You received a lot of great information in this thread that is valuable for your own education as a marxist regardless. However, you should ask yourself what you are actually trying to achieve debating a staunch liberal who has already shown little good faith and a tendency to just handwave away facts that do not prove his worldview.

If it was about a public internet discussion, there is some merit to the argument that the point is convincing bystanders who are on the fence. But you mention it’s about conversations with a friend inside a small social group. Are you trying to turn your friends communist? Think about your own radicalization - were you a diehard liberal who got outdebated by a marxist with impeccable sources once and promptly decided they had to change their whole worldview?

People generally believe what they want to believe. Unless your friend is some sort of philosophy enthusiast who believes in truth and pursues it for the love of the game, this most probably applies to him too. I look for some sort of common ideological ground or an expressed frustration with the current system that communism has an answer to in order to gauge if an individual is worth debating and if I can’t find anything of the sort I just smile and dissociate and move on with my life. You have limited time and energy and picking battles you can win is an important skill to develop.

If you simply want to win the debate then just stop wasting your own time. Marxism is correct, and you know this to be true because otherwise you wouldn’t be posting on an obscure communist website. You don’t need other people to validate your worldview. Let them learn through struggle and focus on your own education so that you can better engage with them when they are willing.

Amnesty International is a Democratic Party den.

In my experience you are better not debating specifics with liberals. Their “sources” are imperialist propaganda and they see yours as “ebil seeseepee lies.” You cannot square that circle. So you question their information environment.

“Nearly everything you think you know about China you learned from people who hate Communism and want to destroy it. The same people who tell you China has concentration camps are the people who told us that Iraq had WMDs. They told you Palestinians bombed their own hospital. They told you there was no pedophile ring of billionaires and politicians. They lie to you over and over but you demand proof for each lie like it is not coming from the same source. 90% of news media is owned by 6 companies that are all owned by the same investment funds and 95% of internet news is delivered by 3 platforms.”

If they are willing to concede that capitalist are existentially threatened by Communism and thus western media is an active part of imperialism and antagonistic to any anti-imperial or anti-capitalist system, they might be worth spending the time citing sources.

I don’t have the time to grab a bunch of sources because it is past my bedtime but I do have this on hand

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RABZFUQFGAQ5N32NWXRJ/full

Talking to a liberal about these topics is like wrestling with a pig in the mud, you get dirty and the pig likes it.

If your liberal friend is a well-natured debater who engages with things in good-faith, then what everyone has laid out for you in this thread is gold. If they’re the kind of person who doesn’t take what they learn, investigates further, hears accounts from people from China (while treating them as people, and not as drones devoid of any agency), and comes to a reasonable conclusion by their own efforts, whether it upends their entire worldview or not, then I dunno how else you’ll convince them. Well, unless you’ve got a really sharp mind, memory, and tongue, then absorb as much knowledge as you can as you should have no problems.

I would focus on pointing out the illegitimacy and blatant fabrication of the accountings coming from fascists and religious zealots and how all Western media sources this “information” uncritically. Have them follow the leads on their own. They have to be the one to investigate and experience for themselves. Most individualists will only learn if it’s something they learn on their own, not if someone else is trying to “one up them” and “force” upon them, as folks tend to let their egos drive when they’re in debates.

It takes a lot of self-less effort and struggle against one’s own selfish tendencies if one wants to learn. One has to be okay with being wrong. And in your case, is it really that difficult for your friend to respect you and to trust in your guidance instead of outright dismissing your claims? I no longer have any close, personal friends in life, but when I did, when we would have some pretty heavy discussions and debates or such, we’d generally give each other some leeway, as we’d come to respect and care for one another and found that if one of us made a pretty impassioned case for one thing or another, we’d dedicate some effort to at least try to understand things a bit more–to “hear them out”, so to speak.

Regarding Uyghurs: Previously. Previously.

Regarding Tiananmen Square: Previously.

Essentially, I’m asking for sources that support the Marxist-Leninist outlook of the world that would look good for a liberal, someone who normally looks for Amnesty International, or the UN, or NATO for citations.

Good luck lol.

But regarding China-Africa economic relations, the Tricontinental publishes a lot of studies and reports on the Third World in general and China in specific. And they subscribe to the “China is socialist” theory.

