog referenced the gay romance between Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald.
In August of 2023, Chinese officials removed an LGBTQ song from the set list of popular Taiwanese pop star A-Mei, ahead of her concert in Beijing. Security guards at the event forced fans to remove rainbow symbols and clothing. On the 22nd of August, Chinese officials shut down a handful of popular social media accounts on the Chinese social networking service WeChat.
As I already explained, China is not a monolith. You can look at any western country and find similar state repression at the local level, which is even more varied in China due to having 1.4 billion people. You are looking at it one-dimensionally, which is the problem I was getting at earlier.
Also “free speech” that doesn’t apply to corporate platforms. Which is, you know, all of them. Love when a liberal says “that doesn’t count, they’re a private business” whenever you point out the blatant censorship in the West.
and this logic applies even within bourgeoisie political parties https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/
Whole fuckin country is a private business
Well private entities should always allowed to choose what content they want to platform. It’s only a problem if we used these privately owned platform as an official communications channel (like government relying on X to announce stuffs).
That’s not the only time it’s a problem. It’s mainly a problem because these privately owned platforms control so much communication.
Valid criticism, but let’s not pretend socialism leads to better outcomes for freedom of speech or press either.
Freedom of press only applies to the wealthy, how do I benefit from it as a worker when all media in my country perpetuates comprador propaganda and I’m too poor to make my own press?
For sure— I’m not saying freedom of press actually exists under capitalism.
My point is that socialism doesn’t have freedom of press either. Censorship and surveillance by the vanguard state (see China, Cuba, historical USSR) is routine.
“Dictatorship of the proletariat”. Unfortunately, dictatorships do not have a tendency to allow for freedom of press.
Dictatorship of the proletariat means democracy for the proletariat, dictatorship against capitalists.
Those words don’t mean anything when they are used to censor. The introduction of censorship allows censors to censor anything, regardless of whether or not it is “capitalist” or not.
There is no way of knowing whether only “capitalist” content is censored or if criticisms that are staunchly and directly against the state (which absolutely deserves its place in any state that doesn’t want to be an echo chamber) are also being censored under the veneer of “capitalism”.
Every government and even every culture practices some degree of control over how we speak and how we exist. Language itself has an impact on this. Despite this fact, it’s possible to recognize proletarian control vs capitalist control.
“Everyone does it!” is literally a logical fallacy.
It’s not even just “some”, you’re minimizing the extent of control here. You cannot have a state held accountable if it systematically suppresses criticism against it.
The proletariat is the majority in most if not all societies, arguing the dictatorship of the proletariat is undemocratic merely because the word “dictatorship” doesn’t make sense. Democracy is [ideally, not what it is in practice] is a dictatorship of the majority, and the proletariat are the majority, surely you see how saying democracy is undemocratic makes no sense.
States are instruments of oppression weilded by classes, they are all “dictatorships” in the sense that a class oppresses the other; the question in state is, is it the capitalists oppressing the working class, or the other way around
Except in practice it’s not proletarians doing these things, it’s bureaucrats who end up forming their own class and class interests in the name of the proletariat. The average proletariat isn’t actually the one who makes these rules or checks or applies censorships. See China, USSR, Cuba.
There shouldn’t be classes to begin with. Eliminating hierarchies in lieu of anarchism deals with the issue without it being “another dictatorship”
forming their own class and class interests in the name of the proletariat.
That’s not how class works, it’s not like starting a new club. Class is defined by your relationship to production, not some nebulous title like “beauraucrats”
There shouldn’t be classes to begin with.
Genuinely, what is your suggested approach to rectifying this and what real world data is it based on? How do you expect to abolish class without a clear understanding of what creates it? How would a scientist expect to cure a disease without understanding what it is?
That’s the socialist definition of class, that is not how I understand class.
I didn’t say it’s like “starting a new club”.
Calling bureaucracy “nebulous” doesn’t invalidate any of the reasoning I provided.
Suggested approach: anarchism.
I didn’t disregard the importance of understanding class, merely that I disagreed with the reductive socialist definition of class.
Socialism changes which class controls the speech from the capitalist class to the working classes.
This is not the case in any of the AES countries.
China, Cuba, Historical USSR. No such thing what you described. It’s state-controlled. In china, it’s bureaucratic class that controls the media, not average workers by any means.
The state is governed by the working classes in China, Cuba, USSR, etc. Administration is not a class, it’s a subset of a broader class, ie the proletariat. Classes are relations to ownership of production and distribution, not simply job categories.
The bureaucracy is still a class category that is distinct from workers in general with its own class interests.
States such as China aren’t really governed by the working classes.
No, this is not how class or the state works. Administration is a subset of a class, just like teachers and doctors are not classes.
Teachers and doctors don’t get to make laws to further their own interests, make it easier for others they know to do the same, amongst the countless other power moves bureaucrats are able to pull off. This power concentrates and develops them into their own class with their own interests because they are so largely cut off and distinguished from the rest of the working population.
Teachers and doctors are nothing like bureaucrats, that’s a fallacious analogy.
Also, all those brands of shampoo are owned by one or two firms.
I’ve just realized that this is much like having multiple identities.
A way to deceive market reputation mechanisms.
Should be made illegal, there should be one main brand seen on everything, then whatever secondary brand they want is possible, but you should clearly see that those 3 niche-optimized goods are from one corp.
So that the choice were, eh, real.
Which shareholders are majority Black Rock and Vanguard group so it doesn’t matter what company because they have the same owners anyway and that goes for 90% of all publicly traded companies globally so yeah
Not “somehow”. Quite easily. Advertising works. People are easily influenced. It wasn’t sudden; it happened little by little over a long time.
Most people do not naturally develop an advanced political education by themselves, they’ve got their own lives to deal with. A peasant could not hold their own in a complex economics debate with a King because they weren’t even taught to read nonetheless learn the intricacies of Middle Age politics.
There is a similar thing going on in the modern world, where sure most people can now read but only the capitalist class for the most part gets to access the highest levels of education. And without the tools to see beyond your cultural norms, to analyse whether they are right or wrong or being lucky enough to be born with the right brain to see past it, what can you even do?
“Ha nice try! That is not real capitalism! You think workplaces would just give workers health insurance under a free market? They would just tell sick workers to figure it out themselves and replace them with healthy ones if needed!”
“Some of the first evidence of compulsory health insurance in the United States was in 1915, through the progressive reform protecting workers against medical costs and sicknesses in industrial America. Prior to this, within the Socialist and Progressive parties, health insurance and coverage was framed as not only an economic right for workers’ health, but also as an employer’s responsibility and liability—healthcare was in this context centered on working-class Americans and labor unions.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States#The_rise_of_employer-sponsored_coverage)
Freedom is when toothbrush.
If it would have stopped at “quit a job you hate” the example wouldn’t have been USian-only and I could relate, while also setting a much better standard for freedom.
Lots of countries tie basic rights like health to your job though
