[Unthinking Majority]

No one is asking you to be unbiased - just that you avoid defending US imperialism while easily criticizing Chinese for similar actions. I'd be more interested in reading your defense of US policy, not bland descriptions of "well, that's hegemons for ya!".

I'm not interested here in defending US foreign policy, I agree with some policies and disagree with others like anyone else. No country is beyond criticism, nor am I hiding my opinions.

The US favors my security interests and are also a more desirable hegemon for myself and most of the rest of the world, including most of the global south, because they aren't a totalitarian fascist state like China that's accountable to nobody unlike the US as a democracy, whose allies are also democracies and not an authoritarian de facto dictatorship like Putin's Russia or Iran's theocratic dictatorship or N.Korea (notice how all the thug dictatorship pariahs have formed an alliance?). And while the US takes part in very unfriendly imperial projects to maintain hegemon status, it doesn't annex other countries (at least not since the end of WWII). Which is to say the US sometimes behaves badly, but great powers have behaved far, far worse, including all of the European empires, Nazi Germany, USSR etc.

The world needs to fear China because if it becomes hegemon and after it has annexes Taiwan and taken full control of Hong Kong, there is a real danger of what it will do next. At best it would behave like the USA, at worst Nazi Germany or Napoleonic France, or maybe something in between like Saddam's Iraq (invade & annex countries with valuable resources).

China has chosen to focus heavily on trying to lead the IT and AI race. In 50 years the human mind can't comprehend what AI will be able to do and how connected to our devices we'll be. A totalitarian state that creates, sells, and controls the most innovative tech would have vast control over worldwide networks, software, and hardware. The country that wins the race to the AI singularity is also in a unique position to have access to the greatest explosion of technology and knowledge in history, beyond anything the human mind can hope to comprehend. China is no dummy, they see this coming and they want to get there first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

[Fasces]

The US favors my security interests and are also a more desirable hegemon for myself and most of the rest of the world, including most of the global south, because they aren't a totalitarian fascist state like China

China is neither totalitarian nor fascist.

that's accountable to nobody unlike the US as a democracy

Debatable, even by neoliberals.

twhose allies are also democracies and not an authoritarian de facto dictatorship like Putin's Russia or Iran's theocratic dictatorship or N.Korea

Except all the ones which are, both presently and historically.

t(notice how all the thug dictatorship pariahs have formed an alliance?).

What alliance?

And while the US takes part in very unfriendly imperial projects to maintain hegemon status,

Unfriendly doing a lot of work there.

it doesn't annex other countries (at least not since the end of WWII).

Neither has China.

Which is to say the US sometimes behaves badly, but great powers have behaved far, far worse, including all of the European empires, Nazi Germany, USSR etc.

Whataboutism. And debatable on the USSR. You really like making super grandiose statements with absolutely no rational backing.

The world needs to fear China because if it becomes hegemon and after it has annexes Taiwan and taken full control of Hong Kong, there is a real danger of what it will do next.

Not really. China is quite predictable, as long as you care enough to actually look into the matter and not just doom scroll.

At best it would behave like the USA,

Better. China has a far lower interest in colonial nation-building and ideological intervention.

at worst Nazi Germany or Napoleonic France, or maybe something in between like Saddam's Iraq (invade & annex countries with valuable resources).

[Rugoz]

China is neither totalitarian.

It certainly was under Mao and still is to a large degree today. Meanwhile Xi builds a cult around his person. Where will this end? China has a long history of bad emperors.

[Rancid]

It certainly was under Mao and still is to a large degree today. Meanwhile Xi builds a cult around his person. Where will this end? China has a long history of bad emperors.

I guess re-education camps, the social credit system, and their efforts to use AI to basically track/ID absolutely everyone doesn't count?

[Tainari88]

Interesting video explaining various perspectives on what role each nation can take regarding the PRC and Taiwan.

[Crantag]

Have you not seen the CCP apologism by leftists here? Not just on this thread, but many others.

