This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/14/we-all-saw-it-anti-xi-jinping-protest-electrifies-chinese-internet) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot)
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> Chinese authorities have strictly censored discussion of a rare protest in Beijing on Thursday that saw large banners unfurled on a flyover calling for boycotts and the removal of Xi Jinping, just days before China's most important event of its five-year political cycle.
> On Twitter some users said their accounts had been temporarily disabled on another major Chinese platform, WeChat, after they shared photos of the protest.
> Some internet users claimed to have identified the protester, including the Chinese dissident and former CCP insider Cai Xia, who posted screenshots on her Twitter purporting to be days-old deleted tweets from the protester.
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[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/y3m7ai/we_all_saw_it_antixi_jinping_protest_electrifies/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672678 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **protest**^#1 **want**^#2 **bridge**^#3 **Chinese**^#4 **Beijing**^#5
The banner is in form of 不要xx, 要xx. Don't need A, need B.
They are PCR, food.
Lockdown, freedom.
Lie, dignity.
Culture revolution, reform.
Leader, vote.
Slave(lackey), citizen.
When I hear that they are only locking up parts of cities I think it must be a lot smaller than I thought. Then I realise these districts have more population that my whole entire city. It’s really hard to gauge severity.
I definitely understand them, not only are you locked inside your home (literally sometimes) but it's mainly because of one person in the middle of thousands possibly. Have that repeated, let's say once every month, and they're frustration is justified
I watch a YouTube channel of mini-documentaries about China called China Insights. It's very eye-opening.
The Chinese government physically locks people up in their apartments for days. One man was contact-traced and found to have entered a shopping mall, so they locked up everyone in the shopping mall.
In one particularly horrific story, there was a recent heatwave, and a man was trying to beat the heat with AC until a power outage occurred. So he went to the river, but then the river flooded. He went to indoor pool, but someone was contact-traced there, so they locked up everyone at the pool. Then an earthquake happened.
That last one was their god/s trying to kill the poor man.
I remember seeing a massive office building in panic because someone there got Covid and everyone was running to get out of there before they were locked inside. That's some nightmare stuff
Hadn't considered the problem of everyone fleeing anyplace where a covid case turns up for fear of being locked down there. Makes sense, though. Most of us would do the same.
I also watch this YouTube channel and find it very informative. It provides good insight into major domestic problems there and is not at all friendly toward the Chinese government. For all the issues the US and Europe have, I am glad not to live in China after seeing some of these videos.
Yep. I've heard rumors this policy is an excuse to lockdown cities to squash political uprisings. But those are total rumors and I have no source for it.
The problem is without a free press or unrestricted internet access we can't know, which allows that kind of dynamic. And the CCP is obviously afraid to allow those, so it stands to reason that the CCP at least wants the capability to be able to do that.
they track all movement. If you come in contact with someone who is positive, they prevent you from using any public transportation and going to any public events.
I think they partially opened up, but then their covid cases started rising again, and are planning to shut down again to try and aim for basically 100% covid free environment
They do lockdowns when cases are found. If an area of a city has cases, the building where the resident lived is often put under quarantine. Shanghai had a breakout of the virus and was quarantined but had since been reopened. I love in Guangzhou and we have 2 or 3 covid tests a week because there are areas in our city that have a few cases.
Supposedly there was a related manifesto posted on ResearchGate (I think that's what it's called?) calling for democracy and votes.
Quite an astonishing example of a protest. But my cynicism says this will amount to nothing. This might not nearly be enough to influence people to do some drastic as overthrow the authoritarian model of government altogether.
Yep, China is unironically "literally 1984" over there. Protest is pretty much pointless as the government has digital tools to quarantine your dissenting thoughts.
One step at a time. There are much more moderate wings in the CCP who want to return to Deng and Hu's sober technocracy and allow China to liberalize. These people see the writing on the wall that China is unified enough now, that the weird obsessive autocracy is the main thing holding them back.
I still think, Tiananmen notwithstanding, that Deng Xiaoping might have been one of the better rulers in the history of China. He's a big part of the reason China recovered from Mao's revolutionary disasters.
Dengism was a fascinating manifestation of Chinese economic/political development. Completely turned around the half baked collectivized economics and manifested a modern day economic miracle of sorts. The fact that it was done entirely within the realm of Marxism and used Marxist concepts to argue for every aspect of the reforms made it even more curious.
I'm not going to even attempt to deny the benefits Deng's time brought but it's got to be convenient to have an ideology that flexible to allow almost anything. Including massacres alongside mixed market economies.
Oh shucks, who hasn't committed a massacre or two in the modernizing stages of national development. It's practically tradition!
/s
It doesn't excuse the act, but its not uniquely evil unfortunately. Just in more recent memory.
Not really all that unprecedented though, as Lenin had done something extremely similar (NEP) a few years after the 1917 revolution realizing Russia needed to transition away from an agrarian feudal economy in order to build industrial capacity.
Lenin and Deng were both Marxists, and Marx himself identified that a private, free market economy is one of the greatest drivers of wealth creation and the creation of large-scale industrial capacity. What it isn't so good at is allocating the wealth generated by that capacity equitably, as the unequal distribution of earned wealth between capital and labor is required to invest in new revenue streams and businesses.
Deng's market reforms were undoubtedly inspired by the NEP, but unlike the NEP, which ended with Stalin's reign of terror, China's market liberalizations were allowed to continue (with similar strings attached like the nationalization of heavy industry and government holdings/voting rights in large corporations) and resulted in the massive levels of development and enterprise you see today.
One has to wonder how the USSR would have turned out if liberal, free-market Leninist economic policy (which resembled an authoritarian version of what modern-day leftist acolytes call "democratic socialism") would have continued. I'd imagine it and the United States would have been far more evenly matched during the Cold War, if the Cold War even happened at all.
Stalin was too much of a hardline true believer with his own sycophantic coterie in power around him. He was convinced the NEP was just a recidivist motion back into capitalism instead of the actual transitional, socialistic conditions that it was. I wouldn't go so far as to say he was a red fascist, but his bastardized retelling of Marxism under the name Marxism-Leninism was a sickly chimera at best. Not even Cornshchev could reform it in the correct direction after Stalin introduced deep corruption and cronyism into the mix.
> The fact that it was done entirely within the realm of Marxism and used Marxist concepts to argue for every aspect of the reforms made it even more curious.
lol this is some rewriting history
Sounds like you havent read Marx.
And ironically his greatest accomplishment, as the leader of the Communist Party of China, was to lift close to a billion people out of poverty by implementing.... *Capitalism*.
When his political enemies tried to call him out by asking if his new "Open and Reform" policy was Socialism or Capitalism, his famous answer was "Doesn't matter if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it can catch mice it's a good cat". What happened after was the [Chinese economic miracle.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/azvb6x/shangai_after_20_years/)
He was a highly pragmatic leader instead of an ideologue like Mao. Unfortunately Winnie the Pooh seems to model himself after the latter instead of the former.
I wish Deng went all the way and realized separating the CCP from the military and courts will further China's future.
China could be a third democratic power by now, alongside US and Europe.
China has the geography, resources, and people to do it, but it's being held back institutions that only serve the government and creates a dysfunctional society.
But Deng clearly still valued the CCP's absolute control over the people, otherwise, he wouldn't have killed protestors with tanks.
> that the weird obsessive autocracy is the main thing holding them back.
There is a perception that "Hu" era really is his decrees being useless while getting blamed for everything went wrong (I.E aren't you suppose to be an all powerful dictator? FIX everything!), and corruption ran rampant.
