A Stroll Around Tongren

Tongren Night Walk, China’s Stunning Ancient City | Guizhou Province | 4K HDR - YouTube

For anyone who has an hour and a half to waste – or even just a few minutes – here is a fascinating video of an evening walk around the (touristy part of) Tongren in China. Tongren? It turns out to be another one of those Chinese cities with about 4 times the population of San Francisco CA which most of us have never heard of.

The video begins with a stroll along the peaceful riverwalk. At about the 40 minute mark, it gets to the busy Central South shopping street. At about the 1 hour mark, it wanders into the space museum.

What is striking – lots of families, young couples, lots of children, a plethora of young women, interesting art work and architecture – along with an almost complete absence of litter, graffiti, official presence, anti-social behavior. A San Franciscan might feel he had crossed into a (much better) parallel universe.

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IF you can believe anything Communist China puts out. They seem to be King of “black is not black and white is not white”.

But they DO know propaganda.

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There is propaganda – “Ukraine is a democracy”, “the vaccine will prevent you from getting Covid” – and then there is reporting. It is seriously dubious that the Chinese Communist Party spent big bucks tarting up Tongren and arranged for large numbers of well-behaved Party members to show up for a video that very few people would ever see.

China undoubtedly has its problems. We have the unholy trinity of the evil Democrat Party, the stupid Republicrat Party, and the bought & paid for propagandizing Big Media. Let’s deal with our own problems first!

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Well, in the spirit of liberty, I can’t fault you on your priorities. Fix ourselves and let the rest be damned.

But I DO NOT agree on China’s priorities. I believe what you say is what a capitalist would consider rational. But they’re not capitalists.

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We agree on that. The Chinese Communist Party is not communist – negligible social safety net, great wealth disparities. It is in fact Fascist, the union of big business and political power.

The problem we face in the West is that our “democracies” have evolved into Fascism also – same union of big business and political power. The difference between the West and China is that in China it is the politicians who call the tune, in the West it is big business. If we force ourselves to be objective, it is fairly clear that over the last quarter of a century the Chinese version of Fascism has done more to raise the living standards of ordinary Chinese than the Western version has done for ordinary Westerners.

Some astute observers argue that China has been coasting on the long-term benefits from its relatively relaxed pre-Xi policies, and is doomed to suffer as Xi imposes more of the top-down rule that is destroying the West. But that is China’s problem to deal with. We have our own much more pressing problems that we need to fix.

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I would argue we have some of the characteristics of fascism, but it’s kind of turned on it’s head. Instead of the politics controlling the business, we seem to have business controlling the politics.

Look at the border. ?Do you really think if the Republicans were for border security we wouldn’t have solved the issue way before now. Trump tried and in the first two years there were enough “Republicans” to get the job done - but it wasn’t. And it wasn’t the media that made the difference. By now people have come to view the media like background music - there but only as “filler”. No one actually listens to those clowns.

So no matter who is in power, the elite still get their “Sylindra” pay-offs”. I grasp that there is a political-economic cartel that runs the nation, but in fascism it’s the political part that actually runs the nation; the business only get the good pickings from the table, like trusty dogs. And I believe we here still think like capitalists, even if the nation is not run like a real capitalist one. That’s one of the things that makes us so mad.

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Agreed. There are definitely two flavors of “fascism”, depending on whether politicians or businesswomen are calling the shots. But it is a symbiotic relationship. A system with very expensive “democratic” elections (as in the US) puts the businesswomen in the driving seat, as politicians have to beg for money and offer inducements/favors in exchange; the absence of that particular kind of corruption (of course, there are others) allows the politicians to call the shots (as in China).

Maybe we need two different words to describe the different forms of fascism which now control the world?

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