Propaganda. I was born in USSR.
Constant deficit - clothing, quality food, etc.
Also, the most important thing - https://www.bbc.com/news/health-27193607
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Chinese government has removed "Respect and protect the right of ethnic minority children to receive education in their own language" from its policy
- Thread starter Ceerious
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Propaganda. I was born in USSR.
Constant deficit - clothing, quality food, etc.
Also, the most important thing - https://www.bbc.com/news/health-27193607
Do you believe that social repression is worth it or a good economic model?
Agency doesn't mean you have carte blanche to do what you want like violating human rights, colonizing or exploiting and oppressing people. That's why there are international laws and human rights.
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I had a family that didn't keep speaking in Spanish at home when we moved to the US because "We want our kids to grow up as Americans". I ended up having to polish up my Spanish through US courses, so I don't speak it like my father, I speak it like an American. They ended up really regretting it afterwords, but I can't really blame them when they were trying to do what was best for me and my siblings. It's hard keeping a foot in multiple cultures, especially when it comes to what is "useful".
I completely agree that even without explicit policies, the modern world is a system that is unkind to cultural diversity.
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Can you try not to defend the USSR for once? As someone that lives in a former communist country I can only say that Communism was a net negative here. Not just that, it was a fckin atrocity. You can actually find lots of people here that would say it was better then, but funny thing is you can trace EVERY fckin problem this shit country has straight to the communist years. Lots of our politicians are still former members of the communist party, but you won't hear the nostalgic people say that. The debt the communist government created led to a catastrophic 90s, but you won't hear the same people talk about it. Lots of shit left to list, but I really don't care enough to do so, so yeah I'd say fuck communism.
I don't think you said anything counter to what I was saying. So before I respond, what did you think I said?
I wouldn't measure this by language. It's an essential human tool for coming together, as long as we settle on one, like on this site. Any system without a common language would be much more unkind to cultural diversity.
This is a more refined way of saying "This is America, speak English!"
Ethnic cleansing is universally bad, actually. And wishing that China would stop engaging in ethnic cleansing does not make one an imperialist. You want us to respect their agency to oppress? That's quite a take.
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Yeah. A lot of times it's really about choosing what is deemed as more "useful". And this is just the language side of things. Culturally, it's even more dire. With how much foreign media we are constantly bombarded with, most kids are no longer interested in their tradition. I myself included. I probably know more about Marvel stuff than my traditions or something. That's why all these racial divides are so infuriating. We're actually more alike in many ways than ever before.
No amount of agency justifies cultural repression and genocide. This is not "western values", the need to respect all peoples is universal. This something taught to us as Chinese people from a young age. 5000 years of culture, from all the fringes of the country made us who we are. Do you honestly believe that the people of China would be okay with the state harming their neighbours? Their kin? That the state propaganda has pulled the wool over the peoples' eyes in a concerted effort to get them to accept their policies doesn't mean we should be okay with it. This isn't agency. The Chinese people have no agency under the ccp.
Trust me I'm very very aware on what the Chinese government's position. I hope you realize as anything the CCP states differs highly from policies on the ground. As a famous example the Chinese constitution itself stipulates democracy and freedom of speech for example, where of course there is none for the Chinese citizen. Even binding international treaties like the 1 Country 2 Systems Hong Kong agreement were basically teared up over the past decade.
As just an example of the CCP attitude towards any language different to theirs:
China Is Forcing Its Biggest Cantonese-Speaking Region To Speak Mandarin
The common language in Guangdong is Cantonese, but that may soon change.
www.businessinsider.com
You do realize that principle is true for ALL languages right? No one is going to claim Italian is a "prestige dialect", hence the same is true for Cantonese in this instance. Hence Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese,.. = Chinese languages. No one outside of CCP influence is going to go describe any of the languages of the Germanic languages group as "languages" but suddenly, with the same linguistic principles, magically degrade the Sinitic group with only calling these dialects. I've got a Master degree in Oriental Linguistics and studied over two years in Guangzhou. Nowhere outside of China were languages like Cantonese EVER degraded as a "dialect", or classified differently when compared to the other language families. One of my professors in Guangzhou even explicitly told me he was not allowed to call Cantonese a language.