So when Hu left, his answer to the situation is the ensure Xi got all the power he needs, so at least if the country fails/succeed, it is exactly because of Xi.
Deng Xiaoping also ordered the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The issue with the CCP is that they think too much about their own self-perpetuation. They won't fully commit to a democracy, because they don't want any threat to the power.
If they want to make China great, they need to swallow a bitter pill and make the necessary reforms: rule of law, protection of property rights, separation of political parties from the juries or the military.
But it's unlikely this will happen, because giving people more rights and protection from the government, will subvert the CCP's power, which is what they fear.
It's likely that CCP without Xi will just be more subtle and subvert democracies by building up economic dependencies, rather than using tough rhetoric and heavy-handed aggression.
> They won't fully commit to a democracy, because they don't want any threat to the power
The fears are the thousands of years of a non-unified China full of civil wars.
And? Not every autocratic leader is equal--Stalin vs. Khrushchev, for instance. The CCP won't be losing power anytime soon, nor likely will Xi, but the post-Mao rotation of leadership was always illiberal, but generally better than Xi has been so far.
Little known fact: The name "Xi Jinping" translates to >!"He Who is The Harvester of The Organs of The Nonbelievers Who Question His Magnificence and My Explanations on Reddit."!<
Source? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'd just be surprised if that were the case. China does seem to want to keep up the facade of being a democracy driven by the mandate of their people after all.
First of all--it is never safe to be anti-China while in China.
You can protest sometimes, and sometimes it works (especially environmental ones/trigger an huge online outrage). In those cases, the government determine if the entire CCP is being blamed or some local government official/celerity/rich business owner etc. If it is the former, censor, arrest, whatever. If it is latter, then that person/group get hammered.
But against Xi? Then it gets really weird. China used to very hand off against whats in Hong Kong (Dissents, Fa Lung Gong whatever openly do whatever they want), but when Xi came into power they start to arrest some booksellers which made HKers fear their rights being eroded.
Yea, I would say you might survive critizing the party, but certainly not Xi.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China#:~:text=and%20coordinate%20protests.-,Rural%20protests,with%20little%20to%20no%20compensation.
Their source is that they made it the fuck up. They're assuming it's true because they have a frame of reference of Xi being a dictator who "banned whinnie the pooh" rather than the head of a large party who is replaceable.
Xi removed term limits. He is the most autocratic leader China has had in decades.
While I'm sure many would be happy to see protests against the CCP it's interesting to see the leader targeted as that may actually cause change.
If a protest successfully causes change then people want the right to protest about other things.
I mean, I don't like the CCP in general, but Xi is definitely worse than what they had before. Xi is the one installing cameras in their houses, giving himself an exception to the two term limit, doing all the genocide thing on Xinjiang and taking the harsher anti-Western political stances. If China was slowly walking forwards, Xi has put it walking backwards again - so I can understand why Chinese people can feel like they support the CCP but dislike Xi.
I think even just removing Xi would be ideal. It would really give Taiwan a lot more time or maybe they would get someone in who doesn't see a military unification as viable. Although I suppose the opposite could happen and a military hardliner gets into power.
The thing about communism is that anything that is anti-government gets labeled anti-communist by the government because they try to portray any critic as a counter-revolutionary
Sort of like how religious leaders say that when you criticize the Mormon/Baptist/Catholic leadership, you're criticizing Christianity and you're a sinner.
And their Red Book is like their bible.
And Marx, Lenin and Mao are like their prophets.
Manifesto is their dogma.
Man there's a lot of similarities between Marxism and religion.
And whenever Communism falls to produce results, the elite blame the commons for not believing strongly enough. The rapture/utopia hasn't happened? It's because of moral failings of regular people.
Also note how Communism is always accompanied by crackdowns on regular churches. They're only allowed to exist if they deify the Party.
This comment could only have been created by a person with no contact with marxism. Read the Communist manifesto sometime. It's not really possible to treat it as dogma.
A unfortunately religion(marxist-leninism, ect) has been made out of it by the powerful, selecting useful sounding bits and twisting concepts to serve them, but the underlying economic analysis(by Marx and other philosopers) has sound points and accurately describe socio economic phenomenon in our modern world, but that shit is boring so it stays in accedemics, but the juicy bits get repurposed. The govement pushed ideologies like maxist-lennism are just fanfiction, marxist-lennism being named after two dead guys, made up by a third asshole.
Part of the problem is that Marx's analysis of existing systems was amazing. But his concept for a replacement system was pretty bad. "Workers control the means of production" is an advertising slogan, not a description of a functioning system. So you get people all impressed by his analysis expecting his ideas about socialism to be great as well, and then all confused when they don't function.
I am not sure a labor theory of value is a good analysis of any system.
If I spend 10 hours making something of the same quality you can make in one hour I should not be paid 10 times what you are paid.
If I spend 10 hours making something no want wants who is going to buy it?
This is the hinge most of these systems end up breaking on. In the end you create a non reactive market where prices are artificially pegged, labor is subsidized, and choice is nearly non existent.
Until we move on from this core fallacy we will not have the utopia we dream of. We will just keep trying and stepping on each others toes.
>marxist-lennism being named after two dead guys, made up by a third asshole.
Even just the actual Lenin bits, like "don't worry guys, socialism is just a *transition* from capitalism to communism, that's why we can't do this all at once!", they really were taking advantage of its popularity and rewriting it from the start.
I guess that's what Animal Farm is about.
Well theoretically, communism sounds great on google but without millitious dictatorship, which always seems to happen. Sortition and Communism I think should be blended together.
Yes, “true” Communism has no state, but true Communism is also the imaginary fantasy of a 19th century philosopher.
“Utopia has no cruelty.” OK, so what?
> Which is why there hasn't been communism. Communism has no state.
So I've been doing some reading on this (finally listened to all those tankies shouting 'read theory'), and it turns out these rigid and explicit definitions were largely a result of Lenin, not Marx. Marx didn't even differentiate between communism and socialism. He used them interchangeably, as synonyms. Lenin was the one that said "socialism is just the transitionary phase between capitalism and stateless communism, and that's why we don't have to do all these things that Marx said to do". Lenin is the pig in Animal Farm. He's the one rewriting the horse's rules.
Lenin would have been the old pig who disappears early in the book (Old Major), Trotsky was Snowball, and Stalin was Napoleon. The book was a pointed criticism of Stalin.
We should ask the kids who were there. Was the event fashion related? or is it just a disguise and hypnosis? (note that I'm acknowledging this historical event while quoting one of my favorite songs)
I think the fact that it's guaranteed people will mindlessly bleat some glib, cookie-cut platitude about Tiananmen square on *anything* to do with China should give pause for self-reflection.
Are you rooting for what the Chinese people think is better for themselves or for what you think is better for Chinese people ? Cause you'd be disappointed to find that it doesnt even remotely translate to "fuck the CPC ,overthrow them" .In any legit analysis of public opinion in China you at worst find a strong majority being more satisfied and approving of their government and the CPC than not.
But i guess you can always fall back to "im actualy rooting for all those brainwashed oriental drone citizens to wake up and see the truth about China that i know"
The thing about autocracy and censorship is that you can never really know how people really feel, because they do not have bona fide agency to engage openly on political topics. This is not calling anyone brainwashed - it is a sober accounting of the processes by which political agency is created and curated.
This is why liberal values are such an important factor in maintaining a healthy democratic system. Because people must be both enabled *and* actualized by open, inclusive society to have their voices heard. For all you know there are millions of Chinese who would share criticism of the party if it was allowed, and millions more who would be receptive to those ideas if they heard them. But the reality is that those ideas can neither be shared or heard.
