Meyerlemon
1d ago
Most regulars are known to be American, Indian, Russian, Jewish, Chinese, Finnish, Dane…. I also keep a mental catalog of who might be what nationality based on their respective knowledge on things if they never explicitly revealed their nationality. I don’t think anyone’s intentionally hiding it anyway, so what real use does a location marker have?
Meyerlemon
2d ago
I’m not debating that. I agree with you. And I’m taking notes on those who think bombing Iran would make them surrender. I plan to have a good laugh rereading those comments if they don’t age well. I just disagree with equating Okinawa with the Japanese home islands. They’re far away, and Japanese see Ryukyu/Okinawa as colony at best during the early 20th century.
Meyerlemon
2d ago
”Mainland” makes rather less of a difference when the entire nation consists of islands.
Okinawa is still ~400 miles away from the nearest Japanese home islands. And the early 20th century Japanese don’t exactly see Ryukyuan as their own people while someone from Nagasaki obviously is. Invading the home islands certainly is different from invading Okinawa.
Meyerlemon
2d ago
Not seeing the utility in having just enough bureaucratic red tape to ensure swift and lethal force delivery while actually saving a few lives (Iranian lives, a people with an actual civilization, which should have some extra utility), and then lowkey saying “I voted for this” when tragedy strikes. That in my book is being unable to have a positive vision.
Meyerlemon
2d ago
Have Americans lost the ability to envision a positive future for their own country? You lead the most powerful and one of the greatest nations ever to exist on this planet. You proudly proclaim your democratic traditions and the spirit of freedom - yet this? Reflexively choosing between the lesser of two evils, unable to craft a positive vision or imagine a way forward, opting to be maximally cynical and completely unconstructive. What the hell is wrong? Seriously what is wrong?
Meyerlemon
2d ago
That is all fair. But what I’m saying here has nothing to do with technology or geography. I’m saying that the humility needed when talking about catastrophic events like this is seriously lacking.
I don’t want to indulge in speculating about whether the J36 would win a dogfight against the F35 or whatever. That’s not the point, and what basis do I (or anyone here except the VP who may or may not have lurked here) even have to trust judgments like that anyway? And that’s only a very small issue when what we’re talking about is ww3. I know the Chinese and the Americans are generally competent and that makes things even harder to predict than US decapitating leadership of random third world countries.
Someone below said that no one knowingly walks into a quagmire, and I think that captures my sentiment pretty well. I want the Chinese government to make sure we do everything we can to prevent catastrophe, then try its utmost to make peaceful reunification a reality, and have at a concept of a plan in place if shits really does happen, in that order.
Meyerlemon
2d ago
The “Xi is surely finished - the CCP elites are rising against him” is such a tired genre after Bo Xilai is out. And the ability and will for the Chinese government to control information flow is much stronger now compared to then. Tell me what are the signs that he’s losing control?
I beg Americans to stop consuming YouTube or xitter slops on Chinese politics. The Chinese themselves don’t even understand Chinese politics enough to give you that level of insights. A couple of neurotic Chinese dissidents assuring that Xi is surely finished this time or English teacher in China/grifters posting the coming collapse of China ver#192 don’t know shit. Please ask your most trusted AI to summarize their previous findings and check their predictive power. That’ll save everyone’s time.
Meyerlemon
2d ago
This isn't exactly an attractive outcome.
Better than “martyred” by tomahawks for sure. Or poisoned by plutonium.
What's the per capita rate of execution in China compared to America?
More. Irrelevant of course. Again wake me up when they start striking or assassinating DPP or NPP leaders. They’re right there across the narrow water.
Meyerlemon
2d ago
That’s where Epoch Times and other Chinese expats take you. Some call themselves “bed listeners”, ie if you’re under someone’s bed to listen to the cracking sounds when they have sex. The point being that you can’t get information directly from the communist party, just like you can’t be a transparent voyeur, so you’d have to infer things from the way they arrange cups during politburo meetings, the orders they call out names in government papers etc. It’s a clever name and they do occasionally get things right, but the noise level is incredibly high.
