I mean… I kinda get it, but nowadays it’s starting to get absurd.
(EDIT: This was supposed to be a “blow air out my nose and get on with my life” meme…)
Inside me are two wolves
One thinks Chinese tech is cool and innovative
The other hates fascist dictatorships
*both of the wolves are gay
You may or may not think China is “authoritarian” but how on earth are they fascist?
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Far right? Hm, maybe not. Otherwise: Check, check, quasi-check, check, check, check, …
China has become a psudo Capitalist country in its quest for world domination.
Capitalism goes hand in hand with right wing extremism
I think China would have to do a lot more for the avg person before they could be considered socialist or communist again
So… Authoritarian, and not far right… So… Not fascist.
Calling a government fascist, but not far-right is like calling Death Valley a lake. There’s no fucking water (anymore), its not a fucking lake.
The far-right part is critical though. It’s kind of like how breast cancer needs to be in breast tissues. China is just authoritarian.
I mean yeah… Far right is kinda a big part of distinguishing authoritarian left vs authoritarian right. I think the only way you could possibly conflate the two is by ignoring economics.
Tradition is big. E.g TCM crap over science
You cannot disagree with the state
Stokes fear and hatred of outsiders
Blames social frustrations on those outsiders
Appeals to restore past glory
Han ethnic supremacy
You could go through all of Eco’s points and apply them to China pretty fittingly.
Been on xiaohongshu for a while now and the chinese netizens I interacted with were nothing but kind to foreigners even when we treated them like shit.
You cannot disagree with the state
Technically you could make thinly-veiled criticisms against local governments, but just not the central government or Xi Jingping
Or you can talk shit about the government behind closed doors, there are no telescreens like Orwell’s 1984.
TCM crap over science
That shit is fucking annoying. My mom keep telling me anti-depressants are bad 😓
Appeals to restore past glory
Genuinely, what on earth are you talking about? China’s past is full of poverty, humiliation, and exploitation, literally, “The century of humiliation!” The only people who “appeal to restore past glory” are the CIA-funded Shen Yun performances romanticizing “China before communism.” The Chinese people I talk to will specifically point to the Qing as a clear demonstration of the danger of clinging to tradition and the necessity of adapting and looking forward.
China literally had a cultural revolution seeking to abolish tradition. I expect you would call that fascist just as you call if fascist whenever some people still follow tradition, after all:
“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology… What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”
Not agreeing with your dictator makes it impossible to leave the country, keeps your bloodline out of good schools, and if your rhetoric is bad enough you just get abducted and dissappear.
Social Credit Scores are dehumanizing and evil.
Pretty fascist if you ask me.
The social credit score stuff is basically a Western myth. There was some local level rumblings and plans, but most of it has been unpopular or axed. The only thing that exists at a national level for individuals is the equivalent of a credit score in the US and western countries. I believed this narrative at one point, but then I delved deeper. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-announced-a-new-social-credit-law-what-does-it-mean/
I think many might reference the Uyghur genocide + extreme authoritarianism to explain why they call China fascist. I personally, am not educated on the persecution of the Uyghur genocide part, so I’m not so sure.
But China definitely has hints of nationalism and “former glory” or whatever when they start talking about Taiwan and the South China Sea. Sooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is copy pasted but solid information, I can list plenty more as well. America loved to lie about the USSR then and they love to lie about China now. They use the same disprovable tactics but we fall for them because we are a new generation and have been taught propaganda in our history classes as if it is fact.
The whole conspiracy theory started with a claim of millions of Uyghurs being supposedly imprisoned story is based on two highly dubious “studies.”.
However, this claim is completely absurd when you stop and think about it even for a minute. That figure 1 million is repeated again and again. Let’s just look at how much space would you actually need to intern one million people.
This is a photo of Rikers Island, New York City’s biggest prison. The actual size of a facility interning ten thousand people.
According to Wikipedia, “The average daily inmate population on the island is about 10,000, although it can hold a maximum of 15,000.” Let’s assume this is a Xinjiang detention camp, holding ten to fifteen thousand people. How many of these would it take to hold one million people?
