[Aunche]

You get an uncanny valley feeling because the Western media always exaggerates the degree of how Orwellian or how much influence the Chinese government really has, so that they can get more clicks from people unfamiliar with China or who are mildly racist.

[cirgue]

So I find this view really interesting because there is ultimately very little racism about dislike for the Chinese government. Most people’s misgivings have much more to do with the fact that a) no one wants to see fellow humans living in a distopia, and b) people look to China as an indication of where the world may be heading in the next few decades. Feeling apprehension about seeing an opaque, oligopolistic, and decidedly undemocratic system adopt a set of policies that are frankly unthinkable to people raised in the us or Europe is completely understandable. Using the term racism is interesting because this has much more to do with ideaologies and values than it does with race.

[xkcd-sucks]

To someone that believes the CCP, "China" and the Han ethnicity are equivalent, it is racist to dislike the government. This equivalence is basically official policy, and also ambiguous phrases like "Chinese people" further such equivalence.

[fermienrico]

I disagree. Having been to China more than 30 times, I can tell you that the reality is worse.

[aaron-lebo]

This is based on what?

[Aunche]

Based on all the articles published about China in the past decade. Wired is especially egregious because they start a lot of misinformation.

In 2011, their headline of Foxconn was "1 Million workers, 90 Million Iphones, 17 suicides" despite the US suicide rate being much higher. Now, you still hear people talking about how terrible Apple and Foxconn are despite both being very desirable places to work for.

More recently, Wired released an article about China's plans for a social credit system. The article equated this with private credit scoring systems such as Sesame credit, even though they have nothing to do with each other. Yes, the social credit system is a bit extreme. Yes, Sesame credit is kind of creepy (but so is Facebook). No, China didn't decide to turn itself into a Brave New World.