u/Nefelia

Dude. In the last 20 years we've seen: false claims of Iraqi WMD to justify war in Iraq; false claims of Assad using chemical weapons to justify an attempt to oust Assad; false claims of Gaddafi feeding Viagra to soldiers to fuel rape-sprees, in order to justify the ousting of Gaddafi; false claims of Russian bounties on US soldiers to drive up anti-Russia sentiment; and a host of other false narratives for both domestic and foreign agendas.

The Uighur genocide/exploitation narratives are just more of the same. And yet, just as 77% to 81% of Americans (depending on the poll you go with) believed in the Iraq WMD narrative, so have they fallen for this latest anti-China narrative as well. Stupid people continue to stupid.

The French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution are good examples of what you don't want to see in the US. If lynching the rich becomes mainstream, you can pretty safely bet that things will spiral out of control as infighting within the revolution created news target groups and the formerly-secure agitators find themselves lined up against the wall.

Thanks for the context. The original narrative was extremely confusing. Seriously, why would officers be wasting time pulling over buses to enforce 'no-mask' mandates? Amazingly, very few on the left (or on the right, really) stop to question these things and doubt the veracity of nonsensical narratives.

Sure. And other polls and data I have viewed placed the number of those who fell for the Iraq WMD narrative at a range of 77% to 81%. The Gallup poll was simply a surprising outlier.

The Iraq WMD narrative (and other pro-war narratives) was one that was pushed by both sides of the political aisle. Democrats were naturally more resistant due to the fact that the president was Republican at the time, but the massive astro-turfing from all major media in the US was extremely effective in convincing the American public of a patently implausible narrative. It certainly didn't help that many Democratic members of Congress (and particularly Hillary Clinton) were supportive of the Iraq War.

As for whether the protests in China actually make a difference, feel free to refer to the article I quoted, which shows some examples of positive change. This is most common when the protests are against local governments in China: the local corruption causes discontent which is problematic for the central government, and the central government gets good press by cracking down on those local officials. Win-win for the locals and the central government, and a big loss for the local governments that aroused the ire of the locals.

Just don't expect protests against the central government to be successful. Nor should you expect massive protests partially funded and supported by the NED (i.e. the Hong Kong protests) to get anything but a firm middle finger from the CPC.

China crushed Covid long before the vaccines were rolled out. I outlines some of the advantages China had in this comment post.

Sure, but I was referring more specifically to China's Cultural Revolution.

My wife's great grandmother was a land-owner during those days. She was hung to death from her own roof, while all of the paintings and cultural relics she owned were gathered up and burned in a bonfire. Absolute imbecility.

Hate America? Not so much. Hate American foreign policy and mainstream media? Very much so.

It is kinda hard to hate America itself when I tune in to so many of their Youtubers. Granted, I am not shy about criticizing what should be criticized, but I feel that the US would be a better place if some of those critic isms were translated to actual improvements. Certainly Americans would be living better if the US government directed more of its spending towards domestic infrastructure and social programs rather than militarism and propaganda.

1) Here is a 2003 article - complete with Gallup Poll results - that shows 90% of Americans believed it 'likely' or 'certain' that Iraq had nuclear weapons just before the Iraq War.

2) As for people being unable to protest in China:

According to research by the Chinese Academy of Governance, the number of protests in China doubled between 2006 and 2010, rising to 180,000 reported "mass incidents." The uprisings are responses to myriad issues, primarily official corruption, government land grabs, Tibetan autonomy, and environmental problems. Late last year, the residents of Wukan -- angered by a land grab by corrupt officials -- rose up and briefly seized control of their village. After several days, the government gave in, admitting to mistakes and vowing to crack down on corruption.

I'd suggest you do not know quite as much about China as you seem to believe. The mainstream media has failed you as badly as it failed your country back in 2003.

I live in China. I experienced the lockdowns and saw for myself the lack of deaths once the severe lockdowns and other countermeasures were put into place. I also have access to data for the hundreds of families that bring their children to our school, and can see for myself just how well contained the virus was after Jan 23, 2020.

Meanwhile, I hear from my parents in siblings about the condition back in Canada. I am not impressed.

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When the US president at the time instituted travel bans it was called racist.

And that was an exceptional bit of stupidity. The proper response would have been to ban all travel while the airports were adjusted to scan incoming passengers.

Seriously, does the average person in the West not understand just how extraordinary an event it was for China to shut down entire cities? That was basically the equivalent of Xi shouting warnings from the rooftops with a megaphone.

I watched the West's half-asses responses to Covid-19 with open amazement. It seems to me that we have completely forgotten how to handle pandemics. We've all learned about quarantines and how we had to lock down villages and towns completely to deal with past plagues. How difficult is it to recognize that the same approach may be needed for current-year pandemics?

