This is the best primer on China and how the Chinese economy works I’ve ever read. The point you make about China being essentially a federated system (much like the US) is something Westerns need to hear.
the massive rise in the chinese economy is at least in part because they were in such sad shape to begin with in 1980, kinda hard to understand why the guy in charge just before that miracle is on the money?
Thank you, very helpful. They are the narratives I come across in the West on alt media. Good idea to include ‘narrative’ #4 and its complete incoherence.
I would add the mainstream Western narrative, which combines elements of #2-4, but which is fear-mongering and/or moralising to lay the basis for increased Western belligerence and potential war. It depends on claims of Uighur genocide and CPC militarism, a version of the War on (of) Terror, based on the narrative that our narrow, flimsy and fast-disappearing democratic rights in the West are threatened by outside forces.
In order to propagandise us with the ideology of Western supremacy, to garner our support and take sides in the imperialist rivalry, everything about China must be misrepresented!
I think you are soft pedalling what is happening in China. My wife was in Beiing last year with our kids. In public toilets there you have to show your face to a camera. Only after she was identified did she get toilet paper. Another friend who is married to a Chinese and since 20 years lives in South China told me of absolutely insane Covid restrictions. After a number of people burned in a high rise that had been welded shut for quarantine reasons millions went into the streets with white papers to protest. Why white paper? Write anything anti-regime and off you go.
Finally about Xinjiang: that is absolutely horrific what is happening there. Ok it is not mailand China. But still. Horrific totalitarian control. Huge concentration camps to sininizise the minorities. Kasakhs from the Mongolian province of Ulgi who have relatives over the border have told me the details. Biggest mistake of the Chinese authorities was to also target the Kasakhs as they have relatives abroad.
This is the best primer on China and how the Chinese economy works I’ve ever read. The point you make about China being essentially a federated system (much like the US) is something Westerns need to hear.
I hope you are able to promote this piece.
First rate!
living in taiwan, i know from conversations with my students that the public school system was
effusive in its description of the horrors of the cultural revolution.
when kissinger was sent to china, how responsible for the current market sized beast are the hidden
controllers of banks today.
using russya as an example, clearly when the mask is removed, the mafia, the family businesses
are dragged into the light.
back to taiwan, it is known that companies moved their main production facilities from this island
to the mainland for all its advantages in the past. currently the local propaganda outfits
express facilities being built in taiwan and abroad. attempts, it is their challenge to find
populations that can support high technology production.
another theory; china was doing so well 2019, that someone made the decision to poison the well
and link a plandemic to their country.
here in taiwan, the suffering generated fallout that is still being resolved, business locations
in formerly high-rent areas have not been replaced.
another anecdote, the taiwanese with money, seek to spend it elsewhere..
another anecdote; 2023 i was contacted by email and social media by chinese recruiters.
in my over 20 years experience of teaching english, first time it happened.
the massive rise in the chinese economy is at least in part because they were in such sad shape to begin with in 1980, kinda hard to understand why the guy in charge just before that miracle is on the money?
Thank you, very helpful. They are the narratives I come across in the West on alt media. Good idea to include ‘narrative’ #4 and its complete incoherence.
I would add the mainstream Western narrative, which combines elements of #2-4, but which is fear-mongering and/or moralising to lay the basis for increased Western belligerence and potential war. It depends on claims of Uighur genocide and CPC militarism, a version of the War on (of) Terror, based on the narrative that our narrow, flimsy and fast-disappearing democratic rights in the West are threatened by outside forces.
In order to propagandise us with the ideology of Western supremacy, to garner our support and take sides in the imperialist rivalry, everything about China must be misrepresented!
Thanks for the long post! Perhaps China is like the EU, a regional power that sits on top of a tree of more local governments.
I think you are soft pedalling what is happening in China. My wife was in Beiing last year with our kids. In public toilets there you have to show your face to a camera. Only after she was identified did she get toilet paper. Another friend who is married to a Chinese and since 20 years lives in South China told me of absolutely insane Covid restrictions. After a number of people burned in a high rise that had been welded shut for quarantine reasons millions went into the streets with white papers to protest. Why white paper? Write anything anti-regime and off you go.
Finally about Xinjiang: that is absolutely horrific what is happening there. Ok it is not mailand China. But still. Horrific totalitarian control. Huge concentration camps to sininizise the minorities. Kasakhs from the Mongolian province of Ulgi who have relatives over the border have told me the details. Biggest mistake of the Chinese authorities was to also target the Kasakhs as they have relatives abroad.