Personally, I feel that being in either of the extremes when it comes to reports of satisfaction is a bad sign. I feel a healthy relationship always requires acknowledging the failures of its own government and being critic on the things that are not being done right… and there’s always something not being done right…
Personally, I feel that being in either of the extremes when it comes to reports of satisfaction is a bad sign. I feel a healthy relationship always requires acknowledging the failures of its own government and being critic on the things that are not being done right… and there’s always something not being done right…
So satisfaction and critique are mutually exclusive now? By that metric every government ever scores zero. Convenient logic when you need to dismiss data that inconveniences your worldview. High approval isn’t delusion. It’s people seeing poverty eradicated, infrastructure built, living standards rise. Problems exist. Work continues. That’s not denial that’s materialism. Maybe try analyzing from actual conditions instead of importing liberal anxiety about what “healthy” dissent should look like. The fairytale of insisting legitimacy requires perpetual dissatisfaction.
I get it. Watching a system deliver for its people while refusing to perform your brand of performative self flagellation and despair must feel unsettling. But projecting your need for cathartic “criticism” and unrest onto 1.4 billion of us is cope of the purest form.
Citing Radio Free Asia, a CIA-cutout, is pretty absurd. Either way, though, the reason why the people of China support their system and government is because their lived experience has been constant improvement in real, material ways, year over year for many decades in a row. If you know people from China, then you’d know that they spend a ton of time criticizing their government, they just support their system because it genuinely does work at addressing systemic problems.
When you hear that 90%+ support the system, that doesn’t mean 90%+ believe nothing is being done wrong. What it means is that the country is headed in the right direction and the government is doing a good job at addressing real, existing problems.
While RFA’s funding is American, the evidence they present (videos of floods, leaked documents, interviews with locals) is often corroborated by non-Western sources like Al Jazeera, The Straits Times, or CNA (Singapore). If the “bad news” is happening, the source’s funding doesn’t make the flooded house or the frozen bank account any less real.
If you know people from China, then you’d know they are very critic of the local level, they are ok with criticising the local landlord, a corrupt mayor, or a lazy bureaucrat. But the “criticism” stops the moment it touches the systemic level (e.g., “Maybe we need a different party” or “The top leadership made a mistake”).
If the government is truly doing a “good job at addressing real problems,” then why is censorship increasing? If 90% of people are happy, the government shouldn’t need to delete videos of a flood or a bank run. The fact that they do delete them suggests the government itself is worried that the 10% of “bad news” could quickly erode that 90% support.
RFA is a propaganda outlet. The fact that sometimes its claims are corroborated does not mean that they aren’t dedicated to anti-communism and supporting western imperialism, regardless of truth.
People from China do tend to criticize the central government, just not as much, because they have fewer problems with it. As for censorship, they do it to censor the speech of capitalists and those that undermine the system, they aren’t fully hiding any and all bad news, just bad news that’s spun in a way that tries to undermine government legitimacy.
I suggest you actually look into how these approval numbers come to be and why.
Is the system so fragile that it can be undermined just by speech?
Marx had a strong belief that communism was inevitable. I’d argue censoring capitalist speech shouldn’t be necessary.
Do you think it would be wise for capitalists systems to openly censor communist speech? I disagree.
In fact I feel directly going after “anti-system” propaganda might actually be counterproductive, for more than one reason:
It makes the population more vulnerable to that rhetoric as soon as they leave the protective environment, since they will now be exposed to propaganda they were being shielded from.
Censorship and transparency are not exactly compatible, and in my mind, transparency is the best defense against corruption… there’s a reason why many right-wing dictatorships have been heavy censors, transparency is the enemy of elitist authoritarianism. The reason why China can act on local officials is because the criticism to local officials in particular is one thing that’s not being censored… but the minute you start organizing a form of collective expression that’s critic with the system, then it’ll get shut down (there’s a University study about this).
It just gives ammunition to the capitalist side, since it helps spread the idea of China being a state very close-minded towards different opinions at a level that is not seen in other nations without explicit censorship, so one could argue that this undermines the image of the Chinese Government just as much (or maybe more, depending on the ideals of the person judging).
Given that the information people receive is explicitly filtered and curated (and one’s opinion is necessarily influenced by the information they have), then it follows (using cold logic) that the filter influences the opinion people have. This is true of any subgroup with any level of propaganda (ie. all nations) but in nations without open censorship the filter is more decentralized, allowing for pockets of conflicting opinions / subgroups to emerge that allows routes to challenge the status Quo.
