• upperleft@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    The Chinese Communist Party is absolutely not above criticism, but I always found the China obsession on reddit to be odd. While I don’t think it should be banned outright, I think y’all ought to consider what is motivating such a weird fetish (because frankly that is) for a specific government.

    • scrollbars@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yup, the flip side of the coin is that reddit really has a hate boner for China. The anti-CCP side has its own collection of nutty people, with a lot of the talking points tracing back to the cult nice people that send out all those Shen Yun flyers.

      Shit’s complicated. That said, banning all criticism of the Chinese government isn’t the answer. We need to be smarter about the information that we digest.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        It really isn’t that complicated. If Chinese politics is to be taken seriously, then there is a ton of low hanging liberal fruit for the picking. There is no reason for the Chinese legal system to not have public trial, for starters. There is no reason for China to censor the internet or speech or free association the way it does. And most importantly, there is no reason for China to not confront the very real sins of Mao and Deng in public.

        I agree there is complexity which exists beyond this kind of stuff. But these are first principles for free society, and political agency, and should be taken seriously.

        • scrollbars@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m sympathetic to what you listed, and it would be nice to see those things come to pass. I’m just cynical about anything that starts to sound like “regime change” after watching the US campaigns in the middle east these past couple decades.

          Even though Tiananmen was a long time ago, there have been more recent cracks in the facade like the unrest over lingering COVID zero policies. It’s encouraging to know that people do have limits, but I don’t know how popular those sentiments are across the broader population.

          • socialjusticewizard@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s always nice to hear from someone else that recognizes how similar all this saber rattling is to the buildup to the first iraq war. All of a sudden after years of radio silence, everyone seems to care really deeply about the situation in another country.

      • God@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        You’re somehow implying that being an anti-ccp “fanatic” is basically crazy, and that people should reconsider their position… because… ? hate boner for china? what does disliking the CCP have to do with “hating china”?

        • nLuLukna @sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I think he’s talking about the people who don’t do anything but look for hateable things about the CCP

          • God@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            why should we look for likeable things about the ccp when they’re committing genocide? lmao. and why should we spend effort looking for likeable things about the ccp when they have millions of genzedongers around the world (example: lemmygrad.ml) to do it for them?

        • scrollbars@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          You can dislike the CCP without hating China, or being fanatical about it. There are people that have trouble with it, though. As an example you could say that the CCP sponsors campaigns of corporate espionage on a large scale to steal technology from other countries. That one is pretty uncontroversial. But some people have trouble preventing themselves from taking it further and making generalizations about how creative the country’s citizens are, as an example.

          • God@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I haven’t seen that. First time I see a suggestion such as that you’re mentioning, that the Chinese could be uncreative. I read lots of Chinese books all the time and if anything I’d say they’re more creative than western authors in many respects.

            • scrollbars@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              Glad to hear, I’ve been meaning to pick up some Chinese sci-fi myself now that more of that stuff is getting translated.

              • God@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                novelupdates.com has a lot of translations of asian novels in general, most terrible quality bc they’re done by amateurs but some are great, and sometimes it doesn’t matter cuz the stories themselves make up for the shitty translation.

                  • God@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    Actuall xianxia novels

                    1. Coiling Dragon
                    2. Douluo Dalu
                    3. I Shall Seal The Heavens

                    More like a parody: My Disciple Died Yet Again

                    Western imitation: Cradle by Will Wright

                    A couple funny amateur western satires I enjoyed:

                    1. Beware of Chicken
                    2. Arrogant Young Master Template A Variation 4

                    My first xianxia was very shitty but I enjoyed it, it’s called Martial God Asura. “Very shitty” is not an understatement, it sucks, but I enjoyed “watching” the story’s landscapes in my mind’s eye.

              • MoistBalls@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                1 year ago

                Honestly, you’ve got some recommendations? I’m actually more into non-fiction, but I really gotta start practicing my Chinese more. I wish more books adhered to the traditional character set and the top to bottom format though.

                • God@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I was trying to learn some Chinese the other day to read some of the raw wordings in Ascending, Do Not Disturb. The novel itself is not amazing, although I did like it a lot, but the translators left some terminology untranslated and I had some fun researching how to read that.

                  I can’t recommend Chinese sci-fi or nonfiction, haven’t read any, I only read fantasy novels. My favorites are Coiling Dragon and Douluo Dalu. If you can read Chinese then why not try those lmao. I wish I could read Chinese. I wouldn’t spend so much time finding translations.

