average 
moment
I guess I was right in being suspicious of western urbanists who were always deafeningly silent on massive projects in China but won’t shut up for weeks about the Dutch king taking a bike-shaped shit. This is how they respond when they are forcibly confronted with the topic.
If you say cringe shit like “West Taiwan” you are forbidden to balk at shit like “United $nakes of AmeriKKKa”
I’m making that rule right now
What about calling them the new southern Canadian provinces
North Mexico is better imo.
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“China builds trains because The West won’t sell them wheels” is probably the funniest take I have ever heard
The Perfidious Yellow Claw of the Orient is too inscrutable to develop the technological knowledge to make Wheelcouldn’t figure out how to roll them, so we had to settle on making them levitate.
In which China can you say you disagree with the government?
Meanwhile in the U.S.: You disagree, you protest, you vote, and nothing ever changes for the better. That’s true freedom.
And the second the government actually is on its back foot, the national guard is deployed, they have prison riot squads deployed to brutalize protesters, and thousands of social media accounts are deleted.
The DHS will dissappear you into an unmarked van
The president will order your assassination by us marshals on twitter
Or that guy in the UK that arrested last week for Facebook crime
Or the journalists who have been detained under anti-terror laws and given impossible bail conditions that mean that merely existing, never mind actually doing journalism, puts them in breach so that the government can imprison them for 5 years or more on a whim without trial.
Or the Cop City protestors who have been charged with terrorism (or outright murdered).
In which China can you disagree with the government
Not the RoC lmao
Dunce take as well, these fools would be shoeless in the breadline and be like at least I have my free speecharinos
Yeah that’s the other thing, how much do I care if I can “criticize” the government if they’re doing what I want from them and taking care of my needs?
Okay so I can complain a bit more loudly in the shitty countries where I have a lot more to complain about? That’s not a selling point.
If you look for criticism of the Chinese government from Chinese citizens, you will find it. However, the vast majority have, in general, a very favorable opinion of the government, therefore they do not have many systemic criticisms to level.
Perhaps the reason that there are no widespread protests in China against extrajudicial killings by police is because that is not a thing that happens in China, save for astronomically rare instances, in which case punishment is swift, and therefore there would also be no cause for public outcry over a lack of consequences.
Should such cruel abuses of power be prevalent throughout the country, and should such widespread discontent and anger with the government exist, it is bound to manifest itself through demonstrations, actions, and protests regardless of whether or not such activities are proscribed by the state. Since we do not see that happening, we can conclude that the causal widespread discontent does not, in the first place, exist.
I guess that for a Westerner, a government isn’t good enough until it is so viscerally hated by the populace that violent uprisings break out every year. Only then will you have true democracy. Only then will you have true freedom. For a government that is competent and well-liked is a dystopia so utterly terrifying that the extent of its horror exceeds the limits of human comprehension.
Westerners fetishize protest. They are aroused by it; for it is the ultimate performative display of freedom and democracy, that unquestionable, holy mantra.
Of course, anyone with half a brain will have noticed that a protest is only the embodiment of freedom and democracy should it occur in a designated enemy country. When it occurs on the home front, that is an unspeakable act of terrorism.
But what makes freedomism freedomism and terrorism terrorism? Of course, freedom and democracy can only exist wherever American capital reigns supreme, and despotism reigns wherever it does not. So it logically follows that it is freedomism to serve the domination of American capital and terrorism to oppose it.
Returning to the original question at hand, we can see clearly that the issue has, in actuality, vanishingly little to do with the objective presence or absence of criticism, or of the right to criticism. It has everything to do with the presence or absence of freedomism, the constituency of this category being comprised of any action taken to serve American capital. With this working definition of freedomism we can say that the true lament is not the inability to criticize (an idea demonstrated to be categorically incorrect), but rather the inability to mount a freedomist criticism - “freedomist” here being obviously present and yet textually omitted, like a coefficient of one - à la the Hong Kong riots of 2019.
With this updated framework, it should be obvious that of the criticisms - and there are many - that are directed against the government, the vast majority of them do not qualify as a freedomist criticism, therefore they might as well not be criticisms at all. Now we can finally conclude that criticism is prohibited in a country where it plainly is not.
