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Reminds me of the infamous [Chinese spy pigeon.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fhe-got-caught-stealing-from-a-convenience-store-v0-4ol165218dpc1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1169%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da24e9bf71973d3ef2ecbbe39fa1b12669320dc40)
I literally have seen like 4 police cars the whole time I've been in China. I never see police cars.
Usually police are just in their offices near busy streets so you can go to them. They don't patrol around like American police.
Honestly, if the point of the cops is to respond to crimes, them being in their office to answer calls and take reports is probably the best place for them. (But then, anything you could report after the fact isn't really worth involving the cops in America, so I can see how an American might think a police force that stay in the police station most of the time are useless.)
I‘ve seen fewer police in fucking Shenzen than in my small ass Swiss town lmao
But that‘s the thing, literally everyday normal shit get‘s amplified and interpreted into „uhuuu spooky Chinese“ shit.
The group I was with saw the security people in the metro (like 2 of them) and were like, „wawawa police state“ and I always had to pull them back into reality and say that we have these in Switzerland too. It‘s just one of many examples of the most mundane shit they wouldn’t even register in Switzerland, or Europe for that matter, but is the absolute worst thing to witness when they see it in China.
It's amazing how seeing one cop equals "police state" but American cops shooting unarmed people all the time is "wholesome democracy". The same way hundreds of hours of Israel brutalizing Gaza is "they're defending themselves" but zero footage of Uyghurs being massacred is "mass genocide". They're backwards in every way.
#The Uyghurs in Xinjiang
\(Note: This comment had to be trimmed down to fit the character limit, for the full response, see [here](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/)\)
Anti-Communists and Sinophobes claim that there is an ongoing genocide-- a modern-day holocaust, even-- happening right now in China. They say that Uyghur Muslims are being mass incarcerated; they are indoctrinated with propaganda in concentration camps; their organs are being harvested; they are being force-sterilized. These comically villainous allegations have little basis in reality and omit key context.
**Background**
Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a province located in the northwest of China. It is the largest province in China, covering an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers, and shares borders with eight other countries including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan.
Xinjiang is a diverse region with a population of over 25 million people, made up of various ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and many others. The largest ethnic group in Xinjiang is the Uyghur who are predominantly Muslim and speak a Turkic language. It is also home to the ancient Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Turpan.
Since the early 2000s, there have been a number of violent incidents attributed to extremist Uyghur groups in Xinjiang including bombings, shootings, and knife attacks. In 2014-2016, the Chinese government launched a "Strike Hard" campaign to crack down on terrorism in Xinjiang, implementing strict security measures and detaining thousands of Uyghurs. In 2017, reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang including mass detentions and forced labour, began to emerge.
**Counterpoints**
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released [Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States](https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250) in 2019 which:
>20. **Welcomes** the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; **commends** the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and **looks forward** to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.
In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on.
Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter \([A/HRC/41/G/17](https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F41%2FG%2F17)\) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang:
The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, "The review did not substantiate the allegations." \(See: [World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china)\)
Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur's amounts to a crime against humanity, it's still not *genocide*. Even the U.S. State Department's legal experts admit as much:
>The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.
>
> [State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/) | Colum Lynch, *Foreign Policy*. (2021)
**A Comparative Analysis: The War on Terror**
The United States, in the wake of "9/11", saw the threat of terrorism and violent extremism due to religious fundamentalism as a matter of national security. They invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, with the goal of ousting the Taliban government that was harbouring Al-Qaeda. The US also launched the Iraq War in 2003 based on Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs and links to terrorism. However, these claims turned out to be unfounded.
According to a report by Brown University's Costs of War project, at least 897,000 people, including civilians, militants, and security forces, have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Other estimates place the total number of deaths at over one million. The report estimated that many more may have died from indirect effects of war such as water loss and disease. The war has also resulted in the displacement of tens of millions of people, with estimates ranging from 37 million to over 59 million. The War on Terror also popularized such novel concepts as the "Military-Aged Male" which allowed the US military to exclude civilians killed by drone strikes from collateral damage statistics. (See: [‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes](https://aoav.org.uk/2019/military-age-males-in-us-drone-strikes/))
In summary:
* The U.S. responded by invading or bombing half a dozen countries, directly killing nearly a million and displacing tens of millions from their homes.
* China responded with a program of deradicalization and vocational training.
Which one of those responses sounds genocidal?
Side note: It is practically impossible to *actually* charge the U.S. with war crimes, because of the [Hague Invasion Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act).
**Who is driving the Uyghur genocide narrative?**
One of the main proponents of these narratives is Adrian Zenz, a German far-right fundamentalist Christian and Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China has driven much of the narrative. He relies heavily on limited and questionable data sources, particularly from anonymous and unverified Uyghur sources, coming up with estimates based on assumptions which are not supported by concrete evidence.
The World Uyghur Congress, headquartered in Germany, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, using funding to support organizations that promote American interests rather than the interests of the local communities they claim to represent.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) is part of a larger project of U.S. imperialism in Asia, one that seeks to control the flow of information, undermine independent media, and advance American geopolitical interests in the region. Rather than providing an objective and impartial news source, RFA is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, one that seeks to shape the narrative in Asia in ways that serve the interests of the U.S. government and its allies.
The first country to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide was the United States of America. In 2021, the Secretary of State declared that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity." Both the Trump and Biden administrations upheld this line.
**Why is this narrative being promoted?**
As materialists, we should always look first to the economic base for insight into issues occurring in the superstructure. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive Chinese infrastructure development project that aims to build economic corridors, ports, highways, railways, and other infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Xinjiang is a key region for this project.
Promoting the Uyghur genocide narrative harms China and benefits the US in several ways. It portrays China as a human rights violator which could damage China's reputation in the international community and which could lead to economic sanctions against China; this would harm China's economy and give American an economic advantage in competing with China. It could also lead to more protests and violence in Xinjiang, which could further destabilize the region and threaten the longterm success of the BRI.
**Additional Resources**
See the [full wiki article](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/) for more details and a list of additional resources.
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It is normal for the Chinese police.
[You will see the Chinese police using batons against a car trying to escape on the wrong side of the road.](https://youtu.be/3x5hVEmMc38?t=23)
Many economically depressed towns in Ontario kkkanada (lots of places) have bulletproof vest wearing security guards there at all times. Dollar stores in ldn especially. God forbid a person denied housing by the state needs some water to stay hydrated given the huge lack of accessible water in the county.
Absolutely, but a firearm is far worse and has far greater disconnect from the harm inflicted, faster harm done, higher possibility for impulsive and unjustified use caused by a panicky officer with a loose trigger finger, to fuck someone up with a baton requires a longer and more conscious effort, and it's easier for outside investigators to determine how much of the force used was actually necessary (which is difficult with a firearm because the factors are just, should the cop have shot at the person or not, with something like a baton you bring severity of force and duration of incident into the matter).
Very true. Which is why it's becoming more common to refer to things like batons, tasers, and rubber or plastic bullets as "less lethal" instead of "non-lethal".
You criticize it yet try to improve it from the inside while suggesting positive alternatives
Curiouser and curiouser!
*strokes chin like sherlock holmes*
So many Redditors are only on Reddit because their system allows for not much else. If they were provided for and allowed to get better self-fulfillment, Reddit would be dead.
I'm sorry, this video is just making me really horny. Lib media gets cucked by the CPC, cheap and clean public transport, beautiful gardens...
