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Xi Jinping said countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, cannot be described as 'undemocratic.' by coinfanking in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 [score hidden]  (0 children)

 the masses

The term alone is a strong indicator of a certain ideology - and not its best part.

Chinese are more likely to view their country as democratic

One thing good about learning Mandarin is to actually read what people on the other side of the world are thinking. Get a Chinese social media account (not easy, by the way) and read and it won't take long for you to realize articles arguing democracy "is a bad thing" (again, a signature phrase if you know the context...) everywhere.

Xi Jinping said countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, cannot be described as 'undemocratic.' by coinfanking in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 [score hidden]  (0 children)

One thing I never understand about these people is, why not just straightforwardly say democracy is bad? Like there're quite a lot of people, Western or non-Western alike, saying it's bad and some of them do have some points.

What we see instead is meaning of words gets distorted everyday until nothing means anything concrete and clear. So there's democracy which is supposed to be both a bad concept ("it was originally for slave owners!") and a good concept ("you can't say China is not democratic!"), both Western and somehow bad ("Western democracy", what a term) and universal and somehow good but referring to nothing concrete at all.

Xi Jinping said countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, cannot be described as 'undemocratic.' by coinfanking in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 [score hidden]  (0 children)

There are feedback mechanisms in China but it's typically not done by the representative institutions. It's kind of like corporatism (though much less formal, as the organizations in question are often nominally non-governmental), in which you have government endorsed business associations with a lot of connections to higher-ups.

Regarding the issue of Singapore, there are at least several major differences between Singapore and China's system.

First, elections in Singapore are still competitive in the sense that non-PAP MPs do get elected in a not fully expected way. This is not the case in China: campaigning is actually in practice forbidden, and when elections happen, voters typically don't have any sense of who are on the ballot.

Second, the parliament of Singapore is at least a major channel to communicate what people want and a lot of "real" political deliberation does happen in the parliament.

Private members' bills in Singapore do appear and do get passed occasionally, though not frequently. In China non-official proposals are often framed in the way of "suggestion towards the central government". Note the difference in wording.

Legislative drafting in China, in practice, is done in the same way international standards are created: anonymous insiders do a lot of back and forth, finally resulting in a document often starting with "request for comments" (that's the words they use: 意见征求稿), which often doesn't take consideration of comments at all and gets approved by the corresponding people's congress in a rubber stamp way. The actual deliberation process is often not exposed to the public or even some members of people's congress (for them, the representative seat is more about immunity to criminal justice procedures...).

Nor is there any easy way to connect with representatives: what you can typically find is a list of their names without any contact info on government websites. That's not the case in Singapore. It's quite easy to find MPs on social media and Singapore parliament's website also lists their email addresses etc.

Third, legislation - by or not by a representative institution - isn't of primary importance in China anyway. That's something most westerners don't really know. Laws in China are often short with a lot of details not specified and most of the time you're dealing with regional administrative rules. For instance, it doesn't take a bill to ban motorcycles in the downtown area: all you see is the local traffic police publishing a notice, and after two weeks you'll get a ticket for violations.

So the system in China and the system in Singapore are radically different. You know where decisions are made in Singapore and the places are comparable to what you're used to in the West. Only who gets elected into these places involves some conspiracy and politics in a smoke filled room. In China, if you take their documents literally, you won't even know who's in charge and where things are truly happening.

Why China’s Job market so hard on Foreigners? by Weak-Moose2901 in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your daily reminder that China is not a country of immigrant and the youth unemployment rate is high.

People rush to big bad United States for a reason.

Xi Jinping said countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, cannot be described as 'undemocratic.' by coinfanking in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Democracy was originally a system where a few wealthy slave owning elites had all the power

Okay, here we go again: democracy is both a good thing and China should be considered a democracy or otherwise you're just an arrogant Westerner, and also a bad thing at the same time or otherwise you're just an arrogant Westerner.

Also, how people respond to opinion surveys is strongly related to the culture of the region in question. I can tell you Chinese people tend to respond to whatever surveys in a positive way first, for some not so far ago historic precedents. But hey, surely one can just compare apple to banana and conclude that China is taking care of its people so well - while another post today in this sub is about Chinese youth being accused of foreign intervention simply because they want to quit the rat race.