Through this manipulation of the intricacies of language, the average Westerner has been conditioned to bark at the enemies of American capital like a trained dog.
China is denying its citizens the ultimate freedom: being slaughtered by a government utterly subservient to American capital, thereby enabling the performance of the freedomist rituals.
How can a Westerner believe seemingly the exact opposite reality? Well, maybe they don’t entirely - just remember to add the invisible coefficient of one, here being the word “freedomist” before “criticism”, so as to correct their omission.
GOOD post god damn this said everything I’ve thought much better than I could’ve said it
Freedom is when you are circumstantially required to do 3X as an individual to enrich a billionaire (and throw away 2.5X) instead of collectively deciding that your responsibility is to do X
the White Terror and Taiwan’s military dictatorship that lasted four decades have entered the chat
By the way, why would you care even a little about stolen technology? Are you profiting from the technology? The only stolen technology I could entertain caring about is weapons. If you bankrupted Microsoft by stealing and FOSSing Microsoft office, I’d thank you and ask how you managed that when libre office exists already.
“China is undermining the ability of our domestic bourgeoisie to steal the surplus labor from the working class” doesn’t ring so clear.
The stolen technology argument is one of the most popular masquerades of racism. I’m sure some nerd could point to some Soviet Intel stolen from Americans or whatever, but the idea that a country only created something because the west did it first is ludicrous. The laws of physics are the same regardless of nation. If you have a proposal for a project to do something, odds are two groups working completely independently will come up with strikingly similar looking designs, even if the inner workings are totally different. That doesn’t mean the design was stolen. The racism is literally “they wouldn’t be smart enough to do that without theft”, and this notion is accepted by even the furthest left liberals in the mainstream.
Right now, the furthest left mainstream liberals are sitting cozily next to Adolf Hitler.
Not to mention, due to population size, the raw number of scientists and engineers in China is gigantic. Same goes for Olympics etc. 1.4 billion people is an absurdly large pool to draw from.
Try protesting a genocide in America
How can you be a “fuck cars” guy can complain about stolen IP?
The professed principles of many a westerner bend like piss in the wind when it comes to chinabad
This is really common in the west, especially with middle class people. I don’t know why they do it, I think it’s years of propaganda. My father used to complain about China in a similar way too, and I grew up with everybody regularly joking about the cheap (cheap as in low quality, not low price) plastic crap they produce and export. I mean to this day there’s YouTube videos like “I bought this thing from China, is it any good?”
On one hand, it’s anecdotes like “hey diiid you know they’re doing this ILLEGAL cloning and biotech science experiments in China?!?”, on the other hand they say “nnaah they can’t possibly come up with their own high tech” (while implying “only white westerners could”). It’s so wild and it’s pissing me off so much, not because it’s anti-China but because it’s so obviously propaganda and just plain fucking stupid
I know this was a rhetorical question you hexbear people usually know your shit haha. Just needed to idk vent get this out whatever
It’s great it’s not just us that can see through the bullshit, I wish there were more of you around
you’re allowed to disagree with the government in china. how brainwashed are these people to think otherwise? i remember thinking that when i was like 7. did these people just never learn anything or mentally grow up?
you’re not allowed to blatantly lie about the government to their detriment in china. many would say “well who decides what’s truth and lies?” and i would say that’s a fair point but what’s truth and lies in america is dictated entirely by capitalist media so even if the evil chinese government was dictating what’s true the same can be said for the US where whats true is just whatever capitalist propaganda your tv tells you, and with how much of right wing media is reliant on just flat out lies i wouldn’t mind some laws like that here in the US
When you get to the bottom of it with these people, “criticism is prohibited” almost invariably means “it’s illegal to overthrow the government”.