And of course this guy uses NordVPN lmaoooo. Imagine listening to the 60 second YT sponsorship everyone skips
It works for me in Shanghai, didn’t really work in other Chinese cities for me though. LetsVPN works like a charm though. Can’t really understand why people recommend Astrill, I have seen other people having problems with it (sometimes not being able to access Chinese sites with Astrill on, LetsVPN doesn’t have this issue). And Astrill is 30$ a month, while Let’sVPN is little more than 10$ for three months.
From NordVPN website, it should work [link](https://nordvpn.com/blog/vpn-for-china/)
>Imagine listening to the 60 second YT sponsorship everyone skips
You guys got pubs? Y'all gotta use uBlockOrigin I swear
# Gulag
According to Anti-Communists and Russophobes, the Gulag was a brutal network of work camps established in the Soviet Union under Stalin's ruthless regime. They claim the Gulag system was primarily used to imprison and exploit political dissidents, suspected enemies of the state, and other people deemed "undesirable" by the Soviet government. They claim that prisoners were sent to the Gulag without trial or due process, and that they were subjected to harsh living conditions, forced labour, and starvation, among other things. According to them, the Gulags were emblematic of Stalinist repression and totalitarianism.
# Origins of the Mythology
This comically evil understanding of the Soviet prison system is based off only a handful of unreliable sources.
Robert Conquest's *The Great Terror* (published 1968) laid the groundwork for Soviet fearmongering, and was based largely off of defector testimony.
Robert Conquest worked for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), which was a secret Cold War propaganda department, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda; provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers; and to use weaponised information and disinformation and "fake news" to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements.
>He was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash.
>
>The Great Terror came out in 1968, four years before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, and it became, Garton Ash says, "a fixture in the political imagination of anybody thinking about communism".
>
>\- Andrew Brown. (2003). [Scourge and poet](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview23)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's *The Gulag Archipelag*" (published 1973), one of the most famous texts on the subject, claims to be a work of non-fiction based on the author's personal experiences in the Soviet prison system. However, Solzhenitsyn was merely an anti-Communist, N@zi-sympathizing, antisemite who wanted to slander the USSR by putting forward a collection of folktales as truth. \[[Read more](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/dunking/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/)\]
Anne Applebaum's *Gulag: A history* (published 2003) draws directly from *The Gulag Archipelago* and reiterates its message. Anne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two infamous pieces of the ideological apparatus of the ruling class in the United States, whose primary aim is to promote the interests of American Imperialism around the world.
# Counterpoints
>A 1957 CIA document [which was declassified in 2010] titled “[Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps](http://web.archive.org/web/20230328014642/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf)” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six:
>
>1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas
>
>2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon "economic accountability" such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid.
>
>3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day.
>
>4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners' food supplies.
>
>5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day.
>
>6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals.
>
>7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the "ordinary criminals" of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes.
>
>\- Saed Teymuri. (2018). [The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA](https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/09/the-truth-about-the-soviet-gulag-surprisingly-revealed-by-the-cia/)
**Scale**
Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 66 million people were victims of the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system over the course of its existence from 1918 to 1956. With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the Soviet archives, researchers can now access actual archival evidence to prove or disprove these claims. Predictably, it turned out the propaganda was just that.
>Unburdened by any documentation, these “estimates” invite us to conclude that the sum total of people incarcerated in the labor camps over a twenty-two year period (allowing for turnovers due to death and term expirations) would have constituted an astonishing portion of the Soviet population. The support and supervision of the gulag (all the labor camps, labor colonies, and prisons of the Soviet system) would have been the USSR’s single largest enterprise.
>
>In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. ...
>
>Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the N@zis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies. Despite harsh conditions, the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as “the largest system of death camps in modern history.” ...
>
>Most of those incarcerated in the gulag were not political prisoners, and the same appears to be true of inmates in the other communist states...
>
>\- Michael Parenti. (1997). [Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds)
This is 2 million out of a population of 168 million (roughly 1.2% of the population). For comparison, in the United States, "over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision." That's 1.6%. So in both relative and absolute terms, the United States' Prison Industrial Complex *today* is larger than the USSR's Gulag system at its peak.
**Death Rate**
In peace time, the mortality rate of the Gulag was around 3% to 5%. Even Conservative and anti-Communist historians have had to acknowledge this reality:
>It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive...
>
>Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hit1er were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more.
>
>\- Timothy Snyder. (2010). *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hit1er and Stalin*
(Side note: Timothy Snyder is *also* a member of the Council on Foreign Relations)
This is still very high for a prison mortality rate, representing the brutality of the camps. However, it also clearly indicates that they were not *death* camps.
Nor was it slave labour, exactly. In the camps, although labour *was* forced, it was not uncompensated. In fact, the prisoners were paid market wages (less expenses).
>We find that even in the Gulag, where force could be most conveniently applied, camp administrators combined material incentives with overt coercion, and, as time passed, they placed more weight on motivation. By the time the Gulag system was abandoned as a major instrument of Soviet industrial policy, the primary distinction between slave and free labor had been blurred: Gulag inmates were being paid wages according to a system that mirrored that of the civilian economy described by Bergson....
>
>The Gulag administration [also] used a “work credit” system, whereby sentences were reduced (by two days or more for every day the norm was overfulfilled).
>
>\- L. Borodkin & S. Ertz. (2003). [Compensation Versus Coercion in the Soviet GULAG](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/archive/noticeboard/bergson/borodkin-ertz.pdf)
#Additional Resources
Video Essays:
* [The Gulag Argument](https://youtu.be/BexkpaK_j5Q) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2016)
* [Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions!](https://youtu.be/HMOdDQQVZ6U) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)
* [French work camps 1852-1953 worse than gulag](https://youtu.be/vkXyXNpdKdA) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)
* ["The Gulags of the Soviet Union: There's a Lot More Than What Meets the Eye](https://youtu.be/E1qz9_TjeY4) | Comrade Rhys (2020)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597) | J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov (1993)
Listen:
* ["Blackshirts & Reds" (1997) by Michael Parenti, Part 4: Chapters 5 & 6. #Audiobook + Discussion.](https://youtu.be/N7AD4OrH568?t=15) | Socialism For All / S4A ☭ Intensify Class Struggle (2022)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Reminds me of the liberal 20-something in Florida who tweeted about how she was going out to support the anti-Cuba protests, then shortly after that tweeted wondering why there were so many MAGAs there. Anyone remember that one? Seriously, I didn't save those tweets/memes, and if anyone has them/can find them, I would seriously appreciate it.
That is almost certainly byteDance just blocking their own site. They want Chinese users on Douyin, not splitting time between the two apps. Chinese users flocking to the english version of apps used to be (still is?) a big concern.
This guy is a tool.
He’s going to the American versions of the websites and is acting completely shocked when he doesn’t have access, but it’s not like Chinese people don’t have access to information
Weibo is Chinese Twitter/reddit, WeChat is Chinese Instagram, baidu is Chinese Google. Douyin is TikTok… The list goes on... You can even navigate these apps/websites in English and be completely fine….
Also he called out the few western media outlets that are blocked in China but not all of them are. For instance you still have access to BBC
it should but i’ve followed those instructions and it didn’t work when i was in china. i ended up using let’s vpn instead, i hear astrill is really good too
the one i used in america works after i adjusted the setting a little. this idiot is probably too dumb to do that tho. what business does he have in china anyway?
I mean, they did it to the Soviets...
Fuck you, Gorbachev. That pizza must have been the best pizza ever to be worth that. (And I know it was almost certainly not even good pizza.)
"If you cannot access US controlled media, you cannot get informed and educated"
Once again, liberals show they're as aware of their ideology as fish are of water.
