Which is why you should support China, as a recent Harvard Kennedy School survey found that over 93% of the Chinese people are satisfied with their central government.
https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf See page 3
Facts don’t care about your feelings
You had me going at first
Hadusinthefirsthalf.jpg
Really thought I was gonna have to deal with some expat-posting cringe
51% isnt exactly a great stat. good for russia, mixed for other soviet states
This is 29 years after the final end of the Soviet Union, during which time there has been no mainstream communist propaganda or viewpoints and constant anti-Soviet anti-communist propaganda. And still 51% of people aren’t believing the BS and know they had or could have had better lives during the Soviet era.
i still think the difference of opinion between russians and other former soviet states is significant
To put things in perspective a good chunk of those 51% are ethnic Russians who’d rather enjoy the cultural/linguistic status the would have had in the USSR as opposed to the marginalisation they feel now. Very little to do with communism.
Ok and?
Support for a government tells us nothing about what class it serves or about the material conditions of society.
Conversely does that mean we should stop supporting a state when its population is opposed to it? Even when it is socialist?
ok so the material conditions are: massive wage growth and severe poverty has almost been eliminated while being the only country with extensive high speed rail.
considering the fact that 100 years ago china was being pillaged by warlords, civil war, the japanese, global imperialism, and had a similar development index to africa, they’re doing quite good for themselves.
Then why not support them base off of that rather than one statistic that by itself tells us absolutely nothing.
This isn’t an effort post where I’m trying to compile every possible reason for why you should support China. It’s just an easy counter to the prevailing perception of China within the West (and among many western leftists) that China is a hellstate where everybody lives in daily fear of their repressive government.
I’m mostly making fun of the tendency of liberals to respond to any solidarity of Communists in the Global North with the Global South by saying “Oh, only privileged white leftists could possibly support the evil Maduoro/Xi/Morales/etc. regime, the real people of those countries YEARN to be free”.
And it’s wrong to say that public approval in their government tells us nothing, propaganda exists, but it can’t make people not recognize if their lives are shit, and staying shit. After all the U.S has the most sophisticated propaganda structure, and yet public faith in Government is consistently low, and most Americans surveyed have little hope in the future.
I listen to the people in my community, and frankly we need to #savethechildren from under the Getty Museum NOW.
I support China but the principle of “listen to the people” is fucking terrible. Propaganda exists, people express beliefs directly against their own interests all the time.
To be fair… The same study conducted by Harvard that OP is citing also states that they do not consider propaganda to be the reason for the massive popular support the party has, they state very clearly that the people’s opinions change with actual material outcomes and that ultimately the fact they have such massive support is that they have only ever consistently seen an improvement in their material conditions year after year. They believe that if citizens experience a lowering of their conditions they will turn against the government.
Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread, our survey reveals that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being. For government leaders, this is a double-edged sword, as citizens who have grown accustomed to increases in living standards will expect such improvements to continue, and citizens who praise government officials for effective policies may indeed blame them when such policy failures affect them or their family members directly. While our survey reinforces narratives of CCP resilience, our data also point to specific areas in which citizen satisfaction could decline in today’s era of slowing economic growth and continued environmental degradation.
The thing is that people are satisfied because of economic growth. Ronald Reagan won the vast majority of states both times he ran, Bill Clinton was very popular too, the James Carville “it’s the economy stupid” line is accurate everywhere in the world.
The real question is that should their economic growth level off to a level comparable to more developed countries would people be this satisfied with their government, and I’m unsure if this would be the case. Everything about this is based on how there’s never been a real financial downturns there nation wide in decades.
No. It’s not “the economy”. It’s real material changes in their lives. This is strictly stated, and something Harvard has been keen to say does not occur in the American population – for example the rust belt are not voting based on rational assessments of their material conditions.
There is a massive difference between voting for the line and voting for actual material change in your life. The Chinese people’s support is driven by absolutely consistent improvement in their lives, nationwide, year on year, for multiple decades in a row with almost no slowing. It is exceptionally consistent and has been since the 50s.
Everything about this is based on how there’s never been a real financial downturns there nation wide in decades.
There’s a difference between a financial downturn and a change in the actual material effect on a population. If people have houses, food, entertainment and work the same hours their lives have not actually deteriorated, they’ve just stayed the same. A financial downturn may affect investment and thus the continued development and improvement of conditions for people but unless the government severely mismanages it there is no reason it should result in a backwards step in the material lived conditions of the people – any private business that is necessary to maintain the conditions of the people can simply be pulled into national ownership and operated at no profit until such a time as things change or have been adapted to suit the changing situation.
Labour is what matters to the continued survival of communities, not financial growth. If you ensure labour is protected in a crisis you do not have a collapse of anyone’s living conditions. Massive setbacks in living conditions of a population is a distinctly capitalist phenomenon and is driven by governments allowing the “free markets” to collapse industries in various local areas and have the communities that depended upon those industries rot as a result, followed by doing absolutely nothing to help those rotting communities.
93% is absolutely phenomenal for the second most populous country in the world.
America, for all its propaganda, doesn’t even come close.
America, for all its propaganda, doesn’t even come close.
That’s in part because hating the government is part of the propaganda. ‘Government is not the solution’. The US gov isn’t the true ruling class.
That is a good point, and I’d be interested to see the “approval rating” of people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
true but listening to people doesn’t mean you automatically adopt their beliefs, that would be dumb. it’s about getting primary sources about the way that society is and building your world view on that
like I seriously doubt most chinese people have strong opinions about communism or socialism or capitalism or whatever (they care about their families and jobs and their own future, etc.). They have opinions about their government based on how they’ve interacted with it and how it affects them like everyone else.
In North Korea it hovers at 98%. Clearly it’s the most persuasive point to be made.
Speaking of which, there’s been a boon in 2% of the hard labor workforce, completely unrelated.
Eh I always take approval ratings with grain of salt
Not because “muh commies faked it” or “muh people brainwashed, but someone saying they APPROVE of their government does say much. What “approve” means varies and for a lot of people it could just mean “generically low key patriotic” like most people in most not totally dysfunctional governments are.
