China isn’t going for EVs because of the interests of capital, but because building rail takes time. In the western, capitalist countries, it’s indeed a consequence of commodification of transit and trying to sell more cars. China is full-throttle on both rail and EVs.

It’s a well known phenomenon that people raised under authoritarian systems with heavy thoughts control will frequently answer the “socially acceptable” thing even on anonymous polls – this is what the state has trained them from birth to do. Another effect that explains the incongruity in e.g. a larger proportion of Chinese respondents thinking their system is democratic than French respondents is that words like democracy do not mean the same thing in China as they do in France.

“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. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. 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.”

• Michael Parenti

The PRC isn’t committing genocide against Uyghur peoples in Xinjiang, just like South Africa wasn’t committing “white genocide,” nor is there “christian genocide” in Nigeria. These are all examples of atrocity propaganda, where the west heavily distorts and often fabricates narratives in order to foment resistance and to give their own populations free excuses to not support anti-imperialism, in essence supporting it.

In the case of Xinjiang, the area is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative, so the west backed sepratist groups in order to destabilize the region. China responded with vocational programs and de-radicalization efforts, which the west then twisted into claims of “genocide.” Nevermind that the west responds to seperatism with mass violence, and thus re-education programs focused on rehabilitation are far more humane, the tool was used both for outright violence by the west into a useful narrative to feed its own citizens. I highly recommend Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation for more on this subject, but on to your main points.

It’s funny that you mention that the polling in China, despite consistency and often being gathered by western orgs like the Ash Center, is unreliable. The same journalist, Jason Hickel, wrote Support for China: Is the data accurate? showing that, yes, it is. The PRC does employ censorship, but this is directed against that which undermines socialist construction, including liberal and pro-capitalist narratives.

The west practices censorship too, it’s just more evenly spread out between state and private sector. Tik Tok, for example, is now censoring pro-Palestinian views, after being purchased by a western company. The west widely reports on Chinese censorship while obfuscating its own, often citing “free speech” paradoxically in the instance of private corporations doing so.

It’s a well known phenomenon that people raised under authoritarian systems with heavy thoughts control will frequently answer the “socially acceptable” thing even on anonymous polls.

This phenomenon is well-known, yes, but not actually true. “Brainwashing” as in “thought control,” does not actually exist. People rationally agree with what they percieve is in their self-interest. We all do this. China does not have the ability to control thoughts, nor is it any more “authoritarian” than capitalist countries. China uses its authority in favor of the working classes, while the west uses it in favor of capitalists and imperialists.

Another effect that explains the incongruity in e.g. a larger proprotion of Chinese respondents thinking their system is democratic than French respondents is that words like democracy do not mean the same thing in China as they do in France.

This is actually a decent point. What does democracy mean in China? Rule by the majority, and the state acting in the interests of the majority. In, say, France, it usually gets reduced to vulgar methods of liberal democracy. Candidates are largely pre-approved by the capitalist system, filtered by campaign expenses and the capitalist media, preventing meaningful working class representation.

In China, they have direct elections for local representatives, which elect further “rungs,” laddering to the top. The top then has mass polling and opinion gathering. This combination of top-down and bottom-up democracy ensures effective results. For more on this, see Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance.

China has the superior system for working in the interests of the working people, while France has the superior system for protecting corporate, imperialist interests.

Let’s go with credulous then. I agree that ultimately it comes down to these narratives working because it’s what these people want to believe already. It’s just confirmation bias. All that said, I do think ridicule has a place as well. Engaging with obvious trolling ends up validating them, as if the point they’re making has enough merit to be engaged with.