• zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Fixation on food security

    The man is OBSESSED with food security.

    All he thinks about is FEEDING PEOPLE.

    What kind of SICK FUCK just goes around all day wondering how to GENERATE ENOUGH FOODSTUFF FOR 1.4B PEOPLE

    Jesus FUCKING Christ, what a psycho.

  • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Yes. The single individual. Forcing this country of over a billion people against their will to have their own sustainable food supply. On his own. Like a dictator.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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      1 year ago

      Believing that over a billion people are all unilaterally controlled by a single person is not only peak great man theory, but also just another extension of rabid racism

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              That was such a brilliant, wonderful, terrible line. Just… so much… political bullshit and lies and dissembling and cruelty and indifference is tied up in that line.

                • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  I found it really authentic because everyone was totally bought-in to the camp. The things that would have been camp were part of these people’s lives, and there was so much attention to detail in how they spoke, moved, dressed, and acted that it sold the whole thing as real people in a real culture living their lives. Like the war boys weren’t dumb, mindless thugs throwing themselves to their death for nothing like in an 80s action movie. They took time to show how they were devoted to Joe, they had religious beliefs, they genuinely thought of themselves as heroes fighting for a worthwhile cause. They invested the warboys with so much depth and character that I, at least, never thought they were silly. These are warriors from a warrior culture who have their rituals of war, their symbols of valor, their pride, their pathos. When the one guy takes a bolt to the head and his buddies are praying for him to get up so he can die as a hero there’s just so much realness in that moment.

                  And for me, personally, I know a little bit about guys like General Butt Naked in the Liberian civil war, and some other pretty out-there gangs and warbands and mercenary companies, so a lot of the “over the top” elements were recognizably similar to things that warrior cultures do in real life.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Is there a moral case against prohibiting any The Economist staff member from having access to writing materials of any kind? BEcuase I think, for the good of humanity…

  • Fishroot [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    This is like my dad said about how Xi is sending youth into the countryside to farm like in Mao’s Cultural Revolution (he was talking about how there are incentive for the government to send educated people to do town development)

    Better die in a field than suffer in a cubicle

    • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      send educated people to do town development

      god what an unimaginable dystopian hell. rather than just let their small towns rot alongside the people in them the government is forcing people to go and develop those areas with juicy incentives

      like imagine going and getting an education and then being able to choose to do socially valuable work that the government heavily encourages

      i’m gonna cry

  • Bernie2028@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    …Why are yall supporting the CCP forcing farmers to do something against their will? How do you expect underpaid, overworked farmers to turn a profit and provide for their families if you’re making them grow a bunch of dirt cheap rice?

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I completely support forcing business owners to do something that improves people’s lives.

      And if you do not, you are my enemy.

        • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Wow what a fucking hack job.

          It states there is, in fact, a guaranteed standard of living. Moreover China has a guaranteed residence for every citizen. If that out of work rural worker wants the minimum income and a roof over his head, all he has to do is go back home (using heavily subsidised transport). Which sucks, but losing a job and having to move back to your hometown isn’t exactly something unheard of in Western nations.

          China has a way to go in terms of healthcare and other benefits, but given it’s providing a better safety net to vastly more people over a larger area with 1/4th of the USA’s GDP and an industrial base that is still largely rural it’s doing an astounding job.

          • Bernie2028@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            guaranteed standard of living

            For people under the poverty line, which is only $2.30 a day. So their “standard of living” is $840 a year to get by on. Even in China that’s not fucking sustainable.

            China has a way to go in terms of healthcare and other benefits

            So you’re saying you’re cool with Chinese farmers not being able to afford going to the hospital because Supreme Leader Xi forced them to grow the cheapest crops imaginable?

            If that out of work rural worker wants the minimum income and a roof over his head, all he has to do is go back home

            Lol. Lmao even. "Losing your job and abandoning your home because of authoritarian regulations is ok’

        • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          ” The Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS lists major funding from defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon Company and General Atomics.[35]

          Significant funding has come from the governments of the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates.[36]”

          lol

            • autismdragon [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Do you believe that the United States and its allies have a geopolitical agenda or not? Do you think they are incapable of lying to further that agenda? Are you familiar with the lead up to the Iraq War?

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Libs: “I love critical thinking and debate.”

              Leftists: “Okay, here’s why your sources might be biased.”

              Libs: "Noooo, not critical of my wholesome weapons manufacturers and fascist governments like that!:

    • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      provide for their families

      Not a problem in a socialist country, the CPC is not stupid, they will make sure adequate social protections are in place for the people who represent the sickle in the hammer and sickle symbol.

      Bernie, the man you support, would agree with this decision, to fight hunger and ensure food security for the citizenry.

        • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Their mode of production is called a “socialist market economy”. The leadership uses socialist theory to guide their decisions on running the country. Why would this not be socialism?

          • Bernie2028@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            Oh well if they say their production is socialist guided then they’re tooootally socialist! Just ignore the privately owned factories paying people $2 a day and the fact billionaires still exist.