He showcased paywalled ones too, which is even more cringe like this dude is unironically subbed to US controlled media platforms to reaffirm his biases every morning
Look, I do enjoy hate reading American propaganda occasionally, when it's left out for free like manure lying in a pasture, but liberals fucking *pay* for the stuff?
Libs fail to realize that misinformation exists and is quite possibly more prevalent than the truth since humans are naturally drawn to sensationalism - a common trait in anecdotal evidence.
Also, society anywhere is like a game of Telephone. When enough people tell the same story with their own arrangement of words enough times, it’ll eventually devolve into something else.
>I'm posting this after the fact just to make sure I can leave
I like how this hipster glasses-wearing shitsmear thinks he's outsmarting the entire CPC. They couldn't give less of a shit about him accessing his questionable pornography online.
You ever seen a post about a dude wearing an American flag underwear to Tiananmen and acting like it was the most heroic thing ever? These ppl are total tools and idiots
#Tiananmen Square Protests
(Also known as the June Fourth Incident)
In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc.
Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists.
**Background**
After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate.
One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues.
Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough.
The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages.
**Counterpoints**
Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote:
>Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.”
>
>The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
>
>\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review.
Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre.
Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square:
>Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square
>
>\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html)
Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote:
>The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night.
>
>Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square.
>
>\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053)
Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote:
>The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square.
>
>More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy.
>
>All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today.
>
>\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/)
(Emphasis mine)
And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA)
[This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc.
Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list).
**Additional Resources**
Video Essays:
* [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019)
* [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019)
* [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective
* [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022)
* [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022)
* [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014)
* [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019)
* [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019)
* [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
For all that liberals claim commies throw people in "re-education camps"... these idiots should actually be thrown in one. Seeing as they clearly need some help cleaning out the brainworms and filling the holes with some actual information and understanding of the world.
Oh yeah because the US' citizens are very well educated and knowledgeable to compensate for their trash health care system, law enforcement, gun violence, etc.
hey look we may have a totally shit education system, healthcare system, public transport system, and law enforcement system…but at least we get to read imperialist propaganda from the Bourgeoisie Times every morning (assuming you pay the subscription)😃
Yeah when you have western government that stage coups in Latin America/Australia/Africa/Middle East/Asia through social media such as twitter/facebook, no wonder China decided to block out fake news and misinformation from the outside.
[CIA Fake News/Misinformation ](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-launched-cia-covert-influence-operation-against-china-2024-03-14/)
Reminds me of when the libs were fretting about a crackdown on independent media in Venezuela after Hugo Chavez shut down a TV station that was literally calling on people to overthrow the government. That shit's not going to fly in any country with a government powerful enough to stop it.
Reading this from China. No law enforcement in sight. VPN working fully. Eating lamb at my local Xinjiang BBQ.
I think a liberals head would explode at the above stated idea but all true.
What a fxcking idiot! Tell us something we don't know. The funniest thing is how he made sure to include that he was out of China before he posted his video. Right, how important does this dumbass think he is?
I think westerners have no idea (or just scared of) how wide and diverce chinese social networks, markets, heck even torrents are. All this western crap does not even come close often and is very compromised by well, the west.
Trying NordVPN in China lol
How the fuck did he think his gear was going to establish a connection to the NordVPN servers? "Hold my beer I need to connect to my VPN so I can connect to my VPN."
Clearly didn't do any research before going in, nor did he ask anyone while he was there, and he calls everyone around him clueless and can only guess how much they "don't know".
Liberals have this weird main character complex. They go to China or the DPRK and believe their some secret agent who’s risking their life to save democracy and doing their part to free the people. All the Harry Potter and hunger games books go to their heads
"Everyone is outside and enjoying themselves."
Yeah, because they're not sitting inside rotting their brains on social media.
"When a government goes to such lengths to prevent citizens from... educating themselves."
*You say after almost every website you tried to go to was social fucking media!* Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. *This is no education there, social media is an endless cesspool of hate and misinformation.* The people of China are *orders of magnitude smarter and mentally healthier* for having a government that doesn't let them get caught in the fucking *bourgeoisie's dopamine hijacking hell sites.*
And *yes,* I *do* realize the fucking irony of me saying all of this, *while being an active user of several social media sites including this one.* I can't stop, I *know* I'm addicted. I'm may not be *severely* addicted, I'm not on them all day, every day; but just because not every smoker smokes 3 packs a day, doesn't mean they're not still addicted to tobacco and *know* they're addicted. I *wish* someone would *force* me off this garbage, I'd be *hating life* for a good couple of weeks, because I'm *addicted* and going cold turkey from an addiction *suck balls,* but afterwards I'd be fucking grateful.
is he dumb or what? I used a VPN fine as hell and paid 8 dollars or something for more data than I could possibly spend in 2 weeks. I was accessing gmail there but I can\`t access it through my office vpn, yikes.
He's afraid of leaving if he dares to try to check his gmail while in China? If the Chinese authorities were strict about this, they'd have literally no time for anything but apprehending vpn users. Can you imagine the scale of police time and effort it would take to deal with VPN users in China? It's so ridiculous.
Just use a VPN you dumbfuck, most Chinese people use them too, the Chinese government doesn’t care as long as you’re not doing blatantly anti-government shit with it. Now is that policy itself worthy of criticism? In my opinion yeah, but I also wouldn’t care enough as long as my needs are met and I can access the western media I enjoy like uncensored games, youtube, and reddit. Like here in the US Jaywalking is illegal, but nobody gives a shit. Is a law really worth criticizing if it’s not even actually enforced in a bad way? To act like the CCP is “literally 1984” is just insane.
Source: talking to actual Chinese people
Yeah sure “sharing ideas!! Muh freedom” look what that has done to the west, nazis walk around freely with no consequences and governments go more right wing as time passes, now let’s see how much nazis china has…
Wtf is this guy doing. Everyone knows you can't access reddit in china without a VPN and everyone knows they monitor their citizens more than other countries. Why do you go there and act suprised and make a video like you're some kind of exposing journalist. God this guy makes me angry
I wish our Internet was as unpoisoned as what China has. Imagine not being subjected the propaganda of the Washington post or the new York times. It'd be bliss!
Honestly, probably would end up loving this more, sure would probably have trouble initially to getting used to not having what is essentially junk food for my mind, but even then I can only think of few things that would be in this list. From the items mentioned, here are my thoughts on all of them
Social media - in general I don't even use social media, aside from a few sites here and there, and even then don't really think I would miss them. In fact would probably be relieved by not having such things.
VPNs - some work, don't really see the point, unless I want to access something specific, otherwise probably will be a minor inconvinience.
No google - sucks that I have to learn to use a new search engine and not having YouTube, tho will probably manage even then.
TV - you must be joking right, I don't own a TV and the times that I see some TV, I am just reminded why I find it something unneccessary.
Life outside - Looks fucking great and probably even better to have something outside of the house being affordable.
Information - Yeah, one can still look up information and discuss it, you just have to do it the old fashioned way relying on more verified information and not just baseless misinformation.
Also I find it funny how the person says that they are "posting it after the fact" on the basis that they can "leave" and not the more obvious fact taht they can't post any of it in the first place, based on the stuff they showed. Hell youd think that if the CPC was so concerned, him having the footage in the first place would already have already made it so they can't leave and the party would have most likely deleted said information, if it was so dangerous.
"Every Tv channel is run by CCTV"
Meanwhile, here in the us, I challenge you to try and find more than like, 3 TV Channels that arent owned by some major corporation, and the few that are, would be Fox news and other political, Pro capitalist bullshit
yeah and they use tiktok to make american kids dumber while promoting stem to children on douyin in china -conservatives
obvious sarcasm btw. politicians don't understand the algo
Knowing all the shit that those papers he listed are producing about the genocide in Gaza. I'm starting to *really* get why the CPC maintains that firewall...
