Meyerlemon
30d ago
Of course, this place is mostly inhabited by Americans. Your sense of what is right or wrong is inevitably tied to your own experience (which I assume is American), and I see nothing wrong with making these kinds of comparative analyses. They are far more informative than talking about “values” as if they exist in a vacuum.
Your perception of China is a belief system, and it does not have to be rooted in anything real. There are no real interactions, no anecdotes, not even citations. Beliefs are difficult to dislodge with arguments. The good thing is that they also cannot shape reality however they wish.
Meyerlemon
30d ago
What is it about Chinese culture that feels so foreign, especially in comparison to Indian culture? I think I sort of understand what you mean, but at the same time I don’t really. Is it the aesthetics, the language, the level or form of religiosity, the way of thinking, or the collective memories people share? And do Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultures feel equally foreign to you?
Meyerlemon
30d ago
the U.S. and Europe tried to walk off a cliff for environmentalism
Being hopelessly idealistic and impractical is not a good thing. Half or more than a half of your people don’t favor that environmentalism, and having your rulers enforced them on you is also doubleplusungood. I don’t know what to say if that is what you meant by not “worsening the problem”. It’s laughable.
The U.S. has chaotic moments but the overall arc is to make costly decisions of questionable efficacy to try and solve the problem.
Much to my disappointment I see little will from Americans left or right to solve the problem. All they have shown so far is to pretend to solve the problem. And they spend more time debating about who should take the blame than acting together as a people to solve any problems. Incredibly unfortunate, I do like the American people.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I don’t think the Japanese or the South Koreans have been ruled by their own people who actively destroyed their cultural heritage. Yes the Japanese had their own identity crisis after the Meiji restoration (e.g. 脱亚入欧) but I’m not sure if there is a societal wide, bottom up or top down destruction of its own cultural heritage similar to China. The South Koreans are subjugated by the Japanese from 1870s to 1945 and were forcefully Japanified, but being colonized is different from what we’re talking about here. North Koreans sure, and I don’t think they have any positive cultural export. Neither does Vietnam. I think the Vietnamese has the same problem just like us.
I guess a good comparison would be … the Turks? An empire that suffered defeat after defeat for a century and ruled by progressives who have in fact latinized their language and destroyed at least part of their cultural heritage? I’m not that familiar with them to tell if it’s an accurate description of their experience, but I’m also not reading Turkish novels or wearing Turkish clothes.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I think this is because Chinese culture of today is not Chinese, but some weird modernist cargo cult culture based on the Chinese perception of the west. It’s of course uncharismatic because it’s a poor imitation of the real thing. And that also contribute to the poor taste of our people.
There is a disconnect between Chinese and the Chinese culture. It’s a civilization that have suffered utter defeat for 100 years, and then ruled by actual progressives who blame said defeat on their own culture and want to distance themselves from it for another 30 years, until they regain a bit of sanity. That’s about four or five generations. Many cultural memories, traditions, vocabularies are lost and hard for people to reconnect. This makes it really hard for the Chinese to export genuine Chinese culture. I think this might be an issue that will get solved once people become richer and have more free time and resource for artistic pursuit but we shall see.
I think your points e.g. about not believing in international treaties or China worsening environmental problems, are obviously nonsense at least in comparison to the US (how anyone can still say this with a straight face after everything that happened last year is both interesting and sad), and not really worthy of discussion especially considering how you responded to others arguments below. And of course saying that our society is the most morally bankrupt is just silly considering how (unfortunately) exposed Americans are to other low trust immigrant societies. But it is hard to argue that the average Chinese person is less morally bankrupt than the average American. I know what my preference would be if I ever had to choose.
It’s pretty apparent that China, as of this year, is still a fairly low trust society, despite how much progress it has made (and despite how safe, clean, and orderly the major cities are). There is a genuine mistrust between people, which is reflected in the hypercompetitive, striver culture. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself, and competition with others is seen as a zero sum game. This kind of mentality is quite common among Chinese people, and it’s sorta reflected in web novels, one of the few semi-successful Chinese cultural output in the West. Of course also reflected in the toxic work cultures in Chinese companies overseas (eg tiktok).
I remember a few weeks ago there was a discussion about how high-trust societies were built, and how impossible that now feels. I think Chinese society may actually be building one right now, through harsh and draconian laws, and through education. From my experience, my generation is certainly more trusting than my parents, which is a low bar considering how the Cultural Revolution and the purges destroyed the good and the noble and turned everyone else into cynical non-believers. Like many things, I think our society is moving in the right direction although still deeply flawed and feels hopeless at times. I don’t think Americans feel the same way about their own society.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
You have a system where people choose who represents them by voting, and you accept the rules of that system. You don’t get to shrug off the consequences or pin the responsibility on “the other side” when it’s convenient. Trump represents your country. He is your country.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
The level of ignorance well-educated Americans have about China is honestly baffling, especially considering how many Chinese nationals literally live among them, how easy it is now for anyone with enough curiosity to see at least what Chinese social media is actually like, and how the civilian and bureaucrats pretend to take China seriously. A few weeks ago Scott Alexander in his open thread, quoted someone claiming that China has a whopping 50% youth unemployment rate (to his credit, he did acknowledge that he hadn’t verified the number). And of course during any discussions you get the usual “social credit score” or “cook the book” talk points. If people wants to talk about overproduction or involution or demographics or the pathological striver culture or the weak cultural output, I’m all for discussion. But using those recycled talk points from ten years ago is all so tiresome.
