this is a call to action, not a complaint! the instinct behind the xi memes is noble but does little to expose the recent and significant harm that our overseas siblings endure. let’s channel our creativity in ways that positively break the mold, bringing awareness and empathy into the conversation.

  • Xanthrax@lemmy.world
    28·
    17 hours ago

    Does anyone remember Armenia? Does anyone remember the invasion never stopped? Did everyone forget that Azerbaijan is supported by the West, even though the public doesn’t support their actions? Did everyone forget that Armenia should be supported by the West? Protect the land.

    Edit: Sorry for the tangent

  • IndescribablySad@threads.net@sh.itjust.works
    10·
    17 hours ago

    I get mixed answers every time I attempt to research this on my own. How’re the gays perceived in modern china? I don’t even need to ask about the rest of the queer umbrella, those answers are fairly explicitly negative.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeOP
      261·
      17 hours ago

      genuinely i think you get mixed answers because it’s a mixed reality haha

      i downloaded xiaohongshu (rednote) and there’s a pretty big gay community on there; if there is censorship it’s not on a scale that incredibly different from what the anglophone internet (tiktok, meta etc) experiences. ironically, most of the trans-/homophobia i have seen on that site comes from clearly american users.

      that said, while there is no longer law against same-sex relationships, there’s no recognition or protection from discrimination either. further, the government is known to do censorship and sometimes worse (harassment) to queer representation. if you want to be a queer activist or make a movie or tv show with a queer couple, that’s gonna be a lot harder than, say, the usa.

      tldr it’s a mixed bag but a slightly different mixed bag than you and i might be used to

      (all of this stated as an outsider looking in, i’m pretty confident that i am well informed but others could certainly do better)

      • savx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        14 hours ago

        i would say the situation is so much worse than you expected. one thing westerners doest seem to realize is that xiaohongshu has a very upper echelon user base, those users already have a tendency to lgbt/feminism such “western value”. if you go douyin/kuaishou, these platforms are where you can actually meet real 2/3/4 tier city people, they tend to have much negative view to such cultures. “基佬”, which means “removeds” is still widely used and mostly in a negative context. during monkeypox outbreak people call the disease as “基佬痘” “removed pox”.

        in term of cencorship, xiaohongshu’s policy varies based on account (or speaking genrally, every platform does this, because they have to make exceptions for internation users). like, chinese people cant search keywords like lesbian as they are censored, but people outside china can. cencorship works very complicated in china, in extreame case, western users can send winnie the pooh / tiananmen / hongkong to chinese user on wechat, the message seems deliverd on their side, but the app simply doesnt display such message on the chinese user’s side. not only they censor keywords, they also routinely nuke bloggers “promoting western cultures”, sometimes people can even get into legal trouble. chinese censorship is so much worse than silicon valley tech company, even twitter uder musk, i dont think they are on the same level.

        Edit: the removed word is f* word for gay people. i didnt realize lemmy would remove it.

  • cm0002@lemmy.world
    61·
    17 hours ago

    It’d be a nice start if .world defd’d from .ml, it’s already done 2/3rds of the Tankie Triad, might as well finish the job

    I think the whole Fediverse would be a lot healthier if def’ding known Tankie instances was more widespread

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeOP
      71·
      17 hours ago

      here im more into the positive encouragement of good quality content than negative actions like defederation, but i technically can’t talk cuz im neither .world nor .ml 👍

  • spujb@lemmy.cafeOP
    41·
    18 hours ago

    (i deleted the previous post because i saw how it could come off wrong, thx yall for your patience)

  • Smorty [she/her]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    54·
    15 hours ago

    so why are people caring about chinese censorship now? what happened? Did some political thing raise the topic again?

    my assumption (CW: very boring)

    I assume it’s because of that breakthrough R1 model, but like - that can’t be the reason. almost all cooperate models are censored, so who cares, just use a model like Dolphin 3 or so with ollama

      • Smorty [she/her]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        6·
        14 hours ago

        oh well that’s boring. so it really is that r1 model.

        and people still care about “censorship”… like - i get it, it’s funny that the model says “whadduyoumean, china is great!” but it’s not that funny i think.

        i get it, but uggggh when can we finally get over this and just use the model, just not for these kind of specific examples which make it mess up.

        that’s like going uhm well actually GPTs cannot count letters, so they are dum and then making a big thing about it.

        i dun get it. yes, china bad, but like - idk i’m obv overreacting.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeOP
      103·
      17 hours ago

      i agree :(

      (that said i can’t tell if you are accusing me of it or not? let me know i suppose)

      • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.comEnglish
        510·
        15 hours ago

        I’m accusing you of blanketed statements against China without much understanding of its history as Sinophobic. China has many faults but this memes lumps together many issues just to paint China as bad. For instance, did you know the GMD, which founded Taiwan, became extremely fascist from 1927 onwards? Did you know they were a dictatorship until 1982 (?) in Taiwan? Or that Tibet hasn’t been its own country for maybe 1000 years, the Dalai Lama tried after the 1911 xinhai revolution but the other powers within tibet ended up making his attempts fail.

