chill

First of all, you have a very liberal-minded understanding of democracy. A lot of these values are really only “valid” in as much as they apply to capitalists in the west. For example:

1. Freedom of Speech
2. Freedom of Press

Both of these only exist in the west as far as they can be abused by those with enough money to buy the media narrative. In China, speech of capitalists and misinformation is cracked down on, but the working class is largely left to speak what they want.

Freedom of reunion (I take to mean freedom of assembly) is partially valid. As China is a socialist country, and the class struggle is very much still alive, creating groups opposed to socialism is cracked down on more. However, there exist many specialty groups, in fact there are 8 political parties other than the CPC that work cooperatively with the CPC when it comes to governing.

Freedom of protest is fine. Protests and public backlash are what caused the CPC to back off on COVID restrictions, even though the CPC was correct. You can’t really aim to overthrow socialism or anything, but protests for example are often supported by the CPC against capitalists.

Education is kept extremely cheap in China. Schools are extremely competitive as well, partially because of how many people there are competing for the top universities, but overall education is extremely affordable. It isn’t free as far as I’m aware, but it isn’t a block for the working class.

Regarding political plurality, there’s a saying in China: “let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend.” I recommend this article on Roland Boer’s trip to China.

As for universal suffrage:

>All citizens of the People’s Republic of China who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of ethnic background, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education level, property status or length of residence. People who have been deprived of their political rights according to law do not have the right to vote and stand for election. One voter has only one vote in each election.

As for universal respect of human rights, China does quite well, and unlike the countries you listed, it isn’t imperialist. France, Germany, Norway, the west in general, all depend on vast looting and plundering of the global south. China doesn’t, it runs on largely its own production, which is why countries in the global south are flocking to China for construction contracts and to join the Belt and Road Initiative.

Imperialist countries in the west use vast exports of capital to super-exploit international labor for super-profits, that’s where western safety nets come from. Essentially, you can think of the west as capitalists in country form, exploiting those under their domination, while China is aligned with the global south and doesn’t have that private domination of finance capital that enables imperialism in the first place.

I’m not moving to China anytime soon. I can’t speak Mandarin, and I have friends and family where I live. I do organize with communists, though, and would love to bring about socialism in my country.

Edit for your edit:

Religion is protected.

As for “separation of powers,” this circles back to you having a thoroughly liberal understanding of politics. Government should cooperate in a functional society, not work against itself. Capitalist countries rely on this instability of government in order to keep capital on top, but there’s no actual reasoning for it. The churn, the competition, it’s all by design to keep society turned against itself instead of cooperating.

I don’t personally know more about this single event, but the broader housing bubble has been widely reported on. If you want a Chinese perspective, I recommend searching CGTN.

As for the CPC, it is by no means perfect. As a socialist country, the PRC does a much better job of meeting the needs of the people. Even the linked article was a protest for government action, not against it. The CPC makes mistakes, but the system itself is better, so it’s likely shortcomings are resolved over time.

As for “tofu-dregs,” they aren’t all that common. It has happened, it was a term coined by Zhu Rongji, premier of the CPC at the time. Using insufficient rebar, poor quality concrete, etc has happened because of rapid development and the ability for individuals to cut corners for higher profits or to meet deadlines. However, this is more of a problem of the past, and not a widescale problem, despite how western countries would report on it.

Really, identifying bias within an article and engaging with it critically is good practice in general.

Capitalists and those who would undermine socialism are prevented from political power, yes. As for the source, it’s in the bottom left, here’s another bunch of sources.

As for Uyghurs, see the Xinjiang Resource List. They are roughly similar in approval rates, same with Tibet, which was liberated from feudalism. Read Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth. Here’s 2 excerpts:

Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

Selection two, shorter: (CW sexual violence and mutilation)

The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation — including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation — were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. [22]

Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.” [23] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [24]

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who wasremovedd and then had her nose sliced away. [25]

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W. F. T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. […] The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.” [26] As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri-La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.

Turn off right-wing media and actually pay attention to what China’s actually like.

Fun statistical fact: outliers are a sign your sampling methodology is flawed, especially when the outliers are a set of samples and not just a singular data point.

“This jet’s speed is an outlier in this set of planes. Outliers mean the methodology must be invalid, so jets can’t be faster than planes.”

This is nonsense. China and the euros have fundamentally different political systems, there is no reason to suppose they should have similar outcomes. The whole point of the discussion is that China’s system is superior, if you say that any data that supports that is an outlier, and therefore must be invalid you’re just presupposing your conclusion.

On your other point about the usefulness of this data: while it is true that there can be many different explanations for the observed results, that just means that we need more evidence to show which system is more democratic, not that this evidence is useless. Saying that people’s opinion of their own system is irrelevant is extremely chauvinistic. In the case of China, we can see the massive increase in quality of life of it’s citizens, as well as a systematic overview of it’s political structures like here. I’ve also heard the book Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is good, but I haven’t read it yet myself.

Furthermore, your point about manipulation of public opinion goes the other way, too. Where did the idea that China is authoritarian come from? People going to China and studying what life is like there, or media manipulation? Who do you think is more likely to be manipulated like that, the people living there who actually experience the political structures of China, or rando westerners whos only source of information is capitalist media? A simple poll like this is more than enough to debunk the people who think China is authoritarian based on nothing but vibes from capitalist media.

KimBongUn already provided other sources, I’m not going to go through the trouble of finding a poll in mandarin when I can’t speak it. Popular support for the PRC is well-documented, as well as the ability for the people to direct policy in a far more material way than in liberal countries.

China has democracy comparable to other socialist states. The difference is socialism vs capitalism, it’s as simple as that.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/

You keep repeating the idea that the PRC is “totalitarian,” despite being broadly democratic with comprehensivs influence being driven from the bottom-up. You’re getting too wrapped-up in liberal, multiparty democracy that it’s running interference for your understanding of cooperative, socialist democracy.

“I want a different party”

There are 8 to choose from

“They don’t count”

Unserious af

That’s a lot of effort for no personal payoff, lol. There’s no reason to believe it’s true.