I first visited China in 1999, did a 6 month Chinese course at PKU in 2002, and lived/worked in Beijing from 2007-2016. Frankly, the political situation simply got worse from 2008 on, whereas before it really looked like China was opening up and would continue to do so.
You're not their target audience, period.
Also you're molded by Western culture, of course you interpret things differently with your own bias (in a neutral sense).
On the flip side, a lot of Chinese find Western media chaotic, unruly and full of lies, which portray Western society in a poor light. And of course, the truth is more nuanced like you said.
While I have encountered a fair number of expats who moved to China and regularly visit NL/DE/CH, and rave about how good things are in China, I've also heard the opposite from Chinese friends who moved away.
The issue is very complex, and I don't disagree that China is full of promise. I really would like China to succeed, and I think that co-operation is necessary to fix a lot of the problems that threaten us on a planetary and social scale (climate change, immigration, economics, etc.).
However, I have a very strong distaste for the CCP and really would like to see them dismantled. For this reason, I doubt I will ever visit China, simply because I've been very publicly vocal in this position.
I'd be interested to hear more from you — I think civil discourse is very important. But I also don't have much tolerance for gaslighting, and sadly many pro-China/CCP actors have gotten very good at that.
I don't need everyone to become CCP fans. I'd already be happy if people can see CCP in a more realistic, nuanced manner, rather than a cartoon villain.
> However, I have a very strong distaste for the CCP and really would like to see them dismantled. For this reason, I doubt I will ever visit China, simply because I've been very publicly vocal in this position.
This reminds me of myself more than 10 years ago. Back then I had been indoctrinated by western media and western views of China for 15 years. China is bad, China is communism, China kills people, Mao killed millions, one child policy bad, etc. When at the airport and police stations I saw government workers with those typical hats on, an alarm bell goes off in my head: OMG communism!!!!
But years later, I got married to my Chinese wife. I started having more interactions with Chinese people. I started researching Chinese recent history. I started researching Chinese society. I started talking to westerners actually living in China.
And I found out that a lot of the stuff people here say about the CCP are twisted half-truths, either deliberately or based on misunderstandings due to different culture and values. The Chinese police, rather than brutal enforces, and actually very friendly, don't carry guns, and it's very common for people to quarrel with the police without suffering consequences. Try that in some western countries.
Of course, China is a developed economy, and there is a lot of really impressive and legitimate industry in China. The hardware markets of Shenzen, the startups in Shanghai, the generally better-educated (than the US) populous. I want to make it clear that I don't hold a cartoonish "China bad" view, and I definitely don't see Chinese people as bad people — I have a lot of them as friends — nor even every member of the CCP as a bad person.
But I think these "attacks" of China aren't that unwarranted. There is something really foul afoot in China, moreso than the US. Perhaps, if the US didn't have such a strong constitution and democratic backing, it would be doing worse things than China. But it isn't, and that's because of the setup of the US government.
The things that really bother me about China are:
1. The invasion of Tibet (everyone seems to have forgotten about this)
2. The Uighur Genocide
3. Well-documented organ harvesting of political dissident groups like Falun Gong
4. The draconian social-credit system
5. The Great Firewall
6. Parts of the "Belt and Road" initiative, particularly landgrabs from poor African farmers
There is very good evidence for each of these points, and the West doesn't have problems like this.
I do see that the US has a lot wrong with it. I also see that Germany and Europe has a lot wrong with it. I also know that media perceptions are often wrong — I'm half German and hold German citizenship, so I know how strange it is to fly between countries and see how distorted media perceptions are on either end.
But China in its current incarnation is, to me, dangerous and scary, and also very promising. I hope we can patch up the past, but we can't do that by being blind to it.
Tibet is strategically important to the Chinese.
It's a major water source and the origin of the Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers. Allowing Tibet to remain independent would mean that India could occupy Tibet, use it as a base for invasion, and cut off China's water supply. There were skirmishes along the Tibet-Indian border earlier this year; it's not a theoretical threat. Any great power would use force under these circumstances.
