So there’s this international student from China in my class and she constantly spreads misinformation about the PRC and its history. She basically bootlicks Western propaganda 24/7. She’s also politically active in numerous student organizations and travels back to China frequently, which leads me to believe she and/or her family and friends are up to no good over there as well. Should I report her to the 12339 website of the MSS?
Snitching on an international student will not help China drive out it’s liberals. China has a bourgeois class operating in full public view. China will drive out liberals by developing it’s relations and forces of production and transitioning to a higher stage of socialism.
The potential disadvantages are many. Including (1) ruining a naive young person’s life for no reason (2) putting yourself and the girl on the five eyes’ radar just to cosplay a cold war spy and (3) substantiating (Chinese) liberals’ claims that communists are aUthoRitArian.
Agreed with the first paragraph, and with point #2 on the second. As to this girl being “young and naive” or anything substantiating claims that commies are “authoritarian” though- I don’t expect anything would come of it unless she were actually up to no good. I have been young and naive myself, but that did not change the fact my actions could cause harm, and also consequences upon myself.
And when it comes to “authoritarianism”- apart from that said claims would be made regardless of the fact, why should we care what Chinese or western liberals think? They’ve already made up their minds, and the overwhelming evidence to the contrary exists if they ever become willing to change their minds as well. Capitalist countries certainly keep a close eye on leftist, particularly communist, and any minority organizations, because they’re trying to protect their economic system, abhorrent as it is. And AES countries absolutely do, and should do the same- it is in the interest of any state, any ideological grouping, to do so, and to shirk from it out of some misguided libertine ideals will simply invite disaster, and is not a mercy that will ever be returned in kind. But I repeat- I don’t expect anything to come of this even if she were reported, unless she were genuinely up to no good. Anyone with the sense to see it can see China is not some totalitarian place, as you said, there are even bourgeoisie operating in public view- and in many ways China could be said to be freer than the west, in large part due to the cracking down on and actual consequences for bourgeois liberals which does not exist in the west.