• ElHexo [comrade/them]
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    1029 months ago

    Let’s lay out the events:

    • AfD travels to China
    • AfD says they’ll pursue a neutral foreign policy approach with China
    • AfD says their getting twenty percent of the vote has “sparked interest from China”
    • AfD says they’ll keep lines of communication open with China

    Headline: “China courts Germany’s far right populist AfD”

      • ElHexo [comrade/them]
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        379 months ago

        There’s no information about that, so presumably given the slant of the article it was an innocuous invitation.

        I have tried to find any other references but haven’t.

        It is not unusual for members of parliament to be invited to other countries, so information needed would include:

        • who specifically invited AfD
        • was this invite open to other parliamentarians
        • what was the nature of their ‘invite’
        • was this part of a broader diplomatic program (such as China’s invites to EU representatives and diplomats to tour Xinjiang)

        China would deal with AfD just like they deal with left, right, far right and theocratic governments and absolute monarchies all over the world.

        • TBooneChickens [any]
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          129 months ago

          That’s all fair, but framing the sequence of events as entirely unilateral action by the AfD is just as slanted as the article, and we’re better than that.

          • ElHexo [comrade/them]
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            299 months ago

            It is almost entirely unilateral action by AfD though.

            A better article would make AfD look even more perverse by highlighting a key plant of Xi Jinping thought is “ecological civilisation”, that China invests heavily in renewables and is building a $1 billion factory in Hungary (from memory) to gain more European green market share.

            It could also seek comment from Chinese officials, or even AfD (I didn’t see that but might have missed it?)

      • @zephyreks
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        219 months ago

        I mean… It’s not like there’s not a standing invitation for Germany’s current government. Is building diplomatic ties not permissible if the party isn’t currently in power?

        Better fucking tell the Republicans to get out of Canadian politics, then.

  • theodewere
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    339 months ago

    of course they’re courting the far right… those guys are easy to buy…

    • nakal
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      119 months ago

      I’m not particularly for the Green Party in Germany, but Mrs. Baerbock seemed to do something right to anger some Chinese officials that much that she needed to take public transportation for a meeting.

      • @[email protected]
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        9 months ago

        She’s “green”, so if she didn’t do it out of conviction, they were shaming her hypocrisy, I’m ok with that lol

  • @[email protected]
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    329 months ago

    Is everything world news on lemmy about China? Like I’ve seen everything from crap articles saying China has a declining population like its a bad thing, or how the west looks like shit compared.

    Like, it’s nothing racist or offensive. Not to me at least. Just lots and lots of it being the primary topic in ways that I’m ain’t too familiar with.

    • GarbageShoot [none/use name]
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      489 months ago

      Remember that a huge part of the lemmy (and derivatives) userbase just came from Reddit, and Redditors are obsessed with China.

    • ElHexo [comrade/them]
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      429 months ago

      Since 2016 we’ve slid into “China bad” reporting, so there’s a lot on that.

      The reporting is usually pretty weak and facile, and rarely touches some of the real issues over there.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      369 months ago

      China is very active player and driving up events, especially as they may be working with nazi wannabes in the German government

      • alternative_factor
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        229 months ago

        Tankies: China is a world power!! It drives so many world events!!
        Tankies: Nooo how dare China get in the press (good, bad, and neutral).

        They feel like any China coverage is inherently imperialist, even when its “China breaks fusion record”, that is meddling in China’s internal affairs to them.

        • @[email protected]
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          9 months ago

          Tankies are so fucking weird to me, and I would consider myself a progressive socialist as well.

          How can they so unapologetically support Russia and China, when both nations are objectively not socialist in any sense of the word.

          China does state capitalism, just because they have a one party state installed by the communist party doesn’t automatically mean they still are. All that is left is intense authoritarianism, with dystopian ambitions on global hegemony.

          Russia is a failed state in the grasp of a kleptocratic oligarchy, with an extreme degree of corruption and disturbing moral decay in all levels of society. The only thing communist about it today is the old soviet ordnance they make their conscripts die in at the ukranian front.

          Modern China and Russia are antithetical to actual leftist ideals, and any tankie supporting them just screams misinformed idiot or foreign propaganda shill and should be dismissed by default.

