No problem! If you want a place to start for a Chinese perspective, I recommend this resource list.

They don’t, though. In China, they call it the “June 4th incident,” and acknowledge that hundreds died around Beijing that day in conflicts between rioters firebombing the PLA and the PLA’s response. What the CPC censors is the now disproven western reporting of thousands dying, and the idea of the square itself having a massacre. Even Wikipedia backs that the square was dispersed bloodlessly. This gets twisted by western media into “censoring the massacre,” when in reality it’s censoring western misinformation meant to delegitimize China’s government.

That’s part of why I prefer Lemmy, it’s more reasonable when it comes to things like that (as in, that doesn’t exist). No problem on the ML question.

It’s actually authoritarian to not use handcuffs, silly, because you have to rely on mind control. /s

Every government censors, China focuses on limiting the speech of capitalists.

PieFed tracks how you interact and has scores for people, called “attitude” and “reputation.” These impact what you can do.

ML stands for Marxist-Leninist.

What part of it is “obvious nonsense?” Pointing at something and calling it nonsense doesn’t explain why, it’s just mudslinging.

There are sub categories in addition to worker and capitalist, such as sole proprietors, small business owners, etc, but society is dominated by the capitalists and their necessary pair, the proletariat.

“Tankie” is just a pejorative for anyone that upholds existing socialist projects as legitimate, so yea, “tankies” are usually communists.

Democracy means rule by the majority. In China, local candidates are directly elected, and then from among these higher rungs are elected, meaning people work their way up in the CPC from the bottom. The CPC itself has tons of polling and data it grabs from asking the public, you can see this in Five Year Plan formation. All of this contributes to a system where the working classes are the ones in control.

The CPC is a working class party, not a class in itself. In the PRC, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, private ownership is relegated to the small and medium firms, which are about half sole proprietorships anyways.

The idea that the party is a distinct class and the idea that an economy where public ownership is principle is somehow capitalist both are contradictory to Marx and common sense, so I’m not sure where you’re coming from.

A revolution would result in bleak reaction and capitalists in charge of the state, this is the opposite of what the working class wants in China.

You never gave any. I’ve done years of reading too, and have a different conclusion, so if you aren’t going to offer any evidence then there’s no reason for me to go along with what you’re saying.

BRI isn’t imperialist, because it results in mutual development. Where the west goes in and plunders and underdevelops the global south, countries in BRI see rising wages and industrialization, escaping the endless trap of imperialism. Does China benefit too? Absolutely. Is it imperialism? No. Here are some good articles:

• Five Imperialist Myths About China’s Role in Africa

• China debt trap? PH an ‘expert in bad loans,’ Locsin says

• Deborah Brautigam Debunks the Chinese Debt Trap Theory in New Research Paper

• China’s Debt Relief for Africa: Emerging Deliberations

• Is China doing colonialism in Africa?

I don’t know about opinion polls to measure China’s democracy. The CCP have ways of “persuading” citizens to feel like the government respects them. According to the World Press Freedom Index, China actually has the third worst freedom of press in the world, ahead of only North Korea and Eritrea.

The CPC’s “ways of persuasion” are continuously improving living conditions and development. China does restrict private press, yes, because it’s a socialist country and doesn’t want the capitalists it keeps in check abusing the press to undermine the system. Further, data on public support for China is accurate, and isn’t the result of any undue manipulation.

The idea of Russia getting a free pass as better than the US simply because it can’t do as much damage is interesting, sort of like an equality vs equity argument, but at the moment Russia’s the only one throwing around literal nuke threats like christmas cracker jokes.

The US Empire is the one plundering the entire global south at the moment. Russia doesn’t get a “free pass,” but the idea that it’s worse than the US Empire is deeply misinformed.

The meme comparing Xi Jingping to Winnie the Pooh has its origins in China, so it’s nothing racial.

It exploded in the west far more than in China, and is most commonly used among racist right wingers.

Since you mentioned that Chinese propaganda isn’t good either, I know you’re arguing in good faith. I’ll also say that before 2025 I would have said China was easily worse than the US, but now I’m not so sure. Either way, it’s comparing mouldy apples to mouldy oranges.

I don’t agree that it’s comparing mouldy apples to mouldy oranges. It’s comparing late-stage imperialism to early-mid stage socialism, a dying empire vs a rising socialist power. Socialism doesn’t mean free from problems, but it does mean that it’s fundamentally different and regularly improving.

If you want to learn more about China’s system, I recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners. If you want to learn about Marxism-Leninism, which is what China and other socialist countries use as their baseline ideology, I made an introductory reading list.

So I still don’t see any evidence of Xi being a “strongman,” but instead an extremely popular and influential leader.

Oh duh! Should’ve thought of that /s

China isn’t capitalist, nor is it an imperialist settler colony that gave 1950s white Statesians a better life. It’s a socialist country, the large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly owned and the working classes are in charge of the state. A revolution would be devastating for the Chinese working classes.

Marxism does not limit one’s understanding purely to production and distribution, though, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Domenico Losurdo’s Class Struggle is a good read.

Do you have an example? The anti-corruption campaigns are immensely popular among the public in China, and they support the government.

China can do wrong, though. I wish they were stronger when it came to foreign policy, and they are lagging in queer rights. However, both the ideas that China is imperialist and that China is worse than the US Empire are absurd.

The US Empire plunders the global south, expropriating vast amounts of resources and super-exploiting foreign labor, while China engages in mutual cooperation and win-win development. Countries imperialized by the US are underdeveloped, while countries in BRI have rapid development. The US has hundreds of overseas millitary bases, and the PRC has no more than 3. The US Empire is kidnapping leaders and threatening to annex Greenland, while China is engaging in mutual trade.

It doesn’t matter what the country pretends to want to be, as soon as it gets too powerful you always end up with some asshole dictator

This doesn’t logically follow. There’s nothing about size of country that correlates to having dictators, Cuba under Batista was small but dictatorial, while China is a democracy with 1.4 billion people. The vast majority of Chinese citizens believe the government represents their interests:

Russia couldn’t be as bad as the US Empire even if it tried, as it lacks the ability to do so. China is a socialist country. The US is the world hegemon and a dying empire. Entirely different scales of evil here.

pooh Bear

I don’t see why it’s funny to use a yellow bear to describe a Chinese man.

So with that said, why the China worship, why the pretence they China can do no wrong? This is literally “US propaganda baaaad, China propaganda goooood”

Nobody believes China can do no wrong or that Chinese propaganda is good. If your entire argument relies on strawmen, then it’s not really anything useful.

What is link aggregation? Just combining network connections of a cloud? What does that have to do with lemmy?

Think reddit, you post links to articles, videos, etc. for the majority of posts.

Why would there by different servers in the first place doesn’t that make the social media smaller for everyone?

Instances can talk to each other, like email. gmail accounts can talk to yahoo accounts. You have a Lemmy.world account, but are talking to me on a Lemmy.ml communiity with my Lemmy.ml account.

What is an instance?

Kinda like a server. Your instance is Lemmy.world, mine is Lemmy.ml. Instances are their own websites with their own communities, but can see other instances they are federated with. Local browsing is your instance, all browsing is for everything you’re federated with.

Isn’t the point of a federalized social media to be better connected?

Yes and no. Not everyone wants to be connected with everyone.