On Xiaohongshu/RedBook planting seeds cultural revolution in the imperial core
Originally recorded January 16, 2025
This episode is edited in our new, more relaxed style. Thanks for bearing with us over the past 7 episodes as we’ve figured out the process.
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Show notes:
0:10 - Red Book / Red Note Xiaohongshu (XHS) app
(Our XHS profiles: Praxis & Mukamuri)
3:55 - Carl Zha’s RedNote Diaries: Compilations of American and Chinese interactions on the Chinese app RedNote aka Xiaohongshu
Further reflections on how a diverse subset of Americans are interacting with Chinese netizens
Thread of Chinese students sharing pictures of their school lunches with American school children.
Elderly American woman joins Red Note
12:13 - Praxis’ thread on X about the significance of the Red Note cultural exchange on the American psyche
Chinese propaganda melting away
Americans are also beginning to question propaganda around the DPRK (North Korea)
18:34 - China and neoliberalism: US deindustrialization coincided with Chinese mass industrialization
22:14 - Chinese user explaining the cultural differences in how Chinese people view community guidelines vs. Americans
22:45 - RedNote terms and conditions details
23:20 - Video of North American man speaking of how his view of China changed through using Red Note. He also contextualizes the community guidelines on the platform as reasonable, instead of orientalizing them
23:45 - Chinese police/military vs. American cops:
Chinese police disarmed and de-escalate situation with minimal force
Tianmamen square vs. Black Lives Matter protests
25:05 - Further context on censorship’s role in socialist countries
32:20 - On eliminating dogmatism andformalism and establishing Juchein ideological work
Speech by DPRK leader Kim Il Sung to Party Propagandists and Agitators
December 28, 1955
An excerpt:
“I would like to stress once more the prospects of the revolution in our country. Our revolution has two prospects. One is the peaceful reunification of our country, and the other its reunification under the conditions in which the forces of imperialism are sharply weakened by a big war.
We, of course, have been striving with all our might to bring about the first prospect.
Our struggle for the peaceful reunification of our country boils down to two points — to carry on construction successfully in the northern half and to conduct effective political work towards the southern half. If we fortify the democratic base by promoting socialist construction in the northern half and arouse the people in the southern half to the liberation struggle through effective political work directed to the southern half, the peaceful reunification of our country can be realized.
Political work towards the southern half means strengthening the influence of the northern half and inducing its broad popular masses to support us. To this end, socialist construction in the northern half should be carried on successfully. The living standard of the people should be raised and the economic foundation strengthened in the northern half through successful economic construction, and the entire people should be rallied around our Party. Then, no matter how desperately Syngman Rhee may try, he will never be able to dampen the fighting spirit of the people in the southern half who are constantly inspired by the socialist construction in the northern half.
A man who came over from the southern half some time ago said: "Syngman Rhee says in his propaganda that the northern half has a population of only 3 million and there is nothing left in Pyongyang but heaps of ashes. But I have seen here that the bridge over the River Taedong-gang has been restored to its former state and Pyongyang is being built into a much more beautiful city than ever before. Syngman Rhee has told a whopping lie." This is what will happen when we carry on construction successfully.
In 1948 when a joint conference of political parties and social organizations from north and south Korea was held, we did not have much to our credit in construction in the northern half. But all the Right-wing personalities of south Korea came to us with the exception of Syngman Rhee and Kim Song Su. The joint conference was of very great significance. Many of those who came to the northern half at that time remained here.
This is what Kim Gu said: "I have found north Korea to my liking. I have seen many Communists both in Shanghai and in south Korea (if he met any, they must have been those of the Tuesday group or the M-L group), but north Korean Communists are different. I thought before that Communists were narrow-minded and wicked people, but as I have found here this time, you are broad-minded and generous people with whom I can fully co-operate. I will co-operate with you by all means. I am old now, and have no ambition for power. If I do not go back to south Korea, Syngman Rhee will certainly clamour that I have been detained. And it is my desire to go back and give publicity to the fine things I have seen here. So I must go back at any rate. Do not think that I am going to collaborate with the Yankees. When I return here later, please give me an apple orchard, as I want to live in peace in the countryside for the rest of my life." Kim Gyu Sik, too, spoke in the same vein. After that, Kim Gu fought against the Yankees.
