The conversations are amazing
Despite the unhappy circumstances, it’s kinda nice Chinese and Americans interacting on social media.
The fact this isn’t typically possible because of bans in China is not so nice. Neither is the fact the US is going down the same road instead of proper privacy laws.
But still, kinda nice
I mean the US is so scared shitless of socialist propaganda, or rather the political upheaval and loss of global dominance by capital that it would lead to, that it has literally bombed and invaded entire countries of civilians over it. Unless a country has any ability to fight back; in which case we do anything in our power to undermine that country’s political process by devastating it economically, conducting covert CIA operations, and funding fundamentalist religious groups.
I think China learned a lesson at some point and, in all fairness, it probably wouldn’t have been allowed to develop to this point if it was more welcoming of exchange with western media. (Well, that, and the fact they’ve funded their socialist project by providing cheap goods for western capitalists to increase their profit margins with)
If we don’t even trust China to define China’s truths, why should we trust America to do so? You’ve seen how much misinformation has damaged our political process. If the Chinese people are happy with their government, and data says over 90% of them are, who are we to say what is right for their country? If in fact they don’t trust their government, it should be left up to them to decide what to do with it and when. Just as we wouldn’t like it very much if China dictated to us what is right and wrong, even if it were to lift millions out of poverty like it did for the Chinese people.
America manipulates media too, arguably to a much greater extent. However, it’s more of a firehose method. Western media is fully allowed to lie, sensationalize, and manipulate truths with no other recourse than an “invisible hand” of a “free market” that is fully willing to gobble up misinformation and spit it back out between each other. For every keyword that is censored on its way from America to China, there’s a billion dollars waiting for any media outlet willing to propagate the capitalist narrative. Non- or anti-capitalist media does not have similar funding, for the very fact that those who are so invested in capitalism are not going to throw their money at outlets which undermine their profits. It’s also not like America doesn’t straight up censor things when it can do so covertly. At least China’s censorship is out in the open.
This is a whataboutism, to be sure, but look at the whole picture. It’s all the more reason for China to weed out information from the West that is regularly and systemically manipulated, in the ways I’ve just described, to undermine them.
It’s exactly the same situation as Israel carpet bombing all of Palestine and continuing to receive billions of dollars in support, only for the resistance fighters to be called terrorists, caged, and starved when they fire back a few rockets. It’s simply not comparable and the hypocrisy is stark.
There’s also the small matter of their language, the friction of which was highlighted when western journalists were quick to cry censorship because nothing came up when they searched “xi jinping” and “tianenmen” on red note. Of course, this was because it’s spelled 習近平 and 天安门 in China. This language barrier makes Chinese media very inaccessible to westerners, and vice versa, which isn’t really China’s problem as the Chinese language already gives them access to all 1.4 billion people they are responsible for. Like red note has been accessible all this time, it’s only now becoming popular in the West as a fuck you to the government for banning tik tok.
(Sorry this got to be so long, there’s a lot of background to cover here that tends to be obscure to the average American. I’m only just able to articulate it myself as I don’t tend to write things I can’t back up with evidence or reasoning. Happy to expand on anything I’ve glossed over for the sake of brevity.)
The social score thing isn’t really propaganda as much as it is idiots believing whatever they read. It started from what was essentially thinly veiled racism, and became “true” because people kept hearing it.
There were several “social credit systems” that were set up in various provinces. These were mainly attempts to aggregate public records from different departments into one searchable database. It mostly affected business owners since they have the largest public record footprint. The idea was you could look up who owns what business and how many code violations those businesses had.
This triculates into the american rumor mill and comes out as the “social credit score” meme which is fantasitcal projection from our own opaque credit system.
Great example of how “ironic” racism is still racism. It invites actual racists to join and fit in.
That’s generally how propaganda works, though.
Eh… I guess, only insofar as any racist bullshit that gets misunderstood as benign.
If you’re only told one thing, especially a lie, and you are told that over and over again, that’s propaganda.
The unexpected propaganda win for the PRC too lol. Anyone who might have been doubting the benefits of the dictatorship of the proletariat will now have first hand evidence that life is absolutely not better in capitalism
This is exactly what governments around the world are afraid of. Every government wants us to blindly accept that every citizen of the nation is profoundly evil and must be obedient to its government.
Russia wants its citizens to believe every single lie about itself and other nations. That everyone in Ukraine is a bloodthirsty Nazi, and Russia is liberating Crimea.
America wants its citizens to believe every single lie about itself and other nations. Every brown person is a terrorist waiting for its Manchurian candidate call sign to do a second 9/11, and that the economy is the greatest in the world.
No nation tells the entire truth, from lying from omission via national security, to straight up war time propaganda, to funding and owning news networks. From Radio Free Europe to Sputnik, a government will lie to your face and tell you its an unabridged raw truth.