Sure. And Swine Flu came from Mexico, and passed through the US without being contained. MERS came from Saudi Arabia. The 2008 Bird Flu came from West Bengal. Zika began in Brazil. Etc.

Epidemics will continue to be a thing going forward, and any disease that contains the right traits to go pandemic will certainly not be contained by any one country.

Americans have the choice to either 1) accept responsibility for their poor handling of Covid-19 despite the warnings that the extraordinary lockdowns in Wuhan gave them, learn the right lessons, and do better next time a pandemic strikes; or 2) deny responsibility in favour of blaming China, fail to learn those important lessons, and get wrecked by the next pandemic that hits (be it from China again or from a different country altogether.

From what I gather from the comments section here, Americans choose 2. Their loss.

The CDC deliberately lied about the lack of effectiveness of masks to prevent the panic buying of masks. The goal was to secure the supply for the front-line medical workers.

It was a clumsy attempt as a worthy outcome. There were better ways to get said results.

From MSN:

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So no, the evidence did not change, but don't take my word for it. Instead, listen to none other than Fauci, who conceded that he willfully lied to the public to prevent shortages of masks for healthcare workers.
"We were concerned, the public health community and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply," Fauci said in June of last year. "And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely, the healthcare workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who, you know, were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

You are making the assumption that the press (or at least the well educated and more worldly editors) couldn't see through the lies. Keep in mind that the Iraq WMD narrative was preceded by 10 years of No-Fly-Zones over Iraqi airspace and crippling sanctions that strictly controlled everything going into Iraq.

Within the span of a year the reality of Saddam Hussein being a powerless has-been who barely had any power outside of Baghdad morphed into a very implausible narrative of Hussein presenting g a threat with technology he simply could not have possessed.

The political class ran with the narrative because it would allow them to exercise American power and (in their thinking) secure for the US a geopolitical master-stroke. Those in the media went along with it because it was a hot story and guaranteed interest, views, and profits.

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I'm not saying the press is perfect, but I don't see the press as a whole as a shill for US geopolitical interests.

No doubt the journalists and editors are just doing what they must to further their careers, but that includes: deliberately spicing up stories to garner greater interest; selectively promote more sensationalist narratives to get more views; and report dubious claims from government sources (often 'anonymous' sources) to retain access to their sources.

Add to that the fact that the CIA infiltration of the US media is a well established reality by this point:

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In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

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The Iraq WMD narrative was no accident. Nor was it a one-off event.

I was lucky enough to be awake and browsing when the Russia-Georgia war started. All initial reporting in the first few hours correctly reported the initial strike by Georgia, the shelling of South Ossetia, and the subsequent retaliation from Russia. I went to bed, and woke up the next morning to see that every single report on the corporate media had been altered to portray the narrative of an unprovoked Russian attack on Georgia. It wouldn't be until a few months later that the previously-removed nuance would return - long after people's minds have been made up and the anti-Russia narrative had solidified past correction in the minds of the masses.

The same process happened with the Assad chemical weapon narrative, the many anti-Gaddafi narratives, the Uighur genocide narrative, etc. Underestimate the influence of the US-controlled media propaganda machine if you wish, but I've seen too many well-orchestrated propaganda campaigns over the past two decades to simply brush it off.

China's economic success relies on far more than just 'protectionism'. While strategic protectionism for fledgeling industries was part of the overall plan, it was accompanies by an enormous amount of investment in infrastructure and human resources. That latter investment is decidedly absent in the US.

this makes it (1) not universal (2) not income (3) has strings attached

Agreed on 1 and 3. Not sure about 2 though. If the end result is an extra $300 per child for everyone who qualifies, then that is basically free income... and incidentally something that I would support.

From 1998 to 2018 China's average salary went from RMB ~9300 to ~93,000. That salary from 2018 is still significantly depressed by the hundreds of millions of rural residents still making less than RMB 1000 per month. The urban workers running the factories and workshops in China's tech and manufacturing hubs are making more.

Xiaomi, Huawei, and several other high-tech firms in China are building fully automated factories run by AI. Chinese now has several fully automated ports, as well as fully automated warehouses.

China's success being reliant on cheap labour is well over a decade out of date.

GDP growth predicated on government stimulus and subsidies. Not the most sustainable form of GDP growth, though at least it is far better than stimulus directed at bailing out the rich.

I say this as someone who would like to see a robust child support subsidy passed, preferably independently.

the reason why Russia has been so aggressive recently is because the Russians know they will no longer have anyone around to design or build tanks, fighter jets, and missiles in the future when the last properly educated generation retires.

