Is it not allowed or frowned upon by the mods and maintainer of Lemmy? Although I do respect the technology and services that Lemmy and its community have provided, I’m still looking for answer on the fact whether it’s ok/allowed to have a vocal and confident opposing view.
Also, within this community (China), Am I allowed to post things that opposes the chinese government, such as, not liking their attitude towards a certain island in the south east of china?
Let me ask you a question: are you a resident of China?
If your answer is “no”, I would suggest that being “confident” and “vocal” in your opposing view is … probably unwise. Keep in mind, before you reply with what I suspect your answer will be, that I have access as a resident (not citizen—there’s a big difference!) of China to all of the information you have access to (unless you’re in the CIA or something, natch!) and to sources of information you have no access to.
And given that I have access to 100% of your sources and sources on top of that, I am not particularly vocally confident of many (most?) things in China and how they’re going.
There are things I am confident of. The reports of mass deaths in Wuhan to COVID-19 are bullshit, for example. (Source: It’s where I live and have family and students.) The nonsense of “Social Credit” as it is breathlessly explained in the western press is so comically wrong it’s not even wrong. It’s the reportage equivalent of someone dumping a random collection of car parts on a table and calling it a television. Indeed most things reported on about China are utter bullshit trivially debunked by … being able to speak and read Chinese. Which very few (verging on none!) foreign correspondents can do.
So while it’s OK to have an opinion (hell, I have a few hundred thousand of my own!), being confident in that opinion—given your deficit in information sources—is probably not wise. Because I, who have a metric fuckton more access to information than you do, do not share this level of confidence.
P.S. I actually voted your question up. It’s a good question. I’m just warning you against brashly arrogant confidence which seems to infest most westerners talking about China.
Hmmm I haven’t been in touch with people that actually opposes the mass media’s narrative about how screwed and inhumane the social credit systems are in china, and speaks english. That pleases me knowing that other people would think differently than I am.
Although I don’t agree with how you see “if you dont live in X, i cant be confident of the condition in X”. Because as a person I could also conclude things coming from incomplete information scattered around independent/corporate news outlet. It seems like you have misclassify my non-involvement with China and their citizen into a misjudgment on my conclusion.
Let me give you a perfect example on a very specific issues about China that I’m confident about. The fact that China have even a notion of regulating speech via state wide censorship is horrendous enough for me to not trust any non independent media representative from China.
Edit: I think your vision towards my non involvement within China and their citizens also undermined the fact that I’m an adult with a human brain which could actually think. Although I would be pleased if you could give me a sourced argument on why,
I intentionally left out the covid part of the argument, simply because it will devolve into a discussion of “well I was there and it was ok” kind of argument, which is to me, not interesting.
The fact that you consider “media” an information source at all is rather amusing to me. “Independent” media has its own masters and those masters have their own reasons for media reporting the way it does. Personally, I talk to boots on the ground for that reason. “Media” is as bullshit as government propaganda (and indeed in many cases effectively is government propaganda for a wide variety of reasons, beginning with media sloth).
As a concrete example of what I mean, consider the “LOL THEM FURRNERS SURE IS FUNNAY!” reportage a few years back on the “hot new trend” “sweeping China’s beaches”: the so-called “facekini”. The way the breathless (and ever-so-slightly xenophobic) reportage surrounding that was provided, you’d think that everybody and their fucking dog was out at the beach wearing spandex balaclavas. And yet, in 20 years of living here, and in travelling around most of the eastern and southern provinces, I have not once, not even a single time seen a person wearing a “facekini”.
So what happened? A lazy-assed “independent media” representative went to a beach in Dalian. Where, yes, “facekinis” are a thing. For middle-aged women, mostly, and elderly people of both genders. (And any youngsters unfortunate enough to be forced to go to the beach with their grandparents.) When you pay attention, you’ll see that the shots of all the “facekini”-wearing people are carefully cropped to conceal the literally THOUSANDS of people on the beach behind them who don’t wear “facekinis”. It’s purest condescending, xenophobic reporting passed off as fact. A tiny (oh-so-fucking-tiny!) kernel of truth gets magnified into a “craze that is sweeping China”.
That is the quality of most (perhaps even all) reportage. Not of China. All of it. Anywhere. If your sole source of information is media, you’re an ignoramus. (Not using the term judgmentally but rather descriptively. It’s not your fault you’re being lied to by people who largely range between lazy and malevolent.)
My trusted sources of information, as a result, are my eyes and are people. My family, for the latter. My friends. My former students. My neighbours. (And the families and friends of all of these.) Wuhan being a major university centre, those students come from literally all over China (including, yes, places like Tibet and Xinjiang), while my family is mostly from central China, esp. Hubei province. So I’m not talking “media” (state or “independent”, or otherwise) as information sources. I’m talking things I see with my own eyes, or things that I hear about from ordinary people who live here. THOSE are my extra sources of information you literally have no access to.
The Great Firewall is an idiotic thing. If I were placed in charge of China, the absolute first thing I would do with it is tear it down. (Not for the reasons you’d likely think, mind, but that’s a different question.)
The Great Firewall is trivially circumvented (Source: waves from behind the Great Firewall) by anybody who wants to. My 13 year old son could figure out how to circumvent the Great Firewall without any input from me. (Source: he did.) It serves no purpose but to make China’s leadership look weak and fearful of people saying bad things about them.