Let’s do some math:
Rikers Size | Rikers Prisoners | One Million Uyghurs Size |
---|---|---|
413.2 acres (0.645 square miles) | 10,000 to 15,000 | 43 to 64 square miles |
In reality, one million people would probably take more space; all the supposed detention camps we see are much less dense than Rikers.
For comparison, San Francisco is 47 square miles. Amsterdam is 64 square miles. You’d literally need detention camps that total the size of San Francisco or Amsterdam to intern one million Uyghurs. It’d be like looking at a map of California. There’s Los Angeles. There’s San Diego. And look, there’s San Francisco Concentration City with its one million Uyghurs.
Literally visible to the naked eye from space.
CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, but their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals. Based on this absurdly small sample of research subjects in an area whose total population is 20 million, CHRD “extrapolated estimates” that “at least 10% of villagers […] are being detained in re-education detention camps, and 20% are being forced to attend day/evening re-education camps in the villages or townships, totaling 30% in both types of camps.” Furthermore, it doesn’t even make sense from logistics perspective.
Practically all the stories we see about China trace back to Adrian Zenz who is a far right fundamentalist nutcase and not a reliable source for any sort of information. The fact that he’s the primary source for practically every article in western media demonstrates precisely what I’m talking about when I say that coverage is divorced from reality.
Zenz is a born-again Christian who lectures at the European School of Culture and Theology. This anodyne-sounding campus is actually the German base of Columbia International University, a US-based evangelical Christian seminary which considers the “Bible to be the ultimate foundation and the final truth in every aspect of our lives,” and whose mission is to “educate people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.”
Zenz’s work on China is inspired by this biblical worldview, as he recently explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I feel very clearly led by God to do this,” he said. “I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.”.
Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.
Zenz outlined these views in a book he co-authored in 2012, titled Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation. In the tome, Zenz discussed the return of Jesus Christ, the coming wrath of God, and the rise of the Antichrist.
The fact that this nutcase is being paraded as a credible researcher on the subject is absolutely surreal, and it’s clear that the methodology of his “research” doesn’t pass any kind of muster when examined closely.
It’s also worth noting that there is a political angle around the narrative around Xinjiang. For example, here’s George Bush’s chief of staff openly saying that US wants to destabilize the region, and NED recently admitting to funding Uyghur separatism for the past 16 years on their own official Twitter page. An ex-CIA operative details US operations radicalizing and training terrorists in the region in this book. Here’s an excerpt:
US has been stoking terrorism in the region while they’ve been running a propaganda campaign against China in the west. In fact, US even classified Uyghur separatists as a terrorist group at one point https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-was-at-war-uyghur-terrorists-now-claims-etim-doesnt-exist/276916/
Here’s an interview with a son of imam killed in Xinjiang https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-19/Son-of-imam-assassinated-in-Kashgar-s-2014-mosque-attack-speaks-out-RqNiyrcRuo/index.html
Here’s an account from a Pakistani journalist who has been all over Xinjiang (which borders Pakistan) claims that western media reports on “atrocities” are lies. https://dailytimes.com.pk/723317/exposing-the-occidents-baseless-lies-about-xinjiang/
It’s also worth noting that the accusations originate entirely from the west while Muslim majority countries support China, and their leaders have visited Xinjiang many times.
- https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/on-eid-xinjiang-imams-defend-china-against-u-s-criticism-1.5425967
- https://www.bolnews.com/latest/2023/07/pak-religious-leaders-nurture-bonds-of-cooperation-with-xinjiang/
- https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/islamic-envoys-say-china-is-protecting-minorities-in-xinjiang-after-five-day-visit
Also notable that whenever western media actually deigns to visit Xinjiang, which is not often, they’re unable to produce support for any of their claims of mass imprisonment and oppression, so they opt for insinuations instead https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9
There’s a further list of debunking here if you’re interested https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/
The whole thing is very clearly a propaganda blitz that US is cynically using to manipulate impressionable people in the west.
I’m down to call them authoritarian because every state is authoritarian in my eyes but they are absolutely not fucking fascists