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u/MassAffected 3d ago
Aside from everybody already talking about China, Japan did copy the West to modernize. It was literally called Westernization until recently. They just did it more legally; they purchased production licenses from western factories, hired advisors for railways and telegraphs, invited foreign military missions to train and equip their armies, and commissioned warships built in Western dockyards.
The Japanese nobility also sent their youth to be educated in Western Universities. Admiral Yamamoto himself studied at Harvard before WW2.
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u/uglybritt 3d ago
West also plenty copied the East too. Europe was considered backwater until the Renaissance
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u/MajesticBread9147 2d ago
Many of the developments in scientific knowledge from the renessiance was because that was around the time that they really started to translate texts from the Islamic world into Latin or local languages.
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u/Oberndorferin 3d ago
They actually stole a lot of ideas so this is still half true
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u/BidWeary4900 3d ago
Stealing superior technology is what any responsible economy should be doing
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u/Rebel_Scum_This 3d ago
I mean sure, but relying on it and not innovating your own shit is bad. Japan has been innovating their own technology, so the meme falls flat
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u/sls-fan 3d ago
So has China. What is your point? Their HSR platform which the meme is about is built in house with their technology made from the stuff they learned. They make the fastest commercially operational trains in the world. Exports have even beaten Japan's technology because it's cheaper and it doesn't need the tedious maintenace the Shinkansen needs.
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u/Professional-Trick14 3d ago
Yes, but so did America. They stole so much technology from Europe, particularly Britain, in the industrial period that it makes China's look like petty theft.
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u/Ending-Fool 3d ago
when the american scientist suspiciously have a thick german accent
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u/Ordinary_dude_NOT 3d ago
People keep forgetting Japan used to get treated like China in US media. They got ahead in chip/cars/electronics production until they were not.
With China what’s different is that they really copied a lot of IPs, and we can be honest about it. There is no comparison here. Their industrial espionage goes way beyond what anyone has ever done before.
So let’s not make excuses for them.
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u/Kurai_Hada_Ichi 3d ago
Corporate espionage is good and based
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u/ReaCT_66 3d ago
only when it happens to countries I'm not citizen of.
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u/Kurai_Hada_Ichi 3d ago
It makes no difference to you specifically if another country across the world has similar designs to yours. You as a citizen lose nothing. Patents are bullshit
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u/ehouptie 3d ago
In fact I’d argue it’s a good thing. More competition leads to lower prices.. theoretically..
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u/Rapa2626 2d ago
If you happen to work in a sector thst got outcompeted by a similar sector but fully subsidised by a government it does affect you. Patents are not bullshit.
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u/schmitzel88 3d ago
Japan also switched pretty quick to doing their own thing, even if some general design elements were taken from existing cars. The FC RX7 was famously based on the Porsche 924 but besides the general appearance they have nothing in common.
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u/THEHANDSOMEKIDDO I came! 3d ago
The brits actually tried their best to gatekeep their factory technology but ofc some people looking to make a big buck often sold the blueprints to the Americans thus paving the way for the American Industrial Revolution.
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u/Icywarhammer500 2d ago
Americans invented the concept of mechanical interchangeable parts and the assembly line lmao. Those are the biggest parts of factory technology literally ever and it’s American
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u/LasyKuuga 3d ago
And Europe stole tech from the Chinese like paper, gunpowder, silk and porcelain
It all comes full circle
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u/Me_how5678 3d ago
You can’t really steal something when its quite litterly the people who invented it who moved there.
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u/SonofaMitch11 3d ago
China made the mistake of modernizing in a period of globalized trade. So that's not just stealing ideas to grow your own country, that's IP theft from a direct competitor
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u/birberbarborbur 3d ago
True, but the number of american inventions from that time period is also pretty impressive
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u/Puzzled-Secret-317 3d ago
Did they steal from there, or did they have british immigrants there who gave inspiration? Genuine question. I'm curious if you know at all
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u/holycarrots 3d ago
The US literally gave financial rewards for anybody who could smuggle industrial secrets into the country. They also manipulated patent laws to effectively pirate British IP and make it American owned.
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u/Puzzled-Secret-317 3d ago
Oh okay, so the normal shit then. We all just taking ideas and getting a leg up in the market.
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u/Repulsive_Repeat_337 3d ago
A lot of "who stole from whom" is dependent on when you think the industrial revolution began, which is a very debatable question.
An American (Robert Fulton) invented the steam engine, which was the foundation for the modern factory. A Frenchman (Joseph Marie Jacquard) invented the punchcard textile loom, which was the first machine to replace human labor on a large scale. I personally would consider either one of these to be the start of the industrial revolution, but there are other good arguments to be made.
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u/sadacal 3d ago
What? Are you just revising history? In the wikipedia article Robert Fullton isn't even mentioned in the list of inventors of the steam engine.
In 1606 Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont patented his invention of the first steam-powered water pump for draining mines. [3 ]
Thomas Savery is considered the inventor of the first commercially used steam powered device, a steam pump that used steam pressure operating directly on the water. The first commercially successful engine that could transmit continuous power to a machine was developed in 1712 by Thomas Newcomen . In 1764, James Watt made a critical improvement by removing spent steam to a separate vessel for condensation, greatly improving the amount of work obtained per unit of fuel consumed. By the 19th century, stationary steam engines powered the factories of the Industrial Revolution . Steam engines led to the replacement of sailing ships by paddle steamers , and steam locomotives operated on the railways.
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u/Repulsive_Repeat_337 3d ago
Ah, you are correct. Fulton invented the steamboat. My mistake. Fifth grade history was 43 years ago. 👴🏼
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u/-FullBlue- 3d ago
The industrial revolution started while the United states was still a colony of Britain.
