JAKARTA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Indonesia’s capital Jakarta topped the list as the world’s most polluted city on Wednesday, having consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May, according to data by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.
Resident Rizky Putra lamented that the worsening air quality was putting his children’s health at risk.
Jakarta residents have long complained of toxic air from chronic traffic, industrial smoke and coal-fired power plants.
Some of them launched and won a civil lawsuit in 2021 demanding the government take action to control air pollution.
Still, Nathan Roestandy, co-founder of air quality app Nafas Indonesia, said the pollution level has continued to deteriorate.
Indonesia is set to name Nusantara as the new capital next year and at least 16,000 civil servants, military and police are due to move there.
JAKARTA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Indonesia’s capital Jakarta topped the list as the world’s most polluted city on Wednesday, having consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May, according to data by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.
Resident Rizky Putra lamented that the worsening air quality was putting his children’s health at risk.
Jakarta residents have long complained of toxic air from chronic traffic, industrial smoke and coal-fired power plants.
Some of them launched and won a civil lawsuit in 2021 demanding the government take action to control air pollution.
Still, Nathan Roestandy, co-founder of air quality app Nafas Indonesia, said the pollution level has continued to deteriorate.
Indonesia is set to name Nusantara as the new capital next year and at least 16,000 civil servants, military and police are due to move there.
Can someone knowledgeable about this provide some valuable insight?
(e: I see it only happened about 4 hours ago, but the who, what, when, where, why?) Was it likely to keep the current president in power or force the election process towards another person?
El Pais is usually a pretty good source for things in Latin America, it answers most of those but others will have to wait until they have someone in custody I imagine. He campaigned against corruption and organized crime so that is not an unlikely source.
Lasso’s government has blamed rising violence on the streets and in prisons on criminal infighting to control trafficking routes used by Mexican cartels, the Albanian mafia and others to move drugs.
Villavicencio’s party Movimiento Construye said on X that armed men attacked its Quito offices in a separate incident.
The party said discussions had been held recently about whether to suspend campaigning due to political violence, including the July murder of the mayor of Manta.
Villavicencio opposed the suspension, it said, saying “keeping silent and hiding in moments when criminals assassin citizens and authorities is an act of cowardice”.
As a legislator, Villavicencio was criticized by opposition politicians for obstructing an impeachment process this year against Lasso, which lead the latter to call the early elections.
Indigenous candidate Yaku Perez said he had decided to suspend his presidential campaign and demanded the violence stop in a video posted after the incident.
I’m not a communist, but communism (or any other ideology) can potentially be a good thing and still implemented in terrible ways. If you want to argue against communism, fine, but “look how they implemented it in this country” is not a good argument.
That is the BEST argument. That shows it can’t be implemented in a real world environment. You have a locked down country where they can do ANYTHING they want and even in that closed environment where they control essentially all variables it fails and fails spectacularly.
Climate crisis, fascism, imperialism, wars to uphold the system, healthcare, trafficking. More food produced to last 1,5 earth’s need still people going hungry, opiate crisis and on and on and on. Enjoy your popcorn you useless piece of shitlib
LOL Literally every one of those things have little-or-nothing to do with capitalism, but you just decided to throw everything out there thinking you actually accomplished something.
Probably the most hilarious one is you having the gall to mention that people are going hungry, and yet communist’s posterchild, North Korea, had some massive famines because the yield from communist farms was shit. It was so bad, that the eViL CaPiTaLiSts in the US actually gave them food aid to save their people.
Nice try, but pointing out liberals being hypocrites has nothing to do with abandoning our own ideals. What’s being said is that you lot claim that’s how things should work and you don’t follow your own rules.
As an actual Chinese person, my disdain for the KMT runs a bit deeper than that.
Fuck Chiang Kai-Shek from the bottom of my heart. He pleaded for help from the CCP, then betrayed and butchered the communists who were helping him. Just look at the Shanghai massacre. He then purged anyone even vaguely left wing from the Kumingtang.
I never abandoned my ideals, they were always fuck the ROC to begin with. How do you think he lost the civil war in China? He lost popular support because he was a backstabbing vermin. He should be in a deeper layer of hell than even Reagan and Thatcher.
god it was so confusing having a prof explain this whole history while adamantly backing the KMT/ROC. I was a lib at the time so I didn’t know how to process it but even then I was like wait he seems like a fucking asshole wtf is wrong with you.
I’m not obligated to respect laws when the laws don’t respect human rights. Slavery was legal at once point. The holocaust was legal at one point. Was I ever obligated to respect those laws?
There’s really no reason to believe western oligarch owned media over Chinese state media. Of course, western propagandists rely on people such as yourself being already primed to believe the worst possible things about China making their work pretty easy.
