cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35822445
my family are Taiwanese-Americans. I was born in the US, but I grew up in a Taiwanese/Chinese household. I write both Taiwanese and Chinese because my grandparents were Chinese nationalists (KMT) who fought and lost to the communists and left China with Chiang Kaishek when he retreated to Taiwan. We’re from Guangdong.
Even though my grandparents spent most of their adult life in Taiwan and America, they still identify as Chinese. They still vote for the KMT and consider Taiwan a part of a democratic China, not the PRC but the ROC.
I don’t identify with an authoritarian China that suppresses freedom of speech, press and religion, commits cultural genocide against the Uyghurs, dilutes Tibetan culture and wants to annex democratic Taiwan. I wouldn’t like living in a country like that.
But that’s exactly what an uncle proposed me: some months ago he bought a house in Guangdong, a house he offers to our whole family. If I want, he says, I can live with him for free, he’s even offering me to let me live at his condo when he’s not in China (travels to America and Taiwan a lot).
I don’t see it: I’m politically active, actually support Taiwanese independence and I don’t believe I could keep my mouth shut if a Chinese starts telling me that Taiwan is a part of China every time I tell them I an actually Taiwanese. The conversation could go south really fast if they start to repeat communist propaganda about helping Uyghurs escape poverty (just an example out of several). I could land in jail.
My uncle says I should forget about politics and enjoy the scenery and local food. I still don’t see it.
Am I a moron? I’d only have to pay for the flight and food for as long as I live in China, a country cheaper than both Taiwan and the US
Already living in one…
Your grandparents were on the side of the owning class. Now it depends. Are you working class or owning class? If you’re owning class, don’t go. If you’re working class, go (and question what the owning class told you).
The authoritarian uniparty is the new owning class, functionally you still don’t have a say, just a different mouth telling you “they’re making decision in your interest”.
It’s the biggest false dichotomy on this planet statist capitalist and statis communism and the same as religious schisms, a disagreement over which elite should be deciding everything and which is going to face the wall.
Do that hardcore enough and you’ll get an elite which has decided to put all the other ones against the wall (pol pot).
You’re hastily jumping to the conclusion that the new thing is the same as the old thing just because it has some similarities.
Your example of religious schisms gives the game away, really, because every major religious schism I can think of did bring significant qualitative changes in the social organization of the societies that underwent them. For example, the ideological and philosophical basis of settlement in the United States was founded on the new sects of Protestantism that followed Calvinist influences. Their attitudes toward labor, property, the question of slavery, and many other political matters was distinct from the results you’d expect out of Catholic settlers, or any other religion. And that’s a difference in religion which, from a materialist perspective, is not even the primary thing that makes history move, but part of the ideological superstructure that serves to maintain the economic relations in a given society.
In the case of China: no, the “authoritarian uniparty” is not simply the new owning class. That’s not how the party works and it’s also not how class works. In fact, the statement “functionally you don’t have a say” is probably the most incorrect statement you can make about SWCC, because it’s a very practical system that, while it made a lot of compromises for the sake of reforms and opening up, it has always listened to input from the people. The way the entire CPC is structured is designed for that purpose and it gives its members ample room to have a say over the way things are run.
To think that the “authoritarian uniparty” was truly some kind of new owning class, you’d have to first explain how a political party that has its origins (and present support) in the peasantry and workers, comes to become the opposite thing entirely, a group that controls capital for the sake of producing more capital. That isn’t even a plausible statement to make of the ruling parties in Western imperialist countries: their ruling parties are organs of their respective ruling classes, international imperialist capitalists who use their states to increase their profits.
Is Xi Jinping answering to Chinese billionaires, structuring policy to serve their interests? And if he is, why do the billionaires allow the CPC to make each 5 year plan and the policies chosen to implement them based on the input from millions of party members, instead of receiving a policy plan from a billionaire operated think tank like they do in the West? Is it really all a big conspiracy?
Some resources:
You’re hastily jumping to the conclusion that the new thing is the same as the old thing just because it has some similarities.
Capitalist realism & imperialist realism and their consequences.
You can’t properly hate somewhere until you’ve lived there…
If you think you’ll be safe, then go. Travel broadens the mind, even if you go with preconceived ideas.
I support Taiwanese independence too, for the indigenous Taiwanese colonised by the KMT losers
Lol @ not identifying with China for their treatment of ethnic minorities and authoritarianism, but identifying with the KMT despite their displacement of indigenous people and the white terror.
