>Foreign media is easily accessible in China using VPN
VPNs not sanctioned by the government (most of them) are officially against the law. It might be easy, but piracy is also easy. That doesn't mean there's no issue with expensive media.
> do you really believe there's no political discourse in China
There is no public political discourse. There is private dinner table discourse. And Chinese people know very well not to criticize the CCP on WeChat or Weibo.
> the election system is already rigged,
No it isn't, that's conspiratorial nonsense.
> Compare this to China, where government officials can actually get convicted and jailed.
Lots of US politicians have been convicted. You just aren't aware of it. A small sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_state_and_loc...
> But Weibo, Wechat, Bilibili, Douyin, frequently censor even the most milquetoast sarcastic remarks about the CCP or Xi [citation needed]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...
https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Two-Chinese-video-producers-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-censors-letter-n-in-cr...
And many more.
> Can a famous US public individual, in US, tell a huge crowd and media that they believe US supreme court and Senate need to be booted from power?
Yes. It's been done many many times.
> Exactly like in US; the party nominates various public officials who oversee the elections, not to mention gerrymandering.
No, not like in the US. In the US, opposing parties appoint opposing monitors. So when people are monitoring the count, you have Democrats and Republicans inspecting ballots together. It is not a single party, it is a competitive adversarial system.
>Thank you, that's interesting. Source?
https://asiatimes.com/2017/03/100-billionaires-among-chinas-...
https://indianexpress.com/article/world/china-counts-over-10...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-na...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/business/china-parliament...
>See, here's the thing: I do understand your point; it was my point of view for the past two decades. Until I realised it just doesn't match observable reality. What you are describing is just prejudice; a colonial mindset based on a combination of racism and ignorance, which is what American exceptionalism boils down to.
Are you Chinese or have you lived in China for an extended period of time? I've been married to a Chinese citizen for 20 years, my extended family is all Chinese, my two children are half Chinese, I speak Mandarin (HSK4-5) and read Hanzi, and I have lived in China, traveled to almost every province, including weeks in Xinjiang. I regularly read Chinese media (Weibo, Xinhua, Bilibili, etc).
I take issue with you attempting to call me a racist, especially since if anything, I have a deep admiration for Chinese culture (which Mao actively tried to destroy BTW)
The problem I see with your viewpoint is that there is no nuance. Anything corrupt is equal, it's all a wash. So whatever specific problems the Chinese system has, you can't criticize them, because your system's problems (which are different in scope and kind) are just as bad. Ergo, if you criticize China you're just ignorant and a racist.
But what if you're capable of criticizing both? I grew up in the ghetto in Baltimore. I lived sandwiched between two crackhouses. My sister died of heroin addiction. My brother in jail. I escaped, became a successful entrepreneur, engineer, and traveled the world.
I have been a life long critic of the US system, of the neo-liberal corpocracy. But I have strong ethics and values around coercion, corruption, and censorship, and I'm not going to just sit by and give the Chinese government a free pass on what I view as a bad autocratic regime. And I can hold that position unironically, while being opposed to US foreign policy adventures, and US corporate lobbying influence that sandbags social democratic problems.
They are two different problems, not the same. And I can tell you from living behind the great firewall, and having grown up in the US ghetto, which problem I'd rather deal with.
What I find ironic, is from your other posts, you apparently support Ukraine in the Ukraine<->Russia conflict, but China actually supports Russia, and Chinese state media parrots endlessly the 'denazification' model in Mainland China, and you see Chinese citizens on Tiktok, Weibo, parroting these claims, that Ukraine is full of nazis.
But nah, having a government in complete control of the national media and what's allowed to be said on tech platforms isn't a problem, right?
To me, if you want to be morally consistent, you have to strongly criticize both systems. You're attempting to deflect and distort criticism of China by making it into a competition/comparison with the US system.
