this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
101 points (71.1% liked)
Memes
54190 readers
1572 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They aren't? Not only is the idea of mass Uyghur slave labor atrocity propaganda akin to claiming that there's "white genocide" in South Africa, Christian genocide in Nigeria, or that Hamas sexually assaulted babies in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, but the PRC is an incredibly industrialized country and as such doesn't have a need for slavery. Slavery in general is a horribly inefficient system fir anything other than agrarian production, which is why the Statesian North liberated the slaves in the south, for more wage-laboring industrial workers.
In the case of Xinjiang, the area is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative, so the west backed sepratist groups in order to destabilize the region. China responded with vocational programs and de-radicalization efforts, which the west then twisted into claims of "genocide." Nevermind that the west responds to seperatism with mass violence, and thus re-education programs focused on rehabilitation are far more humane, the tool was used both for outright violence by the west into a useful narrative to feed its own citizens.
The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective's Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is explicitly pro-PRC, but this is an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims.
I also recommend reading the UN report and China's response to it. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.
Tourists do go to Xinjiang all the time as well. You can watch videos like this one on YouTube, though it obviously isn't going to be a comprehensive view of a complex situation like this.
Not to mention you don't really need slavery when your minimum wage is like 3 euros an hour and unpaid overtime is the norm anyway, at least in office work
China's doing this capitalism thing way better than the west. We should really learn from them. For example if the US abolished auto unions and increased manufacturing subsidies, they could lower wages and deliver cars for more competitive prices instead of having to rely solely on tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Keep coping that, however bad you have it your country, China must be worse, so it's fine that you and your fellow citizens won't do anything about the deteriorating conditions.
Purchasing power in China goes much farther, real wages are much higher than 3 euro equivalent, and that's for minimum wage, not median. High working hours in office work are a problem to work on, yes, but not one with no signs of improvement. The PRC is a socialist economy with heavy union presence. The large firms and key industries are publicly owned, ie public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. The US Empire can't compete with China because it hollowed out its own industry in favor of outsourcing it and imperializing the global south.
meanwhile in the real world
typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China%E2%80%99s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
None of these things would be happening in China if it was doing capitalism. It would look the way other capitalist shitholes look like today.
"Re-education", that's one way to describe what they do in these camps. And please stop deflecting with "the West did way worse" arguments. To me, China is just as bad as the West.
Re-education is also the correct way to describe the vocational schools. I'm not deflecting in mentioning the west, the utility in pointing out how the west deals with extremism is to show that allegations of slave labor and genocide are projection. I understand that you think China is just as bad as the west, the problem is that your reasoning for believing that is based entirely on what the west lies to you about China.
Clueless
It's not deflection dipshit. Why is the US arming ETIM separatist terrorists? What is the PRC supposed to do when you have radicalized islamists running around killing people in your opinion? Bomb a random country like the US did amrite?