this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Again like the tiktok ban: Rather than passing real privacy laws we're passing racism laws and pretending this helps privacy and security.
The CCP might be all Chinese and the Chinese Populace might be +91% Han Chinese but that in no way makes laws which target a hostile foreign dictatorship equate to "racism".
I'll never understand how a country with 1.4B people gets labeled "homogenous" by race counters, but a continent with with 800M, like Europe, is able to recognize dozens of cultures and subcultures.
Would you even guess that China has over 300 living languages inside its borders?
Because not many europeans primarily identify as "european first". This is slowly changing but for the most part, people identify by whatever european nation they inhabit. But i bet most chinese identify as "chinese first" instead of whatever region/city they are from.
In fact, China likes to brag about how "advanced" they are, that they solved this "issue" centuries ago, while the EU is currently trying to "copy them".
TLDR : If you ask a chinese tourist "where are you from?", they will answer "China". If you ask a european the same, noone will say "Europe/EU".
You are looking at it from the perspective of a westerner post springtime of nations. As I understand it a lot of Chinese people see it more like the Romans, wherein they may be different but they are all Chinese. Also China has been committing cultural genocide and assimilation against groups within their borders for millenia, this has resulted in what can best be described as a very broad cultural and ethnic identity.
So you think the Chinese are just naturally genocidal? And that's why the Yao and Zhuang and Bai and Mongolian people don't count as distinct ethnic groups?
Meanwhile, the Welsh, the English, the Irish, and the Scottish do count because... the English have been historically so peaceful and egalitarian?
When the fuck did I say that their naturally that way? Its a control tool, the Romans also used it to a degree. Its pretty hard to keep an empire as big as China going for severap Millenia without doing that type of shit.
Also did I say that I didnt recognize the Yao, Zhuang, Bai, and Mongols as distinct ethno cultural groups? I was talking on my understanding of how quite a lot of Chinese folks see themselves, if you want my opinion on it then Id say the Han identity is probably split them into at least a dozen groups and its just cultural genocide and colonialism all the way down. But I refuse to recognize the concept of an American culture so im a bit biased on that front.
And then finally I didnt know Irish, Scots, and Welsh thoughly identify with the English silly me. Seriously I will repeat myself, I was referring to the dominant groupsing in China not minority groups. But you do allow to make a solid point, who embrases and attemps to enforce the "British" identity the most is it the Scots, Irish, and Welsh or is it the colonialist bastards in the south of England? I am very aware of Englands tendency towards cultural genocide within Great Britain and Ireland, afterall half my ancestors fled to North America to escape the fucking Saxons.
If you don't get the historical or political reason why something is the way it is then it seems "natural" by default. China never had a several millennia empire unless you think Europe is also a several millennia empire. The modern concept of Han is the same thing you're doing when you say "fucking Saxons". The Saxons didn't do anything, the imperial system and opposition to it is racialized. From the 1600s-1900s Han wasn't the dominant group in China, the Qing dynasty had a Manchu identity, and they executed people for expressing Han culture. Opposition to oppression and corruption and European imperial influence was racialized as Han nationalism.
CCP politics straddles an anti-colonial idea of Chinese identity where the diaspora of people shipped around European empires to build railroads or farm plantations are still Chinese, and then also a geographic identity that all those millennia of different systems whether Mongol or Manchu or Han or split up into 100 different states are all equally Chinese.
Given the fact that China keeps reuniting into a variably centralized series of states that claim continuity from eachother id say that is a several millenia old empire, warlord eras not withstanding. All im doing is applying the same rules a lot of folks including myself use for Rome, pre Roman Egypt, France, or most other empires.
As for ruling cultures, well whoopedy doo the Manchus had problem with the biggest culture that they ruled over, thats so fucking common for ruling cultures that it barely even registers in my mind as notable. Sure it went on for about 300 years but thats still a drop in the rather large bucket that is Chinese hostory. Hell id say its more notable when a ruling culture starts out trying to assimilate and hybridize with those they rule, the Normans come to mind on that one.
Frankly I dont care what the fucken CCP claims, empires and states spew a lot of shit from their mouths when the only thing that should be coming out is their own blood. I only care what the common people have to say not some weakling politicians or overworked bureaucrat have to say.
And then finally the problems my ancestors had was with the southern English aka the Saxons, I know who fucked over my ancestors and I will carry on this grudge from them until every Saxon aristocrat and oligarch are lashed to crosses.
European countries aren't totalitarian states. This isn't a question of culture, it's an issue regarding the one and only state power that's making decisions.
This is the danger of being lulled into thinking China is a normal country. Yes, there are long histories in China and are (vanishing) diverse cultures in China but that's irrelevant when talking about the actions of the state, which is all encompassing and overrules culture and diversity every time.
