I have been a lurker here on lemmy for a while and I have hesitantly made an account because I wanted to create a post on politics.
I want to preface this by saying, I lived a childhood being indoctrinated on politics. I was constantly being told that free markets are the pinnacle of human intellect and that free markets (in literally an absolutist way on every aspect of life) is the only way that leads to progress. It honestly took me a while to challenge these beliefs with I attribute to Shaun and Hbomberguy on youtube, and eventually embrace leftist ideas in my personality.
When the recent drama regarding the Uighur muslims occured recently I was a bit let down. I have looked around and saw posts that I understand to be supportive of the CCP in China and other communist states.
So here is my question. Why? Even if we forget about the Uighur, what about the Tianamen square massacre? Is that also false information? China's tightening grip on hong kong despite being met with resistance from people of Hong Kong, is that also false information? The repercussions of Mao's leadership? The complete absence of gay and trans rights in modern day China? China being a police state? Is that all false propaganda?
If your answer might be that western states have also failed to protect the interests of common people, I agree. I think western states do see a resurgence of far right movements exactly for this reason. But this is not a comparison of who is the worst.
Why exactly do people here (at least that is what I perceive) turn a blind eye to the brutalities of an authoritarian government such as the CCP?
In order to fully understand the processes of communist thought you have to look at the history and the reasons things happen (see Hegel). Why did Mao's movement take a hard stance on landlords and property owners, and aristocrats? Because landed classes always come back from exile to claim what's "rightfully theirs" (see 19th century French monarchs or the Kuomintang in Taiwan). When East and West Germany merged 30 years ago, thousands of landlords and property owners flooded back in and evicted thousands of East Germans from their homes. Some of these lawsuits are still going. As a result of the maoist purges, 90% of Chinese people own their homes vs. 65% in the US or 58% in South Korea.
Now consider the situation with education centers in Xinjiang. Look at which countries border this province: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both of these places have been extensively involved in US conflict with the Soviet Union and the War on Terror. Extremist groups in these regions (Mujahideen, Taliban, and ISIS) were trained with American funding and with American equipment to A. Remove Afghanistan's communist govt from power in the 90s and B. destabilize the region in a 20 year war for resource extraction and arms dealing.
The War on Terror is important because ISIS and similar groups have filtered into China, which responded by cracking down on violent religious extremists in order to prevent any caliphates from appearing in their borders. There are numerous posts here and on other communist sympathetic sites on how Chinese mistreatment is overblown. If you trace back through secondary sources enough times you tend to arrive at Adrian Zenz who is a warmongering conservative. And if proponents of the idea that China is committing an actual genocide are pressed, they can't turn up any actual evidence for it. Every Xinjiang concentration camp I've seen ends up being a photo of a prison in South America or the US.
Hong Kong is bit more complicated and can't be effectively summarized in one post. But to put it bluntly, the US and UK have a vested interest in rotting the CCP from the inside out so that they can paternalistically turn it back into a colony. I've even seen posts on reddit and heard self-proclaimed libs in real life parrot the talking point that China should be turned "back into a third world country." Hong Kong's independence is about lassaiz-faire capitalism and big business tied into its historical status as a territory of the UK, not individual rights.
Tiananmen Square could be an entire book. The Party fumbled handling an anti-corruption protest. The core group was Pro-America and advocated the dissolution of the Party, but most participants weren't aware of this and they switched slogans in large crowds. Party officials attempted to talk it out for several months and listen to their demands, but they didn't seem to find any resolution acceptable and the situation turned chaotic. The military relatively peacefully cleared the square, but some time afterward a group of about 300-500 decided to take on the army. Western media blew this completely out of proportion, painting the situation as a bloodbath where thousands died. In this scenario the party fucked up, but the protests themselves were rudderless and reactionary (to most ML readers, this feels sus like the Jan 6 riots). They didn't incur followup protests as one tends to see elsewhere, and they didn't seem to increase anti-party sentiment in the long term.
As an aside, I'm an anarchist. I don't think any state is infallible, and anyone that claims a state to be infallible has some greater ideological issues to work through. But once you sift through the dreck of exaggerated news article and info manipulation, the CCP seems significantly less (emphasis on the less) terrible than western countries that people treat as infallible bastions of freedom and fairness. China may openly censor their press, but they don't fund plantation slavery in Africa, they don't send Pinochet in to assassinate your president, they have actual functioning poverty alleviation programs based on heavily taxing the rich, and they have an actual functioning process in place to combat global warming (the green new deal hasn't even been drafted yet in tje US).
If leftists don't at least do a lukewarm defense of Marxist countries then liberals will see it as a failed project. Instead it is a political experiment that's still in progress and actively gets less violent and more stable over time.
I read your entire response, and my brief follow up is this. I don't like or defend the US involvement in any country they have intentionally destabilized.
On the other hand, I cannot accept an answer such as, "you have only read the western propaganda". You are asking me to deny any credibility of sources coming from western nations, either state media or independent. Even if there exist inaccuracies, I am not willing to just change my perspective just because of "western propaganda". It really is too much to ask for.
And to add to add further to this, I remember another comment of yours saying you are trans (just to be clear I love and support trans people). Are you not concerned at all for the absence of gay or trans rights in china?
Can you explain to me how LGBT rights do not exist in mainland? Last I heard, LGBT rights were legally approved long ago, and the only controversy in recent times happened with a local court which was nullified by the higher authorities.
As for Tiananmen Square, let me shatter the propaganda you have seen with a picture that started the so-called massacre, and a tankman video clip from CNN Crew.
pictures of what Western media and Reuters did not show you
Tankman crushed? CNN footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeFzeNAHEhU