• 0 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 9th, 2023
  • Blinky_katt@lemmygrad.mltoAsk Lemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml•Is any of these true about China?
    1·
    1 year ago

    I want to mention, people whose family were dragged through the culture revolution, etc., CAN have legitimate concerns and trauma. They aren’t just wrong, things WERE scary.

    My grandparents on both sides had ran away from their farmer families in their teens to join the Long March, eventually all made contributions to the Party (e.g. once, my grandma served as a spy behind Japanese lines in a village, then when she had to escape back to safer grounds, traveling outside hiding in sheds in winter, wearing just a shirt, she’d lost her baby to miscarriage). They all attained fairly high ranks, were known to have done exemplary work. During the culture revolution, they were accused of being far Right for various quite often arbitrary reasons. My grandfather’s family had been farmers who owned a few small pieces of land (5 mu), and even though he had ran away at 19 and never went back, he was deemed bourgeoisie no matter what he’d accomplished. They locked him in a dark cow shed for 2 years, with handcuffs so tight the scars went to his wristbone, and his kids were allowed to visit once per month. My other grandparents had similar stories. Some years later, all of them were released, reinstated. Some received formal apologies from the Party.

    My parents grew up during the Culture revolution. They witnessed their parents in various stages of lock up, but were still full of fervor, voluntarily went to the rural villages among the first wave of educated youth following Mao’s call, and neither were granted party affiliation due to “tainted family background.” Years later, this continued to pop in random ways, subverting their career trajectory. This was through to the end of the 80s to early 90s.

    My grandparents remained loyal to the Party until they died. They forgave the bad stuff. But if they didn’t, if other members of my family had differing thoughts and feelings as result, those are a legitimate response to what had happened. They’re part of the complex history of new China. There are people who are alive now who still have memories. Sometimes, when the repression gets higher, even for seemingly legitimate reasons, some people have ptsd.

    The CPC isn’t an angel, and it made mistakes and people got hurt. The difference is, if we want to discuss material conditions, we should probably focus on: has the CPC changed since that time? Has it improved the lot of the Chinese people? Does it clearly demonstrate that it intends to continue to serve the interests of the people, promote equality and common prosperity and all the good things? So long as these remain true, the CPC is worthy to be supported, and held to high account. And not by pretending terrible things didn’t happen either, or that 60 years is all that long ago and everyone should all be fine now.

  • Blinky_katt@lemmygrad.mltoCommunism@lemmygrad.ml•How many people are actually supportive of their government in China, Vietnam, and Cuba?
    36·
    1 year ago

    Of course China is authoritarian. It’s an iteration of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Lol.

    To be more serious. Every single citizen of a country will have lots of complaints about their own country, even those who think most things are working ok. By sheer nature of living somewhere, you become intimately aware of its problems and weaknesses, and wants to see certain changes and improvements. Does this mean they dislike the country as a whole? Or love another country more than their own? No.

    The CPC is enjoying an unprecedented high approval rating due to being a highly efficient government capable of implementing long-term plans to improvement the country. Many people have witnessed those changes with their own eyes, lived through them personally, and mostly approved of the results.

    In addition, a part of the CPC’s mission is to protect and revive China and Chinese culture, which it has done so by alleviating poverty, strengthening the economy and the military, and enhancing China’s influence and reputation in the world. Not every single Chinese person is a socialist or at all interested in politics, but a great majority (even including overseas Chinese) DO resonate with that mission, with seeing how the country has improved, how traditional cultural elements are being preserved and incorporated with modern elements in creative ways in all forms of media, architecture, art works, ways of life, all the scientific achievements, etc.

    Yes, there is censorship and an element of authoritarian control. Moreso in the past, and a little more relaxed in the present, but it’s definitely there. Arguably, the Chinese people is more familiar, even comfortable, with an authoritarian government (how else does one keep a vast country with huge population together throughout the thousands of years). However, because the government is vested with more power in general, the people have higher expectation for it to perform and to take care of everyone. It’s part of the Confucian social contract that hides deep in the structure of society. That being the case, when people fall through the cracks in various ways, they blame the government personally for failing them, more than a typical Western person would in a similar situation.

    Also, the government makes policies primarily based on what benefits the society overall, and not the individual (by this, I do not mean ethnic minorities or classes of people, who are protected as part of a harmonious society; but the concept of individualism itself). If you’re an individual who happens to not conform with what is considered to be socially beneficial, or who wants to be disruptive in some way (and it may even be a perfectly acceptable type of disruption in the West), you would feel the boot of repression upon your neck.

    With 1.4 billion people, even tiny percentage of unhappy people is tens of millions of unhappy people. Each have their own story, and justification, and many grievances are valid. Because no government is ever so perfect as to take the best care of every single person, no government is entirely free of corruption or negligence or ineptitude. The CPC has made mistakes that massively affected some people’s lives for the worse. It has also dramatically improved things in other ways. For some people, the two did not even out. For others, they imagine the West to be a shining beacon that is far better, more free, where people can truly make money and live a good life. Simultaneously, a current trend is for Chinese netizens to say they never realized how great their own country is and how much they love it, until they broke through the Great Firewall via VPN and started to see how the outside is doing.

    Overall, the only way to determine how a country’s government is doing is to analyze vast statistics, and in comparison with other governments. In that light, the CPC’s numbers are pretty good, but there are always room for improvement.