Good thing you’re doing sober examination and study into life in China without western bias, how it has improved real living conditions for its people, and applying that principle equally across the board
Your day-to-day life…on the massive globally interconnected computer network shared by everyone worldwide who has the means to connect to it? You didn’t expect to see an opinion held by well over 1 billion people on that network, ever?
That is more of a problem with how Chinese netizens exclude themselves from western Big Tech diaspora, which is heavily propagandised and moderated for NATO/CIA purposes. Even Wikipedia is not exempt.
Rest of the non-Anglo world has always felt excluded from the internet communities, which are mostly only used by Anglo citizens. Only 10-15% rest of world participates in these places, out of which Russian/Chinese(cn/tw)/Indian/Arabic/ROW speakers are rarely found that speak English. English acts as both a standard language protocol and a barrier of non-white cultural segregation.
As a french dude, and given our history, I have no choice but to stand against all imperialisms. Claiming a territory against the will of its people is exactly what imperialism is. France has done that for centuries along with most of the european powers of the time. Imperialism is criminal, it is murderous, and profoundly unjust. It is nothing less than colonisation. Just let people live on their own terms.
KMT, that originally fled and established Formosa, now says they want to reunite with China. The opposition is DPP, US puppet party that is squatting as “western neoliberal government”…
The opposition is not “the people”. “The people” just want to live peaceful lives without having the US betting their empire on causing WW III in their backyard. In order to properly oppose imperialism, especially as a first worlder, you need to understand the class interests of monopoly capital and how the emergence of finance capital combining with the force and violence of the state is where imperialism comes from. China has never couped a sitting head of state in order to create a banana republic to enslave the populations and resources of another country. There’s valid criticisms to be made but ur shooting yourself in the dick if you’re criticizing without education on it.
Right, I am quite uneducated on China, I’m only speaking from experience discussing with people from Taiwan. I certainly don’t intend to wear a phallus cast
In my experiences talking with most non-right wing Taiwanese people is simply that they want peace and to not be used as a geopolitical pawn for imperialist motives. I think this is a fairly reasonable position and would hope for at least some form of peaceful rapprochement where some amount of autonomy can be established like in the other autonomous regions in China.
The issue is that the current western hegemonic world order helmed by the US is seeking a point of conflict with China to prevent them from effectively disrupting the current status quo which you are probably aware of: imperialism, neocolonialism and unequal exchange. With capitalisms need to continually expand we see again it’s need for war in order to establish new markets. Its probably humanity’s number one priority to prevent the upcoming world crisis and as many emerging wars as possible (especially considering what that would do to climate change). Combatting the propaganda designed to manufacture consent for an upcoming war with China is the most important thing that a leftist can be doing in regards to geopolitics.
With capitalisms need to continually expand we see again it’s need for war in order to establish new markets.
I can understand that. The reliance on war economy is something I learned from Daniel Guérin in “Fascism & capital”.
The issue is that the current western hegemonic world order helmed by the US is seeking a point of conflict with China to prevent them from effectively disrupting the current status quo
Alright
Combatting the propaganda designed to manufacture consent for an upcoming war with China is the most important thing that a leftist can be doing in regards to geopolitics
Fair enough, I understand. Thanks for the breakdown
Claiming a territory against the will of its people is exactly what imperialism is
In case you’re interested in learning more about imperialism from a Marxist perspective, I’d recommend Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. You don’t have to agree with it, but I don’t believe you can have a complete understanding of the way Global South countries have been exploited and subjugated in the last century or so without being aware of the arguments made in this book. The fact that so many of the post WW2 anti-colonial liberation movements were ML or MLM should tell you something.
Also, China doesn’t have to claim anything. Elsewhere in this thread people have already pointed out that under International Law Chinese Taipei is already part of China. No country in the world recognizes the ROC or Taiwan as an independent country. To the extent that the populace of the island has a position on this, it’s split between wanting to retain a special status within China or separatism. And let’s be real here, no country in the world is down with separatist movements. Ask the Kurds, or the Basques, or the Catalonians, or the Chechens etc etc. Hell, let Texas try and secede and see what happens. Realistically, only once Capitalism and Nationalism are both dead and forgotten can humanity start to move away from this geopolitical reality.
Also, China doesn’t have to claim anything. Elsewhere in this thread people have already pointed out that under International Law Chinese Taipei is already part of China.
How foreign countries consider Taiwan may very well define reality, it’s also illegitimate. Would you let someone else tell you what you are ? I consider the only valid stance as per the independence of a territory to be what its citizens have democratically decided. I gather from your reply we’re not actually debating this, my bad.
To the extent that the populace of the island has a position on this, it’s split between wanting to retain a special status within China or separatism
Other countries recognition of your government is one of the key parts of having a government be the government of the place and not a band of dudes in charge. International recognition has long been used as a bargining token by most countries. It wouldn’t be used if it wasn’t incredibly valuable. Want to join the un? Be recognized by other un members. Want to be able to sign treaties and deals? Need recognition that you’re a real state.