                  • MoistBalls@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    I will say that most Westerners will find Chinese much easier to learn than Japanese. You only need to learn about 100 characters to understand 70% and then 1000 to understand like 95% of stuff.

                    I mean you probably wrote like 50 words in your reply, how hard could 100 be right?

                • nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  There are a couple xianxia novels. Reverend Insanity (incomplete banned by the ccp but has some of the best word building and intelligent writting), Lord of Mysteries (more western fantasy lovecraftian mystery) and Forty Millennium of Cultivation (has 40k elements in it). Non fiction isn’t really popular probably because anything non fiction in China that has anything to do with history is at risk due to censors and people in the west aren’t really interested in reading ccp bootlicking.

    • your_mind_aches@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      There’s a crazy amount of sinophobia on Reddit, but let’s be clear, the people who fervently defend the Chinese government are being just as disingenuous.

      • God@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s not sinophobia to criticize the CCP. I haven’t seen anyone saying anything about the Chinese people. What’s more common is criticizing the CCP and its actions as the ruling party of China. I don’t think there’s generalized “sinophobia” as you claim.

        • Jefe@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          The commenter above made it pretty clear that criticism of the government, i.e. the CCP isn’t the issue. The issue at hand is that there most definitely is casual racism on some very popular subreddits that are tolerated more than I’d like. Redditors have blindspots, just like anyone do, but their particular blindspots include casually racist attitudes towards Chinese people. I hope that you’re just lucky in the types of threads and subs you frequent, but I 1000% have seen more than just casual sinophobia that had nothing to do with criticizing their government.

          • God@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            idk maybe i am indeed very lucky cuz i have not seen that, and instead have seen a lot of criticism against ccp being re-purposed as “sinophobia” by the genzedong community.

            notice, for example, how we ended up talking about racism in a thread about criticizing the CCP. coincidence? i think not.

            • Jefe@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              I don’t really know who they are, but it’s still important to consider even if some bad actors also bring it up disingenuously. The alt-right likes to call everyone groomers now, that doesn’t mean grooming is a convenient smoke-screen that isn’t real.

              • God@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                i don’t know what you’re talking about here. what’s important to consider? that criticizing the ccp may be racist? and what does the alt-right calling ppl groomers have to do with the topic? sorry i don’t see the connections here.

                • Jefe@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I’m saying that it’s important to consider that just because disingenuous people call attention to something as a way to dismiss your argument, it does not mean it’s not real. It just means they know how to dismiss your argument really well.

                  What does that have to do with the alt-right? Because lately any time someone says that it’s not evil to be gay and that pride month isn’t some national holiday to turn everyone gay, instead of trying to defend their insane stance they just call you a pedophile or groomer and leave it at that. They don’t actually care about pedophiles or groomers, otherwise they’d actually do something about the church or conservative congress members either being investigated for or charged with sex crimes against minors. All that matters is whatever works to shut you up.

                  • God@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    I’m saying that it’s important to consider that just because disingenuous people call attention to something as a way to dismiss your argument, it does not mean it’s not real. It just means they know how to dismiss your argument really well.

                    dismissing criticism of ccp as sinophobia is not a “dismissing the argument really well”, it’s just bad faith argumentation

                    the fact that the alt-right has an agenda when they criticize the ccp, due to political reasons or otherwise, is

                    1. irrelevant to whether we should criticize the ccp and
                    2. irrelevant as to whether the ccp has things that ought to be criticized or not

                    if your argument is that there’s ppl who criticize genocide due to geopolitical reasons instead of actually caring about the genocide, and that thus, we should not align ourselves with them, and to do so, we should refuse to criticize the genocide…

                    now if you’re saying “there’s ppl with an agenda, so you should question their information”, fo sho, we should question all sources, biased or not, but the biased sources even more.

                    however, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t mention problems where we see them, criticize things we think are wrong, or that we should endlessly hesitate about shit and worry about everything we say because, maybe despite the fact that it’s very credible, it could have a remote chance of being wrong, and maybe it’s better to think that the holocoust may not have happened because maybe we’re victimizing the germans and maybe there’s a jewish conspiracy to fabricate… do you see where i’m going? lmao.

                    ultimately, you’re biased, i’m biased, everyone’s biased, and i like free speech and will practice it whenever i want, and i invite you to visit !fucktheccp@sh.itjust.works because why not. /out