cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/61366893
In mid-September, a man was arrested for stabbing and wounding an unknown number of women outside a hotpot restaurant in the GOGO Xintiandi shopping plaza in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. The man appeared to target only women, and images and footage posted online (much of it later deleted) showed police officers rushing into a shopping center, pedestrians scattering, a man with a face mask stabbing a woman in the face, and at least three women with wounds on their faces. Many Chinese social media users and bloggers noted online censorship of the topic and scant follow-up information from the authorities.
[…]
This has become the typical official response to such “indiscriminate” mass attacks: a brief police bulletin noting that the suspect was arrested and that the case “remains under investigation,” but little to no witness testimony, follow-up reporting, information on the victims, or details on the motive behind the attack.
Each new incident seems to be followed by at least some online censorship, and Chinese news outlets frequently decline to conduct any investigative reporting, preferring the safer course of “waiting for further statements from the police.” This issue of excessive reliance on official notices has drawn critical commentary in a variety of other contexts.
[…]
CDT [China Digital Times] editors have archived two pieces related to the Guangzhou stabbings. The first, a now-deleted article from WeChat account Li Yucheng, is partly translate into English in the linked site (here in Chinese).
The second one (here in Chinese) is fully translated in the linked article.
The second archived piece, an essay by WeChat blogger 昔平 (Xī Píng), is titled “Eventually, We All Learned to Keep Quiet.” Although the author does not mention the Guangzhou stabbings specifically in the text, the essay is bookended by screenshots of the statement issued by Guangzhou police. In light of this, the author discusses how censorship and self-censorship interact to erode societal discourse over time.
The essay, along with the screenshots, is translated in full in the linked article (archived version in Chinese).
It says, amongst others:
[…]
As children, we were taught to “speak freely, and hold nothing back,” but as adults, we discovered an even more profound wisdom: “Too much talk only leads to trouble.”
So when we encountered something odd, we didn’t ask questions; when we observed something unreasonable, we didn’t discuss it; when we heard others speak, it was safer to pretend we didn’t hear them. Over time, this culminated in a remarkably “stable” way of life: our eyes were in charge of seeing, our ears in charge of hearing, and our mouths in charge of staying silent …
And so society grew quiet. Eerily quiet.
Events in the news remained perennially “under investigation," punctuated by a satisfying full stop, and followed by a complete blank. People learned to appreciate this unique literary form: the article’s introduction told you what happened, the middle warned you not to over-interpret events, and the conclusion assured you that the whole thing was being properly investigated.
As for what the investigation uncovered, that was a topic for the next article.
Assuming there was a next article …
The safest mode of expression was no expression at all …
Asking too many questions makes you stick out from the crowd.
And so people began to self-censor in increasingly sophisticated ways. Before speaking a sentence, they would delete all the adjectives. Before writing a passage, they would delete all the opinions. Before venturing to express a viewpoint, they would delete themselves.
What remained was scrupulously cautious and hermetically sealed …
Not all silence is peaceful.
Sometimes silence is just emotion that lacks an outlet.
If someone suffers an injustice and vents about it, at least they’re still communicating with others. But if they don’t know who they can turn to, to whom they can vent, then all they can do is lock those feelings inside themselves …
A truly vibrant society is never silent.
When different voices are allowed to exist, we need not be afraid of any one particular voice.
As for when we’ll relearn how to speak … I’ll just leave that question for all of you to ponder.
After all, we’re still allowed to think.
For now …
[The whole essay is worth reading imo.]
The west? The essays are written by Chinese citizens.
Meanwhile, the majority of Chinese citizens feel pretty happy about their democracy and freedom of speech:
When you reduce a country of billions down to tiny individual, highly selective anecdotes, it’s incredibly easy to paint a broad picture that doesn’t align with reality. The kind of selective reporting you do as propaganda is a well-understood tactic, then you flood the same communities with the same stories. That’s why anecdote isn’t accepted as evidence for broad patterns in academia.
Such surveys are meaningless in a society where people are suppressed and can’t criticize their government.