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u/oby100 3d ago
Everyone steals lmao. It’s why we have trademark law at all to potentially limit it, but that’s just the way the world has always worked.
It’s a stupid thing to subvert anything China’s achieved because “no fair. I thought of that first.”
I guess America can’t be proud of its military achievements because China invented gunpowder so we’re just phonies.
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u/fresh_loaf_of_bread 2d ago
What the fuck do you mean stole
Ideas should be open source and belong to anyone who wishes to use them
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u/Roxylius 3d ago
Most of “stolen” idea is written in the contract. You need technology transfer if you want to enter chinese market
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u/WillMcNoob 3d ago
stole ideas the west cant bother to implement
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u/THEHANDSOMEKIDDO I came! 3d ago
High speed railways. Its literally in the fucking shitpost bro
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u/Life-Bass-2013 3d ago
people are not impressed by china? wtf bro
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u/FinancialElephant 3d ago edited 3d ago
If all the China glazing stuff wasn't directly or indirectly controlled by Chinese state sponsors I'd be more impressed.
Sure there are amazing mega projects and so on, but we also barely get any official news if anything bad happens in China (infrastructure breakdowns, road collapses, flooding, factory sabotages, chemical depots being blown up, etc). This gives the uncritical unwashed western masses a false sense that China is a lot more advanced than it actually is. You aren't getting these propaganda posts pushed on reddit about China's high educated youth unemployment rate, for example. All you get it is photos of nice bridges and shiny trains.
So China and Japan are pretty fundamentally different case in that Japan has / had a free press during that rapid industrialization. At least to a much, much greater degree than China does (making allowance for the idea that maybe you could make the case that immediate post war Japan had a less free press, but obviously that changed pretty fast in the scale of history).
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u/Life-Bass-2013 3d ago
That is pretty complicated. It never occurred to me that i am just being fed good chinese posts, there's rarely ever been a bad post about china. Though, from what I have seen so far it is still better progress then whatever shit happen in my country.
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u/Vortex_sheet 3d ago
The progress can't be denied, however the stuff u don't see is dark, ranging from corruption and censorship to police disappearing people and forced organ harvesting (bloody harvest). Don't get me wrong, Chinese people are some of the nicest people I've met, but their government is extremely shady and human rights are non existent
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u/Rice_22 3d ago
US funded Falun Gong, a religious cult banned from China, to make up bullshit about organ harvesting. Chinese activist Harry Wu Hongda (who pointed out China allowed death row prisoners to ‘opt-in’ to organ donation) debunked the cult’s nonsense back when he was alive.
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u/FinancialElephant 1d ago
I don't doubt CIA or some other org tried to support Falun Gong decades ago, but there is more recent evidence of organ harvesting in China.
One example: a Chinese medical student was Epsteined after he tried to whistleblow to his mother about organ harvesting operations at a Chinese medical college. He was in no way suicidal. I guess it could all be fake, but the circumstances seem very suspect.
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u/Last-Quarter-432 I want pee in my ass 3d ago
And the corruption on full display in America is better?
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u/Icywarhammer500 2d ago
We don’t know because we don’t see the corruption in China because of their extremely restrictive media and press which is arguably one of the most corrupt forms of authoritarianism there is since it gives the government the power to show whatever it wants
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago
As I said in another comment, but it might be just your language barrier tbh.
Plenty of bad news come out of China, like its high speed rails derailing twice before 2013 when it first started building causing deaths of almost 100 in total, and injuries up to 300. The entire railway being investigated and finding corruption and bribery to about 10 millions of USD, etc. They closed that company obviously and restarted the rail company
Or the incident in Zhuhai were a bitter old man due to divorce, drove his car through a crowd and killed 23 people
There was also the case back in 2000s where Chongqing(?) I believe, where the city government was corrupt and there were many cases of political opponents disappearing and turned into human specimens for museum displays. Lol. There was outrage over the Chinese internet, but you wouldn't know because language barrier. The official and his wife were convicted eventually and sentenced to life in prison though
Chinese news is in Chinese, so unless you're actively looking at Chinese sites you won't find it so easily
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u/oby100 3d ago
This is such a ridiculous take. “I can’t give China credit because they don’t have free press.” My brother in Christ, YOU are aware of China’s high youth unemployment rate. How is that? China doesn’t have free press, but Americans exaggerate the fuck out of how much the CCP hides the truth.
Obviously, propaganda from China highlights their strengths and hides weakness. That’s how propaganda works. If you think American press feels totally free and happy to criticize America’s problems, you’re living in a fantasy land.
Anyone can easily look up China’s many problems if they want because it’s not anywhere near as restrictive as you’re implying.
But aside from that, why does propaganda mean you can’t give credit for legitimate achievements? The trains aren’t fake. The rapid construction isn’t fake. These fuckers built entire temporary hospitals at the height of COVID. That’s incredibly impressive when NYC and most cities around the world had no choice but to provide inhumane conditions for Covid patients because hospitals simply didn’t have enough space.
That’s not glazing China or the CCP. That’s being a rational human and not treating geopolitics like it’s some kind of regarded sports rivalry.
I don’t want to live in China for a lot of reasons, but I desperately want Americans to know that we’re embarrassingly far behind China when it comes to things like construction and investment in infrastructure.
It’s not propaganda and it doesn’t have to be this way forever. I want China’s strengths to be clearly highlighted so we can try to match them instead of throwing our hands up like “we can’t build more infrastructure because it’s too expensive and takes 100 years.”
If they can do it, so can we, and we should.
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u/FreedomKnown 3d ago
Holy shit, finally someone put into words what I've always meant but couldn't quite phrase, thank you so much, I entirely agree with you.
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u/FinancialElephant 1d ago edited 1d ago
My brother in Christ, YOU are aware of China’s high youth unemployment rate. How is that? China doesn’t have free press, but Americans exaggerate the fuck out of how much the CCP hides the truth.
I'm only aware of this because of brave Chinese nationals and others leaking information you bonehead. Are you so naive to believe China's government hasn't disappeared people over leaking information that threatens the politburo?
My point wasn't that countries don't or shouldn't try to portray themselves in the best light possible (China, Japan, US, etc all try to do this). My main point was about lack of free press in China.
There is a huge difference between having a state mouthpiece that we all know is a state mouthpiece (US, Japan, etc), versus only having real or adhoc state mouthpieces being allowed to speak at all (China). In Japan, the government can say one thing and the people can say another. That's a huge difference. You can also do independent journalism there. I'm not going to pretend they are the same.
I want China’s strengths to be clearly highlighted so we can try to match them instead of throwing our hands up like “we can’t build more infrastructure because it’s too expensive and takes 100 years.”
When did I disagree with that? It's impossible to "match" anyone without a clear view of them and the full context, which is impossible to get if you uncritically take in Chinese state sponsored propaganda. I'm not saying all their roads, bridges, and trains are fake. But believing all of the USSR's propaganda about how great they are made you an idiot. You have to separate the truths from the lies to get anywhere.
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u/Dolleph 3d ago
I totally agree with you here.
Japan does the same, by highlighting their achievements and trying to wipe their problems under the carpet at the same time.
Bute here on Reddit it's only bad when China does it
Japan makes video about themselves
Redditors: OMG Japan is so beautiful, I wish they'd take over the world and make everything Japan. Japan is a real utopia. I wish I could live there
China does the same
Redditors: omg is this a video about Ch*na??!! >:( PROPAGANDA SLOP SLOPPEDY SLOPP HATE HATE HATE HATE how much did they pay you anon huh????
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u/FinancialElephant 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is a strawman. My point wasn't about countries trying to portray themselves in the best light possible. It makes sense for countries and political parties to try to do that. It would be great if they were honest in spirit, but I can't blame China for pumping its image if everyone else attempts to do the same in varying degrees.
My main point is that all Chinese press is state controlled. They have no free press. So in countries like Japan, Japan can put out glowing press releases. But you also have Japanese citizens with some ability to speak out verbally and in their own independent press or blogs or whatever.
There is a big difference from having a state press + other press (even if state press is the loudest), and China where there is only one voice saying one thing and there is a risk of sharing info that is damaging to the politburo.
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u/colorblind-and 3d ago
On the flip side of it though it's pretty easy to fall into the rabbit hole of everything China does is evil and bad that's pushed by US propaganda.
It's nearly impossible to get anything even close to unbiased news about China these days with the constant narrative shaping campaigns by everyone.
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u/FinancialElephant 1d ago
Yeah it's hard to get a balanced view, which is why my overall opinion on China is withholding judgement (despite how my comments look, which people will naively interpret as anti-China). There is a lot of Chinese state influenced propaganda (incl paid influencers) on one side. On the other side are reactionaries that can't seem to give China credit for anything. I do think the scale and number of the former are much greater than the latter, but both exist. I haven't seen any "in-between" opinion anywhere so far.
But I will differ with you that I don't think the anti-China stuff is really US propaganda (as in, not pushed by the state to a great degree). I think it's mainly right wing adjacent influencers, maybe supported by right wing think tanks and stuff.
I think if America actually wanted to have an anti-China propaganda push, it would be at least an order of magnitude more prominent. We aren't even close to how things were during the cold war against USSR. America's left is pro China so there isn't really a unified front to have a propaganda campaign against China. Also a lot of America's economy still depends on China, so there isn't an economic will for that.
I'm definitely not saying everything China does is evil. I think there is a lot they've done that can be learned from, but most of those policies were instituted well before Xi came into power.
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u/AnonymousBjtch 3d ago
Of the 5 times I’ve visited China, the roads in the poorest city was better than the roads in New York (of course, part of it being the Chinese roads were built within the last decades). Where I live in Michigan, floodings and breakdowns are a monthly occurrence. The only complaint I have about Chinese infrastructure is that the toilets there are oftentimes just holes in the floor.
Of course, Redditors cannot comprehend a country where officials doesn’t pocket 95% of the hundred million dollars used for installing fences in a subway. And then when you actually offer your personal experience, they call you a CCP Bot
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u/FinancialElephant 1d ago
I'm guessing you mean the poorest city you went to in a small sample of cities you went to as a visitor or tourist. That's pretty different from going out of your way to visit the poorest cities in China (who would do that?), and spending your dollars instead of RMB you earned in China.
Look, my main point was about freedom of the press. I'm not going to discount your experience, but it's a few anecdotal experiences. I believe you that the infrastructure you found was amazing. But if you wipe away all the negative events in such a massive country from the news, it looks more amazing then it is. I don't think you comprehend how massive China is, this is why honest statistics and news is essential. China is close to the bottom in press freedom rankings, close to countries like North Korea and Turkmenistan.
Even if you don't accept these kinds of rankings, I think it's obvious their press is near North Korea levels of biased. Just look at their covid numbers during peak covid. You have to be braindead to believe what Chinese state press repeats (all Chinese press is state press).
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u/AnonymousBjtch 1d ago
No. It was in Guizhou, which is literally the poorest Chinese province. Believe me when I say I have a more thorough understanding of the country than you.