As you all know, Kim Gu was a nationalist. From the beginning he was against both imperialism and communism, and came to us with the intention of negotiating with Communists. In view of the fact that even Kim Gu who had regarded communism as an inveterate enemy changed his view of our endeavours to build up the country, it is quite easy to imagine what the workers, peasants, and the public figures with a national conscience in south Korea will think once they come and see the northern half.
Before liberation, the mere words that in the Soviet Union the working class held power and was building socialism made us yearn boundlessly for the Soviet Union where we had never been. How then can the people in the southern half possibly help yearning for the socialist construction of our people in the northern half who are of the same ethnical stock with them?
That is why successfully construction in the northern half is more important than anything else.
As can be seen from the above, when the people in the southern half are roused to action against U.S. imperialism and the Syngman Rhee regime by successful socialist construction in the northern half and through effective political work directed towards the southern half, the peaceful reunification of our country can be materialized.
This is the internal factor making it possible to achieve peaceful reunification.
The external factor conductive to the country's peaceful reunification should likewise be taken into consideration. If we succeed in maintaining peace for a five to ten years period, China, with her more than 600 million population, will grow incomparably in might, not to mention the Soviet Union, and the power of the whole socialist camp will be further strengthened.
Parallel with the growth of the might of the socialist camp, the national-liberation movement of the peoples in the colonial and dependent countries has been ever more intensified, and many countries have been achieved national independence. The peoples of India, Indonesia, Burma and other independent states in Asia and the peoples of the Arab countries are fighting for peace against imperialist aggression.
All this is a telling blow to imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism. When the forces of peace, democracy and socialism grow stronger, the U.S. imperialists will finally be compelled to withdrawn from Korea.
Of course, the struggle for the country's peaceful reunification is an arduous and protracted one. But when we grow stronger and the forces of peace, democracy and socialism are further strengthened internationally, we will be able to achieve peaceful reunification. This is one prospect of the development of the revolution in Korea and of the country's reunification.
The problem of the country's reunification might also be solved not by peaceful means but by war. If the imperialists were to unleash a war on a world-wide scale, we would have no alternative but t o fight, and then it would be quite possible for us to fight and defeat the U.S. imperialists in Korea by our own strength. Although it would be somewhat hard for us to fight against U.S. imperialism single-handed, we should be able to defeat it rather easily when it is compelled to disperse its forces all over the world. In that case, we shall sweep the forces of U.S. imperialism from Korea and achieve the reunification of the country. This is the other prospect of the development of the Korean revolution and the reunification of the country.
We, however, do not want this prospect. We desire the first prospect, that is, reunification by peaceful means, and we are struggling for its realization.
No matter what the prospects of the country's reunification may be, it is more important than anything else to strengthen our Party and steel the Party spirit of its members.”
(We encourage you to read the rest of the short reading.)
34:10 - Society as the Spectacle by Guy Debord (encapsulated in Episode 4)
36:55 - Chinese-American users releasing simulated videos discourages Americans from users RedNote
37:45 - Compilation or Chinese users dispelling propaganda of RedNote partitioning IP addresses
41:22 - Chinese Trump on RedNote
49:00 — Chinese user explains how Americans flocking to RedNote is also de-radicalizing Chinese right-wingers on the mainland and aboard who had precipitously fell victim to anti-China, pro-American propaganda
Further Chinese reflections on their shifting views of Americans through interacting on RedNote
“Americans are finding out China is better than they imagined
Chinese are finding out America is worse than they imagined”
00 - Chinese community vs America identity self-sorting
52:46 - Academic intellectualization of RedNote in order to dismiss it
Chinese users explain on Rednote why Americans must save themselves
58:30 - A cultural revolution
59:00 - On disposability in western culture
1:01:00 - Chinese is a socialist market economy progressing towards communism
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