Communism

Thanks for the ping @[email protected] .

Chinese in China here, I think a better question than "Do you support your government" would be: "If the US government were to replace the CPC and current government tomorrow, would you approve?" Sorry to folks in Nordic countries (another stereotype propelled by liberals) because the US is the "beacon" that liberals use mainly.

If people from any country have no experience with living in other countries, they might be more inclined to topple their own government if their living conditions aren't great and someone were to advocate for the toppling. Even if people read about how bad some foreign governments are in the news, some people would just brush it off as "propaganda", they would have to see it for themselves to believe. This goes both ways for both the people of the US and China.

Comparison is a powerful tool, but some people whip out the "whataboutism" card when you try to do that, they tell you to address the problem instead of finding worse examples from other places. Indeed it's always better to address the problem at hand, but people who scream "whataboutism" in relation to China's issues are really saying "don't look at worse places to make yourself feel good, overthrow the SEE-SEE-PEE regime now!"

Do I support the CPC and Chinese government? Yes and yes.

Does China have problems. Yes.

Do I need to hear from egotistical maniacs in other countries on how to handle issues in my country? No.

I'm a southern Vietnamese. I genuinely support the Communist Party and the government. But I have to say, they just let liberalism and western propaganda run rampant over here. People getting more and more liberal, most don't even know what communism even is, they think it's something taboo. As an average person, I barely see any effort to educate and inform the mass. That's my one strong criticism for the government.

Of course China is authoritarian. It's an iteration of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Lol.

To be more serious. Every single citizen of a country will have lots of complaints about their own country, even those who think most things are working ok. By sheer nature of living somewhere, you become intimately aware of its problems and weaknesses, and wants to see certain changes and improvements. Does this mean they dislike the country as a whole? Or love another country more than their own? No.

The CPC is enjoying an unprecedented high approval rating due to being a highly efficient government capable of implementing long-term plans to improvement the country. Many people have witnessed those changes with their own eyes, lived through them personally, and mostly approved of the results.

In addition, a part of the CPC's mission is to protect and revive China and Chinese culture, which it has done so by alleviating poverty, strengthening the economy and the military, and enhancing China's influence and reputation in the world. Not every single Chinese person is a socialist or at all interested in politics, but a great majority (even including overseas Chinese) DO resonate with that mission, with seeing how the country has improved, how traditional cultural elements are being preserved and incorporated with modern elements in creative ways in all forms of media, architecture, art works, ways of life, all the scientific achievements, etc.

Yes, there is censorship and an element of authoritarian control. Moreso in the past, and a little more relaxed in the present, but it's definitely there. Arguably, the Chinese people is more familiar, even comfortable, with an authoritarian government (how else does one keep a vast country with huge population together throughout the thousands of years). However, because the government is vested with more power in general, the people have higher expectation for it to perform and to take care of everyone. It's part of the Confucian social contract that hides deep in the structure of society. That being the case, when people fall through the cracks in various ways, they blame the government personally for failing them, more than a typical Western person would in a similar situation.

Also, the government makes policies primarily based on what benefits the society overall, and not the individual (by this, I do not mean ethnic minorities or classes of people, who are protected as part of a harmonious society; but the concept of individualism itself). If you're an individual who happens to not conform with what is considered to be socially beneficial, or who wants to be disruptive in some way (and it may even be a perfectly acceptable type of disruption in the West), you would feel the boot of repression upon your neck.

With 1.4 billion people, even tiny percentage of unhappy people is tens of millions of unhappy people. Each have their own story, and justification, and many grievances are valid. Because no government is ever so perfect as to take the best care of every single person, no government is entirely free of corruption or negligence or ineptitude. The CPC has made mistakes that massively affected some people's lives for the worse. It has also dramatically improved things in other ways. For some people, the two did not even out. For others, they imagine the West to be a shining beacon that is far better, more free, where people can truly make money and live a good life. Simultaneously, a current trend is for Chinese netizens to say they never realized how great their own country is and how much they love it, until they broke through the Great Firewall via VPN and started to see how the outside is doing.

Overall, the only way to determine how a country's government is doing is to analyze vast statistics, and in comparison with other governments. In that light, the CPC's numbers are pretty good, but there are always room for improvement.

For China, there's close to a 90% approval rating. Even liberal-approved sources admit that.

https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/surprise-authoritarian-resilience-china/

Authoritarianism isn't real. Every state aggressively defends its class base. If you don't face repression from your capitalist country, that says a lot about how the state sees you.