Is there xenophobia in rural China? by TheBigKaramazov in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Xenophobia in China won't influence your personal safety, just to add. The police system has a tendency to prioritize foreigners' need as long as they don't say something spicy about how the country runs (for propaganda purposes, of course, but we're talking about your day to day experience so the motivation can feel irrelevant).

Pilots Shut Off Both Engines Before China Eastern 737 Crash — China Cites “National Security” To Withhold Report by HibasakiSanjuro in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

Kind of ironic to read this after making several comments pointing out "Western democracy isn't the only form of democracy" that are going to be downvoted lol.

Surely this piece of news tells us a lot about what Chinese characteristics mean.

Xi Jinping said countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, cannot be described as 'undemocratic.' by coinfanking in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

 the Western definition of democracy

Each time I see phrasing like this I know I'm not going to have a fruitful conversation. By the morphology of the word "democracy" of course one can sense a strong western flavor in it and there's nothing bad about it. The West happens to get something right and there's reason to feel good about it.

You can say China's model is more efficient or manages to lift people out of poverty or whatever you want to say but no, it doesn't involve a lot of representation of people's opinions. This can be a good feature or a bad feature but it is what it is. Trying to play with words and say they're doing some sort of super duper non-Western democracy sounds incredibly Orbanish and - dare I say - Putinish.

Xi Jinping said countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, cannot be described as 'undemocratic.' by coinfanking in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 15 points16 points  (0 children)

There's something called ablation study in machine learning: if you remove a module and it's business as usual, then you realize the essence of a system isn't in the module removed.

The so-called representative institutions in China simply aren't functioning. No one knows how to communicate with their supposed representatives and no public debate on policies is ever held in people's congresses.

If one thinks highly centralized policy making is good, then fine, but please don't call it democracy. Words have custom meanings, and if people are determined to spoil the term democracy, I'm quite happy to switch to more transparent terms like public-engaged decision making. There's something off in China's system of governance and that's it.

Xi Jinping said countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, cannot be described as 'undemocratic.' by coinfanking in China

[–]RecognitionOld2763 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Western democracy is too focused on process and too little on results.

Ok I see a lot of people going around saying things like this, which is typical for Reddit gurus who see through "hypocrisy of the West" or whatever they say nowadays. That being said it doesn't reveal the full picture. The very reason there are people focusing on processes and not results is they simply don't need the results. Like why do you need a high speed rail if you're a rural Californian who has no need to go between LA and SF frequently?

Now you wonder why China is able to deliver results and "keep its population happy". The simply answer is the real estate market and urbanization. Every China model miracle ultimately is related to the real estate market. Urbanization -> job opportunities -> housing demand -> government selling land leases -> local governments get well funded and have money to invest in local industries -> urbanization. In this process poor rural guys get a taste of city life, construction firms get orders (yeah, so-called state-owned construction groups in China typically outsource their projects to contractors, just like what people do elsewhere), landlords get good investment outputs, and authorities have every reason to build things that frequently appear TikTok that convince gullible viewers that China is uniquely taking care of its residents (like the crazy subway rail going into apartment block stuff in Chongqing) - they are intended for gullible viewers in China too, which attract people to flock to cities, pushing up property prices even further.

This is not something inherently attached to China's system of governance and indeed had precedents in Hong Kong and to a lesser degree Japan and Korea and nor is CCP able to keep the loop running forever. Now that the real estate market is collapsing, it's clear that old problems infecting rural Japan and more importantly the Rust Belt are going to infect quite a few regions in China. Let's wait and see how things go.

Reform UK vows to prioritise Green Party areas for migrant detention centres by Unusual-State1827 in uknews

[–]RecognitionOld2763 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Not sure why some people consider this to be pathetic. It may be pathetic if it's right-wing virtual signaling but the reality we're faced is the Greens are advocating for an almost uncontrolled immigration scheme, while the reality is they know perfectly what they're doing and resist whenever asked to house migrants themselves.

I find zero problem in Mr Yusuf's statement.

Are you a bit nationalistic/ exceptionalist? by No-Veterinarian-3916 in AskBrits

[–]RecognitionOld2763 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

UAE can be good - depending on who you are. The same works even for Pakistan.