Btw Americans should have realized a long time ago that x country diaspora don’t usually give you more insights than trusted American domain experts. Diasporoids like Pahlavis or Southern Vietnamese or Chinese dissidents are more neurotic than average and wanted to summon Roman Legions to do their biddings, and have incentives to distort reality to get what they want.
Meyerlemon
2d ago
Taiwan is an island country, Japan is an island country, South Korea is a de facto island country…… I’m sure they’d be excited for the opportunity to cut off Chinese ports.
Besides what is the point of imagining those situations where everything is so catastrophically wrong it’s beyond anyone’s imagination? “Oh nukes will fly but our fuhrerbunkers can withstand 100 megatons of explosives while their chinesium bunkers will surely crumble”… what is the point of these besides being analogous to masturbation?
Meyerlemon
2d ago
No Hong Konger has been hanged, precision stroke or killed by ice axe yet. Please remind me when that happens and we could discuss if the Lai Ching-Te or Tsai Ing-Wen would suffer the same fate. For that matter no Tibetan in Dharamshala or Uyghur in Syria/Iraq has been killed by the Chinese government either. Exactly as @2rafa said they were either “united-front”-ed and enjoy bossing over their own people (check the fate of Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme for example) or forced to exile like Dalai or Rebiya Kadeer. At worst they rot in prison like Jimmy Lai. Americans surely love to imagine the Chinese as brutal and hard-willed as they are but we simply aren’t.
Meyerlemon
11d ago
For one thing, prediction markets say it's almost certain that KMT wins the next elections, and everyone knows they're pro-cooperation with the Mainland; their representative insists on Chinese identity, is friendly towards Xi and opposes Taiwanese independence. Abuse from Trump and Lutnick is not very good alliance-building, Beijing barely needed to do a thing. Here's one perspective. There are such polls to drive the point home but I am not sure about it.
The prediction-market volume on Taiwanese elections is way too small to take seriously. It means jack shit. The KMT is very unlikely to win.
For starters, Taiwan’s presidential election is plurality-wins. You can take office with under 50% as long as you get more votes than everyone else. Chen Shui-bian, the first DPP president, won with 39% in 2000 because the KMT split. Song Chu-yu, a former KMT politician, ran as an independent and carved up the KMT vote (he got 36%). The official KMT candidate, Lien, got 23%. If the KMT hadn’t fractured, they very likely would’ve won in 2000 and I think the situation today would have been better had KMT not let their collective brainworms take over. The DPP has been dominant ever since except the Ma years. Right now the anti-DPP vote is split between the KMT (more seniors) and the TPP (more young people), which in some ways rhymes with 2000.
And KMT just does not have charisma whatsoever. It's the lame party. Arguably since the DPP is the ruling party for a decade it start to be the lame party now and young people are moving away from it, but KMT is associated with Chiang, with old KMT soldiers speaking mandarin with Shandong accent, with the Chinese communist party who is equally not charismatic. It'll be a miracle for them to regain power, sans dramatic happenings.
My view is obviously that Taiwanese identity is nonexistent beyond not Chinese. And since Taiwanese people speak Chinese and can (and will because of the gravitational pull) view Chinese media contents, cultural osmosis makes eventual reunification a matter of time (hence the ban on Xiaohongshu and other Chinese social media in Taiwan). Anecdotally late Gen Z and Gen Alpha already seem less pro-independence than millennials and early Gen Z who are the current major voting blocks. But in the short term I don’t think things are going to get meaningfully better.
Meyerlemon
11d ago
The thing that worries me the most is that American decision makers are increasingly just randos on the internet, instead of some cooler head master schemers who have a lot more tolerance to vain glory and low time preference.
My people have too much respect for the Americans to dare to think them as frothing-at-the-mouth barbarians. They are Romans and should be treated with dignity and respect. I hope we’re not wrong, or it’ll be a deadly mistake for all of us.
I don’t know whom to strike for our show of force though. No one in America cares about Myanmar. Maybe philipino shacks on SCS islands? Idk.
