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Ridiculous Chinese censorship used AI to change the gay couple in Together (2025) to a heterosexual couple
(hexbear.net)
Usually, they only censor the explicit content. But this is the first time that AI tools were used to directly alter the content of the original film.
By the way, the film has been withdrawn from a wide release in China after receiving too many complaints.
No, I have written many times that Deng’s reform was critical, especially the first 30 years. I take issue with the neoliberal turn after joining the WTO in 2001, and while the leadership has so far done a decent job of preventing a broader economic crisis, it is very obvious that we are already past the limits of Deng’s reform and there is an urgent need to transition away from the neoliberal policies that rely on an export-led growth model.
It is already evident that the slowing growth over the years, the end of the infrastructure investment-led era, the slump in domestic consumption and the difficulty in transitioning away from the export industries all point toward a need to move away from the neoliberal model. This tracks with the fact that neoliberalism is also reaching its terminal phase globally.
What I don’t understand is why do people cling on to Deng’s reform as though it can go on forever? If Mao’s planned economy only worked for 20 years, and a reform and opening up era had to follow, then the natural course when such a phase has reached its limit would be to transition into a new socialist-oriented phase.
A lot of this comes from poor understanding of Chinese history and how its economy actually works. I’m trying to educate people here but get accused of being an ultra and a Trot lol. An ultra would denounce Deng’s contributions completely, and Trots would hate both Mao and Deng. I don’t even think many here understand the differences between them.
Since when have I said that China exploits the Global South???
Also I never said China is too capitalist. In fact, I said that China is socialism with Chinese characteristics, and this form of market socialism relies on building socialism through neoliberal principles. Very important distinction here.
writes in notebook: "shipwreck hates Jiang Zemin and the Shanghai clique"
Don’t even get me started about how Shanghai single handedly sabotaged the entire national Zero Covid policy just less than three years ago lol. I am still seething.
The biggest achievement of the current premier, Li Qiang (famously the party secretary of the Shanghai branch), was giving Tesla huge incentives to build its factory in Shanghai. These people were so enamored with Elon Musk that they made Tesla the only foreign automaker company in China that does not have to partner up with a local company (not joking). And for this, he is being rewarded with a promotion to the premier position at the 20th CPC Congress (again not joking).
No, you misremembered. Shanghai wanted to go their own way, emulating Western countries with “targeted lockdown” strategy. It went out of control when Omicron hit. When the virus is all over the country, it was pretty much over. The government could no longer justify keep locking down the entire country at that point, and the Zero Covid strategy ended in January 2023 just before the Chinese New Year.
Reminder than Shenzhen has more or less the same population and density as Shanghai, and was hit by Omicron at around the same time, and succeeded with a full lockdown mode. So the argument that Shanghai couldn’t have done it better is pure bullshit.
You are correct but misunderstood my point. I remember clearly that Shenzhen and Shanghai went into lockdown around April 2022 at almost the same time, with quite a staggering outcome.
The March-April 2022 wave showed how costly it would be to get the pandemic under control again if “accidentally” allowed to be spread again. This is the lever the Shanghai libs have over the central government. When Li Qiang (who was criticized for his handling of Covid) was made Premier in October that year during the 20th CPC Congress, it was clear that the libs have regained control. By December as a new wave appeared, the Zero Covid policy would be abandoned.
No problem. I still get emotional about it lol. Maybe I am being a bit unfair against the Shanghai people haha.
Maybe you haven't said that about the Global South, I'll delete it because I have no specific evidence, just thought I'd read you previously skeptical of some BRI stuff for not benefitting the receiving country. But I'm not gonna go searching your history to try to prove it because I believe you
But for the rest, ok, I will read your stuff in this light from now on!
I do think we disagree though about how long Deng's reforms are useful to keep up. To me it seems pretty clear that, as long as Chinese growth (not just money, but skills and equipment etc) is accelerating relative to the US, they're useful. I see yet no indication that this isn't true, and will only begin to be skeptical once it's clear that the benefits are no longer causing a rapid catch-up and passing of US hegemonic power.