If you’d like to try being constructive, you can drop the FFS and follow up with reading advice, for instance, or a bit of your own. It doesn’t have to be long winded, it can just be a couple sentences. This is a good habit to make your own, and replace the waving off with.
Lenin undertook his detailed study of Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916, basing it on the research of an English economist named Hobson. His analysis continues to explain what is happening in the world today as we enter the 21st Century.
Lenin saw capitalism evolving into a higher stage. The key to understanding it was an economic analysis of the transition to monopoly: “…imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.” As Lenin would point out in another article written in 1916 (Imperialism and the Split in Socialism), imperialism was a new development that had been predicted but not yet seen by Marx and Engels.
Lenin provides a careful, 5-point definition of imperialism: “(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
the bourgeoisie are increasingly compelled by a falling rate of profit to use their dominance of the state apparatus to open new markets or access to resource extraction
You continue your shit hole’s history of imperialism by dictating what is right and wrong for a colored mans nation to do in a faraway geopolitical situation you are largely uninformed about. And the fucking gall of using the bloody history of your barbaric country’s colonial exploits as a way to give such pontifications some form of authority. Lmao shut the fuck up and sit down you arrogant bastard.
There are ways to say things without being overly agressive. Take a deep breath. Remember, people aren’t their country. I wouldn’t associate you with some warfare your country has committed, because I have no reason to assume you have anything to do with it. All the best,
Pick one lmfao ofc you aren’t a representative of your entire pissant failed state but the fact remains that your shameful nationality is the only real thing you grounded the validity of your pontifications on. I will be “overly aggressive” towards imperialist troglodytes like yourself and you will do nothing but continue to cry, whine, and seethe because you are an illiterate maggotbrained shit who stands on nothing.
The only people who have the damn right to speak on the issue of imperialism are the victims of your demonic nation and their descendants, not the legacy of the evil bastards who committed such evil crimes against humanity in the first place. Especially since the fucking country you point to is still entangled in a multitude of white supremacist neocolonialist atrocities to this day, utterly ridiculous whataboutery and arrogance but not surprising from a white frenchoid.
That literally only happened because the USSR and China would not and could not vote on it (respectively) because the UN was insisting that the KMT who only controlled taiwan were the legitimate representatives of china, and the USSR was boycotting the UN votes on principle.
The point isn’t “UN is infallible” the point is “Even anti-communist countries in the UN agreed that PRC is the legitimate government of all of China.”
Yes, the UN is an authority on what most nations once thought, if that’s all that’s being argued for. At one point there was an understanding that Taiwan is to be de facto independent and de jure a part of China. Now China is pushing back on the de facto independence a bit, and the US is pushing back on the de jure union with China a bit.
The UN proper is not an authority on anything other than what clubhouse members publicly agree, and can’t otherwise be used as an argument from authority, which is how this came across.
They’ve already been moving troops and equipment away from the Finnish borded demonstrating that despite their narrative they’re not actually worried about NATO invasion. If the Wagner mutiny revealed anything it’s that if Finland ever wanted to take back Karelia now would be the time and to be honest we could snatch St. Petersburg while we’re at it and basically receive zero resistance. We wont though and they know it.
Over the last year, they pretty much cleared the border of troops to support the Ukraine war. A lot of them now stay in Ukraine permanently. Hence Finland could walk into (though obviously not actually hold) St. Petersburg right now.
I think this shows better than anything how much they really are worried about NATO.
So in order to even restore the troop levels prior to Finland’s joining NATO they indeed have to bolster their “defences” quite a lot.
No worry, the vocal Russia/China sympathizers out here will try to convince you that the whole world not aligning with them is a CIA job, neocolonialism and western media brainwash… :)
Is this that stupid shit where their air defense zone covers a huge chunk of mainland China and they freak out every time China flies Chinese planes over China?
Of those aircraft, the ministry said 10 had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, or entered the southwestern part of Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, or ADIZ.
you would find that 10 aircrafts either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entered the southwestern part of the ADIZ. Neither of those is “flying over mainland China.”
It is, but it was clearly done to provoke Taiwan. Calling this a moot point is like saying that laughing at homeless people is fine because it is not illegal.
If you consider China flying planes on its coastline to be unacceptable provocation, I’d love to know what you consider the USA sending ships half way around the world to that same coastline.
China did not just fly planes on its coastline. They crossed the median line, which is an unofficial line that has been dividing the Taiwan Strait for decades. Planes and vessels from China and those from Taiwan would not cross this line to show mutual respect. China is purposely breaking this unwritten convention. See how they usually just barely cross the median line, fly parallel to the line for a bit and head back? Neither are the planes passenger planes, they are fighter jets. This is different from the US sending ships through the Strait. Sending a military ship through the Strait is a provocation to China, but it is much weaker than the direct provocation of the fighter jets crossing the median line.