Meyerlemon
12d ago
The fact that a good proportion of American civilians are contemplating about striking China is a good reason why Xi should stop sitting in the cuck chair and do somethingTM. A couple easy things to try first: Myanmar rebels? Naughty Zimbabwean who threaten to stop selling China lithium? Malays and Indonesians who abuse (or used to abuse) our brethren in SEA? Hope that day comes sooner than later.
Meyerlemon
22d ago
Basically yes. I mean there is a level of cope for sure among the Chinese for how poor our cultural export is, which needs some correction, at least to be able to attract our cultural siblings in East Asia, but it’s always nice and comforting to know that 1/5 of humanity enjoyed it anyways regardless of how well it does outside of our niche. Maybe American perception of China actually matter, idk, but what exactly is the point for e.g. Serbians to love or hate us?
Meyerlemon
22d ago
The 小品s (short comedy basically) haven’t been worth anyone’s time since Zhao left. He’s genuinely a genius. He almost single-handedly raised my opinion of northeasterners, even though a lot of his work is admittedly a bit crass.
He wasn’t ousted only because he supported Bo Xilai. He was ousted because the northeastern provinces went through a near-total societal breakdown after the reforms of the 90s, which, since you’re from there and emigrated, are probably familiar with. It’s a heavy-industry economy, largely reliant on state subsidies, and when that structure collapsed during the reform unemployment exploded. The 80s and 90s saw widespread violence and gang activity.
And he was there, running a media empire. That alone suggests his hands probably weren’t clean. I love him, but I don’t really want to know what he was up to in those years.
Han Feizi was a disciple of Xunzi, another major Confucian scholar. The guy is completely blackpilled on human nature, and part of that comes from how Confucius himself was treated like trash in the state of Lu. Excerpt:
Still further, the people are such as would be firmly obedient to authority, but are rarely able to appreciate righteousness. For illustration, Chung-ni, who was a sage of All-under-Heaven, cultivated virtuous conduct, exemplified the right way, and travelled about within the seas; but those within the seas who talked about his benevolence and praised his righteousness and avowed discipleship to him, were only seventy. For to honour benevolence was rare and to practise righteousness was hard. Notwithstanding the vastness of All-under-Heaven, those who could become his avowed disciples, were only seventy, and there was only one person really benevolent and righteous—Chung-ni himself!
Contrary to this, Duke Ai of Lu, inferior ruler as he was, when he faced the south and ruled the state, found nobody among the people within the boundary daring disobedience. This was because the people are by nature obedient to authority. As by exercising authority it is easy to lord it over people, Chung-ni remained minister while Duke Ai continued on the throne. Not that Chung-ni appreciated the righteousness of Duke Ai but that he submitted to his authority. Therefore, on the basis of righteousness Chung-ni would not have yielded to Duke Ai, but by virtue of authority Duke Ai did lord it over Chung-ni! Now, the learned men of today, when they counsel the Lord of Men, assert that if His Majesty applied himself to the practice of benevolence and righteousness instead of making use of victory-ensuring authority, he would certainly become ruler of All-under-Heaven. This is simply to require every lord of men to come up to the level of Chung-ni and all the common people of the world to act like his disciples. It is surely an ineffectual measure.
You can see his frustration from this wordcelry. How dare these inferior rulers treat the beloved greatest sage of all under heaven like that?
So he concluded:
....For such reasons, it is a common trait of the disorderly state that its learned men adore the ways of the early kings by pretending to benevolence and righteousness and adorn their manners and clothes and gild their eloquent speeches so as to cast doubts on the law of the present age and thereby beguile the mind of the lord of men...... Should the Lord of Men fail to get rid of such people as the five vermin and should he not patronize men of firm integrity and strong character, it would be no wonder at all if within the seas there should be states breaking up in ruin and dynasties waning and perishing.
Guess "the teachers" (ie the moralizing Confucians of Han Fei’s time) is not only wrong but also dangerous. Time to get rid of these vermin!
