• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      The trick is to always assume “China is lying about its internal statistics” and inflate whatever number they give by an arbitrary large percentage. 1.7M is obviously an under-count because the CCP is always lying about everything.

      Also, you can do some broad brush “Everyone in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, North Korea, and Taiwan are prisoners of the Chinese state, so actually that’s over 60M people” napkin math to make the numbers look better.

      • wpb@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I think this is a good rule of thumb in general. When statistics agree with my preconceived notions, I consider them trustworthy, and if not, I assume that reality lines up with what I expect. For example, the referendum in held in the Baltics about leaving the USSR ended in favor of leaving, which I think is a good example of a trustworthy statistic. But the subsequent referendum in the remaining members ended in favor of staying in the USSR, and I think that’s a little suspicious, don’t you?

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Why would it be suspicious? Different members of the USSR had different national conditions, some were quite nationalist and opposed being a part of the USSR, some were more internationalist and wished to retain the Soviet system. In the following years, there have been many studies verifying that of those who lived through Socialism, the majority wish it had remained over the devastation Capitalism brought to the majority of people.

          • wpb@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            It’s suspicious because it disagrees with my preconceived notions about communism.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              The opening of the Soviet Archives backs up these claims. If your pre-concieved notions about Communism are negative, I really recommend giving Blackshirts and Reds a read if you’ve got the time and willingness.

              • wpb@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                See now there you’ve made a crucial error. You’re recommending a book which, while it has some criticism of the specifics of how the USSR implemented socialism, on the whole it’s quite positive about the idea of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat in general. Obviously that disagrees with my preconceived notion that humans are greedy, and that therefore capitalism is good, so I would never read a source that contradicts this, because I would have to dismiss most of it outright. And that’s just a hassle.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  2 hours ago

                  I don’t follow, the author being positive about the working class running society rather than privledged elites having dictatorial control a la Capitalism doesn’t mean you need to dismiss the facts it brings up outright. Are you saying that, as someone biased towards Capitalism, you dismiss any criticism of Capitalism and any positive opinions on Socialism outright? If so, I can’t imagine how you live your life in other areas that contradict your current understanding!

                  To return, I don’t at all believe it’s suspect that the majority of people wished to retain Socialism, and this fact is further cemented by this same general notion being repeated over and over again in polling.

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        No, Occupied China doesn’t control DPRK or ROC

        If we play that game we can’t trust American numbers either so the whole conversation becomes pointless

    • Ziglin (it/they)@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Worthwhile note to people too lazy to click on the link is that this is the 2021 version. In June 2024 (which is linked at the top of the linked article) the numbers look a little different but not much better for the US.

    • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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      4 hours ago

      It’s too hilarious it can’t be intentional that the top country not America is El Salvador which is where you’re questionably sending all your black and brown people.

    • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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      16 hours ago

      Interesting how it’s southern states at the top eh?

      Can’t have anything to do with the fact that the US legally allows prisoner slavery right?

      Winder what the race ratio of the prison population is.

      This is the country routinely accusing other countries of having “prison camps.”

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Interesting how it’s southern states at the top eh?

        Legit amazed California wasn’t higher on the list. They’ve been doing mass-incarceration at an industrial scale since the 70s. But I guess the population is big enough that the per-capita statistics work out.

        States like Alabama, Louisiana, and Oklahoma have such small and anemic populations and dedicate so much of their domestic budget to incarceration that they’re basically giant publicly subsidized slave plantations.

  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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    24 hours ago

    One is labeled as authoritarian dystopia while the other as a beacon of freedom, it’s like we live in the upside down.

      • p3n@lemmy.world
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        45 minutes ago

        Let me address a few things. First, I didn’t post my response because I think the incarceration rate in the U. S. is OK. It’s not. Incarceration of non-violent criminals is especially aggregeous. Private for profit prisons are a horrible idea.