I don't apologize. And I've got better at being less partisan, but I am still pro-China. And I lived in China for 2 years, and East Asia for 10 years.

My advice to these people is that although western democracy is flawed and has its issues. It has certainly improved, and it contains the machinery to continue to improve it. It has the machinery to continue to right what is wrong.

I must disagree. It isn't democracy per se, it's the whole political-economic system of the United States (I assume that's your reference point). I'm not against trying to be positive and trying to make things better. But, a country that industrializes incarceration, and wages wars, but then acts apologetic about it, at some point, actions speak louder than words. But, the whole world is a shitshow, that much is true.

I would tell them, don't throw out the democracy/freedom baby with the bath water.

That might be a fair point. I am not 100% sure, but maybe so.

[Fasces]

It certainly was under Mao and still is to a large degree today. Meanwhile Xi builds a cult around his person. Where will this end? China has a long history of bad emperors.

I guess re-education camps, the social credit system, and their efforts to use AI to basically track/ID absolutely everyone doesn't count?

Totalitarian =/= authoritarian. China isn't totalitarian simply because the Chinese government, especially the government in Beijing, is not omnipresent in the daily lives of their citizens. The Chinese government in practice is highly decentralized and has a very light touch day-to-day, even at the local level. I certainly can say - the US government is much more visible day to day if just because of the omnipresent and highly visible police. I can go weeks without seeing a cop in China, and I can never say that about my life in the US. I barely interact with the Chinese government, and certainly never with the Beijing government, beyond renewing my residence permit each year (which is done locally). My partner also says she has never interacted with the government in any way, outside of the civil servants that work at her government-run university where she takes classes or presenting her ID when buying subway/train tickets. With the Covid outbreak handled so quickly, China has been arguably less "totalitarian" this year than many Western states, to boot.

The closest I can think of would be the quota system wherein firms with certain numbers of employees must employee at least one member of the CCP - but party membership doesn't make you a government official.

I'll grant that this may vary region to region, and if there is one region that it 'totalitarian' it is likely to be Xinjiang. I would describe the Xinjiang Regional Government as reasonably totalitarian.

As for camera/AI tracking - the UK is, alongside China, one of the most surveilled societies in the world. I don't think the presence of a surveillance system qualifies as totalitarianism. The Social Credit system, as Westerners understand it, is also a complete myth - there were two trial programs in two small cities, for government-run initiatives. The 'Sesame Credit' is a private system run by Alibaba that determines interest rates on your credit cards and credit limits based on 'reliability', but it is functionally the same as a credit score, albeit a credit score that tracks whether you interact with friends with low credit, commit criminal acts, and so on.

I mean, we can disagree, but I don't think 'totalitarian' is an accurate label to use for China, unless we're using 'totalitarian' as a more menacing sounding word meaning 'authoritarian' or 'paternalist'.

[Rugoz]

China isn't totalitarian simply because the Chinese government, especially the government in Beijing, is not omnipresent in the daily lives of their citizens.

Isn't it omnipresent by the simple fact that it controls the public discourse?

I certainly can say - the US government is much more visible day to day if just because of the omnipresent and highly visible police. I can go weeks without seeing a cop in China, and I can never say that about my life in the US. I barely interact with the Chinese government, and certainly never with the Beijing government, beyond renewing my residence permit each year (which is done locally).

I think the nature of the interaction is more relevant. Then again, I wouldn't be more afraid of Chinese cop than an American cop unless I'm politically active. I wouldn't feel comfortable with a CCP official in the company however.

I guess in the end it comes down to whether you are a political person or not. Since I am and I like to speak my mind (and hate being censored), I imagine China would be a nightmare for me.

[Fasces]

I guess in the end it comes down to whether you are a political person or not. Since I am and I like to speak my mind (and hate being censored), I imagine China would be a nightmare for me.

