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1 year agoI sometimes forget that honey is bee vomit, and that everytime I eat it I’m letting a hive of bees do a Roman shower in my mouth.
GnastyGnuts [he/him]
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Joined 4 years ago
Cake day: August 3rd, 2020
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3·1 year agoFrom that news.com australian article I posted: “But the concept of a Chinese “debt trap” has also been criticised, with a study in 2020 finding China had restructured or refinanced about $21 billion of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019. The study also noted there was no evidence of “asset seizures”and that Chinese lenders had not used courts to enforce payments, or applied penalty interest rates to distressed borrowers. [emphasis mine]”
They’ve had the opportunity to really milk these countries if they wanted, and actively chosen not to.
EDIT: Here’s the study being referenced in that paragraph i quoted: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3745021
So, all the neoliberal western countries that largely believe their democracies are also democracies?
I honestly don’t care if western neoliberal countries see themselves as democracies or not, or if they are democracies or not, since that’s not really my grievance with them anyway. However, in China the idea of democracy that is promoted by the Xi himself is one of majority rule, the same way nearly everybody uses the term. That’s the standard that Chinese people are going to be inclined to measure their government against, especially since their government has actively invited them to think of democracy in those terms.
Quoting Xi: “Whether a country is a democracy or not depends on whether its people are really the masters of the country. Democracy is not an ornament to be used for decoration; it is to be used to solve the problems the people want to solve.” (from a central conference speech he made in 2021, you can probably find the whole thing if you look)
That doesn’t sound far off from “western” notions of democracy, does it? That’s the idea of democracy that they’re being “indoctrinated” with over there, and what the vast majority of Chinese citizens believe their government lives up to.
Ofc indoctrinated citizens think they’re a democracy, they also probably have different understanding of democracy
How do you justify dismissing it as indoctrination? And if the majority think of it as a democracy, under what definition or understanding of democracy is the perspective of the majority not of prime importance?
America isn’t a democracy either but people are brainwashed into believing it is. Most of the Americans that choose “not a democracy” in that poll are Republicans that’ll say “democracy is mob-rule, we’re a Republic!”
The first part of this I agree with (other than the notion of brainwashing), but I don’t understand where you’re getting the second part. According to that poll I linked about perceptions of democracy, 73% of US citizens value democracy, which doesn’t fit with 51% thinking it’s not a democracy, but liking it that way because they think democracy is mob rule.
Does this look democratic to you?
I don’t consider the contentiousness of elections to be of primary importance when evaluating if a government is democratic, but given the measurable advancements that have occurred in China under Xi’s leadership, I can buy that he would have such immense support, particularly if there isn’t an equally appealing alternative with such a proven track record.
Most of the time they don’t forgive debt and when they do it’s corrupt [emphasis mine]; they’re trying to win them over to become satellite states one day.
What do you mean when you say their debt forgiveness is “corrupt”? And why do you believe that they want to win them over as “satellite states” and not as regular-old geopolitical allies?
Ok, they’re nicer than the west, that doesn’t mean it’s not still imperialism
What about it makes it imperialism to you? Do you see any difference at all between lending money for development projects and imperialism? How does forgiving loans facilitate economic domination of these places?
From that news.com australian article I posted: “But the concept of a Chinese “debt trap” has also been criticised, with a study in 2020 finding China had restructured or refinanced about $21 billion of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019. The study also noted there was no evidence of “asset seizures”and that Chinese lenders had not used courts to enforce payments, or applied penalty interest rates to distressed borrowers.” For a go at economic imperialism, they don’t seem keen on putting the choke-hold on.
imperialist influence in Africa and interest money.
Consider:
https://fair.org/home/why-comparing-chinese-africa-investment-to-western-colonialism-is-no-joke/
I personally take it less as people finding liberalism appealing, and more that real change is scary and entails the possibility of suffering and death.
I will behave as I did on the old sub: I will be as nice as they are, as mean as they are, as thoughtful as they are, or as dumb as they are.
I always took it to be a nickname for neoliberal warmongers specifically, obviously playing off of “tankie”, and partly in reference to good 'ol
. The real funniest thing though is that the “bad guys” (like Russia) seem to have better, more cost effective drones lol.
“Echo chamber” is when you prefer people you like and get along with over people you don’t like and don’t get along with, real freak-shit.
God, what a fucking lame-ass.
Torn between “C’mon just die, even you want it at this point!” and “C’mon, live! Suffer more, you vile hag!”
My take: The difference is this is a statement from freed black man and former slave basically saying a white guy was cooler than them, so redditors like it.
0·1 year agoI remember I thought she was “thunderf00t” on youtube because that obsessive freak used her in so damn many video thumbnails.
Sorry, it’s a habit many of us have in this community, of responding to posts about assholes as though we’re responding to the assholes themselves. I feel like that habit might be really confusing to newcomers and make them think we’re weirdly hostile to people just posting normally.