Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide.
Except in Ukraine people did die and their heritage and language were being actively suppressed, etc. We know this because it is documented all over, even in pictures on the net. These specific things are readily confirmable. It was even a large impetus for a broader war, as hopefully you're aware. There is zero question that Ukrainian nazis were shelling Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas and that Ukraine as a state was passing laws detrimental to Russian speakers.
In Xinjiang, no such evidence exists because nothing of the sort happened. It's based on a lie dreamed up by one Christian fundamentalist Adrian Zenz. Every source on this "genocide" traces back to him, and none of the claims are confirmable. Even to the UN! In fact you, yes, even you if you have the means to travel, can go there today and see for yourself that the Uyghur population is thriving and they will laugh if you tell them they're being genocided. I'll leave the academic discussion for exactly where to draw the line for the definition of the term genocide to others for now. But based on how you were defining it, Ukraine was committing genocide, but no, China was doing quite the opposite by encouraging ethnic diversity. Again, go see for yourself like this person did: Oh yeah, just look at all that genociding going on!
Those are still internal to China. I can understand that people are ignorant of the fact that Taiwan is part of China given the rhetoric around it and the fact that it is still provisionally ruled by the ousted rump-state nationalist government that still thinks it's the legitimate ruler of Mongolia too. Taiwan IS part of China, but there IS something being actually being contested there. But Hong Kong? Hong Kong unambiguously is in China, it's just one of the Special Autonomous Regions, but even they themselves consider themselves part of China, not "external" to it.
Also, it's not "bad shit," it's treating reactionaries with relatively kid gloves.
China does not have a "dictorial" leadership. As for Russia, well it's leadership is no more "dictorial" than that of any western "democracy" leadership. Their "political alliance" is still relatively loose, and the only way in which they could be considered part of the same "axis" (not a word you used, but still kind of implied) is because the US's belligerence against them both has driven them closer together.
Hating the west/USA is just a matter of simultaneously knowing history and being a compassionate, empathetic human being. And I would bet that most of the people you would say "love" either Russia or China rather just support their actions and goals, probably very critically in the case of Russia, and do so for rational reasons based on the true behavior of those countries. That is not campism. Campism is when you support (or "love") a country not because its actions genuinely align with your own ideals or ideology but purely because you identify with it. Interestingly, it largely stems from a failure of self-awareness. There absolutely are campists for Russia and for China, I am not denying that at all. But despite what the libs here say, you won't find very many of them on lemmy. Most of the people on lemmy support these countries for very rational reasons regarding ideology and their geopolitical conduct.
This is more or less correct. Most campists on lemmy support the US/NATO and they certainly aren't tankies by anyone's standards. You're right about it always having been solely a derogatory term for certain radical leftists, nowadays usually those who support countries whose governments are fighting western imperialism. But like many others have said in this thread, it is becoming so diluted that merely not supporting the fascist DNC has been enough to get a person labeled a tankie. The silly "authoritarian" part mostly came into play once liberals started using the term and (as usual) completely not understanding its origins (origins that have to do with a specific uprising in Hungary in the 1950s).