I have been lurking on Chinese social media because I’m sort of a native Chinese speaker. In China’s leftist scene, a lot of the “patriot”, anti-imperialist, pro-CPC folks are extremely anti-feminist, anti-LGBT, racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, and islamophobic.
Of course CPC itself doesn’t slightly take those stances. However I’m worried if it grows out of control it might be a problem in the future, as some of those leftist influencers have millions of social media followers.
Yup, nationalism is a problem that needs addressing. That and xenophobia. Hopefully Xi remains, his government seems to be trying to deal with it in a correct manner.
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the position that actually gives him power never had a term limit to begin with. “president of china” is a ceremonial role.
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General Secretary of the CPC is indeed the strong position. Thats how it is/was in most ML states, including the soviet union. Still, whats most important is the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Communist Party, since they can dismiss the General Secretary at any time. In fact, Deng Xiaoping was never General Secretary, but he was still de facto leader of China from 1978 to 1997, because he was very influential and trusted by the Politburo and Central Committee who implemented his policies.
As a final note, power in ML states is very distributed and not concentrated, unlike what the west claims. In China, the General Secretary of the CPC is the ideological leader, since he leads the CPC. Hes responsible with analyizing the material conditions and then creating policies based on that, which will then be implemented and debated by others. The General Secretary is appointed by the Central Committee of the CPC. The President is the head of state, who appoints ambassadors, nominates the prime minister and oversees his work. The prime minister is the head of government, who appoints the ministers and implements the government policies created by the General Secretary. Both President and Prime Minister are appointed and dismissed by the National Peoples Congress, the chinese parliament. Finally, you have the Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the CPC, who is appointed by the Central Committee and is the supreme commander of the armed forces. So as you can see power is very divided and can be centralized or decentralized at will depending on what people want. At present times, Xi Jinping is General Secretary, Chairman of the CMC and President at the same time, so he has considerable power.
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Is Xi doing anything about LGBT though?
I think it’s impossible for a highly unequal society to avoid the problems of discrimination and prejudice against minority groups. For this to change the material conditions of the Chinese must improve (as I’m sure they will).
Keep in mind a lot of those are just anti American liberal interventionism Goes for a lot of the issues you mentioned, but for example a lot of the “pro-feminism” voices on social media are literally funded by American NGOs for regime change. They could care less about women and equality, in fact they love to see them all Chinese women die horribly if they bring down the communist government with them, and another war criminal in the US will tell Americans that it was worth it.
If you lurk more you will see how ridiculous the social media “feminists” often are, how they fall completely silent if not sabotage feminist matters that would put communist China in a good light, how the same groups again and again aligns with American imperialist positions when it has nothing to do with feminism (for example, being rabidly pro-Ukraine, advocating that covid is just a harmless flu).
Of course when such people parade around social media with a feminist banner, you will see people respond by stomping it to the ground with boos and widespread opposition. Nothing wrong with being “anti-feminist” when the “feminist” in question has little to do with things like women’s equality and more about sowing discord, and thus the loud opposition to it says little about people being against women’s equality and more about against sowing discord.
I guess the issue there would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Which I would believe would be the long-game planned by said American imperialists. They hope to get people across the world to associate social progressivism with imperialism which makes it easier to convert them to fascism and makes Western liberals say, “See, see, these people aren’t leftists they’re bigots!”
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A push back/reaction toward America’s rainbow imperialism I think
This is exactly it. The older generations are more homophobic and the like, and rather than seeing acceptance of it as societal progress they view it as something imposed on their culture by the imperialists. Naturally the younger crowd is more accepting, but the people that really push this stuff (from their perspective) liberals that are shitting on their country. They’re so used to hearing shit about how their country is so oppressive, no freedom, the typical liberal bs and the LGBT culture issues come across as identical and they don’t see it as a real issue. Especially the older people, since the younger generation in general is more pro-west. To be frank they see it as something akin to “western imposed degeneracy”.
It’s so weird that they never see the irony in “if you do minority rights better than the US they lose that much power to talk shit about you.” Like Chinese politicians are amazing at clapping back on western hyprocrisy. Imagine how much more material they’d have if LGBT rights in China actually were better than the west’s.
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That’s the impression I’ve gotten when asking some older family members living there about this kind of stuff (e.g. the LGBT+ situation). Some of them considered it as a foreign concept which was “brought over here by the west with possibly nefarious purposes”.
