For the first time in 22 years, two German warships will sail through the Taiwan Strait, a move likely to provoke Beijing. Germany joins other Western nations in asserting freedom of navigation in the region amid China’s territorial claims over Taiwan
The Chinese state is a much harder nut to crack under the CCP than it was a century and a half ago under the Qing Dynasty. But there are plenty of John Bolton-esque figures in the American government who seem willing to give it the old college try.
It’s very difficult to talk about the English Empire as the world’s premier opium cartel without taking a bit of the blush off the rose of liberal democracy and free market capitalism. These historical blemishes get dusted over for a reason.
I agree, but that reflex is unfortunate because the ability to openly discuss and confront those things is what sets democracies apart from totalitarian states. You could never see that kind of frank introspection in China regarding June 4th '89, for example.
You could and did. That moment radically transformed how the Deng Administration treated independent political movements, college student activism, and old guard Maoist organizations.
The argument that Chinese politicians and scholars simply don’t acknowledge the events as happening is Western propaganda.
Cool, how long did you live there? Do you still have contacts on the mainland?
Two years, working abroad. And plenty of friends and relatives both on the mainland and in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
I must say I’m very surprised that your HK and TW people share your views. I don’t know any Hong Kongers or Taiwanese but most people I know (generally northerners, which is ironic) have more, shall we say, nuanced opinions.
I didn’t say they share my views. I’ve seen every angle of the argument and quite a few of them have different opinions.
But they argue over a shared history. Mainlanders don’t get confused when someone from Taiwan talks about Tienamen. Taiwanese people don’t stare blankly at the name Chiang Kai-Shek. Folks from Hong Kong aren’t unfamiliar with the British Occupation.
People aren’t simply ignorant of the facts. They tend to be biased due to their material conditions. If you’re a mid manager at the Houston branch of Sinopec, you didn’t get there because you were a John Bircher. Meanwhile if you’re on the payroll of the Foremost Group, you’ve got a very real financial incentive to oppose Chinese unification (but also a real incentive to oppose US tariffs on China).
Work as a contractor long enough and you’ll get all different kinds of viewpoints. They’ll be adversarial, not simply ignorant.
Obviously. My reference to Tiananmen wasn’t implying that people are ignorant of it, but rather that it can’t be discussed openly in a public forum. Write an analysis of it on Weibo that criticizes the government and see where that gets you (whereas in the US you can freely write about the war in Iraq, slavery, or whatever else strikes your fancy)
Also very true, but at least opposing viewpoints aren’t actively suppressed by the government. Equating the two is off by several orders of magnitude.
They can and do. Whole books are written on the subject. But, again, there’s a question of perspective. You’re not going to get shelf-space at a Chinese book store selling something titled “How the Deng Government Destroyed China: The Tienamen Square Incident and the Death of Chinese Democracy” for the same reason you’re not going to get Barnes & Noble to host your copy of “George Washington: America’s Hitler” or convince Ron DeSantis to put a copy of Das Kapital in every Florida student library.
The post will be taken down and your account will likely be suspended. But then you’ll get the same treatment on Twitter trying to post the word “cisgender”. Does that mean Americans simply don’t know about transgenderism? Or does it mean moderators for an arch-conservative are running the largest social media site in your country?
Tell that to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Tell it to Bong Hits for Jesus guy. Tell it to folks trying to distribute voter registration information in Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana and Tennessee.
One of the problems with discussing any kind of Chinese censorship in the United States is that Americans assume they are uniquely privileged and that Chinese people are exceptionally surveilled and repressed. This is largely because the folks making the assertion are saying things that would get you censored in China, but not in the US. By contrast, there are people in the US who have lost their jobs, their property, and their freedom as a consequence of verbally challenging the US government. They aren’t able to voice their grievances because they are censored for saying the things you are not allowed to say. They could say these things in China without consequence and quite a few people in China do espouse these views. But where as boycotting Israel or burning an American flag won’t cost you your career in Chinese state government, like it will in Texas or Florida, we don’t consider this an essential freedom.
The specific set of taboos are different in our two countries. But political taboos exist in both and trigger reactionary responses in both. This does not preclude having a conversation about certain events. But it does shape how people view these events and who they assume are righteous relative to who they assume are tyrannical.
You can talk about the J6 riots around the US Capitol. But you can’t run for office as a Democrat and say “The J6ers were right and justified in their actions, I support them!” because the party will kick you out. You’ll be excommunicated from Dem social circles. You won’t be able to get contracts from Dem officials in blue states. Anyone offering you a job in these circles will fire you. Dem media won’t host you on their shows. Your “social credit score” will be in the trash. Does that mean the Dems have censored you? Or does that mean you’ve alienated everyone you need to do business with the party?