…says the guy on Lemmy criticizing the U.S. government and not getting thrown in jail for it.
You do understand that free speech that doesn’t threaten the government is tolerated everywhere, right? Us having more free speech here is just a function of the US government feeling more secure in its power, you can still find examples of free speech being punished in the US when it has threatened its power.
Well, it depends on what the government considers threatening.
The mere suggestion that the state is illegitimate in China would have gotten me disappeared. But I could join protests in the US denouncing the government in front of government-owned buildings without much worry.
But then we look at how China continues to develop and grow their sphere of global hegemony, while the US is collapsing before our very eyes. So it makes you wonder if ruling with an iron fist and crushing dissidents has some merit after all.
The mere suggestion that the state is illegitimate in China would have gotten me disappeared.
China has a smaller surveillance state than the US, so I doubt it. Also yeah, the US hasn’t faced serious coup attempts in the last 50 years.
So it makes you wonder if ruling with an iron fist and crushing dissidents has some merit after all.
Their execution or imprisonment stats must be much higher than the US! Wait. I’m just hearing… oh dear.
The justice system in the US is inexcusable, but China’s is also not great.
The vast majority of arrests lead to informal “administrative” detentions wherein you are held for (usually) a short time—a few weeks, maybe more if they don’t believe you’re reformed.
You get picked up one day and they tell you to confess. It’s in your best interests to confess to something, even if you think they have the wrong person, because they tell you it will go to trial if you don’t, and that would just be so hard on your family, right? They’ll highlight their impressive over 90% conviction rate too, so you know if you don’t confess you likely go to jail for years and your life is over.
You confess, you go to a detention center, any number of things can happen because it’s all informal and left to local officials, and then one day they just shove you back into the street like nothing happened. You’re likely out of a job now since you haven’t shown up in days, and you get some fun new restrictions on your ability to travel. But at least it wasn’t prison.
It’s also worth noting all this time that your family probably doesn’t know what happened to you.
Another factor that contributes to China’s lower incarceration rates is that they often choose not to prosecute “personal” crimes. This would be things like robbery, sexual assault, etc. where the victim is another individual citizen. Usually those are handled via financial compensation, essentially the victim can sue for damages, and there’s no need for trial or imprisonment if the offender just chooses to pay.
Their execution or imprisonment stats must be much higher than the US!
That’s the neat part! There aren’t any. China doesn’t publish their stats on executions and they don’t permit any external auditing of their justice system. What I do know is that, unlike the US, China does not bother with long prison sentences for those sentenced to death. Usually it just happens right after the trial, so those sentenced wouldn’t contribute to the imprisonment rate. But I don’t buy into the vague estimate of “thousands” that the UN and Amnesty International claim, so that’s probably a negligible statistic anyways. But I would certainly believe China is close to the top globally in terms of executions, even if they didn’t advertise it to those of us living there.
On the other hand, we should also start counting “shot by police” as an act of execution in the US. Might level the playing field after that.
TL;DR: Who needs high imprisonment rates when you could just go hard on the Panopticon Effect and make your entire society carceral in nature?
Another factor that contributes to China’s lower incarceration rates is that they often choose not to prosecute “personal” crimes. This would be things like robbery, sexual assault, etc.
Tons of these crimes aren’t prosecuted in the U.S., either, especially claims of sexual assault. And here are some sentencing guidelines from China that address both those crimes, which they don’t have just for fun.
You probably don’t understand Chinese law as much as you think you do, and you’re definitely exaggerating the idea that it’s uniquely unfair or arbitrary. Pre-trial incarceration happens all over the world, police telling suspects to confess happens all over the world, collateral consequences of arrest and imprisonment happen all over the world.
There’s also a ton of context needed to determine whether any of these things are even bad in a given situation. Pre-trial incarceration has all sorts of issues, but if someone goes on a shooting spree and has a history of not showing up to court dates for prior arrests, it’s appropriate.
Then China must feel real threatened. According to this, it’s against the law in China to even say you don’t agree with the law.
“A citizen, when exercising the right of freedom of the press, shall abide by the Constitution and the law, and shall not oppose the basic principles established by the Constitution or damage the interests of the State, the society or the collective, or the lawful freedom and rights of other citizens.”
A million Uyghurs, whose only apparent crime is being Muslim, have been sent to labor camps and undergone forced sterilization.
Tiananmen Square started out as people peacefully protesting government corruption, and ended in the state murdering them.
With respect to free speech, there’s not even a comparison there with respect to America. It’s not “potato potato”.