It has though. For the majority of its existence America had continuously screwed over the Native Americans. In fact, one of the primary reasons for the American revolution was to allow colonists to settle on Native American land. It's only after the natives lost their will to fight when America decided to play nice with them. This is pretty much what happened to Tibet and no doubt is going to happen to Xinjiang.
But on the topic of truth, some accusations against China are false. Are you willing to discuss them?
I am kinda interested in the reading the discussion further though. But of course if you feel more comfortable taking it private I'd understand.
If you're interested, we could discuss privately too. Consider this an invitation to contact me.
The problem with "attacks" against China is not so much that they are unwarranted, but that, by the time they reach the Western public, they've gone through multiple layers of filtering, stripping them of relevant context. That can cause problems to appear either more widespread or more localized than they actually are.
Case in point:
> invasion of Tibet
Missing context: the invasion of the whole rest of China, partially by means of brutal military campaigns (e.g. Changchun, Taiyuan), partially by local KMT-affiliated warlords realizing that the CCP had the upper hand and switching allegiance. Tibet was an example of the latter, with the lamas remaining in power until the Panchen Lama allied with the central government in a power struggle against the Dalai Lama, causing him to flee into exile.
> Uighur Genocide
Missing context: all non-Uighur people in China who are nonetheless subjected to "reeducation through labor", political indoctrination, birth control (more than 60% (!) of all Chinese women were sterilized to enforce the One Child Policy) and so on.
> organ harvesting of political dissident groups like Falun Gong
Missing context: organ harvesting from non-Falun Gong, non-dissident executed prisoners.
> social-credit system
Missing context: the implementation pretty much failed. The nationwide rollout was originally scheduled for 2020, but the current state is far from the original vision. Both in terms of social scores (only pilot projects in a few cities) and in terms of credit scoring (Private companies like Ant Financial preferring to use their data for their own internal credit scores instead of sharing with the central Baihang Credit). Ironically, Jack Ma claimed in his speech that his company's credit scoring was so good that they shouldn't be required to back their loans with as much capital, but the regulators didn't buy it.
> Great Firewall
Missing context: the large amount of cross-border communication that happens despite of it, both due to not-uncommom use of technical circumvention tools and due to some sites (e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/china ) not being blocked when you'd expect them to be.
> the "Belt and Road" initiative
Missing context: the large amount of "Belt and Road" projects which are not part of any coordinated initiative, but rather an uncoordinated outpouring of Chinese capital in search of higher profits.
Of course the above is not a defense of China, but definitely a criticism of mainstream Western media discourse on China.
And concerning
> the West doesn't have problems like this.
The West did have problems like this, but a) waited them out (territories annexed a hundred years ago, minorities mostly assimilated, natural drop in birth rates) or b) adopted a different solution (organ harvesting from traffic deaths instead of prisoners, established credit scoring agencies, a political system that doesn't totally collapse if information flows freely, impact assessments for infrastructure projects). Most likely, China will solve their problems in a similar way.
> Also, why live in the Netherlands if China is so great? Wouldn't it make sense to move back there, if everything is on the up & up?
Because China wasn't great. I came here in 1993 with my parents, back then China was dirt-poor. My wife came here much more recently, in 2012, and she's of the opinion that the Netherlands is very boring and has no good food compared to China. She'd fly back multiple times a year if she could.
For a more realistic perspective on Chinese society and its changes in the past 20 years, you should read this: The American Dream Is Alive in China https://palladiummag.com/2019/10/11/the-american-dream-is-al...
> is kind of ridiculous.
This is a whole different topic. There's a lot to deconstruct and to respond to in just those few sentences you typed, and those few links you sent. I would be glad to engage with you on this subject, but I have to know something first: do you truly wish for a conversation, or do you just want to stick with your existing opinion?
China has problems, but it isn't the boogeyman the media makes it out to be. When the west better understands China, and when the west and China come together, the whole world wins.