What makes anti China propaganda so effective is that people want to believe it.
Believing that western system is fundamentally better allows justifying all the horrors we see day to day by saying that the alternatives are even worse, and so we shouldn't even try to change anything.
Accepting that China managed to find a better path that the west is actively fighting against means having to accept that the west is on the wrong side of history. That's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people.
World you participate in a mild, painless experiment? Would you carefully read Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, and then come back here with an honest review? You don’t even have to agree with him. All I ask for is a fair treatment.
… This whole framework and its usually unquestioned assumptions produces strange works that seek to analyse China as an emerging capitalist market economy, with a rising middle class that would demand its liberal ‘freedom and democracy’ were it not for a repressive Communist party…. It certainly leads to circular research ‘results’. A good example is the search for ‘evidence’ of ‘democracy’, focussing on grassroots democratic practices. Since the whole perspective for what counts as ‘democracy’ is the rather thin Western liberal notion, they typically fail to find ‘evidence’ and so must conclude that such an absence is due to an ‘authoritarian’ political structure that ‘represses’ such ‘democracy’. You cannot find what is not there, especially when you ignore the reality of a relatively mature socialist democracy.
… For Chinese scholars, those who peddle Western perspectives and models fall into the trap of yixi jiezhong, seeking to understand China with Western eyes. …
Out of interest, what’s the legality of that? It’s not the same as torrenting, but does anyone know whether there are implications for sharing links to databases?
I would imagine it would be frowned upon by the Vogons in the copyright cartels. But I doubt they’ll toss up any roadblocks for a small site like this.
Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
Thank you for this. I’ve only just read the first chapter, and it’s already eye-opening how it addresses the Western approach to discourse about China.
Its a huge book for me and after reading it I felt like I actually knew something and had a foundation to learn more. The sheer amount of sources and citations makes it possible to really expand your knowledge on these topics in ways many westerners simply won’t.
I think I’m going to read this next. Do you have any other recommendations on Chinese history, the revolution, socialist development or honestly anything China related?
Well, tbh, this is a relatively new topic for me, so I don’t have a wide range of sources. I plan to slowly work through the sources cited in Boer’s book.
Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China is a good book about the start of the revolution. Snow was a US journalist but all things considered, he gives a fair account.
There are some good Chinese movies on YouTube. There’s an old thread about some on here. I’ll try to find it and share the link. It’s really strange to watch movies where US soldiers aren’t the heroes. You just get a completely different sense of perspective, which is required to fully understand China.
World you participate in a mild, painless experiment? Would you carefully read Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, and then come back here with an honest review? You don’t even have to agree with him. All I ask for is a fair treatment.
You will never ever get a bad faith liberal like this to read unfortunately
Just in case they might read a few lines:
Linkage.
EDIT: Please normalise all book recommendations with links to copies.
Out of interest, what’s the legality of that? It’s not the same as torrenting, but does anyone know whether there are implications for sharing links to databases?
I would imagine it would be frowned upon by the Vogons in the copyright cartels. But I doubt they’ll toss up any roadblocks for a small site like this.
Plus there’s https://lemmygrad.ml/c/leftpiracy for example.
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Thank you for this. I’ve only just read the first chapter, and it’s already eye-opening how it addresses the Western approach to discourse about China.
Its a huge book for me and after reading it I felt like I actually knew something and had a foundation to learn more. The sheer amount of sources and citations makes it possible to really expand your knowledge on these topics in ways many westerners simply won’t.
I think I’m going to read this next. Do you have any other recommendations on Chinese history, the revolution, socialist development or honestly anything China related?
Well, tbh, this is a relatively new topic for me, so I don’t have a wide range of sources. I plan to slowly work through the sources cited in Boer’s book.
Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China is a good book about the start of the revolution. Snow was a US journalist but all things considered, he gives a fair account.
And I’ve read some of the link in Dessalines’ link-list, On Mao, Maoism, and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and the PRC.
And the Qiao Collective publishes some great videos: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCPi2i0AZTD2IkENqN3GAbsA. Their ‘China and the Left’ conference was especially enjoyable: https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PLQFBO6UUfDCQoIxtdxX5dVRwl1kS9IhnV.
There’s also the works of Mao, Deng, and Xi.
CGTN has some good stuff but its a bit of a chore to find the documentaries, etc: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCgrNz-aDmcr2uuto8_DL2jg/playlists.
News with Jingjing has some good videos: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCPvWHbIwTHbXX9Jo_Vephdg.
There are some good Chinese movies on YouTube. There’s an old thread about some on here. I’ll try to find it and share the link. It’s really strange to watch movies where US soldiers aren’t the heroes. You just get a completely different sense of perspective, which is required to fully understand China.
Edit: I’m unsure how good this is just there’s a section of resources in China, here: https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/.
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