There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit “score” based on individuals’ behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[7][8][9] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores, and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.[7][10] According to a February 2022 report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a social credit “score” is a myth as there is “no score that dictates citizen’s place in society”.[7]
This last one is ‘Western propaganda’ but is very helpful in identifying the types of products to avoid. It’s near impossible in the US, unless you make your own textiles/clothes or only buy second-hand.
Your first link is a few paragraphs with no sources whatsoever.
The second one sources Human Rights Watch, who got bodied even on reddit the last time they tried to spread this line. They pretty much source only from Zenz (a far-right anti-semitic christian evangelical who thinks birth conrtrol is genocide).
The third link has Zenz again as its main source.
Its so exhausting to have to debunk the same recycled sources over and over, so here’s a megathread:
I appreciate a someone making the effort to debunk but your megathread is absolute garbage, I checked a couple links, got redirected toward twitter and quora threads, so ty but don’t spread misinformation.
I need to check a lot of those links and archive them, because predictably a lot of the ones posted to US run websites like twitter get removed for going against the US-zenz narrative.
Also does the fact that these ppl use twitter or quora automatically mean they’re misinforming people?
So all of the nations with a free and open internet are pushing propaganda, and we should just take the firewalled nation of oppressively regulated speech at their word?
No nation should allow the US surveillance arms like Facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube and reddit to operate within their borders. These are US controlled entities that serve to push pro-US foreign policy, and hoover up all global communications.
For example, the most popular social media platform in India, is facebook. The US controls the main communication platform of a country with a population much larger than its own.
Countries should realize what a dangerous threat it is to have US companies control your social media.
How many times must I write the difference between corporate controlled platforms and governmentally controlled internet?
Oh, the burden you must bear dealing with us know nothings.
The same corporations that own the media own the government. There is no difference between the two in the United States. This “democracy” is a sham. This is an oligarchy. How many times do you need to be told this before you get it?
There is a difference between a corporation manipulating their own service and a government controlling the entire internet for the nation.
There really isn’t a fundamental difference here. US capitalists run the country, control its media, and stand above it’s political system. It’s military/defense apparatus, and police function as their hired goons.
dude, the CIA controls everything. Probably since at least the 60’s. Use your brain. Why do you think the most far right and “far left” media agree on the SAME THINGS when it comes to US foreign policy? US media is JUST as free as Chinese media, which is not at all. Read about the twitter leaks. Feds just emailed them to take shit down and they did it.
Meanwhile the US congress government have gotten <20% approval ratings for years. You should probably take some lessons from the PRC on how they overthrew an oppressive government and internal reactionaries, because they have more experience at it than most countries.
They already overthrew their government and embraced socialism. You act like they want to overthrow their current government. They live decent lives. Better than ours. Our media lies to you about them. They are largely happy. I know it’s impossible to imagine that, what with living in this nightmare, but it’s possible when your government treats you as more than consumables to be exploited for profits.
lol “free and open internet” have you not been reading the news the last two decades, or especially the last year? USA has its own set of “great firewalls”, the latest one built against tiktok
true! of course your hand waving why it was banned and the options they were given. tiktok could have divested from chinese control in the US region they chose not to. in no way has the US government censored information from individuals as a result of that bill. they censured the business operating procedures. two very different and distinct issues when it comes to access to content.
In no way have americans been prevented from accessing the information within tiktok. compare and contrast that with say trying to find tiananmen square information in china.
in fact i’ll help everyone out, here is the ruling
US users make up about 17% of TikToc’s global user base. Selling their addictive algorithm to keep a small number of users was never going to happen.
And what hand waving? It was banned because the US government could not control the flow of information to its own people like it can with all the other US corporate/state owned media. The data collection nonsense is just that. If they cared they could have regulated data collection across the board. Foreign countries abide by host countries laws all the time, see GDPR and similar. But that would have cut into the profits of other corporate/state controlled media outlets like Meta and Google.
