Not really surprising that german state media would fall in line when it comes to China reporting. The chinese have a history of playing ball with pretty much anyone from Israel to the EU and beyond. If there’s even any basis to the article’s thesis, it is the rabidly pro-US faction that rules Germany today which is making the main choice in this matter.
Oh great, even more lies from German state media. This AfD group had no official invitation from the Chinese government, nor did they meet with Chinese government officials. DW is really trying their best to push horseshoe theory on us, and it would be laughable if people didn’t take it seriously.
Are they in opposition to NATO? If so, then makes sense for realpolitik reasons.
Let’s lay out the events:
- AfD travels to China
- AfD says they’ll pursue a neutral foreign policy approach with China
- AfD says their getting twenty percent of the vote has “sparked interest from China”
- AfD says they’ll keep lines of communication open with China
Headline: “China courts Germany’s far right populist AfD”
Much more of these cursed alliances will happen in future unless the left and/or socially progressive forces in the west develop a coherent anti imperialist stance. As in anti NATO, anti IMF, anti World Bank. Traditional left wing positions based on global historical materialism.
Until that happens, the right wing and/or social conservatives, like the AfD here, will steal their lunch from them and form these kind of alliances. The primary contradiction globally is the disparity of living standards and wealth between the west/imperial core/triad, and the third world/global south, orchestrated by modern day imperialism and neocolonialism. Countries in the global south are prepared to work with anyone willing to end that, or at least show some support for ending it.
In short, the left in the west needs to get it’s stuff together, actually practice internationalism, and actually practice anti imperialism instead of selling out to the biggest institutions of modern day imperialism on the planet, such as NATO. If the left does not do this, alliances like this will continue to happen as the right occupies, or pretends to occupy, a space the left should be occupying.
I’m loving this, AfD has been collaborating with the far-right party in our country, which accuses everyone else of being filthy commies, it would be a beautiful irony (in the unlikely event this were to be true) if they started talking up the CPC because russia can’t fund them anymore hahahaha
They share a common enemy, democracy.
China is a democracy
How high are you right meow?
Do you not know what the structure of China is?
Serious question, do you? When I criticise the US I do so from a position of knowing how power works between its three branches of government, how the senate works, how local governance works, how elections work, how the courts work. Do you know how China conducts any of these? Do you know how they govern 1.6billion people?
It’s a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.
It may wear the skin of a democracy, but it is not a democracy.
According to their respective peoples, China has an infinitely more vibrant and responsive democracy than the United States.
I’d hate to think you’d be so blind to the irony of saying such a thing as ‘wearing the skin of democracy’ if you were living in the west.
Either way I’d be ashamed to act like you have and speak despite having such ignorance about the Chinese system of democracy.
lmao dog you shoulda just said “i don’t know anything about that, why don’t you tell me?”
it still would have taken you zero effort and you’d have avoided embarrassing yourself
It’s a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.
It may wear the skin of a democracy, but it is not a democracy.
This is the vaguest description ever and it’s not even correct with the vague points. There are multiple parties, and given that there are multiple parties the candidates certainly aren’t chosen by one party.
How are candidates chosen? Who elects them? When are elections held? What is the structure of the elections?
Do you know any of these things? Serious question. Have you ever investigated and learned this topic thoroughly? You know how the US system works I assume, I bet you vaguely understand some other systems too, like parliamentary ones such as the UK (or not, could be wrong). Have you ever actually investigated the topic or have you just passively repeated vague statements made by other people who are also passively repeating vague statements about it?
If you want me to I can in fact give you a fairly good summary of how the Chinese system actually works. But do you even want to know? Are you actually open to learning?
Democracy is when you vote between red man and blue man, both of whom have the same policies.
And both are funded by the same Bankers, Weapons Makers and Resource Extractors
It’s a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.
I much prefer all those two or three party states where the candidates are chosen by their respective parties on the marching orders of the capitalist class
So you don’t know the structure
President for life doesn’t sound democratic.
Term limits that silence the will of the people don’t sound democratic to me
Neither does censoring criticism of the government and proxy depictions of it.
Imagine for a split second that the strongest government in the world is constantly attempting to cause the overthrow of your legitimately popular government, despite it being popular and significantly beloved by almost all people there. This external, most powerful government in the world tried to cause unrest in every possible way, including funding all opposition groups and organizations regardless of their violent/genocidal intent (e.g. Falun Gong, Islamic terror groups) and cause unrest on your borders (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Korea).
What do you do? When good faith polling shows that you’re popular and fulfilling the needs and desires of your country’s working class but a foreign press tries to speak about the terribleness and need for overthrow, do you just let that happen with more money and propoganda than you can possibly provide to support yourself? Or do you censor the BS and report to your population that these images/ideas/orgs are actually subversive and attempting to change the government they legitimately love.
