US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Taiwan, Defying Beijing’s Warnings (scmp.com)

I don't think the 1.4 billion Chinese people will appreciate you saying their country is run by air quotes Petty dictator. But if you're an American you may be continuing the proud American tradition of speaking with self serving authoritative ignorance about that which you know not.

I'm always somewhat agast at how much these intended criticisms of China's political system and government, seem completely tone deaf and low empathy to how the Chinese people will feel about these statements.

And if you bring this point up the utterers will simply shrug and say, "well how they feel is based on propaganda and I'm right about their country they're wrong." Which is like a complete psychosis for those commenters to believe.

Or they'll backpedal and say "oh no I'm not saying China hasn't achieved many good things but...", or they'll try to artificially split and say "oh no I'm not attacking the Chinese people I love the Chinese people I love Chinese food but you know I'm just attacking the Chinese government" failing to understand that the Chinese government is a direct creation of the Chinese people and their revolution, any you can't separate them at all, not really.

I suppose maybe you'll think "well what am I supposed to do if I disagree with what China is doing you're saying I can't say anything because Chinese people feel upset about it and by saying something I'm being inconsiderate to them and therefore that's bad?" Well that's a fair point. I think you got to be able to criticize but I think you got to criticize from a place where you actually understand the picture like if you're making a criticism without understanding how Chinese people feel about something your criticism is inconsiderate and it's invalid and off base and it doesn't make any sense. Now I'm not attacking you specifically so it's sort of unfortunate that you know it will look like that but your comment is like representative of a whole genus of comments so you're not unique in this view and I'm not attacking you specifically but these types of attitudes that people have which are very common.

Nothing's probably going to change from me saying this because I think the population is always going to be uninformed about things but they're going to have strong feelings about them anyway and that's how the world keeps turning around and wars happen and all this kind of stuff and I don't think the population is ever going to become more informed because for the powers that be it's useful to keep people uninformed so they can be used to manufacture consent for war and conflict that's profitable and so on.

But I guess I just like to think or believe in a sort of civilizational dialectic where you have this conflict and debate about different systems and it's based on to some extent a well-informed position of either side and also respect: like people keep the f** out of each other's way, you know. okay China runs their experiment and do their things their way, and America runs their experiment and do their things and they don't interfere with each other really, but yeah they can criticize each other and learn from each other I think that's ideal. but it's got to be based on the mutual understanding and respect otherwise it's just abusive. You know if you're just criticizing without any kind of understanding or respect it's just abuse.

And it's so often presented as "oh well I'm right and I know I'm right and I'm absolutely right."

I know I'm kind of going on a bit but it's my first comment of the day and I'm on a roll so you know why stop now? The other point is I noticed that people have this view that Chinese live in a sort of very highly censored information controlled society and so they're unable to kind of think the "lofty thoughts with the freedom...