I’ve been writing under the assumption that the accounts that I gave the same name to would be connected (like a proto-federation thing), so don’t worry about that. I appreciate the concern, though.

I have criticized China, you can dig around on my Hexbear account if you really like and find that (@GarbageShoot)*, but China isn’t nearly as afraid of criticism as the “literally 1984” redditors say, it just has a practical sensitivity over issues of sovereignty that they fail to understand as part of a coherent ideology other than hyper-defensiveness (go figure, Redditors are politically illiterate).

China is a very diverse place with a wide spectrum of ideology – most of which I disagree with, going by rough estimations based on recent statements from their central committee. Speaking in terms of meaningful factions that have sway above the municipal level, I’d say they are much more diverse than the US in this respect, since the US is characterized more by the harshness of disagreement than the actual extremity of differences in overall policy. If we imagine Chinese politics on a spectrum from “Maoism” to “some hodgepodge of reactionary antiquarianism and desire to be a western vassal again, plus religious zealotry**” where the former is a 1 and the latter is a 10, our friend Xi seems to be at maybe a 4, I’m at about 3. I’m not a full-on ultra but I think there’s some right-deviation going on (not as much as in past decades, admittedly). Are you following?

It feels a little unfair to dismiss me as a “tanky,” I don’t think I called you names, but at least you aren’t being too mean beyond that. What do you mean “patriate”? That’s something that countries do, as far as I can tell.

*I am completely confident that you won’t actually find the remarks I’m talking about, but I think you’ll trust me that they are there.

**This last part is mainly among rightist minority groups rather than the Han Chinese rightists, who mainly stick to the first two categories.

Redditors will believe anything that supports “China bad,” even silly lies that were debunked decades ago. Here are some different testimonies from student leaders of the protests. You tell me what seems credible.

hmm, I guess it depends on your definition of disparage, but the thing is that even if I was out here in America hawking the most shameless bullshit, China wouldn’t do shit when I visited short of question me a bit harder in customs because arresting me for pretty benign actions I took in another country as someone with no affiliation with China would typically be considered kidnapping under international law. Of course, America calls most instances of its enemies arresting its citizens kidnapping, but China rarely arrests Americans (including when tourism to China was higher) or foreign citizens in general.

Reddit geopolitics work a lot better when they stick to vague insinuations and cartoonish hyperbole, because when you drill down and try to set realistic expectations based on the information available, it falls apart completely.

Lots of things happened in the square at that time, as the Chinese government discussed on TV the following days. One thing that did not happen was people dying, though some were struck with batons to force them to disperse after they declined to follow the demand to disperse (most left peacefully).

China is going to put me, an American in America, in jail using a game launcher?

Or, they simply lie and say that there is no genocide going on.

Even state department mouthpieces have walked back the lie of there being a genocide in Xinjiang. Leave it to Redditors to be to the right of the state department.

How is that relevant?

Also as a european, i don’t really care if the Data gets funneled to the USA or China, both equally bad imo.

This is super off-topic but since you have a more reasonable stance on this than I usually see in the wild, I need to ask: Do you truly think the US is no worse than China or are you speaking in terms of impact on your life personally? (the latter would be fair in this context too, just wondering)

That and they’re owned by China, so the chances of your data being funneled out to China is practically 100%

a) Tencent has a minority share b) what the fuck is China going to do with my data? Target ads a little more precisely the one time a year I go on newegg or whatever? Shouldn’t you be much more concerned about an entity like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft having that information? And it’s not like at least two of those don’t have a history of working with the US government and others, i.e. governments that actually impact your life.