Lemmy.ml users will give you an unbiased take.
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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Long Live the Chairman, maybe he reign ten thousand years!
/s
For china I only trust reputable human right organizations
It kind of depends on whether or not you speak Mandarin.
One thing to keep in mind is that noone has a clear picture of what is going on in the top levels of the PLA, nor the CCP. And that is intentional, of course.
Unless you have a foundation, avoid the China-Fact-Chasers guys, as they are very one-sided, despite their vast 1st person experience living in China. Lei-talks has a less extreme interpretation, with lots of numbers to back things up - and will also go off on the fantastical topics here and there. Ken Cao puts out a lot of content, as does David Zhang, also very anti-CCP
There is a GProf show that focuses on the Chinese markets which helps balance the economy knowledge, but is weak on politixal content.
@SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world @jaxxed@lemmy.world
I'm a native mandarin speaker and China's politics seems so opaque af. All I really know if the real life experiences as like a civillian, and stories my parents told me, and my 8 years of childhood memories there. No clue what the fuck is happening inside Beijing.
I mean I can tell you about my personal experiences of what life is like, but I don't know about how the political system even fuctions. Even my parents that grew up there and lived there for decades there doesn't know wtf is going on in the politics. Its blurry, it's confusing. In my view, it feels kinda like another imperial dynasty, but with CCP as a party at top instead of a traditional monarch.
Edit:
Also: Regarding June 4, 1989, I asked my parents about it and they just said "oh there was something happened with university students... civil unrest" that's all they know. Guangdong Province was where they were at and its far away from Beijing. Now that we're in the US and told them about the western side of the story, and they're like: "whatever happened, it was probably necessary, its not like the country could just allow such chaos to happen" so... yeah... they don't really care. I suspect most people in China don't pay too close attention either.
My older brother made a huge fuss about it when he learned it in the US, I think it was in school where he learned it, totally shocked him and shattered his worldview. I remember him telling me about it, and telling me to "Google Tiananmen Square Massacre". Now he's seems like a conspiracy theorist that distrusts any and all governements, that shock is probably what turned him to Antivax, I mean the shock of his schools in China hiding the other side of the story.
Who do you follow, that you might suggest?
What's wrong with being anti-CCP? I hate China's corrupted government almost as much as I hate the USA's.
Some of the anti-CCP stuff is too heavily algorythmucally captured, and ends up being "China will lose" - which is both wrong, and the wr0ng way to look at the world.
The China-Chaser guys can be the worst for this, as the tend(ed) to phrase the everrything as a US vs China competition - for which the US is destroying the Chinese. Any realist out there knows that the Chinese and US economies are so intertwined that they are both in trouble.
Truthfully, I find that I am anti-CCP, as you can tell bt my suggestions. I try to balance it out, bit I avoid those "US fails as China soars" channels. I tjimk that I tend to follow Taiwanese producers, as they have healthy concern but strong independence. Also I hate bully countries.
One of the few reputable and non-biased sources is the South China Morning Post
SCMP used to be unbiased. However, I'm not so sure if that's still the case.
SCMP used to be unbiased.
When was that? When it was Murdoch owned? Yeah I'm sure!
This is a continuation of Xi solidifying control over the government, which is a break from the post-Mao CCP in having power more diffused across different people. It is likely that the corruption allegations are correct, but bribing officials to win government contracts are pretty par for the course for people in those positions.
My go to for news is Novara Media and they occasionally interview a guy who does podcasts on the intersection of western/Chinese culture, maybe a good one but idk outside of their reports. His name is Kaiser Kuo
Which latest consolidation of power? I lived in China for 7 something years.
I use 1440 for news in general, and if I want to confirm or get more context on something, I use a few different sources to piece together the consistent facts.
Xi disappeared two top generals, but there are signs that he's done it without party approval and might have ruffled some feathers.
Few things going on there. Disappearing a couple generals is pretty par for the course for Xi and it wouldn't be ruffling any feathers if the economy wasn't stumbling, unemployment wasn't crazy high and his covid policy wasn't an unmitigated paying-it-forward disaster.
He's probably asserting authority because he knows he's run out of a lot of runway, and I've read things and listened to people saying that Xi is really at the end of his rope, but being in China myself recently, so educated guess having talked to Chinese people, unless there's a military coup, which seems imprudent and not to the advantage of the military, I don't see Xi being ousted from leadership.
He's changed the constitution so that he can be president for life, released indoctrination pamphlets, but way more importantly on the ground, has dominated trump publicly and repeatedly, which Chinese people love to see, and the technological infrastructure and development of China is so rapidly outpacing the rest of the world due to Xi's directives(400% medical tourism increase in the last 5 years, more than double solar energy installation than the other 199 countries combined every year, 25% of global battery energy grid storage added annually in China alone, BYD destroying Tesla, driverless taxis being commonplace in China, delivery drones, wind farms/turbines) that China already looks progressive, almost futuristic, and has no reason to stop pushing forward.
It's impossible to know, but i think this move will further strengthen his authority that is resting on his political victories on the public stage and that head party and military members won't want to risk removing Xi from power now for fear of losing this opportunity to completely outpace the US in practically every field while trump is fumbling everything scientific, social, and technological while simultaneously destroying almost a century of international goodwill and trust.
Chinese people care a lot about face, and while they aren't domestically happy about covid/economy/unemployment, a lot of them are very happy to be prevailing over the US and for the rest of the world to be witnessing repeated Chinese victories over the US.
2028? Depends on how Xi does. For now, I can't see the advantage to any faction in China removing Xi in the near future and throwing away this golden opportunity trump has handed to them.
This power struggle feud has been going on for at least rwo years, with various levels of hostility, peaking in open military posturing in the streets.
china pretty much controls whatever news comes out of china, so the sources you have to search elsewhere. xi has been consolidating power for like 10 years, and he made a "president for life" a while back too. the evergrande situation , plus thier population crisis which they are trying to "solve".
some other points like thier college graduates are way exceeding the amount of jobs available in thier tech sector, so they have become very incensed, also with HCOL which leads to thier populaiton issue, in addition to the one child policy has left the country very woman deficient.
china like most insular asian countries are very anti-immigration, they allow very few to naturalize in the country and the caveat is denouncing your other citizenships. ALso westerners, particular white ones that move there are often used by the ccp as propaganda to legitimize companies in the country.
https://youtube.com/@leisrealtalk
Plenty of interesting stuff going on that she covers (generals being ousted, political infighting etc.).
There's a bias there but once you filter through that lens the information is really interesting.
She's actually one I've already been listening to, but was looking for others to round out the perspective.
seems just gossip. Couldn't have the patience to wade through until a policy difference between Xi and anyone else in Chinese establishment was mentioned. What are the policy differences being explored?
Private people who have traveled there.
What do y'all think of RedNote?