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China is also cracking down on LGBTQ groups: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57759480 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57759480 Many of the
by ilamont 5y ago
China is also cracking down on LGBTQ groups:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57759480 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57759480
Many of the closed WeChat accounts display messages saying that they had "violated" Internet regulations, without giving further details.
The account names have also been deleted and just read "unnamed".
"After receiving relevant complaints, all content has been blocked and the account has been suspended," the notice said.
The crackdown is the latest example of what some call growing intolerance toward the LGBT community.
Last year, Shanghai Pride week, modelled on Pride events in the West, was cancelled without explanation after 11 years of it going ahead.
In 2019, the Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released in Chinese cinemas, but references to the Queen singer's sexuality and AIDS diagnosis were censored.
In 2018, Weibo said all posts related to homosexuality would be taken down, although it backtracked after massive outrage.
- totetsu 5y agoWeChat seems like a pretty big part of life in China and with the know your customer requirements I imagine those accounts are links to individuals. It must be a nightmare to have one canceled.
- noduerme 5y agoAnd most recently, China wants to censor less masculine men: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-bans-sissy-men-tv/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-bans-sissy-men-tv/ I have a theory about this that isn't politically correct, but here goes. This has nothing to "conservative values" or homophobia or whatever you call sexual repression in places like Arkansas and Afghanistan. It's not based on religion or culture. It's just the CCP running an actuarial table. The CCP is a blunt force instrument. It realized some time ago that the one-child policy had left it holding the bag on taking care of a rapidly aging population without enough young people to power the economy in 10-20 years. Not only that, you couldn't easily just repeal the policy and expect a baby boom. They took a look at Japan and realized they were about to hit a demographically driven, deflationary wall. So the party planners moved from repealing the 1CPolicy to actually offering cash bonuses for second children. This volte-face happened within a few short years. But it didn't work as well as expected. Their sudden magnanimous gesture didn't bump their 5-year plan's crop of new Han for a few reasons: A shortage of women (unexpected consequence of the 1CP), more women in the workforce who don't want to have children, video game culture which makes young men stay home instead of going out and impregnating girls -- which is why they're now limiting screen time, gender fluidity / queerness which suppresses baby-generation, and of course western individualism, the great bugbear of "harmony," which encourages people to wait for love and financial stability before having children. At the end of 5 years of encouraging people to have babies, they don't have enough babies. So now they have to get harder on the edge cases. It's probably safe to assume that gays and lesbians represent at least 10% of the Chinese population as they do in most countries. So that's what, 120 million people? Let's say half of whom are young enough to have at least one child? So we're talking about an extra 30-60 million children if you can somehow get a replacement rate. That's what I believe all these recent moves by the CCP have been about. And banning test study programs? Same thing. No point having more babies if you're also getting overproduction of elites. They need construction workers and factory workers. And someone was told, we ain't gonna become Germany by bringing them in from Tajikistan, so take this data and figure out how to squeeze as much Han production as possible out of it in the next 5 years.
- erosetthanatos 5y agoI 100% agree with your assessment. I've thought the same thing for a while. The downfall of the West is already a foregone conclusion purely from demographics. CCP's hardline on reversing the inverted pyramid trend will catapult it as indisputable leader within the next 20-30 years.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- noduerme 5y agoI don't think their attempts at upping the birthrate are going to succeed. The CCP is fighting against the larger trend of decreasing fertility rates in all post-industrialized nations, while trying to promote stability... they started later and they got to the wrong side of the inverted pyramid faster than the west. Now, if they do have success with a baby boom it may come with unintended consequences. The party leadership is aging, worse, ossifying. It's going to get less and less easy to put down youth protests the more Xi starts to look like Fidel Castro. Maybe their technological cage can keep citizens too afraid to talk to each other, but they're too well connected to the rest of the world to not know what's going on. And you can't cut the cord. That's why the laws against video games, and the censorship of LGBTQ media, have to be pushed as a nationalistic marketing campaign rather than forced as Maoist dictats. (Although the idea of Mao banning video games is kinda funny). China will never be a superpower unless they have a liberal French-style democratic revolution. Then all bets are off. A democratic China might take over the world. Other than that, the worst the west has to fear from that quarter is losing our own souls in the process of doing business with a genocidal government. It hasn't stopped us from buying toasters on Amazon yet.