How does the World view China these days?

[Silent Member]

Well, if you're going to be an evil superpower you might as well go all the way.

[Rubin Farr]

These are fucking concentration camps, why is the UN silent on this?  Or The Hague?

 

[Enthusiast]

The UN is a joke

[auxien]

looks like the world views China as a good investment these days

Quote

New investments by overseas businesses into the U.S., which for decades held the No. 1 spot, fell 49% in 2020, according to U.N. figures released Sunday, as the country struggled to curb the spread of the new coronavirus and economic output slumped.

China, long ranked No. 2, saw direct investments by foreign companies climb 4%, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said. Beijing used strict lockdowns to largely contain Covid-19 after the disease first emerged in a central Chinese city, and China’s gross domestic product grew even as most other major economies contracted last year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-overtakes-u-s-as-worlds-leading-destination-for-foreign-direct-investment-11611511200?mod=e2tw

[Cryptowen]

5 minutes ago, auxien said:

looks like the world views China as a good investment these days

ppl are down with imperialism so long as its on the upswing

[Rubin Farr]

China has decided to renew their bullshit state sponsored propaganda that the US started COVID in a lab. Do they know the kid who accused someone else of farting is always the culprit?

https://qz.com/1959825/china-renews-its-push-on-a-conspiracy-theory-about-covid-19/

[chenGOD]

2 hours ago, auxien said:

looks like the world views China as a good investment these days

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-overtakes-u-s-as-worlds-leading-destination-for-foreign-direct-investment-11611511200?mod=e2tw

I mean, the US still remains the largest total stock of foreign investment. But countries like South Korea, Japan, Australia, Vietnam etc. are not going to ignore their largest trading partner, especially in 2020 when the US was being run by a wannabe tinpot dictator. Once countries see some semblance of competence in the US, FDI will likely be renewed.

 

[auxien]

1 hour ago, chenGOD said:

Once countries see some semblance of competence in the US, FDI will likely be renewed.

we'll see how things go long term. i'm not sure the world's investors are going to look to the US as the steady pillar it has been for decades, for plenty of reasons beyond Trump/COVID.

2 hours ago, Rubin Farr said:

China has decided to renew their bullshit state sponsored propaganda that the US started COVID in a lab. Do they know the kid who accused someone else of farting is always the culprit?

https://qz.com/1959825/china-renews-its-push-on-a-conspiracy-theory-about-covid-19/

i've read a few instances of this over the last two or so months iirc...my take is that they're using the negative attention re: COVID to try and sow some mistrust around the world towards the US/the west. since obviously people are stupid enough to believe any fucking thing they read on FB/Weibo/etc, no matter what their nationality.

[ignatius]

just heard a report on NPR that interviewed a bunch of people in Wuhan who said the virus did not start in China. so whatever campaigns are happening people are believing them. 

[zkom]

I don't think that the Chinese disinformation campaign is aimed at western audiences but it's a tool for internal propaganda to undermine criticism towards the CCP inside China. There are always a few idiots who will believe any stupid conspiracy theory you throw at them instead of the most obvious explanation but most westerners trust CCP even less than their own governments.

Anyway blaming the US biological warfare development for pandemics is an old story. See f.e. Operation INFEKTION https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_INFEKTION

Russians are also way better at information warfare than China with more than a century of practice. China's army of youtube commenters and other psy ops in the west are mostly just embarrassingly obvious from the western point of view because they seem to have about zero understanding about the western mentality and psychology. See for example the difference in programming with RT and CGTN. RT subtly undermines the confidence in western leaders, economic system etc using local contrarians while CGTN is so obvious government approved propaganda that it's almost hilarious.

