Thanks for your reply!

I know about the distribution of power, that has a kind of pyramid shape, sorry for the lack of vocabulary. I have also seen videos, of cause one sided, from people that lived in China for some time and displaying their view. One very popular story is the "they paint their grass green", which I understood as follows: There is the goal of having a certain amount of green land in the country, so each region trys to reach that goal and show the higher ups how good it is going by having green grass and hills. This is of cause a very simplified scenario, but I have read a few other things that aren't so great. Of cause you can say the same thing about many other western and global north countries, but very few people are so emotional and strong opinionated as supporters of China, some north korea or Russia. I feel like i have not read a comment with such a strong opinion about any other country here on Lemmy.

I see that the view of most westerns is shifted from reality, but I have not read a comment that seems to see both sides of that country, it seems very extremistic.

Now when I think of China, these things come to mind:

• the Uighurs
• not quite working democracy
• extreme surveillance
• stories of people getting herassed by the police for criticising the state or being different (Naomi Wu on yt for example)
• impressive industrial development in the last few decades
• high working ethics
• creativity in engineering
• skilled labour
• high building rates of solar and renewable energy sources
• also high coal production and high building rates of coal power plants
• high censorship, as it can be seen with deepseek and other AI or media
• stories about testing radioactivity on a village
• striving for higher environmental regulations in the industry
• affiliation with Russia, that invaded Ukraine (after the Nato got closer of cause, which might be seen as a provocative move)
• affiliation with north korea, which is a different conversation
• their problem with Taiwan and tsmc
• hard working conditions in factories (owned by western companies sometimes, but the government is supposed to protect the citizens in my view)

Now this is of cause not at all everything and I am aware its a view fuelled by western media. But if half of those things are true, its still not going great.

I don't want to talk China down, I want to understand why so many people in this space are pro china, when I see the government as pretty critical. I know the us is putting a ton of effort into discredit other forms of government or markets, and there are for sure a few points in this list that is heavily influenced by them.