Hate to break it to you, but even the US state department recognizes that there’s no such country as Taiwan. Please call it by its correct name, “Chinese Taipei,” so people know what you’re talking about.
you realize that the uptick in frequency of these ‘provocations’ only started in response to the pelosi visit? the incident that had a considerable portion of the entire chinese population howling for the cpc to shoot down the plane and engulf the world in nuclear fire? this is the cpc’s way of appeasing its very large and very rabid nationalist constituency (who are very disappointed that they have not died in a nuclear armageddon, btw) and it is a meme on the chinese internet that despite all of its rhetoric, this pathetic level of ‘not touching you’ fuckery is somehow the lowest that the cpc is willing to stoop to when faced with a de jure violation of its sovereignty.
This is the epistemological stumbling block of living in the west, is this cultural remnant of christianity that compels us to view all things first and foremost through the lens of good or evil, moral or immoral, fault and blame.
States are not perfect frictionless spheres floating in a vaccum and acting purely off some set of moral principles. They are enormous machines rooted into existence by countless interfaces, big and small, with the world as it exists. A state operates on material conditions, on probabilities, contingencies and eventualities. The number of trigger states in a computer is nothing compared to the volume of procedure and protocol involved in the running of a society. With this in mind, the more relevant question to ask with any geopolitical event is not “Who is morally responsible for this?” but “Is this outcome a logical one given our understanding of the factors at play?”
It probably does violate standing diplomatic agreements with the PRC over how that sort of thing would be handled. There was a lot of pushback in Taiwan because they saw it (correctly) as pointless pot-stirring.
Anyway, I think most of the flights that aren’t innocuous (and many of them are or they wouldn’t need to have such bullshit articles) are drills in preparation for the possibility of the US using Taiwan as a military platform as it has been angling for in the past. They aren’t just dick swinging or whatever, China doesn’t want to take any risks in the event of a military conflict, though it would prefer such a conflict not take place.
idk dog, the wording in the article leaves some weird wiggle room.
Of those aircraft, the ministry said 10 had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, or entered the southwestern part of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, or ADIZ.
The southwestern quadrant still includes a bit of mainland China and is mostly outside of the Strait, not to mention that all of the Strait is still in the ADIZ.
Having seen Tetris, this is pretty meta. Befitting of a movie about the theft of intellectual property rights to involve the theft of intellectual property.
Your account has been flagged for CCP tankie shill-like activity. Please review These Nuts and never forget that Mao killed more people than Stalin and Hitler combined!
Your logic is baffling. Hitler killed millions of people in the Holocaust. Mao killed millions more, yet he’s still a folk hero. Where is the disconnect here?
That the only way you can come to the conclusion that Mao “killed more” is if you’re deliberately downplaying how many Hitler killed, aka Holocaust denial.
I may have missed the lesson where numbers aren’t allowed to be bigger than other numbers, so let me rephrase this in a way you might be able to understand. The most conservative estimate of famine deaths during the Great Leap Forward (backward) is greater than the ENTIRE European Jewish population in 1933 by at least six million.
I also like how you’re deliberately trying to whitewash Hitler by ignoring all the non-Jewish deaths he was responsible for.
Seriously, you’re trying to argue that Mao “killed” every single person who starved to death in a famine, but Hitler is completely innocent of any of the deaths that occurred in World War 2. It’s a double standard no one would employ unless they were trying to downplay Hitler’s crimes.
That’s how it works in a dictatorship right? The fish stinks from the head.
To address your disingenuous bad-faith argument, counting non-Jews you have 11 or so million total dead in the Holocaust, we are still nowhere near it. Fuck Hitler, fuck Stalin, fuck Mao, the CCP, and fuck the US federal government.
Again, you’re saying Mao is guilty of every death in a famine because he was a “dictator”, but Hitler isn’t responsible for any of the deaths in WW2 (even the deaths by famine it caused).
Famines were extremely common before the CPC came to power. Most Chinese people lived in extreme poverty, and life expectancy was less than 35, with no significant improvement under the KMT. In between Mao coming to power and his death, life expectancy in China nearly doubled. Today, average life expectancy in China has exceeded that of the US, a feat that would’ve been unimaginable back then.
It’s true that Mao made misteps (which the CPC readily admits), but those specific, dramatic events have been disproportionately elevated to obscure the more general trend, which has been drastic improvements in the lives of the people of China.
Of course, in addition to minimizing the frequency and severity of famines in pre-industrial China, your history books likely did not place the same level of blame on the British for the intentional famines which Ireland and India were subjected to, in which Britain did not only refuse to provide aid to their colonial subjects (often on the express basis that it would motivate people to work harder), but also did not cease their plundering - in both cases, food was exported out of the country while the people starved.
