I keep on getting deflected off to like the western news sites for information about China and then it’s just the news site demonizing the country. I was just wondering coming from like a Marxist point of viewpoint figuring probably this would be the best place to look for some thing even probably neutral about China. Does anyone have good information about how the government is run along with accurate numbers of the death in the great leap forward that isn’t some kind of “100 million deaths under communism “type argument, or even like claim also, it would be also good to list if you’re interested in helping me sites about what was achieved in the great leap forward and in the rapid industrialization also consequences of that primarily anything environmental if there’s anything about the consequences also some decent information about censorship and what exactly is Chinese censorship? What is it look like and is it really that hard big or even what exactly is it censoring I don’t know too much about it and I would like to

  • Hillock@kbin.social
    81·
    1 year ago

    I can talk a bit about the censorship. Censorship can be found in every type of media and has reached extreme levels under Xi.

    First, all IPS in China have to block access to a lot of websites that are hosted outside of China. This includes sites like Google, Wikipedia, Netflix, CNN, and GitHub. Basically anything that is even slightly popular and can be used to share information or media. I am not sure if Lemmy is already on that list but if not it will be soon.

    You can circumvent this by using VPNs but that’s illegal. People usually get away with it unless they actively go against the interests of the Chinese government. So consuming western media generally is fine but getting politically active isn’t.

    Then there is a more active form of Censorship. There are a few government agencies whose purpose it is to go through all kinds of media and ban/delete anything that doesn’t align with the interests of the Chinese government. This is done automatically with stuff like image recognition software, algorithm analyzing texts, and today probably with some kind of “AI”. But also done manually by people reading through stuff. All media companies operating in China have to be compliant with this.

    So if you use something like WeChat to share to information that’s critical of the Chinese government, it simply will get deleted as soon as it’s detected. The person who sent it could get into trouble depending on what exactly they tried to share. Anything that’s detected by the automated system the other person won’t even receive.

    Movies, books, TV shows, and other forms of entertainment have to be approved before being released. This is kinda like the age rating agencies in western countries. Just way stricter and mandatory for every kind of publication or media.

    An example on how ridiculous the censorship system is: A few years ago the General Manager of the Houston Rockets tweeted “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”

    This led to China disabling all NBA broadcasts for the rest of the year. The Rockets lost a lot of sponsorship money because of it. China said it will only return the broadcast if he gets fired. They returned earlier though. But a lot of popular people in the NBA spoke out against Morey for tweet, including LeBron James.