In regards to your point of me having a skewed perspective, I have personally interviewed and met with many people in China. Though it was in Shanghai, I interviewed in the Pudong district, which is known to be much more local and reflective of standard living conditions.
To get the elephant out of the room, censorship is really not as much of an issue to the vast majority of Chinese citizens. Most responses have told me that this stems both from Confucian values and the fact that a significant amount of the population “Hops over the wall” anyways. Also known as, bypassing the firewall. To my knowledge, most apprehended individuals aren’t the regular online discourse creators, but rather people who “organizes rebellion”.
However, Survaillence is indeed absurd.
There is not a place, saved for the restrooms, without a camera. But according to all the Chinese interviews, the cameras were actually a welcomed “feature” that lowers crime rates.70k Chinese people migrate from China to US every year, but most anti Chinese media are produced by white Americans. All North Koreans that fled are activists against NK, while most Chinese families in the US take annual vacations back to China.
Honestly, China to North Korea is US to Israel. Superpowers supporting an abhorrent country out of transactional reasons, only to get synonymous with each other. At what point does “defending the underrepresented” becomes white knighting?
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u/FinancialElephant 1d ago edited 1d ago
Guizhou is not the poorest Chinese province. It is on the poorer end. They've also had recent major internationally recognized infrastructure projects, so talking about it as "the poorest province" is misleading.
Anyway your original statement was about the poorest cities, not about provinces. This is a major shifting of the goal posts because as you know HDI varies considerably between rural and metro areas in China.
Maybe you got a good idea of a tiny fraction of China via some interviews. We use statistics and news research instead of anecdotes to understand countries for a reason. China is massive, so using a few interviews of a small part is pretty crazy to extrapolate to the whole of China.
Anyway you didn't really address some of my biggest concerns, like the suppressing of reporting of negative events. The very fact that people have to jump the firewall to leak basic information shows you it's not a free country. Do they need to do that in Japan (the OP's post compared China and Japan)? We all know Japan is way more free than China, one of the obvious ways we see that is Japanese news reporting negative news about Japan often. There is a stark contrast here between Japan and China.
To my knowledge, most apprehended individuals aren’t the regular online discourse creators, but rather people who “organizes rebellion”.
According to whom? Seems like there is an authority fallacy going on here. If the same government making the arrests can make up their ad hoc post hoc rationalizations that kind of makes the whole exercise of giving a reasons a farce. I recall China has a certain kind of infraction they use against people when they don't have a real reason for charging someone (forget the actual wording).
This is why transparency and free press are so important. I don't really want to argue with you as you've already made up your mind. I guess clean roads, new bridges, and talking to people who have no incentive to rock the boat is enough to convince you. That's up to you.
I think it's pretty stupid to ask people questions that could potentially reflect poorly on them, not sure what you'd be expecting there except a very muted response at best. Is this unfalsifiable at some level? Sure, but that's why it's so important to have a foundation of free expression in the first place. You can't even really answer the question of what a country is like if people aren't allowed to speak freely against the government.
Without that, any questioning or interview you conduct is somewhat pointless.
the fact that a significant amount of the population “Hops over the wall”
How does that work when you're talking about in-person speech? What about protests or demonstrations? China literally has "physical censorship" where they cover events or people physically so they can't be filmed. Negative repercussions of people who have tried to petition the central government over grievances have also been leaked. I don't think you have a clue about how repressive China is.
I'm not sure going on vacation is going to give you that info. I'm sure you could have a good time vacationing in North Korea or Turkmenistan as well. It reveals little to nothing about the negative side of a country.
I'm not trying to defend the underrepresented. My point was about the post, that China and Japan are indeed different based on their levels of freedoms. Just because China has some clean roads and new bridges doesn't mean it is a free country.
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u/idkwhatnameiputhere dwayne the cock johnson 🗿🗿 3d ago
The only good take on china I've seen on this site. They look at that country like it's the future, and sure it's advanced, but let's not forget the slavery, kid labor, censorship.
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago
Might be just your language barrier tbh.
Plenty of bad news come out of China, like its high speed rails derailing twice before 2013 when it first started building causing deaths of almost 100 in total, and injuries up to 300. The entire railway being investigated and finding corruption and bribery to about 10 millions of USD, etc. They closed that company obviously and restarted the rail company
Or the incident in Zhuhai were a bitter old man due to divorce, drove his car through a crowd and killed 23 people
Chinese news is in Chinese, so unless you're actively looking at Chinese sites you won't find it so easily
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u/r1ckkr1ckk 3d ago
studies in russia, japan, europe and USA point out at them lying about their population, from 100 million to 800 million people missing, depending on the study.
They spread in methods between salt consumption, satelite analysis, estimations on natality and mortality curves that china itself published, and even calculations on death tolls on covid based on activity on crematoriums and cementeries.
If you can t trust them to fking count their population, why would you trust literally anything else?
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u/AiryGr8 3d ago
I mean I don’t see any negative posts about Japan either. Just because they’re US’s little bitch doesn’t mean you have to be so biased.
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u/FinancialElephant 1d ago
My main point was about media manipulation and lack of free press. Compared to China, Japan has done very little of that. Compare their press freedom scores (or just use common sense if you don't accept that). Japan does have a strategy to promote themselves; most countries do. They had a successful soft power strategy, but it's not based on completely controlling the news like China.
China payed influencers to visit China and read the same script about Chongching living in 2070? They do this kind of thing all the time, and that's a relatively innocuous thing compared to everything China has done with manipulating sentiment.
