qwename @ qwename @lemmygrad.ml

Fight decades of misinformation on China with official Chinese sources.

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4 yr. ago

US complained so much about the fallacious "fentanyl from China" that Xi said this:

I would like to let you know that China sympathizes deeply with the American people, especially the young, for the sufferings that Fentanyl has inflicted upon them. President Biden and I have agreed to set up a working group on counternarcotics to further our cooperation and help the United States tackle drug abuse.

All Marxists should analyze and understand what this paragraph means, especially the part I placed in bold:

China is promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through Chinese modernization. It will not take the old path of colonization and plundering, or the wrong path of seeking hegemony with growing strength. It does not export its ideology, or engage in ideological confrontation with any country. China does not have a plan to surpass or unseat the United States. Likewise, the United States should not scheme to suppress and contain China.

I think this means that there is no universal socialism button that can be pushed by any single country alone that will magically solve the problem of transitioning from capitalism to socialism. Marxists in every country must not wait for handouts, because theory is free but practice requires hard work and sacrifice.

Even @TankieReplyBot@lemmygrad.ml stopped replying to youtube posts sometime between its last post at 09:50:20 UTC and the next youtube post it should have replied to at 09:58:31 UTC on Nov 10.

@TankieReplyBot@lemmygrad.ml is still replying so that's a small consolation, though I'm not sure if it's hosted on the same servers as elara.ws or genzedong.xyz

More details: https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/09/san-francisco-chinese-consulate-shooting/

• Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s Remarks on the Escalation of Tensions Between Palestine and Israel https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/2535_665405/202310/t20231008_11157299.html

Q: Fierce conflict has broken out between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip, causing massive casualties on both sides. Does China have any comment on this?

A: China is deeply concerned over the current escalation of tensions and violence between Palestine and Israel. We call on relevant parties to remain calm, exercise restraint and immediately end the hostilities to protect civilians and avoid further deterioration of the situation.

The recurrence of the conflict shows once again that the protracted standstill of the peace process cannot go on. The fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine. The international community needs to act with greater urgency, step up input into the Palestine question, facilitate the early resumption of peace talks between Palestine and Israel, and find a way to bring about enduring peace. China will continue to work relentlessly with the international community towards that end.

• Xinhua (state media) Backgrounder: Major Palestinian-Israeli conflicts in recent years: https://english.news.cn/20231009/e01c59819b3f4ac6a5dd8c5e407a221e/c.html
• CGTN (state media) Backgrounder: The decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-08/Backgrounder-The-decades-old-Palestinian-Israeli-conflict-1nJEaEexPfW/index.html
• Global Times (international branch of People's Daily, a Party media) Editorial : To avoid a new Middle East war, Israeli-Palestinian issue can't be delayed https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202310/1299464.shtml?id=11

State media (mainly Xinhua and CCTV) reports on both sides of the situation in Palestine and Israel in the same news article, like they have been doing for Russia and Ukraine since Feb 2022.

There is this photo circulating around on Weibo (Chinese Twitter/X), which reads “坚决支持巴勒斯坦和阿拉伯人民反对美帝国主义和犹太复国主义的斗争”, which translates to something like "firmly support the Palestinian and Arab people's struggle against U.S. imperialism and Zionism". I might be wrong but this was probably taken around May 25 of 1967 during a rally in Beijing, or maybe in March 1965 when a Palestinian Liberation Organization delegation visited China.

Israeli embassy is posting things on Weibo but they have to use the "select comments" feature to only display pro-Israel comments. Palestinian embassy's Weibo stopped posting in 2012, their last post was about how the Chinese government and people have always supported the just cause of the Palestinian people's struggle to restore their legitimate national rights, and included this picture of Deng Xiaoping and Yasser Arafat:

People are still commenting on this old post as a sign of solidarity with Palestine.

In China there are:

• 98 million members of the Communist Party of China (7% of the population)
• 73 million members of the Communist Youth League (there is overlap in membership with the CPC as the age requirements are 14 to 28 years old for the CYL and over 18 for the CPC, so do not just add the numbers from the CPC and CYL)
• 114 million members of the Chinese Young Pioneers (ages 6 to 14)

Joining the CPC is about taking on a responsibility to the Party and people, which is different from just believing in the principles of communism as a non-Party member.

The rest of the population can certainly "identify as communist" without being members of the CPC/CYL/CYP, but it depends on how you define it.

You will need

1. a collective leadership,
2. physical base of operations,
3. to do work IRL that benefits the exploited, and
4. propaganda/publicity (neutral term) to attract members or supporters.

I imagine most groups online cover point 4, but lack all the rest.

Point 1: There will be no "real" unity without a single voice of authority, unless you want anarchist ways of organization.

Point 2: Building tangible things IRL is necessary as humans are not digital lifeforms.

Point 3: If there's nothing to show beneath all the talk, then there isn't any reason for people to support you.

Point 4: This one everyone probably understands.

People who decide to read this may also want to read the Constitution of the Communist Party of China: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202210/26/WS63591ff9a310fd2b29e7eb2a.html

Both available on ProleWiki:

• https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China
• https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China

Side-note about HTTPS, the link OP posted does support HTTPS: https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20/content_WS5ed8856ec6d0b3f0e9499913.html, but not all Chinese government sites do.

Victor Gao (Gao Zhikai) was an interpreter for Deng Xiaoping, but he is not a CPC member, but rather a member of China Democratic League.

Here's Victor Gao talking about China's whole-process people's democracy: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-11-07/How-does-whole-process-people-s-democracy-work--1eJSwwxCtji/index.html

Some foreign news agencies even called me a spokesperson of the Communist Party of China, which is not true. In reality, I'm not a CPC member. I'm a member of a democratic party of China.