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Socialism is a mode of production that is in part defined by class war between the elites and the people, with the state being on the side of the people (as shown by their desire to bolster food security). In our current globalized world, China is not in a position to bring about full communism, liquidating all the elite, without incurring apocalyptic economic punishment from Western capitalists.

              China is a country with flaws, but a country doesn’t need to have achieved a fully functional planned economy to be called socialist, as the label is contingent on the ideology that the state employs in the governance of their country.

            • citrussy_capybara [ze/hir]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              The factories aren’t privately owned, they’re owned by the country and rented by private companies. Stop talking. You don’t know shit. Start reading and educating yourself instead of spreading US state department propaganda.

              • Bernie2028@midwest.social
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                1 year ago

                So, what you’re saying is they’re not owned collectively by the workers? Tell me again why independent unions are illegal in China.

                • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  This is grasping at straws to find justifications for hating china as much as the state dept. tells you to while telling yourself you’re a leftist. I’ll report you to Bernie for this.

    • ToxicDivinity [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      they’ll never get rich but they’ll also never end up starving because they grew a cash crop that they couldn’t eat. Xi is trying to make sure that no one in his country ever goes hungry. I wish we had leaders in the usa that cared as much about that.

      • Bernie2028@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        How do you know that? People in China go hungry all the time. Official poverty rates might’ve been reduced significantly, but the poverty line in China is much less livable than the poverty line in America. If you make $2.31 a day in China, you’re not technically in poverty!

        Not to mention similar homelessness rates to America

            • Zodiark [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Similar amount go hungry in the US

              US has 4-5x less the population of the PRC. The PRC is doing a better job, with room to improve, of feeding its citizens.

              Which means, given the government’s record in improving the quality of life of China for the past 50 years, the CPC is on a trajectory of virtually solving food insecurity in China.

              Now, let us be honest. All of your questions in this thread are just begging the same questions other federated instanced posters are asking:

              Why don’t you share our hate for China?

              Personally, hate doesn’t make me happy. I don’t hate China because if their prosperity would mean US decline, it means there’s something wrong with the economic system that treats survival in a world of post scarcity production as a zero sum game. After China is balkanized, and a decade of harvesting China and the rest of Asia occur, the US would invent new enemies and power blocs to exploit and eviscerate. An elimination of the last world powers would just reinvent the same exploitative power dynamics that the US and Europe had with the continents of South America, Africa, and Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries.

              I would live in prosperity off exploiting others or in perpetual misery supporting alienated, affluent, and hollow people.

              Even if that doesn’t bother you, or you don’t care about China, you should still know that the elimination of those enemies won’t result in the reintroduction of a New Deal in the 21st century. Paraphrasing from someone: You’re not going to get Star Trek, or the world of Interstellar. You’re getting Elysium and then we’re all getting extinction.

              Just a life of meaninglessness under the leadership of the West.

              You don’t have to praise or fawn over China but you can’t delude yourself into believing that the collapse and dissolution of America’s enemies would mean that their spoils would be shared with you. It’ll be shared among the masters, administrators, and enforcers of annihilation. And all that cheerleading, xenophobia, and chauvinism would just end up wasting your own time and your colleagues time in preventing the annihilation of meaning and solidarity between humanity.

              This infographic would explain my point better

                • autismdragon [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Man, the thought terminating cliche rigging of the brains of people on these subjects is really depressing.

                  We make long well thought out good faith posts and get dismissed as propaganda, even though we’re just regular people with earnest opinions. Like come on, have some intellectual curiosity. Think. This isnt even a enthusiastically pro-China post. Please. If you’re going to come to our instance, please, please actually come here in good faith.

                • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  That’s really rude, you asked a question, someone gave you an answer, and then you dismiss the answer as propaganda without reading it because it’s difficult to read. This isn’t what Bernie would do.

                • Zodiark [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  @Bernie2028@midwest.social

                  I’m saying your China hate isn’t going to make you happy or wealthy. No one on Hexbear here hates China with you, and you just come off as a nihlistic anti-intellectual loser.

                  You’re probably a troll, but it still bears worth typing out why I - and others who share my view or are malleable to it - don’t waste our time scapegoating a country for a decline in quality of life here in the West.

                  You’re smelly. You have poop running down your pants and piss making squishy sounds on your shoes. I, and all humanity, cringe at you.

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              China, state whose economic decision you disagree with, hunger rate of 2.50% in a country of 1 billion people.

              America, state whose free market approach to food security you generally agree with, hunger rate of 10% in a country with 1/3 the population.

            • 2.5% is the hunger rate of China according to your source. So I decided to look up the US and see how it compares. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance/

              10% or in other words china is currently 4x better at feeding the hungry than the US is. 10% of 300+million is also around 30+million, so a comparable number but just out of an incomparably smaller population.

              So you, following the advice of people who cannot get hunger below 10%, in a country with enough food waste to solve the problem, think that people on the other side of the world, whose hunger problem is only a quarter of your neighbors, should fix their hunger by growing LESS FOOD in favor of cash crops? Is that correct?

