"y'know ... China actually bad though"
just for that extra oof - from the commenter in the image Oct 2020:
:vote:
"Call me a counter-revolutionary if you want, but I'd much prefer bourgeois democracy over fascism. That is why I entreat all my fellow leftists to vote for Biden. Don't write in Bernie Sanders. Don't vote for Howie Hawkins. Vote for Joe Biden. I wish we never came to the point where I'm asking you to vote for him, but here we are. As a leftist, I hope you value the same things that I do. If you do share those values, you will hopefully understand how voting for Biden is better for the people who I hope we continue to stand for than they would fair under Trump."
This image is a mind prion and encountering it has caused my brain to fold into itself.
China literally killed a trillion people and you're just sitting here laughing. You disgust me.
Someone teach me how to edit memes I want to make a version that says "eating shit is bad" and the guy in the last panel has doodoo on his face
People really seem to like equating China's surveillance system with America's when I really don't think that's fair.
China's police and surveillance systems are highly dependant on municipalities and implementation is guided by local parties and governments. The only big nationwide things are for cybernetic programs, like the poverty alleviation stuff.
China has used their surveillance for good, the US never has and never will.
You're assuming that China isn't democratic lol, they actually have very high rates of engagement in local politics and there are still massive amounts of collectives and labor unions that hold power on local levels.
There's still corruption, but it's not happening because of the system in China, but in spite of it.
there are still massive amounts of collectives
8000+ collective villages and the number is rising, it had been falling for a while but since Xi it has gone on the rise.
I'm torn, Cuba has an incarceration rate like 4 times higher than China, but they have a much more humane prison system (Plan Progressivo).
Either way, the US has an incarceration rate significantly higher than everyone else and spends more on police hardware than 95% of countries spend on their militaries. So China good just by virtue of being seeveral orders of magnitude less evil and whith a population 3 times higher.
yeah i mean, china less bad. fuck america. this is not intended to be an anti-china response, but critical support is still critical. :amerikkka:
I think Cuba is still one of the best examples of socialist policing done correctly. They do have the added benefit of having a small population and having had a huge majority of their reactionary capitalist class flee after the revolution. Their current system is more geared towards uniting the peasant class and working class through education.
China still has a large population of reactionaries and you need some form of police to prevent them from taking power.
I think the most important thing to look at when judging China or any countries policing system is how they're utilized primarily. Who is being beaten and harassed. Is it workers? Minorities? Are the police being used as a tool to suppress the exploited classes? Or are they primarily serving as functionaries of the workers?
I think in China it's more the latter, like some of the biggest stuff I've seen is them doing mass arrests of pyramid schemes and other financial criminals.
if china had a neighborhood watch like cuba has
I mean... meh? I don't think Cuba gets bonus points for being poor and lacking the labor surpluses for a professional police force. I don't know if China's bureaucracy would have been able to deal with Bo Xilai's naked predatory corruption if it was operating on the Neighborhood Watch model. I doubt the big corporate institutional actors that have accumulated economic clout in China could have been reined in, either.
Maybe there really is something fundamentally wrong with large national governments. It would definitely scratch my libertarian itch to reach this conclusion. But "China less bad because large well-funded policing exists" doesn't really get to the heart of why police are bad. It seems to skip over the history, nature, and purpose of western policing forces and simply land on the "ACAB so less is better" ideological principle without asking what role these organizations play in society.
The word was bonus points, which isn't to say its better or worse. I agree with Zifnab25 that its fair to say that the nature and history of policing in China is different enough to question an uncritical ACAB for their police, Chinese police didn't grow from Slave Patrols.
I also want to talk about how you said what you said. It is cool that Cuba has "resisted corporate capitalist imperialism," so has China. The use of the word "corporate" implies all Capitalism isn't corporate, and "capitalist imperialism" implies there are non-capitalist (or non-young/pre-capitalist) empires.
Since we're talking China, "if they don't turn to a imperialist police state model" also feels out of place, this would imply China is imperialist, which it isn't. It would also imply China is a police state, which, maybe? Are there strict limitations on things that could create economic disruptions? Yes. Is that a limitation on the negative freedoms we have in the West? Yes. So what? Through the removal of some negative freedoms you gain positive freedoms like a young retirement age, a decent pension, and freedom from absolute poverty. If that is in a country that uses its surplus to participate in economic development in good faith then I fail to see how it is an imperialist police state.
it’s fine to think about shit theoretically, but in practice, it just isn’t what it should be or could be.
I agree
got any info you can share? All I've found is about the "neighborhood committees" that are the lowest level of organization in China
The responsibilities of Neighborhood Committees are:
-To instruct local residents about the Constitution, policies and laws,
-To collect the subscription of the apartment building and building site, and to mark the documents,
-To help supporting the legitimate rights of the residents,
-To protect public property,
-To organize community events and entertainment,
-Peacemaking on low-level disagreements,
-To help public safety,
-To govern hygiene in common areas,
-Care of the elderly and handicapped, education of young and the improvement of social security,
-To bring the needs of suggestions of citizens to the attention of the government.
https://uwidata.com/9786-the-secret-of-chinas-success-neighborhood-committees/
In this context I just take it as a general anti-establishment symbol, rather than a dig at anarchists in particular. But IDK maybe an ML who loves sectarianism made this.
as we all know, authoritarian societies have separate passports for each ethnic region to be sure that minor cultures are allowed to exist
I agree, but also I'll admit that anarchists can be selective in which bourgeois deceptions we choose to reject. The beauty and curse of "anarchism" is that it's an ideologically diverse milieu, which means sometimes There Will Be Clowns.
Like everything, there are aspects of china good and china bad
trying to put everything in absolute good or bad is reductionist and absolute baby brain stuff
(but yes the average American saying china bad is saying it because of lies/propaganda. We should still be able to criticize/commend china in a leftist space though)
Absolutely, yeah. But I think we here mostly get that already. I've been upvoted here saying "Stalin sucked" verbatim before. But I would criticize him on, all things considered, relatively minor issues, whereas your average liberal would be criticizing him for eating all the grain.
Like, just for example, archiving a long, carefully written letter from a gay man who wants to know why the government made his existence illegal with a short remark calling the man an "idiot and a removed." Like, that's pretty yikes.
Edit: It's so yikes that the site won't even let me quote it lol
if the comment was anything more than just 'china bad actually', I might think this would apply
then don't just say 'china bad' like the commenter in the image ... is that so hard to follow? like even in 'leftist spaces' doing lazy 'china bad' is still not good
Only if you think all musicians that use anarchist imagery are actual anarchists.
I still disagree, anarchist imagery has been getting co-opted by capitalism for a long time now and this looks like an example of that.