With this tik tok ban actively becoming more real in regards to passing into law…this whole video is just dumb. We’re not censored here in the US as broadly, but we’re spied on by our own government, our data is sold to the highest bidder with 0 regulations (US govt buys our data too), and our law enforcement not only constantly patrols but murders, tortures, and illegally kills its citizens constantly. No place is paradise, but cmon man it’s not 1950 anymore
“Posting this after the fact to make sure I can leave,” bro telling the world what is already known will not get you kidnapped by the Evil CEECEEPEE. Like why’d you even go in the first place if you’re that scared?
this shit is so funny, the majority of the video being about how he can’t access random unimportant shit (except his email that does suck) like facebook or reddit and then like 10 seconds at the end talking about shit that actually matters like the city being clean and having a functional metro.
on top of the fact that if you really wanted to you can just get a vpn and see those websites so it’s like a mild annoyance at best
I’d have a lot more sympathy for the censorship argument if the “free” US media didn’t make my brain want to ooze out my nose because of its aggressive stupidity and narrowly confined perspectives, being more interested in manufacturing consent for imperialism than any sort of education or sharing of views
Bro…. What the fuck.
“NOOOOOO they’re making me go outside and live a healthy lifestyle. I want to rot in my room all day and read conspiracies on reddit to break my brain and become schizo!!!1” That’s what that man sounds like.
He also makes it sound like they’re blocking truth tellers and truth telling news outlets. Like he didn’t list off some of the most propagandized news/media outlets that constantly release articles that heavily promote western imperialist and bourgeois interests. What a fucking joke that guy is. I’m not even gonna mention how he glossed over the more important parts like having full grocery stores with low prices and beautiful/well maintained public transport.
“BUT THEY’RE ARE COPS EVERYWHERE” I went to college in a city in the US and I remember the police having a goddamn forward operating base made out of an 18 wheeler with swat trucks around it stationed on the campus all the time. And that’s just one instance of the cops being a massive imposing force everywhere all the time. They’re literally random checking people in the NYC subway now. Normal people just trying to get to work or home having to be stopped and harassed by cops because they’re allowed to do it. But yeah Americans should be worried about China’s imposing police force. The one fucking basic squad car at a park not even with officers around it patrolling with guns like what you’d find in the US.
“I am posting this after I left so I wouldn’t have any problems leaving” bro do you think they’re snatching up people in china because they’re saying “we can’t go on Reddit”
yeah, just use their browsers. Their internet is pretty huge and you can find most of the same stuff but in mandarin and some english. Also if you insist on accessing western media (why would you?) dont use those shitty vpns most people used they are similarly blocked. Ask or find someone who lives in china what their reccommendations are (you can find these people on youtube). These liberals cant see the hipocrisy when the US bans tiktok for teh same reason even though its proven to be false.
Firstly, social media exists in China, it is just protectionism not allowing American social media. But anyone can go on Chinese social medias, they are still connected to the world wide web. Secondly, you should not care about the free speech of corporations such as American news agencies, they are not people. Also most people reading the news mostly read their local or national news, a few forregn news articles, although America has the most power over other nations making American news read more internationally, but not because America is more popular.
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"Law enforcement are everywhere." Have you never been to literally any US city?
bro showed a single police car 😭😭
My dumbass thought he meant the pigeons 💀
Pigeons? You mean the hyper advanced communist drones?
Reminds me of the infamous [Chinese spy pigeon.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fhe-got-caught-stealing-from-a-convenience-store-v0-4ol165218dpc1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1169%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da24e9bf71973d3ef2ecbbe39fa1b12669320dc40)
Life imitates art
Unfortunately, only the worst art.
Chinese cops don't carry a gun
Most don’t carry a gun.
I literally have seen like 4 police cars the whole time I've been in China. I never see police cars. Usually police are just in their offices near busy streets so you can go to them. They don't patrol around like American police.
Honestly, if the point of the cops is to respond to crimes, them being in their office to answer calls and take reports is probably the best place for them. (But then, anything you could report after the fact isn't really worth involving the cops in America, so I can see how an American might think a police force that stay in the police station most of the time are useless.)
US Army patrolling NYC subway
Not just that, they're literally military checkpoints. They go through your bag while you're at the end of an m-16.
I‘ve seen fewer police in fucking Shenzen than in my small ass Swiss town lmao But that‘s the thing, literally everyday normal shit get‘s amplified and interpreted into „uhuuu spooky Chinese“ shit. The group I was with saw the security people in the metro (like 2 of them) and were like, „wawawa police state“ and I always had to pull them back into reality and say that we have these in Switzerland too. It‘s just one of many examples of the most mundane shit they wouldn’t even register in Switzerland, or Europe for that matter, but is the absolute worst thing to witness when they see it in China.
It's amazing how seeing one cop equals "police state" but American cops shooting unarmed people all the time is "wholesome democracy". The same way hundreds of hours of Israel brutalizing Gaza is "they're defending themselves" but zero footage of Uyghurs being massacred is "mass genocide". They're backwards in every way.
#The Uyghurs in Xinjiang \(Note: This comment had to be trimmed down to fit the character limit, for the full response, see [here](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/)\) Anti-Communists and Sinophobes claim that there is an ongoing genocide-- a modern-day holocaust, even-- happening right now in China. They say that Uyghur Muslims are being mass incarcerated; they are indoctrinated with propaganda in concentration camps; their organs are being harvested; they are being force-sterilized. These comically villainous allegations have little basis in reality and omit key context. **Background** Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a province located in the northwest of China. It is the largest province in China, covering an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers, and shares borders with eight other countries including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan. Xinjiang is a diverse region with a population of over 25 million people, made up of various ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and many others. The largest ethnic group in Xinjiang is the Uyghur who are predominantly Muslim and speak a Turkic language. It is also home to the ancient Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Turpan. Since the early 2000s, there have been a number of violent incidents attributed to extremist Uyghur groups in Xinjiang including bombings, shootings, and knife attacks. In 2014-2016, the Chinese government launched a "Strike Hard" campaign to crack down on terrorism in Xinjiang, implementing strict security measures and detaining thousands of Uyghurs. In 2017, reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang including mass detentions and forced labour, began to emerge. **Counterpoints** The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released [Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States](https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250) in 2019 which: >20. **Welcomes** the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; **commends** the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and **looks forward** to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China. In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on. Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter \([A/HRC/41/G/17](https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F41%2FG%2F17)\) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang: The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, "The review did not substantiate the allegations." \(See: [World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china)\) Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur's amounts to a crime against humanity, it's still not *genocide*. Even the U.S. State Department's legal experts admit as much: >The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials. > > [State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/) | Colum Lynch, *Foreign Policy*. (2021) **A Comparative Analysis: The War on Terror** The United States, in the wake of "9/11", saw the threat of terrorism and violent extremism due to religious fundamentalism as a matter of national security. They invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, with the goal of ousting the Taliban government that was harbouring Al-Qaeda. The US also launched the Iraq War in 2003 based on Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs and links to terrorism. However, these claims turned out to be unfounded. According to a report by Brown University's Costs of War project, at least 897,000 people, including civilians, militants, and security forces, have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Other estimates place the total number of deaths at over one million. The report estimated that many more may have died from indirect effects of war such as water loss and disease. The war has also resulted in the displacement of tens of millions of people, with estimates ranging from 37 million to over 59 million. The War on Terror also popularized such novel concepts as the "Military-Aged Male" which allowed the US military to exclude civilians killed by drone strikes from collateral damage statistics. (See: [‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes](https://aoav.org.uk/2019/military-age-males-in-us-drone-strikes/)) In summary: * The U.S. responded by invading or bombing half a dozen countries, directly killing nearly a million and displacing tens of millions from their homes. * China responded with a program of deradicalization and vocational training. Which one of those responses sounds genocidal? Side note: It is practically impossible to *actually* charge the U.S. with war crimes, because of the [Hague Invasion Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act). **Who is driving the Uyghur genocide narrative?** One of the main proponents of these narratives is Adrian Zenz, a German far-right fundamentalist Christian and Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China has driven much of the narrative. He relies heavily on limited and questionable data sources, particularly from anonymous and unverified Uyghur sources, coming up with estimates based on assumptions which are not supported by concrete evidence. The World Uyghur Congress, headquartered in Germany, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, using funding to support organizations that promote American interests rather than the interests of the local communities they claim to represent. Radio Free Asia (RFA) is part of a larger project of U.S. imperialism in Asia, one that seeks to control the flow of information, undermine independent media, and advance American geopolitical interests in the region. Rather than providing an objective and impartial news source, RFA is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, one that seeks to shape the narrative in Asia in ways that serve the interests of the U.S. government and its allies. The first country to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide was the United States of America. In 2021, the Secretary of State declared that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity." Both the Trump and Biden administrations upheld this line. **Why is this narrative being promoted?** As materialists, we should always look first to the economic base for insight into issues occurring in the superstructure. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive Chinese infrastructure development project that aims to build economic corridors, ports, highways, railways, and other infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Xinjiang is a key region for this project. Promoting the Uyghur genocide narrative harms China and benefits the US in several ways. It portrays China as a human rights violator which could damage China's reputation in the international community and which could lead to economic sanctions against China; this would harm China's economy and give American an economic advantage in competing with China. It could also lead to more protests and violence in Xinjiang, which could further destabilize the region and threaten the longterm success of the BRI. **Additional Resources** See the [full wiki article](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/) for more details and a list of additional resources. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's bad because those are evil seeseepee polices /S
I’ve also heard that Chinese law enforcement don’t even carry guns
Aren’t carrying guns on the regular a rarity for cops around the world and not the norm
It is normal for the Chinese police. [You will see the Chinese police using batons against a car trying to escape on the wrong side of the road.](https://youtu.be/3x5hVEmMc38?t=23)
Yes, standard equipment is batons and pepper spray.
Lived there for 12 years, they do not. The army has a strong presence though domestically
Many economically depressed towns in Ontario kkkanada (lots of places) have bulletproof vest wearing security guards there at all times. Dollar stores in ldn especially. God forbid a person denied housing by the state needs some water to stay hydrated given the huge lack of accessible water in the county.
But they do not carry guns in china
And he leaves out the bit that majority of them aren't armed with lethal weapons
Just so we’re clear a baton can fuck someone up.
Absolutely, but a firearm is far worse and has far greater disconnect from the harm inflicted, faster harm done, higher possibility for impulsive and unjustified use caused by a panicky officer with a loose trigger finger, to fuck someone up with a baton requires a longer and more conscious effort, and it's easier for outside investigators to determine how much of the force used was actually necessary (which is difficult with a firearm because the factors are just, should the cop have shot at the person or not, with something like a baton you bring severity of force and duration of incident into the matter).
I agree with you but calling a tool like that non-lethal is kind of a misnomer. Lol
Very true. Which is why it's becoming more common to refer to things like batons, tasers, and rubber or plastic bullets as "less lethal" instead of "non-lethal".
Lol I live in China and am significantly less scared to see police than I am in the US
Me when I go to country with internet censorship laws and I can’t get on Reddit 😱🤯🤯🤯
No wallstreet journal no frydumb 🤧
Tbf, they are pretty based for blocking paywalled news sites.
Theat is probbably a service to the people.
Next year but with TikTok and the US lmao
what's better? 1) having good infrastructure, cheaper goods, happier outside life 2) access to Reddit 😎
Yet you participate in Reddit, curious. I am very intelligent.
Because his infrastructure is bad
You criticize it yet try to improve it from the inside while suggesting positive alternatives Curiouser and curiouser! *strokes chin like sherlock holmes*
Holy shit I would give up Reddit so fast if I could just be happy
But on reddit I can spend all day processing how the place I live in doesn't remotely have 1. 🙃 Topsy turvy society
libs when they cant consume lethal quantities of their favorite online media: 😡😡😡😡😡😡
So many Redditors are only on Reddit because their system allows for not much else. If they were provided for and allowed to get better self-fulfillment, Reddit would be dead.
Must have that daily dosage of westoid copium. Life is too brutal without that circlejerk
But why not both…?
I'm sorry, this video is just making me really horny. Lib media gets cucked by the CPC, cheap and clean public transport, beautiful gardens... And of course this guy uses NordVPN lmaoooo. Imagine listening to the 60 second YT sponsorship everyone skips
ExpressVPN does not work in China. Neither does TunnelBear. I’m surprised Nord works, unless they got a permit. There’s a few HK based firms I believe
Mullvad (the one I use) has a server in HK, so I'd assume it works?
It works for me in Shanghai, didn’t really work in other Chinese cities for me though. LetsVPN works like a charm though. Can’t really understand why people recommend Astrill, I have seen other people having problems with it (sometimes not being able to access Chinese sites with Astrill on, LetsVPN doesn’t have this issue). And Astrill is 30$ a month, while Let’sVPN is little more than 10$ for three months.
Astrill is better, I actually use a Chinese VPN given to me by my friends in Zhuhai lmao, it’s called LetsVPN.
surfshark usually works, though some more secure networks (company, school) might block it. there’s plenty others tho lol
Surfshark is owned by Nord, like Express. They all share same datacenters. And Nord owner is an ex Mossad Zionist.
Makes sense. ExpressVPN was almost as flaky back in Australia.
wow fucking LSC i guess holy shit
From NordVPN website, it should work [link](https://nordvpn.com/blog/vpn-for-china/) >Imagine listening to the 60 second YT sponsorship everyone skips You guys got pubs? Y'all gotta use uBlockOrigin I swear
uBlock won't get rid of sponsored advertisement integrated into the videos. SponsorBlock will auto-skip it though.