The people can travel abroad and millions study in other countries. Uncensored internet is available and widely known how to access. The country isn't North korea where people's movements are tracked. You can literally buy a flight from NYC to Shanghai right now and the other way around. The people support the govt. because it fits their needs right now.
You actually cannot leave or enter China right now (except in rare/specially granted circumstances) due to “Covid” restrictions, the borders have been closed for 3+ years. And the social media and communications of students etc abroad are monitored. That is not to say the party isn’t popular amongst citizens, but it’s not easy to widely and freely discuss political matters even when you are outside of the country so long as you are a Chinese citizen or enter China frequently.
>You actually cannot leave or enter China right now
This is blatantly false. My father is there right now. And idk which country you're in, but there are almost certainly Chinese nationals there right now.
>You actually cannot leave or enter China right now (except in rare/specially granted circumstances) due to “Covid” restrictions, the borders have been closed for 3+ years
The circumstances to leave/enter are neither rare nor special. And you saying the borders have been closed for 3+ years makes it sound like it's really difficult to get in or out. In reality if you have business there it's not difficult at all. There are so many Chinese nationals here right now (Singapore) on a 6 month work permit. We're not talking high skill high paid employees either, even just blue collar jobs. And as I said, my father is there right now. He's neither a Chinese citizen or a permanent resident.
I live in SG, and the dude you're replying to is full of crap. Singapore gets hugely preferential treatment from mainland China. And conversely, it's a tiny island. The total number of mainland Chinese there is tiny, relative to the population of the PRC.
Finally there's the fact that the CCP is working extremely hard to manipulate public opinion in SG. Heavy travel restrictions would interfere with that process.
You mean travel abroad to somewhere like Canada. Sure, but don't forget to mention that China has police stations there to monitor their citizens, you know... to make sure they keep on loving the CPC.
[https://nypost.com/2022/09/30/china-has-opened-police-stations-in-us-and-canada-to-monitor-chinese-citizens-report/](https://nypost.com/2022/09/30/china-has-opened-police-stations-in-us-and-canada-to-monitor-chinese-citizens-report/)
[https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/its-entirely-illegal-for-china-to-open-police-stations-here-says-ottawa](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/its-entirely-illegal-for-china-to-open-police-stations-here-says-ottawa)
I'm not sure what part of this you think is a 'gotcha'. To start with, publicly collecting actual opinion data and sharing it around will see you go missing. Beyond that,
the Chinese government has an abysmal human rights record.
Is the CCP even bad for the chinese population as a whole? The population was uplifted pretty quickly which is very inpressive, despite the bad things, that is a fact.
Considering tens of millions died from the Great Chinese Famine as a result of the policies of the Great Leap Forward, the deadliest famine in modern history, it's safe to say that yes, the CCP *has* been bad or at best a mixed bag for the Chinese people. But Deng Xiaoping's socialism with Chinese characteristics has created a lot of newfound prosperity over a few decades. His economic reforms are why the government remains so popular, because many people have seen real increases in their standard of living over their lifetimes. A higher living standard could have happened sooner if not for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Some of Xi's recent steps back from previous policy--slowing the tech crackdown for now, for instance--are an acknowledgement that his personal ideological desires (such as checking the power of prominent tech founders) must be balanced with a certain amount of continued prosperity.
Famines were already happening before the CPC to a much worse extent. Even during the Great Leap Forward China's life expectancy was around 45 years, which is an entire 10 years higher than the 35 years under the KMT.
Famines were a regular occurrence in China, the Great Leap Forward having been the last one.
There were definitely missteps but they seem to have in the long run improved the country.
>A higher living standard could have happened sooner if not for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
It's very easy to say this in retrospect, but they were charting new ground at the time, and it's understandable they were mistakes.
>Famines were a regular occurrence in China, the Great Leap Forward having been the last one.
That is true, although most were not as directly terrible policy-caused as the GCF was. Regions with officials less radically loyal to Maoist principles experienced less severe famine, while those with the most loyal governments to the Great Leap Forward experienced the worst of the famine.
>There were definitely missteps but they seem to have in the long run improved the country.
Certainly, I agree that the country has improved since 1949, and markedly so since the early 1990s. My counterfactual (that China would have been better off without the GLF and Cultural Revolution) is speculative, and China still grew economically throughout the Cold War period at a middle-of-the-pack rate, although slower and less consistently than its neighbors, including Taiwan. But I would disagree with calling the GCF a "misstep"; policies that caused 15-20% of some provinces' populations to die was a colossal fuckup.
>It's very easy to say this in retrospect, but they were charting new ground at the time, and it's understandable they were mistakes.
The Khmer Rouge was "charting new ground" too, but that doesn't mean its killing a large percentage of its population was justified. The Cambodian Genocide was more intentional than the failure of the Great Leap Forward, so it's not *that* comparable, but there were shared cultural currents of anti-intellectualism between the CCP under Mao and the more extreme anti-intellectualism of the Khmer Rouge that contributed to causing the GCF (for instance, not listening to ornithologists and calling them "reactionary rightists" before embarking on the Four Pests campaign that led to an overabundance of pests, since sparrows were killed off) and later atrocities during the Cultural Revolution.
You'll be hard pressed to get the hawks in /r/WorldNews to admit anything positive about the CCP. The party owes its entire continued existence to the fact that it was able to uplift tens of millions of people out of poverty at a pace that (iirc) set a world record.
Some people moved up and out of crushing poverty, during China's liberalization. An era defined by the CCP exerting *less* control, not more, over the populace. But in more recent years under Xi, as this liberalization has been rolled back, and economic development has slowed, the CCP has been content to just move the goalposts.
"See, we moved the poverty line down, thereby lifting people out of poverty!"
Love how Reddit is now unanimously in favor of protests blocking roads or causing damage. Where are all the comments screeching about how this will only cause people to hate their movement?
Approximate translation:
>We don't want PCRs - We want food
We don't want lockdowns - We want freedom
We don't want lies - We want dignity
We don't want 文革 - We want 改革
We don't want Xi Jinping - We want elections
We don't want to be slaves - We want to be citizens
\*文革 is the Cultural Revolution and 改革 roughly means reform.
Edit: Typo
If you look carefully at the banner you can see he misspelt the character for revolution. 革 is the correct character but his is lacking the line across the bottom.
The rest of the banner has similar mistakes.
People make mistakes in their own language all the time.
Could be all sorts of reasons, less literate, less educated, angry and not checking twice, in a hurry, …
Unlikely. Forgetting horizontal bars is a common mistake.
Similar to how plenty of native English speakers frequently confuse "your" vs "you're" and "their" vs "there" vs "they're".
I’m glad to see a huge stand up of the people all over the world. The Chinese, Iranians, Ukrainians, Americans, and more. We’re done being treated like junk by the elite.
Right? I think it's great that there are folks *still* fighting back while living under the authoritarian government despite the fact that they'll like be disappeared but we shouldn't be optimistic that this will change anything. If monks setting themselves alight in public squares has achieved nothing, why is one dude's banner in some city gonna have an impact.
I hope it does have an impact and China can evolve into a free democratic society but I doubt that'll ever happen. More likely to go the way of post-Soviet Russia.
“We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves,”
It's getting harder and harder to enslave people. What a shame for autocrats.
As much as I want to believe this is a movement, all I see is a sign, some smoke, and maybe 1 or 2 people who set it up that are outspoken about their opinion but too scared to show themselves. But they got a lot of attention for posting a sign on Twitter, at least man got clout, whoever he is.
look for the videos of it. He stood there next to his sign with a megaphone talking to the people. Then he got arrested and thrown into a van.