You’re right, what does it matter that every Chinese person gets to live twice as long as they used to, if the process of getting there wasn’t perfect?
Your carefully researched and insightful rebuttal has convinced me. I hate massive increases in life expectancy now. Clearly, we have no choice but to abandon communism no-choice
I read somewhere that Mao’s family was considered well off for peasants because they could afford eggs a few times a year. I have no idea if there’s any truth to that.
the GLF was economic policy made in response to withdrawal of soviet technological and financial aid during the sino-soviet split, one of the primary motivating factors of which being soviet insistence on china essentially allowing the soviets to recolonize the port of dalian to build a naval base from which to deploy its pacific fleet.
on top of being under sanctions from the west, the sino-soviet split further deprived china of markets with which to support its all-important capital intensive industries and so china was forced to resort to agricultural export as a method of making up the shortfall. collectivization was also pursued simultaneously to pool domestic capital for internal consumption, but due to various geographical, technical and political considerations, internal consumption was not sufficiently stimulated to support manufacturing, and so agricultural export became the primary way to finance china’s continued industrialization. most accounts that are not hysterically anti-communist (including liberal darling amartya sen) of the period around the 1958 famine have records of aggregate production being more than sufficient to sustain the overall population, with the primary points of failure being overzealous local governments in highly productive areas, as opposed to popular western conceptions of overbearing central government mandated directives.
all this to say that hitler and the holocaust’s relevance as a point of comparison to mao and the GLF as anything beyond ‘people died when he was in charge’ is laughably superficial and mostly only functions as a thought terminating associative fallacy for juicing your dopamine receptors in order to immunize your brain against more correct opinions.
Hitler killed millions of people in the Holocaust.
Fascism did this, not Hitler alone. Fascism and Capitalist Imperialism (western as well) started a world war that killed nearly 100 million people in WW2. Mao did not kill anywhere near that much, it’s reactionary nonsense. China experienced the greatest increase in life expectancy in history under Mao
Mao killed trillions of people!!1!1!1111 Stalin killed zillions and Xi is killing gorillions!1111!!1! Omgomgomg wake up sheeple, time to inbade chyna! Heil Amerikkka, Heil Anglostani!
It’s funny how you clowns keep pretending that the only deaths Hitler caused were the ones that specifically happened in the death camps, as if he didn’t literally start WWII. And meanwhile you insist that every single stubbed toe and premature ejaculation that ever happened in a socialist country should be added to the “victims of communism” death toll.
Wow you’re such a :LIB: that you can’t even be bothered to read what you yourself write susie-laugh
Does your brain turn to mush every time you’re questioned or only the times you get quoted? Did you use words that were too big for yourself? michael-laugh
Cancel culture is just changing the channel when there’s someone on your TV screen that you don’t like.
You want go clockwork orange and strap people down, tape their eyes open and force them to watch the things you want them to watch? Because that would ensure the freedom of the people on TV to say whatever they want, right? The freedom of Hollywood assholes are more important that our freedom to change the channel, amirite?
What the fuck are you even talking about with Hollywood and television? Are you on a script? Bitch, you’re the one complaining about cancel culture. You’re the one equating being made fun of for having stupid reactionary opinions to literal torture. Can you please put in the absolute bare minimum of effort when you speak to at least remember the topic of fucking discussion??
I haven’t been so befuddled by a completely deranged and incoherent reply since I last posted on reddit-logo. Buddy I do not miss dealing with dipshits like you.
I understand the liberal brainpan isn’t capable of maintaining a thought or any information for longer than a few sentences, but this is really exceptional. Why are you acting like you weren’t the one crying about cancel culture in the first place? Why do you compare being bullied for your reactionary opinions with torture? Are you stupid?
It’s a problem idiots like to whine about as if it’s actually an important thing and I demonstrated how ridiculous it is because any solution to this “problem” would be insane.
I suggest you read Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” so you’ll be better able to understand this kind of rhetorical device. It’s meant to make you think about what the actual issue is, but apparently you’re unwilling or unable to think.
Hint: If you’re not willing to strap people down and force them to watch what you want them to, then what’s the solution to the “cancel culture” problem? Or maybe it’s not actually a problem that needs to be solved. It’s literally just people not watching things they don’t like.
I’m almost tempted to spend this time mocking you for being so fucking stupid as to believe that some idiot offering a cartoonish solution to a problem is proof that it can’t be solved. Because that’s a real fucking stupid thing to say and you’re a real fucking stupid person for saying it.
But it’s more important that I tell you to shut the fuck up and go back to read what the thread you’re replying to is about. You were the one who whined about cancel culture. Turn off the chatbot in your brain and actually pay the fuck attention to what’s going on around you. Holy shit dude.