        Just want to point out it’s not so black and white and such memes to me came off as “China bad.”

        Others called me tagged as a tankie for some reason. Idk how I would be tagged as such, I have plenty of criticisms of China though I am left learning. My PhD is on 19th-20th century China, just find these sort of blanket statements on China negative.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
          152·
          14 hours ago

          Taiwan whataboutism, “Tibet wasn’t a country” so it’s okay to invade them, don’t critcise china or you’re a “sinophobe”, appeal to authority (PhD? Sure you don’t even have a 101 on chinese history lol).

          My man, we are criticising the dictatorship of china, and you run to fund excuses not to, that’s why you’re tagged a tankie.

          IMO you should be tagged illiterate about the human history instead. Or dictatorship bootlicker.

          • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.comEnglish
            36·
            14 hours ago

            I didn’t attack you. No need to be rude.

            Edit: Also, Taiwan and Tibet are in the meme I’m responding to. Not whataboutism.

  • j4k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    47·
    18 hours ago

    I don’t know with Taiwan, maybe offer them a place in the USA or something. If the ROC had tried to settle with only holding Taiwan and ended the civil war diplomatically, that would be entirely different. If the US civil war had ended with a ceasefire and the Southern Confederacy had retreated to Cuba while never rescinding their claim as the government of the Confederate states, I would not take kindly to any foreign intervention as a US citizen. Maybe I’m one of the only people with independent thought and ethical reasoning skills in the country, but I find it idiotic to have a double standard. Let those that wish to immigrate do so and take whatever with them, but anyone else getting between the ROC and PRC is a piece of shit with criminal motivations. The Chinese decide their own fate and destiny. Some will be winners some will be losers. The ROC failed to represent the Chinese people when they retreated to Taiwan. It isn’t my place to take sides or get involved. Give them a peaceful escape, sure, solve the conflict peacefully, sure if it is possible, but to try to push the PRC into WW3 is some dumb nonsense just like trying to “contain” China instead of coexisting peacefully. Containment is needed for incompetent exploiter criminals to maintain hegemony without merit.

    Taiwan also held a referendum on gay marriage and voted overwhelmingly against it, but the courts forced it through anyways.

    The world is a messy place, and I’m for everyone being happy and coexisting in peace. However I seriously worry that Taiwan is the cause of WW3 to come in a few years time. WW3 is the obvious easiest way for the present elite to deal with climate change without changing their ways at all. The flip side of the climate change coin is “a population problem.” Population is easy to manage with a large scale global conflict. Killing 7 billion people solves the problem for at least another century. That is not as impossible as it sounds. Consolidation of power makes it even easier. I don’t support that. Let all of Taiwan immigrate anywhere in the world if it saves the rest of us. That is just 24 million people, versus billions, and for a fight in a civil war which they never tried to settle.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
      9·
      16 hours ago

      The Chinese decide their own fate and destiny. Some will be winners some will be losers.

      Tell me, should we take this same mentality to Ukraine and Palestine? Should those Eastern Europeans just be left to fight it out amongst themselves? Not our problem if the bigger more powerful one invades another? Not our issue what happens in the Middle East, if one country keeps another under its thumb for decades and then starts a wholesale genocide?

      By all means, avoid hawkishness. Nobody wants to do anything to provoke China. But if China does decide to invade Taiwan, that will be one sovereign state aggressively invading another. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing to say “hey, maybe it’s a good idea to try to stop that”.

      • j4k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        43·
        16 hours ago

        Picking a side in isolation without context is not smart. Looking at the situation in totality is required.

        Ukraine gave up nuclear arms with the understanding that this invasion would never happen. I think it is up to the entire world to take a stand in that instance.

        Israel is a rogue crusader state that shouldn’t have existed as evidenced by genocide. The entire middle east is a mess due to the boarders and racism of western powers after WW1. Getting involved there is wrong on top of the original wrongs that caused it. Two wrongs never make a right.