From "Press conference on successful implementation of 'one country, two systems' in Hong Kong and Macao since the 18th CPC National Congress": http://english.scio.gov.cn/pressroom/2022-11/06/content_78504624_9.htm

Thank you, a question from Bloomberg. If a decision to extend "one country, two systems" past 2047 in Hong Kong was made, what would such an extension mean for Hong Kong's future? Thank you.

Thank you very much for your question. Unswervingly, comprehensively, and accurately implementing "one country, two systems" is China's unchanging policy. On July 1 this year, in his address at the meeting celebrating the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly announced to the world, "There is no reason for us to change such a good policy, and we must adhere to it in the long run!" If Hong Kong, Macao, and the international community had any doubts in this regard before, this speech by the general secretary on July 1 gave the final word, and all those worries and discussions no longer persist.

Now this doesn't mean that the overall policy won't change over the next couple of decades, but I think it's more realistic for the transition to socialism to occur from within Hong Kong and Macao and not through intervention from the central government.

For reference: Xi Jinping's address at the meeting celebrating the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland and the inaugural ceremony of the sixth-term government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region http://www.china.org.cn/chinese/2022-07/04/content_78303693.htm

You can try SWAPO's website: www.swapoparty.org.na/index.php/document-publications, might be slightly outdated but it does include the 2018 changes to their party constitution by adding "socialism with Namibian characteristics".

Sorry I got heated up after reading the article you linked, the strong words are directed at that. I personally wish the Cultural Revolution had succeeded but alas here we are.

There will always be the risk of reactionaries sneaking into the party and climbing up to the higher ranks, or former comrades turning corrupt and endangering the the socialist cause. But that doesn't mean we should destabilize the country just to deal with them, that only helps the reactionaries further their cause.

What everyone should learn from the Cultural Revolution is how NOT to handle internal contradictions.

This is the second time I'm seeing the Cultural Revolution put in a good light in this post, get off your high horses you naive idealists!

The Cultural Revolution was hijacked by ultras, Lin Biao tried to assassinate Mao.

This is the Constitution of the CPC in 1969: https://fuwu.12371.cn/2014/12/24/ARTI1419387596442272.shtml, it includes this paragraph in the preamble:

林彪同志一贯高举毛泽东思想伟大红旗，最忠诚、最坚定地执行和捍卫毛泽东同志的无产阶级革命路线。林彪同志是毛泽东同志的亲密战友和接班人。

(DeepL translation) Comrade Lin Biao has consistently held high the great red flag of Mao Zedong Thought and has most faithfully and resolutely implemented and defended the proletarian revolutionary line of Comrade Mao Zedong. Comrade Lin Biao is Comrade Mao Zedong's close comrade-in-arms and successor.

Utterly disgusting.

I reread my comment and fixed a mistake for the 1964 statistic, it turned out to be 32.3% because I mixed up the denominator and used the population number from 1982 when calculating for 1964.

From Amazon it looks like the book is written in English and Han Dongping “teaches history and political science at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Han comes from a rural background in China. ” Now that doesn't sound like something I would waste time reading as a Chinese. But I found a PDF of it on http://www.socialiststories.com/en/writers/Han-Dongping/ so I might read it.

I'd be wary of anyone who tries to glorify the Cultural Revolution.

For example, the point about literacy rates:

From China's second census in 1964, 233,267,947 out of 723,070,269 people over the age of 13 were illiterate, that's 32.3%.

From China's third census in 1982, 235,820,002 out of 1,031,882,511 people over the age of 12 were illiterate or semi illiterate, that's 22.9%.

Note that these two statistics aren't referring to the same thing, so the report for the third census in 1982 also mentions that the percentage of people that were illiterate and semi illiterate went down from 38.1％ in 1964 to 23.5% in 1982.

Side note: I found a site that's supposedly "The voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA" https://revcom.us/a/174/dongping_han-en.html that mentions this book, and what do I find?

But after Mao died in 1976, top leaders in the Communist Party, headed by Deng Xiaoping, carried out a reactionary coup.

Others have mentioned China's non-interference policy, I'd like to add that I think the only way for China to get more involved is through the UN, that means the Security Council or Peacekeeping or some other UN organization.

Sorry I got the impression that you meant trolls and bots hiding their real location to avoid law enforcement, because normal users can't tell either way.

Using a VPN or other methods to hide your IP address will only delay tracking efforts, and throwaway accounts are not a thing in China with real-name verification, though there is a similar problem with personal information being stolen to register accounts, and selling your verified account for profit.

If a person is in China and tries to use a VPN/proxy based overseas to hide their real IP, they would have to add an additional layer of redirection to avoid running into a situation where multiple accounts are posting from the same IP address. If a person is overseas and tries to use a proxy based in China to make it seem like they are in China, well then they're just inviting the authorities to ask for server logs from the local provider, it's the same situation if they're in China but using an IP address from another province.

Of course most trolls or bots aren't going to be targeted IRL, usually their accounts gets muted for some duration or banned if they violate laws or platform TOS. Occasionally you see reports of people being detained for spreading rumours or outright false claims that become widely circulated.

If the person is based overseas, there's nothing you can do to them IRL unless you're the US.

a spark that sets a prairie ablaze

"A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire" is the title of a famous letter and saying by Mao Zedong. Both "Maoists" and reactionaries like to use Mao's sayings to criticize the CPC, the former aiming to criticize the "revisionist" government, and the latter aiming to overthrow the socialist system.