Others just treated it as a “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t care” type of situation…
Hasn’t crossdressing been a thing in China since like…forever? Plus I was under the impression homosexuality didn’t become a political issue until the Qing Dynasty.
Yep, they’ve been doing that in opera performances for a very long time…
I mean, my impression is that, in regards to LGBT people, most Chinese folks see it from a “don’t ask, don’t tell” point of view. It’s not surprising that there is social apprehension/ignorance towards LGBT issues given some of the attempts made by Western libs to apparently put forward progressive issues on Chinese social media with the true intention of creating social friction, as user roccopun described in this thread.
In any case, it doesn’t seem systemic (correct me if I’m wrong) to me (same as the racism problem, which I have seen a lot of as well), so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, just something that will become less evident as time goes on and China develops.
I do have to call into question someone here who stated that LGBT rights in the West are better than in China. By what metric? Perhaps LGBT people enjoy greater social acceptance in general in West, but what is the standard of living of the average LGBT person, especially a transgender person, like? If more and more people have easy access to free education and healthcare, are guaranteed work, and are able to afford housing, and social and material inequality lessens, then the people will have less and less of a reason to scapegoat LGBT folks as conduits of liberalism as a result. Though not founded in reality, such concerns are merely a byproduct of the ever-present threat imperialism and capitalism poses on all socialist states; it is unfortunate, but not surprising to see.
ive discussed this at length with other trans people i know in china. we concluded that the conditions of trans people in china and america are nearly identical, with slight favor to china simply because no one knows what being transgender is (which has its own issues too). whereas in usa its a hot button issue
Is the Beijing LGBT Center considered reliable for stats? (Not that their website is working right now)
I recall seeing that they report widespread depression, suicidal thoughts, and difficulty in public spaces for transpeople. So I assumed that meant conditions for lgbt people haven’t really improved that much, combined with the state not having any real preventative measures against discrimination (though I’ve seen a few regional court cases where they rule in favor of an lgbt person, it’s not exactly comprehensive). Gay marriage still isn’t legal. Though if you’re using the USA as a metric, the baseline for what’s considered ‘an improvement’ can vary wildly between comparisons to NYC or to Alabama.
General material conditions being better in China though? Yeah, I recognize that. My main thought process here is whether it’s cool with most bosses to show up to work and get a paycheck while being openly trans, because that’s where I’ve had the most issues.
extreme necropost but yeah the stats for the beijing lgbt center are generally reliable and the statistics released by them are roughly on par with statistics in the USA, though is some metrics China does slightly better. obviously it depends on regions and so on as well
unfortunate. i can only hope that those with such views remain a minority or have little power to cause harm. at the same time, i cannot expect a developing country with a very rural population to be perfect about things like this.
China has a lot of Nazbol problem online but pretty much non existent offline, CPC shuts that shit down hard.
Since you say your native language is Chinese, watch this video and be sure to read the comments in the comments section. https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV11S4y167Ni?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0
Most young people on the left don’t object to the things you mention. What you are referring to is what we call identity politics. It has been used as a tool of peaceful evolution by US. What we are opposed to is a propaganda tool of American imperialism, not LGBT itself.If, unfortunately, you do read ultra-nationalist but pro-China bloggers, then you are right, that such a situation exists, and it’s very common.But remember, they don’t count as leftists.
They act like they’re immune to ideological pitfalls, but this is all the exact same transphobic garbage you can find on patriots.win
Like I get the sentiment, but if they make these points without building solidarity with lgbt comrades then they’re just setting themselves up to be divided along gay/straight, trans/cis lines. Just from the opposite side.
This is exactly the kind of situation I’m talking about.
Does anyone knows if the majority of the young chinese citizens:
a) support LGBT rights and are MLs
b) supports LGBT rights but are libs
c) doesn’t support LGBT rights and are MLs
I also would like any material to read about LGBT stuff in China, bc Idk anything about it
yeah i remember seeing a study that has like 60-70% support for lgbt among young people, but near nonexistent among older
lmao @ them comparing trans women to the legend of the white snake
WAKE UP
Kind of an aside, but… brings a whole new dimension to Western libs that say “I love the Chinese people but I hate the Chinese government”
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