So you won’t see me defending your straw man because, well, it’s a fucking straw man now, isn’t it?
This one is far easier.
There is no “Social Credit System”. Not in the way that it’s been reported in the west. As I said, the reportage over “Social Credit” is the reporting equivalent of dumping car parts on a table and calling it a television. There is only one possible answer to your (implied) question here: 无. (Look it up, specifically in its 禅/Chan/Zen usage.)
I can’t answer this question because it is badly formulated. It would be like me asking you to defend the USA’s invasion of Moscow: you could not defend that which does not exist. (You think it exists? You’re certain it exists? If so, please tell me how my wife, my mother-in-law, my coworkers, my friends, et al can get their scores because they have no fucking idea what I’m even talking about when I mention it. I mean surely if you’re that certain you’ll have actual, concrete, solid information, right?)
Try wording the question differently. (Hint: Properly wording a question involves a question mark. Another hint: The style of question you want to be aiming for is one related to gathering information, not confirming your badly-constructed opinions.)
There is good information on so-called “Social Credit” out there, and the “Social Credit” system has troubling implications, but literally everything you have read about it in media is 100%, pure, unadulterated bullshit. (And as I said above, if you’re convinced it’s not, let me know how my wife can get her “Social Credit” score because she has NO fucking idea what you’re on about.)
Oh, as a side note, if you want to come across as actually knowing shit, getting the basics (like names!) right is a good start. There is no “CCP”. “CCP” is the initialization used by the wilfully ignorant. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student to figure out what the proper initialization is. (Hint: It’s trivial to find the proper initialization and in the process you don’t come across as stridently ignorant.)
Thank you for the reply. Quite the response there, might need time to process. Although I will not ever discredit you for your source of information (which is family, friends, and colleagues), I didnt expect that you would go on the route of “independent media has their own master” and “media as a source of information is laughable”. It’s true that biases does exist, but it certainly is also true that we as a human being can process those biases out based upon the political alignment of each news source. I mean, I would expect that as a basic skill and conclusion that everyone would realize once they know news source are likely biased.
And about CCP, I suppose I use that term interchangeably with the chinese government and officials and I’m sorry if that’s not accurate enough to convey my intention.
Also, just as a note for the future, calling all of the things in media is “100% pure unadulterated bullshit” would only highlights your lack of skill in engaging with a society/system which has more than a single news source and narrative.
It’s easy enough to fix: CPC. Communist Party of China. CCP is what ignoramuses use because they literally don’t know the official name.
Just as a note for the future: not answering questions that were asked twice makes you look like a dishonest idiot.
Now that we’ve exchanged our ritual insults, let’s try to return to civil discourse.
And you can begin with, since you’re so certain that the reportage around “Social Credit” isn’t 100% pure unadulterated bullshit, your answering a simple question (repeated here for your convenience): How can my wife (or my mother-in-law or my son or my friends or my colleagues or my …) get their “Social Credit” score? Please be specific, since, apparently, expats who’ve lived here 20 years (that’s me), and people who were born here need some “informed” American to tell them how to do it. (They don’t even know that such a score exist, those ignorant fools!)
When you answer that question—on a topic that you’re “confident” of, recall—perhaps we can go on to continued conversation. But without answering it, or without admitting that you don’t actually know shit about it, there’s really no point in continuing a conversation. You’re convinced you know it all and there would be no point in talking further.
(For bonus points, what’s the Chinese name for this “Social Credit” program?)
Well, that’s precisely the problem most governments face. Trying to “manage” people is the very definition of tyranny. We are not numbers in a spreadsheets, we are people with conflicting desires and needs.
As a resident of France and French speaker, i have access to way more information about France than you non-french speakers. I have access to all your information sources and other sources.
Yet i don’t believe anything my government says because all governments lie to protect the psychopaths in power and we should burn all parliaments down in order to establish a true democracy (power to the people != elections).
Whether your overlords are elected for 5 years after being pushed by the oligarchy (hello Sarkozy/Hollande/Macron) or rulers for life (hello Xi Jinping) does not matter. Almost every Nation-State on Earth is a capitalist and colonial construct that must be abolished in order to build a free society. Especially if you feel like you’re a communist, “stateless” and “classless” is communism 101 and apart from the Zapatistas in Chiapas and to some extent the Kurdish in Rojava no wide-scale society on this planet is going in such direction, especially not liberal “democracies” like France or State-capitalist “republics” like China.
I’m not sure what point you’re making. Are you seeing me make confident, vocal statements about France or something? Or are you just picking words at random from something you read so you could react to it with your favourite hobby horse?
Go back and read what I wrote. Then come back and explain line by line what literally anything in your reply had to do with what I said.
My point is that foreign propaganda is just as wrong as domestic propaganda. And no you weren’t exactly defending Chinese government propaganda, you were in fact defending a more balanced view which is good. That’s why i didn’t downvote :)
I merely expanded on your argument. Or maybe i’m just a GPT-3 powered bot, who knows? ;)
EDIT EDIT: removed my edit which was replying to the wrong person editing their post. Having posts edited in real-time in the UI is… disconcerting