          • @[email protected]
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            59 months ago

            Because they had grievances about the west, which we all have if we’re being honest, but were successfully coerced from people into this completely bizarre state of mind into thinking that China and Russia are some sort of garden paradise utopian societies of peace, love and sunshine, not the reality of both countries being insanely unhinged places.

            In both China and Russia, there is no rule of law, no respect for basic human rights or respect for anyone’s culture or ethnic background, complete control of the press, anti-LGBTQ+ hate that is literally put out from the government, anti…

            Well lets just put it this way, Chinese Nationalists and Russian Nationalists make the KuKluxKlan look like Bernie Sanders voters in comparison, that’s how insane these people are and the respective governments do everything they can to keep that silent and breaking out into the international community.

            I know people from China who barely escaped that country and there’s just endless horror stories that you can find all over youtube

          • @[email protected]
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            -89 months ago

            Berniebros can never be socialists. Free welfare is not socialism. Go back and love Bernie or AOC or something.

        • AmberPrince
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          139 months ago

          For real. The tankie problem here is crazy. I can say something like China is trying to deny freedom of navigation of international waters on the South China Sea and somehow it becomes “BuT aMeRiCa”. I don’t get it.

          • @[email protected]
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            109 months ago

            I’ve been seeing this a lot from instances like hexbear and lemmygrad and my take is either cult members, paid trolls, brainwashed persons prone to pavlovian responses, or all of the above.

            I just wish that as a user I could block instances.

            • @[email protected]
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              89 months ago

              It’s definitely all of the above.

              Hexbear is particularly vexing to me. According to the fediverse observer they’re less than a month old and yet have already become one of the most active instances.

              • LiberalSoCalist
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                89 months ago

                hexbear has existed and been building their userbase for 3 years, but during that time their codebase diverged greatly from mainline lemmy to include in-house tweaks and features which made it not possible to federate, and it’s only within the past month that they got everything compatible

            • @zephyreks
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              59 months ago

              This isn’t unique to the far-left, though. It’s a problem throughout the entire political spectrum.

              It’s rather dangerous to be creating echo chambers in a democracy, though. Democracy lives off of discourse between opposing views.

              • AmberPrince
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                59 months ago

                Democracy lives off of discourse between opposing views.

                The inference here is that both views are of equivalent merit which is very much not true. This idea is called The Paradox of Tolerance. If a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant.

                • @zephyreks
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                  39 months ago

                  Except… That’s not what democracy relies on. Democracy relies on discourse of views, even if they are unpopular. Tolerating only the prevailing opinion isn’t a democracy, it’s an autocracy.

              • @[email protected]
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                09 months ago

                I would not call them far left tbh. There’s something else about them that irks me. It honestly feels more North Korean to me and that ain’t left by any stretch of the imagination. It seems to be more authoritarian minded.

                • AmberPrince
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                  49 months ago

                  Agreed. Tankies are right-wing authoritarians in that communism is supposed to be stateless. They bitch about US imperialism but are always very quiet about China’s actions in Africa. It’s frustrating because like I get it. America has some pretty deep problems but to think that somehow it is worse than China is mindlessly reactionary.

            • Maestro
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              49 months ago

              On kbin you can block domains. It’s the next best thing.

      • @zephyreks
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        9 months ago

        Nazi wannabes with 13% of the vote…

        I mean, it’s not like China is only working with AfB. They recently invited School to Beijing.

        • GarbageShoot [none/use name]
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          139 months ago

          AfD holds multiple municipal seats and Hitler never won an election (he got about 36.7% in 1932). The Nazis took over because liberals (specifically Hindenburg and co) appointed Hitler and then Hitler was able to take over when Hindenburg died in part thanks to paramilitary support. Just worth noting for gauging AfD’s distance from potential takeover.

          I highly doubt that the PRC wants them in charge or wants to help them get there, though.

        • @[email protected]
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          59 months ago

          Nazis, not Nazi wannabees, with current polls having them at 20% nationwide and up to 33% in some states. You know, the ”we should found an SA [the paramilitary Nazi organisation] and clean up"-party. The party whose youth organization is officialy declared right-wing extremist.

    • Maoo [none/use name]
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      359 months ago

      They’re a target of the US Empire and folks that can’t do media criticism gladly take the bait.