I’ve been to China. VPN access requires jumping through insane hoops and disguising your traffic as different traffic. Tor is blocked. Most commercial VPNs are IP blocked. HTTPS proxy or HTTP proxy over SSH tunnel gets blocked very quickly due to traffic analysis.
uh obviously? do you not understand the distinction between corporate and government mandates? I can explain it if you need me to because its kind of critical to this whole conversation. and if you do understand the difference, then wtf is your point.
My point is that there is no such thing as a truly “free” internet, whether it be by corporations or governments. You might as well be defending unicorns.
Do you know the difference between the internet and the World Wide Web?
Accessing the dark web is illegal in China, for example. They reduced access to the internet to government regulated websites, who must apply and be approved by the Chinese government to be accessible within the Great Firewall.
Sure, and in the US companies like Google heavily distort search algorithms to make it so that the vast majority of people see only what’s already approved.
So you don’t like that your point was disproven and are now comparing corporate manipulation of their own services to governmental control of the entire internet?
What did you “disprove?” It’s absolutelty comparable to acknowledge that no matter where you are, the internet is deiberately censored and distorted to curate a narrative, regardless of if its corporate owned or government owned.
To be clear, it is overwhelmingly Westerners that wish to depict a Chinese man as a yellow bear. You can talk about Pooh, just not in the way westerners tend to want to.
As for the Social Credit system, the version reported in western media is false and exaggerated. There is a credit system, but it’s largely for businesses and other social entities, not some Orwellian big brother system.
Did you read your own link, or just grab the headline from a google search and call it “good enough?”
It’s true that, building on earlier initiatives, China’s State Council published a road map in 2014 to establish a far-reaching “social credit” system by 2020. The concept of social credit (shehui xinyong) is not defined in the increasing array of national documents governing the system, but its essence is compliance with legally prescribed social and economic obligations and performing contractual commitments. Composed of a patchwork of diverse information collection and publicity systems established by various state authorities at different levels of government, the system’s main goal is to improve governance and market order in a country still beset by rampant fraud and counterfeiting.
Under the system, government agencies compile and share across departments, regions, and sectors, and with the public, data on compliance with specified industry or sectoral laws, regulations, and agreements by individuals, companies, social organizations, government departments, and the judiciary. Serious offenders may be placed on blacklists published on an integrated national platform called Credit China and subjected to a range of government-imposed inconveniences and exclusions. These are often enforced by multiple agencies pursuant to joint punishment agreements covering such sectors as taxation, the environment, transportation, e-commerce, food safety, and foreign economic cooperation, as well as failing to carry out court judgments.
These punishments are intended to incentivize legal and regulatory compliance under the often-repeated slogan of “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.” Conversely, “red lists” of the trustworthy are also published and accessed nationally through Credit China.
Yes, I have. Have you read beyond that point? The West distorts the scope and nature of the credit system to ludicrous degrees, nobody claims that there’s no such thing.
It’s besides the point how it is talked about. The Second screenshot literally says “Social credit. We don’t have this at all” and your link very much proves that they do. Therefore propaganda in my eyes.
They very much have a credit score that is not anywhere comparable to the Orwellian depiction in western media, and furthermore the credit system is largely for businesses, not individuals. The western depiction simply does not exist.
I can and will not argue this point since I lack the proper knowledge on the subject.
We all agree on the fact that a system exists.
From the post:
“Social credit. We don’t have this at all” is a lie. Again, I am not saying anything about how to system works or how it is preceived. I am saying that it exists and the post claimed it does not, nothing else.
That makes it propaganda to me.
TL;DR:
The post claims that something that exists does not. This is a fact.
I believe this to be propaganda in some form. This is an opinion.
It’s overwhelmingly clear that you need to do more legwork to prove that that user genuinely thinks there is no credit score, and is not directly responding to the Orwellian version. This is clearly taking a dogmatic reading of one sentence to come up with the absurd claim that Chinese citizens believe that publicly stated policy doesn’t actually exist.
It is overwhelmingly clear that you are not arguing in good faith. You are trying to argue points I explicitly said I am not arguing or discussing. But I will explain again. I will also use the word image instead of post to make it more clear what I mean, just in case that was confusing you.
Let us break this down.
