The conversations are amazing
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Edit: the removed comment said that the social credit score existed based on this Wikimedia article.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
In the Wikipedia article itself:
There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit "score" based on individuals' behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[7][8][9] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores, and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.[7][10] According to a February 2022 report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a social credit "score" is a myth as there is "no score that dictates citizen's place in society".[7]
I have some sources on the child and slave labor, if that helps.
https://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/genocide-of-the-uyghurs-in-western-china/china-tibet-and-the-uyghurs
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicated-uyghur-forced-labor
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/nz0g306v8c/china-tainted-cotton
This last one is ‘Western propaganda’ but is very helpful in identifying the types of products to avoid. It’s near impossible in the US, unless you make your own textiles/clothes or only buy second-hand.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print
Your first link is a few paragraphs with no sources whatsoever.
The second one sources Human Rights Watch, who got bodied even on reddit the last time they tried to spread this line. They pretty much source only from Zenz (a far-right anti-semitic christian evangelical who thinks birth conrtrol is genocide).
The third link has Zenz again as its main source.
Its so exhausting to have to debunk the same recycled sources over and over, so here's a megathread:
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs
I appreciate a someone making the effort to debunk but your megathread is absolute garbage, I checked a couple links, got redirected toward twitter and quora threads, so ty but don't spread misinformation.
So all of the nations with a free and open internet are pushing propaganda, and we should just take the firewalled nation of oppressively regulated speech at their word?
No nation should allow the US surveillance arms like Facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube and reddit to operate within their borders. These are US controlled entities that serve to push pro-US foreign policy, and hoover up all global communications.
For example, the most popular social media platform in India, is facebook. The US controls the main communication platform of a country with a population much larger than its own.
Countries should realize what a dangerous threat it is to have US companies control your social media.
It's funny that we're arguing this on a platform that's legal in the US, and banned in China. Is lemmy.ml a US surveillance op too? Are you? Am I?
There is a difference between a corporation manipulating their own service and a government controlling the entire internet for the nation.
No one is forcing you to use US corporate social media. Everyone needs internet access.
There really isn't a fundamental difference here. US capitalists run the country, control its media, and stand above it's political system. It's military/defense apparatus, and police function as their hired goons.
US corporations are the US government. They outright own it. US media is state media with extra steps.
dude, the CIA controls everything. Probably since at least the 60's. Use your brain. Why do you think the most far right and "far left" media agree on the SAME THINGS when it comes to US foreign policy? US media is JUST as free as Chinese media, which is not at all. Read about the twitter leaks. Feds just emailed them to take shit down and they did it.
No nation has "free and open internet" in reality. Some are just more open about their biases while others try to obfuscate how they censor.
It really is astounding how much every sinophobes source is inevitably just Wikipedia.
More and more I see them just sending either a duckduckgo search, or the first few links from that search, which is of course always from anglo-supremacist news sources.
It's too bad the people of China aren't allowed to edit Wikipedia, and correct the facts, because of their oppressive state.
🤣 https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-internet-is-flooded-with-wikipedia-edits-made-by-government-and-big-oil/
To be clear, it is overwhelmingly Westerners that wish to depict a Chinese man as a yellow bear. You can talk about Pooh, just not in the way westerners tend to want to.
As for the Social Credit system, the version reported in western media is false and exaggerated. There is a credit system, but it's largely for businesses and other social entities, not some Orwellian big brother system.
Really? Because all sources that I can find trace the origin to Xi’s visit to the Philippines back in 2017.
http://hongkongfp.com/2018/11/20/filipinos-flood-social-media-winnie-pooh-memes-xi-jinping-visits-manila/
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2018/11/21/2003704655
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/11/21/1870392/winning-pooh-images-flood-social-media-xi-jinping-arrives
It originated as a group picture of Obama as Tigger with Xi as Pooh in 2013, not 2017. Your own sources dispute what you're saying. What has come from that isn't a continuation of that trend of group pictures, but a singular insistence of depicting a Chinese man as a yellow bear.
First paragraph from your source. China blocks it to prevent bloggers in China from making the comparison (kinda hard for them to block it on Facebook as China does not have control there). That's also where this meme started.
I'm also fairly certain that Pooh having yellow fur is mostly just coincidental (it'd be a bit surprising if Chinese citizens created a racist meme against another Chinese man). The offensiveness of the meme is much more related to Pooh being quite dim and just general fatshaming, not racism. That's not to say you can't use the meme in a racist way, just that the origins seemingly aren't racist.
In my understanding the racist part of the original meme is the Obama been Tigger(one letter away from the N word)
Really?! Unsurprising, but that makes the entire thing even worse.
I missed that. Thanks. So does that meme from the west outweigh Xi’s entire Philippino welcoming and barrage of memes, prompting the banning of the word Pooh in Chinese media, justify your claim that it’s overwhelmingly Westerners?
"Pooh" is not banned in China. Taking down racist attacks against Xi happend prior to the visit to the Phillipines, read your own articles. Some users used it in the Phillipines to protest Xi because the racist caricatures were taken down, which was a western thing.
Did you read your own link, or just grab the headline from a google search and call it "good enough?"
Yes, I have. Have you read beyond that point? The West distorts the scope and nature of the credit system to ludicrous degrees, nobody claims that there's no such thing.
It's besides the point how it is talked about. The Second screenshot literally says "Social credit. We don't have this at all" and your link very much proves that they do. Therefore propaganda in my eyes.
They very much have a credit score that is not anywhere comparable to the Orwellian depiction in western media, and furthermore the credit system is largely for businesses, not individuals. The western depiction simply does not exist.
I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a "social credit score", and gave more details about how it's administered.
Basically, the headline is "no, it's not at all what you've heard", and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I'm not sure your point about "there's no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere" is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan "whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere."
If that's not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that's not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that's exactly how it works doesn't serve your argument. And "well but the West is totally lying, maaan" isn't proof; it's an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.
No, it does not describe "exactly as what the western media depicted." The west reported utterly nonsense and unfounded ideas of facial recognition and tracking, among other ludicrous ideas out of a necessity to sensationalize.