China doesn't have to be BASED, and likely isn't. It just has to be better enough than the US, which in the 2020s is an embarrassingly low bar to pass.

I think it makes sense when you remember that alot of the bad is being controlled out of it through people being tourists and likely not speaking high level or in many cases any Chinese.

Tourists are not really going to interact with many/if any of the systems with real issues like the hukou system but will have daily interaction with systems that work incredibly well like the metros.

And then through not speaking the language spotting assholes becomes exponentially less likely.

You'd be surprised, some people are actually completely unaware of how a bunch of basic things work in the west. My younger cousin, who had never left China and is also extremely offline (for a zoomer), once asked me what's the deal with lawns. Like "Who maintains them? Is it like plants in parks? Why are they there?". The more I explained it, the more confused she got.

So you can't not have grass, everyone has grass. But it also can't be too long. And you have to spend extra money keep it alive in a drought (which Australia experiences fairly frequently). And you have to spend money on equipment to cut it, or spend more money hiring someone else to cut it. If you're renting, not maintaining the landlord's grass will get you in trouble and possibly evicted. And you have to keep weeds out.

Now, she was 19 at that point in time, so fairly naive. But still.

Instead of having this feeling of skepticism and judging China through unserious posts like these, watch some videos of people travelling and/or living in China, watch a documentary and/or read about how their governance works, listen to the Deprogram podcast episode on China they did a few months back. Then you can have a real, nuanced personal opinion formed through your own marxist judgement and factual analysis.

I don’t think that’s what this post is saying. A very real phenomenon on Xiaohongshu is Chinese citizens just straight up not knowing how bad it is in America. Of course there are assholes, but this post isn’t about how all Chinese ppl are saints (plenty of anti black and anti Indian racism), it’s about how by and large America isn’t understood as the predatory capitalist hell that it is. When I joined the app, it was a common misconception that every American owned and lived in a McMansion style home, and some Chinese users straight up called people liars for describing experiences with poverty, homelessness, medical bills etc

https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-china-is-a-big-country-inhabited-by-many-chinese-charles-de-gaulle-10-76-34.jpg

(Wouldn't be surprised if this quote was originally meant to be chauvinistic or mean-spirited given it comes from the arch-neocolonialist and generalissimo of failing upwards, though China Daily seems to represent it in a positive light.)

I haven't been to China in over a decade, but I always ask the same question and follow up with the same comment when Westerners ask about it. I usually use this to dissuade them of saying paranoid things.

"You ever been to Flushing?" Yes...? "It's like that, except with more lights."