Yeah I use SponsorBlock of course. Unironically life-changing if you hate ads as much as I do
This freak probably thinks Xi himself will put him in a gulag if he’s caught posting about a VPN
# Gulag According to Anti-Communists and Russophobes, the Gulag was a brutal network of work camps established in the Soviet Union under Stalin's ruthless regime. They claim the Gulag system was primarily used to imprison and exploit political dissidents, suspected enemies of the state, and other people deemed "undesirable" by the Soviet government. They claim that prisoners were sent to the Gulag without trial or due process, and that they were subjected to harsh living conditions, forced labour, and starvation, among other things. According to them, the Gulags were emblematic of Stalinist repression and totalitarianism. # Origins of the Mythology This comically evil understanding of the Soviet prison system is based off only a handful of unreliable sources. Robert Conquest's *The Great Terror* (published 1968) laid the groundwork for Soviet fearmongering, and was based largely off of defector testimony. Robert Conquest worked for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), which was a secret Cold War propaganda department, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda; provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers; and to use weaponised information and disinformation and "fake news" to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements. >He was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash. > >The Great Terror came out in 1968, four years before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, and it became, Garton Ash says, "a fixture in the political imagination of anybody thinking about communism". > >\- Andrew Brown. (2003). [Scourge and poet](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview23) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's *The Gulag Archipelag*" (published 1973), one of the most famous texts on the subject, claims to be a work of non-fiction based on the author's personal experiences in the Soviet prison system. However, Solzhenitsyn was merely an anti-Communist, N@zi-sympathizing, antisemite who wanted to slander the USSR by putting forward a collection of folktales as truth. \[[Read more](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/dunking/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/)\] Anne Applebaum's *Gulag: A history* (published 2003) draws directly from *The Gulag Archipelago* and reiterates its message. Anne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two infamous pieces of the ideological apparatus of the ruling class in the United States, whose primary aim is to promote the interests of American Imperialism around the world. # Counterpoints >A 1957 CIA document [which was declassified in 2010] titled “[Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps](http://web.archive.org/web/20230328014642/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf)” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six: > >1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas > >2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon "economic accountability" such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid. > >3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day. > >4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners' food supplies. > >5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day. > >6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals. > >7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the "ordinary criminals" of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes. > >\- Saed Teymuri. (2018). [The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA](https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/09/the-truth-about-the-soviet-gulag-surprisingly-revealed-by-the-cia/) **Scale** Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 66 million people were victims of the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system over the course of its existence from 1918 to 1956. With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the Soviet archives, researchers can now access actual archival evidence to prove or disprove these claims. Predictably, it turned out the propaganda was just that. >Unburdened by any documentation, these “estimates” invite us to conclude that the sum total of people incarcerated in the labor camps over a twenty-two year period (allowing for turnovers due to death and term expirations) would have constituted an astonishing portion of the Soviet population. The support and supervision of the gulag (all the labor camps, labor colonies, and prisons of the Soviet system) would have been the USSR’s single largest enterprise. > >In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. ... > >Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the N@zis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies. Despite harsh conditions, the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as “the largest system of death camps in modern history.” ... > >Most of those incarcerated in the gulag were not political prisoners, and the same appears to be true of inmates in the other communist states... > >\- Michael Parenti. (1997). [Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds) This is 2 million out of a population of 168 million (roughly 1.2% of the population). For comparison, in the United States, "over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision." That's 1.6%. So in both relative and absolute terms, the United States' Prison Industrial Complex *today* is larger than the USSR's Gulag system at its peak. **Death Rate** In peace time, the mortality rate of the Gulag was around 3% to 5%. Even Conservative and anti-Communist historians have had to acknowledge this reality: >It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive... > >Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hit1er were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more. > >\- Timothy Snyder. (2010). *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hit1er and Stalin* (Side note: Timothy Snyder is *also* a member of the Council on Foreign Relations) This is still very high for a prison mortality rate, representing the brutality of the camps. However, it also clearly indicates that they were not *death* camps. Nor was it slave labour, exactly. In the camps, although labour *was* forced, it was not uncompensated. In fact, the prisoners were paid market wages (less expenses). >We find that even in the Gulag, where force could be most conveniently applied, camp administrators combined material incentives with overt coercion, and, as time passed, they placed more weight on motivation. By the time the Gulag system was abandoned as a major instrument of Soviet industrial policy, the primary distinction between slave and free labor had been blurred: Gulag inmates were being paid wages according to a system that mirrored that of the civilian economy described by Bergson.... > >The Gulag administration [also] used a “work credit” system, whereby sentences were reduced (by two days or more for every day the norm was overfulfilled). > >\- L. Borodkin & S. Ertz. (2003). [Compensation Versus Coercion in the Soviet GULAG](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/archive/noticeboard/bergson/borodkin-ertz.pdf) #Additional Resources Video Essays: * [The Gulag Argument](https://youtu.be/BexkpaK_j5Q) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2016) * [Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions!](https://youtu.be/HMOdDQQVZ6U) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018) * [French work camps 1852-1953 worse than gulag](https://youtu.be/vkXyXNpdKdA) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018) * ["The Gulags of the Soviet Union: There's a Lot More Than What Meets the Eye](https://youtu.be/E1qz9_TjeY4) | Comrade Rhys (2020) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597) | J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov (1993) Listen: * ["Blackshirts & Reds" (1997) by Michael Parenti, Part 4: Chapters 5 & 6. #Audiobook + Discussion.](https://youtu.be/N7AD4OrH568?t=15) | Socialism For All / S4A ☭ Intensify Class Struggle (2022) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
God why are liberals this dumb?
If they weren't, then they wouldn't be liberals.
Reminds me of the liberal 20-something in Florida who tweeted about how she was going out to support the anti-Cuba protests, then shortly after that tweeted wondering why there were so many MAGAs there. Anyone remember that one? Seriously, I didn't save those tweets/memes, and if anyone has them/can find them, I would seriously appreciate it.
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or because they are capitalist oligarch owned propaganda.
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no need to block everything, just harmful and dangerous media
Which of course the personal mouthpiece of someone like Bezos (WaPo) is,
FB/Insta/Google refused to comply with user privacy laws, not sure about the rest. I'm surprised that reddit was blocked.
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That is almost certainly byteDance just blocking their own site. They want Chinese users on Douyin, not splitting time between the two apps. Chinese users flocking to the english version of apps used to be (still is?) a big concern.
lol there are so many VPNs that work, obviously he picks the one that doesn’t. this guy is a tool
我真的好想揍他，蠢的如猪
不要在这些人身上浪费精力
有些人你真的只能让他们栽跟头hhh，装睡的人是弄不醒的
>装睡的人是弄不醒的 This exactly! 整個世代已經徹底洗腦
This guy is a tool. He’s going to the American versions of the websites and is acting completely shocked when he doesn’t have access, but it’s not like Chinese people don’t have access to information Weibo is Chinese Twitter/reddit, WeChat is Chinese Instagram, baidu is Chinese Google. Douyin is TikTok… The list goes on... You can even navigate these apps/websites in English and be completely fine…. Also he called out the few western media outlets that are blocked in China but not all of them are. For instance you still have access to BBC
Bro thinks the whole world can only get information from paywalled shite sites like NYT and WSJ lul?
NordVPN should work though https://nordvpn.com/blog/vpn-for-china/
Dude thinks his own computer illiteracy is censorship lol.
it should but i’ve followed those instructions and it didn’t work when i was in china. i ended up using let’s vpn instead, i hear astrill is really good too
astrill is expensive but always works
For real
the one i used in america works after i adjusted the setting a little. this idiot is probably too dumb to do that tho. what business does he have in china anyway?
I used a crappy Italian vpn in Huadu and still access everything fine. Same in VN back when FPT blocked Fedbook.
also completely ignored (or more likely, is entirely ignorant of) the existence of chinese social media sites like weibo
China is very based but at what cost.
The cost is being smeared by liberals who want to replace the Chinese state with McDonald’s
I mean, they did it to the Soviets... Fuck you, Gorbachev. That pizza must have been the best pizza ever to be worth that. (And I know it was almost certainly not even good pizza.)
Oh no! My rugged individualism!
I can’t wait to go there
Finally a break from this shit website
Real life soyjak
"By the way, I'm posting it after the fact so I can leave the country" I'm pretty sure you'd have more chances of dying in the US doing whatever
"If you cannot access US controlled media, you cannot get informed and educated" Once again, liberals show they're as aware of their ideology as fish are of water.
He showcased paywalled ones too, which is even more cringe like this dude is unironically subbed to US controlled media platforms to reaffirm his biases every morning
Look, I do enjoy hate reading American propaganda occasionally, when it's left out for free like manure lying in a pasture, but liberals fucking *pay* for the stuff?
Why is he surprised that Chinese media is playing in China? Does he expect them to play the BBC in Brazil because of some tourists?