Britain has committed a lot of killings in my country for 2 centuries. Winston Churchill also orchestrated the well known Bengal famine induced genocide.
My dude calls people statists but then also cites death tolls spouted by the US State department on Mao’s casualties is a level of mental gymnastics that may finally dethrone the Maga morons.
I’m sure there’s some explanation for how Mao killed 100,000,000 people but somehow the population of China went up and the life expectancy doubled under him. It can’t be because the US stat dept. exaggerated the deaths by an exponent tho.
China is fascist now, they can go on calling themselves communist in a vain attempt to have something resembling legitimacy. But any fool knows that when the ruling party is full of billionaires, that’s no communist system.
They Chinese people are a great people and deserve a better government than the fascist regime lead by Winnie Xi Pooh.
Idk how to tell you this, but the CPC and the Chinese state have like 90% approval from the Chinese people according to western academic sources beloved by libs.
Because it’s not saying Chinese people look like Winnie the Pooh. It’s only Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh. Do you understand the distinction between insulting an ethnicity and insulting an individual?
And you must’ve been living under a rock (or behind a firewall in an authoritarian country) if you’ve never heard of Xi being compared to Winnie the Pooh. I hear he’s sensitive about it, and it’s banned to make such statements in China. But since I’m not in China and Xi is a piece of shit, this incentivizes me to insult that shithead in ways that hurts his fragile little ego.
What a useless definition. It doesn’t even consider the class character of fascism.
Authoritarian is a useless word. It literally could be used to describe any state.
China is actually highly democratic, but that would require expanding your bourgeois ideas about democracy and understanding how their system actually works in practice.
Misogyny is a problem everywhere and is in no way unique to fascism or any political economy, is predates capitalism by thousands of years. I agree it should be abolished, and that is what socialism aspires to do. But the idea that it can be eliminated by flipping a switch is idealist and unrealistic. There is plenty of truth to the critique that patriarchy still exists in China, but the PRC has maybe also done more than any other state to end some of the most oppressive forms of misogyny, for the most number of women, in history.
Propaganda about past grievances? That is too vague to be meaningful either. Some past grievances, like the Japanese war crimes in China, are legitimate. Others, like conspiracies about “judeo-bolshevism” are not. The term “propaganda” here is loaded too, like if the US government does its best to bury its history of chattel slavery (like it is doing in florida, for instance), would it be “propaganda about past grievances” to fight back against that? Would you tell the grandchild of a slave in Florida that by spreading information as wide as possible to the people about the crime of slavery it is somehow fascist? it makes no sense
If you’re living in a place where they will drive over you with a tank if you protest the rulers, you’re living in an authoritarian state. This isn’t exacltly a subtle thing.
Misogyny is a problem everywhere and is in no way unique to fascism or any political economy, is predates capitalism by thousands of years.
I’m not talking about a few weird comments here and there. I’m talking about the ruling class in China raping women and getting away with it because it’s considered ok for the rulers to rape women in their society. Because it’s a fascist society. Communism is supposed to espouse equality between men and women. But China isn’t communist anymore.
Propaganda about past grievances? That is too vague to be meaningful either.
“Century of humiliation! We must allow strongman Xi to rule over us for as long he wants to fight back against the westerners trying to humiliate us!”
This is standard fascist propaganda, fear of outsiders, citing past grievances as a reason for needing a strongman ruler.
In reality it’s the CCP is humiliating the Chinese people. It’s a garbage government. The people of China deserve better.
Nah I live in a democratic country where women aren’t treated like property and we aren’t constantly butt hurt about some bullshit that happened in the past. In fact there are billions of people living in similar countries as mine.
Maybe it’s just you and the people around you that are fashy which makes you think everyone is this way. We aren’t.
I encourage you to learn about how fascism works so you won’t be so easily manipulated by fascist assholes like Xi and Putin.
You have it wrong. The Communist Party isnt producing billionaires or getting rich through corruption (at least not in the recent decade of anti corruption). Billionaires join the CPC for THEIR benefit, clout and image.
China is the only country that actually punishes billionaires for their crimes instead of giving them a slap on the wrist, house arrest or just straight up not punishing them. China executes billionaires when they commit a crime. Liu Han ordered a Mafia hit on a villager who protested one of his illegal real estate expansions, as well as a business rival. He was executed for murder. China is the only country in the world that would sentence someone worth $40 billion, let alone to death, let alone not given a presidential pardon. Jack Ma regularly oversteps and gets punished by the CPC.
The only billionaire the west has executed is Jeff Epstein (for entirely the wrong reasons). China’s executed 14+ in the last decade.
