anon · 6d
hi! thanks for your kind response to my last message. i get it if cia affiliation is a turn-off; i suggested cdt because it’s a decent entry point if you’re new to the world behind the great firewall, but if you’d rather look to other sources or rawdog weibo yourself, obviously that’s fine too.
of course you’re allowed to say you fuck with china. i’m really sorry if it sounded like i was saying you couldn’t. i’m not trying to make us seem like an unliveable hellhole lol. i guess i’m just paranoid because i’ve seen a lot of well-meaning western leftists sink into the trap of thinking the us is the only evil in the world, which makes them more likely to repeat chinese state propaganda on their behalf. but as long as you keep your critical thinking skills with you, you should be fine.
if you’re at the point where you genuinely believe 6/4 never even happened, then um…😬 i’m not sure what to say to you. like, nothing i say would change your mind. but that kind of denialism is a very easy way to piss people off, especially older folks from beijing, so if you’re wondering who you’d be hurting, that’s your answer right there.
on chinese imperialism: if you have any friends from hong kong, taiwan, vietnam, the philippines, anywhere else in the south china sea, tibet, altishahr & dzungaria, or inner mongolia, they might be good to talk to about this kind of stuff. you’d probably find them a lot more convincing than some random anon. if you don’t have any friends from those places, you can see if there’s a community centre or temple or mosque in your area where you can chat with some of the diaspora.
besides that, i guess my main tip would be to learn at least a little bit of mandarin chinese. i can’t emphasize enough how much you’re missing if you don’t know the language at all. what else…avoid falun gong at all costs lol, they’re a cult notorious for right-wing views. generally speaking, always listen to a chinese person before you listen to a white person. listen to ethnic minorities before you listen to han chinese. listen to working class chinese, especially any migrant workers, before you listen to wealthy urbanites. all that good shit 👍
haha thank u for coming back with some concrete tips for me! this is what i was loooking for for sure. i just answered a way longer message about this n don't wanna repeat myself but i do work with a lot of immigrants from china, taiwan, the phillipines, mongolia, central asia, vietnam, who talk about china in various ways based on their own political affiliations. honestly one issue i keep running into is that diaspora who move to america are inherently more pro-america. like they have drank the american kool-aid because they want to live here. they are also often upper middle class, since it costs a lot of money to imigrate here. this makes their political perspective sort of skewed and still a reflection of what i've heard a lot before. it doesn't mean i will discount it, obv, but it is super different from someone who has not chosen, or is unable, to immigrate here. i seriously would love to talk to chinese people who aren't han chinese, people who are working class, and people who are migrant workers. i don't think those people are on XHS from what i've seen--i heard it's a lot of middle and upper middle class han chinese women.
you're definitely right that my best bet is learning a bit of mandarin. otherwise, how am i really gonna know what's up? but for now my views are just views, my thoughts are just thoughts, and my opinions are still percolating. but again, as someone who is a communist, it makes sense i will sometimes have positive opinions about a large communist country. whether or not i get into it as deeply as some other people... i don't know if i am ever going to know enough to have a strong stance. i'd certainly like to get there! but there's so many barriers, mostly economic, to me being able to go to places and talk to people who will give me other perspectives.
anyway thanks for coming back and giving me more to think about!
