Maybe silly but at my Korean classes there’s a seemingly “apolitical” guy working in IT who plans to work in China’s IT sector and we talked a bit about it. Just talked about how it’s exciting but wishes it was less difficult for him to go, that they’re making huge leaps in the IT field etc. Just nice to have a convo about it without Uyghurs or muh political freedoms or whatever coming up.
I work two jobs and speak to a wide variety of 99% working class people in both. When the topic of China comes up I find that most people have neutral or even positive view of the country. Talking to people only on Twitter or whatever would definitely make you think otherwise.
The ones who have a negative view are usually the types to watch some stupid probably fascist youtube and think they suddenly understand economics and go on about how China is collapsing soon cause of covid lockdowns or some shit. Even then I’ve had a lot of success just pointing out that US media can’t be trusted on the issue.
All the American liberals around me in my experience get uncomfortable if I so much as praise China’s rail infrastructure and seem to think that Uyghurs have been poured into the concrete or something.
One of my friends is from Hong Kong and he talks about China like it’s a normal country, how disgusting of him. Wants to go there once to work in IT as well. Or to improve his Kantonese and Mandarin.
On a serious note, many people with non-Western roots think like this. Almost as if Western propaganda is targeted at a certain audience.
Whenever I mention my respect for Cuba and my desire to meet the country and people are normal about it 👌👍👌👍👌👍
