How would you answer this, and how would you expect Chinese netizens on Xiaohongshu to answer?

I will link to the thread in the comments because I want you to take a moment and think about it first.

    • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      36·
      4 hours ago

      Belt and Road Initiative, China owning most of the cobalt reserves and refining resources that oftentimes rely on enslaved child labor, anti-Black discrimination inside Chinese enclaves in Africa (1) (2), mandating Mandarin in Ugandan schools, with Kenya and South Africa making it optional

      • Cowbee [he/they]
        73·
        4 hours ago

        Can you elaborate on how BRI is Imperialism? Further, learning mandarin as a second language in schooling isn’t the same as forcing everyone to speak it, Spanish is required learning in many US schools and it isn’t a form of Mexican imperialism. I’d also like to see a source on the child labor in the cobalt mines.

        The racial discrimination is terrible, no doubt, and it needs to be worked on and fixed. However, this doesn’t seem to be something the PRC is pushing so much as individual racists. I am hopeful that that situation will improve especially.

        There are many arguments against China being Imperialist, from Vijay Prashad. Here’s an excerpt from a sepatate article, a quick 9 minute read:

        In a 2005 presentation to the Congressional U.S.-China Commission, U.S. State Department official Princeton Lyman assessed how China’s model of socialist state loans don’t serve the function of profit:

        “China utilizes a variety of instruments to advance its interest in ways that western nations can only envy. Most of China’s investments are through state-owned companies, whose individual investments do not have to be profitable if they serve overall Chinese objectives. Thus the representative of China’s state-owned construction company in Ethiopia could reveal that he was instructed by Beijing to bid low on various tenders, without regard for profit. China’s long term objective in Ethiopia is in access to future natural resource investments, not in construction business profits.”

        Despite recent claims that China has been using its companies to engage in neo-colonialism throughout Africa, the situation Lyman assessed has continued to be the case throughout the last fifteen years. As I’ve mentioned in past writings, China’s investments do not meet the definition of neo-colonialism; Chinese enterprises help the job markets abroad rather than only employing Chinese workers, China hasn’t been engaging in “land grabs” in Africa, and China isn’t working to trap African nations in debt. In accordance with China’s not engaging in regime change, China has also never favored any government for its form or ideology.

        • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          36·
          3 hours ago

          I’m really glad to hear that in classic ML fashion, you know better than Ugandans themselves what does or doesn’t constitute colonialism. I recommend actually watching the TikTok video from the Ugandan activist I linked you that already explains how Mandarin is erasing indigenous languages in favor of facilitating Chinese exploitation of local resources.

          Believe it or not, Spanish is also a colonial language. It’s pretty well known in any history book that it was used to enact cultural genocide on indigenous people all across Turtle Island. Indigenous people in Latin America have the “choice” of assimilating into Spanish culture or face poverty, starvation and genocide by white Latinos.

          lmao imagine unironically linking the qiao collective, the mouthpiece of the CCP, as a credible source. I was wondering how long until the .ml brainwashing chip activates 🤭

          here’s an even quicker read:

          The University of California, Irvine report stated that the Qiao Collective posts “positive, often revisionist perspectives about Chinese politics.” That report stated that Qiao Collective claims that the “West’s perceptions of China as a human rights violator are actually the opposite; China is benevolent in helping marginalized people.” 1

          The UC Irvine report stated that the Qiao Collective is particularly sympathetic with regard to how China treats the Uyghur people. 1 On Aug. 31, 2022, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report stating that the “Chinese government’s rights violations against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang ‘may constitute … crimes against humanity.’” 5

          The left-of-center Human Rights Watch stated that since 2017, the Chinese government has carried out “a widespread and systematic” attack against the Uyghur people that included mass detention, torture, religious persecution, separation of families, forced labor and sexual violence. 5

          The UC Irvine report stated that the Qiao Collective “assert[s]” that re-education camps do not exist and the camps were built to “deradicalize” extremists so they can get proper training to live on their own. UC Irvine’s report stated that Qiao claimed the camps teach Uyghurs to “better function in the economy,” learn technical skills, and they are allowed to go home a couple times per week to see their families.