        I responded because the OP posted an image comparing the incarceration rates of the CCP’s cultural revolution to the current U.S. incarceratiom rate. The implication is that because the per-capita incarceration rate was lower in China during that time, it was a nicer place to live than current-day America. That ignores the part where the Chinese government starved to death 15,000,000 - 55,000,000 people, or put in Americanized terms: somewhere between the entire population of Pennsylvania to the entire populations of California AND Pennsylvania.

        Claiming that a per-capita measurement normalizes all factors, makes a sampling error based on survivorship bias. It is highly unlikely that the overlap of people who starved to death during the CCP’s famine had the same incarceration rate of those who did not. I’m guessing rich and party aligned individuals had a much lower rate of both starvation and incarceration.

        This would certainly be true in the U.S; Incarceration rates are much higher for low-income individuals: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html. Low income individuals are also more likely to starve to death in a famine* (*citation needed). Now imagine if the United States government starved to death the poorest 10,000,000 people in the U.S. and then started bragging about how much it’s per-capita incarceration rates have improved!

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          33 minutes ago

          The CPC did not starve to death millions of people. There was famine in China from natural causes, and the CPC did their best to alleviate that as best they could, even if millions ended up starving despite their best efforts. The PRC is still a developing country, and this was ever more true during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution had its fair share of issues, the modern CPC doesn’t look fondly upon it, but the famine would have happened even without Communists in charge, and in fact it did! Famine was common in China before it industrialized under the CPC.

          • p3n@lemmy.world
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            8 minutes ago

            There was famine in China from natural causes

            From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

            It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history

            (Emphasis mine.)

            Also, regardless of the reason my other points stand: having millions of poor people starve to death will reduce you incarceration rate, and people might choose to live in a country with a higher incarceration rate if it means they don’t starve to death.

    • davel@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      The rest are in undeclared labor camps

      Goes for both

      US labor camps are not undeclared (though extraterritorial black sites are). They’re called prisons, and the labor is slave labor, thanks to the 13th amendment.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The previous user is a bit off base with the labor camps idea (not to say that the Xinjiang detention camps for Uyghurs aren’t widely known), but it is worth noting that China does utilize administrative detentions/行政拘留 for smaller offenses which are kept statistically separate from prison counts.

        If Raiden needs a source, the law covering administrative detentions can be reviewed here:

        https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2021-01/23/content_5582030.htm

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          but it is worth noting that China does utilize administrative detention

          Isn’t that the same as Jails in the US which is separate from prison statistics?

          Jail is where you go for the night when arrested for disorderly conduct and are released the next day.

          • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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            23 hours ago

            Administrative detentions can be longer. On paper they can hold you about a month, but it can be longer than that with a judge’s signoff if they have proof of a crime.

            This is typically where the police try to get you to confess to something and drag it out as long and uncomfortably as possible until you do, after which you either get to go free (though you end up on a list for a long time) or you may go to a “black jail”/黑監獄 which is a sort of under-the-table prison.

            The terms of release can also sometimes require completion of a rehabilitation program, which is often the voluntary alternative to prison, or getting transferred to a short stay detention center for a few months to perform community service.

            • davel@lemmy.ml
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              16 hours ago

              Administrative detentions can be longer. On paper they can hold you about a month, but it can be longer than that with a judge’s signoff if they have proof of a crime.

              And in the US, jail can be up to just short of a year.

              This is typically where the police try to get you to confess to something and drag it out as long and uncomfortably as possible until you do, after which you either get to go free (though you end up on a list for a long time) or you may go to a “black jail”/黑監獄 which is a sort of under-the-table prison.

              The terms of release can also sometimes require completion of a rehabilitation program, which is often the voluntary alternative to prison, or getting transferred to a short stay detention center for a few months to perform community service.

              So pretty similar to the US.

              • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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                5 hours ago

                Yeah, the justice system in the US is pretty fucked up. Provably so, with plenty of data made publicly available to back it up.

    • veganbtw@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 day ago

      Source: The US propaganda you received and believe uncritically.

      What’s next, you explaining their inherent need to lie because of their race?