These socialist states aggressively defend the project of socialism in their countries because it represents the working classes.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/

https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf

The survey team found that compared to public opinion patterns in the U.S., in China there was very high satisfaction with the central government. In 2016, the last year the survey was conducted, 95.5 percent of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with Beijing. In contrast to these findings, Gallup reported in January of this year that their latest polling on U.S. citizen satisfaction with the American federal government revealed only 38 percent of respondents were satisfied with the federal government.

As we all know. The national language of China is English and the most popular website in China is Twitter.

Generally the people I meet from such countries are here because they're liberals. So of course I'm going to hear liberal takes from them.

Sadly I do not know many nationals of these countries. My best friend in University had a Chinese girlfriend though. The relationship really didn't work out because she was so eager to return home, and he wanted to stay in the west. Sample size of 1, so pretty meaningless, but it's all I've got for empirical anecdotes.

China: very very high, maybe 90%, their material conditions have progressed in leaps and bounds. Most people want a better life for their kids: the government is delivering that = most people are satisfied with the government's performance

Cuba: much more mixed, people are suffering economically. Says you, "Oh but that's the fault of outside influences"... well your particular explanation of the causes will chime with a certain percentage of the population only, there's lots of angry anti-government people in Cuba, but they may not be a majority, hard to put a number on it

Vietnam: I have no info on this

Luna oi is a Vietnamese person who talks up their government's efforts, the best example I can think of is the communal rice farm she works on

Depends really, my family relative in China don't really complain about a lot to the degree about toppling the government. A lot of stuff we perceive as unthinkable in the west (a functioning public transport, low cost of living, etc) are taking for granted.

They do have complains about the bureaucratic aspect of the government and also the healthcare system (especially important for my parent's and grand parent's gen as they get older).

There is also a lot of generational gap that influences opinions. My grand parent's generation are very mixed towards the party (from uncritical support to very negative) (my mother side were bandits prior 1949 and my dad's side are landlords). My parent's generation are more positive as they were the one benefitting the most of the reform and opening up. My generation is apathic as competition is very fierce to the point that some people don't see career advancement as something that is doable (less interested into the governance aspect of the country)

There is also a lot of gap in opinions depending of where you are from (ei. Urban vs countryside). Since my family moved to cities throughout the generations due to the five years plans I can't really comment on the countryside aspect of stuff

These countries don't get polled much, so it's hard to get a number. There's that famous Harvard survey showing extremely high satisfaction with the Chinese government though. Opinions on these countries are going to lean negative within the western internet ecosystem. For example, the vast majority of Chinese people are posting on Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, etc. etc. rather than Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, and Facebook.

I'm just vibes-posting, but I think most people in liberal democracies do not trust their politicians, and most people in AES-countries do? Don't answer "propaganda" because liberal democracies do that far more! Maybe it is just that politicians in liberal democracies are worse! Like, I don't think there are many non-liberal democracies who have Nazis in government, vs. vice versa.

Dirty Westerner, but from polls and outside forms of public sentiment I have seen, public support of the government in China is extremely high, due to the large, until possibly recently, economic growth and decades of constant improvement in people's material conditions.

Cuba it is not as strong, as the US blockade has prevented the strong growth China has experienced. But there is still majority support due to the Batista regime still being in living memory and the various improvements in literacy and education, medicine/life expectancy, and various forms of local democracy. There are organic and legitimate critiques, but anti-government protests are usually dwarfed by pro-government/M-26-7 protests. And usually, though this is often misrepresented by pro-western sources, the dissatisfaction with the current government is more pro-reform rather than in favor of reversion back to capitalism. Though this is one of those things that polling or any way to quantify public sentiment can very easily be twisted with framing.

Vietnam, I have less knowledge of and cannot give a summary off the top of my head with any trust in my own knowledge.

China has high approval rates as most loathe-some tankies know. I heard Vietnam has fallen off in terms of socialist education, but they at least are proud of their government’s Covid response. I’ve heard from the only people I know that have been to Cuba that they aren’t very fond of their government, but that’s biased as they were missionaries and the church tends to be more reactionary. I’ve heard that outside attacks on a governments tend to embolden public support, so that probably accounts for the support Cuba and the DPRK receive despite their relatively poor sanctioned conditions.

A lot

ping @[email protected]

85%, if I remember correctly