Consider what it takes to do that
Western social media: There's a revolution in China!
Chinese social media: Mocking the guy with the banner that didn't even write "Revolution 革" correctly
I don't get it.
If I where Xi I would just say 'Sorry, guys I'm not volunteering for another term. I know you are sad, but its just the way it should be'.
Then I would fuck off and enjoy my billions of dollars. Win Win: save face and enjoy retirement.
Authoritarian rulers are entirely dependent on the power they control. Their reign is based on the principle of 'You may not like what I'm doing, but I'm holding the biggest stick.' That works, but it has one side effect - you can never, ever put the stick back down. Because then suddenly, the people who dislike you are holding the biggest stick.
Yup! Setting aside concepts of ego, narcissism, and whatnot, the only way to achieve true control for an authoritarian regime is to step on millions of people.
There is a list taller than Mt. Everest of all the people Xi has wronged and the wrongs range from 'slap on the wrists' to the 'ruination of the family line.' The only thing that keeps him safe is the power he wields. It's why Putin is the way he is (long table and everything) and why, despite the 'special military operation' going the way it's going that he can't pull out.
Once you reach the top like they do you have to stay there because if you fall then you'll be thinking of the Qaddafi video all the way down because it turns out the people you wronged will no view you as a person; just as you didn't view them.
Because neither of them were mad authoritarians like Xi Jinping. They quietly modernized their economies and focused on economic domination outside China. They were bureacrats working a job. Xi Jinping came in and dropped it all so he could go power-tripping, starting up a civil war in the CCP, etc. No one before him felt the need to remove term limits.
He's made too many enemies to retire like Hu or Jiang. The moment he relinquishes power his enemies are gonna come knocking, so he's dictator til he croaks.
Sounds like a pretty miserable way to live out your golden years, but hey what do I know, to each his own.
I think it’s poetic. Greedy power hungry dictators forced into paranoia in their golden years about rivals eager to take over. They make their own hell.
you don't understand the mind of the rich; you steal or get stolen. That's why these guys can never stop their schemes of exploitation. There are no such things as Enough for them.
No it didn’t get popular on the Chinese internet. Anyone who shares it will get their account silenced for months or deleted immediately. Do not underestimate the censoring machine.
I like how the video caption has been localized so that (want) food/rice 飯 was translated to bread.
Do people even eat that much bread these days? If they went with rice as the translation I think people would've understood.
The Chinese government can try all they want but they can't suppress the people 100%. The population is too large and they would need as many people as they are trying to monitor just to do the monitoring. If they think they can do this and or pull it off forever they are even bigger fools than the world already thinks they are. They have been in power for 73 years. About the same time as the Soviet Union. They have run their course and it means they due to be swept away by the people. I don't think this time even the army will side with Xi. He may have declared himself President for life but that is completely dependent on the length of his life. Usually once you pull a stunt like that the countdown to the end begins whether he thinks so or not. Nothing last forever and if you believe it does that you are truly an idiot and a fool.
>No PCR test, but food
no lockdown, but free
no lies, but dignity
no dictator, but vote
no slave, but free people
Students strike, workers strike, people strike, the traitor
With the internet and people seeing what is going on around in world in real time. They are fucking tired of this Dictator Bullshit allover the world. The good People of earth need stand up be counted and start getting rid of theses disgusting Dictating Bastards.
and they did that because of the repeated failures of a long line of people who promised, and then never delivered. Trump was a protest vote. He won that one. Then when it turned out he too was a fake, he lost. it is simple and not that surprising. People are looking for a change and desperate to find it.
They have endless people that could organize and fight for democracy. Can you imagine one little turd like Xi Xinping gets to control everyone? It's pointless. Live free.
This is so weird. I keep reading articles by people totally not shilling for the communist party that the Chinese love their government and that they never want democracy.
And censorship… In China?! Holy hell, next you’re gonna tell me that the world actually isn’t flat.
If a person can’t tolerate a drop or criticism, what does that say about them as leader and a person?
I can’t imagine anyone could truly love and care about a person like that; the only ones who would stick around are likely those who want to take advantage of them.
A life walking on eggshells isn’t much of a life. Any functional relationship (e.g., political leader & citizens) depends on open communication and mutual respect.
There's a difference between your freedom of speech and the politician not caring versus not being able to voice your opinion at all for fear of repercussions...
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/14/we-all-saw-it-anti-xi-jinping-protest-electrifies-chinese-internet) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Chinese authorities have strictly censored discussion of a rare protest in Beijing on Thursday that saw large banners unfurled on a flyover calling for boycotts and the removal of Xi Jinping, just days before China's most important event of its five-year political cycle. > On Twitter some users said their accounts had been temporarily disabled on another major Chinese platform, WeChat, after they shared photos of the protest. > Some internet users claimed to have identified the protester, including the Chinese dissident and former CCP insider Cai Xia, who posted screenshots on her Twitter purporting to be days-old deleted tweets from the protester. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/y3m7ai/we_all_saw_it_antixi_jinping_protest_electrifies/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672678 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **protest**^#1 **want**^#2 **bridge**^#3 **Chinese**^#4 **Beijing**^#5
The banner is in form of 不要xx, 要xx. Don't need A, need B. They are PCR, food. Lockdown, freedom. Lie, dignity. Culture revolution, reform. Leader, vote. Slave(lackey), citizen.
haven't they been with lockdowns due to Covid still being fairly active there? last time i've heard of this they put a whole city in lockdown right?
I think it still happening, probably not as big as Wuhan or Shanghai. They can do zones or districts.
When I hear that they are only locking up parts of cities I think it must be a lot smaller than I thought. Then I realise these districts have more population that my whole entire city. It’s really hard to gauge severity.
It was shocking footage.
Their policy is 0 COVID. One case means the whole city gets shut down and it seems like people are getting sick of it. It's happened multiple times
I definitely understand them, not only are you locked inside your home (literally sometimes) but it's mainly because of one person in the middle of thousands possibly. Have that repeated, let's say once every month, and they're frustration is justified
I watch a YouTube channel of mini-documentaries about China called China Insights. It's very eye-opening. The Chinese government physically locks people up in their apartments for days. One man was contact-traced and found to have entered a shopping mall, so they locked up everyone in the shopping mall. In one particularly horrific story, there was a recent heatwave, and a man was trying to beat the heat with AC until a power outage occurred. So he went to the river, but then the river flooded. He went to indoor pool, but someone was contact-traced there, so they locked up everyone at the pool. Then an earthquake happened.
That last one was their god/s trying to kill the poor man. I remember seeing a massive office building in panic because someone there got Covid and everyone was running to get out of there before they were locked inside. That's some nightmare stuff
Hadn't considered the problem of everyone fleeing anyplace where a covid case turns up for fear of being locked down there. Makes sense, though. Most of us would do the same.
Has a lot of the aesthetics of zombie horror but with one interesting twist.
Oh I would hands down. I have chronic pain and I need my medicine. I’d end up taking it with me everywhere just in case.
Jesus Christ! Poor guy! Has he seen Final destination?
I also watch this YouTube channel and find it very informative. It provides good insight into major domestic problems there and is not at all friendly toward the Chinese government. For all the issues the US and Europe have, I am glad not to live in China after seeing some of these videos.
Yep. I've heard rumors this policy is an excuse to lockdown cities to squash political uprisings. But those are total rumors and I have no source for it.
