this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Falun Gong have allied with foreign intelligence services, but they weren't created by those services. Originally, the organization was allied with the Communist Party and on generally good terms. They only ran afoul of the Chinese Communists when Falun Gong leaders became embroiled in increasingly noxious financial and abuse scandals. Not unlike how the Catholic Church's status soured across Europe and the US East Coast following the slew of child sex abuse allegations.

That's when Falun Gong officials started fleeing to the NATO block and issuing increasingly hysterical allegations about the conduct of the CCP towards its members.

[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for the correction. The point remains that today's CCP mostly limits itself to suppressing foreign actors. And why should it need to suppress its own citizens, anyways? The CCP has a 95.5% approval rate. The Chinese people are utterly committed to their socialist project, and rightly view it as a creation to be proud of.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

And why should it need to suppress its own citizens, anyways?

The goal of the modern CCP is largely understood to be economic growth and steadily improving quality of life for domestic citizenry as a means of discouraging domestic upheavels (Tianamen and the Falun Gong lead movements being two classic examples).

That's going to come with some level of suppression due to friction between what any subset of the population believes/wants and what the central government believes/wants.

But this isn't - at it's root - a Socialist policy. It is a Confucian policy, with Socialist Characteristics.

The CCP has a 95.5% approval rate.

I hope you're joking.

There's no shortage of dissatisfaction with the CCP from within the Chinese polity. There's no shortage from within the CCP.

But what westerners don't like to talk about is the Mass Line approach employed by Chinese political leadership, which legitimately seeks to minimize conflict in pursuit of maximum economic benefits.

You don't have gonzo gunmen storming Beijing in hopes of winging President Xi, right now, because you don't have a public openly at odds with the mission of the chief executive.

[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 53 minutes ago

In 2016, the last year the survey was conducted, 95.5 percent of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with Beijing.

...

Compared to the relatively high satisfaction rates with Beijing, respondents held considerably less favorable views toward local government. At the township level, the lowest level of government surveyed, only 11.3 percent of respondents reported that they were “very satisfied.”

So, I am not going to dive into the raw numbers, but I'm already a little turned around at

  • relatively satisfied

  • highly satisfied

  • very satisfied

I'll simply note that local governments are also run by Communist Party officials. So claiming the CCP has 99.5% approval (even considering how this is a decade out of date and how "relatively" and "highly" satisfied suggest a bit of a gulf in opinion) is a serious fudge of the real public view.

That said, yeah. Much higher domestic view of the state than in the US/EU block. Definitely a problem for all those NAFO-heads who pine for Regime Change in Beijing.