              If I’m misrepresenting you please let me know

        • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          but the poverty line in China is much less livable than the poverty line in America

          The poverty lines are calculated using the same formulas to determine livability for each country. Everybody should theoretically have a somewhat similar standard of living at the poverty line across countries

          The poverty line for USA is a 14500 salary. 80% of Americans live in a city. How many cities in USA exist where you can live well on a 14500 salary? Not to mention a single healthcare incident will instantly wipe out whatever scraps you can save off a 14500 salary

          People who make 2.3USD a day in China live in a place where it is possible to live on that cheap salary

          Not to mention similar homelessness rates to America

          Can you link a source? The most recent data I found dates back to 2011

          • Bernie2028@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm

            Purchasing power parity of China is 4.022. So let’s look at the overall poverty line of $2.30 in China. That would be equalivent to $9.25 a day in America, or $3,376 a year.

            China makes their poverty rates appear so low by making their poverty line absolutely ridiculous and actually much lower than comparable countries.

            Of course I couldn’t any PPP rates for just rural China (although it’s pretty obvious $3,376 isn’t going to suddenly becoming $30,000 because it’s rural), but see this:

            Our results indicate that the mean subjective poverty line of the rural households is 8297 yuan per capita, which is far higher than the national poverty line (2800 yuan). Statistically, 29% of the surveyed rural households who are not objectively poor feel subjectively poor.

            • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              29% of people who are not objectively poor feel subjectively poor?

              I said that amount is livable in China. That study is about people’s feelings. Hardly related

              Not to mention I work in Silicon Valley as a software engineer and it’s literally common for people here to be making 200-400k to complain about being poor and not saving much all the time

              How many people living in the Midwest or the south on a 20k salary do you think would feel subjectively poor?

              • Bernie2028@midwest.social
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                1 year ago

                Conveniently ignoring the fact a $3.3k salary isn’t livable anywhere in America.

                Spoiled middle class westerners complaining about being poor is totally different LMAO. Americans will complain about being poor when living in a decent house in suburb, being poor is seen totally different in 2nd and 3rd world countries that are, yknow, struggling much moreso.

                • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Conveniently ignoring the fact a $3.3k salary isn’t livable anywhere in America.

                  Well that’s why the American poverty line has been calculated to be 14500

                  14500 is the poverty line in America and 845 is the poverty line in China

                  PPP isn’t a perfect comparison between every single combination of all 200 countries in the entire world

                  But the poverty line is specifically calculated for every single country

        • meth_dragon [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          rice farmers complaining about profits are definitely not going hungry

          poverty in china nowadays is pensioner age old people whos kids have left for the cities for better economic opportunities because their village is located inside a literal cliff 18 hours and a mule ride from civilization and the only viable occupation there is subsistence barley farmer/part-time chicken keeper

          poverty alleviation isn’t about making sure these people can turn a profit, it’s about relocating them to places where they can be made less hostile to the concepts of electricity and running water, because otherwise they would just be content to stay inside their cliff and head into town once a year to collect their poverty check/trade in their moonshine for ibuprofen

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    People are choosing to ignore the problem: the farmers that are planting rice aren’t making as much money farming as farmers that are able to plant for profit, and the gov’t isn’t doing sufficient to make up for the loss of revenue while despite requiring their labor for the good of the state. As stated in the lede, “But these new plans clash with other signature directives, including pulling farmers out of poverty—and that is causing resentment and confusion.” If farmers discover that they can go do other things that involve less backbreaking work and make more money doing it, then you have fewer people willing to farm in the first place. Which, of course, you can solve by using forced labor, since no one seems to give a shit about the Uyghurs.

    If you believe that the state is more important than any personal rights to individual self determination, then sure, this is a totally fair policy. If you believe that the state has the right to enforce poverty on one group of people in order to ensure the comfort of a different group of people is morally justified, then it’s also cool.

    I would say that if the state expects people to do labor, then the state should be expected to pay for that labor. Particularly when that state has the 2nd greatest number of billionaires of any country in the world, and could not realistically be called “communist” when compared to any of the source material.

    • Redcat [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      i dunno i think not dying of starvation is a great human right to have

      If you believe that the state has the right to enforce poverty on one group of people

      citation needed

      since no one seems to give a shit about the Uyghurs.

      yes, they are making rice in the deserts of xinjiang using slave labor because there’s a shortage of farmers in china. no wait the article is about sichuan

      and the gov’t isn’t doing sufficient to make up for the loss of revenue

      yes the chinese government is famous for not supporting it’s agricultural sector

      I would say that if the state expects people to do labor, then the state should be expected to pay for that labor.

      meanwhile the united states actually does use slave labor in the deserts of california, but nobody seems to give a shit about americans

    • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      it’s not the feeding people that they’re even mad about so much as the freedom of action that a country has when it doesn’t rely on trade with other nations for essentials like food and energy