Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight. I like proper discourse and it’s alright if I and another person disagree on something, what is important is that we communicate and understand where the other is coming from. The ultimate goal is the satiation of needless and avoidable suffering for all minds.
I’ve only been on Lemmy for a few days but across any sub I’ve noticed any criticism of China or the CCP is met with immediate downvotes and anything remotely positive of the US or really any western country whatsoever meets a similar fate.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored, no upvotes, no downvotes, no comments.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I completely off base here? And is there anything else here that seemingly gets downvoted automatically. It would be sad to see the fediverse and Lemmy be nothing more than just another echo chamber on the web.
Finally, I am posting this assuming it will also be downvoted to hell based on the title alone and that itself will be some monochrome of truth of the situation here.
And what “freedoms” do you enjoy in the USA / The West (yes I realize you said you’re from Africa)? The freedom to choose between two capitalist/fascist warmongers every 2-4 years in your elections? The freedom to have the police state protect private property over humans? The freedom to wage wars on the global south? The freedom to fund and aid in genocide? The freedom to be overworked and underpaid while billionaires extract every ounce of wealth from countries and workforces? The freedom to go into lifelong debt for basic human rights (housing, health, education)?
The majority of Chinese actually believe that China is more free than the United States … this is more important than whatever a Western-funded “Freedom Index” claims.
The CPC (not CCP) lifted 800 million people from abject poverty and have effectively eliminated extreme poverty in the country. China also has higher home ownership rates than the US, higher effective literacy rate, lower infant mortality, lower rates of suicide and gun violence, lower obesity, … While billionaires exist in China, they do not (and cannot) control/influence government, and corporations do not extract wealth from key industries.
Not only do the billionaires not control the government, if the billionaires are discovered cutting corners or stealing in ways that harm the public good, they get dispossessed, imprisoned, or executed. Remember that distinctly American story about the cost analysis about some flaw in cars that killed people and how the cost of law suits was lower than the cost of fixing the flaw? In China, that results in the death penalty for the corporate executives who oversee those types of decisions.
Thank you! That’s the difference between rhetorical freedom and substantive freedom.
What gets me is how people will look at China’s poverty alleviation (actual material liberation from hunger and desperation) and call that “authoritarianism”. Meanwhile, the US lets people die of treatable illnesses, go bankrupt from medical bills, and drown in student debt… and for some reason that’s perceived as natural.
And on wealth inequality, you’re right. The CPC doesn’t let billionaires write policy the way the Kochs, Bezos, or Musk do, which shouldn’t be acceptable anywhere in the world.