MicroWaveNov 16, 2023

Biden says he still believes Xi Jinping is a dictator

https://lemmy.world/post/8330852

Biden says he still believes Xi Jinping is a dictator - Lemmy.World

US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he still believes Chinese President Xi Jinping is a dictator, even as the two leaders made progress in their relationship during a meeting outside San Francisco. “Well, look, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden told CNN’s MJ Lee. “Anyway, we made progress.” When asked about Biden’s latest comment at a Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Thursday, a spokesperson called it “extremely erroneous” and an “irresponsible political maneuver, which China firmly opposes.”

Show threadBloodSlutNov 16, 2023

What a weird way to define a dictator.

Not “he has been in power for an extended period of time in a country with a single ruling party.”

But “he runs a communist country that has a different government than ours”?

Show threadBuelldozerNov 16, 2023

I’m not a big fan of President Biden after some consideration I’ve decided I do like his answer. It’s nuanced, which means the Internet won’t understand it, but it answered the question correctly (Yes he is) while making it clear that other countries have different styles of Government that we may not like but must accept if we want to have relations with them.

Countries with Liberal Democracies, like the United States, have no responsibility to lie about another countries style of Government to spare their feelings but we also don’t need to let our distaste preclude us from talking to them.

Show threadbighiNov 17, 2023
What a weird take.
Show threadKarmaTrainCabooseNov 17, 2023
What makes it weird?
Show threadbighiNov 18, 2023

Everything. Its fully loaded with fake news from the biggest propaganda machine in the world: the US.

There’s no dictatorship in China. But the US spends A LOT of money to make every socialist country look bad, because if people knew there was an alternative to capitalism, most of the ruling class in the US would fall. They can’t let that happen.

Show threadKarmaTrainCabooseNov 19, 2023
China is effectively a dictatorship. It has one political party and Xi Jinping ended the two term limit so he could stay in power. What form of government would you say they have?
Show threadbighi

It has nine political parties, not one. But also, political parties work differently in a socialist country. You can’t expect other systems to be a 1-to-1 mapping of what you have in your country.

Even in a socialist country with a single party (which is not the case of China), there is competition for leadership.

The leader of China is elected. Really elected, without rigged elections like you see in countries like Russia. That effectively makes it not a dictatorship.

All this talk of China being a dictatorship comes from US propaganda.

So let me try and break a few of the misconceptions created by the US propaganda machine: the leader is elected. People can complain about the government, and they do. Not only that, but the government is regularly reading criticism and using that to make things better. There is no social credit score.

Nov 19, 2023 at 11:06pmWeb
Show threadKarmaTrainCabooseNov 20, 2023

There may be other political parties but none of them have anywhere near the power of the CPC. They are all subordinate. For example, all election candidates must be approved by the CPC.

Also, the only direct elections in China are at the local level. At higher levels of government everything is chosen by local congresses. This results in a system where the people at the top are very removed from the votes of citizens.

Also, the national Congress largely exists to rubber-stamp whatever Xi Jinping wants. Any opposition would be swiftly stamped out.