[Cryptowen]

10 minutes ago, zkom said:

China's army of youtube commenters and other psy ops in the west are mostly just embarrassingly obvious from the western point of view because they seem to have about zero understanding about the western mentality and psychology

yeah they stick out like a sore thumb, i've definitely noticed it. that & comments that are obviously bot-generated in order to artificially pump those numbers up (gotta pump those numbers up kid). on the one hand its a relief that this manipulation (from abroad, and from close to home in the case of the latter) is so glaringly obvious. on the other hand it's disturbing, because if reading ellul has taught me anything its that propaganda still functions as intended if you're exposed to it often enough, even if you're fully aware that it's propaganda

basically we're in world war three but it's being fought mostly with memes, psyops, and tactical application of nookie (so far)

Edited January 25, 2021 by Cryptowen

[Rubin Farr]

7 hours ago, auxien said:

we'll see how things go long term. i'm not sure the world's investors are going to look to the US as the steady pillar it has been for decades, for plenty of reasons beyond Trump/COVID.

i've read a few instances of this over the last two or so months iirc...my take is that they're using the negative attention re: COVID to try and sow some mistrust around the world towards the US/the west. since obviously people are stupid enough to believe any fucking thing they read on FB/Weibo/etc, no matter what their nationality.

They could also be trying to throw off attention that they are repeatedly violating Taiwan’s airspace.

[chenGOD]

7 hours ago, auxien said:

we'll see how things go long term. i'm not sure the world's investors are going to look to the US as the steady pillar it has been for decades, for plenty of reasons beyond Trump/COVID

I mean those same fundamentals were in play before, and there was still plenty of FDI. It took a very badly handled pandemic and an obvious petty dictator to finally knock the US off it’s perch, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that opinion will swing back the US way in the next couple of years. 

[auxien]

8 minutes ago, Rubin Farr said:

They could also be trying to throw off attention that they are repeatedly violating Taiwan’s airspace.

nope. the Taiwan airspace flights were done for the express purpose of getting attention. 

Quote

Chinese warplanes flew more than two dozen sorties near Taiwan over the weekend, as Beijing staged its largest show of aerial force toward the island democracy in four months, just days after President Biden took over the White House.

Flown over two days off southwestern Taiwan, the flights appear to deliver a warning to the Biden administration of the stakes involved in supporting the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its territory and has vowed to assimilate. Hours after the U.S. issued a statement Saturday evening in Washington calling on China to cease intimidation, Taipei reported that Beijing sent more flights on Sunday.

The Chinese military flights coincided with U.S. naval maneuvers in the nearby South China Sea, which an American aircraft-carrier strike group entered on Saturday to conduct security operations and combat drills.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-flies-warplanes-near-taiwan-in-show-of-force-prompting-u-s-warning-11611513299

 

[zlemflolia]

On 7/18/2020 at 1:38 PM, Rubin Farr said:

These are fucking concentration camps, why is the UN silent on this?  Or The Hague?

 

looks like prisoners being transported, a routine occurrence in any state which uses carceral punishment.  not saying its a good thing but concentration camp is a specific term, which frankly can be applied to the prisons of most countries especially the US which is a much worse offender, if ethnic concentration alone indicates a concentration camp.  any more sources on this?

Edited January 26, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[auxien]

6 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

I mean those same fundamentals were in play before, and there was still plenty of FDI. It took a very badly handled pandemic and an obvious petty dictator to finally knock the US off it’s perch, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that opinion will swing back the US way in the next couple of years. 

China's been slowly creeping up either way. we'll see how things go, it could go either way.

[Rubin Farr]

32 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

looks like prisoners being transported, a routine occurrence in any state which uses carceral punishment.  not saying its a good thing but concentration camp is a specific term, which frankly can be applied to the prisons of most countries especially the US which is a much worse offender, if ethnic concentration alone indicates a concentration camp.  any more sources on this?

https://www.saveuighur.org/camps/?gclid=CjwKCAiA9bmABhBbEiwASb35V8EZrikCEAryBYkNiKpwKUEqJfg1H_-Q39zFNTWARaYlTIJZ3L3SHBoC330QAvD_BwE

[chenGOD]

36 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

looks like prisoners being transported, a routine occurrence in any state which uses carceral punishment.  not saying its a good thing but concentration camp is a specific term, which frankly can be applied to the prisons of most countries especially the US which is a much worse offender, if ethnic concentration alone indicates a concentration camp.  any more sources on this?

A) It is not routine to blindfold prisoners for mass transportation.

