Mrsilms (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

saw all of that. my mom and dad in born in shanghai.

gensing (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

Unfortunately, our propaganda system works really well and many westerners dont think it exists. OVER criticizing china is part of this system. If ppl are made to focus on how bad china is, they will "appreciate" our system, and dont have to face that our system has limitations/propaganda as well.Our books do teach about real communism, but still use the term for authoritarian states. They mention its not the pure form, but students start to associate good communism with bad communism anyway.

gensing (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

Yes you are totally right, western countries control their ppl with propaganda too. Even though we have freedom of speech, only certain ppl who say and think the "right way" will be selected to be journalists and tv personalities. So even with freedom of speech there is propaganda and control. It's better than China's censorship but it achieves similar ends.

gensing (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

yeah, again the problem basically lies in definitions which really sucks. States like USSR, China, North Korea, and Vietnam are described as communist and call themselves communist, so communism has taken on the definition of a brutal authoritarian state that controls ppl with propaganda and has a rich elite. Marx would have HATED this definition. The closest thing we have to pure communism now is democratic socialism (eg. sweden) or mix market democracies (eg. Canada where I was born.)

loveluan (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

government in every country controls their citizens, newspapers, informations in somewayit's just not very fair how western media discrib china doesn't have freedom of speech when most of the counties don't

loveluan (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

that's the reason i want to explain the real meaning of communism to western people. cuz when i was little, in china, text books explained communism, and how wonderful it is, even though the society is quite different from how the text books discribs it.when i came to canada, i felt the automosphere are more close to the communism discrided in chinese textbooks, but the text books here are very different when it comes to commu, it discribs commu in a totally wrong way.

MGR1900 (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

Well, it would be great if the fairy princess existed also but the cold reality is that the fairy princess doesn't exist. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the fairy princess exist. She could do all sorts of cool things and then we could go visit all the fairies and the unicorns would be awesome. But then again, you have to live in the real world where the fairy princess and pure communism are simply fantasies. I live in the real world.

gensing (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

Well at least pure communism has good ideals within it. They are ideals ppl should try to work towards even if you can never completely get there. Freedom of speech and democracy were impractical ideals at one time too and lots of ppl criticized them for being impossible, but it was the ppl who continued to believe in impractical ideals that allowed us to have democracy and freedom of speech today. And even though we don't have "pure" democracy, at least we have something closer to it.

MGR1900 (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

gensing, ok. I see that. However, pure communism is a total fantasy. Authoritarian communism eventually falls apart under its' own weight (USSR).

gensing (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

Loveluan is referring to pure communism. You are referring to authoritarian communism which couldn't be farther from pure communism. That's where the confusion lies. Authoritarian communism is closer to US style "democracy" than it is to pure communism.