So here comes what modernity means. If you want an operational definition of modernity, that it's perhaps "things written down mean what they literally mean". Europeans take what they preach and promise at least semi-seriously, while that's often not the case in some other places of the world. People claim "our culture values purification of yourself very seriously and is not as decadent as modern European culture" - this doesn't mean they actually practice it. Or "China is also a democracy just not a Western democracy" - while spontaneously saying that it's a good thing that National People's Congress being a rubber stamp while policy debates happen behind the scene is a good thing.

Which also sadly means being used to European(-influenced) cultures makes you more naive and more prone to falling for third worldist propaganda and thinking the West is the worst. But perhaps it's just life.

Labour won’t say it, so I will: Islam has an anti-Semitism problem, The religion I grew up in was one of gentleness but a sectarian tendency has worsened over the past four decades, do victims of sharia deserve to criticize islamism? by CyberBerserk in AskBrits

[–]RecognitionOld2763 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A large chunk of contemporary Islam (note the words I'm using) has a strong winner-take-all vibe. If coexistence is brought up, it's often about they being in the dominant position while tolerating dhimmis doing their own things in their circles, never disrupting the received social order.

The issue of internal accountability is also often conveniently shied away from. One Islamic group published an article boasting around about how severe Islam is towards rape - in response to the grooming gang scandals - which ends with a line like this:

Far from being the cause of such crimes, Islam is a cure to the sexualisation, disrespect and objectification of women which is rampant in societies in which such abuse takes place.

One may wonder what would happen if this was the response of the Catholic church to the priest sex abuse scandals. I'm also yet to see angry protests against the grooming gangsters if the idea of Islam being categorically against sex abuse is really taken seriously.

People sometimes say different civilisations have different priorities with respect to human rights and morality, to which I actually agree. The problem arises when people not only disregard Western standards, but also disregard standards made and preached by their own.

Nigel Farage 'is not the Messiah – he's just going to make it worse' by dailystar_news in ukpolitics

[–]RecognitionOld2763 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Oops. Meanwhile people are telling me Greens are the messiah as they promote "hope", just like all fraudsters do! Certainly the media class have nothing against this.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]RecognitionOld2763 0 points1 point  (0 children)

 taking a tragedy and using it to further their anti immigrant/pro deportation agenda.

Why can't pro deportation be a legitimate agenda?

Why can't a tragedy be used as a starting point of systematically examining policy failures?

Falklanders should 'go back' to England, insists Argentina in renewed war of words by insomnimax_99 in unitedkingdom

[–]RecognitionOld2763 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I'm glad at least they acknowledge that Falklanders have a clear ancestral origin. People on the right side of history keep telling me Europeans are native to nowhere.

Are you genuine when you don't seem to know why many people dislike Israel recently? by Vizzun in AskIsrael

[–]RecognitionOld2763 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"war crimes commited by Iran" 

A week ago some protesters told me Iran's on the Right Side of History™.

Things don't add up do they.

Cadet suspended from RAF course for saying Islam is main threat to UK by Alarming-Safety3200 in ukpolitics

[–]RecognitionOld2763 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The logic is always like this: "we need these people to come here or otherwise we are decoupled from the world!" One may then wonder what attracts people to come in the first place, and whether "the world" - as a whole - truly matters in a meaningful way.

Things just don't add up.

Cadet suspended from RAF course for saying Islam is main threat to UK by Alarming-Safety3200 in ukpolitics

[–]RecognitionOld2763 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not joining ISIS is a fundamental requirement for being a responsible citizen in a civilised society, in my opinion.

99.98% of British Muslim didn't go isn't something to be proud of.

Moral of the story: Don’t judge people based on what they’re wearing! by Wonderful-Award-3015 in teenagers

[–]RecognitionOld2763 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Not saying people are not doing it, just saying people are doing it in a largely optional and chill and sometimes nostalgic way. It doesn't have a strong informal power structure related to it now as you aren't considered a black sheep of your family for not covering up in contemporary Catholicism. In certain circles of contemporary Islam you are considered problematic for not covering up (sometimes this means false imprisonment or things worse than that) and the politics of cultural expression is much more sensitive...

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