B) Ethnic concentration doesn't indicate a concentration camp. It's the fact that the people interred there are held without trial, and with harsh conditions. Now you may say that US prisons are harsh - and they are no picnic to be sure. But compared to prisons in East Asia, they are a walk in the park. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chinese-prison-americans-perspective/

In a completely wonderful piece of fucking ridiculousness, the difference in the detainment conditions between Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver BC and Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor show you a little bit more about how Chinese authorities view prison:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/meng-wanzhou-bail-covid-extradition-1.5870636

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/michael-kovrig-spavor-consular-access-1.5883882

Anecdotally, I had a friend arrested in South Korea for selling hash. He spent 9 months in a South Korean prison. If friends or family didn't bring him food, he would get one bowl of gruel a day. His cell was a room with 10 or 12 other individuals, all with a communal toilet.

Another friend from Myanmar was incarcerated in one of the most notorious prisons in the world as he was a journalist who wrote things about the government that were not too flattering in their truth-telling. He was put in Insein Prison for 3 years. He's a pretty quiet guy as a result.

C) China calls these camps: "re-education centres". Here's a description: https://wiki.ubc.ca/Racism_and_Persecution_against_Uyghur_Muslims_in_China#Concentration_Camps

Quote

Kayrat Samarkand was an Uyghur Muslim detained by the police and sent to a "reeducation camp" for 3 months in Xinjiang.^[10] In an interview, Samarkand stated that he was continuously humiliated and brainwashed with endless hours of communist propaganda and chanting slogans praising the President Xi Jinping.^[10]

Now of course, by placing all these people in the camps, this leaves thousands of children to be sent to boarding schools. In Canada, we have our own shameful history of the residential schools that was part of the attempted genocide of First Nations peoples here. Reading about the tactics used by the Chinese government on the Uyghurs, I am very much reminded of this history.

You have this opinion that the US is the worst evil ever seen by the world, and there are many flaws in America, but I can't help but feel you have very little knowledge about places where much worse atrocities are visited upon people on a regular basis. Have a read of this twitter feed. I know and trust the academics who oversee this work:

 

[chenGOD]

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/01/china-xi-jinping-business-entrepreneurs/617777/

Mmmmm here's how you crush capitalism.

[dingformung]

 

[Limo]

59 minutes ago, dingformung said:

 

“The government is opposed to this policy but I can not rule out single cases for any county”.

He might not even be lying. Heaven is high and the emperor is far away.

Of course during the Great Leap Forward no one in Beijing said peasants should starve to death either, but local governments certainly acted as if they thought it had. And to bring in a little Godwin: Hitler didn’t design the gas chambers but he was definitely responsible for filling them.

Edited January 31, 2021 by rhmilo

[auxien]

^yeah, the way he's hedging his wording in much of what he's saying is no mistake. everything i've seen of the Uyghur situation is very, very concerning and makes me feel particularly sad and helpless and honestly don't know what to say about it. seeing that video of the woman's forced sterilization that was shown to the ambassador just made me think of how the US is (was?) doing that to some captured immigrants at the Mexico border. that this sort of thing is happening anywhere is a shame, but that it's happening in the most powerful and wealthy countries in the world is very concerning. the powers of some few/temporary in leadership wrecking humanity in the most vile ways possible and just getting away with it, it being swept under the rug? hard to imagine much more shameful.

On 1/28/2021 at 8:05 AM, chenGOD said:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/01/china-xi-jinping-business-entrepreneurs/617777/

Mmmmm here's how you crush capitalism.

good article, thanks. makes me wonder how the fuck will the big capitalist barons that arise will ever be kept in check if even China allows them/can't control them.

[chenGOD]

5 hours ago, rhmilo said:

Heaven is high and the emperor is far away.

The emperor may be in danger of losing the Mandate of Heaven though. 

[chenGOD]

4 hours ago, auxien said:

makes me wonder how the fuck will the big capitalist barons that arise will ever be kept in check if even China allows them/can't control them.

I mean Chinese style capitalism started in the 70s with Deng, I think the CCP just always thought they would have the above mentioned Mandate of Heaven. Xi needs to go back and read his Confucius. 

[Limo]

3 hours ago, chenGOD said:

The emperor may be in danger of losing the Mandate of Heaven though. 

He sure is acting like thinks he’s at risk of doing so.

Though I do think cutting down Jack Ma might have been a sensible thing to do: the guy was about to create a privately held financial institution that would have been too big too fail. For all his faults, the emperor did look at what that lead to in the West and decided he’d have none of it.

Edited January 31, 2021 by rhmilo