In this hypothetical situation, what do you propose? Allowing the propaganda but claiming it’s wrong has failed in many projects, and resulted in massacres once fascism won (Chile, Indonesia). Just trying to set up a wall of no information works for a bit, but info can cross anyways (USSR). Allowing limited access if you search for it but not allowing it’s widespread propagation is the method of china. A VPN allows you to see it all, but it can’t be spread too widely before it is stopped from being viral.
Do you have a better solution? Because this is how China presents itself and how the Chinese population sees it
What’s that got to do with China?
Oh I think he’s talking about FDR, the most popular president in U.S. history and one consistently ranked amongst the best
And in hindsight, not such a great person. Or at least had a lot of negatives to go along with his positives. Probably best to hard code not only a term limit, but an age limit on elected officials. I’m tired of the world being run by geriatrics. Culture seems to be consistently 20 year ahead of government.
Term-limits are blatantly anti-democratic and age limits are clumsy, but a cognitive evaluation and probably an MRI would be good for rooting out cases of cognitive decline.
There is an informal age limit in China and Xi is still below it, though just barely. I’m curious if he’ll go for another term after crossing it. I think he understands that he needs to retire sometime – no one wants to become a late '60s Mao.
Unlike in China, the people here actually have the right to vote. That right does not exist in China
What are you talking about? Of course the people in China have a right to vote.
Honestly, how did you come to be so confidently incorrect about this? You would have to have done no research at all to think the people of China don’t vote, but a normal person who has done no research about a subject will have the humility not to assume they know what they’re talking about.
It’s okay to admit you don’t know something. Like the other person said, Chinese people can vote
Learn yourself so that you can make informed opinions
It’s better to have no knowledge than negative knowledge (knowing “facts” that are completely wrong because of a gut feeling assumption rather than any evidence or research)
Meh, our democracy isn’t even that threatening to China (Taiwan’s is, it showcases a viable alternative to the CPC), they just had to leave us to our “contradictions”, they’d keep booming and we’d just keep buying their stuff while we eat each other alive, if China is doing this, they gotta be really desperate to turn Europe fascist again.
(Taiwan’s is, it showcases a viable alternative to the CPC)
Throwing chairs at each other in the Legislative Yuan over who gets to be America’s most loyal running dog isn’t seen by anyone thing China as a viable alternative to governance.
It’s ok, Hu Jintao really didn’t mind being dragged off the stage like an idiot in a country where face is everything. China does settle fistfights in private, which does set a good example for the populace, ngl.
PS: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/面子:
面子是人際關係中的一种现象，在東方等级观念较强的社会（如中國等）特別受到重視。具体定义不明，基本上意味给社会中每个人的尊重[1][2]。如果不给人面子，即是拆穿別人的面具，可能会引起报复。如果有面子，一般会被认为是社会地位较高，更受人尊敬，然而面子不够大，可能是因为在社会、经济等方面地位低下。“面子”是“社会脸面”，代表着个人在人生历程中由成就和夸耀所获得的名声以及被社会重视的声誉[3]。「厚顏」俗稱「不要臉」。
Aside from the racism of the “face culture” narrative, the guy is a dinosaur and notably not an official, just there as a matter of respect and legacy as a former President. We don’t really know what happened, but those meetings are long and the dude is probably senile, so he was probably getting helped off the stage by aides at around the time they expected from the outset.
Lol Hu is 80 years young, just like our boy
Seriously, China caring enough for their elders that they don’t want them shitting their pants on live television is apparently genocide now
Muh face
Did that sound like a thing that wasn’t wildly rascist when you wrote it? You can delete your comment. You simply can choose not to be rascist, it doesn’t cost you anything.
Is everything world news on lemmy about China? Like I’ve seen everything from crap articles saying China has a declining population like its a bad thing, or how the west looks like shit compared.
Like, it’s nothing racist or offensive. Not to me at least. Just lots and lots of it being the primary topic in ways that I’m ain’t too familiar with.
China is very active player and driving up events, especially as they may be working with nazi wannabes in the German government
Tankies: China is a world power!! It drives so many world events!!
Tankies: Nooo how dare China get in the press (good, bad, and neutral).They feel like any China coverage is inherently imperialist, even when its “China breaks fusion record”, that is meddling in China’s internal affairs to them.
For real. The tankie problem here is crazy. I can say something like China is trying to deny freedom of navigation of international waters on the South China Sea and somehow it becomes “BuT aMeRiCa”. I don’t get it.
I’ve been seeing this a lot from instances like hexbear and lemmygrad and my take is either cult members, paid trolls, brainwashed persons prone to pavlovian responses, or all of the above.
I just wish that as a user I could block instances.
This isn’t unique to the far-left, though. It’s a problem throughout the entire political spectrum.
It’s rather dangerous to be creating echo chambers in a democracy, though. Democracy lives off of discourse between opposing views.
I would not call them far left tbh. There’s something else about them that irks me. It honestly feels more North Korean to me and that ain’t left by any stretch of the imagination. It seems to be more authoritarian minded.