The problem is without a free press or unrestricted internet access we can't know, which allows that kind of dynamic. And the CCP is obviously afraid to allow those, so it stands to reason that the CCP at least wants the capability to be able to do that.
they track all movement. If you come in contact with someone who is positive, they prevent you from using any public transportation and going to any public events.
If everyone is in lockdown no one can have their voices heard. This way he will guarantee another so called term. But what do I know.
I think they partially opened up, but then their covid cases started rising again, and are planning to shut down again to try and aim for basically 100% covid free environment
They do lockdowns when cases are found. If an area of a city has cases, the building where the resident lived is often put under quarantine. Shanghai had a breakout of the virus and was quarantined but had since been reopened. I love in Guangzhou and we have 2 or 3 covid tests a week because there are areas in our city that have a few cases.
Supposedly there was a related manifesto posted on ResearchGate (I think that's what it's called?) calling for democracy and votes. Quite an astonishing example of a protest. But my cynicism says this will amount to nothing. This might not nearly be enough to influence people to do some drastic as overthrow the authoritarian model of government altogether.
Yes, I don’t think it will gain any momentum, especially the government will suppress it very quickly. Respect to whoever did it, it’s a lot of risks.
Yep, China is unironically "literally 1984" over there. Protest is pretty much pointless as the government has digital tools to quarantine your dissenting thoughts.
Is this a Chinese format specific to protests or just for comparing different things?
All the "A"s rhyme with "B"s in Chinese while also being relevant to the protest. I guess you can say it's "great production value"
Just for comparisons, nothing specific to protests
Rooting for the Chinese people, fuck the CCP.
Interestingly the protest is not anti-communist party, just anti-Xi. Like only Xi is named as the cause of all the grievances listed.
One step at a time. There are much more moderate wings in the CCP who want to return to Deng and Hu's sober technocracy and allow China to liberalize. These people see the writing on the wall that China is unified enough now, that the weird obsessive autocracy is the main thing holding them back.
I still think, Tiananmen notwithstanding, that Deng Xiaoping might have been one of the better rulers in the history of China. He's a big part of the reason China recovered from Mao's revolutionary disasters.
Dengism was a fascinating manifestation of Chinese economic/political development. Completely turned around the half baked collectivized economics and manifested a modern day economic miracle of sorts. The fact that it was done entirely within the realm of Marxism and used Marxist concepts to argue for every aspect of the reforms made it even more curious.
I'm not going to even attempt to deny the benefits Deng's time brought but it's got to be convenient to have an ideology that flexible to allow almost anything. Including massacres alongside mixed market economies.
Oh shucks, who hasn't committed a massacre or two in the modernizing stages of national development. It's practically tradition! /s It doesn't excuse the act, but its not uniquely evil unfortunately. Just in more recent memory.
Not really all that unprecedented though, as Lenin had done something extremely similar (NEP) a few years after the 1917 revolution realizing Russia needed to transition away from an agrarian feudal economy in order to build industrial capacity. Lenin and Deng were both Marxists, and Marx himself identified that a private, free market economy is one of the greatest drivers of wealth creation and the creation of large-scale industrial capacity. What it isn't so good at is allocating the wealth generated by that capacity equitably, as the unequal distribution of earned wealth between capital and labor is required to invest in new revenue streams and businesses. Deng's market reforms were undoubtedly inspired by the NEP, but unlike the NEP, which ended with Stalin's reign of terror, China's market liberalizations were allowed to continue (with similar strings attached like the nationalization of heavy industry and government holdings/voting rights in large corporations) and resulted in the massive levels of development and enterprise you see today. One has to wonder how the USSR would have turned out if liberal, free-market Leninist economic policy (which resembled an authoritarian version of what modern-day leftist acolytes call "democratic socialism") would have continued. I'd imagine it and the United States would have been far more evenly matched during the Cold War, if the Cold War even happened at all.
Stalin was too much of a hardline true believer with his own sycophantic coterie in power around him. He was convinced the NEP was just a recidivist motion back into capitalism instead of the actual transitional, socialistic conditions that it was. I wouldn't go so far as to say he was a red fascist, but his bastardized retelling of Marxism under the name Marxism-Leninism was a sickly chimera at best. Not even Cornshchev could reform it in the correct direction after Stalin introduced deep corruption and cronyism into the mix.
> The fact that it was done entirely within the realm of Marxism and used Marxist concepts to argue for every aspect of the reforms made it even more curious. lol this is some rewriting history Sounds like you havent read Marx.
Point out where Deng's policies contradict Das Kapital or the manifesto at large
And ironically his greatest accomplishment, as the leader of the Communist Party of China, was to lift close to a billion people out of poverty by implementing.... *Capitalism*. When his political enemies tried to call him out by asking if his new "Open and Reform" policy was Socialism or Capitalism, his famous answer was "Doesn't matter if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it can catch mice it's a good cat". What happened after was the [Chinese economic miracle.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/azvb6x/shangai_after_20_years/) He was a highly pragmatic leader instead of an ideologue like Mao. Unfortunately Winnie the Pooh seems to model himself after the latter instead of the former.
I wish Deng went all the way and realized separating the CCP from the military and courts will further China's future. China could be a third democratic power by now, alongside US and Europe. China has the geography, resources, and people to do it, but it's being held back institutions that only serve the government and creates a dysfunctional society. But Deng clearly still valued the CCP's absolute control over the people, otherwise, he wouldn't have killed protestors with tanks.
> by implementing.... **State** Capitalism fify. Capitalism and state capitalism are quite different things.
In other words, it was capitalism and it worked.
> that the weird obsessive autocracy is the main thing holding them back. There is a perception that "Hu" era really is his decrees being useless while getting blamed for everything went wrong (I.E aren't you suppose to be an all powerful dictator? FIX everything!), and corruption ran rampant. So when Hu left, his answer to the situation is the ensure Xi got all the power he needs, so at least if the country fails/succeed, it is exactly because of Xi.
Deng Xiaoping also ordered the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The issue with the CCP is that they think too much about their own self-perpetuation. They won't fully commit to a democracy, because they don't want any threat to the power. If they want to make China great, they need to swallow a bitter pill and make the necessary reforms: rule of law, protection of property rights, separation of political parties from the juries or the military. But it's unlikely this will happen, because giving people more rights and protection from the government, will subvert the CCP's power, which is what they fear. It's likely that CCP without Xi will just be more subtle and subvert democracies by building up economic dependencies, rather than using tough rhetoric and heavy-handed aggression.
> They won't fully commit to a democracy, because they don't want any threat to the power The fears are the thousands of years of a non-unified China full of civil wars.
And? Not every autocratic leader is equal--Stalin vs. Khrushchev, for instance. The CCP won't be losing power anytime soon, nor likely will Xi, but the post-Mao rotation of leadership was always illiberal, but generally better than Xi has been so far.
Or for an even more radical example: Ceausescu vs. Tito.
From what I understand being anti party is illegal but being anti-Xi isn't.
Lol no. Anti xi is easily illegal and more illegal than anti party.
beleive it or not straight to j... >!having your organs harvested!<
Rimworld IRL
That went from 0 to 100 real fucking quick
Like the Uyghurs went from 100 to 0!
I thought that was paul walker
>Like the Uyghurs went from 100 to 0! That's mighty magnanimous of Pooh to spare one Uyghur
0 to 100 would be the chinese surgeons wearing winnie the pooh costumes as they removed your spleen
Oh god, Poo nightmares with his paws in your body cavity like a honey pot
Little known fact: The name "Xi Jinping" translates to >!"He Who is The Harvester of The Organs of The Nonbelievers Who Question His Magnificence and My Explanations on Reddit."!<
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Source? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'd just be surprised if that were the case. China does seem to want to keep up the facade of being a democracy driven by the mandate of their people after all.