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Going to have to question this part. Russia is leading the world in hypersonic glide vehicles, surface-to-air missiles, another military fields.

As much as the West likes to talk-up Russian aggression, Russia would actually rather avoid war for at least another 5year, or preferably 10 years. There has been a lot of cutting-edge technological development in Russia's military industry, but the current number of these weapons and vehicles actually operating is quite small. Russia ten years hence will be far more powerful than the Russia of today.

I've seen no indication that Russia's technological development in the military field is expected to fade away in the near future. If you have any links to sources that state otherwise, I'd be interested in giving them a read.

China literally locked the fuck out of Wuhan and took a hammer to its economy. Instead of following suit, the West criticized China for violating human rights and carried on as usual.

Sorry, but if the West was prepared to ignore the blaring trumpets and frantically-waving red flags that was the Wuhan shut-down, then arguing that earlier notification would have made a difference is dishonest and disingenuous.

The West ignored the warnings and half-assed their much-belated response. Cope.

The CDC and the WHO lying about the masks is what made it possible for people to doubt the science. Both institutions should have been honest about the mask issue from the beginning: a cloth mask will help halt the spread, while N95 masks should be reserved for professionals.

Worst case scenario, use the massive resources at the disposal of the US federal government to secure as many N95 masks in the US as possible, and ensure all upcoming supply is funnelled directly to hospitals.

Lying about the effectiveness of masks laid out the groundwork for skepticism of the experts.

Plenty of ex-pats live in China. They can testify to how well China is doing... and then get called a 'woman' and get downvoted to oblivion.

My own child was born in Wuhan in early 2020. We experienced the lockdowns and the subsequent re-opening. Despite owning a school in Beijing that has hundreds of students, not a single one of them or their extended family died of Covid-19. I'm fairly sure not a single one of them or their extended family even got infected in the first place.

The initial lock-down was severe... and as a result very effective. The West (including my own home country, Canada) half-assed the lock-downs, and as a result is plain for us to see.

Good luck with that. Last I checked, Vietnam and South Korea had backed off into a more equidistant stance, and Japan was backing off from the more aggressive stance adopted by Abe and his immediate predecessor. India has also made it clear that the Quad will never be a military alliance.

But do keep blowing away hundreds of billions on an oversized military budget in a doomed attempt to maintain full-spectrum dominance. Surely that won't blow up in your face and lead to a not-so-distant economic collapse (Soviet style).

Judging by how Biden handled the pullout from Afghanistan, I wouldn't associate him with good planning and smooth execution. Of course, given the shit-show Trump made of the implementation of his controversial travel ban, he doesn't get much credit in that department either.

The distribution of the vaccines was an enormous money maker for the pharma corporations involved. I'll assume the smooth implementation was due to them wanting to rake in the cash.

Believe what you will, but we run a school here in China with data on hundreds of students and their families. Thus far: zero deaths and zero Covid-19 infections. Not really surprising though, given the absolute severity of the lockdown we went through on early to mid 2020.

Serious lock-downs work. half-assed lockdowns don't work.

The West ignored the Wuhan lockdown. No amount of prior warning would have made an impact if they could so blithely dismiss that extreme reaction on the part of the CCP.

The sad truth is the Western governments (and populations) were complacent and arrogant. They had been minimally effected by previous epidemics-of-concern such as SARS, and thought Covid-19 would be the same. Now they are paying the price for not taking it seriously.

How is it that China (a developing country with an average GDP per person of 10,000 dollars) is able to succeed at that but your country (which is likely much richer) can't?

1. Politics. While China can make decisions based on practical metrics, the Western democracies need to factor in optics and future electoral campaigns.
2. Organizational competence. Perhaps more than any other factor, the fact that the Chinese government is capable of managing complex logistics in harmony is what allowed them to control the virus past the initial severe lockdown.
3. The populace. Freedoms liberties are great, but if they are not coupled with a strong sense of civic responsibility to have a population of selfish twits running rough-shod over the measures meant to manage the crisis.
4. Urban design. The overwhelming majority of Chinese people live in gated communities. Whether it be a single apartment building with a surrounding wall, or a community of dozens of buildings enclosed with a wall, Chinese cities are a seemingly endless series of gated communities placed side by side. Even the rural areas are dominated by hutongs, which are gated communities with tightly packs single-family homes inside.

That means there is only one exit for hundreds or thousands of people, which makes the enforcement of quarantine mandates much easier than they would otherwise be. The relatively few buildings that don't have an enclosing wall can simply have their rear and side doors welded closed for the duration of the pandemic while their front entrances are monitored by local security.