It’s overwhelmingly clear that you need to do more legwork to prove that that user genuinely thinks there is no credit score
I have never tried to prove this. I said that the image claims that there is no system for social credit score. I do not equate the image to users in general. I even suspect that this image could be fake.
and is not directly responding to the Orwellian version.
Was I not clear enough? I am not discussing anything about any version of the system in question, only it’s existance. Image says it does not exist, we both agree that it does. Again, I am not saying anything about how it works or how it is perceived.
This is clearly taking a dogmatic reading of one sentence to come up with the absurd claim that Chinese citizens believe that publicly stated policy doesn’t actually exist.
You are right, it would be an absurd claim to make, one that I am not trying to make. I am trying to point out that the image claims something to be true. We both agree that this is not true, or are you going to say at the system does not exist now?
I also said that I believe this some form of propaganda, but that does not have mean that I endorse or refute any claim regarding the west part of the world’s view on this matter.
Please discuess my arguments. Please refrain from “attacking” points I explicitly said I was not making.
I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a “social credit score”, and gave more details about how it’s administered.
Basically, the headline is “no, it’s not at all what you’ve heard”, and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I’m not sure your point about “there’s no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere” is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”
If that’s not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that’s not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that’s exactly how it works doesn’t serve your argument. And “well but the West is totally lying, maaan” isn’t proof; it’s an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.
It originated as a group picture of Obama as Tigger with Xi as Pooh in 2013, not 2017. Your own sources dispute what you’re saying. What has come from that isn’t a continuation of that trend of group pictures, but a singular insistence of depicting a Chinese man as a yellow bear.
The blocking of Winnie the Pooh might seem like a bizarre move by the Chinese authorities but it is part of a struggle to restrict clever bloggers from getting around their country’s censorship.
First paragraph from your source. China blocks it to prevent bloggers in China from making the comparison (kinda hard for them to block it on Facebook as China does not have control there). That’s also where this meme started.
I’m also fairly certain that Pooh having yellow fur is mostly just coincidental (it’d be a bit surprising if Chinese citizens created a racist meme against another Chinese man). The offensiveness of the meme is much more related to Pooh being quite dim and just general fatshaming, not racism. That’s not to say you can’t use the meme in a racist way, just that the origins seemingly aren’t racist.
Hmm, could be. Although the meme did take off way more with Xi than it ever did with Obama. And other comparisons were made with Eeyore and Piglet, which iirc were mostly due to facial expressions and choice of clothing (it was a shorter lady wearing pink I believe).
But I hadn’t thought of that connection yet. I figured it was mostly physical resemblance (posture and size).
I’m aware that it’s China that takes down the racist caricatures. The meme started more innocently, with Pooh being Xi and Tigger being Obama. This turned into western users overwhelmingly sticking with Xi as Pooh. The origins and what stuck are different entirely in intent and character.
But as far as I know China isn’t taking down Obama-Tigger comparisons. So Chinese netizens are also sticking with the Xi-Pooh comparison (otherwise China wouldn’t bother taking it down anymore), which doesn’t seem to match with what you’re describing as likely intent, nor with who is making the comparisons.
You seem pretty convinced it’s mostly racist westerners using the meme, but do you have anything other than a gut feeling to back this up? Because the actions of the Chinese government seem to suggest it’s mostly a domestic problem to them. And for those Chinese users it seems to have taken off as a way to avoid the censors (which is now ineffective, and has morphed into a point of principle).
I missed that. Thanks. So does that meme from the west outweigh Xi’s entire Philippino welcoming and barrage of memes, prompting the banning of the word Pooh in Chinese media, justify your claim that it’s overwhelmingly Westerners?
“Pooh” is not banned in China. Taking down racist attacks against Xi happend prior to the visit to the Phillipines, read your own articles. Some users used it in the Phillipines to protest Xi because the racist caricatures were taken down, which was a western thing.
I didn’t evade anything, you’ve been fundamentally wrong about reality several times. Secondly, it wasn’t “the nation of the Philippines,” it was some users, and the fact that the yellow bear caricature is overwhelmingly western does not mean non-western users don’t exist.
