Canadians’ opinions of the United States have deteriorated while their perceptions of China have improved compared to a few years ago, a new report suggests.
There are so many places people can turn to for journalism, opinions, and first hand accounts about day-to-day life in China. Why does everyone continue to swallow the propaganda explicitly delivered by eurocentric, western corporate media outlets?
No nation in the entirety of human history has provided a higher standard of living to a larger population than China. Why is it so hard for people to believe that the majority of people might actually appreciate and choose the structures and systems managed by the CCP?
Do people really believe that if any meaningful proportion of the more than 1,400,000,000 Chinese citizens (~40% of whom have received formal military training) had significant objections to their way of life that they wouldn’t be able to facilitate change or make more noise? It seems phenomenally disrespectful and beggars belief to imply that such a large number of people are either too stupid/immoral to care, or too cowardly to act. Is it not possible that they simply have a different set of values?
At this point this isn’t even a matter of speculation. Harvard’s been tracking domestic opinions through independent polling since the early 2000s. The tables in the report span to 2016:
Sadly no newer data but as you can see there’s a positive trend across levels of gov’t with pretty high satisfaction across the board. Would be nice to see where these numbers are today, after COVID, the real estate bubble and the Trump trade war.
It’s also amazing to me that even when measured and quantified, any positive conclusion about China must be presented by the global west with the caveat of “…but at what cost?”
“Everyone is happy because the system is delivering improved outcomes, but if the system stops delivering improved outcomes people might become less happy!”
Yeah… No shit… Welcome to every political and economic system ever…
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty problems but I think they got decent chances to solve or navigate many of them. For example managing their hard-on for Taiwan without resorting to war. Managing the decline of the US without war is another big challenge.
The hard-on is not really difficult to understand or empathize with. I mean, if the British had fled to, and seized control of Florida during the American Revolutionary War, I’m not sure people would be ok with just ceding the land to them…
I suspect that had the Kuomintang won mainland China and the CCP taken Taiwan, there wouldn’t be the global outpouring for Taiwanese sovereignty. People want to make this seem like a moral argument, but it’s really just the global west continuing their crusade against anything socialist or communist.
Oh yeah, I get all that. A CCP Taiwan would have been treated like Cuba and probably had similar if not worse fate given what happened with other left revolutions in the region.
That said, the history since then has created facts on the ground that Taiwan is independent at present and has had some form of democracy for 30 odd years. I personally would prefer for people in Taiwan to decide on whether to go independent, stay status quo or move towards unification. If China keeps developing as it has in the past, I think there’s a good chance that in a couple of decades Taiwanese people could decide to unify. There’s always gonna be unhappy people either way. Such is democracy. And any other system for that matter.
There are so many places people can turn to for journalism, opinions, and first hand accounts about day-to-day life in China. Why does everyone continue to swallow the propaganda explicitly delivered by eurocentric, western corporate media outlets?
No nation in the entirety of human history has provided a higher standard of living to a larger population than China. Why is it so hard for people to believe that the majority of people might actually appreciate and choose the structures and systems managed by the CCP?
Do people really believe that if any meaningful proportion of the more than 1,400,000,000 Chinese citizens (~40% of whom have received formal military training) had significant objections to their way of life that they wouldn’t be able to facilitate change or make more noise? It seems phenomenally disrespectful and beggars belief to imply that such a large number of people are either too stupid/immoral to care, or too cowardly to act. Is it not possible that they simply have a different set of values?
At this point this isn’t even a matter of speculation. Harvard’s been tracking domestic opinions through independent polling since the early 2000s. The tables in the report span to 2016:
Sadly no newer data but as you can see there’s a positive trend across levels of gov’t with pretty high satisfaction across the board. Would be nice to see where these numbers are today, after COVID, the real estate bubble and the Trump trade war.
Exactly.
It’s also amazing to me that even when measured and quantified, any positive conclusion about China must be presented by the global west with the caveat of “…but at what cost?”
“Everyone is happy because the system is delivering improved outcomes, but if the system stops delivering improved outcomes people might become less happy!”
Yeah… No shit… Welcome to every political and economic system ever…
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty problems but I think they got decent chances to solve or navigate many of them. For example managing their hard-on for Taiwan without resorting to war. Managing the decline of the US without war is another big challenge.
The hard-on is not really difficult to understand or empathize with. I mean, if the British had fled to, and seized control of Florida during the American Revolutionary War, I’m not sure people would be ok with just ceding the land to them…
I suspect that had the Kuomintang won mainland China and the CCP taken Taiwan, there wouldn’t be the global outpouring for Taiwanese sovereignty. People want to make this seem like a moral argument, but it’s really just the global west continuing their crusade against anything socialist or communist.
Oh yeah, I get all that. A CCP Taiwan would have been treated like Cuba and probably had similar if not worse fate given what happened with other left revolutions in the region.
That said, the history since then has created facts on the ground that Taiwan is independent at present and has had some form of democracy for 30 odd years. I personally would prefer for people in Taiwan to decide on whether to go independent, stay status quo or move towards unification. If China keeps developing as it has in the past, I think there’s a good chance that in a couple of decades Taiwanese people could decide to unify. There’s always gonna be unhappy people either way. Such is democracy. And any other system for that matter.