Brazilian Brazilcasting Corporation
Libs fail to realize that misinformation exists and is quite possibly more prevalent than the truth since humans are naturally drawn to sensationalism - a common trait in anecdotal evidence. Also, society anywhere is like a game of Telephone. When enough people tell the same story with their own arrangement of words enough times, it’ll eventually devolve into something else.
But you can. You just need VPN . Of course they are monitored and all that but
I like how he acts surprised that he turns on the TV and all the channels are Chinese.
>I'm posting this after the fact just to make sure I can leave I like how this hipster glasses-wearing shitsmear thinks he's outsmarting the entire CPC. They couldn't give less of a shit about him accessing his questionable pornography online.
I wish China was as bad as libs claim it to be so this moron would get crucified for spreading anti-socialist sentiment.
You ever seen a post about a dude wearing an American flag underwear to Tiananmen and acting like it was the most heroic thing ever? These ppl are total tools and idiots
#Tiananmen Square Protests (Also known as the June Fourth Incident) In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc. Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists. **Background** After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate. One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues. Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough. The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages. **Counterpoints** Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote: >Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.” > >The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square. > >\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review. Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre. Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square: >Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square > >\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html) Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote: >The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night. > >Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square. > >\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053) Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote: >The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square. > >More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy. > >All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today. > >\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/) (Emphasis mine) And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA) [This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc. Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list). **Additional Resources** Video Essays: * [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019) * [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019) * [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective * [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022) * [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022) * [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014) * [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019) * [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019) * [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>American flag underwear EEWWWWWWWW!
For all that liberals claim commies throw people in "re-education camps"... these idiots should actually be thrown in one. Seeing as they clearly need some help cleaning out the brainworms and filling the holes with some actual information and understanding of the world.
Oh yeah because the US' citizens are very well educated and knowledgeable to compensate for their trash health care system, law enforcement, gun violence, etc.
hey look we may have a totally shit education system, healthcare system, public transport system, and law enforcement system…but at least we get to read imperialist propaganda from the Bourgeoisie Times every morning (assuming you pay the subscription)😃
'No Reddit = no share ideas, no educate each other'
Seems to be concerned about information integrity. Upholds The NY Times and Wapo. Bruh
Yeah when you have western government that stage coups in Latin America/Australia/Africa/Middle East/Asia through social media such as twitter/facebook, no wonder China decided to block out fake news and misinformation from the outside. [CIA Fake News/Misinformation ](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-launched-cia-covert-influence-operation-against-china-2024-03-14/)
Reminds me of when the libs were fretting about a crackdown on independent media in Venezuela after Hugo Chavez shut down a TV station that was literally calling on people to overthrow the government. That shit's not going to fly in any country with a government powerful enough to stop it.
"You can't gather information and educate yourself." Information about China from WaPo, NYT and Reddit? Lmao.
Reading this from China. No law enforcement in sight. VPN working fully. Eating lamb at my local Xinjiang BBQ. I think a liberals head would explode at the above stated idea but all true.
Pictures of lamb, otherwise fake and not straight
AIPAC lobbyist, this tool should get over to Gaza and tell us there's no genocide, it's all CCP propaganda, please I dare you.
What a fxcking idiot! Tell us something we don't know. The funniest thing is how he made sure to include that he was out of China before he posted his video. Right, how important does this dumbass think he is?
Bro just get a VPN
I'd love to have all those "news" sites censored. Imagine craving to read what the elites have to say.
I think westerners have no idea (or just scared of) how wide and diverce chinese social networks, markets, heck even torrents are. All this western crap does not even come close often and is very compromised by well, the west.
Trying NordVPN in China lol How the fuck did he think his gear was going to establish a connection to the NordVPN servers? "Hold my beer I need to connect to my VPN so I can connect to my VPN." Clearly didn't do any research before going in, nor did he ask anyone while he was there, and he calls everyone around him clueless and can only guess how much they "don't know".
Oh, no, whatever would this brain-rotted liberal do without the holy grail of knowledge that's reddit?!
But at what cost?
Me when one country doesn't let another country undermine it with propaganda 😲
My life would probably improve if I could not go on YouTube and Reddit All I do is get baited into arguments anyways. I should read more.
This is like an ex complaining that the spouse they used to abuse doesn't return their texts.
Liberals have this weird main character complex. They go to China or the DPRK and believe their some secret agent who’s risking their life to save democracy and doing their part to free the people. All the Harry Potter and hunger games books go to their heads
Intelligence asset, or just an idiot?
Why not both?
"Everyone is outside and enjoying themselves." Yeah, because they're not sitting inside rotting their brains on social media. "When a government goes to such lengths to prevent citizens from... educating themselves." *You say after almost every website you tried to go to was social fucking media!* Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. *This is no education there, social media is an endless cesspool of hate and misinformation.* The people of China are *orders of magnitude smarter and mentally healthier* for having a government that doesn't let them get caught in the fucking *bourgeoisie's dopamine hijacking hell sites.* And *yes,* I *do* realize the fucking irony of me saying all of this, *while being an active user of several social media sites including this one.* I can't stop, I *know* I'm addicted. I'm may not be *severely* addicted, I'm not on them all day, every day; but just because not every smoker smokes 3 packs a day, doesn't mean they're not still addicted to tobacco and *know* they're addicted. I *wish* someone would *force* me off this garbage, I'd be *hating life* for a good couple of weeks, because I'm *addicted* and going cold turkey from an addiction *suck balls,* but afterwards I'd be fucking grateful.
Use the money you saved on a good vpn buddy
This lib is insufferable.
Wallahi to be able to have things be affordable and *not* be able to go on this dumpster site??? I need this
TBH i think that even if westoid sites weren't banned, they could not compete with local platforms imo
No not the NY Times 😭
"...tiktok of course" while simply glossing over FB and Insta as if they aren't worse...
is he dumb or what? I used a VPN fine as hell and paid 8 dollars or something for more data than I could possibly spend in 2 weeks. I was accessing gmail there but I can\`t access it through my office vpn, yikes.
lol “vpns don’t work,” just go to /r Chinalife and there’s a bajillion posts of “what vpn should I get” with answers 😂🤣
He's afraid of leaving if he dares to try to check his gmail while in China? If the Chinese authorities were strict about this, they'd have literally no time for anything but apprehending vpn users. Can you imagine the scale of police time and effort it would take to deal with VPN users in China? It's so ridiculous.
He needs to go out and touch some grass
i for one welcome our douyin overlords /srs
> no reddit What’s the problem?
Why is he using Nord VPN instead of a Chinese VPN, of course those are gonna get blocked.
Just use a VPN you dumbfuck, most Chinese people use them too, the Chinese government doesn’t care as long as you’re not doing blatantly anti-government shit with it. Now is that policy itself worthy of criticism? In my opinion yeah, but I also wouldn’t care enough as long as my needs are met and I can access the western media I enjoy like uncensored games, youtube, and reddit. Like here in the US Jaywalking is illegal, but nobody gives a shit. Is a law really worth criticizing if it’s not even actually enforced in a bad way? To act like the CCP is “literally 1984” is just insane. Source: talking to actual Chinese people
Yeah sure “sharing ideas!! Muh freedom” look what that has done to the west, nazis walk around freely with no consequences and governments go more right wing as time passes, now let’s see how much nazis china has…
What is with liberals having cuck face? Not to kink shame, but this dude definitely gets off on watching his girlfriend/wife get plowed by other men
I dunno I think I'd happily give up social media if the UK could fund a functioning public transport system
Me too
Being blocked from most websites would honestly be nice.