On Venezuela, I remember the Orinoco Tribune being a good English-language source. Since Maduro’s kidnapping the English landscape has been really confused due to so many being in denial about the Delcy-Trump alliance, so YMMV.

The various ML organisations also obviously have their newspapers (liberation news, fight back, etc etc) but for (what I assume are) obvious reasons they focus more on their own local efforts than debunking propaganda.

Your friend doesn’t seem convinceable though. When one sees sources as simply either truth or lies, it’s very easy to disregard any source they disagree with as complete fabrication. Even if Reuters itself did a piece called “We lied, there’s no Uyghur Genocide” he’d probably just scoff and say it’s because Reuters doesn’t want to be banned in China, or something like that.

You can’t convince somebody who’s still willing to actively and enthusiastically believe in the “Uyghur Genocide” after almost 10 years of no evidence.

The whole conspiracy theory started with a claim of millions of Uyghurs being supposedly imprisoned story is based on two highly dubious “studies.”.

However, this claim is completely absurd when you stop and think about it even for a minute. That figure 1 million is repeated again and again. Let’s just look at how much space would you actually need to intern one million people.

This is a photo of Rikers Island, New York City’s biggest prison. The actual size of a facility interning ten thousand people.

According to Wikipedia, “The average daily inmate population on the island is about 10,000, although it can hold a maximum of 15,000.” Let’s assume this is a Xinjiang detention camp, holding ten to fifteen thousand people. How many of these would it take to hold one million people?

Let’s do some math:

Rikers Size	Rikers Prisoners	One Million Uyghurs Size
413.2 acres (0.645 square miles)	10,000 to 15,000	43 to 64 square miles

In reality, one million people would probably take more space; all the supposed detention camps we see are much less dense than Rikers.

For comparison, San Francisco is 47 square miles. Amsterdam is 64 square miles. You’d literally need detention camps that total the size of San Francisco or Amsterdam to intern one million Uyghurs. It’d be like looking at a map of California. There’s Los Angeles. There’s San Diego. And look, there’s San Francisco Concentration City with its one million Uyghurs.

Literally visible to the naked eye from space.

CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, but their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals. Based on this absurdly small sample of research subjects in an area whose total population is 20 million, CHRD “extrapolated estimates” that “at least 10% of villagers […] are being detained in re-education detention camps, and 20% are being forced to attend day/evening re-education camps in the villages or townships, totaling 30% in both types of camps.” Furthermore, it doesn’t even make sense from logistics perspective.

Practically all the stories we see about China trace back to Adrian Zenz is a far right fundamentalist nutcase and not a reliable source for any sort of information. The fact that he’s the primary source for practically every article in western media demonstrates precisely what I’m talking about when I say that coverage is divorced from reality.

Zenz is a born-again Christian who lectures at the European School of Culture and Theology. This anodyne-sounding campus is actually the German base of Columbia International University, a US-based evangelical Christian seminary which considers the “Bible to be the ultimate foundation and the final truth in every aspect of our lives,” and whose mission is to “educate people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.”

Zenz’s work on China is inspired by this biblical worldview, as he recently explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I feel very clearly led by God to do this,” he said. “I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.”.

Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.

Zenz outlined these views in a book he co-authored in 2012, titled Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation. In the tome, Zenz discussed the return of Jesus Christ, the coming wrath of God, and the rise of the Antichrist.

The fact that this nutcase is being paraded as a credible researcher on the subject is absolutely surreal, and it’s clear that the methodology of his “research” doesn’t pass any kind of muster when examined closely.

It’s also worth noting that there is a political angle around the narrative around Xinjiang. For example, here’s George Bush’s chief of staff openly saying that US wants to destabilize the region, and NED recently admitting to funding Uyghur separatism for the past 16 years on their own official Twitter page. An ex-CIA operative details US operations radicalizing and training terrorists in the region in this book. Here’s an excerpt:

US has been stoking terrorism in the region while they’ve been running a propaganda campaign against China in the west. In fact, US even classified Uyghur separatists as a terrorist group at one point https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-was-at-war-uyghur-terrorists-now-claims-etim-doesnt-exist/276916/

Here’s an interview with a son of imam killed in Xinjiang https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-19/Son-of-imam-assassinated-in-Kashgar-s-2014-mosque-attack-speaks-out-RqNiyrcRuo/index.html

Here’s an account from a Pakistani journalist who has been all over Xinjiang (which borders Pakistan) claims that western media reports on “atrocities” are lies. https://dailytimes.com.pk/723317/exposing-the-occidents-baseless-lies-about-xinjiang/

It’s also worth noting that the accusations originate entirely from the west while Muslim majority countries support China, and their leaders have visited Xinjiang many times.

