Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread!
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Yeah, that’s great. The only issue I would have is that if you are mentioning the US, then your audience is probably Amerikans, who are very Sinophobic.
But considering that China is getting a lot of good rep, then I think it’s fine to use it as an example.
If you want to drive the point home, why not ask a concrete question like “how did China go from a nation of starving farmers to a global powerhouse in a couple of generations if it wasn’t socialism?” after your definition of Capitalism.
Fair point, I’ll try to keep that in mind. Could probably apply to imperial core audiences in general, asking a rhetorical question like that. Or elsewhere if somebody is being Sinophobic.
I think the phrasing is also general enough about the principles we went over concerning capitalism that “In the capitalist US” could be replaced with “In capitalist Canada” or EU or whatever and still be accurate. It might not land as hard if someone is in an area where unions are stronger, but my impression is that although organized labor is stronger in some parts of the imperial core than others, it’s also been in decline for a while, owed largely to it only having achieved buffer status rather than controlling the state.
That’s a good point.
Adding to your point, in a place with strong unions, maybe it’s good to question why things keep getting worse even with union protection. Unions in Capitalism is just delaying the inevitable (the tendency for the rate of profit to fall).
The Nordic countries are seeing this happen in real time.
i think what’s interesting is that the thick veil of misinfo was super strong in internet/west in 2010s simply because… whatever interactions westerners had with mainlanders was very limited, esp thru internet, and it was really extraordinarily easy to think of them as faceless and unreal if there god forbid were any users on western internet (great firewall is such a benefit to PRC it’s not even funny anymore).
but because of how xhs and rednote became actual things you could use if not the very small flux of people being exposed thru brief tiktok ban, people actually saw chinese as real people and not just imagined suffering drones (before that i really legit think everyone thought that a chinese that was happy in mainland was bot or drone or spy, it doesn’t sound absurd to them, and even now that persists, and i’d say it’s still a majority now). now i feel you see a lot of anglosphere/diaspora chinese (and i suspect a lot are. CIA asset adjacent) making big fusses about social things there so that people never really think it’s too goodl… it feels as if a corrective measure or propaganda, especially since we know how controlled and astroturfed the net is in the west
i think the phase of chinamaxxing had a peak but is now going to dip or plateau if we return to the normal state esp of little exposure or organic interest in PRC, and i’m rather sad the mainstream opinion will revert into the programming we used to have once more. fingers crossed the bigger push and continued huge growth of PRC continues to make containing the china good narrative impossible, even in spite of whatever mediastorm they conjure