There's a historical irony that the most pretigious legalist scholars, Han Feizi, Shang Yang, Li Si, all died unnatural deaths. Han Feizi was killed because of Li Si, his fellow disciple under Xunzi, was jealous of his talent, threw him in prison, and had him executed. Shang Yang and Li Si, who actually seized power, ended up killed by the state (at least in part) because the very policies they designed were enforced on themselves. Their last words are basically some variation of “I should’ve touched grass and not gone full blackpiller”. The empire of Qin which treats their thoughts as state ideology, fell in only 15 years after the first emperor defeated all warring states, and the normies in the warring states hated their policy so much that the legalists were disgraced until the end of Imperial China. Truly the definition of bearing the fruits of your own labor. But at least they are true believers of their own ideology (and also truly great statesmen), not LARPers.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I’m not a military expert, and I don’t know whether your assessment of either the US or Chinese military is accurate, so I won’t comment on the military side. But aren’t the perennial questions 1) whether the Taiwanese are willing to fight a prolonged war, given that they’re an advanced economy unlike the Ukrainians who arguably had little left to lose, and 2) the US’s (and to a lesser extent Japan’s) willingness to engage in an unlimited shooting war with China?
I’m not pretending to know everything about the Taiwanese military, but the infighting between the DPP and KMT, and how closely tied the KMT is to the Taiwanese military sounds pretty dire to me. The state of their military reserves also seems less than ideal. It would be ridiculous to expect them to fold as soon as shots are fired, but there doesn’t seem to be much confidence at least based on the narrow and admittedly biased sample of Taiwanese people I’ve met with.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
Cao Pi in mandarin sounds similar to fucking. People use it on the internet to avoid being censored.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
A couple of reasons.
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The casting was terrible. The actors themselves are mostly fine but they’re badly miscast. You end up with what feels like a Lu Su playing Liu Bei, a Yuan Shu playing Cao Cao, etc. When the core characters, Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang are all miscast at the same time, the entire show collapses.
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The script writing was very bad. The 1994 version used a classical vernacular script that preserved historical immersion, the 2010 version uses modern vernacular Chinese. On top of that, the dialogue is constantly trying to sound clever, punchy, and “memorable.” You get lines engineered for quotability and trying too hard to sound deep but without gravitas. That left the audiences with too many lines that can be turned into memes when the time is ripe.
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It was made during a period obsessed with “reinterpretations” of classics. I don’t know how closely you follow mainland media, but this show came after Yi Zhongtian’s hugely popular reinterpretation of RoTK. He had a very cynical view of the history (not his invention), Liu Bei as hypocritical, Cao Cao as selfish but pragmatically “real” (in his own words 真小人>伪君子), and everyone stripped of moral elevation. That clearly influenced the show’s script writing and acting.
The end result is that no one really respects the show. Compared to the 1994 version, it’s obvious that the newer one completely lacks 形 意 神. Add in the often silly dialogue and awkward acting, and what you get is a meme generator.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I think the only conclusive (and boring) point here is that Xi has consolidated power to an extent that his predecessors could not. And he does appear to have firm support from the Chinese ruling class considering how he purged all but one on the standing committee of the CMC without much troubles. When he started his term, people were talking about how he was a compromise candidate between Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao’s factions, and how he was going to reign with a Taishang Huang pulling strings behind him, but those predictions aged poorly.
It does not inspire confidence, for sure, to see such a high ranking general purged for being a traitor to the country. It certainly makes one wonder whether they are all compromised in some way. That being said, “leaking nuclear secrets” in this case could be serious, but it could also refer to something more benign, like “informing the Americans that we have significantly built up nuclear capabilities, so think thrice before you move”. A decade or two ago, the Americans or even the Taiwanese could induce defections by offering better material conditions, supporting opposition factions, or providing opportunities to immigrate, or simply by attracting naïve party members through ideological pull. I seriously doubt that this is still the case, given the cost benefit analysis. They can be compromised by inside forces but hardly by outside.