You’re going to massive lengths to defend depicting a chinese man as a yellow bear.
Pooh having yellow fur is entirely irrelevant to any usage I’ve seen. I don’t think anyone is using it in a racist manner and if you examing its usage I think you’ll agree that it wouldn’t make sense for that to be the primary motivator; it’s posted because it’s censored, not for any racial motivation.
Again, you change the disagreement when you’re being disproven. You can’t support the claim that it’s ‘overwhelmingly’ Westerners, which is the point I challenged.
Go ahead a re-read this thread rather than wasting both of our time changing your point to continue a needless debate.
More and more I see them just sending either a duckduckgo search, or the first few links from that search, which is of course always from anglo-supremacist news sources.
I mean, last I checked, Wikipedia is far more accurate than most encyclopedias professionally assembled. And, to add to it: Wikipedia is certainly well sourced, and admits its biases quite openly, and in fact are working to correct those biases.
So, what Chinese-based wikipedia alternatives are out there? And I mean, communally owned, maintained, and edited encyclopedia, which, quite frankly, is one of the best examples of a communist endeavors one can find on the internet at this time…
I’m assuming it’s still as accurate as the data previously showed, and because I’m an active editor there, who works quite hard to ensure what I edit is reliably sourced.
Removed by mod
Edit: the removed comment said that the social credit score existed based on this Wikimedia article.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
In the Wikipedia article itself:
There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit “score” based on individuals’ behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[7][8][9] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores, and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.[7][10] According to a February 2022 report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a social credit “score” is a myth as there is “no score that dictates citizen’s place in society”.[7]
I have some sources on the child and slave labor, if that helps.
https://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/genocide-of-the-uyghurs-in-western-china/china-tibet-and-the-uyghurs
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicated-uyghur-forced-labor
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/nz0g306v8c/china-tainted-cotton
This last one is ‘Western propaganda’ but is very helpful in identifying the types of products to avoid. It’s near impossible in the US, unless you make your own textiles/clothes or only buy second-hand.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print
Your first link is a few paragraphs with no sources whatsoever.
The second one sources Human Rights Watch, who got bodied even on reddit the last time they tried to spread this line. They pretty much source only from Zenz (a far-right anti-semitic christian evangelical who thinks birth conrtrol is genocide).
The third link has Zenz again as its main source.
Its so exhausting to have to debunk the same recycled sources over and over, so here’s a megathread:
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs
I appreciate a someone making the effort to debunk but your megathread is absolute garbage, I checked a couple links, got redirected toward twitter and quora threads, so ty but don’t spread misinformation.
I need to check a lot of those links and archive them, because predictably a lot of the ones posted to US run websites like twitter get removed for going against the US-zenz narrative.
Also does the fact that these ppl use twitter or quora automatically mean they’re misinforming people?
Your sources have to come from an US State Dept approved news media like the New York Times.
It certainly doesn’t signal credibility
So all of the nations with a free and open internet are pushing propaganda, and we should just take the firewalled nation of oppressively regulated speech at their word?
No nation should allow the US surveillance arms like Facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube and reddit to operate within their borders. These are US controlled entities that serve to push pro-US foreign policy, and hoover up all global communications.
For example, the most popular social media platform in India, is facebook. The US controls the main communication platform of a country with a population much larger than its own.
Countries should realize what a dangerous threat it is to have US companies control your social media.
It’s funny that we’re arguing this on a platform that’s legal in the US, and banned in China. Is lemmy.ml a US surveillance op too? Are you? Am I?
There is a difference between a corporation manipulating their own service and a government controlling the entire internet for the nation.
No one is forcing you to use US corporate social media. Everyone needs internet access.
US corporations are the US government. They outright own it. US media is state media with extra steps.
You don’t need to use social media to access the internet.
How many times must I write the difference between corporate controlled platforms and governmentally controlled internet?
Oh, the burden you must bear dealing with us know nothings.
The same corporations that own the media own the government. There is no difference between the two in the United States. This “democracy” is a sham. This is an oligarchy. How many times do you need to be told this before you get it?