      The first rule of propaganda is emphasis, which is what you’re astutely picking up on. Why are stories about X and not A, B, C? When they’re about X, what context is emphasized, what is fact and what is allusion, who is interviewed and given the opportunity to comment and who is not? “World news” stories are very frequently just stenography of various think tanks, often ones that are more or less in agreement with one another.

      The entirety of China’s actions reported in this story are that China (exactly who isn’t stated, not even a group) invited an AfD delegation to meet with them. No source is cited, but maybe it’s Weidel. From this they create an entire narrative by retelling past articles about AfD’s foreign policy statements and ask one person to comment: “political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder from the University of Kassel”. They don’t mention that he’s also an SPD politician and associated with a government-funded research institute with a dodgy past. Maybe his takes are good, but why they asked him and not others isn’t stated, of course.

      This is just folks getting easily hoodwinked by a propaganda push. Same as folks were suddenly very concerned about WMDs in Iraq or the political powers in Afghanistan and so on. They weren’t, not organically - a network of think tanks, government stooges, etc all rally to provide jobs for these kinds of nerds to write these kinds of articles and have these kinds of takes. Several think tanks in Washington have converted from focusing on Syria or Iraq to focusing on Russia or China, as they know who butters their bread.

      Anyways that’s a long ramble in response to a simple question.

    • AnonTwo
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      9 months ago

      …?

      Like 9 articles on my front page are US. 1 is Ukraine. 1 is China, and the rest are neutral.

      Are you maybe just taking particular notice to the China articles?

      edit: since I realize this was specific to m/worldnews…

      2 China post
      2 Ecudor post
      3 US post (1 pertaining to Italy as well)
      1 iranian post
      1 French post
      1 Japan post

      I stopped there as this is actually getting redundant at this point, there’s very little trend among the posts as of this time.

    • SeaJ
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      -39 months ago

      .ml stands for Marxist-Leninist so for some reason there is generally a lot of praise for China which is closer to fascism than either of those idealogies.

        • SeaJ
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          19 months ago

          It’s authoritarian with large amounts of state capitalism combined with high amounts of nationalism. That sure as shit is not communist.

          • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
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            219 months ago

            I am once again asking liberals to learn that words in general have meaning beyond synonyms for “good” and “bad”.

          • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
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            9 months ago

            Good lord you butchered each and every single term you used in this comment.

            Did you ever have a period in your life where you just shut up and listened until you felt you understood what was going on? It doesn’t appear to be the case from the outside.

            Now that you’re in a community that’s liberated from the US-centric echo chamber you just came from no more than a month ago, it’s a very good opportunity to start now!

      • AOCapitulator [they/them]
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        9 months ago

        no it doesn’t lol

        .ml is the country code for Mali where the developers are from lmfao

        just lies on lies

  • Redcat [he/him]
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    9 months ago

    Not really surprising that german state media would fall in line when it comes to China reporting. The chinese have a history of playing ball with pretty much anyone from Israel to the EU and beyond. If there’s even any basis to the article’s thesis, it is the rabidly pro-US faction that rules Germany today which is making the main choice in this matter.

  • @[email protected]
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    9 months ago

    It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears.

    Yes yes, if I didn’t want your opinion I should have stayed on Reddit.

    Yes, yes, you got here first.

    Yes, yes, I’m a brainwashed liberal.

    Yes, yes, you’re actually one of the oldest Lemmy communities but you’ve only recently started federating.

    Yes, yes, you’re seeing the light and can see through the western media’s bias and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.

    Yes, yes, China is great, Russia is fantastic, Ukraine should pursue for peace and roll over.

    Yes, yes, you never allowed downvoting so you’re used to just comment and that’s why there’s so many hexbears in here. And you’re definitely not Russian or CCP farmed trolls.

    Yes, yes, all those things are true.

    I’m sure I’m missing a few, but I’m pretty close to a hexbear “Bingo!” I think.

    • @[email protected]
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      -19 months ago

      It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears

      Lmaooo go cry about it I guess

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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      -99 months ago

      Libs crying that they can’t just pile on people who disagree with them will never stop being funny. These trolls can’t actually make any coherent arguments to support their positions and simply regurgitate a handful of tropes they memorized. All of a sudden this tactic doesn’t work anymore and y’all having a meltdown.