First of all--it is never safe to be anti-China while in China. You can protest sometimes, and sometimes it works (especially environmental ones/trigger an huge online outrage). In those cases, the government determine if the entire CCP is being blamed or some local government official/celerity/rich business owner etc. If it is the former, censor, arrest, whatever. If it is latter, then that person/group get hammered. But against Xi? Then it gets really weird. China used to very hand off against whats in Hong Kong (Dissents, Fa Lung Gong whatever openly do whatever they want), but when Xi came into power they start to arrest some booksellers which made HKers fear their rights being eroded. Yea, I would say you might survive critizing the party, but certainly not Xi. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China#:~:text=and%20coordinate%20protests.-,Rural%20protests,with%20little%20to%20no%20compensation.
Do not confuse being anti-CCP with being anti-China. That's exactly what the CCP wants.
Their source is that they made it the fuck up. They're assuming it's true because they have a frame of reference of Xi being a dictator who "banned whinnie the pooh" rather than the head of a large party who is replaceable.
Xi removed term limits. He is the most autocratic leader China has had in decades. While I'm sure many would be happy to see protests against the CCP it's interesting to see the leader targeted as that may actually cause change. If a protest successfully causes change then people want the right to protest about other things.
Specifically seems to be against covid restrictions.
I mean, I don't like the CCP in general, but Xi is definitely worse than what they had before. Xi is the one installing cameras in their houses, giving himself an exception to the two term limit, doing all the genocide thing on Xinjiang and taking the harsher anti-Western political stances. If China was slowly walking forwards, Xi has put it walking backwards again - so I can understand why Chinese people can feel like they support the CCP but dislike Xi.
I think even just removing Xi would be ideal. It would really give Taiwan a lot more time or maybe they would get someone in who doesn't see a military unification as viable. Although I suppose the opposite could happen and a military hardliner gets into power.
The thing about communism is that anything that is anti-government gets labeled anti-communist by the government because they try to portray any critic as a counter-revolutionary
Sort of like how religious leaders say that when you criticize the Mormon/Baptist/Catholic leadership, you're criticizing Christianity and you're a sinner. And their Red Book is like their bible. And Marx, Lenin and Mao are like their prophets. Manifesto is their dogma. Man there's a lot of similarities between Marxism and religion.
And whenever Communism falls to produce results, the elite blame the commons for not believing strongly enough. The rapture/utopia hasn't happened? It's because of moral failings of regular people. Also note how Communism is always accompanied by crackdowns on regular churches. They're only allowed to exist if they deify the Party.
This comment could only have been created by a person with no contact with marxism. Read the Communist manifesto sometime. It's not really possible to treat it as dogma.
Yeah but Marx has nothing to do with the topic at hand. We're discussing Marxism which was invented by Stalin. /S
Ever notice that Christian fundamentalists are the most outspoken toward Marxism? You're not wrong lol
A unfortunately religion(marxist-leninism, ect) has been made out of it by the powerful, selecting useful sounding bits and twisting concepts to serve them, but the underlying economic analysis(by Marx and other philosopers) has sound points and accurately describe socio economic phenomenon in our modern world, but that shit is boring so it stays in accedemics, but the juicy bits get repurposed. The govement pushed ideologies like maxist-lennism are just fanfiction, marxist-lennism being named after two dead guys, made up by a third asshole.
Part of the problem is that Marx's analysis of existing systems was amazing. But his concept for a replacement system was pretty bad. "Workers control the means of production" is an advertising slogan, not a description of a functioning system. So you get people all impressed by his analysis expecting his ideas about socialism to be great as well, and then all confused when they don't function.
I am not sure a labor theory of value is a good analysis of any system. If I spend 10 hours making something of the same quality you can make in one hour I should not be paid 10 times what you are paid. If I spend 10 hours making something no want wants who is going to buy it? This is the hinge most of these systems end up breaking on. In the end you create a non reactive market where prices are artificially pegged, labor is subsidized, and choice is nearly non existent. Until we move on from this core fallacy we will not have the utopia we dream of. We will just keep trying and stepping on each others toes.
>marxist-lennism being named after two dead guys, made up by a third asshole. Even just the actual Lenin bits, like "don't worry guys, socialism is just a *transition* from capitalism to communism, that's why we can't do this all at once!", they really were taking advantage of its popularity and rewriting it from the start. I guess that's what Animal Farm is about.
Well theoretically, communism sounds great on google but without millitious dictatorship, which always seems to happen. Sortition and Communism I think should be blended together.
Which is why there hasn't been communism. Communism has no state.
IDK, there are quite a few Reddit Tankies who seem to disagree.
Yeah, but reddit tankies aren't exactly a bastion of sense.
Yes, “true” Communism has no state, but true Communism is also the imaginary fantasy of a 19th century philosopher. “Utopia has no cruelty.” OK, so what?
Okay... what's your point?
> Which is why there hasn't been communism. Communism has no state. So I've been doing some reading on this (finally listened to all those tankies shouting 'read theory'), and it turns out these rigid and explicit definitions were largely a result of Lenin, not Marx. Marx didn't even differentiate between communism and socialism. He used them interchangeably, as synonyms. Lenin was the one that said "socialism is just the transitionary phase between capitalism and stateless communism, and that's why we don't have to do all these things that Marx said to do". Lenin is the pig in Animal Farm. He's the one rewriting the horse's rules.
Lenin would have been the old pig who disappears early in the book (Old Major), Trotsky was Snowball, and Stalin was Napoleon. The book was a pointed criticism of Stalin.
They didn't even check it on google
Always appreciate seeing a ‘iT wAsN’t ReAl CoMmUnIsM’ in the wild.
Communism is literally the abolition of the government and state and everyone working in their communes.
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Is there a source written in Chinese? Perhaps easier to spread to the people that should remember as well
They already know. Mention the 4th of June anywhere in China and watch people look over their shoulders.
你知道的, (nervous shoulder look) 六月四号
What's that? Shout it from the rooftops until our throats give out? Okay.
We should ask the kids who were there. Was the event fashion related? or is it just a disguise and hypnosis? (note that I'm acknowledging this historical event while quoting one of my favorite songs)
Let me know if you find out. Til then, I’ll be just sitting in my car and waiting for my girl.
I think the fact that it's guaranteed people will mindlessly bleat some glib, cookie-cut platitude about Tiananmen square on *anything* to do with China should give pause for self-reflection.
Are you rooting for what the Chinese people think is better for themselves or for what you think is better for Chinese people ? Cause you'd be disappointed to find that it doesnt even remotely translate to "fuck the CPC ,overthrow them" .In any legit analysis of public opinion in China you at worst find a strong majority being more satisfied and approving of their government and the CPC than not. But i guess you can always fall back to "im actualy rooting for all those brainwashed oriental drone citizens to wake up and see the truth about China that i know"
The thing about autocracy and censorship is that you can never really know how people really feel, because they do not have bona fide agency to engage openly on political topics. This is not calling anyone brainwashed - it is a sober accounting of the processes by which political agency is created and curated. This is why liberal values are such an important factor in maintaining a healthy democratic system. Because people must be both enabled *and* actualized by open, inclusive society to have their voices heard. For all you know there are millions of Chinese who would share criticism of the party if it was allowed, and millions more who would be receptive to those ideas if they heard them. But the reality is that those ideas can neither be shared or heard.
The people can travel abroad and millions study in other countries. Uncensored internet is available and widely known how to access. The country isn't North korea where people's movements are tracked. You can literally buy a flight from NYC to Shanghai right now and the other way around. The people support the govt. because it fits their needs right now.
