Americans are joining the Chinese social media app en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.

  • American users have flocked to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu in defiance of security warnings.
  • Chinese and American users have engaged in surprisingly friendly conversations about each other’s lives.
  • The influx of American users could burden Xiaohongshu’s censorship mechanism, experts say.
  • john89@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    1 day ago

    This is a fine example of how the american government doesn’t care about the interests of americans.

    The government only exists to serve the wealthiest among us. Some of those wealthy people are upset that Chinese aristocrats are getting all that money.

    This trade war only exists because rich americans want more money for themselves. It has nothing to do with national security and you’re a useful idiot if you think otherwise.

    • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      44
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      23 hours ago

      You don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few. And China has increasingly been prosecuting their wealthy.

      Which is what they really don’t want us learning to do.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 hours ago

        you don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few.

        This is false attribution.
        There’s no way to verify how other political system would have worked for China. Maybe it would have worked even better? Taiwan for one is richer, stronger and happier than China per capita so does that mean dictatoriship -> democracy is a better system? Do you see the flaw in this attribution logic now? So, unless you have a time machine…

        • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          29 minutes ago

          Actually it’s very easy to know. By design, capitalism concentrates most of the reward among a small number of privileged few.

          And people with good sense judge a country by how well it’s working people are doing- not by how much more wealth a few people have been able to hoard.

      • TheFriar@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        23 hours ago

        Capitalists use the same exact argument for why outsourcing labor to the poorest countries is actually a good thing. For real, I’ve argued so many right wingers saying “searching for the cheapest labor actually helps the worlds economy because you’re lifting those poor people of _____ out of poverty! It doesn’t matter that it’s only pennies/day, because to them, that’s a lot of money!”

        Pretty goddamn gross behavior.

        • b000rg@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          22 hours ago

          Outsourcing is extracting wealth from another nation. How can you possibly compare that to lifting ones own citizens out of poverty?

          • NuclearDolphin@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 hours ago

            Exchange isn’t extraction. If you’re buying raw materials from Africa, yes. If you’re buying finished goods from China, no.

            This is precisely why the US had a sudden about face about China. They were hoping their entryism with capitalist exchange would result in the fall of the communist party, who number one priority is preventing the plundering of resources through unequal exchange.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            21 hours ago

            You can’t untangle the outsourcing of manufacturing to China from that.

          • TheFriar@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            19 hours ago

            I wasn’t making a 1:1 comparison. I was saying that “but look how many people have been lifted out of poverty!” argument is a capitalist argument, because it completely ignores the reality of the situation. Have people been lifted out of poverty by outsourcing? Of course. But that doesn’t negate the core problem.

            As the other person mentioned, outsourcing manufacturing TO china is largely responsible for the manufacturing boon there. And then rich Chinese capitalists (though they use the cover of not being called capitalists) became rich middlemen between “western” businesses and the cheap Chinese labor. So outsourcing has absolutely contributed to it. You and the American capitalists are looking at the same thing, one is crediting American executive innovation, the other is crediting the CCP.

      • gubblebumbum@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        20 hours ago

        You do it by exploiting the billions outside your borders from countries even more poor like mine where they sell their garbage low quality products that cant be repaired or recycled, from shitty earphones to bikes that start breaking down in a year, taking advantage of poor people who cant afford to buy anything of better quality. China isnt better than us when it comes to exploitation and inequality.

          • dirthawker0@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            9 hours ago

            Chinese manufacturers build according to budget. They are perfectly capable of making high quality products, and do. The problem is a lot of companies (looking at you, Walmart) demand their Chinese manufacturers build products for a pittance – the manufacturers won’t say no, but they’ll find a profit for themselves by using lower cost materials.

            Ask yourself – if you were a woodworker and someone offered you $250 to build a small stand out of wenge, you’ll probably do a good job of it. If someone offered you $30 to build the same stand, and you really needed that $30, you’d make it with pine and just paint or stain it to look like wenge. Chinese manufacturers are no different.

          • PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            17 hours ago

            I think the Chinese businessmen are exploiting slave laborers to produce cheap goods and export them to most of the world. Would you call that a mutually beneficial relationship?

          • gubblebumbum@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            18 hours ago

            Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?

            Chinese brands owned by Chinese capitalists operating with consent from the chinese state.

            spreading their wealth to those in need

            Using planned obsolescence and taking advantage of poor consumer and environmental protection laws to sell garbage to people trapped in a cycle of poverty isn’t exploitation? Also China ‘invested’ billions here too and we didnt get any hospitals. We got china flooding our markets with its shitty goods and chinese ‘businessmen’ running scam centers.

            They value mutually beneficial relationships

            they do have a mutually beneficial relationship with our dictators.

            • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              18 hours ago

              I love that capitalists attacking communists always end up accidentally attacking capitalism. Classic.

              • HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                8
                arrow-down
                5
                ·
                18 hours ago

                China is a capitalist country with aspects of socialism. it’s not really communist anymore.

                No one here is shitting on communists, were shitting on you for a thinking the Chinese are any different than us.

              • gubblebumbum@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                edit-2
                18 hours ago

                China is a capitalist shithole but for some reason its biggest defenders are always self proclaimed western communists.

                edit: we also have a few militant communists groups that like to blow up chinese nationals working for their govt every now and then.

                • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  18 hours ago

                  What exactly do you think “capitalist” means? Because it sounds like you think any participation in markets is capitalism.

                  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    ·
                    12 hours ago

                    I think dengist policy introduced a capital holding class to China and that the workers don’t have democratic control of the workplace.

              • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                18 hours ago

                What do you think “capitalist” means? It sounds like you think it’s just market participation.

          • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            22 hours ago

            Why would I need to, these things have been known for decades?

            Don’t get me wrong, capitalists (ex apple) love to collude, but it doesn’t make china some magical perfect land.

            • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              11
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              22 hours ago

              Yes, the intelligence orgs have been spreading lies for decades.

              China isn’t perfect, but most of the scandal news we hear about it is fabricated by our government. Even our own government has now admitted they made up the Uyghur genocide claims.

    • pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 day ago

      It has everything to do with national security, they just don’t consider common people as part of their nation same as slaves weren’t.

      • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        23 hours ago

        Yeah, national security for the rich, they don’t want us plebes getting any ideas about what real justice looks like.