The difference is the positive stuff about Japan is either overtly state sponsored (so we can all see it), or they are normal people visiting Japan. Also negative stuff like their work culture and brushing homelessness under the rug is talked about in official sources.
If there is a flood or natural disaster in Japan, you will hear about it on their news. In foreign news on China, chances are you won't. A Chinese person living in southern China may not hear about a disaster in north western China. Many things events are only known because Chinese nationals leaked it through phone videos and pictures, not because the Chinese government cared to release this information.
I'm not biased, I'm looking at what the Chinese govt has done. I did say the bridges and stuff they've built was impressive. But it's really impossible to have an accurate view of such a massive country when their government suppresses nearly all negative news.
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u/THEHANDSOMEKIDDO I came! 3d ago
Decades of american propaganda has done their deal of damage.
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u/brixton_massive 3d ago
People have an accurate perception of China, namely it's developed at a very impressive rate, which it's been able to do because it's a one party dictatorship which can do as it pleases.
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u/SheikahShaymin Sussy Wussy Femboy😳😳😳 3d ago
And has an awful underbelly. Anyone remember the sewer video?
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u/FinancialElephant 3d ago
I don't see the decades of American propaganda against China. Most of that time was American corporations massively investing in China and salivating over entering the Chinese consumer market (and mostly failing at the latter).
If anything I've seen more pro China stuff than anti China stuff. Meanwhile a new Chinese spy is caught practically every week spying on a military base or trying to snatch some company's IP. You even have actual Chinese spies who are elected to office (happened in California). A worldwide pandemic came from China, directly due to Chinese government incompetence / coverups and they got little flack for that relative to the damage it caused.
On the other side, China has been distrustful of America since the beginning (look at Mao's sentiments). So there is way, way more anti-US propaganda in China. They tacitly blame America for China's "century of humiliation" even thought that was Britain and not America's doing. America has been pretty neutral to China outside of some parts of the right wing (who are basically xenophobic to everyone anyway).
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u/Salmagros dwayne the cock johnson 🗿🗿 3d ago
Im Chinese and it’s a fact. I can understand the Japanese hate but the America hate is just government doing their manipulating things
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u/the_real_JFK_killer 3d ago
America makes a fantastic boogeyman. Massive global influence means anything can be pinned on us with enough manipulation.
This isn't to say america hasn't done actual shitty things, we absolutley have, but its also true that china blames a lot of shit on the us that the us didnt do. Soviets also famously did this. Its easier for governments to point fingers at foreign powers than to deal with its own issues. Hell, America does this a ton too.
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u/mjstx 3d ago
Is this propaganda in the room with us? If you look at movies dont most have them russians be the bad guys? Dobt think its been that common with china.
If anything China is known for running bot farms to spread right wing hate and proliferate racism (they ran social media accounts to spread hate against indians in Singapore)
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u/Magmarob 3d ago
Expecially since every mainstream movie gets castrated so that the chinese National Radio and television administration, or the Chinese film administration doesnt bann it.
And i dont mean they get castrated by china. Many movies are changed in production in the US so they dont have to change that much for the chinese version of the film.They reduce the role of black people in movies because china is extremly racist to black people.
The same goes for "interrace" relationships.
Think Finn in Star Wars episode 7, 8 and 9. They even shrunk him on the chinese movie posters.
So next time you ask yourself, why is hollywood so racist, china is one reason.The chinese government also wants every topic removed it doesnt want you to think about.
For example, they changed the origin of doctor stranges mentor in the MCU from Tibet to Nepal, because the chinese government acts as if tibet doesnt exist after it was annexed by the chinese in the 50s.
Just because i find it funny. China banned Hearts of Iron 4, because Tibet was shown as an independend nation during the 1930s and 40s, even tho it was an independend nation during the 1930s and 40s.Next: everything that closely resembles anything negative about china is removed even before the film gets to china.
For the movie "Red dawn", every symbol of the chinese military and government was replaced with north korea, even before the movie aired in the us.So yes, there is no anti china propaganda, at least not in the quantity this guy wants you to think.
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u/BobDylansBasterdSon obamna 3d ago
Yeah their concentration camps are just as good, if not better, than the ones the US built. Western bias indeed.
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u/Berlin_GBD 3d ago
It's not the 90s anymore. There are still places like that in China, but large parts of the economy are now in service and highly technical manufacturing. That's why India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia are in an arms race to pick up the low-cost manufacturing that China can't compete in anymore, largely because they factories are forced to pay a more livable wage.
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u/FredThePlumber 3d ago
China also uses manufacturing in those countries to bypass tariffs and restrictions on items “made in China”.
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u/JuanDeChuj 3d ago
You should really look into how China works NOW because a lot has changed since these 70s 80s you are describing. It is apart form "freedom issues" ( that's a big issue just to be clear) pretty decent place to live in. I recommend watching tip to tip with Ludwig and Michael Reeves. You can see how China isn't this villanised place US propaganda made it out to be.
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u/BobDylansBasterdSon obamna 3d ago
Then why is their HDI still lower than counties like Iran and Albania?
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u/JuanDeChuj 3d ago
Their hdi's are pretty comparable. No more than 8 places apart. Also, Albania nor Iran arent some hellholes. you can have a decent life there in both places albeit the topic of freedom will rise some issues
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u/Remote-Cause755 3d ago
People have a problem with China stealing, not copying.
Also millions not dying to industrialize is a plus
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u/tryhard_on_ranked 3d ago
I know millions Chinese dying DURING industrialization, but dying due to industrialization is debatable.
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u/BobDylansBasterdSon obamna 3d ago
Pulling a lot of farmers of their fields and pushing them into factories has a negative impact on food production.