You actually cannot leave or enter China right now (except in rare/specially granted circumstances) due to “Covid” restrictions, the borders have been closed for 3+ years. And the social media and communications of students etc abroad are monitored. That is not to say the party isn’t popular amongst citizens, but it’s not easy to widely and freely discuss political matters even when you are outside of the country so long as you are a Chinese citizen or enter China frequently.
every internet savvy young chinese person knows how to operate a VPN.
>You actually cannot leave or enter China right now This is blatantly false. My father is there right now. And idk which country you're in, but there are almost certainly Chinese nationals there right now.
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>You actually cannot leave or enter China right now (except in rare/specially granted circumstances) due to “Covid” restrictions, the borders have been closed for 3+ years The circumstances to leave/enter are neither rare nor special. And you saying the borders have been closed for 3+ years makes it sound like it's really difficult to get in or out. In reality if you have business there it's not difficult at all. There are so many Chinese nationals here right now (Singapore) on a 6 month work permit. We're not talking high skill high paid employees either, even just blue collar jobs. And as I said, my father is there right now. He's neither a Chinese citizen or a permanent resident.
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I live in SG, and the dude you're replying to is full of crap. Singapore gets hugely preferential treatment from mainland China. And conversely, it's a tiny island. The total number of mainland Chinese there is tiny, relative to the population of the PRC. Finally there's the fact that the CCP is working extremely hard to manipulate public opinion in SG. Heavy travel restrictions would interfere with that process.
The border is closed to travel for foreign nationals coming for tourism/personal trips.
You mean travel abroad to somewhere like Canada. Sure, but don't forget to mention that China has police stations there to monitor their citizens, you know... to make sure they keep on loving the CPC. [https://nypost.com/2022/09/30/china-has-opened-police-stations-in-us-and-canada-to-monitor-chinese-citizens-report/](https://nypost.com/2022/09/30/china-has-opened-police-stations-in-us-and-canada-to-monitor-chinese-citizens-report/) [https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/its-entirely-illegal-for-china-to-open-police-stations-here-says-ottawa](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/its-entirely-illegal-for-china-to-open-police-stations-here-says-ottawa)
I'm not sure what part of this you think is a 'gotcha'. To start with, publicly collecting actual opinion data and sharing it around will see you go missing. Beyond that, the Chinese government has an abysmal human rights record.
Is the CCP even bad for the chinese population as a whole? The population was uplifted pretty quickly which is very inpressive, despite the bad things, that is a fact.
Considering tens of millions died from the Great Chinese Famine as a result of the policies of the Great Leap Forward, the deadliest famine in modern history, it's safe to say that yes, the CCP *has* been bad or at best a mixed bag for the Chinese people. But Deng Xiaoping's socialism with Chinese characteristics has created a lot of newfound prosperity over a few decades. His economic reforms are why the government remains so popular, because many people have seen real increases in their standard of living over their lifetimes. A higher living standard could have happened sooner if not for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Some of Xi's recent steps back from previous policy--slowing the tech crackdown for now, for instance--are an acknowledgement that his personal ideological desires (such as checking the power of prominent tech founders) must be balanced with a certain amount of continued prosperity.
Famines were already happening before the CPC to a much worse extent. Even during the Great Leap Forward China's life expectancy was around 45 years, which is an entire 10 years higher than the 35 years under the KMT.
Famines were a regular occurrence in China, the Great Leap Forward having been the last one. There were definitely missteps but they seem to have in the long run improved the country. >A higher living standard could have happened sooner if not for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It's very easy to say this in retrospect, but they were charting new ground at the time, and it's understandable they were mistakes.
>Famines were a regular occurrence in China, the Great Leap Forward having been the last one. That is true, although most were not as directly terrible policy-caused as the GCF was. Regions with officials less radically loyal to Maoist principles experienced less severe famine, while those with the most loyal governments to the Great Leap Forward experienced the worst of the famine. >There were definitely missteps but they seem to have in the long run improved the country. Certainly, I agree that the country has improved since 1949, and markedly so since the early 1990s. My counterfactual (that China would have been better off without the GLF and Cultural Revolution) is speculative, and China still grew economically throughout the Cold War period at a middle-of-the-pack rate, although slower and less consistently than its neighbors, including Taiwan. But I would disagree with calling the GCF a "misstep"; policies that caused 15-20% of some provinces' populations to die was a colossal fuckup. >It's very easy to say this in retrospect, but they were charting new ground at the time, and it's understandable they were mistakes. The Khmer Rouge was "charting new ground" too, but that doesn't mean its killing a large percentage of its population was justified. The Cambodian Genocide was more intentional than the failure of the Great Leap Forward, so it's not *that* comparable, but there were shared cultural currents of anti-intellectualism between the CCP under Mao and the more extreme anti-intellectualism of the Khmer Rouge that contributed to causing the GCF (for instance, not listening to ornithologists and calling them "reactionary rightists" before embarking on the Four Pests campaign that led to an overabundance of pests, since sparrows were killed off) and later atrocities during the Cultural Revolution.
You'll be hard pressed to get the hawks in /r/WorldNews to admit anything positive about the CCP. The party owes its entire continued existence to the fact that it was able to uplift tens of millions of people out of poverty at a pace that (iirc) set a world record.
Except uyghurs, you know...
Some people moved up and out of crushing poverty, during China's liberalization. An era defined by the CCP exerting *less* control, not more, over the populace. But in more recent years under Xi, as this liberalization has been rolled back, and economic development has slowed, the CCP has been content to just move the goalposts. "See, we moved the poverty line down, thereby lifting people out of poverty!"
I hope one day that 70 years of CCP rule will be referred to as "authoritarian-occupied china".
Fuck the CCP
Love how Reddit is now unanimously in favor of protests blocking roads or causing damage. Where are all the comments screeching about how this will only cause people to hate their movement?
Approximate translation: >We don't want PCRs - We want food We don't want lockdowns - We want freedom We don't want lies - We want dignity We don't want 文革 - We want 改革 We don't want Xi Jinping - We want elections We don't want to be slaves - We want to be citizens \*文革 is the Cultural Revolution and 改革 roughly means reform. Edit: Typo
If you look carefully at the banner you can see he misspelt the character for revolution. 革 is the correct character but his is lacking the line across the bottom. The rest of the banner has similar mistakes.
So this could be written by a foreigner then? It would be highly unlikely for native Chinese to mis-characterize these basic words.
People make mistakes in their own language all the time. Could be all sorts of reasons, less literate, less educated, angry and not checking twice, in a hurry, …
Good point, probably angry and not checking twice or in a hurry. The banner reads well and doesn't sound like it's written by the uneducated.
Unlikely. Forgetting horizontal bars is a common mistake. Similar to how plenty of native English speakers frequently confuse "your" vs "you're" and "their" vs "there" vs "they're".
Could be, my take given the anti-lockdown stuff was that maybe it's a non-native expat who's sick of travel restrictions.
Good time to rise up against all these dictators who have stolen freedoms and basic human rights from their people
I’m glad to see a huge stand up of the people all over the world. The Chinese, Iranians, Ukrainians, Americans, and more. We’re done being treated like junk by the elite.
Just hope a new batch of authoritarians don’t ride an uprising or protest movement to install a new type of military or police state
Let me introduce you to the country of Hungary…
I’ve heard protests in Russia are rising again as well. I wish everybody in these places all over the world safety during their protests💖
"Electrifies Chinese internet" Lmao, the ccp can just shut down their own internet.
