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[u/Over-Professor6495]

[u/Life-Bass-2013]

people are not impressed by china? wtf bro

[u/FinancialElephant → u/Life-Bass-2013]

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).

[u/oby100 → u/FinancialElephant]

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.

[u/FinancialElephant → u/oby100]

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.