Fine, I'll admit, I have a problem. I hear obvious bullshit and I sort of automatically filter it out because it's clearly bullshit and nobody will buy into it, and then sometimes it turns out it was actually a Really Big Deal that I probably should have paid some attention to. Made that mistake with Bitcoin, could have been rich but noooo, I ignored it because it was obviously dumb as hell. Another example: I distinctly remember going "What is this Gamergate shit? It'll probably blow over but let me try to see if there's a point to it" and then I got a booty-call from my then-girlfriend that her roommate was heading out to class so I went up to her dorm room, and that was the last I really paid attention to gamergate until years later when it turned out to have become a whole thing. My eyes would just glaze over anytime I saw the word because I basically went "oh yeah its that bullshit that dumbasses were losing their minds over and nobody cares about, I ain't got time to pay attention to that shit" and then it turns out it was actually this major flashpoint for the rise of the particularly bizarre new far right dweebs we get nowadays.
I did the same thing with "tankies". Never heard the term until maybe 2017? and largely ignored it. It just seemed to be a nothingburger, some new term for a few terminally online weirdos who hated Communists, and I assumed they were just fascists because you know who hated the Communists the most? Nazis. But then it spread and more people started using it, and then applying it more broadly (even Bernard Brethren are tankies, apparently?) which meant that it was such a varied term as to have no meaning. And I basically wrote off anyone hating on tankies as some dumbass who wasn't worth listening to because they were too ill informed to have anything of value to say.
It's probably not all of a sudden but it's really dawning on me that this is not some flash in the pan that'll just go away. I've been expecting it to just burn itself out because it's so obviously on its face bullshit. But, fast forward and the term seems to have taken on a whole life of its own. So many people hate on "tankies". Even anarchists I know irl hate on "tankies". Supposedly radical leftists hate on "tankies". I went on a date with an anarchist who started ragging on "tankies" and I just left because what even is that shit? It's become so prevalent I feel I can't ignore it anymore.
Don't support the NATO proxy war that's grinding up Ukrainian lives? Ebil tankie. Don't support genocide in Palestine? Ebil tankie. Wouldn't vote for Genocide Joe or Holocaust Harris? Ebil tankie. Not racist against Chinese people? Ebil tankie. Think Cuba and Venezuela are cool actually? Ebil tankie. Don't like NATO? Ebil tankie. Post on Hexbear? Ebil tankie.
I didn't grow up during the Cold War so idk how AmeriKKKan society was about Communists, but I don't remember any of this level of prevalent rabid anti-Communism from liberals and even people who fancy themselves as so-called radical leftists in like, 2000 - 2015. This is getting absurd and frankly baffling. Not too long ago a bunch of these same people were saying socialism is cool, war is bad, black and brown lives matter. But now all of a sudden it seems like you actually apply those slogans and you're an "ebil tankie".
What makes it seem extra insidious is that basically all of this seems to feed back into supporting USAdian warmongering and imperialism. Like, what is a "tankie"? When you ask people they'll say "Authoritarian Communists" but it really just seems that they call anyone who isn't deepthroating the boot of the AmeriKKKan Empire a "tankie".
How did this happen? What is going on?
China does not have a lot of sweatshops.
Censorship is not a moral quantity, it is a tool. It can be used for good reasons, okay reasons, understandable reasons, cruel reasons, economic repressive reasons, purely reactionary reasons. If you punch a Nazi you are censoring them and I commend you for doing it.
Define, "a bit shit to deal with". What treatment fo you believe your country deserves?
China fought a civil war in the 1940s following the expulsion of imperial Japanese occupation. The communists won. The nationalists, i.e. reactionary capitalists, mass emigrated to Taiwan for a final holdout (they did genocidal things to the indigenous people there btw). The US intervened to prevent the communists from finishing the civil war and reuniting all of China. This was only possible because the US was also pressuring China via the invasion and later partition of Korea and China chose solidarity with their analogs there facing a much greater threat (the US). Since then, both the PRC and Taiwan have claimed all of China. The KMT claims even more than modern China, in fact. The civil war has never ended, it has simply reached a deadlock, with Taiwan serving as a US outpost and manufacturing center.
Public opinion is easy to sway, particularly on polls. We can say that the people of Taiwan don't want war and yet the US wants to use them to provoke China into war. We can say that they prefer the prior status quo of almost one country with two systems, i.e. easy trade and travel with their neighbor, to one of barriers and US propaganda against the PRC.
And what has the PRC done, exactly, to Taiwan?
China is exactly like every other country in having boats in waters that others complain about. Even some landlocked countries. Though it is far less rapacious, per capita, than most. Why are you singling out China?
These are the consequences of capitalism, not morons or China being bad. Capitalism forces owners to maximize profits any way they can and if that means a 10% cheaper item that breaks twice as much, well they don't care so long as their profits go up. Capitalism also creates a culture of commodity acquisition through the destruction of forms of socialization and self-actualization. So people adopt consumerist hobbies that appear to others as, "buying dumb garbage". China's explicitly stated strategy is to allow capitalist relations in a subset of its economy, particularly for export, in order to build up what's known by Marxists as productive forces. That to survive imperialism and imagine socialist transition, they need to be able to create all the products needed and to rope imperialists into dependency. It seems to be working, wouldn't you say?
China has also advanced massively in two decades. It doesn't just export cheap plastic things. Some of the finest and most durable products come from China.
This is also capitalism. The US and Australia are financialized economies premised on commercial rents and appropriate COVID interventions destroyed that model. The financiers demanded higher profits and their states relented. China and other socialist-run countries responded much more appropriately and millions of people would still be alive if others had their model.
Talk to people in China. Watch videos of normal people there doing normal things. It is a normal country with nice people.
Re: the news, focus on media criticism. What are the tropes being played up? Who wrote the article? Who is the editor-in-chief of the rag? What sources do they cite? Are they associated with the MoD? An NGO with MoD ties? Who pays them? Are they representative? When they call someone an expert, why should you believe them? And of course, to properly criticize you will have to acquire a lot of geopolitical knowledge to know when something said is simply false.
This is a chauvinist trope. Chauvinist media calls people in China "missing" with literally zero evidence. Those people regularly have to come out and say, "I wasn't missing, I was just living my life like normal."
But in the US, immigrants are being disappeared on a daily basis on camera.
Australia is a US lapdog. Remember AUKUS? Y'all are used to poke and prod China all the time and your MoD runs propaganda operations against China all the time.
Australia is also an Anglo settler state that is continuing its genocide against aboriginal Australians. Aboriginal Australians still fear the state stealing their children over small and normal things, something that does happen and is a holdover from cultural genocidal boarding schools. Australia has not returned lands to the rightful owners and the height of its justice is a piecemeal appeal to tolerance and integration. Australians remain highly racist.