Preventing a CIA color revolution is doing a heckin authoritarianism
Plus it’s always from arrogant as fuck Westoids who think they should be allowed to visit China and make snide comments about “West Taiwan”, wear Free Hong Kong t-shirts in Tiananmen Square while asking their tour guide how many people died there. Then they invariably get in shit with the law there and complain about
and how it’s impossible to “criticize the government” there
West Taiwan
Oh, that’s an immediate sentence to the mines. Actually much of r*ddit would be sent to the mines
absolutely no one besides westerners says shit like that. especially no one on Taiwan.
on taiwan you’re either some rare old GMD-head that still thinks taiwan is the ROC and should take back the mainland, and then immediately move the capital to nanjing, i guess.
or you’re a cool hip young (probably gen X or millennial actually) Hard Green and you’re pro “independence” or more formally become a US puppet state.
or you’re (the vast majority) a nonpolitical
maybe there’s one person on the whole island that’s been reddit poisoned enough to have the extreme fringe belief that the island should conquer the mainland and turn it into another “taiwan”
Pretty sure you can disagree with the government in China. They have a phone line for suggestions and complaints, and it can actually change things about the government
When libs say “disagree with the government” they mean like “disagree with the existence/legitimacy of the government” i.e. they want to advocate for overthrowing the government. When they see people advocating for overthrowing the government in foreign countries and getting arrested for it, in their minds these are freedom fighters who are being persecuted for their speech. When they see people advocating for overthrowing the government in their own country, they accuse them of being violent extremists who deserve to be arrested and should just use the legal process.
Just email mrpresident@china.com
r/Ebikes has a strange relationship with China. Whenever a post mentions it, there is one of three themes:
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I bought a $300 dropshipped ebike on Amazon and it turns out those sneaky Asiatics sold me a cheap bicycle. They can’t make anything right and if you buy a Chinese bike it will explode immediately.
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Holy shit China is an electrified paradise where there are so many ebikes, they’re much more affordable, the infrastructure for them is so much better than the west, and the companies aren’t on the edge of bankruptcy: https://www.reddit.com/r/ebikes/comments/1hd2w55/im_in_shenzhen_china_right_now_and/
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We need to ban all Chinese things while supporting the western companies that assemble bikes from Chinese components, even though they’re risking imminent collapse because they can’t domestically manufacture a battery or the frame to put it in while the import tariffs strangle them
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
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One thing I’ve noticed is that a noticeable chunk of the “urbanism subculture” is very hostile to anything that deviates from “traditional-style development”, which gets extended to architectural styles. It’s definitely a result of the space being dominated by Americans that lionise Europe and Europeans themselves.
It’s like a mix of traditionalism and a “small is beautiful” mindset. Also heaps of chauvinism.
I also think OP shouldn’t have drawn a comparison between Taiwan and (the rest of) China. For one, Taiwan also has high-speed rail and a good metro system in Taipei, and two the size difference is huge, Taiwan would never come close in terms of quantity lol. Plus they opened themselved up to dismissals because “muh freedoms”
Edit: apparently the original post is about cars in Taiwan with darkened windshields.
It’s a logical continuation of the early 20th century Petit-Bourgeois Americans’ worship of Europe as a beacon of sophistication. The idea of Europe as a shining city on a hill continues to occupy a central position on the minds of similarly situated Americans today, including the segments that consider themselves urbanists. And they’ll be caught dead in a ditch before they cede any of that ground to the
Far East.Thinking about that Borealism post from a week or so ago, that really helped fully illuminate some things for me
I also think OP shouldn’t have drawn a comparison between Taiwan and (the rest of) China. For one, Taiwan also has high-speed rail and a good metro system in Taipei, and two the size difference is huge, Taiwan would never come close in terms of quantity lol. Plus they opened themselved up to dismissals because “muh freedoms”
Edit: apparently the original post is about cars in Taiwan with darkened windshields.
I agree, even pre-edit. Even if the post was originally about Taiwan I think it was a deliberately inflammatory approach, there really wasn’t a need to bring up sovereignty there and it was 100% going to ensure people were not receptive. Gotta identify the right time
They’ve built all the thousands of km of track… but can’t make wheels that go fast for some reason? Chauvinism is a hell of a drug
They have their own space station but apparently they can’t manufacture round steel discs.
No no no for you see the dastardly orientals are fundamentally incapable of advanced locomotion. All their trains are literally falling apart right now.
I don’t have any evidence because they’re really good at hiding it, any contradictory evidence you see is invented by the seeseepee
West Taiwan 
One of the worst redditisms.
It’s always fun to tell redditors that the official position of the government on the island of Taiwan is that Taiwan is a province of China
