I haven’t read a lot of these sources myself yet, but the first one at least by the Communist Party of India is worth a read.
The discussion around China’s treatment of Uygurs is always so unnuanced to me.
All of the arguments I see read like there are only two options:
- China is a villain and needs to be stopped.
- China has not and never will do anything wrong. Your criticisms are orchestrated by the CIA.
I tend to believe all of the following can be true at the same time:
- The US is imperialist and the Biden administration is going hard against China
- China is not a utopia and has a number of areas where they could improve
- A lot of what the US is pushing in regards to the Uyghurs is filtered through a propaganda machine bent on helping their imperial goals
- Some of the Uyghurs have made public claims of oppression by China
- As an anarchist I believe in working toward ending oppression and I stand in solidarity with people’s struggles against oppression
- As an anarchist I would fight against a US imperial attack (militarily, economically, or otherwise) on China
- As an anarchist in the US pretty much all of my organizing is focused on oppression here and not in other countries
- My actions in solidarity with the Uyghurs are pretty much saying things like “I hope the Uyghurs find liberation in China, but the US getting involved sure wouldn’t help anything”
I think in large part it may because people don’t consciously think about the difference between…
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US government officials or other others deeply embedded in the US power structure criticizing China for its treatment of Uyghurs and the massive amount of propaganda and hypocrisy involved with that.
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The average leftist saying “yah, it seems like from what I can tell China is not treating the Uyghurs humanely” while being under no delusions about both the propaganda and motives involved in most of the information they get and also about the general brutality of the US government.
Coming back at category 2 with “but whattabout the US?” doesn’t add anything to the conversation, the vast majority of category 2 agrees with these criticisms of the US.
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If you live in China, by all means, have a nuanced take.
If you live in the West, stop supporting US justifications for military and diplomatic action against less imperialist nations.
I literally just said that part of my nuanced take is: “I would fight against a US imperial attack (militarily, economically, or otherwise) on China.” And “The US getting involved sure wouldn’t help anything.”
But OK.
Your post was talking about nuance with respect to China in the context of an active propaganda attack by the West against China based on unverified claims. This propaganda attack is clearly and obviously intended to curry favor with the Western population in order to escalate military, economic, and/or diplomatic action against China.
You shouldn’t have a nuanced take with respect to unverified claims which are obviously and clearly intended to promote a narrative that will lead to military, economic, and diplomatic action. You should have an absolute take and categorically reject the unverified claims.
No one disputes that the vocational centers, and I sure am glad I don’t have to figure out how to stop documented terrorists whose training was facilitated by the West in Afghanistan, but I can’t in good conscience condemn vocational centers when there is no precedent for a more humane way of deradicalizing documented terrorists. There are lots of unverified claims around these vocational centers, and I will categorically dismiss them until there is verifiable evidence, because I oppose any and all military, economic, and diplomatic actions taken by the West.
The West has shown over and over again that its only goal is shoring up power for capitalists. China is obviously a threat to the West. Even in the imaginary world where “they’re capitalist though!”
Also, replace all of these ideas with Russia or Iran and my points would be exactly the same. It doesn’t even matter if China is socialist or not, they’re clearly the lesser evil relative to the West, and Western hegemony is the #1 enemy.
I believe that nothing is beyond criticism, including (and especially) myself, just because there is a worse evil out there. If that’s what you believe, then cool I guess. Just please be consistent and stop criticizing me (an anarchist who is post-civ and believes fighting the West is important) as I am a lesser evil relative to the West, and Western hegemony is the #1 enemy.
I’m not going to stop criticizing the spread of Western propaganda ever. Even before I understood economics well enough to be a leftist, I still criticized Western intervention and justifications for war always because it so obviously carried malicious intent. Whether you’re an anarchist, a liberal, a conservative, or a communist, if you regurgitate unverified Western propaganda, you are doing the slave master’s work for them.
The only things I said that could be in anyway considered critical of China are:
- China is not a utopia and has a number of areas where they could improve
- Some of the Uyghurs have made public claims of oppression by China
Trying to argue against either of those seems silly as utopias don’t exist in the material world and there is documented video of some Uyghurs claiming they were oppressed by China. Arguing against that with some anarchist, who would take to the streets to stop US aggression against China, on the Internet does nothing to stop US imperialism. It’s even more useless than writing your political leaders and begging them not to take action against China.
My entire point is that there is nothing wrong with the non-nuanced take from “tankies.” We should categorically reject the Western claims. Sorry, but “documented video of some Uyghurs claiming they were oppressed by China” by themselves are insufficient evidence to verify the claims being made. Namely that the claimed oppression is systemic and structural. I can’t possibly know whether these testimonies are bought and paid for by the West or if they are legitimate. There’s also no evidence that these claims of oppression are systemic nor structural.
You’re drawing a false equivalence between the two extremes. Plus you’re straw-manning the “tankie” take by claiming we say “China has not and never will do anything wrong. Your criticisms are orchestrated by the CIA.” All your criticisms, even if a little strawman-y there, too, of the anarchists who criticize China as a villain are pretty on point though.
The point is that actual anti-imperialists should categorically reject these unverified claims that the oppression is systemic and structural. Any failure to categorically reject the unverified claims is empowering imperialism in the West. This is a common problem for anarchists, as they tend to criticize all governments equally and as a result help to promote the power of the global hegemon.
If China takes over the global hegemony and implements the sort of obvious imperialism that the West perpetuates today, then I’ll criticize them to the exclusion of the West.
Uh oh, here comes lemmygrad to call us all cringe lib cia anarkiddies
keep in mind, all of these articles are coming from people who spent the last three decades crucifying and slaughtering muslims and black people, millions of them dead, most of them innocent, all of these crimes the nazis are guilty of ten fold and worse. they don’t care about muslims, they want a war with china because they turned globalism into a war they can’t win.
they’re stupid fucking nazis
