Apologies, both A) if this has been asked before, and B) because this is a hella rookie question, but I genuinely find it difficult to find accurate statistics and other info about other countries, specifically socialist ones.
Like, I'm a college student and sometimes if I'm doing an assignment and wanna bring up a fact about China that I either A) know or B) am pretty sure of, I can't source it without googling and getting a bunch of "China's malnutrition rate is over 78%," "it's illegal to have sex in China," "the CCP will get you arrested for being gay or white or STRAIGHT or WHITE" etc.
On top of that, if I see a stat about China or Cuba or wherever else, how am I supposed to reliably fact check it? Like I see a Forbes headline or whatever and immediately am like "yeah fuckin bullshit, right," but how am I supposed to prove that to other people?
Makes sense, I guess the focus was more on quick searches, but I didn't think of academic databases as an option somehow lol
Also goddamn see this is stuff that I hear and it absolutely does not surprise me at all, but if you told this to some rando without proof they wouldn't believe you; meanwhile if someone shouts the talking point that Cuba fudges the numbers or (actual thing I've heard from someone) shoots their illiterate kids, people will uncritically eat that up.
The western propaganda machine must burn. :amerikkka:
if you can't fact-check something with credible articles or scholarly sources, you could probably try emailing Chomsky for advice, or an english-speaking professor in China who'd have access to Chinese sources, or even the Chinese embassy
Genuine question, is emailing Chomsky a viable option?? He's like hella busy all the time right?
If you don't email him soon you probably won't get another chance.
:chomsky-yes-honey:
