China and Self Censorship

[bgmnts]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55651798

Another pathetic weasel of a human specimen here bowing down to potential China money. Have to love how terrified people are of criticising China.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Have to love how terrified people are of criticising China.

A hesitancy to criticize China does not strike me as very high on the list of most common attributes in the English-speaking world these days.

[Famous Mortimer]

Money doesn't criticise China, certainly (when was the last big budget movie with China as the villains?)

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Money doesn't criticise China, certainly (when was the last big budget movie with China as the villains?)

So sad that we live in an age where movie studies refuse to put out jingoistic content with racist caricatures as villains like in the 1980s.

To the extent that's true, it's because customer-oriented companies logically do not want to offend one sixth of the world's population. I'm not sure I see the scandal there.

[Sin Agog]

Did you watch that documentary I linked in another one of these threads, PDD?  It's both a testament to the doggedness of the Chinese spirit and utterly devastating in a way like very little else I've ever seen.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TeQQJRytag

[Chedney Honks]

China is the best country in the world.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Money doesn't criticise China, certainly (when was the last big budget movie with China as the villains?)

Dunston Checks In

[Paul Calf]

China is the best country in the world.

1/10 try harder.

[Paul Calf]

So sad that we live in an age where movie studies refuse to put out jingoistic content with racist caricatures as villains like in the 1980s.

To the extent that's true, it's because customer-oriented companies logically do not want to offend one sixth of the world's population. I'm not sure I see the scandal there.

No, they've just replaced China with Russia as the bad guy.

You honestly don't see a problem with an authoritarian govenment using its economic clout to silence criticism of its atrocities even overseas?

[madhair60]

1/10 try harder.

lmao

[NoSleep]

So sad that we live in an age where movie studies refuse to put out jingoistic content with racist caricatures as villains like in the 1980s.

To the extent that's true, it's because customer-oriented companies logically do not want to offend one sixth of the world's population. I'm not sure I see the scandal there.

It's about political censorship, not causing offence with "jingoistic content with racist caricatures as villains".

Winnie The Pooh got banned in China because of comparisons (made by Chinese citizens) between the appearance of the character and their president, Xi Jinping.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-winnie-the-pooh-film-to-stop-comparisons-to-president-xi

And an NBA player tweeted support for the protesters in Hong Kong causing the NBA to apologise for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Association_criticisms_and_controversies#2019–20_Hong_Kong_protests

South Park did an episode all about the controversies and willingly got themselves banned in China to comment on the hypocrisy of US businesses turning a blind eye to China's poor record on human rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_in_China

[Chedney Honks]

1/10 try harder.

Haha. It's genuinely hilarious that you think that is trolling.

[dissolute ocelot]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55651798

Another pathetic weasel of a human specimen here bowing down to potential China money. Have to love how terrified people are of criticising China.

Have you actually seen this guy's terrible videos though? All shouting non-sequiturs about sauce. I've no idea what the business model is for that, but he's probably funded by a Chinese state sauce combine anyhow.

[Cuellar]

Yeah I hate Uncle Roger. Piece of shit.

[Bernice]

ah but what about america ahhhhh

[bgmnts]

Have you actually seen this guy's terrible videos though? All shouting non-sequiturs about sauce. I've no idea what the business model is for that, but he's probably funded by a Chinese state sauce combine anyhow.

Oh it probably is utter shit, like most comedy, but that's not the point.

[jobotic]

You leave poor little China alone, or there'll be Big trouble!

[Huxleys Babkins]

I doubt he's "self-censored", more had a threatening email from YouTube about the video and had to comply or else lose his entire livelihood.

YouTube is a hellhole for independent voices right now. We desperately need competition, but that ship sailed a long time ago. The only people who could compete are open to the same corporate and government interference that Google are.

[greenman]

I mean its the appeal of Trump that as with many other areas such as globalisation he's appealing to legitimate grievances in a dishonest self serving fashion.

[Chedney Honks]

I once brought some bbq off an Uyghur and he tried to sell me weed. Had a naan with salt and chilli on it. Well nice.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

China still seems to be quite backwards in terms of animal rights. 

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's plenty of reasons to criticise China, but they're not the reason our leaders are doing so, in many cases they'd probably do the actual bad stuff if they thought they could get away with it.

[Pink Gregory]

There's plenty of reasons to criticise China, but they're not the reason our leaders are doing so, in many cases they'd probably do the actual bad stuff if they thought they could get away with it.

