Western tourism in high-tech dystopia with communist aesthetics

The Communist Party of China is reviving the old communist propaganda custom of providing curated tourism to eager Western admirers of its political system. Hasan Piker, a self-declared socialist and streamer in the US with tens of thousands young followers, is one of the latest influencers who visited China, and poured praised over its totalitarian regime. Like any other pro-Chinese propagandist, Hasan Piker praises China for its investment in its infrastructure and lifting people out of poverty.

Now that China is widely adopting neon-lighting in its high-rise buildings, a tacky practice abandoned by the West in the 1980s, China’s urban landscape really does look flashier. In reality, what young people are being shown by these influencers is only a small part of Chinese reality which doesn’t reflect the daily-life of the majority of Chinese. More concerning is that these kind of propaganda shows don’t do justice to the many Chinese dissidents and Uyghurs who are in prison and ultimately present a false and glossy image of a murderous and brutal regime.

Hasan Piker should and can now better as a nepo baby: he is the son of Mehmet Behçet Piker, who was the Vice-President of one of Turkey’s largest conglomerates, Sabancı Holding. However, he is just one of the latest Western influencers who is being groomed by either China or Russia in what is an ongoing phenomenon of young people becoming full-time propogandists and advocates for Russia and China. Jackson Hinkle is probably one of the most popular among these new grifters and they are inspiring others to abandon their lives in the West to join these dystopian paradises.

The old communist adage about the West being unsympathetic to the poor is a popular talking point by these Western propagandists. The problem is that these propagandists will never show you how ordinary people live in these dystopias. The central district of Moscow does look fancy and wealthy while Saint Petersburg still retains its historical charm. Yet Russia is not just Moscow nor Saint Petersburg and Beijing is by far representative of China. Just for perspective, together, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, China’s major and richest cities, hold just up to 6% of China’s population and many of the people living in these cities are poor immigrants who come from the countryside.

This is how China is presenting its dystopia to the world via its Western advocates: an imperfect country with distinct traditions and customs that is doing its best. In reality, there is no unique mystique about China that makes it particularly more communist. A more befitting description for China would be, a high-tech barbaric dystopia with communist aesthetics run by an absolute dictator and managed by a party of oligarchs. The Communist Party of China is the world’s biggest criminal organisation followed only by the Kremlin.

Grifters like Jackson Hickle and Hasan Piker will scream about human rights violations if their free speech is curtailed back home in the US, but their propagandistic activity in China substitutes the journalistic content that China suppress at home. The official record of jailed journalists in China is up to 100 people but the actual figure runs much higher. Fore more perspective, China has detained up to one million Uyghurs in its genocidal campaign to destroy their national, cultural and religious sentiments and customs.

There’s a very special place in hell for these Western frauds who are walking over the dead bodies of Chinese journalists in Beijing to promote their Instagram-glam grift.