A million Uyghurs, whose only apparent crime is being Muslim, have been sent to labor camps and undergone forced sterilization.
Do you know the sources of these claims? Because you’re repeating stuff that was first spread around by a German Christian nationalist (a euphemism) employed by a cia front group, which had already been debunked, and could be debunked by anyone looking at his methodology who is able to read mandarin.
Why is this myth pushed so hard by western countries which slaughter Muslims by the millions, and are engaged in genocide against a majority Muslim population as we speak?
Why do Muslim delegations visiting uniformly support the way China has treated its minority Muslim populations? Before you say sectarianism, investigate and realize that the delegations were intentionally multi-sectarian.
Tiananmen Square started out as people peacefully protesting government corruption, and ended in the state murdering them.
How violently do you think the US would have responded to US protestors trying to overthrow the government when they start burning and lynching to death unarmed soldiers? You can still find photos online of mutilated PLA soldiers corpses from june 2nd. 300 or so dead, including the soldiers that were killed, seems pretty light. Oh wait, the US military would never show up to a protest not armed to the teeth, silly me.
<rolls eyes>
Just produce some evidence. I’m sure it’s easy, it’s not like you’d have to resort to something weird like pointing at a fraction of a percent difference between censuses as evidence of a genocide.
Just to be clear, that was sarcasm and is what the allegations of genocide are entirely based upon - dig into any allegations of uygher genocide and you can link back to Adrian Zenz’s “study”.
To be clear, I never said “genocide”. I honestly don’t know that that word applies to this situation.
For evidence that what’s going on is not good, here’s one of the first hits I find on searching the internet. It mentions a tribunal in the UK, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International all reaching similar conclusions and I find no mention of Adrian Zenz in the article or on the tribunal’s web page nor any mention of population change.
Maybe if you tried even the briefest line of investigation into who any of the groups named are and how they reached their conclusions you wouldn’t be embarrassing yourself by naming organisations that are very publically recorded as basing their opinions on his work.
You should be embarrassed at how little effort it took me to find that link.
Would China not drop bombs if they faced no consequences and it benefited them?
No, China has something called a democracy and Chinese people don’t want to drop bombs on little kids. Let me make that clear, Chinese people don’t want to blow up little kids. It might be hard to wrap your mind around but a majority of people don’t want something to happen, so it doesn’t happen.
The average American also doesn’t like the idea of having children be blown up, but they watch slop TV instead and complain about gas prices and having to wear a mask once in their life. When kids do get blown up the TV tells the american settler that they were evil kids, so they go back to complaining about tv shows and self-flattery.
Sorry, if you legitimately believe that China doesn’t drop bombs on people because that’s the will of the people then I don’t think there’s any further productive conversation to be had. I admire your ability to believe, though.
Crackkker projecting again
Seems you haven’t seen humanity ever in you life so you can’t imagine it existing
Sad
Idk, they probably have had the opportunity sometimes, but they don’t have the same military industrial complex as the USA pushing for it at every chance. So the cost benefit analysis is different. Quite often it doesn’t benefit “the USA” as much as a few specific people within, and that mechanic doesn’t exist in the same way for China.
What do you mean that mechanic doesn’t exist in the same way for China? Are you talking like China has achieved a classless utopia situation?
No, the arms manufacturers just don’t have the same level of influence over the government and armed forces that they do in America, and the people in the government who decide whether to drop bombs won’t personally get rich if they buy more bombs.
That isn’t something unique to China btw but basically almost every country except USA and a few others.
Do you think that dynamic wouldn’t exist for any country, including China, that had as much world influence as the US does now?
Can you be more clear in your question?
My point is that the real hard-to-swallow pill for people like OP is that China is not a magical place where everyone just sings kumbaya all day. China is just like any other country comprised of humans that has existed ever, and would do the same things the US is doing now if they could. The only reason this meme is in any way accurate is that China can’t realistically drop bombs like that, otherwise they would. Tankies like OP will defend imperialism all day long, as long as the imperialists say “Death To America!”. If the US poofed out of existence today, there would be a power vacuum quickly filled by exactly the same sort of people that are dropping those bombs in the meme.
So I guess my question is “What’s the point of pretending that China is any different?”
China is just like any other country comprised of humans that has existed ever, and would do the same things the US is doing now if they could.
Yeah, except they’re different countries, made up of different people, with a different culture, with a pretty much fundamentally different kind of organizational structure governing them. I don’t think “well, they’d probably do it too, if the US were gone” is a super convincing argument in favor of the US dropping bombs on people.
