• Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    10 hours ago

    You can say goodbye to China’s future as an AES country if this goes nationwide. America worship is still very strong despite everything and you can bet American feds and citizens will be pushing their bullshit propaganda everywhere.

    There’s also the matter of American social media brainworms that infects every country addicted to it. China has been making great strides in a lot of areas but it’s soft power isn’t quite there to do something like this without a strong backlash.

    • Aquilae [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 hours ago

      At least on Rednote, billionaires like Elon and the US itself already seemed to be somewhat looked up to. I hear that’s the attitude most people have in places like Shenzhen and Shanghai.

      Yeah I don’t see anything good coming out of this at all. I just hope this stays isolated to Shanghai.

      • alcoholicorn
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        9 hours ago

        At least on Rednote, billionaires like Elon and the US itself already seemed to be somewhat looked up to. I hear that’s the attitude most people have in places like Shenzhen and Shanghai.

        That attitude existed before Rednote users interacted with Americans. The exchange seems to have done a lot to discredit the chinese-facing propaganda that lead them to believe these things.

          • alcoholicorn
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            9 hours ago

            Literally all I need to post in the “why do you americans hate Elon Musk so much” threads before they’re like “Oh.”

            But before that, just describing how capitalists exert a malign influence on our government was adequate.

            • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              9 hours ago

              I’m still not sure what to do with the ambivalent feelings toward MAGA that they have. They keep saying we need to work with them to have a proletarian uprising, but I’m not sure if they realize that MAGA is the fascist vanguard

              • combat_doomerism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                8 hours ago

                they don’t understand that america is a settler colony and thus there are inherently different (and more difficult, i would say) class dynamics to work with than there was in china. same mistake that pretty much all the great socialist leaders like lenin stalin mao etc made, that resulted in all the glowing writings about america that patsocs like to misuse, they did no real investigation so on a surface level they apply the basic “all workers of the world unite” lens to it, not understanding that white workers have very real material incentives to fight against socialism. specifcally for thinking we should try and work with MAGA people is they probably think it can just be twisted into “socialist patriotism”, like china or vietnam did, but they dont understand that patriotism for the US inherently means patrotism for a country whose reason for being was and still is the exploitation and genocide of POC around the globe.

    • REgon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 hours ago

      On the other hand we can see from rednote that the Chinese getting mythbusted on the western Paradise is also a possibility. Though on foreign social media? Who knows what will happen.

      • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        10 hours ago

        I think this is isolated because a small amount of westerners are going there and usually it’s because they are reacting negatively to something their government is doing. If only people who feel anti-american are there, it is a net positive, but if the average American is flooding China with average American perspectives, it could reaffirm the pro-musk, pro-america type posts. I’ve already seen a lot of Chinese putting notes like “some Americans seem to hate x but others say they are exaggerating, which is true?” Which shows that these Chinese users are open to either side being true and are surprised enough by the people saying negative stuff that they think it could be a lie

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          9 hours ago

          Given that CPC has managed to navigate these things successfully for many decades on end, I’m going to assume that they thought through these things as well.

          • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            9 hours ago

            I hope so, but looking at situations like zero covid shows that they are also under pressure from less politically developed people, people who have capitalist desires. A lot of Chinese netizens talk about these issues in the party, saying that many people join as members through rote memorization and don’t fully understand Marxism, but do it to get social capital and better work prospects. Apparently Chinese schools teach introductory Marxism but it sounds similar to how politics and economy are taught in US schools- a surface level understanding which doesn’t practically instill how to embody the values and philosophy.

            I’m as big a china stan as they come and have a lot of hope that the CPC will keep China moving towards socialism, but it’s good to have a sober analysis of the situation beyond just hope.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              5 hours ago

              Every approach has its risks. The downside of being closed off is that people develop their own theories about what the outside world is like. I imagine the rationale is that China feels confident enough to experiment with starting to allow some interaction which can build confidence if it lets people see that their country is doing well relative to others.

      • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        10 hours ago

        But the real concern are the US tech giants. We’ve already seen from our own countries how the youth go all in for American culture and allow English to become dominant. Then comes the white worship, liberalism, and insane conspiracies that get passed around. Hong Kong is a great example of what happens when you open up entirely to western social media.

        I feel that this could lead to a Chinese perestroika or glasnost but hopefully It either won’t go nationwide or I’ll be proven wrong if it does.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          9 hours ago

          I don’t know why people continuously assume that CPC doesn’t understand these basic things and that they haven’t weighed pros and cons themselves. The article has an important bit here

          Mao emphasized that the “Internet+” era has brought about the success of companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, Douyin, and Xiaomi, which have generated millions of job opportunities. Now, in the age of AI, as long as the cross-border flow of sensitive data is properly regulated, opening up computing power and restoring international internet access will have more benefits than drawbacks.

          It’s not going to be unfettered free for all access, it’s still going to be mediated.

          • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            2 hours ago

            Well that’s a huge relief. I was so startled by the article that I must have glossed it over. The CPC has moments where it seems to be very insightful and on the mark, other times naive. It’s nice to see that they’re being more of the former in this case.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              2 hours ago

              It’s not like they operate without a nod from the central government. CPC likes doing this sort of stuff where they let local governments try new things out, and then see how things develop. I think that’s a rational approach to at least try these things.

          • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            7 hours ago

            If even a weak and defeated nation like Brazil can mess up some of the plans of the US tech giants, I assume the only reason the Chinese wouldn’t is because they’d make an explicit choice not to. Which, in turn, cannot arise from naivety but from policy. The question is whether people think Chinese policy is that foolish or not.

            I doubt China will have an unregulated internet, not even in Shanghai.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              6 hours ago

              Exactly, it’s still going to be regulated, but now people will be interact more broadly with the rest of the world. I think it’s a good thing overall.

      • NotLuigi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        10 hours ago

        In a place where we are on equal footing. On American social media, even TikTok now, the trigger words are too restrictive to properly critique anything and still get reach

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          9 hours ago

          I expect the goal is going to be to promote Chinese platforms globally, and opening up this way is a show of confidence on the part of China that their narrative is becoming dominant. This is the same rational the US had when it was not afraid of outside media, because its narrative was dominant at the time. Now the US narrative is faltering even domestically, and it’s an opportunity for China to start exercising soft power of their own in the media space.

          • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            9 hours ago

            Their soft power has been severely lacking, I am at least optimistic that this can help shift global perspectives towarda China. It would be really exciting to see the US be replaced as the world’s media and content hegemony