Additional context to answer some of the questions here: His superior Lai Xiaomin:

• investigated in April 2018
• arrested in Nov 2018
• prosecuted in Feb 2019
• first court trial in Oct 2020
• sentenced to death on Jan 5, 2021
• appeal rejected, verdict maintained on Jan 21, 2021
• executed on Jan 29, 2021
• corruption activities were between 2008 and 2018

As for Bai Tianhui:

• arrested in Jan 2019
• first court trial, sentenced to death, on May 28, 2024
• corruption activities were between 2014 and 2018

So the jig was up when Lai was investigated in 2018, Bai was already doomed from that point on.

If there’s a reprieve it would be explicitly stated, none in this case.

@[email protected]: I’d like to recommend the whitepaper published by the State Council Information Office of China in 2021, “Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity”: http://www.news.cn/english/2021-05/21/c_139959978.htm

It’s a long read but most of the questions brought up in your comments here can be found in the first 3 sections. Maybe it will clear up some of the inaccurate presentation of history like “Tibet was separate from China before 1720”, “Then it was independent 1912-1950”. Feel free to question the Chinese government if you believe that certain facts presented in the whitepaper are wrong, and bring your relevant authoritative sources to refute them.

the professor explains that a party reportly bluntly states that development in china has been rather uneven, unbalanced and lopsided. There are significant issues with party loyalty and corruption. Gaps between rural and urban areas are large. Many cadres don’t promote scientific innovation well and so on. It might not be correct to pin all of this on rightist errors by one man, but these are errors.

Maybe you could further explain how uneven development or any of the other issues are “rightist errors”, there is a fundamental divide between people who outright reject Deng Xiaoping’s policies and those who accept them with criticism. The policy of 一国两制 (One China, Two Systems) is probably the most suitable example that can be viewed as “rightist”, letting Hong Kong and Macao continue to operate their capitalist system. Other less “egregious” examples are 经济特区 (Special Economic Zones) like Shenzhen and Hainan, there’s also the “infamous” 社会主义市场经济 (socialist market economy).

once a country has been made independent of imperialists, nationalism becomes an obstacle to socialist development

China’s policy of peaceful coexistence would be helped by promoting a more internationalist stance in culture.

From Mao era’s 世界人民大团结万岁 (Long live the great unity of the people of the world) to Xi era’s 人类命运共同体 (community of shared future for mankind), China has always been advocating for internationalism.

Nationalism’s call to unity is collectivism at the national-level, I agree that collectivism at different levels can be in conflict with each other, for example when family interests conflict with national interests. There is a Chinese saying “舍小家、为大家”, which means something like “for the greater good”, to describe putting the interests of the greater collective (nation) before the smaller collective (family/self).

Similarly, national interests and international interests can also be conflicting, but China doesn’t choose nationalism or internationalism exclusively, it depends on the situation. When assisting the development of Global South countries, is that not internationalism at work? When handling disputes in the South China Sea, China defends its legitimate claims to the islands for national interests.

Nationalism can be reactionary when used at the expense of other nations (invasion, chauvinism, xenophobia), internationalism can be reactionary when used in disregard of legitimate national interests (like contributing to underdevelopment of the current nation, sounds familiar? That’s what some people say when China provides cheap goods at the detriment of Chinese workers). Until world communism has been achieved, there’s no simple “choice” between nationalism or internationalism, even then there will be new problems in the new world order.

China before Xi’s reforms was pretty much a capitalist hellhole. Corruption, environmental degradation and poverty were rampant

Those issues do not justify calling China during that period a “capitalist hellhole”.

even the CPC’s official stance is that Deng made some rightist errors

Could you provide the source for this?

The CPC has also made errors in recent years by becoming more nationalistic and has moved slower on LGBTQ rights than is expected of a socialist country.

China’s nationalism is controversial to some, probably because they think it’s like the toxic “America First”, or that it is not a very communist stance, but I do not see it as a mistake. Nationalism is fundamental for the survival of any nation that wishes to be independent and not controlled or invaded by foreign powers.

LGBTQ rights are important in the sense that they are treated as normal people, not “special” people. China is certainly lacking some LGBTQ rights that are available in other countries like same-sex marriage.

I think the state of the internet is currently telecom landlords providing the basic hardware infrastructure like cables and routers for a fee, big tech corporations and traditional news outlets dominating mainstream websites/apps, and finally other groups doing things like maintaining technical standards, improving FOSS ecosystem, and building decentralized platforms to combat mainstream centralized platforms etc.

The pervasive anarchist “freedom” mentality on the internet brought by the US, that it shouldn’t be regulated by the government, has led to an anarchist-style landscape that is instead regulated by private entities. Sure there are still some restrictions on what corporations can do like privacy laws, but the bigger problems are that relating to “free speech” and valid information.

Note that although we are on Lemmygrad, one of the many decentralized platforms in the Fediverse, this doesn’t mean that decentralized platforms are a good alternative to centralized capitalist platforms. For starters anyone can setup a platform for their own reactionary groups. Without clear guidelines for development, decentralization is nothing more than chaotic anarchy that capitalists can take advantage of. The internet is already decentralized on the lower physical/link/transport layers (OSI model), the fact that we now have to “re-decentralize” it on a higher layer for applications like social media and file sharing is why I think this model is not sustainable for socialism on the internet.

There’s a scifi TV series called Severance where memories at work and memories of personal life can be severed, I won’t spoil the story but this news of writing code in their sleep sounds just like that.

Thanks for the ping @[email protected] .