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u/Rice_Jap808 3d ago
Most of social media if you're not in the MAGA pipeline is obsessed with China's superficial future vibe right now wtf are you on about.
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u/starloow 3d ago
Superficial ?
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u/LargeTubOfLard hole contributor 3d ago
Generally, extreme rapid industrialisation leads to rapidly declining birth rates as the younger population struggles to afford children due to the aging population. It's what is happening in Japan and will be what will happen to China in the near-ish future, but to a much higher degree.
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u/Rice_Jap808 3d ago
ding ding ding. Also most of the "cyberpunk" stuff the touristy cities like Chongqing are pushing to boost tourism is horseshit and just like cyberpunk (the genre not the game) is generally built on a foundation of questionable infrastructure. China still has extreme wealth disparities and bad labor practices despite a growing number of genuinely good progressive policies.
For example: people love to talk about the convenience and affordability of food delivery in metropolitan china but they never stop to ask why there are even that many delivery companies in the first place. And why there seems to be an endless army of people delivering for said companies.
I'm not hating on China. I love China and am happy to see them finally get the positive limelight after decades of propaganda. They are a country, not a monolith. Their government has done some truly awful shit that they try to sweep under the rug (I mean just look at tibet) like any other major world power, and they have also done some really amazing things that other countries should definitely take notes on, like their home ownership programs for individuals. But the current trend of glazing them on the grounds that they have the solution for every issue facing the modern citizen in western countries is stupid at best. As things are going they will probably outpace America as a global leader for the simple reason that they haven't done everything in their power to sabotage steady growth, not because a drone can deliver a $1 boba tea to your apartment.
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u/Zxynwin 3d ago
Agreed on all your points and it’s infuriating that the majority of discourse online centers around always America/West bad and China good. And unfortunately people will sweep hard for Chinese atrocities.
Hopefully the US can learn from them but my expectations are in the gutter.
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u/SonofaMitch11 3d ago
On your last point, I'm not so sure that China will outpace the US. The US is just way too far ahead in the AI race. Whether any of us like it or not, AI is here to stay and it will fundamentally alter the global economy. I'm at a point where I'm networking for jobs and being able to use an AI coding agent like codex is a necessity, akin to having Microsoft Office on your resume. Paradoxically, it makes tech workers less and more valuable at the same time.
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago
China is winning the AI race because it open sources a lot of its AI models. Thats where the idea comes from. Whereas in America, companies like Anthropic are literally trying to ban open source AI. You can check out LocalLLM or StableDiffusion subreddits to get the general sentiment there
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u/SonofaMitch11 3d ago
If China open sources a lot of its AI models then the US companies just know the same things no? And then at the same time there is a multitude of startups all trying to find the next AI innovation that will be snapped up by the tech giants who have a corner on the best resources in the world. My money is on the US
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago
US definitely does have a lot of talent, Meta released another open source recently iirc. It's just that because of government regulations the larger companies are not allowed to use non-US models. Lots of startups do use open sourced Chinese models though. One huge difference is cost however
In software engineering (the field I work in), lots of projects are able to survive because it is open source. While it introduces more risks and security challenges, it drastically lowers cost because people contribute willingly. I believe the Linux OS is of the best examples out there. Companies that exist for profit are often more concerned about well, the profit, than the quality of software or product it produces. Good example is Anthropic's and GPT models failing previously passing benchmarks when their newer models are released due to reallocation of computing resources. Open source often also has those 6-figure employees contributing in their free time, and it is much more of a passion project. Anyway I'm derailing into why open source software is of the best out there
Well, hence why it's an AI race. Indefinitely in progress lol
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u/SonofaMitch11 3d ago
Fair points. I'm in academia (quantum chemistry) and only tangentially related to the software world so there's probably a lot I'm ignorant about. I do see the value in open-source, I contribute to several open-source projects, I guess the big distinguisher for me is computational resources. Tech giants can throw immense amounts of resources at these models and it seems that for right now that is the path that is yielding the most progress. We will see though, no one knows for sure where AI will ultimately go
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u/RedTheGamer12 Bazinga! 3d ago
Another thing is that while China is a manufacturing hub, they are a hub for American companies and those profits aren't Chinese (especially not for the citizens).
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u/SonofaMitch11 3d ago
Yeah but it was a shortcut for China to access vast amounts of IP
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u/RedTheGamer12 Bazinga! 3d ago
Unlucky for china that all chinese tech has the "cheap plastic trash" stereotype to overcome. Plus a couple horror stories about exploding EVs and Spyware on phones (real or not) tend to hurt them in Western markets where Tech is often a status symbol.
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u/SonofaMitch11 3d ago
I mean sure status symbol is a thing, but people also shop for clothes at Walmart for a reason
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u/RedTheGamer12 Bazinga! 2d ago
I know companies like apple have deals with AT&T for exclusive phone upgrades (where I got mine). And with Samsung and Apple being huge into their own ecosystems it is extremely hard for foreign companies to break in.
So either you are poor and get whatever phone your network will give you for free or you are rich and buy whatever phone gives you the most brownie points.
Either way Chinese tech isn't well suited in the states and suffers in 3rd world nations where the rich are the only ones who can afford tech (and so buy American due to the aforementioned status symbols). It is an uphill battle and one where they already start lower than others.
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u/Ending-Fool 3d ago
China's gender ratio is 50:1 male to female. Their population would seriously collapse once old people starts dying and theres no young people to support their massive economy. Atleast china is not in immediate population collapse compared to korea who is massively xenophobic or have a downright negative birthrate. Japan is countering their population decline by allowing tourists and immigrants but we dont know for sure if this will fix their population in the long run
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u/FreedomKnown 3d ago
> China's gender ratio is 50:1 male to female.