No no, we had to put twelve thousand people in camps over forty years of martial law to stop the authoritarians!
A non “authoritarian” country is a contradiction in terms. A government is an instrument of class control. Can anyone name a government that doesn’t use authority?
even if you believe multiparty democracy to be something non negotiable?.. my family are Taiwanese-Americans. I was born in the US
Nobody’s caught this yet.
Feel like I’m missing something here.
He says he’ll only set foot in countries with a multi-party system.
He lives in a country without a multi-party system.
Democracy can’t exist under capitalism, capitalism is inherently authoritarian. Sorry, you think all the news, media, housing, industry, and literally every scrap of economic power can be held in individual hands without that affecting the political system? Ive got a fuckin bridge to sell you
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Albert Einstein
Capitalist states are authoritarian no matter how many parties they have. They are dictatorships of the capitalist class against the working class.
I write both Taiwanese and Chinese because my grandparents were Chinese nationalists (KMT) who fought and lost to the communists and left China with Chiang Kaishek when he retreated to Taiwan.
You understand that Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT party were fascist, right?
cultural genocide against the Uyghurs
dilutes Tibetan culture and wants to
Show me the Tibetans who miss living as illiterate serfs under autocratic feudalism and I’ll show you the CIA-backed, “suck my tongue” royal family and its deputies.
democratic Taiwan
Bourgeois democracy is a head fake.
Every country is ‘authoritarian’. That’s pretty much the practical definition of a country - that they, and they alone, can use force within their borders.
If you travel to another country, you should of course consider your own safety, as well as whether that country crosses something you see as a red line. To give an example, I oppose state restrictions on religion (unless they are dangerous to the public), am a republican, and support Palestinian independence. But I would visit France, the UAE or Germany if I got the chance, and I would try to understand why they have those policies (restrictions on Muslims’ clothes, monarchy, and ban on criticising Israel). But I would not go to the US, since getting shot by a random madman is not good for health.
I thought lemmy.ml was federated with hexbear so why do i need to create an account to tell that guy in the comments he’s an absolute fucking moron for saying “unless it’s a last resort this doesn’t sound like a good idea”
that guy in the comments he’s an absolute fucking moron for saying “unless it’s a last resort this doesn’t sound like a good idea”
it gets so much worse than that too. here are some more answers from the comments
Maybe I’m paranoid but, considering you’re politically active, I’d worry it’s a honeypot, designed with the intention of bringing you to china on your own volition and then locking you up there.
Even if it isn’t a designed honeypot, it sounds like OP will land themselves in jail either way.
If you already say in advance that you cannot accept the mainland Chinese political system and it’s set of rules, then I can hardly suggest to go there. If you start disagreeing with others publically and become a problem person you will end up in jail rather quickly. Whether you believe that to be rightful/proper justice or not, will not matter.
lies and sinophobic propaganda from the most propagandized people who think they arent propagandized. no wonder they can’t federate with us, they might have to learn something about reality
Because pawb.social is defederated from hexbear.
I would consider this post itself a liability if I were living in china. Yeah, even if I thought it were safe initially, there’s no guarantees that living there is safe long term. Like right now, people still generally consider it safe to continue living in the US, but I don’t blame anyone for choosing to leave, because there’s really no group that’s entirely safe from Trump’s hate mongering (besides sycophants).
I’ve been to China a number of times and it is a very interesting place with many amazing people. A government doesn’t necessarily represent the people that live there.
That said, it is up to you and your moral system whether to visit a country with a government you disagree with.
lol
I have a Taiwanese friend who is very much anti-CCP, but he does go to china for vacation every now and then.
Yes, you need to be in the right headspace, you cannot expect to vocally or publicly criticize the government and go unpunished. But politics are not everything. China is beautiful in many ways and has many great people. I think it would be a good idea to take the opportunity and make this experience. And afterwards, your opinions on china and the CCP will have a stronger foundation than they do now.
edit: you say you are politically active: is this evident from your social media accounts? That might be problematic.
You absolutely can criticise the government. Having spent the last year travelling there, it was a regular topic of conversation with locals. There was absolutely no fear of being dragged away by the secret police
Of course, that is also not what I would consider ‘publicly or vocally’.
I mean they had huge protests against lockdowns during COVID which resulted in the government relaxing those lockdowns. I can’t think of a more public or vocal way of criticizing the government than that
Removed by mod