If there was a snap election todaty in China with 100% voter turnout, the Communist Party would be re-elected tonight. The party responsible for improving the lives for 1.4 billion people actually isn’t disliked in China. The Chinese are not without grievances with the government but literally no other political system in the world has matched Chinese progress over the last 70 years. The average Chinese person isn’t unaware of western Liberal democracy, it simply isn’t appealing. A system that’s basically a popularity contest that elects senile old men, cowboy actors and reality TV stars that have no business being statesmen is actually not a good system. Having lifetime appointed judges to interpret the words of long dead slave owners is not a good system. Having a leadership spill and a change of prime minister every year is not a good system. We can improve on freedom of expression, sure, but the Chinese people aren’t sheep who need to be liberated. Neoliberalism is the failure in the world, not the Chinese model.
Billionaires join the CPC for THEIR benefit, clout and image.
Yeah that’s how it works in a fascist system. The wealthy join the ruling party and gain connections to other wealthy people so they can all become wealthier.
The existence of billionaires in China indicates that China is not communist. If it were communist the wealth of the billionaires would be seized and redistributed to the people. China is a country where billionaires are legal and labour unions are illegal.
And your obsession with executions is indicative devaluing life. And it’s interesting that you buy into the conspiracy that Epstein was killed to silence him but haven’t considered the possibility that executions happen in China for the same reason.
If there was a snap election todaty in China with 100% voter turnout, the Communist Party would be re-elected tonight.
Then why isn’t there an election? Why aren’t opposition parties allowed in China? If the CCP would easily win an election, why not have them?
It’s because China is fascist. I think you’re confusing fascism with corporatism. They’re not at all the same. in fascism there’s a hierachy and corporations benefit by falling in line with the hierarchy. Winnie Xi Pooh (who shouldn’t even be leader, but pesky rules bout term limits don’t apply to autocrats) is at the top. Questioning his authority gets you executed. The leadership of China is most certainly misogynistic. The propaganda in China is all about century of humiliation kind of things. China is anti-democracy. These are all the properties of a fascist system.
And yeah fascists will lie about being left wing. See “National Socialism”.
Billionaires exist as a necessary evil, they’re not deities like they are to the west like Gates or Bezos, or a pillar of power like Russian oligarchs. China may not be Marxist as it is, but to completely cut away from the rest of the globe would be suicide. Market socialism relies on being a necessary part of the global economy, and China being able to manufacture in it’s current state while being able to raise the conditions of the proletariat makes it either the worst socialist state or the best capitalist state. Neither is worth of the vitriol it has received. If they must exist, better they exist for the benefit of the people rather than own media companies that push right wing agenda.
The fixation with executions comes from the accusation that billionaires are in charge. It they truly were, they wouldn’t be subject to the same laws as the common folk, and yet herr they are. Unlike Russia or the west, they are held accountable for their actions to a higher degree. All else equal, the CPC treats billionaires worse than any other form of government, and that’s not a bad thing.
For your second point re: elections: Why? The US doesn’t even have free elections, an electoral college overrules pupular vote, nor does the UK, the king and house of Lords aren’t subject to democracy. The Soviets had a free election in 91, voted to remain socialist,nand it was hijacked by the west. Allende was democratically elected and the west supported the usurper. An election while liberalism exists is just inviting interference. Taiwan didn’t have elections for 4 decades and were still beloved by liberalss. The house of Saud doesn’t have elections, did 9/11 and is a close US ally.
If the outcome is obvious, why waste time and resources to indulge western sensibilities, as if bourgeoisie democracy is a human norm, when you can skip that step and move on with increasing society? If it just leads to a Chinese Jan 6th, or worse, why would that possibly be on the table? The CPC would win and somehow the losers would obtain US military grade weapons and seize power. And even if there were no interference and the CPC won anyway, guess what? Every paper in the west would claim it was rigged.
Ren Zhengfei, the CEO of Huawei, has had people arrested and thrown into a dungeon. Billionaires here don’t have that level of power.
You keep imagining yourself as some communist revolutionary, but you’re just another useful idiot that’s been fooled by fascist propaganda.
You should know that fascists are liars and will even label themselves as “communist” if it furthers their goals of acquiring power.
After the ruling party of China did the Tiananmen Square massacre (en.wikipedia.org/…/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests…) and got away with it, they shifted to being fascist thugs whose only goal was to maintain and expand their power.
If you’re gonna support fascist thugs, at least be honest about who they are. You look really silly otherwise.
Source? Zhengfei couldn’t even keep his own daughter out of prison. Xi has been the one to crack down on billionaires (part of why a lot of my family like him better than Hu) so if it happened ages ago, I don’t remember. Even so, he’s less wealthy than Jack Ma, who is subject to the CPC’s rules, not vice versa.
All I know is the CPC has done more for the working class, lifted more workers out of poverty than any of the government’s that have earned your respect.