Some classes definitely enjoyed more stability under the USSR, and the collapse of its empire left voids in many states that corrupt individuals could capitalize on. For many, though, it's just cycling out one evil for another.
I do wish we could unilaterally denounce and condemn fascist imperialists, regardless of the empire in question. (Especially when they're not diametrically opposed and are often economic dependents in many ways.) Justifying one seems to implicitly condone the other. And there's a bit of a tendency for neoliberal arguments (e.g. of how relative poverty has been lowered) to pop up that can be misleading or dishonest.
There's no good justification for it unless you're an imperialist.
I do wish we could unilaterally denounce and condemn fascist imperialists, regardless of the empire in question. (Especially when they're not diametrically opposed and are often economic dependents in many ways.) Justifying one seems to implicitly condone the other. And there's a bit of a tendency for neoliberal arguments (e.g. of how relative poverty has been lowered) to pop up that can be misleading or dishonest.
There's no good justification for it unless you're an imperialist.
Trust me I'm very very aware on what the Chinese government's position. I hope you realize as anything the CCP states differs highly from policies on the ground. As a famous example the Chinese constitution itself stipulates democracy and freedom of speech for example, where of course there is none for the Chinese citizen. Even binding international treaties like the 1 Country 2 Systems Hong Kong agreement were basically teared up over the past decade.
As just an example of the CCP attitude towards any language different to theirs:
China Is Forcing Its Biggest Cantonese-Speaking Region To Speak Mandarin
The common language in Guangdong is Cantonese, but that may soon change.
No force is needed when the biggest cities in Guangdong are mostly migrants that don't speak cantonese.
Not true as the government forcibly forbid the use of Cantonese on television as one of many examples:
Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy - Wikipedia
You are, are you? Then why do you post a link that states China is forcing a broadcast station to use Mandarin as if it is inconsistent with the official policy? Here is the official policy: http://www.linxiang.gov.cn/24733/24760/24821/24986/24988/content_1573492.html Mandarin is the common variety and to be promoted. It is to be the variety of broadcast.Trust me I'm very very aware on what the Chinese government's position. I hope you realize as anything the CCP states differs highly from policies on the ground. As a famous example the Chinese constitution itself stipulates democracy and freedom of speech for example, where of course there is none for the Chinese citizen. Even binding international treaties like the 1 Country 2 Systems Hong Kong agreement were basically teared up over the past decade.
As just an example of the CCP attitude towards any language different to theirs:
China Is Forcing Its Biggest Cantonese-Speaking Region To Speak Mandarin
The common language in Guangdong is Cantonese, but that may soon change.
Who said anything about treating all varieties of a dialect continuum equally? Do Americans and British treat all varieties of English equally? It seems obvious that the prestige variety receives far more importance than any other variety. It is the prestige variety, after all.
You keep referring to Europe. Let us look at how Europe classifies languages vs dialects, then. It happens that Europe has a European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Let us see how the charter differentiates between dialects and languages.
The nation state defines what is a language and what is a dialect through its democratic process. For example, some linguists refer to Bavarian as a Germanic language, but Germany does not recognize it as a regional language. If China does not get to define what is a regional language and what is a dialect, it would be because it is not a democracy, not because there is some linguistic rule that says otherwise. But that still does not escape the fact that the dialect-language distinction is political, not linguistic.
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User banned (1 week): Whataboutism
I seriously cannot believe you just Shen Yun'd me.
Yes.
Chinese people aren't naturally saints, and it is ridiculous to pretend that their ancient cultural solidarity is being repressed by the CPC. Let's set aside the simple fact that oppression of ethnic minorities is common in all cultures (American indians, inuits, ainu, sami, jews and so on), China literally fought a civil war in living memory! You brought up "5000 years" did you forgot how many of those years were spent killing each other? Spoiler, roughly 4000 of them.
