That doesn't meant that they have to link to a servile piece of Western "socialism" that seems to think China's Belt and Road initiative is even close to the greatest thing since sliced bread. Said link says nothing about how in South Asia and Africa, the Belt and Road is seen as being about as neocolonialist as anything the US and UK has ever done, nor that many sub-Saharan Africans see the Chinese as being about as racist as Americans and British.
The link at least gives up the game in admitting that the Chinese long view is re-integrating Taiwan as well as Macau and Hong Kong.
It doesn't tell you that, even if Taiwan was originally semi-dicatatorially governed by Chiang Kai-Shek et al, that since his death, other parties have democratically governed and have been led by Taiwanese natives.
Nor do I have to accept their attempts to spin an AP story about Twitter shutting down some fake accounts and why.
Nor do I have to accept the claims of Zeese and Flowers that the protests haven't gotten organized labor involved. Per a MUCH more nuanced piece by Jacobin, the protests have failed to draw in non-Chinese migrant laborers, tis true, but Hong Kong Chinese students have been involved with the protests from early on. This is NOT a "Brooks Brothers riot." In addition, though also ignored by the thought leaders? Many of these migrant workers have been pressured by their home countries not to participate. So, a Filipino making double (net) money in Hong Kong vs back home? Zeese and Flowers need to be blaming Manila (and Jakarta et al) and not Beijing.
And, as far as income inequality? Hong Kong may be horrible, but ... mainland China is about the same as the US, per Wiki.
Stuff like this is why, to the degree I am a socialist, I call myself a post-capitalist and NOT an anti-capitalist.
I reject Hegelian dialectic as bad philosophy and as pseudoscience when given a materialism quick rinse and used as the framework for a theory of economics, in addition to economic theorizing before behavioral economics in general already being close to pseudoscience.
Beyond that, on the twosiderism?
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has now said the CHINESE GOVERNMENT tried to get him to fire Rockets GM Daryl Morey. Let that sink in.
I'll also admit, lest I get slammed too hard on the charge of motivated reasoning, that I had not thought of the possibility of NED involvement. At the same time, to claim this is ONLY, or nearly only, a "billionaires' riot" sounds over the top.
Beyond rejecting twosiderism and rejecting any economic thinking that comes close to Marxism, I also reject reflexive anti-Americanism in opining about foreign policy. Note that bold-faced word "reflexive."
I have no problem criticizing American policy where it's wrong, whether wrong on explicit American exceptionalism grounds, Coca-colonialism or something else. But, to automatically assume it's wrong, and worse, to pull out the twosiderism and assume there's only two sides and the other is automatically right?
No dice.
That's why, several years ago, I stopped reading Counterpunch for a few years.
I know, per a guy I started following on Twitter before realizing he's from the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay, California, that the Zeese/Flowers link is almost two months old.
Doesn't matter. It was laden with twosiderism at the time.
As for said person from the PRHB? He claims China isn't imperialist. The pro-Chinese imperialist running dog (I see what I did) also claims that Uyghur-repressing China is especially dedicated to world peace. That would be the Xinjiang that was independent in the 1940s (and had not belonged to most Chinese dynastic empires — the Mongol Yuan and peak-era Qing Manchus are the only once to contain it in more than 1,000 years until today's China) until Communist, I mean state-capitalist, Bejing took it back over.
I don't know if this is more the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay being that idiotic, or if it's an alleged anti-capitalist actually being a grifter for a few yuan. Said Chinese lackey also claims Beijing doesn't practice Coca-colonialism. No, it practices ethnic and cultural colonialism, as anybody aware of the state-sponsored moving of Han Chinese to Xinjiang knows.
Rainer Shea is also refudiated in another way by the Jacobin piece and indirectly, so are the Green flunkies. In Taiwan, it's the plutocrat capitalists who want closer ties with China. That would be people like Taiwanese native, but now based in Hong Kong, Joe Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets.
Jacobin also refutes both Shea and the Zeese-Flowers duo specifically on twosiderism.
Going forward, it will be crucial for the younger generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and elsewhere to move beyond the false dichotomy of China versus the United States — neither country’s ruling class has a material or ideological incentive to promote self-determination and democracy in the region.
Exactly. Jacobin notes on the Chinese side that Beijing has repeatedly broken post-1997 promises about Hong Kong. It's no more to be trusted than NED.
As for the state-capitalist running dog Shea?
He looks like a Humboldt State student, by age in his picture. Probably thinks he's discovered the eternal truth and is combining that with college-age rebelliousness. (And I'm familiar enough with Humboldt State and Eureka, and allegations about them.) I remember putting up hammer and sickle signs a couple of times when I was that age, just for the rebelliousness; I was in truth politically quite conservative then. Today? While I look to move beyond modern capitalism, I reject anything tainted with the pseudoscience of Marx, as noted above, let alone provably fallacious stupidity like this.
Youth is indeed often wasted on the young. It's wasted worse yet when other sites, like Wrong Kind of Green, rerun stuff people like him write.
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