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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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You don't expect a short visit would instantly expose to you all the complications and intricacies of politics in the billion-sized country, do you?

That's right. Now, would you expect to gain insights on the complications and intricacies of their politics by reading western media?

would you be ready to say all the people who lived there their whole lives and complain about such things are dirty liars

Well would you be ready to say that all the Chinese people who deny these things or find them implausible are dirty liars?

Thinking one can answer these questions without any sort of reliable insider information source is delusional. I don't have them; do you?

Now, would you expect to gain insights on the complications and intricacies of their politics by reading western media?

By reading only Western media, you can't. By reading all kinds of media - including, but not only, Western - you can make some progress towards it.

Well would you be ready to say that all the Chinese people who deny these things or find them implausible are dirty liars?

If they are in China at the moment, or their relatives or family are - no, they are probably just afraid. Justifiably, I may notice, as we have examples of people persecuted for saying things the regime does not like. I wouldn't call a dirty liar a person that says something he knows to be not true, but also knows if he says the truth he'd risk his life and maybe the lives of others. I'll rather call him a victim. If they are outside China's control - I'd have to look into them further to determine whether or not they are liars, so it'd go on case by case basis. If they say there are no human rights violations in China - they are liars for sure, as there are documented examples of them. If they say the specific violation did not happen - it may be true, or they may be mistaken, or they may be lying, again - case by case.

Thinking one can answer these questions without any sort of reliable insider information source is delusional

Answer definitely? No. Get to a high degree of certainty? Yes. Just as it is done with all other things we can not observe or perceive directly - by carefully collecting, evaluating and filtering available pieces of circumstantial evidence, until a general picture starts to become clear. And then updating this picture once new pieces of evidence come in. Current picture suggests China is under a totalitarian fascist regime which has a complete disdain for anything called "human rights" in the West (I'm not sure there's such concept in China at all?), routinely prosecutes dissidents and anybody who dares to contradict the party line, operates concentration camps and performs multiple atrocities.