I lived in Taiwan for over 5 years, most people use Chinese products every day. China is their largest trade partner.
There are huge differences between China and countries like Vietnam and Mexico.
Vietnam is significantly poorer with poor infrastructure. They don't have the capacity to move enough finished products onto modern container ships today. Their electricity infrastructure is unreliable, their local freight rail is poor, and their roads are awful. Chinese wages are much higher than Vietnam now, but because of economies of scale, China can invest in the best industrial infrastructure in the world to help keep prices down for manufactures in every other part of the business process. Vietnam could catch up one day, but they are far behind. India is also in this same position.
Mexico has wages that are just as high as China, but also has terrible infrastructure and and a failing government. No one in China is worried their products will be held hostage by drug gangs, or that their engineers inspecting their factories will get kidnapped.
China is doing so well because they have planned ahead. They created world class manufacturing infrastructure around Shanghai and Shenzhen that have laid the groundwork for modernizing the entire country. They have done a very good job building their "moat" to discourage manufacturers from moving elsewhere, there are just too many potential savings to keep manufacturing in China rather than take a risk moving elsewhere. Despite the US pushing "derisking" so hard, it will have only a slow impact on pushing companies to leave, because the US cannot actually offer them a better deal to move somewhere else.
The components in those Taiwanese and South Korean products come from China. You can't avoid the world's second largest economy in a globalized world.
Most people start by ending up on the join Lemmy website and are bombarded with info about the fediverse, and the description of each server makes it sound like you can only interact with local commities. If you link someone straight to lemmy.world I imagine they will have no problem signing up.
It's shocking how much faster Linux runs compared to a modern windows installation. I do worry however that as more and more programmers focus on web apps that we will eventually see the same problem on Linux as well. Developing desktop applications for Linux is already a pain and the ease of making modern web apps will amplify the problem. At least Linux won't have all of the awful bloat that Microsoft runs in the background on windows these days, but I don't think we will be able to escape from web app hell on Linux.
The Chinese word for red panda is literally Firefox, 火狐, that's where the web browsers name comes from.
It's a shame registration is so difficult right now when this is the perfect storm to get people to switch to Lemmy.
The LDP has never had opposition leaders arrested. Just because they are popular doesn't mean that they aren't anti-democratic. Democracy requires free elections, which cannot exist if a significant minority is being actively suppressed.
I was looking for it on here. GIMP is way too difficult for most people. Krita feels like it can do just about everything an amateur would want to do with Photoshop and makes it painless.
rif basically was reddit to me. If that app goes I won't use it on my phone anymore. I think I'll still use old.reddit.com, but if that goes I'll never use it again.
I really hope the educational subs like learn programming, personal finance, and so on can be successful here.
Listen, I literally lived there for years, I have family there, and I visit all the time. People buy and use Chinese goods every day. Xiaomi smart phones and gadgets are super popular. Chinese phone brands like realme and oppo outcompete local brands. People buy Chinese groceries all the time, especially flavorings and hot sauces. People import Chinese books, watch Tencent TV, and listen to Chinese music. They speak the same language so of course people will buy goods and media content from China.
Even though virtually everyone hates the Chinese government, most people still interact with Chinese people, media, or goods on a daily basis. And this isn't even getting into business supply chains; Taiwan's dirty secret is that most Taiwanese businesses are very pro-China, even though your average person is worried about China having too much influence.