The only way we could actually learn the “truth” (if there is such a one when anyone could be as brainwashed as their government wants them to be) is by directly talking to the citizens of each nation. The internet is a great equalizer, the only limit is language and translation. That’s why governments censor the internet, or even shut it down when it gets too much for a government to manage.
We all have more in common with the random citizens of China, Russia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, America, Mexico, Canada, Uganda, South Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Ukraine, Brazil… We have more in common with being human and being subjugated and redistricted in doing what makes us happy and free.
And the government and rich of each of those nations and beyond have more in common each other than to the citizens they try to control like dogs. They all disagree on why they do it, but the end result is the same. Status quo, monopoly on violence kept in place with whoever is at the top. The set dressing and costumes change, but the stage play goes on.
You and I have more in common than with the president or prime minister or dictator we are under. The only thing we share with the top 1% and our governments is the lanauge we share and the citizenship. I have friends around the world, and I have more in common with random geeks in Japan and China, than the leadership of my nation.
The governments want you to think that you have nothing to share and love with another human being outside the lines drawn in the sand by people out of touch with the people inside those lines.
But nowhere else on the planet invests as much money and effort into it as the US. $325 million a year on anti China propaganda alone:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1157/text
You never saw that mentioned in the media did you? There is a reason for that:
It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.
The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.
Google whataboutism
They’re obviously saying all of this to up their social credit!
I’m also learning it’s not real dude we’ve been duped
I just want to point out that the attempt to compare medical costs in a direct comparison in US dollars isn’t exactly easy as it does ignore purchasing power and base wages.
The point would probably be better made with hours of labor at a base pay to pay off treatment which I do think American healthcare would probably still lose quite handedly.
It’s funny that Xiaohongshu is popping off right on the cusp of a TikTok ban. They’re not even flocking to established US alternatives.
The fact that Xiaohongshu is Chinese is the point, it’s a protest against banning Chinese Social Media without holding US-based Social Media to the same standard.
It started from an American user on tik tok saying “we should go to a Chinese app like red book” it’s a meme that went wild
I’ve been saying it, but I think there’s also a factor that people simply want somewhere new to go. I can’t think of a time when people went back to an older platform while abandoning a newer one.
its likely that tiktok users already had accs on US alternatives.
Some of this stuff is dated. Chinese healthcare used to be less available and more expensive until the government put efforts in changing that fact. China’s a nation that seems to believe that they can use their government to make things better.
China’s a nation that seems to believe that they can use their government to make things better.
Isn’t that what you pay taxes for?
I pay taxes to stay out of jail
Is this the tankie nonsense that ml spews that I’ve been warned about?
Cause I’m sure this is partly true, as a Canadian I know that China is pragmatically not hell (defiantly has lots of problems though) and that the US is only good if your rich.
I personally don’t see this as pro China but more as a criticism how living in the US has been romanticized.
Too late, you’re a tankie now 👻
I’m pretty sure that is you don’t believe China is a literal hell, you’re a tankie. Though, I think tankies are the feminist your uncle always warned you about tbh
82$?! That’s ~8200 roubles! Holy golden expensive fuck!
I love this so much
She can get it.
She can get it. God what a woman.
Lmao
Kek even
They could, but they dont want to.
The ban discussion originated during the 2020 election when Trump didn’t like the information being spread there as he thought it aligned more with left wing policies. So he wanted it banned. People kept pushing the “it’s bad for kids” bullshit to keep it rolling until it finally went into effect. The Democrats didn’t try to stop it, and the people voted back in the person who wanted it banned. So effectively, they did vote for it in a way.
Trump wanted the ban when he was in office, Biden actually did the ban when he was in office.
Who could I have voted for to keep it from being banned?
Votes:
R- 186 FOR 25 AGAINST
D- 174 FOR 33 AGAINST
A veto is over road by 2/3 vote in Congress… Meaning NO president could have vetod it. So yes I place it on the person who started the process and all of those who voted for it in the house/ Senate.
Clearly meaning that Biden did not “do the ban” But don’t let facts get in the way of a good story
It’s really weird to act like Biden didn’t want the ban and was some hapless third party to all this when before they even had the vote he was saying he’d sign it.
Bills don’t get an automatic veto override if enough people vote yes, and an override doesn’t make him sign it. He signed it because he wanted to, and in doing so he put the Democrat brand on it. He could have made them hold another vote to actually override his veto and make it clear that he didn’t want this, he could have spoken out against it in any way before the bill was passed and on his desk, but he didn’t, and now that it’s wildly unpopular for some reason the entire DNC is just:
When did I say Biden didn’t want the ban? I said the Democrats wanted it too and showed they voted for it? Do you only absorb information you want to absorb?
