cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35822445
my family are Taiwanese-Americans. I was born in the US, but I grew up in a Taiwanese/Chinese household. I write both Taiwanese and Chinese because my grandparents were Chinese nationalists (KMT) who fought and lost to the communists and left China with Chiang Kaishek when he retreated to Taiwan. We’re from Guangdong.
Even though my grandparents spent most of their adult life in Taiwan and America, they still identify as Chinese. They still vote for the KMT and consider Taiwan a part of a democratic China, not the PRC but the ROC.
I don’t identify with an authoritarian China that suppresses freedom of speech, press and religion, commits cultural genocide against the Uyghurs, dilutes Tibetan culture and wants to annex democratic Taiwan. I wouldn’t like living in a country like that.
But that’s exactly what an uncle proposed me: some months ago he bought a house in Guangdong, a house he offers to our whole family. If I want, he says, I can live with him for free, he’s even offering me to let me live at his condo when he’s not in China (travels to America and Taiwan a lot).
I don’t see it: I’m politically active, actually support Taiwanese independence and I don’t believe I could keep my mouth shut if a Chinese starts telling me that Taiwan is a part of China every time I tell them I an actually Taiwanese. The conversation could go south really fast if they start to repeat communist propaganda about helping Uyghurs escape poverty (just an example out of several). I could land in jail.
My uncle says I should forget about politics and enjoy the scenery and local food. I still don’t see it.
Am I a moron? I’d only have to pay for the flight and food for as long as I live in China, a country cheaper than both Taiwan and the US
All states are authoritarian, what matters is which class is exerting its authority. The state is an instrument of class oppression, no more than that, and no less. In the US, the ruling class is the bourgeoisie. In the PRC, the ruling class is the proletariat. Since we can only move beyond concepts like authoritarianism once we abolish the state, and we can only abolish the state by eliminating class, which gives rise to it, we must support the working class being in charge.
Visit China, it will do you good to broaden your horizons. Talk to Chinese citizens, see what they think. China is a democratic country. Even the people of Taiwan want, above all, to maintain the status quo, not seeking full independence. All in all, you’re deeply ill-informed on what China is actually like, and are framing everything through an explicitly US-focused narrative. I recommend you focus on listening more than anything else if you do decide to visit.
Capitalist states are authoritarian no matter how many parties they have. They are dictatorships of the capitalist class against the working class.
I write both Taiwanese and Chinese because my grandparents were Chinese nationalists (KMT) who fought and lost to the communists and left China with Chiang Kaishek when he retreated to Taiwan.
You understand that Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT party were fascist, right?
cultural genocide against the Uyghurs
dilutes Tibetan culture and wants to
Show me the Tibetans who miss living as illiterate serfs under autocratic feudalism and I’ll show you the CIA-backed, “suck my tongue” royal family and its deputies.
democratic Taiwan
Bourgeois democracy is a head fake.
lol
Your grandparents were on the side of the owning class. Now it depends. Are you working class or owning class? If you’re owning class, don’t go. If you’re working class, go (and question what the owning class told you).
The authoritarian uniparty is the new owning class, functionally you still don’t have a say, just a different mouth telling you “they’re making decision in your interest”.
It’s the biggest false dichotomy on this planet statist capitalist and statis communism and the same as religious schisms, a disagreement over which elite should be deciding everything and which is going to face the wall.
Do that hardcore enough and you’ll get an elite which has decided to put all the other ones against the wall (pol pot).
They can’t be the owning class because they are not members of the owning class. They aren’t ceos or investors or landlords or royals or hedgefundlings.
Already living in one…
You can’t properly hate somewhere until you’ve lived there…
If you think you’ll be safe, then go. Travel broadens the mind, even if you go with preconceived ideas.
I’ve been to China a number of times and it is a very interesting place with many amazing people. A government doesn’t necessarily represent the people that live there.
That said, it is up to you and your moral system whether to visit a country with a government you disagree with.
Sure, as long as the probability of the government there taking action against you in the time you’re there is low, why not?
