this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Your examples are a bit odd, people constantly bitch about everything Samsung and Meta do, to the degree that even tech philistines are aware of it. Tencent is, in most of the ways that matter, just a branch of the Chinese government and a severe privacy violator in more tangible ways than ad space profitability improvements. Steam rarely jails people, Chinese companies phoning home helps do just that.
China is going to put me, an American in America, in jail using a game launcher?
Do you intend to visit china after disparaging it?
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.
Because I instantly pegged you as a tanky, I’m going to be brief. You don’t intend to disparage china but do intend to go there so I sincerely wish you a fun trip! China’s great, if you know where to go and what to do. I also hope you don’t win the lottery and end up a geopolitical token during a disagreement between states, as happened a few years ago to some Australians and Canadians abroad. Avoid patriating and you’re just about as safe as you believe.
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.
You’ve led me to learn that patriate, expatriate, and repatriate have unrelated definitions and I’ve been guilty of using malapropisms. Past that, I apologize but I really don’t intend to engage in lengthy political arguments or dissertations on the internet anymore. And it’s best not to link your other accounts, you will be doxxed by someone. Best to edit that out.
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.