China is awesome. Its people are awesome. Its philosophy/culture is great. Its government is doing some awesome things.

The notion that shame should be felt over that view is absurd.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have problems.

One can admire/envy/enjoy China and acknowledge they are an authoritarian state, have some worrying cultural issues, a strongman leader, a bloody history, censored discourse and so on.

These views aren’t mutually exclusive.

And as for the “western imperialist” rhetoric, that has precisely nothing to do with China’s problems. It’s irrelevant whataboutism.

And it’s especially ironic given most of it on Lemmy is spouted from users in western nations.

For reference: Lemmy.ml is banned in China.

a red flag

Nice

I dunno it's pretty easy to think China has some really cool things but also acknowledge it's a terrible place

This is why I personally like to use the cool shit Yugoslavia did. Obscure by western standards and the only ones who get weird about it are Serbs.