Sophia wrote on Apr 9
th, 2021 at 11:04pm:
Your right.
I have been to China, Fiji, South East Asia, Bangkok, Bali, and impoverished areas are off limits and tourists are shown the nicer parts to spend tourism dollars on... I was told ages ago to give ourselves free time to walk the walk and talk the talk to mingle amongst locals.
There really is a huge rift between well off and impoverished... not much in the middle we call middle class.
Basically, I come away feeling saddened for those people and feel annoyed when others choose to turn a blind eye.
Even in Fiji.... a Fijian woman was talking to me about their hardships and make little money .... I don’t understand the low stated unemployment rate when I was told it was 25% of the country unemployed. (Back in 2000).
So what’s the real figure?
What was a “shameful” thing that happened... as our plane was delayed and our 2 hour taxi ride happened in daylight hours.... when it was supposed to be at night .... so we wouldn’t see how those Fijians really lived.
Tin shacks .... the type of old tin sheds old farmers here, keep their old tractors in.
And little shops/stores all with heavily adorned with iron bars....seems to indicate high crime rate.
I didn’t like it there at all, my friend that invited me seemed so blind and oblivious to it all. I actually felt sick to my stomach.
No wonder they (in those countries mentioned) view us as rich white westerners.
Yes, and while it's understandable that any nation should be rightly ashamed of, or at least embarrassed by, abject poverty, it's unconscionable that the CCP perverts the truth of the peoples' suffering with impunity and voraciously (even blatantly) exploits poverty for political and economic capital... Marx that!
Marx... A dreamer who, in fairness, never lived to see the extent of enslavement his theories inflict on the people he sought to liberate. All he did was establish a tyrant's bible.
Religion: an opiate for the masses? Marxism / communism - amphetamine for the psychopath.
And of Marx's (albeit unintended) victims of his ramble - the rural or impoverished Chinese; what do they make of the CCP's flaunting showcase cities in their face, like Shanghai or Beijing, while they live in destitution, I wonder.
However, all governments can become corrupted and tyrannical when able to rule in the dark; the remedy for which democratic governments must accede to: enforced accountability, and the caveat that the executive leader and their government is neither indispensable nor absolute.
But, in sympathy with the Chinese people, the west has had nearly 250 years of democratic state-crafting.
China has had imperial rule, then military rule followed by descent into the hell that is hardline 'communism'. They have never known government where the supreme leader is not an absolute ruler, hiding behind by the cult of personality and perverted by the myth of indispensability.
And these limits to power can only be sustained by the principles of free speech, the right to protest against the government and a free media.
The refusal to accede to this is a measure of the CCP's cowardice.
Is it messy? Emphatically yes. And you wouldn't want it any other way, given the alternatives.