          • Cowbee [he/they]
            61·
            3 hours ago

            I watched it in full.

            As for Spanish, I’m aware of its origins. I still don’t see how making it a mandatory second language in many US schools would imply Mexican or Spanish colonization of the US.

            As for linking QiaoCollective, yes, I did. Is there a problem with reading sources that go against your narrative? Funny you link HRW, which is a US-based group founded explicitly to push anti-communism:

            >Human Rights Watch was co-founded by Robert L. Bernstein,[8] Jeri Laber, and Aryeh Neier[9] as a private American NGO in 1978, under the name Helsinki Watch, to monitor the then-Soviet Union’s compliance with the Helsinki Accords.[10] Helsinki Watch adopted a practice of publicly “naming and shaming” abusive governments through media coverage and direct exchanges with policymakers. Helsinki Watch says that, by shining the international spotlight on human rights violations in the Soviet Union and its European partners, it contributed to the region’s democratic transformations in the late 1980s.[10]

            Some criticism:

            In 2014, two Nobel Peace Laureates, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire, wrote a letter signed by 100 other human rights activists and scholars criticizing HRW for its revolving-door hiring practices with the U.S. government, its failure to denounce the U.S. practice of extrajudicial rendition, its endorsement of the U.S. 2011 military intervention in Libya, and its silence during the 2004 Haitian coup d’état.[68]

            In 2020, HRW’s board of directors discovered that HRW accepted a $470,000 donation from Saudi real estate magnate Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber, owner of a company HRW “had previously identified as complicit in labor rights abuse”, under the condition that the donation not be used to support LGBT advocacy in the Middle East and North Africa. After The Intercept reported the donation, it was returned, and HRW issued a statement that accepting it was “deeply regrettable”.[69]

            HRW does good work sometimes, like calling out Israel for their genocide on Palestinians, but they were formed explicitly to target countries that dared stand against US hegemony. Read the actual, full UN report.

            • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              15·
              3 hours ago

              if you think criticizing the USSR is “anti-communist” that’s your own cultist complex to deal with. critiquing Russian imperialism has always and will be based, regardless if it’s hiding under the hammer and sickle or the Wagner logo

              • Cowbee [he/they]
                61·
                3 hours ago

                There’s meaningful critique of the USSR, yes. Being founded in the United States to serve as a watchdog over the Soviets at the height of the Cold War while the United States was licking its wounds after commiting untold masses of war crimes in Vietnam is the peak of hypocricy and purely exists to slander Communism. Moreover, the USSR was not Imperialist, it stood against Imperialism by supporting Cuba, China, Vietnam, Algeria, Palestine, Korea, and more liberate themselves from Imperialism and Colonialism.

                • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  27·
                  3 hours ago

                  do y’all ever get tired of the genocide denialism circlejerk? don’t you feel pathetic to do the job of Russia and China for free? at least get new material besides "X is anti-US, therefore X anti-imperialist and therefore communist ". it’s called being a tankie

                  • Cowbee [he/they]
                    61·
                    3 hours ago

                    The UN report says that while the camps may constitute crimes against humanity, they aren’t genocidal. The claims of genocide come from Adrian Zens, a far-right Christian Nationalist that, get this, believes he was given a mission from God to discredit China. US-based media spreads these as “claims” because there’s no punishment for spreading these claims, and if no evidence comes out of these crimes of excess then they can rely on having only reported “claims.” What Qiao Collective states is in line with the UN report and what the visitors China has invited from the Middle East to investigate back up.

                    As for the logical pretzel you created at the end, that’s just condescending. Many non-Communist groups are anti-US, like the Russian Federation, which is fully Capitalist. There are plenty of reasons to oppose the US without being Communist. However, there are AES states that go against the US as well.