That the west allows unrestricted criticism of its own leaders shows strength - the governments aren’t afraid to be criticized.
That China and other authoritarian dictatorships are so obsessed with policing every last morsel of criticism shows weakness and intense paranoia. They are led by rulers deeply fearful about their own people and worried about their own legitimacy.
Maybe there is a little of that. I think it mostly boils down to wanting to control the narrative.
_Everyone_ wants to control narrative. Especially people who think they are right. People in power, leaders, managers, unions, workers, parents, kids... all, absolutely every last one wants to control narrative.
At least the marketplace of ideas types tend to want to control the narrative by having the most compelling arguments, while the CCP (and other authoritarians) are clearly above such nonsense.
Are you kidding me? The entire point of cancel culture criticism is that it (the dominant culture that cancels) is obsessed with policing language and thought and is in fact very sensitive to being criticized. It’s not just China that has this issue.
Yes, but cancel culture is a product of the people, not the government. While it may be misguided sometimes, it’s not the government entity stopping individuals from expressing an unacceptable opinion.
Perhaps outside cancel culture phenomena; but we did see the government attempt to control the narrative around Covid (and other thot button topics) and encouraged and continues to encourage algorithmic and manual overrides for social media and search companies.
If I actually felt “cancel culture” was organically “by the people” I’d feel a lot better about it.
As it stands, it’s used by massive corporations to market products.
To quote a recent tweet:
“There is ZERO place for #racism or bigotry in fandom, whether it’s #StarTrek or #StarWars. Moses Ingram and her role as Third Sister has just as much place in the stories we love as any other actor or character. Stop the hate. #Reva #MosesIngram.”
Compare the level of outrage to the level of outrage of Chinas human rights violations. Or Americas, for that matter.
A slight against a racial minority who stars in a currently promoted tv show will bring more “cancellation” than running a concentration camp.
"Smart" is pushing it, more like loud/visible because netizens first picked up that critical Chinese voices that get amplified the most in western media bubble are prodminantly Chinese women which ties into the entire battle of the sexes idpol drama among Asian diasphora and sexpat jokes back in PRC. Though there is some truth to it, simply not many prominant male western Chinese analysts/journalists that specialize in Chinese domains get public attention because... draw your own conclusion. They're out there, just not hired for the spicy jobs. I think first person to get seriously harassed was ASPI's very own Vicki Xu a few years ago and now looks like state aparatus finally decides to add some bots to it, although execution is as incompetent as ever. Regardless it seems like effective button to push, because it's calibrated to divide Chinese diasphora communities and weaponize all the bored misogynists from both sides of the GFW. It's not going to cause the resilient to quit, but it will make their lives more difficult, while stirring up acrimony in the diasphora, which is the point.
Smart people are always a target, if not aligned to the current regime, it's not a CCP peculiarity nor new. Dumb people are easy to manipulate both directly and indirectly while smart ones can answer back effectively, can know how to push others backing them up etc.
Did you remember goebbels stanzas about "if someone speak of culture I took my gun"? Well, goebbels was actually very close to Eduard Bernays in reasoning terms, an line-of-thoughts Bernays ancestor was also Gustave Le Bon, his best-seller was "Psychologies of crowds" witch happen to be the favorite book of mussolini, hitler, lenin and probably franco. I'm pretty sure in the past similar line-of-thoughts have existed as well, even ancient Greek's have had the concept of "useful idiot", someone knowledgeable enough to be useful, but dumb enough to be just a human-robot.
And that's not a far-right peculiarity a (Delano) Roosevelt far less know nowadays cousin Clinton Roosevelt have envisaged the ideal socialist society in the 1841's "The Science of Government Founded on Natural Law" stating that a socialist society is not at all a Democracy, appear to be, but in reality is a society driven by a small élite of unknown to the masses thinkers who really decide anything while others simply obey convinced by propaganda/ideology. Oh, yes, I've write before far right because actually to my eyes Chines Communist Party is leftists as mussolini's National Fascist Party, they born out of the same model, witch happen to be the UK merchants model. Yes, really. Of course both regimes was/are adapted and blended, but the original line of though was that.
Linking dictatorship and women rights is a smart move, a brand new kind of propoganda against China. I'd suggest armour yourself with more magical wards - why not? - China is oppressing LGBT, China is oppressing women, China is oppressing disabled, China is oppressing elderly, and China is most definitely oppressing 10 year old LGBT female cats with three legs parading for gun rights.
I don't know what this says, but the English words that stand out remind me of a quote from the original Hitch Hikers, somewhat of a paraphrase of Orwell's Lesson of Newspeak: "The best way not to be unhappy, is not to have a word for it".
It's a series of words and phrases that will trigger censorship by the great Firewall. Typically used to sabotage someone's post and prevent it from being seen by those in China.
> The Chinese Communist Party has a problem with women of Asian descent who have public platforms, opinions and expertise on China.
- which sounds quite different, and far more credible. (Not that I'd expect the CCP to be at all nice to a man, Asian or not, who was a well-known and opinionated expert on China...but (oops!) failed to favor the CCP.)
Article title reads like a conspiracy theory. Then I started reading. The articles talks about online trolling of smart Asian women aka journalists on Twitter. I am not being condescending but I thought this was going to be a interesting read.
So, here is a video about something that more closely represents the title: The Scientist That "Discovered Antigravity" Then Disappeared Completely - An Unsolved Mystery - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS_rEzKdzBA
This is an article pumping information control legislation from an organization who receives at least 47% of their funding from the department of defense, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Thales Group, and Raytheon Technologies. This article itself seems like an "information operation", in the article's parlance, to help generate consent for legislation that controls information.
There is practically no empirical evidence in this article, just reliance on vague "indicators" and the time of tweets. Forgive me for taking this with a massive grain of salt.
That China and other authoritarian dictatorships are so obsessed with policing every last morsel of criticism shows weakness and intense paranoia. They are led by rulers deeply fearful about their own people and worried about their own legitimacy.