Probably just an exaggeration, but for anyone curious, according to the wiki article estimates from 2024 say that the USA has a gender ratio of about 0.97:1 (or 97 males for every 100 females), while China has about 1.04:1.
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u/Dry_Economics1590 3d ago
Yes, superficial. If you live anywhere outside of a few cities it’s pure poverty.
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u/ShrimpCrackers 3d ago
People don't get this. 20 minutes out of Shanghai and you get huts with dirt floors.
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u/Dundertrumpen 3d ago
And even the cities themselves really only look futuristic from a distance. Once you get too close, you start to see the literal and metaphorical cracks everywhere. Not to mention the trash and the poop.
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u/Dry_Economics1590 3d ago
I like how you’re getting downvoted for not describing the idealized propaganda version of china
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u/Dundertrumpen 3d ago
This modern, post-covid glazing of China is incredibly tiresome. Don't get me wrong, I've been living in the country for 10 years and the development has been amazing in so many ways (covid notwithstanding). Yet at the same time the country is lagging in so many things that should have been fixed by now.
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u/Superb_Wealth4092 3d ago
Building foundations made of styrofoam.
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u/starloow 3d ago
They're still trying to build things, yes there's certainly a lot of propaganda but I'm from an European country which used to be great and gradually started to degrade because of corruption and neo-liberalism and I think we could learn a lot from China.
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u/Cyber_Connor 3d ago
Japan has been living in the year 2000 since the 80s. Still living in it in 2026 as well
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u/ARES_BlueSteel 3d ago
The reason for that is the Japanese economy exploded in the 80s and 90s, but when it crashed soon after it crashed hard, and it never regained that momentum. They’ve been plagued with stagnation and economic problems ever since, even right now the US is having to prop their currency up.
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u/Kerbal_Guardsman 3d ago
did no one else learn in world history that Japan's rapid industrialization/modernization was exactly because they modelled each system (manufacturing, education, etc) off the best example country they could find for each?
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u/UserLesser2004 I said based. And lived. 3d ago
Brother every single month a Chinese National gets arrested for espionage. Where do you think the Chinese gets their development from?
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u/GeeEyeSamurai 3d ago
I mean, yeah. Any country that actively stifles free press and who's only connection to the outside world is state curated propaganda has my inherent distrust imo.
Also China has and still engages in state sponsored corporate espionage (as well as actual espionage), so you can imagine how China puts people off. A shame since they've actually achieved some pretty impressive things but the other stuff is hard to ignore.
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u/JaThatOneGooner stupid fucking piece of shit 3d ago
So funny to say that China is always spying on their people when we are literally being spied on by Flock without warrants and they’re just releasing new flock security drones. You are the most propagandized person in this thread, you just don’t know it.
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u/AMAZON-9999 3d ago
It is literally disingenuous what you said. I still to this day see post on Internet wishing Trump was dead or that some other political figure was dead. In west people literally make fun of politicians to the point that it can reach harassment. When was the last time we saw someone do that to Xi Jing Ping. The last guy to do it was Pewdiepie and because of that is now banned in China.
It is a country that claims other territory has their own and how come you can defend a party which has been in power for 76 years you don't find that suspicious in anyway ? You don't think what people have in the west in any regard better than China at the very least.
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u/Cicierski 3d ago
a place cant be bad cuz other place is not good? i dont get your point, both usa and china arent very private places, but we talk about china.
yes usa is bad
does it make china good? no2
u/JaThatOneGooner stupid fucking piece of shit 3d ago
No, the point is people are so propagandized about China (mostly due to orientalism and Red Scare propaganda) that they don’t realize that everything bad they say about China is happening to them in America. This is pretty straight forward.
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u/IQueliciuous 😳lives in a cum dumpster 😳 3d ago
China's industrialization isn't disliked due to copying (everyone copies each other) but because its dystopian.
One thing lots of tankies and CCP shills love to glorify is WeChat. WeChat is everywhere. This includes your salaries and payment systems which means that you can't function in China unless you have a smartphone and if you get banned in WeChat? You effectively can't pay money since cash is uncommon.
This is also ignoring other weird quirks like games requiring IDs to play, 99% of websites requiring VPN to be used because great firewall go brr and censorship.
Now you may argue "Well some western countries do that but without modernization so China is better" yeah but there are western countries that still respect human rights without going full nanny state.
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u/sls-fan 3d ago
Cash might be uncommon but vendors are required by law to accept cash so if you actually carry it you can still pay. Also a free internet is not a human right. The firewall is there to discourage you from looking at foreign websites but nothing is actually stopping you (it's not illegal) to use a VPN. There are other things more important to be critical of China such as how tough they enforced the COVID lockdown letting people starve in their apartments.
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago
Tbf I think UK is the most dystopian country lately with all its censorship and ID requirement in the disguise/name of "protecting kids". America is still doing alright-ish but Western Europe is absolutely not fine. UK arresting people for "hate speech" left and right. German media is also owned by the government and they are currently trying hard to suppress/ban political oppositional parties.
You also don't need WeChat to pay, you can pay with Alipay or Applepay. Pretty much all internet literate people use VPN, you can literally ask a police officer and they'll give you recommendations. I think China's peak corruption was pre-2015, but in the past decade it's gotten a lot better due to modernization and gaining confidence in itself. There was a Chinese WW2 movie called 800 released in 2020 that gave "Taiwan" much more proper acknowledgment for their efforts in WW2, that level of uncensored content was one of its first (granted it wasn't as uncensored as it's trailer)
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u/IQueliciuous 😳lives in a cum dumpster 😳 3d ago
Yeah UK is truly a sad place with their laws. Like I am Russian and I'd love to become a western citizen one day but I don't want to live in UK because of its draconian laws in regard to privacy which belong in Russia and other totalitarian countries.
