>>468096>me referring to China as "CCP." Well there is a point in not using that propaganda terminology. If only to communicate that you aren't towing the ideological line that seeks to demonize China in order to make war. Also language is an ideological battlefield why would you seed any ground to the warmongers ?
>But I don't see China as an enemy?You are still repeating the same criticisms about China that are being used to manufacture consent for painting China as an enemy. The neocon warmongers create a black and white political reality where you are either with them or against them. They will treat you as an enemy unless you tow the warmonger line exactly. Otherwise they will treat you as an enemy regardless how nuanced your stance is.
When somebody resorts to this us/them-binary, the only rational choice that you have is to maximize the hostility of your stance against them. Unless you can find a way to criticize China while still maximizing your opposition to the neocons, you will maneuver your self into a weak position, where you partially agree with people that will do nothing but relentlessly attack you.
>I see its system of government as something I wouldn't personally like.There's the problem, you are looking at this separated from the material world, as if you were analyzing a platonic ideal.
>People both in and outside of China seem to think it's especially censoriousCensorious in relation to what ? China has a lot less censorship than it did 30 years ago.
Before the communist revolution, China was a defeated empire under foreign colonial occupation, there was no freedom of speech and since most people were illiterate and could not access information systems, there wasn't even the potential for it. When the communists took over they fixed illiteracy and they build accessible information systems. While they very severely censored those systems, they did create the potential for freedom of speech to exist. The Chinese internet is very heavily censored, but Chinese people can say more than they used to. It's a slowly improving trajectory. You may lament that they are on a low level of civil liberties, but as long as it's getting better, it's not worth much worry.
In the west there was more freedom of speech in the past, and it's on a worsening trajectory. The internet in the west is becoming a lawless place. Where neither privacy nor freedom of speech are legally enforced. Civil-liberties once given they can't be un-granted. The attempt to undo civil-liberties is just a crime.
We can only compare china and the west with regards to their direction of development.
When we compare the state of things, we can only make comparisons through time.
- how does the present West compare to the past West
- how does the Chinese present compare to the Chinese past.
>I don't see protection of individual rights as authoritarian, I don't see recognition of rights to organize as authoritarian, I don't see abolition of slavery as authoritarian.You are stuck in ruling ideology
you think there is a political axis like this:
freedom ←–→ authoritarian
But that is wrong you can use authority to improve freedom. Authority can protect individual and collective rights (don't forget collective rights), which results in people being more free. That is authoritarian in the technical sense too, so it's not useful to treat "authoritarian" as a bad word. It's neutral, it depends on who wields authority and for what purpose. For example I disagree with neoliberal neocons having any authority and i consider all their power as illegitimate. However if social democrats or socialists gain political power i would consider their authority and power legitimate. For a very simple reason socdems and communists act towards the good of society, while neo-liberal neocons are inflicting death and destruction on the world.
When some South American country throws out a neo-liberal junta and begins implementing social democratic reforms, the news will call that an authoritarian dictatorship. The imperial bourgeoisie experiences authority reigning in their power and because of that the corporate mainstream media starts screaming about authoritarianism. And technically they aren't wrong, the freedom of the capitalists to exploit people to death is being reduced by authority. Reducing exploitation and improving living conditions are a good thing. I don't see why you should try to tie your self into a knot by saying that it's only "authoritarian" when authorities do bad things.
>people in China probably shouldn't trust their governmentAt present the Chinese government is acting in ways that are improving the material conditions for the Chinese population, that's why the Chinese population trusts their government, and it's rational for them to do so. For the moment Chinese people tolerate censorship because they experience improving standards of living.
The western governments are acting in ways that is harming the material conditions for western populations, and that is why they are losing trust. The population is behaving rationally as well. If they combine censorship with worsening standards of living that will speed up the loss of trust.
>the suppressive way it handled COVID initially by going after doctors who were sounding the alarm about the situation was as bad as our gov't handled it in the US once it got over here.You are right that the Chinese government has wronged that doctor, but their changed their tune very quickly. They changed their behavior when it stops working, and overall the Chinese were able to get through the covid crisis much better than many of the western governments, especially compared to the US.
>The paragraph which follows here sounds nice, I just have zero faith in it.Faith ? WTF ?
No you have to analyse the premises, the arguments and the conclusions, and then say what you find wrong.
>Power and the capacity to hold onto it is a constant factor in how these things play outNothing is a constant, least of all power.
>Why run a capitalist economy, then?China allowed capitalist elements into their economy For several reasons.
- To bribe western capitalists to not attack them while they were economically weak and technologically backwards.
- Exchange of labor-power for technology
- Create a large trade network that shields them from encirclement.
- Perhaps some ideological orthodoxy, Marx said that socialism would arise out of the most advanced capitalist economy.
>Why has Xi not turned away from Dengism if the Chinese gov't doesn't gain materially from this arrangement?Well that isn't true, XI has changed the economic direction a lot since Deng. Big bourgeois capital is weakening, while they promote petit bourgoise small enterprises and even more so workercoops. XI also revived the role of State enterprises for becoming high tech-leaders. In that way the Chinese economy is beginning to resemble more what the US economy looked like in the 50s and 60s. Wealth inequality is also going down in China, and internal consumption is increasing.
The way living conditions are improving in China it might be that ten-twenty years from now China will turn into an unclosed society, that is able to greatly expand civil liberties without any risk to social stability, and the west regresses into the kind of neo-lib-shitholes that western neo-colonies currenty are, with neither prosperity nor liberty.