"Authoritarian" is largely a meaningless term. All it really means is one group using force against another group, but it doesn't say anything about which group is which. In the US Empire, the capitalists use the state to crush the workers, and export genocide and chaos to the global south. In the PRC, the working class uses the state to keep the capitalists in check as they progress and develop along socialist lines. This stark difference in which class is in power is shown with immense popular support in the PRC:

[–] syzygy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Can you please provide a source for the graphic?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 week ago

It's in the bottom left, here's another bunch of sources.

[–] sudo_halt@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 1 week ago

Bottom left of the picture would be a good start

[–] AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Meta argument: charts like this are basically useless.

I was raised in a very religious town. If you asked, the people in that town would say “my religion is a religion of love” “people should be as free as possible because it’s an extension of personal agency” and all the while they beat their kids and would rather die than let gay or trans people be themselves.

They can quote the scriptures and could likely write some pretty strong rhetoric implying they are loving and kind and caring, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the truth.

Point is that just because you get phrases pounded into your head doesn’t mean you truly believe them or even know what they imply.

If your country’s rhetoric specifically states that the government serves the people and says it over and over, regardless of the truth of that statement, people will have a tendency to select it. (Like if your government called itself the people’s republic…)

If you asked Americans and Chinese if they think personal freedom is important, you’d likely get the reverse pattern in your graph. Is this because America has more freedom? No, more likely it’s because the historical rhetoric we get exposed to emphasizes “freedom” whereas China’s revolutionary rhetoric was centered around “democracy”

If you asked Americans if they support socialism, you’d get lower bars than if you asked it indirectly. Just using the word socialism skews your metric.

People will say they support or don’t support concepts they don’t understand, or that they view in a different light than others. Does democracy mean more than two political parties? Does democracy mean no capitalism? Does democracy require freedom to spread information freely? Etc.

So once again these metrics are useless because I’d imagine most of these countries’ voters would disagree on what the statements even mean.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 week ago (14 children)

You'd have more of a point if the fact that the people of China support their system wasn't regularly proven in various metrics, not just a single poll.

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[–] b_rain@troet.cafe 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

@KoboldCoterie
Exactly this.

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[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 45 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Libs be like "this is a totally organic movement with broad local support"

Take a moment to imagine the absolutely demonic levels of McCarthyism that would be unleashed if it was discovered that BLM or the Green Party were headquartered in Beijing.

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[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Responding to a federated comment because I don't have a .ml account:

Okay, but we are talking about a country where you aren’t allowed to form a political party that opposes the CCP, right?

There are eight other parties in the People's Republic of China other than the *CPC

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