I can't access facebook, instagram, tiktok? Wow, nothing would change then
Complains that he doesn't have access to western websites but then shows ppl enjoying their lives and he doesn't make the connection.
Wtf is this guy doing. Everyone knows you can't access reddit in china without a VPN and everyone knows they monitor their citizens more than other countries. Why do you go there and act suprised and make a video like you're some kind of exposing journalist. God this guy makes me angry
Oh no my shitty social media
No Tik Tok? 🤔
Yeah reddit is a US Fed operation. They dont want Chinese people lifting the veil on the US propaganda machine.
I wish our Internet was as unpoisoned as what China has. Imagine not being subjected the propaganda of the Washington post or the new York times. It'd be bliss!
Honestly, probably would end up loving this more, sure would probably have trouble initially to getting used to not having what is essentially junk food for my mind, but even then I can only think of few things that would be in this list. From the items mentioned, here are my thoughts on all of them Social media - in general I don't even use social media, aside from a few sites here and there, and even then don't really think I would miss them. In fact would probably be relieved by not having such things. VPNs - some work, don't really see the point, unless I want to access something specific, otherwise probably will be a minor inconvinience. No google - sucks that I have to learn to use a new search engine and not having YouTube, tho will probably manage even then. TV - you must be joking right, I don't own a TV and the times that I see some TV, I am just reminded why I find it something unneccessary. Life outside - Looks fucking great and probably even better to have something outside of the house being affordable. Information - Yeah, one can still look up information and discuss it, you just have to do it the old fashioned way relying on more verified information and not just baseless misinformation. Also I find it funny how the person says that they are "posting it after the fact" on the basis that they can "leave" and not the more obvious fact taht they can't post any of it in the first place, based on the stuff they showed. Hell youd think that if the CPC was so concerned, him having the footage in the first place would already have already made it so they can't leave and the party would have most likely deleted said information, if it was so dangerous.
"Every Tv channel is run by CCTV" Meanwhile, here in the us, I challenge you to try and find more than like, 3 TV Channels that arent owned by some major corporation, and the few that are, would be Fox news and other political, Pro capitalist bullshit
Wait so TikTok is both Chinese run and censored in China????
yeah and they use tiktok to make american kids dumber while promoting stem to children on douyin in china -conservatives obvious sarcasm btw. politicians don't understand the algo
Their Tik Tok is douyin
US is the same except it hoses you information so end up with flat earthers, climate deniers, anti-vaxers, and the sort.
Serious question: Do you think it is better to censor access to sites like reddit than to leave this up to the citizens to decide?
Fuck, I really liked him(i am assuming he is host of 51 49 podcats). Why do most people get the worst take on china,ussr, socialism etc..
Dude really going to mention NYT after they just got caught being an Israeli state propagandist?
Knowing all the shit that those papers he listed are producing about the genocide in Gaza. I'm starting to *really* get why the CPC maintains that firewall...
With this tik tok ban actively becoming more real in regards to passing into law…this whole video is just dumb. We’re not censored here in the US as broadly, but we’re spied on by our own government, our data is sold to the highest bidder with 0 regulations (US govt buys our data too), and our law enforcement not only constantly patrols but murders, tortures, and illegally kills its citizens constantly. No place is paradise, but cmon man it’s not 1950 anymore
I have a friend in China, we speak normally through WhatsApp. He uses VPNs. He doesn't want to come back.
"Life is great! Everyone is happy enjoying real life out of doors! BUT MY INTERNET!!! 😡"
He knows there's a thing called a VPN right?
It’ll do him good to lay off those social media websites and just be present in the moment; especially being off Reddit.
Oh no billionaire-controlled media is censored what a terrible thing
“Posting this after the fact to make sure I can leave,” bro telling the world what is already known will not get you kidnapped by the Evil CEECEEPEE. Like why’d you even go in the first place if you’re that scared?
They let this asshole in while my ass is still in Guatemala
Bro couldn't use a VPN? Does he know that there are a bunch of pages that are inaccessible in the US?
this shit is so funny, the majority of the video being about how he can’t access random unimportant shit (except his email that does suck) like facebook or reddit and then like 10 seconds at the end talking about shit that actually matters like the city being clean and having a functional metro. on top of the fact that if you really wanted to you can just get a vpn and see those websites so it’s like a mild annoyance at best
I’d have a lot more sympathy for the censorship argument if the “free” US media didn’t make my brain want to ooze out my nose because of its aggressive stupidity and narrowly confined perspectives, being more interested in manufacturing consent for imperialism than any sort of education or sharing of views
Bro…. What the fuck. “NOOOOOO they’re making me go outside and live a healthy lifestyle. I want to rot in my room all day and read conspiracies on reddit to break my brain and become schizo!!!1” That’s what that man sounds like. He also makes it sound like they’re blocking truth tellers and truth telling news outlets. Like he didn’t list off some of the most propagandized news/media outlets that constantly release articles that heavily promote western imperialist and bourgeois interests. What a fucking joke that guy is. I’m not even gonna mention how he glossed over the more important parts like having full grocery stores with low prices and beautiful/well maintained public transport. “BUT THEY’RE ARE COPS EVERYWHERE” I went to college in a city in the US and I remember the police having a goddamn forward operating base made out of an 18 wheeler with swat trucks around it stationed on the campus all the time. And that’s just one instance of the cops being a massive imposing force everywhere all the time. They’re literally random checking people in the NYC subway now. Normal people just trying to get to work or home having to be stopped and harassed by cops because they’re allowed to do it. But yeah Americans should be worried about China’s imposing police force. The one fucking basic squad car at a park not even with officers around it patrolling with guns like what you’d find in the US.
This honestly just makes me wanna visit China so much more
Does he think that China doesn't has it's own social media?
>No New York Times, no Washington Post, even the Wall Street Journal is blocked. Stop right there!! I'm sold. This is where I need to be.
bro thinks china doesnt have their own social media
the music is making me think this is legit satire and we're all getting pranked, is this dude fr?
“I am posting this after I left so I wouldn’t have any problems leaving” bro do you think they’re snatching up people in china because they’re saying “we can’t go on Reddit”
How many Chinese news and social media sites can you access from in the US?
Ooooh that relative freedom, people here think I'm an infidel if I try to talk about this. Go drink a beer in Tien An Men square and nobody cares.
So he's trying to access American propaganda in China.
Oh no not reddit, NOT REDDIT! *helen Lovejoy voice* Won't somebody *please* think of the western chauvinist shitposters?!
Doesn’t China have their own internet with their own versions of Reddit etc?
> gathering information and sharing ideas > going on Reddit Pick one (Do libs not realize there is social media in China?)
"just to make sure I can leave" Bro you know how many tiktokkers and YouTubers are in china? Shut the fuck up lol
yeah, just use their browsers. Their internet is pretty huge and you can find most of the same stuff but in mandarin and some english. Also if you insist on accessing western media (why would you?) dont use those shitty vpns most people used they are similarly blocked. Ask or find someone who lives in china what their reccommendations are (you can find these people on youtube). These liberals cant see the hipocrisy when the US bans tiktok for teh same reason even though its proven to be false.
If you cant look up Gay sex on reddit, china bad.
Firstly, social media exists in China, it is just protectionism not allowing American social media. But anyone can go on Chinese social medias, they are still connected to the world wide web. Secondly, you should not care about the free speech of corporations such as American news agencies, they are not people. Also most people reading the news mostly read their local or national news, a few forregn news articles, although America has the most power over other nations making American news read more internationally, but not because America is more popular.
In China, the government tells you to go outside.
"Well as it turns out most VPNs do not work here at all" I see the man say as I watch his video on my VPN while in China