Chinese in China here, I think a better question than “Do you support your government” would be: “If the US government were to replace the CPC and current government tomorrow, would you approve?” Sorry to folks in Nordic countries (another stereotype propelled by liberals) because the US is the “beacon” that liberals use mainly.

If people from any country have no experience with living in other countries, they might be more inclined to topple their own government if their living conditions aren’t great and someone were to advocate for the toppling. Even if people read about how bad some foreign governments are in the news, some people would just brush it off as “propaganda”, they would have to see it for themselves to believe. This goes both ways for both the people of the US and China.

Comparison is a powerful tool, but some people whip out the “whataboutism” card when you try to do that, they tell you to address the problem instead of finding worse examples from other places. Indeed it’s always better to address the problem at hand, but people who scream “whataboutism” in relation to China’s issues are really saying “don’t look at worse places to make yourself feel good, overthrow the SEE-SEE-PEE regime now!”

Do I support the CPC and Chinese government? Yes and yes.

Does China have problems. Yes.

Do I need to hear from egotistical maniacs in other countries on how to handle issues in my country? No.

we should be careful about trusting individual self-proclaimed Marxists

I agree with this, which is why I don’t read or quote from them, but their work might be relevant to others which is why they seem popular.

and instead should work more to propagate and organise the material that already exists

marxists.org is a great resource but doesn’t actually have Xi Jinping’s work on it, or any of the past 3 Chinese leaders for that matter, even though they are available in Chinese and English from official sources. ProleWiki is what this site promotes, though more work is definitely needed.

To be fair, I have no clue to who these people are, I don’t read the writings of any non-Chinese marxist besides Marx, Engels, Lenin (and maybe Stalin). I also don’t like the idea of linking increased literacy to willingness to learn.

Crowd-sourcing information is not a new idea, that’s how humanity has advanced, the internet does make it much easier, and with better translators it’ll be even better in future. The main issue is moderation as you mentioned, which goes back to having an authoritative person or group that most people can trust to delegate the tedious work of moderating to.

I want to note that English-speaking people might be comfortable with applying “anti-authority” to everything due to their imperalist environment, but this causes a lack of awareness of socialist authorities that are in power, such as China. That is why it is important to move away from “anti-authority” to anti-capitalism.

Two people in this thread say that with the internet, we can move away from “big public figures”/“big thinkers”. While I appreciate this optimism, it just sounds very anti-authoritarian, and I quote from Engels On Authority:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.

There are anti-government and anti-“big corp/business” tendencies in the US/West, which I will call “anti-authority” for now. The essense of “anti-authority” in capitalist countries is anti-capitalism, or anti-“dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”, but there is a gap in this logic that stops people from turning into marxists right away, as they might instead become anarchists. This gap in logic will not be closed just by having everyone have access to free information through the internet, as there is too much information to digest, and imperialists will also interfere with the propagation of marxist ideology.

“Anti-authoritarian” sentiments do have positive outcomes, like decentralized technologies (think internet, bittorrent, p2p, fediverse etc.), the open source software movement, but these only serve as tools, they are the means and not the end.

Reform and opening up has always been controversial up to this day, but it doesn’t stop there, market economy, One Country Two Systems, supporting private enterprises, not meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, largest trading partner of the US, all used as evidence by different people to call the CPC “revisionist”/“class traitor”.

History has no ifs or buts, the Cultural Revolution has shown that those who claim to be Maoists could not defend their ideals, even from within a socialist country, this is a disgrace to Mao whose banner they hold high. High respect for Mao is one thing, but using said respect to lure people into a cult of Mao is what some people are doing now in China to erode the legitimacy of the CPC.

Maybe there was another path, maybe not, doesn’t matter now to China, and other countries should definitely learn from the lessons and mistakes of the CPC. Turns out that running a country isn’t as easy as what people imagine, and the dictatorship of the proletariat isn’t easy when you have to worry about underdevelopment, poverty, corruption, global imperialists, the list goes on.

Theory is nice and all, but it only matters when you put it into practice, that’s why Marxism is scientific socialism, and that’s what kept the CPC going for 102 years. If you don’t hold the reins, nothing else will matter, and any ideals you’d want to protect won’t be worth a damn.

Here are some common “criticisms” of Xi from different angles (not meant to be serious):

• West (imperialists, neoliberals, anarchists, racists): Xitler
• Ultras: revisionist, nationalist
• Maoists: Dengist, revisionist, pacifist
• Dengists: Maoist

Jokes aside, I think Socialism with Chinese characteristics focuses more on how to maintain and build upon a socialist country, rather than how to become a socialist country (Mao’s great achievement). That doesn’t mean other countries can’t learn from China’s experience, but it means keeping in mind China’s historical background when researching. This includes its 5000 year-old history as a civilization with some setbacks but still going strong today. If you learn Chinese, you’ll be able to read text from ye olden days. Ancient Chinese philosophies still have influence in modern-day China, like how people still read the works of ancient Greek philosophers.

How is any of this relevant to Xi’s ideology? Xi Jinping Thought is the latest theory of the CPC put into practice, it includes new theory, but also builds upon tried and tested theory from past leaders. Xi is an important foreman of this period (since 2012), but also part of the collective leadership of the CPC. Collectivism doesn’t exclude individual ideas, but is more resilient to corosion from individualism. The CPC upholds a long list of theory from Marxist-Leninism, Mao, Deng, Jiang, Hu and now Xi, so when we talk about “Xi’s ideology”, do not forget the collective body of knowledge and people surrounding it in the background.