Not excusing it, just describing it:

Bitching in the pub or a to a group of friends: no one cares, literally no different than the USA. Same with just bitching in your office - no one really cares, it's done basically every day, you might cause arguments but it's not a government involved thing. No worse than you see in any generic political discussion.

Bitching on social media: varies. If you get a few retweets or have a small group of followers, or it's just a group chat of a few hundred people: no one cares, literally no different than the USA. If you get a lot of retweets, or mass engagement, often companies will delete out of abundance of caution, but won't get you in trouble with government or ban the account. Comparable to twitter/Facebook code of conduct enforcement. Forums like PoFo exist on the Chinese net - my partner loves using them, and she frequently talks politics online. She tends to be more anti-CCP than me (though from a feminist and a very vague pro-capitalist perspective, contrary to most here on PoFo. She agrees with the CCP on issues like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, etc which is why I think people who think a democratic China would be pro western are in for a rude surprise.)

If you regularly get a lot of retweets or mass engagement, you might get out on a watch list or an "innocuous" police visit where they pretend to be looking at some other issue but are just making themselves known. You won't get arrested for it though - the worst case is your account gets banned.

The big no nos: when you start trying to organize something, that'll get you a visit real quick. Bitch to your friends about the city being dirty - no one cares. Talk to your friends about going to a meeting or marching at city hall to get the streets fixed: you're garaunteed a friendly chat from local police asking you to cut it out.

Another big no no is being too specific about your Bitching: saying the city government is corrupt is less likely to attract government attention than saying person xyz in position abc is corrupt.

It also depends on who you are. Joe schmoe gets a lot of leeway, foreign journalists get a lot less, etc etc.

If your goal is to get arrested you basically need to have a large media presence / be well known, and have had multiple repeated visited from police for "friendly chats". Then you'll get arrested for disrupting the peace, agitation, or violating the sensibilities of the Chinese people, something like that. Might serve a week or two in jail and be banned from certain public activities for six months to a year.

[Tainari88]

@Fasces my husband was a union organizer. For an international union and a local state one. He always said that getting a bunch of workers and politicians and leaders in the community, marching, dialing phone numbers and sending out messages and showing up in some government building and pressuring is where the government gets worried. In most nations. Not just the USA.

I think the problem is that the USA is under the false belief or they have lying mass media perpetuating the lie that only in the USA is there freedom of speech, expression or possibilities for political change. That only under capitalism and liberal style representative democracies do you have any possibility of change.

I don't know why people believe in so much bullshit. They should live in five different countries with different governments as both foreigners and national rights and they will quickly realize, most governments don't give a shit what you say in some coffee house or at a friend's dinner party. But if you go on a campaign to organize and pressure with some real organization? They notice.

I always said, "You will know how effective you are at politics (in the Leftist tradition),by how many angry government officials are at your door saying to you in various ways--Stop what the hell you are doing! It is making us have to talk about things we want to keep quiet!"

No one cares about talk. Action is what scares the governments who are corrupt and sellout.

[Fasces]

@Tainari88 Fully agree. Your husband is wise. I think where China distinguishes itself is in the use of big data and AI algorithms to actively listen in on your conversations. This isn't to say the US doesn't do it, its basically the same tech as PRISM, and some of my left-wing friends from the US definately feel the heat of government oversight for their participation in Antifa message boards and discords, but I feel, at least for now, its to a lesser extent - if only because one party is actively anti-government, and having the government listen in on their plots would make sedition very difficult.

[Tainari88]

@Tainari88

Fully agree. I think where China distinguishes itself is in the use of big data and AI algorithms to actively listen in on your conversations. This isn't to say the US doesn't do it, its basically the same tech as PRISM, but I feel, at least for now, its to a lesser extent - if only because one party is actively anti-government, and having the government listen in on their plots would make sedition very difficult.