You make the common mistake of thinking "agency" is universally good. I'm telling you now that it is not. Agency is a double edged sword. When a Taliban extremist beheads a woman, that is Arab agency. When Bolsonaro's government razes the Amazon, that is Brazilian agency. When Hindutvas repress subcontinent Muslims, that is Indian agency. Human agency carries the potential to deny others their individual agency, always have. There has not been a single moment in human history where this was not true. What people here really want is not agency. What they want is "you're free to do whatever you want, provided it is from the choices I outlined for you".
That is not "agency". We have a bunch of words for that, though. Paternalism, elitism, enlightened despotism, white savior, etc. Take your pick, but if you're going to use "agency" you should have the honesty to recognize the implicit downside.
Caveat emptor: I am Chinese and have lived in China a few years; there are good sides and bad sides to the people, the culture, and the government. The last time I visited was 2017. It is possible China has degenerated to 1984 in the last 4 years, but I doubt it, as I still regularly send my relatives holiday greetings. Mostly, they are just worried about COVID. If they care about the Uyghur situation, they never brought it up to me. CPC repression? Possible, but seeing enlightened liberals shrug at the border crisis instead of literally storming the chain link fences, why should I hold my relatives to a higher standard than my so-called "countrymen"? No one cares, no one actually cares enough to do anything. Posting "how awful" on the internet is worthless. Put up or shut up.
Let me repeat, if an American is posting here about "tankies" covering up Uyghur repression instead of plotting to storm the border to free the "kids in cages", their opinion is worth less than shit to me. It is actually more vile than just not posting at all, because people using ethcs as a conversational cudgel without backing it up with praxis just degrades both ethics and praxis.
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I'm posting to show how awful the oppressive official policies are, as the aim is not to promote an official languages, but an eradication of local cultures and languages, which you see all over China from Xinjiang, Hong Kong etc.
You're obfuscating and confusing things. In order for your example to work you would need to put the English dialect variant on the same level as the Cantonese variants that exist in the South of China. After all Mandarin, Cantonese,.. are full fledged branches of the Sinitic Languages. Likewise English, German,... are linguistically full fledged branches of the Germanic languages. Hence they should be placed on equal footing when comparing one to the other. Hence if you would somehow insist to move away from the term "language" in favor of "dialect group" or another term, then logically one would have to say the "German dialect group", the "Cantonese dialect group" etc.
It is linguistic because one can scientifically place language in families of groupings. But hey don't take it from me here is a great thread from renowned linguist in the Sinitic Languages, professor Zev Handel, an authority in his field. He has some great literature out on the subject as well:
After a while I learned what was really going on. It wasn't just that spoken Cantonese was a distinct language from spoken Mandarin. They are not mutually intelligible— not just because of pronunciation, but because of differences in vocabulary, morphology, and syntax.
They are obviously similar, true, but only about as similar as French is to Spanish. The term "dialect" is an unfortunate misnomer, and when understood with its meaning as a technical term in the field of linguistics it is completely inappropriate. Cantonese is a language.
Thread by @ZevHandel on Thread Reader App
Thread by @ZevHandel: Time to give some much-deserved attention to #Cantonese #廣東話 #粵語 🇭🇰! I know! How about a thread on Written Cantonese? Yes, it’s the written language that is widely used by millions of people b...…
threadreaderapp.com
Agency doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want. The reasons you name are why we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are there to protect people from their governments acting with impunity.
Unfortunately it doesn't work very well when you give some of the worst abusers veto right but that's another discussion.
So you sending a few messages on I assume WeChat is evidence the CCP isn't a dystopian authoritarian regime? If you don't see the irony of that then I don't know what to tell you.
Have you asked your family if they aware of the Uyghur genocide? Seeing the propaganda the CCP is spreading online it's probably unlikely they even know what exactly is actually happening in Xinjiang.
Do you think that the CCP is commiting human rights abuses or not?
Do think the CCP is colonialist or not?
Saying someone on the internet can't comment on things is ridiculous. Public opinion and online discourse can and have caused change. Not always for the better but it has.
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Or you could hold Chinese and Western governments (and their supporters) to the same high standards and criticise them when they do (and support) terrible things? Is that so difficult?