The BRI was an initiative that gained traction after Obama ended quantitative easing in late 2013. In other words, as China’s twin surpluses ended, China had to stop accumulating dollar reserves so they had to find a way to lend out those money elsewhere.
The problem with BRI and the Asian Development Bank is the fact that when you try to lend out investment money, but has not built a domestic market that can accommodate for the production, then obviously the BRI countries will still have to sell to the countries that are willing to run the deficit to import from them.
By the way, I have also made clear that these are not my ideas. Much of my understanding of economics and framework of analysis are strongly influenced by Prof. Jia Genliang of the People’s University, whose combination of Marx, MMT and List have proven very valuable for me to understand how global capitalism work, especially in relation to China.
The problem is the growth has not translated into wage growth for the working people. Unemployment is actually quite high (especially youth unemployment) for a country that is growing at 5% GDP. So where did all the growth come from? If it’s more investment in housing, then that increase in the GDP growth isn’t going to benefit the people.
Does prof Jia Genliang or other profs of similar vein have reading material?
Yes, 《国内大循环：经济发展新战略与正则选择》(The Great Internal Circulation: New Strategies and Policy Choice for Economic Development) (2020) and 《现代货币理论在中国》(Modern Monetary Theory in China) (2023) are the two major works in recent years on how trade policies and the monetary system actually work in China.
They go against the standard neoclassical thinking (need to balance the budget etc.) and focus on using political economy (what Marxian economics is called in China), MMT and List’s theories on international trade as a framework and really helped me understand a lot of the intricacies of the Chinese economic model.
In Chinese only though. I did try to translate some a while ago but I don’t have as much time to do them these days (I don’t use machine translation because they make a lot of mistakes or use weird phrases).
Thanks comrade. And funny enough I can kinda read Chinese. Somewhat. I'll give them a look with time.
Welcome. Feel free to let me know if you have questions.
Growth doesn't always translate like that to wage growth, and in fact would not if the surplus value was being used to further accelerate more growth. investment in further infrastructure, reasearch, etc, controlled by the CPC directly or through incentive structures over a private market, would not at all translate to raised wages but would raise the possible wages for all in the long term if successful.
I see the position that Chinese wages are too low to be one of priority, not of an ideological mistake. Because extreme poverty is low and 'political capital' (popularity) is comfortably high internally, it's a completely valid strategy to now translate growth to direct benefits but instead to strategic positioning for the future of the political economy, including the possibility of war with the US.
While i have your attention on the matter, something I've tried to ask before but still just do not feel I have gotten a good enough response to: why is the switch from an export economy to an internal market considered such a hurdle or barrier?
I think that this hurdle that you often bring up is expressly set at a very low priority by Chinese officials because it will be so easy to overcome relative to the much bigger ones (like US hegemony, global cooperation, resource management). Even within the framework of MMT (of which I am unconvinced except as a method of accounting with little strategic difference), this switch to an internal market can just be flipped pretty damn easily. So why should they put energy into the topic now as opposed to once the current strategy of investment in the future is going so well? What are the problems you forsee?
Read my entire explanation here.
Why do you think wage growth is not important? Why do you think China is having a serious consumption and deflation problem…. if it has nothing to do with wage growth? People are not consuming because of the economic downturn and uncertainty. Income does not justify the spending.
I think it can be said to be less important given the much larger contradictions facing China. Not that wages are just unimportant in themselves.
I agree that the problem of wage growth and an non-export economy are intermingled, of course. I just think that this is a pretty easily solvable problem and CPC under Xi Jinping is aware of that. But raising wages is in contradiction right now to competing with the US on a global stage (because, instead of increasing wages which will be used for consumer goods, extra surplus is put back into larger infrastructure and future-oriented technology and weapons). Being an export economy is still the correct strategic choice until China is no longer massively out-accelerating the US on the global stage.