I think the USA does or will do a lot more surveillance of its own population. The FBI is not supposed to be listening in on its native citizens conversations. But they do all the time. Now, there are accusations of Alexa and all the other 'assistance' devices in the home that are being accused of being gov't plants that you BUY to listen in on you....with the excuse they are going to make your life easier.

I just bought a laptop and spilled some syrup on it by accident. I sent it for repairs and it is ruined. I am bummed. But then I feel relief I don't have to cope anymore with another device. I am getting to the stage of getting nostalgic for 70s cord phones and quaint wiretaps where the cable guy is the one representing the gov't and placing a mini mike in your avocado green kitchen phone with a long cord mounted on the wall while you drink your morning coffee and eat your toast.

Now? You got @blackjack21 with big cloud data storage, and algorithms, and they know everything about every move you make. I think hiding is not the solution with these BIG Brother governments. It is to be upfront and organized and be part of a larger organization that can bail your ass out or agitate international pressure for your release if the gov't is after you.

AI, and all the rest is already being implemented for mass usage in the USA. It will not just be the PRC's gov't doing facial recognition and credit checks. and etc.

I am going for a month and a half back to the states to Denver and since I sold my home there? I had to find a place to stay. I usually stay with friends but many because of COVID and many relatives and college age kids moving back home because they lost their jobs and can't pay rent anymore? Have no space for me. So? I told my husband go and rent out something for us. Hotels, and rental cars are OUTRAGEOUS now. One month for a rental car is about $4000 dollars in Denver folks! Thank god we kept an old 2004 Buick to run around in. In order to rent for one month the apartment we rented? Got to do a credit check and a social media check in case we steal 'the furniture'. Yeah, right. It is because they don't want a terrorist or some fanatic who might blow things up. They check everything now before you get to rent a place.

That is reality. If people think they are living anonymous lives? They are mistaken.

Protect yourselves. Join recognized organizations. Join political parties you agree with, and get involved in community organizations you agree with. Join international groups with large memberships that accomplish big goals every year. Don't go it alone! It is your only hope against big brother gov'ts.

[wat0n]

It's not just the USA, all governments will likely use AI and other means to keep the peace. That much should be clear after the events of the last few years.

I still prefer the USA since one can criticize the government with almost complete freedom (the only thing you cannot do is release classified information). Many of the things @Fasces won't happen to you in the US, if you want to claim politicians are pedophiles you can do so and the cops will leave you alone.

[Fasces]

It's not just the USA, all governments will likely use AI and other means to keep the peace. That much should be clear after the events of the last few years.

I still prefer the USA since one can criticize the government with almost complete freedom (the only thing you cannot do is release classified information). Many of the things @Fasces won't happen to you in the US, if you want to claim politicians are pedophiles you can do so and the cops will leave you alone.

To a degree, usually the degree of melanin in your skin.

[Rancid]

if you want to claim politicians are pedophiles

Claim? We know!

Gaetz is a PEDOPHILE!

LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

[wat0n]

To a degree, usually the degree of melanin in your skin.

No, that applies even to Black people

Of course if you engage in terrorism or insurrection you will be hunted and caught, just like the Black Panthers and the trumpists who went to the Capitol will attest (and whine about)

[Fasces]

Eh, I'd love to think that, but seeing how decimated black militia groups are compared to white ones...

One good thing about China - it's an equal opportunity opressor.

[wat0n]

Well, I don't recall Black militia groups who marched in parts of Georgia and the like were decimated last year. It seems that as long as you don't fight the government, you can set up your militias, arm yourself and openly carry firearms in many jurisdictions without breaking any laws.

It's almost as if fighting the government will get you into trouble with it, regardless of the country at hand.

[Fasces]

The US has a government full of antediluvians. You can't just cut off history to the last 5 years. The same idiots in power now were the same idiots in power in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s.

[Rugoz]

It also depends on who you are. Joe schmoe gets a lot of leeway, foreign journalists get a lot less, etc etc.

I imagine that if you attempt to reach any position of power or influence, all the "bitching" you did in the office or social media starts matter.