People criticize the government all the time in China, what gets suppressed is nearly always the kind of speech you in particular support: pro-western, pro-capitalist speech. Jason Hickel has an excellent article on whether or not the consistently high approval ratings in China are accurate. The truth of the matter is that the people of China legitimately do support their government, and criticisms of government policy actually do result in changes in policy direction. That’s why the people both support the government and critique it.
An example of critique often comes from Utopia (乌有之乡), who produce left-wing commentary within China that does not shy from critique of the government as a whole, while also not typically falling for faux-left opposition. This is a Great Struggle is a good example, as is Emergency Measures: Mao-Era Computer Development and Huawei. They provide not just critique, but almost always positive suggestions.
I know Jason Hickel and his writings. They perfectly fit into China’s propaganda work and, unfortunately, only that and nothing else. His writings have nothing to do with economics.
Can you actually explain why Jason Hickel is incorrect here? All of what you post is linked to western intelligence agencies and assets like the NED, if your point is that only Chinese propaganda is bad then you’re a chauvanist. You also didn’t at all address the topic of Utopia (乌有之乡) and the vibrant criticism that exists in China as a part of their democratic process.
I didn’t address this simply because there is neither a vibrant criticism in China nor anything even remotely similar to a democratic process. China is a dictatorship.
So you cannot actually explain why Jason Hickel is incorrect, then, and instead prefer making baseless claims. China is indeed a democratic country with a process of criticism and self-criticism, hence why I linked a highly critical but productive site. I recommend Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, you can learn a lot about how China functions democratically. Then again, you seem content to keep ignoring any points brought up against you and the articles you post.
Why is Jason Hickel correct? Can you explain this?
Where are those statistics from? How are you sure they’re not lying out of fear?
They’re from NIRA data, a western pollster firm. It’s hard to prove a negative, you’d have to prove that Chinese citizens live in fear and lie. Jason Hickel has an excellent article on whether or not the consistently high approval ratings in China are accurate.
Lmao I’m sure plenty of Americans would say the same moronic things as these polled, it’s not very hard to brainwash the masses when you control the media.
The US is on the same list, just go down. It’s in between Hungary and Kenya. You have a very confused idea about how propaganda works, you don’t literally beam ideas into peoples heads. People can tell when they are oppressed, and when they aren’t.
Can we get the Uygher data? Or any of the millions of prisoners they have?
Also please tell me more about how you seem to love the DPRK and North Korea for everyone else to see your crackhead thoughts on their freedom and Democracy 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It’s telling that you immediately deflect to other topics when it’s clear that you have nothing to stand on. You can’t admit that you were wrong, so you bring in entirely unrelated topics like the DPRK to save face. It’s cowardly at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.
In any case, Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation includes many testimonies and statistics from Uyghur peoples in Xinjiang, particularly Urumqi but also in general. For the DPRK, they have a system of approval voting, multi-candidate primaries, and each government position at the top is less powerful than western counterparts, ie they have less individual power than western heads of state. The SPA is the main governing body of the DPRK, which is elected by the people on the ground, and is largely but not exclusively made up of the WPK.
I respect the commitment to yapping but in my experience anyone who talks more than I do on the internet is either a bot or tunnel visioned hard one way or another.
Opinions on Japan and South Korea? Out of all these Asian countries, who is the absolute worst overall… in your opinion? And who is the best?
I’m tunnel-visioned in that I’m a socialist organizer. I take organizing for socialism seriously, which includes both organizing work and study. As for Japan and the ROK, what exactly do you mean by “best” and “worst?” In what way? I’m not a moralist, I don’t see the world as a Marvel movie. Ask a specific question and I’ll give a specific answer. Healthcare, housing, etc. are all good examples.
Please cosplay as a stalinist and talk about Charlie Kirk’s dubbing work in Dunkirk
lemmy.ml yearns for the boot with Chinese characteristics.
I yearn for a socialist democracy, calling that a boot is odd.
And the west yearns for those chinese citizens to have a democratic society to write more essays in