There really isn’t a fundamental difference here. US capitalists run the country, control its media, and stand above it’s political system. It’s military/defense apparatus, and police function as their hired goons.
dude, the CIA controls everything. Probably since at least the 60’s. Use your brain. Why do you think the most far right and “far left” media agree on the SAME THINGS when it comes to US foreign policy? US media is JUST as free as Chinese media, which is not at all. Read about the twitter leaks. Feds just emailed them to take shit down and they did it.
Yeah? Do a quick search on how to overthrow the government. Can’t do that in China.
The Chinese people overwhelmingly approve of their government, so they have no reason to overthrow it.
Meanwhile the US congress government have gotten <20% approval ratings for years. You should probably take some lessons from the PRC on how they overthrew an oppressive government and internal reactionaries, because they have more experience at it than most countries.
They already overthrew their government and embraced socialism. You act like they want to overthrow their current government. They live decent lives. Better than ours. Our media lies to you about them. They are largely happy. I know it’s impossible to imagine that, what with living in this nightmare, but it’s possible when your government treats you as more than consumables to be exploited for profits.
lol “free and open internet” have you not been reading the news the last two decades, or especially the last year? USA has its own set of “great firewalls”, the latest one built against tiktok
No nation has “free and open internet” in reality. Some are just more open about their biases while others try to obfuscate how they censor.
dunno what your talking about ive never been blocked by government mandate only corporate mandates, and I can just vpn around those.
The US government literally just effectively banned a social network through government mandate.
true! of course your hand waving why it was banned and the options they were given. tiktok could have divested from chinese control in the US region they chose not to. in no way has the US government censored information from individuals as a result of that bill. they censured the business operating procedures. two very different and distinct issues when it comes to access to content.
In no way have americans been prevented from accessing the information within tiktok. compare and contrast that with say trying to find tiananmen square information in china.
in fact i’ll help everyone out, here is the ruling
US users make up about 17% of TikToc’s global user base. Selling their addictive algorithm to keep a small number of users was never going to happen.
And what hand waving? It was banned because the US government could not control the flow of information to its own people like it can with all the other US corporate/state owned media. The data collection nonsense is just that. If they cared they could have regulated data collection across the board. Foreign countries abide by host countries laws all the time, see GDPR and similar. But that would have cut into the profits of other corporate/state controlled media outlets like Meta and Google.
Chinese users use VPNs all the time. Additionally, western countries deliberately distort search results so the most approved sources are front and center.
I’ve been to China. VPN access requires jumping through insane hoops and disguising your traffic as different traffic. Tor is blocked. Most commercial VPNs are IP blocked. HTTPS proxy or HTTP proxy over SSH tunnel gets blocked very quickly due to traffic analysis.
You’re also not, presumably, a Chinese citizen, who know better how their own internet works. Why would you immediately jump to doing what you know?
uh obviously? do you not understand the distinction between corporate and government mandates? I can explain it if you need me to because its kind of critical to this whole conversation. and if you do understand the difference, then wtf is your point.
My point is that there is no such thing as a truly “free” internet, whether it be by corporations or governments. You might as well be defending unicorns.
Do you know the difference between the internet and the World Wide Web?
Accessing the dark web is illegal in China, for example. They reduced access to the internet to government regulated websites, who must apply and be approved by the Chinese government to be accessible within the Great Firewall.
https://www.goclickchina.com/insights/the-complete-guide-to-the-great-firewall-of-china-gfoc/
Sure, and in the US companies like Google heavily distort search algorithms to make it so that the vast majority of people see only what’s already approved.
You’re still confusing the internet and the web.
So you don’t like that your point was disproven and are now comparing corporate manipulation of their own services to governmental control of the entire internet?
Get real.
What did you “disprove?” It’s absolutelty comparable to acknowledge that no matter where you are, the internet is deiberately censored and distorted to curate a narrative, regardless of if its corporate owned or government owned.
Does google own all yanks?
wow you have a LOT to learn. I recommend you start at the grayzone on youtube.
Are you aware the channel you’re recommending is blacklisted China?