And yes, if you are able to take action (protesting, 'storming the cages' etc), then you should. But not everyone is in the position to do so, so it's not a failure if you aren't able to.
But failing to speak up and criticise the failings of ALL governments (and their respective supporters) IS wrong.
Edited - final paragraph wasn't needed.
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The shit CCP does is horrible, but honestly shut up and be a good citizen is probably what you'd do if you actually live in China. Its pretty sad but it is what it is.
Yeah, that was aimed at the Western CCP apologists, but I've removed it to avoid derailing the conversation.
Macau portuguese, Uighurs, Tibetans, all going to vanish. In the past countries have done that (Brazil have done this in the start of 20th century, when we had a non negligible part of the country talking nheengatu), but times have changed and it is sad to see China doing this now.
It is vile to you that people would call out genocide?
See, I don't think you hold that same standard for anything else. You don't go around calling people vile for talking about other injustices without backing the talk up with action in other contexts. I don't think you even hold yourself to that standard. You just really really hate it when people talk negatively about the Chinese government. I think you should start getting used to it because it's not going to stop so long as the CCP continues to be shit.
This entire post is ridiculous. I almost can't believe people are seriously engaging with this.
The fact that people are willing to stan for a government that does this...vile, just vile.
As opposed to all the China Understanders™ here who clearly have lived for years in China? Get real, 90% of this thread are uper middle class anglophones who get their China news from NYT, The Economist, and Adrian Zenz.
I fully admit I'm a banana, but if this is not enough for your idpol, how's this? My grandparents' generation were repressed by the CPC during the Cultural Revolution. They were not KMT-aligned but not exactly CPC-aligned ether. I was not raised to hate my origin country, unlike your standard gusano immigrant family; my family is sad about some of their history but the immigrant experience is "survival by any means necessary", and they have followed this idea to the letter. We don't bitch and moan online, we simply take action. How many people in this thread have "skin in the game", do you think? Maybe we should open a poll. No one can comment on China news on Restetera unless they have something at stake.
You have no fucking idea who you're dealing with. Argue the logical merits of your case or shut it. Trust me, if I wanted to play oppression Olympics with you people I would win 99 times out of 100. I have no interest in games with no challenges, and oppression Olympics with Resetera.com China Understanders™ would be like playing DOTA 2 against babies. Back the fuck off "aznpxdd".
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I reckon at this point there's no going back for any of the minorities under the CCP.
Simply can't imagine the regime would ever walk back on their recent human rights violations.
An outside intervention, either military or economic, would probably heighten nationalism, thus leading them to double-down on the abuse.
With that said, there needs to be a direct and tangible response to the CCP. Sanctions need to be levied.
Simply can't imagine the regime would ever walk back on their recent human rights violations.
An outside intervention, either military or economic, would probably heighten nationalism, thus leading them to double-down on the abuse.
With that said, there needs to be a direct and tangible response to the CCP. Sanctions need to be levied.
<insert quote from intellectuals praising Stalin or Hitler>
Yeah it happenned , happens today and will continue to happen.
You don't get to decide who gets to comment on something. What you are doing is exactly what the CCP does to try to discredit criticism. The CCP deserves all the criticism it gets.
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As an immigrant myself, I don't see how being an immigrant has anything to do with criticizing CCP's actions when warranted?
I was not the one who started calling people's credentials into question.
My ethos was challenged. I responded in kind. I note you did not rush to my defense, but have decided now of all times is where we need to defend freedom of expression. The implication was obvious. I was a "westerner" who didn't "understand shit" and that my relatives' lived-in experiences are not substantial grounds for my stance. If you have a more charitable read, please, do share. I'm very curious if you actually read it another way or if you're deliberately ignoring the context here just to snipe at me.
See above.
My identity was challenged. I defended my credentials using rhetoric, as is fair.
I notice you have a habit of not reading context cause this is not the first time I had to refer you to an earlier point in the conversation chain.
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Apropos of nothing, since apparently this is what the audience wants.