Allowing the free speech of capitalists is what contributed to undermining socialism in Eastern Europe through outlets like Radio Free Europe. Marx’s belief that communism is economically compelled by existing systems does not mean Marx didn’t also believe that it is necessary for the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie and strip them of their political power, including their speech:
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
…
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
As for capitalist countries censoring the speech of communists, they already do this. Always have and always will. For all of your theories about how censoring the speech of capitalists and fascists might backfire, this doesn’t actually bear fruit in reality. Combatting misinformation and disinformation that have the explicit purpose of undermining socialism has been very good at protecting truth and social cohesion. VPNs are commonly used by people in China anyways, and this isn’t punished, so Chinese citizens can still access whatever it is you fear they cannot.
Marx didn’t also believe that it is necessary for the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie and strip them of their political power, including their speech:
Marx believed the bourgeoisie must be stripped of class power, but he was a lifelong opponent of state censorship.
“If the immaturity of the human race is the mystical ground for opposing freedom of the press, then certainly censorship is a most reasonable means of hindering the human race from coming of age.”
As for capitalist countries censoring the speech of communists, they already do this. Always have and always will.
You are avoiding the question: do you think it’s wise or not?
Personally, I despise when capitalist states censor communist speech… just as much as I despise it when socialist states censor capitalist speech.
If you think I’m a sympathizer or glosser of the way capitalist states operate, you are wrong. I’m highly critic of them, systemically. And I’d rather continue being able to openly criticize whatever system I find has systemic problems.
For me, transparency is more important than the economic model. I’ll openly embrace a fully transparent communist country, in the same way that I might embrace a fully transparent capitalist one (provided there’s still agreed-upon social control, I don’t want a wild west situation).
The thing is that, as things stand, China would not be as happy to have me criticize it as the West does. And that tilts the balance to one of the sides when in comes to that principle.
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
All these things translate into tangible freedoms allowing people to live their lives to the fullest. Freedom can be seen as the measure of personal agency an individual enjoys within the framework of society. A good measure of whether people genuinely feel free is to look at what people of the country have to say on the subject. Even as mainstream western media openly admits, people in China overwhelmingly see their system as being democratic, and the government enjoys broad public trust and support.
That’s unfortunate given their treatment of their people.
It’s unfortunate that you believe the lies the West tells you about its enemies.
The treatment of the people of China by the government is why over 90% of the population approves it, which is shown to be consistent and accurate.
That’s true. The way China treats people as if they should be protected from bad news that could be perceived as negative or destabilizing (at least without some “massaging” of its statistics), is the reason why they have always good news and high approval rate.
Personally, I feel that being in either of the extremes when it comes to reports of satisfaction is a bad sign. I feel a healthy relationship always requires acknowledging the failures of its own government and being critic on the things that are not being done right… and there’s always something not being done right…
So satisfaction and critique are mutually exclusive now? By that metric every government ever scores zero. Convenient logic when you need to dismiss data that inconveniences your worldview. High approval isn’t delusion. It’s people seeing poverty eradicated, infrastructure built, living standards rise. Problems exist. Work continues. That’s not denial that’s materialism. Maybe try analyzing from actual conditions instead of importing liberal anxiety about what “healthy” dissent should look like. The fairytale of insisting legitimacy requires perpetual dissatisfaction.
I get it. Watching a system deliver for its people while refusing to perform your brand of performative self flagellation and despair must feel unsettling. But projecting your need for cathartic “criticism” and unrest onto 1.4 billion of us is cope of the purest form.
Citing Radio Free Asia, a CIA-cutout, is pretty absurd. Either way, though, the reason why the people of China support their system and government is because their lived experience has been constant improvement in real, material ways, year over year for many decades in a row. If you know people from China, then you’d know that they spend a ton of time criticizing their government, they just support their system because it genuinely does work at addressing systemic problems.
When you hear that 90%+ support the system, that doesn’t mean 90%+ believe nothing is being done wrong. What it means is that the country is headed in the right direction and the government is doing a good job at addressing real, existing problems.
While RFA’s funding is American, the evidence they present (videos of floods, leaked documents, interviews with locals) is often corroborated by non-Western sources like Al Jazeera, The Straits Times, or CNA (Singapore). If the “bad news” is happening, the source’s funding doesn’t make the flooded house or the frozen bank account any less real.
If you know people from China, then you’d know they are very critic of the local level, they are ok with criticising the local landlord, a corrupt mayor, or a lazy bureaucrat. But the “criticism” stops the moment it touches the systemic level (e.g., “Maybe we need a different party” or “The top leadership made a mistake”).
If the government is truly doing a “good job at addressing real problems,” then why is censorship increasing? If 90% of people are happy, the government shouldn’t need to delete videos of a flood or a bank run. The fact that they do delete them suggests the government itself is worried that the 10% of “bad news” could quickly erode that 90% support.
