I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.
And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.
This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.
Critiquing China from the left is ok. And what that looks like is acknowledging that there is racism present in China and there are marginalized groups who aren’t being treated fairly. That needs to change, just like it needs to change in nearly every other country in the world. Marginalization of minorities remains a global problem, and China could be doing more.
BUT, there is little credible evidence to suggest that minorities in China are worse off than minorities in the US, or Scandinavia, or Japan, or Isreal, etc etc etc. In some respects, they may even be better off.
So yeah, it would be totally reasonable to take, say, an anarchist perspective, and criticize China as part of a broader concern about power structures. Criticism that paints China as “evil” is not criticism from the left and is, intentionally or otherwise, buying into Western anti-China propaganda.