• orrk@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    11 months ago

    as opposed to the exact same thing China does for the profit of their ruling class, but worse

    • OtakuAltair@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      Since Xiaoping’s market reforms, China has nationalized numerous exploitative private companies, decreased working hours to 8 per day, improved working conditions, gotten rid of hundreds of thousands of corrupt officials, purged greedy billionaires like Jack Ma, and built the most extensive high-speed rail and public transport system in the world.

      China, with 5x the population of the US, had 121k covid deaths, while the US had 1.2mil. Because the latter prioritizes capital/profit over human lives, while China does the opposite.

      These are clearly in the interest of the Proletariat/working class, not the ruling class; China has actively punished the latter.

      And all that without overthrowing foreign governments and causing genocides. So how is China even comparable to the US, aside from their economic growth? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe western media tries to show their geopolitical rivals in a bad light, even when they’re objectively better?

      • orrk@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        11 months ago

        wait, you are using the propaganda figures of an authoritarian shithole that openly genocides one ethnicity after the other as your source?

        ya, if you go by that logic, I’d just use PraugerU and claim that America is a morally pure nation who’s only problem is the existence of civil rights…

          • voracitude@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            11 months ago

            In China, from 3 January 2020 to 3:52pm CET, 30 November 2023, there have been 99,320,286 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 121,874 deaths, reported to WHO

            Reported to

            Remind me: Who’s doing the reporting?

            • OtakuAltair@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              10
              ·
              11 months ago

              Lmao, if you refuse to accept even sources like WHO, there’s no discussion to be had here.

              • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                12
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                11 months ago

                If you don’t understand how a country self-reporting a statistic like that is unreliable then you’re right, there is no discussion to be had. It would be a waste of anyone’s time (including the time it just took me to write this comment).

      • voracitude@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        How’s Evergrande doing? What about Chinese property in general? All that ghost housing the population have sunk their savings into is appreciating nicely, yes? What’s the birth rate like in China now vs 60 years ago by the way? How’s that compare to other powers? What’s the average age of the Chinese population, again? And boy howdy the Uighurs are going to be glad the CCP aren’t into genocide.

        It’s not a good idea to trust the numbers the CCP provides (if you can even get recent ones). I don’t pretend the US is good, but I’m not about to suck the dick of any country like you are just because they’re not America.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          All that ghost housing the population have sunk their savings into is appreciating nicely, yes?

          Funny how everyone complains about US investors sitting on property makes housing unaffordable and also complains that surplus housing in China makes housing a bad investment.

          Everyone hates everything.

          • voracitude@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 months ago

            Are you trying to imply that everywhere is the same? Different places, different problems, different causes.

            Surplus housing was built in China because the population needed a safe investment for their savings. The stock market is too volatile, and investing overseas is tightly controlled, so housing has been the choice because it lasts.

            In the US, there’s a conflux of factors that’s led to a housing shortage, then the pandemic exacerbated that situation, and now spiking interest rates are making it unaffordable to move for the few who did manage to buy a home with their meagre resources. Then, of course, there’s institutional investment buying up single-family homes and driving up prices even more.

            The point is that China is not some perfect übermensch, even compared to the US, and anyone claiming otherwise needs to be corrected.

            • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              11 months ago

              The point is that China is not some perfect übermensch,

              I didn’t claim they were.

              Whatever the cause, the surplus of housing in China can’t be seen as a negative for the same reason a lack of housing is a negative in the US.

              You can’t have it both ways.

              The trains ran on time under Mussolini. Just because a dictatorship does bad things doesn’t mean absolutely everything must be bad. Just because a democracy does good things doesn’t mean everything is perfect.

              • voracitude@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                11 months ago

                I didn’t claim they were.

                The person I originally responded to was, and you replied to me defending their point, so yeah, you’re taking it up. If you didn’t mean to, fine. The rest of my post stands. To wit:

                Whatever the cause, the surplus of housing in China can’t be seen as a negative for the same reason a lack of housing is a negative in the US.

                What the hell are you talking about? Too much of anything is bad, just like too little is bad. Americans don’t have their entire life savings sunk into investment properties nobody wants. The Chinese population does. If nobody wants those properties they own, nobody buys them, and the value tanks. If the construction of those properties had been funded by the government you might have a point, but when it’s funded by the life savings of 900 million people or more, that’s a major fucking problem, and it’s not related in any way shape or form to the American housing market.

                • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  11 months ago

                  you replied to me defending their point

                  No I didn’t. I specifically ended with, “Everyone hates everything.”

                  Too much of anything is bad, just like too little is bad.

                  Just like too little of anything is also bad.

                  If the value tanks, homes are affordable.

                  You can’t have it both ways.

                  • voracitude@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    11 months ago

                    So when I said “just like too little is bad”, which you even actually quoted, you just decided to ignore that and the rest of my words to restate your prior, addressed, and wrong point.

                    Affordable housing does not depend on bankrupting your entire populace, as in China, nor is it possible in a system like that in the US that refuses to build more housing to sate the demand of the existing populace (let alone population expansion).

                    They. Are. Different. Problems. They. Have. Different. Causes. And. Solutions.

        • OtakuAltair@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          Last I heard, Evergrade’s chairman was selling their luxury property to pay for the debt. And you guys are still calling planned cities ‘ghost housing’? Lmao. Cool name though. I’d say the US could learn from it, but they’re unlikely to do something that’s not profitable.

          You do realize you can google things yourself, right? China’s demographics are similar to the US, though, afaik.

          the Uighurs are going to be glad the CCP aren’t into genocide.

          Like I said in another comment, even the US State department says there are no mass killings in Xinjiang, and those guys would love to report otherwise. It’s probably not good there, though. Bad Empanada looked into it, and there seems to be cultural repression going on. He has sources in the video’s description.