It's the state that owns and controls these companies, it's the state that dictates their policy and usage, and since the state is fascist and actively seeking to undermine democracy across the global, it is wise to treat the products of that state as a threat.
I know some Irish Republicans, Spanish Catalonians, German anti-Zionist political prisoners, and ... waves hand at Poland, Hungary, and Russia
Quite a few native Europeans who would tell you differently.
I don't think the folks on Lemmy are at any risk of that.
Imagine thinking government should dictate the terms of business and not the other way around.
Europe has some authoritarian governments, not totalitarian dictatorships that approach anywhere near the all-encompassing control of the CCP. Hungary maybe I guess, which isn't a country I'd recommend taking tech from either.
Ireland is not comparable to China though, that's an extreme reach. We're not talking about right-wing groups seeking power within democracies, we're talking about uni-party state control.
Lemmy definitely has a tankie infestation already. I got banned from lemmy.ml for discussing Tiananmen and Hong Kong. Pointing out that the Great Leap Forward resulted in millions of deaths was labeled "cia misinformation" by the mods. It's a throughly compromised instance.
Lemmy users are not immune to tankie and Rusdian trolls, and thinking that they are is actually a weakness that gets exploited by those bad actors.
Normal regulatory duties of a government are a far cry from the state having total ownership and control of business and using that control as part of a coercive campaign to suppress human rights, dissent and individual freedoms.
Whatever authoritarianism is festering in other countries, China is still on an entirely different level, it's not really a question.
Totalitarianism is always when the other guy does it. Never question the modem day police/surveillance state at home. Certainly don't ask about our colonies abroad, or their paramilitary death squads and torture prisons financed with domestic capital.
It's got an anti-war infestation that's regularly accused of being tankies for failing to clap for the correct set of tanks.
Calmly explaining this to my US Postal Service and my Tennessee Valley Authority
No...totalitarianism is an actual distinct system of governance when the state controls every aspect of daily life, communication and economic activity. It's an actual word with meaning.
Ok, I'm not sure if we're talking through a translator app or something, but I didn't get banned from lemmy.ml for being "pro-war" I got banned for mentioning a historical fact about the Great Leap Forward and acknowledging other atrocities like the genocide occurring in Xinjiang.
If someone is anti-war they would be against those types of things as well. Tankies instead deny that those events occurred/are occurring, that's why they're so easy to spot and how people know they're on Lemmy -- they literally can't condemn the CCP for any of the things they purport to be against when it comes to other countries, since it's counter-productive to their true goals to criticize the CCP.
By contrast an honestly anti-war progressive type of person would be just as clear-eyed about their own government as they are the CCP. That's being anti-war, you can't be selective or try to ignore degrees of difference just because it's politically uncomfortable, that's just being a mouth-piece for a specific flavor of authoritarianism.
Again, running public services is not the same as the state owning and controlling all businness and industry. If the Post Office was used to control speech, that would be totalitarian use of a public service.
I think you're just being obtuse at this point. You might be down for totalitarianism and the abolishment of individual freedoms, most people are not. Since, you know, having no rights kind of suck ass.
Imagine saying that in a country with the highest prison population in the world
I assume most race counters on a global would just consider Western European Descent as one, if they even differentiate between Caucasians at all, but if you go to Europe then you meet people with heritages from all over the world pretty regularly and if you go to China you mostly meet people from China whose family is Chinese going back many generations. Maybe it's a cultural issue or maybe that's just the result of their previous massive increase in population after industrialization and the legislative failures of the Mao regime meaning the naturally occurring ratio is skewed that far from the norm.
I don't know, and I don't really care, tbh.
Where as when you go to Europe...
You will meet people with heritages from all over the world. For example, the UK has local heritage demographic around 74%, and of combined total white demographic of around 81%. That's a much different number than the Chinese 91%.
You can cross the straight in from France or take a thirty minute flight from Spain and be counted as "non-local". Meanwhile, traveling from Shenyang to Shenzhen means nothing.
The islanders of Hainan are no different than the mountain men of Inner Mongolia.
Lol you brought EU into the conversation but didn't state the statistics for them. The large majority of Immigrants to an EU member state are classified as "Non-EU Nationals" meaning they come from outside of the EU. About 5.3% of all EU population are first generation Non-EU immigrants.
TBH I can't even tell you what the race, ethnicity, and heritage stats are for the EU because they've got the worst demographics tracking imaginable.
banned
Believe it or not, also Rule 1. Wait, wrong instance.
I can see how this might seem like a hexbear or ml thread from the pro-ccp comments on this post, lol.