        Why not accept that the PRC won the civil war and that the ROC lost without any further conflict. I mean I would love to spend time living in Shenzhen. I spent time on some Chinese electronics forums before they got locked down to user names with mainland phone numbers. There was all the usual talk and even a lot of politics along with a bunch of pinned threads about what was not acceptable to say or talk about. People were actually more real and a more vibrant community than in the west in many ways. I would honestly rather be a part of what I saw in those instances. I could go on more, but I see the only real losers as venture capital in this situation and their money is not worth a single death.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
          42·
          14 hours ago

          Why not accept that the PRC won the civil war and that the ROC lost without any further conflict

          Because, at its most fundamental, I think looking at the world in terms of the bigger fish is a disgusting worldview. We should just let the strong rule? In that case, let’s go USA! Go pull out those nukes and use 'em on anyone who dares challenge your supremacy!

          No, I would much rather live in a world where people can decide for themselves what they want, and where everyone else will help them achieve that if a bigger fish comes along to try and stop them.

          • j4k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
            23·
            14 hours ago

            That is a selective narrative context that is not grounded in the full scope of reality and recent history. You’ve decided to make up a label of what is or is not a big and small fish. The ROC was once a very big fish and it lost badly. You are parroting propaganda perspective when you fail to look at the big picture of events and look at them in total. This view of Taiwan in isolation without the history and broader context is propaganda nonsense out of western countries.

            The actual geopolitics of Taiwan is very much about US manipulation and denial of maritime access to China. It always has been. This is absolutely about bullying anyone that can challenge American supremacy. The whole logic behind TSMC was to make Taiwan valuable to venture capital in the USA so that the supremacy angle was not the only factor that kept the US attached to Taiwan. It was a brilliant move, but it is ending now. The end of the silicon age is now. We are reaching the Landauer Limit in around 5 years time when memory eraser is too power intensive to scale further. This changes the formula of value. In addition, China’s population peak against the cost to invade Taiwan is set to be optimal in 2030 after which invasion becomes much less feasible. This is what most independent analysts that I follow say. I don’t want to see any of this happen and I’m not taking sides. A realist perspective and open minded observation leads me here. I’m pretty skeptical of most sources and especially ones that focus on recent events to the exclusion of context and total history to spin some narrative or convenient propaganda to support the only bully with military bases around the world and surrounding China in this instance.

    • Lemmynated@lemmy.zipEnglish
      6·
      17 hours ago

      What if the confederates could not renounce their claim on the US because America would invade Cuba if they did?

      China will not allow them to renounce their claim, to do so would imply that Taiwan is not Chinas.

      Because that’s what Taiwan has to go through, so most people say keep the status quo because it’s better than pissing of China and them starting WW3 over the island.

      • j4k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        16 hours ago

        I view that like retaliation for Taiwan holding onto the UN chair for all of China along with all the other diplomatic attempts to repress the PRC. I can empathise for sure about how past problems are thrust on a newer generation that has no say in where they were born. I personally feel like the entire affair is not a real issue but is heavily politicized.

        China is largely thriving with people that have more purchasing power than most people in the USA. China doesn’t seem all that bad to me. It is just as backwards conservative as any large group of people. The cultural values are less than ideal in some areas, but the USA is no better, or anywhere else for that matter. A foreign national just bought a US president after that president tried to overthrow the government. I can still say that openly, but for he long. All US companies are moving to a neo feudal society, a regression of a millennium of sociopolitical progress and destroying any semblance of democracy. An informed public is the third cornerstone in the foundation of democracy and yet the internet only has 2 relevant web crawlers, both of which are not deterministic and are individually targeting users across all platforms. Mainstream media is owned by a half dozen entities. This is no different than China. It is likely worse. So what is everyone fighting for. It is just about TSMC and the supporting industry.

        I was in the bike shop business. There are a handful of factories around Giant there in Taiwan. They undercut the whole market until there were no other competing companies making bikes at large scale production. When they got the monopoly buttoned up, the price of bikes over doubled here. This has crushed road cycling in my area. No one could afford a nice bike and most quit riding. This is Orange County CA, one of the biggest bike markets in the world.

        I think the ethics are sketchy regardless of who the government is. Overall, whatever is right or wrong may change but it is relatively minor stuff. There are privateers and criminals on all sides. It is not worth dying for a change of address when paying taxes IMO.