I discovered this after upgrading our instance yesterday, which also upgraded all frontends to their latest versions as well. After I did, our Tesseract frontend stopped working and I noticed immediately as it's been my primary for a while. Initially I thought it was an API version mismatch, but no, it was much worse.
Someone pointed out that the developer of the frontend added an explicit hidden and unmodifiably blacklist which includes any and all instances to the left of Kissinger. There's a commit which also explains their specious reasoning about our instance specifically, as it seems we've been on their shit list for a bit longer than that.
This instance and its admin staff encourages identity politics, groupthink, mob mentality, and extremist solutions to societal problems. Users who advocate violence are not moderated so long as the admins agree with the target. Caution and critical thinking are advised when interacting with this instance or its users.
When you use tesseract to connect to one blacklisted such instance , you just get a message informing you that Tesseract is "incompatible with that instance" which leads one to think of a technical issue, like an API mismatch, rather than the dev being an opinionated coward.
Isn't it funny how all the software developed by turbolibs, like Piefed and Tesseract, end up with hidden control mechanisms from developers who think they know better than everyone else? That they don't just think they deserve to tell you what you should think, but they should manipulate you to think it? Isn't it funny how libs go on about how bad it is to support lemmy due to the ideology of the devs behind it, and yet lemmy has 0 opinions as a software? It does make one think...
Anyway, I forked - it as one does - and disabled the blacklist, but since this is a massively ideologically compromised software, I'll doubt I'll keep this frontend up after Lemmy 1.0. I think we'll bring up mlmym again now that someone's maintaining it again.
The very fact that China is a unique mix, including massive capitalism - ~60% of China’s GDP comes from the private sector, which also accounts for 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs -is a perfect example of socialism and communism not being viable on their own.
They need a capitalist platform holding the whole thing up for it to work, and even then their socialist/communist parts are the worst and most deplorable parts of the country - authoritarianism, mass censorship, capital punishment for even remotely criticising the government, child and slave labor, extreme poverty in the underclass with an elite ruling class, state sponsored propaganda that is demonstrably false but all means to challenge it banned/blocked. Then there’s the whole persecution of Uyghurs thing as well, but I’m sure you’ll pretend that’s not a thing right?
Your definitions of “doing well” for all the other countries I gave are crazy. Just absolute madness.
The fact that you continue to believe China to be evidence against socialism is proof that you, again, do not understand socialism and communism. Socialism is not about dogmatically collectivizing everything, regardless of the situation. It's a scientific approach. Markets play a subservient role in China's economy, which is dominated by massive state owned enterprises. Markets play a progressive role in creating developed productive forces that can then become centrally planned. It's not that socialism can't work on its own, it's that the system is already socialist, and fully planned economy requires higher developed productive forces than China presently has to be fully effective.
There is no child nor slave labor in China. There is no "elite class," the CPC is dominated by the proletariat. The state does wield massive power, correct! It uses it against capitalists, fascists, and reactionaries that would overturn socialism.
As for Xinjiang, no, there is no genocide. Western allegations of genocide didn't stick due to lack of evidence, and as such the west turned to vague allegations of "human rights abuses." These allegations are largely dramatized and exaggerated, but still, you can start to put together the lack of credibility. That's not enough, though, to dismiss. Where did they come from? And why?
Prior to the establishment of de-radicalization programs, western-backed terrorist attacks were common, in order to disrupt the Belt and Road initiative (where Xinjiang is key to expanding westward). These included:
July 5, 2009: The Urumqi Riots resulted in 197 deaths, and 1700 wounded in mass stabbings.
October 28, 2013: Tian'anmen Attack, 5 killed, 40 wouded, when a Jeep was driven directly into crowds.
March 1, 2014: Kunming Train Station Attack, 31 killed, 141 wounded. 8 jihadists committed mass stabbings.
May 22, 2014: Urumqi Attack, 39 killed, 94 injured as 2 attackers drove cars into crowds and threw explosives at buildings.
And many more. Since the de-radicalization efforts, these attacks have gone down to effectively 0. The reason for these attacks was because Xinjiang is geostrategic for the Belt and Road initiative, which is why the west stoked anti-China sentiment among the Uyghur peoples, funding terrorist groups and separatists. When China responded not with tanks and bombs but with vocational centers and investment in the region, the west pivoted to claims of "genocide," then walked those claims back to "human rights abuses" when no evidence for genocide materialized.
I recommend reading the UN report as well as (especially) China's response to it, which eclipses it in size and detail. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, Christian nationalist and professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.
Qiao Collective also has Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation as well. This is my personal recommendation for a Chinese Marxist perspective.
"General authoritarianism" is a nonsense claim. All states are monopolies on violence. What matters is which class controls the state, not if this or that state has power, as they all do. In China, the proletariat is the ruling class, and they use this authority to direct production and distribution towards pro-social ends. This is because China is a socialist country.
You have no coherent analysis, so you just resort to insult. It's deeply unserious behavior.