Way to prove my point. Lol
To be clear, it is overwhelmingly Westerners that wish to depict a Chinese man as a yellow bear. You can talk about Pooh, just not in the way westerners tend to want to.
As for the Social Credit system, the version reported in western media is false and exaggerated. There is a credit system, but it’s largely for businesses and other social entities, not some Orwellian big brother system.
Did you read your own link, or just grab the headline from a google search and call it “good enough?”
Yes, I have. Have you read beyond that point? The West distorts the scope and nature of the credit system to ludicrous degrees, nobody claims that there’s no such thing.
It’s besides the point how it is talked about. The Second screenshot literally says “Social credit. We don’t have this at all” and your link very much proves that they do. Therefore propaganda in my eyes.
They very much have a credit score that is not anywhere comparable to the Orwellian depiction in western media, and furthermore the credit system is largely for businesses, not individuals. The western depiction simply does not exist.
I can and will not argue this point since I lack the proper knowledge on the subject.
We all agree on the fact that a system exists.
From the post:
“Social credit. We don’t have this at all” is a lie. Again, I am not saying anything about how to system works or how it is preceived. I am saying that it exists and the post claimed it does not, nothing else.
That makes it propaganda to me.
TL;DR:
It’s overwhelmingly clear that you need to do more legwork to prove that that user genuinely thinks there is no credit score, and is not directly responding to the Orwellian version. This is clearly taking a dogmatic reading of one sentence to come up with the absurd claim that Chinese citizens believe that publicly stated policy doesn’t actually exist.
It is overwhelmingly clear that you are not arguing in good faith. You are trying to argue points I explicitly said I am not arguing or discussing. But I will explain again. I will also use the word image instead of post to make it more clear what I mean, just in case that was confusing you.
Let us break this down.
I have never tried to prove this. I said that the image claims that there is no system for social credit score. I do not equate the image to users in general. I even suspect that this image could be fake.
Was I not clear enough? I am not discussing anything about any version of the system in question, only it’s existance. Image says it does not exist, we both agree that it does. Again, I am not saying anything about how it works or how it is perceived.
You are right, it would be an absurd claim to make, one that I am not trying to make. I am trying to point out that the image claims something to be true. We both agree that this is not true, or are you going to say at the system does not exist now?
I also said that I believe this some form of propaganda, but that does not have mean that I endorse or refute any claim regarding the west part of the world’s view on this matter.
Please discuess my arguments. Please refrain from “attacking” points I explicitly said I was not making.
I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a “social credit score”, and gave more details about how it’s administered.
Basically, the headline is “no, it’s not at all what you’ve heard”, and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I’m not sure your point about “there’s no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere” is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”
If that’s not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that’s not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that’s exactly how it works doesn’t serve your argument. And “well but the West is totally lying, maaan” isn’t proof; it’s an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.
No, it does not describe “exactly as what the western media depicted.” The west reported utterly nonsense and unfounded ideas of facial recognition and tracking, among other ludicrous ideas out of a necessity to sensationalize.
bro is a fed or just an average american who can’t read
Really? Because all sources that I can find trace the origin to Xi’s visit to the Philippines back in 2017.
http://hongkongfp.com/2018/11/20/filipinos-flood-social-media-winnie-pooh-memes-xi-jinping-visits-manila/
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2018/11/21/2003704655
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/11/21/1870392/winning-pooh-images-flood-social-media-xi-jinping-arrives
It originated as a group picture of Obama as Tigger with Xi as Pooh in 2013, not 2017. Your own sources dispute what you’re saying. What has come from that isn’t a continuation of that trend of group pictures, but a singular insistence of depicting a Chinese man as a yellow bear.
First paragraph from your source. China blocks it to prevent bloggers in China from making the comparison (kinda hard for them to block it on Facebook as China does not have control there). That’s also where this meme started.
I’m also fairly certain that Pooh having yellow fur is mostly just coincidental (it’d be a bit surprising if Chinese citizens created a racist meme against another Chinese man). The offensiveness of the meme is much more related to Pooh being quite dim and just general fatshaming, not racism. That’s not to say you can’t use the meme in a racist way, just that the origins seemingly aren’t racist.