If all they wanted to do post 1989 was to maintain and expand power why the fuck haven’t they? Mongolia is right there, the Qing annexed it, the ROC annexed it, but the PRC can’t? Why forgive loans for Africa?
Why exempt Tibetans and Uyghurs and Mongolians from the One Child Policy? What kind of fascism does population control on the Han majority but not the minorities in their country?
If the goal was to acquire power, there are dozens of regimes that have done a better job at seizing absolute power, but instead the CPC open up more? The Juche government of the DPRK has absolute power, why didn’t China cloister itself from the world like pre Deng? Or start proxy wars in foreign countries to push nationalist jingoism?
I support my countrymen, no fascist thugs. If you’ve ever been to China you’d know it’s not some Orwellian nightmare state. Listening to the media’s portrayal of China when they lie or twist the truth on just about anything else is the brain worm talking. China’s fascist like Saddam has WMDs.
Think about where you’ve gotten your conception of China from and question whether or not they’re biased. You’re talking to someone with first hand experience in China.
I think you make some excellent points and I was glad to read much of what you wrote. If you don’t mind, I am curious about how concerned you are about the points raised above regarding women in positions of power and Xi’s unprecedented (to my knowledge) third term?
I’m not an expert on the gender dynamics of the political system, so it’s something I’ll have to look into, but to address the term limits thing, I kinda have to explain how the political system of the PRC works.
The way the President of China is decided is on the system of the People’s Congress. Starting from the lowest, most local level (will refer to as level 1), grassroots civilians will elect a congress representing the village/town. Larger populations elect people to a congress representing whole smaller cities, municipal districts or a county. This is level 2. Then for level 3, it’s a congress for cities and prefectures. Level 4 is a congress for provinces and autonomous regions. Level 5 is the National People’s Congress.
Depending on where you live and how populated, as a grassroots/civilian voter level, you elect someone to level 1 (more rural areas) or 2 (cities). Then, candidates from 1 & 2 elect someone among them to move up to level 3, level 3 select someone among them to move up to level 4, and so on. Its not possible to “skip” levels, you can’t get elected into a position of power unless you’ve held a lesser position of power and was competent enough for your equals deem you worthy of advancing. Level 5, the National People’s Congress consisting of around 3000 delegates, then elects the Central Committee for the PRC as well as the President of China by majority vote. The move to abolish term limits was put forth and passed by the National People’s Congress. They must have thought it was inconsequential, or it was more important to consolidate power during rising tensions with the west. Whatever the reason, this did not increase the powers of the office of President. If it was a malicious power grab by Xi, this was a poorly done one since General Secretary (the leader of the executive branch of government) had no term limits to begin with and holds more power (for reference, Deng Xiaoping was never President, but served 3 terms as General Secretary but was the most influential man in China during his active years)
Now, term limits in and of themselves aren’t necessarily good or bad. They were never in the original constitution of the PRC to begin with, were added I believe in the 80’s and abolished in 2018 since its effectiveness is questionable. German Chancellor’s have no term limits, nor most countries with Prime Ministers.
Thanks for answering and for trying to contextualize the answer as well. I think the latter in particular was very helpful. You are very much correct in your assertion that term limits are not a part of many democratic institutions, and I do not see any inherent issue with this. I imagine it might also depend on the particular mechanics and dynamics of the systems in question. Countries such as Germany and those with prime ministers often have a system of representation that allows for smaller political parties, which I think makes it harder for a single candidate to stay as head of state for a prolonged time (though I know of at least one case of this happening even if it isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
I did not know about the way you (to me) seem to choose representatives who then iteratively elects further candidates representing them. If my understanding is correct, then I would say that the first election seems to form the basis for the subsequent ones, which I think is a neat idea. However, that would also imply that how the first election is conducted is quite important for the composition of government. What limits are there to who can be a candidate in the first and second stages of the elections? I assume of course you had to make some simplifications, so I might be off track a bit here.
Well instead of minor parties, there are simply different factions in both the CPC (the executive branch) as well as the People’s Congress. Although there are actually minor parties in the National People’s Congress, but even to me they seem like tokens.
There are more hardline Leninists vs more free market liberals, among other stances for the way China should move forward in both branches. Nanjie, for example is still Maoist because the people chose leadership to remain Maoist, compared to Shenzhen or Shanghai which is far more liberal. Although as a whole, in recent years “centrists” (by Chinese standards) have been more likely to be elected upwards beyond a regional/county level, but that might be due to the fact that the status quo, although not perfect, has been more beneficial than detrimental to the average Chinese.
As far as I’m aware, the lowest levels of election would be the equivalent of like a village council (although villages in China may be considered a small city in other countries), and candidates I believe have to be citizens that have no prior convictions. Relevant background also helps.
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