We very often hear in the west about Chinese or Korean propaganda, where allegedly the government pays vloggers or other form of entertainment to improve the impression of the country from the outside. I hear about the beautiful modern Chinese cities but we also hear about lots of inequality and human rights violations in, say, work environments. However i find it harder and harder to separate propaganda from information. For example, i remember watching some videos about China from an American YouTuber (who used to live in China) that criticizes those videos that were just glazing China and saying “well, people there starve and get in camps”, and then go and glaze the USA like crazy. However when actually looking into that, the stats don’t look that bad, in some cases better than the USA. So, where is the truth about all this? Does the chinese government actually pay content creators for propaganda? Does China and the DPRK actually have those insane human rights violations we see about in media?
Sorry if i was unclear, thanks in advance for the answers
For example, i remember watching some videos about China from an American YouTuber (who used to live in China)
Is this YouTuber by any chance a racist white supremacist sexpat associated with Epoch Times and the Falun Gong cult?
The guy at the store mentioned USians retiring to other states for the sex industry, notably underaged workers.
How do you know we are not paid chinese-DPRK bots? Is your metric educated enough to know the difference and whether the difference matters?
Sometimes the most rewarding answers are ones you investigate yourself. If you like reading (on the US, China and then DPRK respectively but they don’t have to be read in that order, and if you are only going to read one then I would read number 2 because the first half of the book is a condensed world history of modern western hegemony):
- Against Empire - Parenti
- Why the world needs China - Ferrana
- Patriots, Traitors And Empires: The Story Of Korea’s Struggle For Freedom - Stephen Gowans
The most common anti-China atrocity propaganda often falls into one of four categories: Uyghurs, Tibet, Tianneman Square and Hong Kong protests. They are very simple to dispel but without learning the reality of how the world actually is they often will do little to persuade.
(I have not acually addressed what is propaganda, how it can be used to persuade - we are actually split in lemmgrad on the concept of “brainwashing” - because that is a whole separate discussion and often sometimes pointless without understanding about historical events as they actually are)
Best of luck