Same things, but through 'the market'.  That old engine of liberty.

[greenman]

There's plenty of reasons to criticise China, but they're not the reason our leaders are doing so, in many cases they'd probably do the actual bad stuff if they thought they could get away with it.

...often bad stuff they exported to china so they could get away with it.

[NoSleep]

...the main one being local wage disputes. Fortunately for all their disenfranchised workers they can probably afford the dirt cheap goods imported from China (where their jobs disappeared to).

[Pink Gregory]

Ask a stupid question, but question nonetheless; while all the image management, propaganda and abuses have existed under previous leaders, is President Xi considered divergent from the course of other Presidents, or much in the same mould?

Within and outside of China, I mean.

[Chedney Honks]

More of a cunt by far.

[Pink Gregory]

More of a cunt by far.

Does the leader himself have that much say over the direction of the party though?  Of course he would.have surrounded himself with fellow-travellers and allies, but are the officials around him considered as culpable in quite the same way?

[greenman]

Does the leader himself have that much say over the direction of the party though?  Of course he would.have surrounded himself with fellow-travellers and allies, but are the officials around him considered as culpable in quite the same way?

I get the impression that Xi is more of an autocrate than the previous few leaders, whilst obviously there wasn't direct democracy in the past their did seem to be a situation where leaders needed a broad base of support and allies were as from the sound of it Xi has built up much more of a power base and eliminated rivals.

[Mister Six]

Does the leader himself have that much say over the direction of the party though?  Of course he would.have surrounded himself with fellow-travellers and allies, but are the officials around him considered as culpable in quite the same way?

There's a lot of in-fighting and factions and so on, but Xi has consolidated power, expelled or imprisoned opponents[nb]His ostensibly decent anti-corruption drive helped there.[/nb] and built a cult of personality the likes of which China hasn't seen since Mao. He's ensured he'll retain power for life, knowing that losing control would leave him with a big target on his back, were another faction to gain control.

He has massive sway over the direction of the party as a whole, helped by the Chinese state structure of the boss having the first and final say. Generally he gestures in the direction he wants China to go and those gestures are interpreted by those below him into more detailed gestures and so on and so on down the chain.

He's constrained the news media (which had been growing increasingly free before he took over) and overseen increased censorship of the internet.

That said, this further down the chain have autonomy to make their own decisions so long as it's deemed to fall within the general direction of the Party. Stuff like the Covid cover-up in Wuhan was almost certainly local police acting on their own recognisance rather than a command from Beijing, even if the US likes to pretend Xi himself is keeping track of every movement made by every official in a country of 1.3 billion.

The reality is more prosaic: local officials are shit-scared about their little domain looking bad in the eyes of those higher up, and those under them are scared about the local officials stomping on them (such is the extremely stratified and unidirectional power dynamic in the country) so the immediate reaction to anything bad happening is to try to cover it up immediately, with little thought to long-term fallout.[nb] While I was living in Beijing, some princelings decided to recreate The Fast and the Furious on one of the city's massive ring-roads late at night, and crashed. Not only were all social media posts about the crash deleted but searches for things like "crash" or "ring road" were disabled - which of course only made the incident more infamous and widely known than if it had been ignored by the officials.[/nb]

There absolutely is dissent towards Xi among other factions of the party, and those high up in the chain have been pissed off by the way he flipped the Chinese narrative from "poor country makes good and is eager to join the international system in its own way, over time" into "We're going to be in charge of the world whether you like it or not establish a multipolar win-win situation in which China is as much a superpower as the US", because it led to the US realising what a threat Beijing is to its political and cultural supremacy, which became Donald Trump's trade war and all the related sanctions and stuff directed towards China over the past four years.[nb]Luckily for China, Trump's short-sighted America First Plan destroyed the US' standing in the eyes of the world and damaged international relationships when a competent politician would be creating alliances to constrain Beijing.[/nb]

The "Made in China 2025" plan for the country to lead key technologies and industries like AI and aviation by 2025 was one example of Xi's pushiness ruffling America's feathers, and it was quietly retired the other year. Too late, though, to not raise questions about why China still claims "developing country" status and related special treatment at the UN. Inside the Party, a lot of people are fucked off at Xi about this because they think (correctly) that he played China's hand too early, and now the county is paying the price as the US fucks up its access to stuff like computer chips, which Chinese companies are some distance off reproducing at the same level as US companies.

But despite the annoyance, what can they do? He still has control over the party, and isn't going to cede that ever.