I know it's complicated but the fact it's not china stepping up in these situations is incredibly disappointing to me. That, and their tolerance of billionaires, is really fucked up.
Over the last year or so I have read The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. The Dispossessed in particular describes a communist society - like, an actual stateless, classless, moneyless society - and is really very moving and insightful imo. Le Guin's background was in anthropology iirc so she had some really fascinating things to say about people and culture, even if I don't agree with all of her politics (she was an anarcho-syndicalist).
I mention it because I had been struggling to get back into reading but both of those books absolutely captivated me, again especially The Dispossessed. She really looked unflinchingly at what she saw as the challenges and potential shortcomings of her theoretical communist society which is really compelling and made it feel very real.
I also read "Coming of Age in Karhide", which is a short story in the same setting as tLHoD that examines gender through the eyes of a human society that was genetically modified in the distant past to eliminate all sexual dimorphism, to the point that they are serially dioecious (all individuals can produce both sets of gametes and carry young, just not at the same time) and that was interesting, to say the least, although potential trigger warning as it's extremely about Gender and I don't think I'm well positioned to notice stuff that other people might find disturbing in that context.
The modern Japanese people aren't indigenous to Japan - the Ainu are and probably some other groups, plus the Ryukyuan people of Okinawa and the other Ryukyu islands. I don't know if they're technically settler-colonial in a Marxist sense, but I assume that's what the other commenter is talking about
They explicitly called themselves vanguardist. That is the specific aspect of Marxism-Leninism that people who complain about "tankies" describe as
advocat(ing) ... for invading neighboring communities and forcing them to accept their form of socialism at gun point.
Again, if I gave you a bunch of anonymized quotes, one from a principled member of the BPP and the other from "tankies", you would not in a million years be able to pick out the panther, because they are exactly the kind of people who get smeared as "tankies". It's also very telling that you talk about a "definition of tankie" but didn't actually give one, despite the lack of a definition being explicitly what we are talking about.
I always find Domino's to be vastly better than pizza hut here in AU. It's a halfway acceptable pizza while pizza hut is a sloppy, barely-cooked mess. Which is the exact reverse of the situation ~25 years ago when I worked there, come to think of it, for the exact same reasons.
Even then, the criticism in a group meeting should be general and feedback for specific individuals given in private. "Guys, the hazardous materials cabinet was unlocked when I came in this morning, can the last person out double check even if they haven't used it that day?" is public feedback. "dat_math, you didn't tidy your workspace properly before leaving last night" is private feedback.
Even with billionaires I would rather see them imprisoned where possible. Of course we know from experience that it often isn't, but still. I certainly wouldn't shed any tears over losing them, but I don't support the death penalty under pretty much any circumstances, with only a few exceptions.
Pu Yi was very successfully rehabilitated by the CPC iirc, and he was literally installed as a puppet ruler by imperial Japan. I think that was a genuine triumph.
Apparently measles is so contagious it requires a 95% vaccination rate to attain herd immunity. These people are really fucking shit up.