China

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[–] Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

Yeah, the 95% approval rating is a famous study. Sure, what else would Chinese people express other than approval of their government if and when asked? Everyone who even slightly criticizes the Chinese Communist Party would forcibly disappear.

However, when Chinese citizens are surveyed anonymously, support for party and government plummets.

Chinese citizens who rarely voice open criticism of their government reveal stronger negative views when they can answer questions anonymously, according to a new study published in The China Quarterly.

The study by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences shows an enormous drop in citizen support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government policies when citizens are surveyed using a method that hides their identities and makes them feel more anonymous than a typical survey.

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[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml [S] -1 points 9 months ago

Again. Living in a fantasy world. People in China criticize the party all the time. There are protests all over the country. Hell, there are protests in Xinjiang. And they're live streamed, recorded and posted, and no one is being disappeared for that.

Reading this report from Cambridge is very much like reading clear popaganda. It claims to be an impartial journal, but the first thing it does is it uses the incorrect name of the party. The party's official name is the Communist Party of China, which follows a long tradition of communist party naming convention. The journal uses the Chinese Communist Party, which is not the name of the party.

Then it says that the Harvard study "routinely appears in Chinese propaganda", as though a 15 year study conducted by one of the most prestigious universities in the world is somehow to be doubted as Chinese propaganda. This is not missed.

It then uses the phrase "tendency for citizens in an autocracy to conceal political opinions". Again, not missed. China is not an autocracy. It is a bureaucracy. A vast bureaucracy. Xi does not wield absolute power. He was elected in parliamentary process. Hu was not an autocrat. Jiang was not an autocrat. Xi didn't abolish the bureaucracy. Xi didn't abolish local governments. The idea that China is an autocracy makes me think these authors have no integrity whatsoever.

Further, the list experiments in this report conflate willingness to protest with non-support of the party. I think it's obvious that this is a contrived conclusion. There are protests all over the world by people who support their government.

"the survey as administered through the internet" and "recruited approximately 2000 people".

The Harvard study included face to face interviews and covered more than 31k people in both urban and rural settings.

This report you've linked certainly requires follow up but it absolutely does not invalidate the work of the Ash Center.

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[–] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'm surprised that number isn't higher... Like 105%

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[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml [S] -1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Why, because you think Harvard would spend 15 years producing propaganda for China?

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[–] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

An approval number in the 90s is strong evidence of authoritarian control. Look up Stephen Hasan's freedom of mind resource center.

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[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml [S] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I want you to try to imagine something.

75 years ago, it was 1951. In 1951, the US was undergoing a technological revolution while it bombed the shit out of and occupied various countries around the world. In 1951, the average Chinese citizen was living off a $1/month. It was a peasant society.

In those 75 years, the US has seen massive technological improvements while simultaneously seeing massive increases in homelessness and economic precarity.

In those same 75 years, Chinese rice farming peasants became able to purchase and drive the world's most advanced electric cars. Homeownership rates in China are 50% higher than in the US.

There are 40 million people in China over the age of 75. Meaning they personally experienced the most rapid industrialization and economic development in the history of humanity. Edit: Let me be very clear. There are 40M people in China who went from an average of living in a peasant society on $1/month to driving electric cars.

I dunno. I kind of think that's a good reason to be happy with your government. I think if your whole family lives in multigenerational housing that you own, where poverty and homeless has been on a steady decline, where technological advancements make your lives better for 7 decades in a row, and where your elders are saying that things have literally never been better in their entire lives, that you're generally going to have a much higher approval rating than anything in the West.

Stephen Has[s]an

Is a psychologist who used to belong to a cult and has an axe to grind, which he has been grinding in Western society studying cults within Western society. His story is like reading Plato's allegory of the cave. He escaped one level of mental control and entered into Western society. Now he critiques cults against the backdrop of Western society as "normal" but doesn't ever critique Western society as pathologically and fundamentally, which it clearly and most assuredly is. He even wrote a book about the mental health harm of "Eastern Religions". Like, how much more do you need to know about the guy to understand his work has very limited applicability and certainly can't be easily transplanted to cultures he's never been a part of nor applied to things like national psychology for populations larger than anything he's ever studied before?