Those are all basic laws that apply to businesses, not random citizens.
That's not the case, except insofar as private citizens are forced to become businesses and register with the government in order to publish anything at all.
I never said China is "perfect." I said it is demonized as "authoritarian" by Western Media because the owners in Western Media can't do as they please in Chinese markets. I'm not "gaslighting" you by disagreeing with your conclusions.
Of course. And Western governments are likewise demonized by chinese media. That's not a particularly meaningful claim.
Every perspective has its own bias. You are "gaslighting" me by pretending "authoritarianism" can't be objectively defined.
The bias of western media comes out in the types of stories they choose to cover and not to cover, the opinion pieces they put out, and the framing of narratives, but usually the factual information is more or less correct and there are obviously sources which are more trustworthy than others.
Secondly, Western States aren't limited.
This is the gaslighting stuff. There are term limits on the president.
There is a separation of branches; executive, legislative and judicial.
There is the presumption of innocence and the right to due process.
If you weren't ignoring these attempts, we could be agreeing at how ineffective they are as limits, and how due process isn't applied to "enemy combatants" but instead I'm having to point out that term limits exist on the president or that the Supreme Court exists and can overturn laws when they violate the constitution.
There are flaws in these systems that led to the NSA continuing to spy and guantanamo to stay open.
But we can't talk about that if you won't acknowledge a Supreme Court exists.
They are extremely strong, the US has hundreds of millitary bases all over the world (China has less than 10 foreign millitary bases).
Yeah the US is imperialist. But don't change the subject. We're talking about the limitations on said imperialist state like I listed above. Term limits, separation of power, right to a trial with a jury of your peers, etc which are obstacles (no matter how futile) the imperialist state must overcome when they want to act in an authoritarian manner.
The behavior of the military overseas is a completely different sphere of issues related to manufactured consent and the military-industrial complex and neo-colonialism.
The Bill of Rights and Constitution also don't serve the people. What they do serve is providing freedom for Capital owners to plunder and profit as they please, and the State is under their control.
There's the bill of rights and the constitution, and then there's the way a state applies the bill of rights and the constitution after 200 years of capitalist manipulation.
Whatever state of government preexists the capitalists (or at least preexists their total consolidation of power) will be manipulated to rule their interests, we can't discard the baby with the bathwater just because they've twisted our rights around to serve them
Certain rights in these bills like property rights are inherently serving capitalism, but others like the right to bear arms are the exact opposite.
My point is that "authoritarianism" is a meaningless buzzword.
I could not disagree further. To throw this out this far into the discussion feels really disingenuous.
If it's meaningless then I don't know who is and who isn't authoritarian, and that seems really convenient for would be authoritarians.
Are there any means to you that would not justify the ends which we can agree on as ideal natural limitations for any state?
All states exert authority, what matters most is which clads is in control and thus exerting its authority.
I agree with how you're thinking about this, but it seems backwards.
What matters most is how authority is wielded.
The ideal form of government if you only loon at material conditions right now could be argued to be a benevolent dictator who makes all the right calls. But both of us (presumably?) are against that because we understand the incentives that power structure provides and the implications for long term stability.
The reason the working class should be in control isn't just because that's an axiom one insists on, but because they are the least incentivized (ideally) to wield their power tyrannically.
But in a worst case scenario they still could theoretically be tyrannical (for example imprison people without giving them a fair trial) and that would be bad.
This gives us a lens where it is possible for a worker led government to be authoritarian and one not to be, and says that the latter is preferred.
If we don't have the language to criticize the former and move towards the latter then what are we doing?
As for that one particular CNN article, I question it highly. Either the quality or quantity of the event is highly distorted, or important facts are obscured.
Hmm okay.
Since you said you never claimed China to be perfect, can you help me out and provide a source for something China has done wrong recently just for a sanity check?
Every negative example I brought up has been dismissed so in what ways are China not perfect in terms of civil rights/freedom of speech?
Further, you again pretend "very satisfied" is the same as overall approval. You're lying. The actual approval rate at the Township level is 70.2%,
Where are you getting this number?
I'm not lying, this is the narrative your source is arguing
Compared to the relatively high satisfaction rates with Beijing, respondents held considerably less favorable views toward local government. At the township level, the lowest level of government surveyed, only 11.3 percent of respondents reported that they were “very satisfied.”
I read the whole article, there's no further data on the subject beyond this paragraph
I think you might be misreading the 70% as the US approval rate for local government?
This dichotomy is highlighted by a 2017 Gallup poll, where 70 percent of U.S. respondents had a “great” or “fair” amount of trust in local government.
which you either think is "abysmally low," or are intentionally trying to twist very satisfied into satisfied in general, which is coincidentally a propaganda tactic used by Western Media, focusing on one aspect and omitting the more important data. Here's the actual table:
Oh sorry lol. I'm going through the replies one by one on my phone cause theres a lot and i typed the above first
Honestly I'm having a hard time understanding this. Do you know what the averages mean, why are they so low? Like the 2.8 avg?
It's the bolded purple part so it seems like the authors believe it to be the most important number on the chart.
I would think at first to interpret that as a 2.8% average approval rate but obviously the 70.2% approval is right there next to it so that doesn't make sense.
Would I be correct in interpreting this as a minority of people (26%) really dislike the government and (76%) just kind of like it so they average each other out to 2.8%?
Yes, a study by a theoretical "neutral" party would be most accurate.
Agreed. It's frustrating China does not allow that.
True "neutral" parties dont really exist of course, this is a fundamental tenant of western science which is why data must be transparent and the methodology critiqued through peer review, so that this bias can be revealed and accounted for.
It's likely the approval rate is actually higher than the hostile poll shows. By showing that even someone hostile must admit the high approval rates, other, less hostile polls showing the same or better figures are vindicated.
Remember the Western Media trick of demonizing the other side to manipulate a narrative you mentioned? These demonizing tricks can work both ways, we should he careful about sensationalizing things (as you've been critiquing me for doing)
"even someone hostile" who says they're hostile?
Either it's a reliable study and should be taken at face value or its a biased study and should not have been cited.
Why should I care about whether a polling organization is labelled as "hostile" by you or the media? That's a distraction, in the context of authoritarianism you find these labels meaningless.
The thing we should be looking at and questioning is their methodology.
If a study has bad methodology then it didn't get accurate data. The data is wrong. You don't get to add extra points to your side because you deem them as hostile, you throw the study in the trash and find a better one.