• https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/on-eid-xinjiang-imams-defend-china-against-u-s-criticism-1.5425967
• https://www.bolnews.com/latest/2023/07/pak-religious-leaders-nurture-bonds-of-cooperation-with-xinjiang/
• https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/islamic-envoys-say-china-is-protecting-minorities-in-xinjiang-after-five-day-visit

Also notable that whenever western media actually deigns to visit Xinjiang, which is not often, they’re unable to produce support for any of their claims of mass imprisonment and oppression, so they opt for insinuations instead https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9

There’s a further list of debunking here if you’re interested https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/

(1) On Brainwashing - https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

(2) Immanent critique - eg https://redsails.org/on-dialectics/

I’ve only really just started my research era (and what better place to start it with than the “Tiananmen Square Massacre”) so I can explain my process of finding sources as this was all very recent. I don’t know how useful this will be for you because this was intended for a mainland Chinese liberal who just kind of left me on seen when they wanted to “argue” with me about it (and sadly they were on the side of saying it did happen).

So first things first, I watched the Hakim video, which I had watched in the past, but I wanted to collect all the sources and actually scrutinise them. Who are the individuals making these claims and what is their authority on the matter, were they in Beijing and were they at the square that night?

The video makes the claim Robert Helvey was in Hong Kong while erroneously using a totally unrelated news article as the link. So I search for the claim and it comes from Bahukutumbi Raman, the (at the time) head of counter-terrorism activities in India. Pretty authoritative source I would say.

I then start putting pieces together, and reading through different sources, there really weren’t a lot of journalists inside the square. So the next question is who (if anyone). The Chilean diplomat is mentioned in the video, but I don’t think it’s mentioned that RTVE, the Spanish state owned broadcaster, were the only journalists who filmed the entire night inside the square. So I watch what videos are available, and what the journalists themselves had to say about that night. No massacre, just like the Chilean diplomat. What about other folks? Robert Munro of the Human Rights Watch was there and he counted 10 foreign journalists I believe. Cool. They all pretty much corroborate the same story and align with what the Chilean diplomat say.

I start hunting for more videos and I stumble across Nury Vittachi’s breakdown which has way more sources than the Hakim one and really goes into depth. I compile that into my list. I stumble across a twitter thread with videos of student protestors Liu Xiaobo and Hou Dejian also saying there was no massacre in the square. More and more to the list. I check out the ProleWiki as well.

So then I look at certain American sources to see what the paper trail looks like. I find some information on George Soros, Milton Friedman, and two very interesting magazines, The Chinese Intellectual and China Alliance for Democracy, and how they were funded by the KMT and CIA to spark a color revolution.

I noticed in my compiled list a pattern, that in 2009 a ton of journalists come out and say “no massacre happened, but it happened elsewhere in Muxidi and Chang’an”. And I think Hakim in the video makes the point that “violence did happen but it was outside the square and China was always transparent about that”. So the next question is - does that violence constitute a massacre and when you look at what the “Massacre” is defined as, it’s quite explicitly defined as the military using machine guns on unarmed students immediately after a peaceful exit is secured (and then graphic tank stuff). It was always “there was violence in the area and a massacre in the square”. But now the definition is changed to “there was a massacre in the area and no violence in the square”. There are a lot of conveniently worded things like “it had turned out the majority of the massacre took place outside the square”. Well duh, if nobody died inside the square, and some people died outside the square, by definition the majority of violence was outside the square!

And then finally I searched on reddit if anyone else has posted about any claims or if my claims show up. And added relevant information from there.

Anyway, that’s sort of my thought process when doing research. I hope that was helpful even if it was a ramble. No idea how it would work against liberals.