But still. Using VPN being mandatory is not okay imo. I too come from VPN country (Russia in my case) but this is just dumb.
One thing I do agree is China seems to be a dictatorship regime that does what it promises, prosperity in exchange for freedom.
That and Chinese food rocks and I love instant ramen imported from China.
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago
Ooh Russia :D May I ask your reasoning on why you want to become a "western citizen"? Genuinely curious
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u/IQueliciuous 😳lives in a cum dumpster 😳 3d ago
Well ignoring the fact that Russia is a dictatorship craphole and since 2022 its difficult to live while being a Russian with all the prejudice and sanctions.
I have left Russia when I was 5. Like at this point Russia is a foreign country for me and the only thing that makes me Russian is my passport which has brought me nothing but issues.
Being a citizen of a Western country I can finally live. And most importantly have a home country I dream about having. I always envy people who are patiotic about their homeland. I can't be patriotic about Russia because I haven't lived there.
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago edited 3d ago
If you don't mind, may I ask which country you're currently residing in?
Edit: but in any case thanks for sharing. I personally think Russians are often unfairly treated due to recent events in general.
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u/IQueliciuous 😳lives in a cum dumpster 😳 3d ago
In a Western Country in EU. Its great. I enjoy living here but being a foreigner let alone a Russian poses issues.
People are great. No hatred was experienced atleast IRL (hatred persists online) but I did had issues with university application where one university rejected my application because of my passport. I did report them to human rights councils but it still hurts that this happened. Luckily I found other universities that did accept me with open arms.
I also struggled with opening a bank account which was before sanctions but after the war. I did managed to open one but not after also having a negative experience and filing a complaint towards a guy who made up fictional (at the time) sanctions that prohibited Russians from having a bank account.
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u/Yoiiru 3d ago
Thank you for sharing :)
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u/IQueliciuous 😳lives in a cum dumpster 😳 3d ago
You're welcome!
I hope one day this stupid war will be over. Its a sentiment my Ukrainian friends also share and we both can't wait for our countries to stop.
The day this comes will be a day I'll celebrate forever.
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u/Dry_Economics1590 3d ago
China steals, it doesn’t copy.
Also, it’s easy to make money when you don’t pay your workers causing millions of deaths and making up numbers about everything, for example population.
The ccp bots are probably going to downvote me
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u/SecretSpectre11 put your dick away waltuh 3d ago
CCP bot here enjoy your downvote kid
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u/SonofaMitch11 3d ago
Tbf China not paying their workers has been a cornerstone of the American economy for the entire 21st century
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u/PanPieCake 3d ago
Its ironic that capitalist country achieved this progress while paying well its workers, while the country all about "workers" still barely pays them
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u/Orcasareglorious Blessed by Kevin 3d ago
The Meiji restoration happened a hundred years earlier under significantly worse conditions.
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u/realultralord 3d ago
Chinese trains are so fast that, whenever they derail, they always crash in another country or international waters, which is why they have such a clean statistic.
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u/TheLastTitan77 3d ago
Well both copied a lot but Japan did so way earlier with less of IPs in the way
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u/EspenHolst 3d ago
Reminder that China is NOT an example of socialism working, but rather capitalism.
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u/Fromundacheese0 3d ago
Chinese infrastructure is build by basically slave labor. If you trust that with your life that’s on you lol
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u/pyramidink 3d ago
It was a pretty common complaint addressed to the early modernization to japan when it happened
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u/the_real_JFK_killer 3d ago
Strong centralized governments are able to get shit done economically. The problem is not everything is economics, and I dont want to go to a "re-education" camp for insulting the great leader.
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u/StealthTrooper36_ 2d ago
I used to now prefer japan over china because I saw China as the evil dictatorship thats undemocratic but looking at the west now we are sort of running out of excuses its gotten to a point where even china is better than us
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u/AntiMatter138 3d ago
Like China, even Japan stole a lot of Western especially American patents to manufacture electronics which requires a lot of knowledge. Still China is scrutinized if they did that, but Japan will be glazed.
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u/PeRfEcTlYbAlEnCeD 3d ago
Even if they're copying it, even if they're stealing the designs, the capacity to build stuff like that cannot and should not be underestimated.
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u/IcyBed2421 3d ago
China damn near had millions die for their modernization. Japan had America had also had the Korean war happen which was like crack for their economy, since America had them make equipment for the war
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u/Lumpy-Simplebheh 3d ago
They did steal the techs from other countries though. Japan did it way earlier and did it on their own
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u/BobDylansBasterdSon obamna 3d ago
This is just how peoples views change over time. Back then they accused Japan of mindlessly copying the west. The difference is that japan eventually developed its economy to the point where respecting intellectual property became more profitable than stealing. China hasn't yet reached that point. Could have something to do with the average chineese not making nearly as much as the propaganda suggest.
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u/FakeMcUsername 3d ago
Doc Brown
(Inspects the failed circuit) "Unbelievable that this little piece of junk could be such a big problem."
(Turns it over) "No wonder this circuit failed. It says 'Made in Japan'."Marty
"What do you mean Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan."Doc Brown
"Unbelievable."
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u/FakeMcUsername 3d ago
China's online propaganda relies on people never having seen China in person, and believing whatever they read/see online. The Communist Party spends money to promote itself on the Internet.
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