RFA is a propaganda outlet. The fact that sometimes its claims are corroborated does not mean that they aren’t dedicated to anti-communism and supporting western imperialism, regardless of truth.
People from China do tend to criticize the central government, just not as much, because they have fewer problems with it. As for censorship, they do it to censor the speech of capitalists and those that undermine the system, they aren’t fully hiding any and all bad news, just bad news that’s spun in a way that tries to undermine government legitimacy.
I suggest you actually look into how these approval numbers come to be and why.
Is the system so fragile that it can be undermined just by speech?
Marx had a strong belief that communism was inevitable. I’d argue censoring capitalist speech shouldn’t be necessary. Do you think it would be wise for capitalists systems to openly censor communist speech? I disagree.
In fact I feel directly going after “anti-system” propaganda might actually be counterproductive, for more than one reason:
It makes the population more vulnerable to that rhetoric as soon as they leave the protective environment, since they will now be exposed to propaganda they were being shielded from.
Censorship and transparency are not exactly compatible, and in my mind, transparency is the best defense against corruption… there’s a reason why many right-wing dictatorships have been heavy censors, transparency is the enemy of elitist authoritarianism. The reason why China can act on local officials is because the criticism to local officials in particular is one thing that’s not being censored… but the minute you start organizing a form of collective expression that’s critic with the system, then it’ll get shut down (there’s a University study about this).
It just gives ammunition to the capitalist side, since it helps spread the idea of China being a state very close-minded towards different opinions at a level that is not seen in other nations without explicit censorship, so one could argue that this undermines the image of the Chinese Government just as much (or maybe more, depending on the ideals of the person judging).
Given that the information people receive is explicitly filtered and curated (and one’s opinion is necessarily influenced by the information they have), then it follows (using cold logic) that the filter influences the opinion people have. This is true of any subgroup with any level of propaganda (ie. all nations) but in nations without open censorship the filter is more decentralized, allowing for pockets of conflicting opinions / subgroups to emerge that allows routes to challenge the status Quo.
Allowing the free speech of capitalists is what contributed to undermining socialism in Eastern Europe through outlets like Radio Free Europe. Marx’s belief that communism is economically compelled by existing systems does not mean Marx didn’t also believe that it is necessary for the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie and strip them of their political power, including their speech:
As for capitalist countries censoring the speech of communists, they already do this. Always have and always will. For all of your theories about how censoring the speech of capitalists and fascists might backfire, this doesn’t actually bear fruit in reality. Combatting misinformation and disinformation that have the explicit purpose of undermining socialism has been very good at protecting truth and social cohesion. VPNs are commonly used by people in China anyways, and this isn’t punished, so Chinese citizens can still access whatever it is you fear they cannot.
Marx believed the bourgeoisie must be stripped of class power, but he was a lifelong opponent of state censorship.
One quote from him (source):
“If the immaturity of the human race is the mystical ground for opposing freedom of the press, then certainly censorship is a most reasonable means of hindering the human race from coming of age.”
You are avoiding the question: do you think it’s wise or not?
Personally, I despise when capitalist states censor communist speech… just as much as I despise it when socialist states censor capitalist speech.
If you think I’m a sympathizer or glosser of the way capitalist states operate, you are wrong. I’m highly critic of them, systemically. And I’d rather continue being able to openly criticize whatever system I find has systemic problems.
For me, transparency is more important than the economic model. I’ll openly embrace a fully transparent communist country, in the same way that I might embrace a fully transparent capitalist one (provided there’s still agreed-upon social control, I don’t want a wild west situation).
The thing is that, as things stand, China would not be as happy to have me criticize it as the West does. And that tilts the balance to one of the sides when in comes to that principle.
huh?
People in China enjoy genuine human rights, like right to housing, education, and healthcare. 90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
In fact, people in China enjoy high levels of social mobility in general https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html
Student debt in China is virtually non-existent because education is not run for profit. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jlim/2016/08/29/why-china-doesnt-have-a-student-debt-problem/
China massively invests in public infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/12/05/china-used-more-concrete-in-3-years-than-the-u-s-used-in-the-entire-20th-century-infographic/
China also built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/ten-years-27000km-china-celebrates-a-decade-of-high-speed/
All these things translate into tangible freedoms allowing people to live their lives to the fullest. Freedom can be seen as the measure of personal agency an individual enjoys within the framework of society. A good measure of whether people genuinely feel free is to look at what people of the country have to say on the subject. Even as mainstream western media openly admits, people in China overwhelmingly see their system as being democratic, and the government enjoys broad public trust and support.