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.
You say I’m looking at it one-dimensionally, but you always dismiss or shrug off any negatives that may come about w.r.t. China, or frame it as being positively worked on, when you don’t do the same for other countries. If I mentioned a different country in such a context you would have called it deflection.
A monolithic representation of the positive is still a monolith.
I don’t present China as universally positive, I have drawn a clear line between socialist countries that are generally working towards a better society, imperialist countries that have been declining and are a net drain on the world, and non-socialist countries in the periphery that ultimately are progressing, albeit not necessarily as much as they could be if they were socialist.
There’s also the fact that we aren’t at all on the same page when it comes to dialectical materialism as being the start point for any genuine analysis, and as such I tend to reject framing that involves metaphysics.
You say you don’t, but you exclusively discuss positivity or progress w.r.t. China and socialist countries. When anything negative is reframed out of the equation, the resulting assessment necessarily becomes unilaterally positive.
Imperialist countries being a drain on the world isn’t something I’m arguing against, although we do not share a common understanding of imperialism.
It’s true that I don’t believe analysis must be through the diamat outlook for it to be rational, though framing away negatives as metaphysical or any other framing that makes them to be other than what they are (i.e. negatives) isn’t something that I find compelling.
I’ve said a number of things are problems, such as the urban/rural development gap. This is a problem to be solved, and thankfully it’s one being actively worked upon. How is this not a “negative” in your view? You keep trying to look at things as a laundry list of pros and cons, and try to put things into neat categories, but that’s not how the world works.
You did, as a list of “all things china is actively working on”. It’s the framing away of negatives that makes it not seem as much of a negative whenever you do mention them, however briefly.
Maybe it’s not how the world works, but it does strike me as strange if that’s only the case when it comes to describing socialist countries.
I don’t really see any major issues China has that aren’t being actively worked on, big or small. China of course has problems, but these aren’t static and permanent. China is both socialist and anti-imperialist, so in that way it makes sense.
Zoom out, 100 years pass. What do you think is going to get worse in China? What is China doing that’s actively progressing in a bad direction?
I think you’re confusing my condemnation of imperialist countries as being unable to address their problems due to the faulty mode of production they rely on, with the belief that these are simply “negatives.” I see them in the same way all societies have problems, the difference is that some societies are actually able to address these problems by putting needs over profits, and this goes back to the mode of production.
Why do you think I constantly centered imperialism as a problem unable to be solved without revolution?
It’s not just China though, you approach other socialist countries the same way.
You say China’s problems aren’t static or permanent, but you don’t append such disclaimers or framing to issues outside of socialist regions.
I don’t see China as anti-imperialist, but I’ll drop the words “imperialist” and “fascist” altogether for the purposes of this discussion since we use it to mean different things.
Not everything is always changing significantly, some things can stay the same over time, but to answer the question, I’d say I see state surveillance, suppression of criticism, censorship, and things like that getting worse in China. Though this is kind of something I see happening globally, I’m inclined to believe this is worse in China because it’s already etched into the system at a scale more prolific than in the west.
You can routinely find criticisms of America online but China censors this. You do not personally take offense to this because in your view the capitalist should be suppressed (“communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat”), but I do. I will also say that it is this framing which makes it such that one has to be a capitalist in order to criticize the Chinese state (and thus be censored), but this isn’t true; I’m not capitalist but I would certainly criticize the state. I am staunchly against the notion of a dictatorship altogether, but this is something not everyone is uncomfortable with, I suppose.
My issue is that you don’t frame away the negatives that you mention of non-socialist countries as being part of progress or being actively worked on the way you do for socialist countries.
I don’t see China as being innocent and I retain that China is violent and aggressive when it finds the opportunity, and I’ve seen examples of this prior but I’d have to research to get into that w citations.
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:
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.
You say I’m looking at it one-dimensionally, but you always dismiss or shrug off any negatives that may come about w.r.t. China, or frame it as being positively worked on, when you don’t do the same for other countries. If I mentioned a different country in such a context you would have called it deflection.
A monolithic representation of the positive is still a monolith.
I don’t present China as universally positive, I have drawn a clear line between socialist countries that are generally working towards a better society, imperialist countries that have been declining and are a net drain on the world, and non-socialist countries in the periphery that ultimately are progressing, albeit not necessarily as much as they could be if they were socialist.
There’s also the fact that we aren’t at all on the same page when it comes to dialectical materialism as being the start point for any genuine analysis, and as such I tend to reject framing that involves metaphysics.
You say you don’t, but you exclusively discuss positivity or progress w.r.t. China and socialist countries. When anything negative is reframed out of the equation, the resulting assessment necessarily becomes unilaterally positive.
Imperialist countries being a drain on the world isn’t something I’m arguing against, although we do not share a common understanding of imperialism.
It’s true that I don’t believe analysis must be through the diamat outlook for it to be rational, though framing away negatives as metaphysical or any other framing that makes them to be other than what they are (i.e. negatives) isn’t something that I find compelling.
I’ve said a number of things are problems, such as the urban/rural development gap. This is a problem to be solved, and thankfully it’s one being actively worked upon. How is this not a “negative” in your view? You keep trying to look at things as a laundry list of pros and cons, and try to put things into neat categories, but that’s not how the world works.
You did, as a list of “all things china is actively working on”. It’s the framing away of negatives that makes it not seem as much of a negative whenever you do mention them, however briefly.
Maybe it’s not how the world works, but it does strike me as strange if that’s only the case when it comes to describing socialist countries.
I don’t really see any major issues China has that aren’t being actively worked on, big or small. China of course has problems, but these aren’t static and permanent. China is both socialist and anti-imperialist, so in that way it makes sense.
Zoom out, 100 years pass. What do you think is going to get worse in China? What is China doing that’s actively progressing in a bad direction?
I think you’re confusing my condemnation of imperialist countries as being unable to address their problems due to the faulty mode of production they rely on, with the belief that these are simply “negatives.” I see them in the same way all societies have problems, the difference is that some societies are actually able to address these problems by putting needs over profits, and this goes back to the mode of production.
Why do you think I constantly centered imperialism as a problem unable to be solved without revolution?
It’s not just China though, you approach other socialist countries the same way.
You say China’s problems aren’t static or permanent, but you don’t append such disclaimers or framing to issues outside of socialist regions.
I don’t see China as anti-imperialist, but I’ll drop the words “imperialist” and “fascist” altogether for the purposes of this discussion since we use it to mean different things.
Not everything is always changing significantly, some things can stay the same over time, but to answer the question, I’d say I see state surveillance, suppression of criticism, censorship, and things like that getting worse in China. Though this is kind of something I see happening globally, I’m inclined to believe this is worse in China because it’s already etched into the system at a scale more prolific than in the west.
You can routinely find criticisms of America online but China censors this. You do not personally take offense to this because in your view the capitalist should be suppressed (“communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat”), but I do. I will also say that it is this framing which makes it such that one has to be a capitalist in order to criticize the Chinese state (and thus be censored), but this isn’t true; I’m not capitalist but I would certainly criticize the state. I am staunchly against the notion of a dictatorship altogether, but this is something not everyone is uncomfortable with, I suppose.
My issue is that you don’t frame away the negatives that you mention of non-socialist countries as being part of progress or being actively worked on the way you do for socialist countries.
I don’t see China as being innocent and I retain that China is violent and aggressive when it finds the opportunity, and I’ve seen examples of this prior but I’d have to research to get into that w citations.