Cowbee

Carlson and Bannon are homophobic, racist, pro-imperialism, and anti-communist, just like you. They agree with you.

Neither Tibet nor Hong Kong had popular resistance to China, both "resistances" were directly aided by the west to provoke more bloodshed. Tibet in particular was a feudal slave society. Two excerpts from Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:

Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

Selection two, shorter: (CW sexual violence and mutilation)

The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation — including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation — were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. [22]

Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.” [23] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [24]

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who wasremovedd and then had her nose sliced away. [25]

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W. F. T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. […] The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.” [26] As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri-La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.

-Dr. Michael Parenti

Taiwan is under the rule of the Kuomintang, who lost the war and fled to Taiwan, slaughtering resistance. The people of Taiwan are increasingly in favor of reunification with the mainland. LGBTQIA+ rights in China are improving over time. They have a long way to go, but nevertheless they are steadily improving.

Russia does sell oil, I don't see what that has to do with anything right now. As for China, there's no "regime change" in Hong Kong, they just got Hong Kong back from Britain. Taiwan is governed by the Kuomintang that invaded Taiwan and slaughtered the indigenous people there when the KMT lost the Civil War, and is gradually more in favor of reunification. The Phillipines aren't being attacked by China. Again, you're taking the far-right, pro-colonial stance, and just wish China was still under British and later Japanese colonialism.

This was the original claim:

Socialist countries generally have better safety nets, like China. Even Cuba, poor and sanctioned as it is, takes better care of its poorest than capitalist countries do.

Which is true, and requires analyzing them in context of their peer countries. Imperialist countries have inflated living standards due to taking huge amounts of super-profits from the global south, therefore comparison isn't going to be even anyways. Comparing Cuba with other Latin American countries makes a lot of sense, trying to grab "the best" of each like history is just a static snapshot and doesn't matter is horrible for trying to see which is better.

But that doesn't make sense, you compare among peers in development timeframes where you can, as well as size and location. Nordic countries tend to have good safety nets, but they also fund them from imperialism, and they've been developing for a longer period of time. China isn't imperialist, and it's only recently been developing. If you're trying to compare capitalism and socialism as systems, you have to compare their trajectories and where they've come from, not static snapshots.

Major cities tend to have better infrastructure and access to care. I don't know about "best" though.

When you say "top of the world," the US is the world hegemon with the greatest amount of wealth and plunder. It distributes it very poorly because it's a dying capitalist empire, of course. Nordic countries are in some ways behind China and in some ways ahead even if they fare better than the US, but that's because of imperialism still, and not an example of capitalism working. China shows that, despite developing far later than the imperialist west (take your pick on whichever one), it has managed to develop far more quickly and for the benefit of all, rather than an elite few.

Don't insinuate that I'm a bot. Dehumanization is bad. Either explain what you mean by "best in class" or accept that it's possible that someone would interpret it as I did.

No? I included the Nordics as well. What are you trying to say, here? I used the US Empire as its the dying world hegemon, but use any western European state you like and it's similar.

China beats the US when it comes to quality of life for those without much money, though. Maybe if you were talking 20 years ago the situation would be different, but China has absolutely surpassed the US. Further, the US Empire relies on imperialism, and has been a developed country for far longer. China at the moment is the world's most developed socialist country, and it already surpasses the US Empire.

Sure, but they're also useful examples.

A human put in the prompt and posted the output, yes. The message is what's most important for agitprop.

Sure, but already it's better to be poor in China than poor in the US.

China eradicated extreme poverty, and has been extremely consistent when it comes to improving quality of life year over year. Imperialist countries may have higher quality of life in some areas, such as the Nordics, but they are regularly deteriorating thanks to capitalism while China is regularly rising thanks to socialism.