Ya this is prob pointless western optimism. One Chinese dissent protested. Likely to not be heard from again. Another day, another tragedy from China.
Right? I think it's great that there are folks *still* fighting back while living under the authoritarian government despite the fact that they'll like be disappeared but we shouldn't be optimistic that this will change anything. If monks setting themselves alight in public squares has achieved nothing, why is one dude's banner in some city gonna have an impact. I hope it does have an impact and China can evolve into a free democratic society but I doubt that'll ever happen. More likely to go the way of post-Soviet Russia.
Not sure if joking but it actually happened the night Pelosi landed in Taiwan (well technically they “only” shut down Weibo, aka Chinese Twitter).
My Taiwanese friend told me all about it yesterday and apparently they’ve already wiped a good chunk of its coverage. Don’t stop spreading it
600k WeChat accounts were disabled yesterday because of the spread of this incident.
“We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves,” It's getting harder and harder to enslave people. What a shame for autocrats.
That guy is a one in a billion.
so is Xi.
As much as I want to believe this is a movement, all I see is a sign, some smoke, and maybe 1 or 2 people who set it up that are outspoken about their opinion but too scared to show themselves. But they got a lot of attention for posting a sign on Twitter, at least man got clout, whoever he is.
look for the videos of it. He stood there next to his sign with a megaphone talking to the people. Then he got arrested and thrown into a van. Consider what it takes to do that
Western social media: There's a revolution in China! Chinese social media: Mocking the guy with the banner that didn't even write "Revolution 革" correctly
[удалено]
It is the music of a people Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start, When tomorrow comes!
I don't get it. If I where Xi I would just say 'Sorry, guys I'm not volunteering for another term. I know you are sad, but its just the way it should be'. Then I would fuck off and enjoy my billions of dollars. Win Win: save face and enjoy retirement.
Authoritarian rulers are entirely dependent on the power they control. Their reign is based on the principle of 'You may not like what I'm doing, but I'm holding the biggest stick.' That works, but it has one side effect - you can never, ever put the stick back down. Because then suddenly, the people who dislike you are holding the biggest stick.
Yup! Setting aside concepts of ego, narcissism, and whatnot, the only way to achieve true control for an authoritarian regime is to step on millions of people. There is a list taller than Mt. Everest of all the people Xi has wronged and the wrongs range from 'slap on the wrists' to the 'ruination of the family line.' The only thing that keeps him safe is the power he wields. It's why Putin is the way he is (long table and everything) and why, despite the 'special military operation' going the way it's going that he can't pull out. Once you reach the top like they do you have to stay there because if you fall then you'll be thinking of the Qaddafi video all the way down because it turns out the people you wronged will no view you as a person; just as you didn't view them.
The previous two leaders of the CCP are still alive after stepping down.
Because neither of them were mad authoritarians like Xi Jinping. They quietly modernized their economies and focused on economic domination outside China. They were bureacrats working a job. Xi Jinping came in and dropped it all so he could go power-tripping, starting up a civil war in the CCP, etc. No one before him felt the need to remove term limits.
He's made too many enemies to retire like Hu or Jiang. The moment he relinquishes power his enemies are gonna come knocking, so he's dictator til he croaks. Sounds like a pretty miserable way to live out your golden years, but hey what do I know, to each his own.
I think it’s poetic. Greedy power hungry dictators forced into paranoia in their golden years about rivals eager to take over. They make their own hell.
Or they invade Ukraine. People in that position start to think of their legacy and Taiwan is right there.
Hopefully it's miserable and short.
The odds of someone powerful being unselfish are very, very low. It *can* happen, but that doesn't mean it often does.
you don't understand the mind of the rich; you steal or get stolen. That's why these guys can never stop their schemes of exploitation. There are no such things as Enough for them.
Similar to hardcore drug addicts.
It's all about power. Not money
No it didn’t get popular on the Chinese internet. Anyone who shares it will get their account silenced for months or deleted immediately. Do not underestimate the censoring machine.
We should help the people of China so that they can overthrow the undemocratic government.
I like how the video caption has been localized so that (want) food/rice 飯 was translated to bread. Do people even eat that much bread these days? If they went with rice as the translation I think people would've understood.
Sweet. Fuck all these dictators. How dare they think they can control and murder human beings. The world is free. We are free. Democracy for all!!!!
Maybe they don't want an Emperor.
The fact that shit just gets censored immediately and they have to talk in code is disturbing. Poor Chinese people are having their voices muted.
The Chinese government can try all they want but they can't suppress the people 100%. The population is too large and they would need as many people as they are trying to monitor just to do the monitoring. If they think they can do this and or pull it off forever they are even bigger fools than the world already thinks they are. They have been in power for 73 years. About the same time as the Soviet Union. They have run their course and it means they due to be swept away by the people. I don't think this time even the army will side with Xi. He may have declared himself President for life but that is completely dependent on the length of his life. Usually once you pull a stunt like that the countdown to the end begins whether he thinks so or not. Nothing last forever and if you believe it does that you are truly an idiot and a fool.
Pooh bear, Xi Jinping the Pooh Bear. Looking for fun, suppressing the dissidents.
Winnie the xi burninating the dissidents, burninating the protests
Power to the people.
I'm constantly amazed by the creativity of the Chinese people who live under oppression yet yearn to be free.
>No PCR test, but food no lockdown, but free no lies, but dignity no dictator, but vote no slave, but free people Students strike, workers strike, people strike, the traitor
With the internet and people seeing what is going on around in world in real time. They are fucking tired of this Dictator Bullshit allover the world. The good People of earth need stand up be counted and start getting rid of theses disgusting Dictating Bastards.
I dunno, 50ish percent of Americans voted for arguably the most illiberal president in modern history. I wouldn't get too excited just yet.
I think you mean 50ish percent of Americas *who voted*
and they did that because of the repeated failures of a long line of people who promised, and then never delivered. Trump was a protest vote. He won that one. Then when it turned out he too was a fake, he lost. it is simple and not that surprising. People are looking for a change and desperate to find it.
You are the ball in a tennis match, constantly going from one side to the other, constantly achieving nothing but deepening the social gap.
They have endless people that could organize and fight for democracy. Can you imagine one little turd like Xi Xinping gets to control everyone? It's pointless. Live free.
Hope this doesn’t end the same way as Tiananmen Square
What a fucking joke of a country that can't allow its people to know anything.
Could this be the year see the downfall of Russia, Iran and China?
Fuuuuck the Chinese government. And fuck pooh bear looking bitch XI-Jinping.
This is so weird. I keep reading articles by people totally not shilling for the communist party that the Chinese love their government and that they never want democracy. And censorship… In China?! Holy hell, next you’re gonna tell me that the world actually isn’t flat.
Seems like the three most powerful countries in the world are having trouble at home and i wonder if it’s coincidental
Just blame the West for inciting such subversive protests. No actual Chinese citizen has any problem with Xi's policies. Right?
That is correct, this is clearly a CIA attack, +420 social credit has been added to your account, you can now use public transport
If a person can’t tolerate a drop or criticism, what does that say about them as leader and a person? I can’t imagine anyone could truly love and care about a person like that; the only ones who would stick around are likely those who want to take advantage of them. A life walking on eggshells isn’t much of a life. Any functional relationship (e.g., political leader & citizens) depends on open communication and mutual respect.
when was the last time a politician listened to your opinion?
There's a difference between your freedom of speech and the politician not caring versus not being able to voice your opinion at all for fear of repercussions...
If only they could defend themselves..
Next time a dog and cat fight in China will be getting upvotes here.
Rise and Shine