this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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who are all based in the west, i checked
Actually they're cringe in the west
as a side note, there's no such thing as unbiased. everyone is shaped by their class background and material conditions
ignoring the class character of those sources will wind up with an unexamined bias towards a bourgeois viewpoint, however international
Critiquing China from the left is ok. And what that looks like is acknowledging that there is racism present in China and there are marginalized groups who aren't being treated fairly. That needs to change, just like it needs to change in nearly every other country in the world. Marginalization of minorities remains a global problem, and China could be doing more.
BUT, there is little credible evidence to suggest that minorities in China are worse off than minorities in the US, or Scandinavia, or Japan, or Isreal, etc etc etc. In some respects, they may even be better off.
So yeah, it would be totally reasonable to take, say, an anarchist perspective, and criticize China as part of a broader concern about power structures. Criticism that paints China as "evil" is not criticism from the left and is, intentionally or otherwise, buying into Western anti-China propaganda.
let's be specific about what your claims are, marginalized is an incredibly low bar to clear when the US has been pushing lies about extermination camps
https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang
The accusation is that they are operating extermination camps, though. That is the claim of various media and government-affiliated organizations in the west. That's what we're responding to.
I think there's some confusion that because we push back so strongly against red scare nonsense regarding China that we have no criticisms of the country.
This is not true. We do, it's the "critical" part of critical support. But in the context of the most deranged militaristic country in the world warmongering constantly the choice of when you voice those criticisms is very important. If you're not careful those criticisms actually strengthen the hegemonic conception that China is an evil enemy to be defeated at all cost.
So the issue myself and others here have isn’t that Uighurs may face discrimination, marginalization, etc. They might, I will admit I don’t know enough to comment one way or another.
The thing is, “marginalization” is most definitely NOT the narrative going on in western media. It is that China is specifically engaging in genocide and forced labor camps. Both of these claims are patently untrue with zero evidence; and even Michele Bachelet’s UN commission agreed on this.
That is the narrative we push back on here.
Can you or any liberal institution you know of point to an instance where America resolved the issue of organized terrorist attacks in a region without the use of invasion, drone strikes, and black sites? By all means, please tell us how you think China should have solved this issue instead.
I wouldn't say it's marginalization so much as it is being born into poor economic standing with limited upwards mobility, if that makes sense? China does try with it's affirmative action policies, but it's pretty hard to overcome when you're a visible minority and generally born in poorer provinces simply by demographic distribution.
Thanks for acting as an excellent example.