In my understanding the racist part of the original meme is the Obama been Tigger(one letter away from the N word)
Really?! Unsurprising, but that makes the entire thing even worse.
Hmm, could be. Although the meme did take off way more with Xi than it ever did with Obama. And other comparisons were made with Eeyore and Piglet, which iirc were mostly due to facial expressions and choice of clothing (it was a shorter lady wearing pink I believe).
But I hadn’t thought of that connection yet. I figured it was mostly physical resemblance (posture and size).
I’m aware that it’s China that takes down the racist caricatures. The meme started more innocently, with Pooh being Xi and Tigger being Obama. This turned into western users overwhelmingly sticking with Xi as Pooh. The origins and what stuck are different entirely in intent and character.
But as far as I know China isn’t taking down Obama-Tigger comparisons. So Chinese netizens are also sticking with the Xi-Pooh comparison (otherwise China wouldn’t bother taking it down anymore), which doesn’t seem to match with what you’re describing as likely intent, nor with who is making the comparisons.
You seem pretty convinced it’s mostly racist westerners using the meme, but do you have anything other than a gut feeling to back this up? Because the actions of the Chinese government seem to suggest it’s mostly a domestic problem to them. And for those Chinese users it seems to have taken off as a way to avoid the censors (which is now ineffective, and has morphed into a point of principle).
I missed that. Thanks. So does that meme from the west outweigh Xi’s entire Philippino welcoming and barrage of memes, prompting the banning of the word Pooh in Chinese media, justify your claim that it’s overwhelmingly Westerners?
“Pooh” is not banned in China. Taking down racist attacks against Xi happend prior to the visit to the Phillipines, read your own articles. Some users used it in the Phillipines to protest Xi because the racist caricatures were taken down, which was a western thing.
You evaded the question with semantics. Is one meme ‘overwhelmingly’ more than a nation of Philippinos?
I didn’t evade anything, you’ve been fundamentally wrong about reality several times. Secondly, it wasn’t “the nation of the Philippines,” it was some users, and the fact that the yellow bear caricature is overwhelmingly western does not mean non-western users don’t exist.
You’re going to massive lengths to defend depicting a chinese man as a yellow bear.
Pooh having yellow fur is entirely irrelevant to any usage I’ve seen. I don’t think anyone is using it in a racist manner and if you examing its usage I think you’ll agree that it wouldn’t make sense for that to be the primary motivator; it’s posted because it’s censored, not for any racial motivation.
Again, you change the disagreement when you’re being disproven. You can’t support the claim that it’s ‘overwhelmingly’ Westerners, which is the point I challenged.
Go ahead a re-read this thread rather than wasting both of our time changing your point to continue a needless debate.
It really is astounding how much every sinophobes source is inevitably just Wikipedia.
Which in turn its Adrian Zenz 😂
More and more I see them just sending either a duckduckgo search, or the first few links from that search, which is of course always from anglo-supremacist news sources.
It’s too bad the people of China aren’t allowed to edit Wikipedia, and correct the facts, because of their oppressive state.
🤣 https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-internet-is-flooded-with-wikipedia-edits-made-by-government-and-big-oil/
They literally dont care since they have a dozen better alrernatives 😂
Are they better, though?
I mean, last I checked, Wikipedia is far more accurate than most encyclopedias professionally assembled. And, to add to it: Wikipedia is certainly well sourced, and admits its biases quite openly, and in fact are working to correct those biases.
So, what Chinese-based wikipedia alternatives are out there? And I mean, communally owned, maintained, and edited encyclopedia, which, quite frankly, is one of the best examples of a communist endeavors one can find on the internet at this time…
Lol, what do you mean “checked”? You’re just assuming its accurate based on your pre-existing biases.
I’m assuming it’s still as accurate as the data previously showed, and because I’m an active editor there, who works quite hard to ensure what I edit is reliably sourced.
Oh, so you didn’t check.
Can you site a source more credible than a crowd sourced encyclopedia run by Americans
*feds. and the criteria for a credible source for them as they need to be western-aligned media. it’s a complete joke.
Can you provide evidence for that claim?