      And here’s a bingo card for you lot

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    169 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    AfD co-leader Alice Weidel and her Bundestag federal parliamentary colleagues, Petr Bystron and Peter Felser, spent almost a week in Beijing and Shanghai at the end of June.

    Upon their return, Felser told DW that he supposed it was his party’s good results in the German polls which had sparked the interest of the Chinese.

    She spent six years living there on a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship and completed her doctorate on the Chinese pension system, before moving on to work for Goldman Sachs.

    Geopolitically, said Schroeder, the AfD sees the traditional Western ties with the United States, which it regards as hegemonic, as having past their use-by date.

    The member of the European Parliament from Saxony, who aligns himself with the right-wing side of his party, has attracted attention in the past for multiple pro-China statements.

    For example: The party has opposed the use of components from the Chinese communications equipment supplier Huawei in the expansion of 5G mobile internet services in Germany.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @[email protected]
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    I’m loving this, AfD has been collaborating with the far-right party in our country, which accuses everyone else of being filthy commies, it would be a beautiful irony (in the unlikely event this were to be true) if they started talking up the CPC because russia can’t fund them anymore hahahaha

    • @sndmn
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      109 months ago

      They share a common enemy, democracy.

        • @sndmn
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          49 months ago

          How high are you right meow?

          • Awoo [she/her]
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            9 months ago

            Do you not know what the structure of China is?

            Serious question, do you? When I criticise the US I do so from a position of knowing how power works between its three branches of government, how the senate works, how local governance works, how elections work, how the courts work. Do you know how China conducts any of these? Do you know how they govern 1.6billion people?

            • Dr. Bluefall
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              79 months ago

              It’s a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.

              It may wear the skin of a democracy, but it is not a democracy.

                • @[email protected]
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                  09 months ago

                  Let’s topple all fake democracies. China’s red-blue man owns US’s red and blue men anyway.

              • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
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                9 months ago

                According to their respective peoples, China has an infinitely more vibrant and responsive democracy than the United States.

                I’d hate to think you’d be so blind to the irony of saying such a thing as ‘wearing the skin of democracy’ if you were living in the west.

                Either way I’d be ashamed to act like you have and speak despite having such ignorance about the Chinese system of democracy.

      • @[email protected]
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        9 months ago

        Meh, our democracy isn’t even that threatening to China (Taiwan’s is, it showcases a viable alternative to the CPC), they just had to leave us to our “contradictions”, they’d keep booming and we’d just keep buying their stuff while we eat each other alive, if China is doing this, they gotta be really desperate to turn Europe fascist again.

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
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          289 months ago

          (Taiwan’s is, it showcases a viable alternative to the CPC)

          Throwing chairs at each other in the Legislative Yuan over who gets to be America’s most loyal running dog isn’t seen by anyone thing China as a viable alternative to governance.

          • @[email protected]
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            9 months ago

            It’s ok, Hu Jintao really didn’t mind being dragged off the stage like an idiot in a country where face is everything. China does settle fistfights in private, which does set a good example for the populace, ngl.

            PS: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/面子:

            面子是人際關係中的一种现象,在東方等级观念较强的社会(如中國等)特別受到重視。具体定义不明,基本上意味给社会中每个人的尊重[1][2]。如果不给人面子,即是拆穿別人的面具,可能会引起报复。如果有面子,一般会被认为是社会地位较高,更受人尊敬,然而面子不够大,可能是因为在社会、经济等方面地位低下。“面子”是“社会脸面”,代表着个人在人生历程中由成就和夸耀所获得的名声以及被社会重视的声誉[3]。「厚顏」俗稱「不要臉」。

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
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              179 months ago

              treated like an idiot in a country where face is everything.

              哇,你真懂中国文化。只有我们中国人不喜欢丢脸,不像那些外国政治者。他们热爱在大家面前受困窘。

    • @[email protected]
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      59 months ago

      But also not in there year surprising. Those self proclaimed “patriots” are always happy to sell out their country.

  • @[email protected]
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    9 months ago

    The only reason China can buy the AfD is because Russia’s checks suddenly started bouncing.