Congratulations, you fell for their 2 party stick
Don’t change the subject, since the ban discussion originated in 2020 who could I have voted for to stop it from happening?
Everyone on my ballot, both republican and democrat all support the ban
Change the subject? You just said Biden could have vetod it and I gave you the facts that he could not have done shit about it. What mental gymnastics is that shit. Also congress who made it impossible to override is voted in every 2 years. So being that there have been 2 votes for Congress since 2020 that you ask of, you could have voted to replace the entire house twice since then.
you could have voted to replace the entire house twice since then.
Replace with who? Everyone on my ballot was for the ban
(edit: also I never said Biden could have vetoed it, I just said that he did the ban, because he signed it and has been publicly in favor of it)
Everyone on your ballot was for the ban and they were people trying to represent you. Either that means you have an opinion differing from the majority of the population in your area, or the people in your area need to find new candidates. I know in my area I am vastly different than what the majority wants. Shit, every person at my work wanted the ban. Coworker was yelling about how much he hates anyone against Trump and that he’s glad they are banning Tik Tok. He listens to far right propaganda on the radio daily that’s anti trans, anti immigrants, and I hear them claiming that all of the positions he is filling are their by merit, and that none of the positions Democrats fill are their by merit, just sponsorship. It’s a broken 2 party system. (Yes, The broken part was redundant)
That’s how democracy works though, either you agree with the majority, tolerate the majority opinion, or you have to work to change the majority opinion, or leave.
I think what many of us are overlooking is that the representatives on average are almost 60, over 60 in the Senate. 60 years olds in average don’t care what 20 year olds want, they think they know what’s best for the 20 year olds future, applying information that may have been valid 30 years ago. Their kids are older than 20, and they already disagree with their opinions.
We need to get the average Congress member age down to 40, senators 45 and force all members older than 65 to retire and take on advisory roles only. A 65 year old does not remember working paycheck to paycheck and what the struggles of everyday Americans are. They only care about how to grow their investments. If their car breaks down, they have enough money to get another, rent a car until its fixed, or simply schedule rides without fear of true disaster. The percentage of Americans that if their car breaks down will lose their jobs, apartments, not be able to afford food, and become homeless which is becoming illegal as well is increasing day after day.
The majority of Americans can not simply take a bus to work, nor walk there. A new car is outrageously out of reach for many people, and used car prices aren’t cheap either.
I wanted to join a rugby team to get more exercise and get in better shape. The sole reason I decided not to was because if I get injured, say break an arm… I would lose my job. And that’s before I say I couldn’t afford the medical bills to go to the doctor anyways.
A 60+ year old Congress member will just call the youth overweight and lazy… but shit. At 35 I know ive worked harder than many I know, but the risk aversion I take to avoid ruin is real. There is no community pool around here, I could never afford one of my own. No sidewalks, and there will be ice everywhere for another month or so… so I’m not going to try bike riding and go over ice on 2 wheels. I should be trying to find more hiking trails… that’s about all I might be able to find that is risk adverse exercise around here.
I get what you mean about the candidates for Congress, it seems they aren’t any great ones. We need to figure out a way to change that.
As a civ player, I know a cultural victory when I see one.
My people are now
listening to your pop music and wear your blue jeanseating your noodles and use your social media apps.
Remember that “Grapes of Wrath” completely backfired as a propaganda piece because Russians were amazed that poor Americans could still afford cars
What do you mean propaganda piece? Stienbeck didn’t write that for Americans to read?
Just a bit of context as someone from Eastern Europe - it was not that people couldn’t afford cars, it was that they were in short supply. People - fewer people than in the West, but still a lot of people - bought cars, they just got them 30 years after the fact.
That’s not how I remember it. The average persin in Eastern Europe couldn’t afford to buy a car and cars were in short supply, resulting in significant waiting periods (we’re talking years). The average citizens in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had much less purchaisng power compared to their counterparts in the West. Soviet-made cars were much more expensice relative to Western-made ones, and of considerably lower quality, generally speaking.
Oh, you’re right, I guess on the one hand I’m from the happiest barracks so to speak, but what I meant to say that there it wasn’t uncommon to know people with cars, it wasn’t some “you have to be a politician or CEO equivalent” thing, more like a “most people don’t have one, but they do know someone who has one”.
TBH it feels like it was similar than trying to save up for a house from zero for young people now. It’s not entirely unrealistic, but the average person won’t get there.
The peeps I know were teachers and they did own a car, the same car over 30 years though. There were no traffic jams though.
Having a Western car though, that was the real shit. I knew someone who had a VW Golf in the 80s, now for that you had to be high in the pecking order.