CCP BAD
CCP BAD
CCP BAD
UYGHUR GENOCIDE
WINNIE THE POOH
TIENANMEN SQUARE
CCP BAD
With the moderators' permission I will post this bit in all future China threads so as to remind the good people here that CCP BAD, cause they forget it so easily. BTW when are we banning Genshin Impact? I'm uncomfortable seeing Western gamers deceived by cute anime ladies (and guys) into funding genocide.
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Nice one Encephalon, you really showed the CPC apologists who's boss.
if we just keep owning the apologists we'll liberate both the border camps and the Xinjiang region! Come on everyone keep owning every apologist you can find.
God you people aren't event worth the pejorative of 白左. Yeah look it up you anglophones, I know you want to. Ever since you guys learned the word "tankie", you've been dying for another phrase to signal to your ingroup.
I recommend Yabla for Chinese-English but Google works fine as well.
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CCP shills got offended by the criticism xi jinping and his crew get here. They might say otherwise, but they get in these types of threads and always try to defend the CCP.
Idk, personally I wouldn't come rushing to defend Xi or the CCP at the same time they're conducting a live genocide even if I took issue with ERA members using the "tankie" wording
trying to muddy the water with "the US is also bad" comes across as either being a useful idiot for the CCP or as trying to defend their interests
trying to muddy the water with "the US is also bad" comes across as either being a useful idiot for the CCP or as trying to defend their interests
How do you defend genocide, holocaust, or otherwise deplorable, horrific ethnic cleansing? What bizarre mental gymnastics are required to do that?
Also, posting straight up propaganda about USSR. I grew up in that soviet shithole and the only people who dare defend that fucked in the head system were the ones who were the most corrupt – stealing and lying with impunity. All I remember is the poverty, the hunger, the rampant alcoholism (used to suppress the first two listed items), the deceitfulness, and the systematic corruption. There are not many things that make me angry, but ill-informed or paid off people who are somehow misty-eyed nostalgics over it all really trigger me.
User banned (1 week): Whataboutism
Something a lot of Americans are ignorant about is the dialectic, just adopting the will of the American empire without an ounce of self reflection, just slop it up and propagate the empire's rhetoric against a powerful country that is diametrically opposed to western hegemony. I mean, it's either that or one way or another, either intentionally or otherwise you support and like American/western hegemony and are willing to dismiss the very real fact that America is without question the biggest threat to peace around the world.
I believe that the Ughyur people are being oppressed in China. I think it's terrible, I also think the evidence supports that it doesn't remotely hold a candle to what's happening in Gaza or what America did to Iraq, and you're probably going to have a very difficult time proving otherwise. So if you live in the imperial core and you're spending all your time worrying about what China is doing to Muslim people while spending very little time worrying about what your own country or the country that your country is allied with is doing, which also happens to be worse, maybe reflect on that or just continue to be a liberal and be anathema to me.
I believe that the Ughyur people are being oppressed in China. I think it's terrible, I also think the evidence supports that it doesn't remotely hold a candle to what's happening in Gaza or what America did to Iraq, and you're probably going to have a very difficult time proving otherwise. So if you live in the imperial core and you're spending all your time worrying about what China is doing to Muslim people while spending very little time worrying about what your own country or the country that your country is allied with is doing, which also happens to be worse, maybe reflect on that or just continue to be a liberal and be anathema to me.
I was born in a former eastern bloc country(still live in it), and its very infuriating when someone would post apologia videos. The USSR invaded us and fucked the whole country up, but no man, some people are just following their ideology and dont care about that.
Why are we drawing comparisons to other atrocities? It's whataboutism at its best.
Yeah, this is the same thing as going into that "US bombed civilians, not terrorists in Afghanistan" thread and to start talking about how china is committing genocide. How these posters arent banned is mindblowing to me
The base assumption is that we're all white americans is what im getting from these kind of posters.
What may also be shocking, is that while two things can be bad, it's also possible for one bad thing to be worse than another.
I can see why you are confused, you edited out the first part of my post, apparently didn't read it either, which answers your question.
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