I’m fairly convinced that close to no one on the internet has a knowledgeable take on this. Chinese or non-Chinese spectators alike are like a lonely man living next door to a couple having sex. It’s possible for the man to guess at their relationship and catch glimpses of the truth, and if something goes transparently wrong he’d notice that too, but most of their dirty talk in bed amounts to nothing, except attracting his attention. When Lin Biao killed himself in a plane crash in Mongolia, no one was expecting it, except maybe the politburo and his direct underlings. And even now, no one outside of the Chinese decision making circle knows whether Lin was actually, seriously disloyal, or whether it was all Mao’s paranoia. Chinese history books are filled with such incidents, where a ruling emperor lives too long to pass the baton to the crown prince, until simmering distrust forces the crown prince either to usurp the throne or to idle until being killed by the emperor/father. This is literally the most common trope in Chinese history besides barbarians knocking on our door. Future historians will debate whether the killing of Zhang San was the single gravest mistake of the emperor that led to the downfall of the dynasty, or whether it was completely justified and with the crown prince a traitor, the dynasty was doomed regardless. I’m not convinced they are making informative guesses either way. Historians, not unlike me, will judge based on outcomes and on how well the narrative fits the prevailing zeitgeist, but I’m not deluded enough to think those takes are entirely truthful.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
The 2010 version is receiving mockery and dismissal on Chinese social media constantly. One of the biggest meme generators actually. I think the show itself is ok, if you treat it as a story on its own unrelated to the actual history and the novel.
The 1994 version is fantastic, a perfect balance between the director’s own interpretation and the material it based itself on. Music is great, casting is legendary, but it’s filmed three decades ago.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
If you can’t read Chinese, there’s not much point in reading the actual history book. It is a great book, well written by Chinese history book standard, but it is a biography of a hundred different people, each presented in chronological order within their own lives. Without already knowing the broader historical timeline, it’s hard to connect them to one another. On top of that, it’s written in classical literary Chinese, which is hard even for native Chinese readers. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is written in vernacular Chinese and should be much more accessible, though I’m not sure how much that classical vs vernacular distinction survives in English translations.
Playing the games honestly sounds more reasonable. That said, with the games (and with romance of the three kingdom itself, since it’s a novel) it becomes hard to tell what’s actual history and what’s fictionalized. Not that it matters too much.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I really appreciate how you keep tediously yelling into the void, getting mostly dismissals and accusations in return, and yet still choose to engage with people even if losing your temper at times. Not unlike most of my experiences engaging with non-Chinese (or Chinese, frustratingly) online, it’s incredibly frustrating and infuriating to never be taken seriously, but I’m naively optimistic about everything, so here we are. I hope this isn’t the last time I see you posting here. It’s of course interesting to see the progression of your takes too.
In my defense, one had to have direct exposure to intra-Chinese discourse (and then, very specific circles) to get that part right then.
On the off chance that you disappear from this forum forever, I’d really like to ask where exactly you got any exposure at all to intra-Chinese discourse even if indirect. There are discussions on Zhihu (which I’ve seen you cite before, though the platform is now nowhere near its peak), as well as on Weibo, Bilibili, etc. But those spaces are mostly surprisingly barren, especially on sensitive topics, where people have to communicate in something close to Morse code. There are very few places on Chinese social media to hear anyone with enough intellectual curiosity talking about sensitive topics. You also can’t really find good takes from overseas Chinese, or from Hong Kongers or Taiwanese, for reasons I’m sure you understand. I’ve found that frustrating as well, which is partly why I’m here. I want to see what a few gems of non-Chinese takes on China look like, even if they’re buried in a sea of noise.
It would be great if you could at least leave your methods here, in case anyone manages to overcome the activation energy and actually wants to know what’s happening in the country. Or just to satisfy my curiosity.
Many people have profile pics, basically a blob of color. Their flairs are colored, and their usernames have a specific pattern. Yours, for example, starts with a capital B, has three capital letters, and is medium in length…
A lot of regulars also mention their nationality or ethnicity once in a while. Eventually you just remember.
I dunno. Maybe it’s my autism showing, but the autism prevalence here has to be really high.
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