I sometimes wonder whether Americans today have roughly the same level of understanding of China as people had of the Soviets back in the day. Or maybe Russia being (at least in our Oriental mental map) Western meant it was better understood? Genuinely not sure. Don’t you want to know your enemy, if thats what we are?
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
Wolf Totem is our version of a “Noble Savages” book. Not to criticize it too harshly but it’s one of many works that try to understand and explain why China fell behind, though I’m not convinced they truly understand the culture they romanticize. Few of those writers have more than a superficial understanding of the savages. That genre has become increasingly irrelevant in China anyways. I guess this particular book does align quite well with American red tribe values.
they could until Mao messed it up with his stupid "simplified Chinese" that randomly removes strokes
It was not Mao’s effort, and you should not give him credit for it. Since the beginning of the New Culture Movement, scholars had already been considering the simplification of Chinese characters as a way to improve literacy. Some radicals even wanted to abolish Chinese characters altogether, similar to what Vietnam eventually did. The Nationalists also had their own versions of simplified characters before the Communists (RoC’s Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the US, Hu Shih, is one of the most prominent supporter of reforming the Chinese language), although these efforts met with strong opposition. Japanese too have simplified some Chinese characters (some even borrowed by the communists later). All of these movements eventually culminated in the Simplified Chinese.
Most simplified characters have roots in Caoshu or Xingshu. Because of their cursive nature, these scripts naturally reduce and merge strokes. Scholars who are tasked to simplify Chinese mostly do not make up new characters. There are a few abominations that are created entirely after the Communists took power and makes no sense, but overwhelmingly, simplified characters predate Mao, some of them by centuries, even millennia.
Also only ~20% of Chinese characters have been simplified, and a majority of them (I would guess 60% probably) are only mildly simplified and easily recognizable by traditional Chinese users.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
Sure I'll write an effortpost when I have enough time. I don’t think it has reached SK levels yet, but Chinese netizens often call the Korean dating market “early access” which implies that we’ll get there soon. I’d rank the intensity above the US but below SK. That said I haven’t been on the dating market for some time, and I only know what it’s like through second or third-hand information.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
Unlikely to matter at all, all these BS. I can’t find any Chinese media discussing it, except on Chinese expat forums where people are mostly mocking it. The Japanese don’t use 他 as a third-person pronoun, and Koreans hardly use any Chinese characters these days. So who exactly is the target audience here? Taiwanese? Activists can make a thousand such characters a day and it won't matter a bit to the people who actually use it. I can't imagine anyone unironically using it and not get mocked. It’ll become one of those meme character like 囧 once Chinese netizens find out its existence.
Also all of these pronouns, 他 the neutral third person later repurposed as a male pronoun, 她 the female third person, 牠 the animal third person, 祂 the deity third person, 它 the catch-all third person, and whatever this new abomination is, are pronounced exactly the same: tā. In my Chinese speaking brain, these pronouns are all the same because they’re homophones. English speakers might notice that Chinese speakers occasionally misgender people, and that’s mostly not because we do it on purpose. I will support the idea to eliminate all these nonsense pronouns and just keep the original 他, and hopefully it'll also cool down the ever-intensifying gender war in China.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I’m really not sure about the less materialist part, but definitely less pro-democracy and more nationalist. The rise in nationalism is actually a bit awkward for the party, because while it would love to derive (and is deriving) its legitimacy from Chinese nationalism, there’s always tension between nationalists and genuine believers of communism and that communism meme keep propagating inside of China. Honestly it would be nice if they just changed the name to avoid confusion, both internally and externally.
From your article:
To measure the level of postmaterialist values, we adopted Inglehart’s 12-item measure in the WVS. Respondents in the survey were asked to prioritize the 12 value-laden choices. Among these choices originally designed by Inglehart and his associates, six are considered post-materialism-oriented values: more say on job, more say in government, freedom of speech, less impersonal society, ideas count more than money, and more beautiful cities. The other six are deemed materialism-oriented values: maintain order, maintain stable economy, economic growth, fight rising prices, fight against crimes, and strong defense forces.Footnote21 We follow Inglehart’s approach and create an index of postmaterialist values ranging from 0 to 6.
I don't think that's actually measuring materialism anyways, but I guess there's different interpretations of what materialism means.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I think that’s mostly cope from people who can’t get into Tsinghua or Harvard. I think people do rightfully see things like "Columbia master’s students in biostatistics" or overseas student from anywhere else that's not Ivy as slackers since many of those degrees are essentially bought, but that criticism doesn’t really extend to most other Ivy programs. Among well-educated people, these schools are seen as more or less equivalent, though choosing Tsinghua versus Harvard does signal your political preferences to some extent.
You're right that people were aware that there was a lot of petty corruption with people like the police, but the general sentiment was "Yeah, it's better to live in the UK or America, but China is getting better fast, there's so much opportunity, and my life will definitely be better next year than this year." In my experience that last sentiment is mostly gone. I've only spent a limited amount of time on the mainland in the past year, so now doubt I'm getting some bias, but even there the attitude among young people is "The job market is shit, wages aren't going up anymore, and I'll probably never be able to own a home/have a family/be as succesful as mom and dad." Which is a shocking change to see in such a short time. A lot of people also complain that the system isn't fair anymore. Like I said, the petty local corruption is one thing, but I heard a ton of complaints about things like a medical exam scandal (I might be misremembering) where a woman was let in who didn't pass (or something, I might be way off here) and a bunch of other scandals, often followed by comments like "This is why China is such a shit country." I never heard anything like that ten years ago.
We indeed have very different experiences. I think there’s a decent chance that I’ve met and talked to more Chinese people than you, but of course we all live in our respective bubbles. Even so, I think it’s almost impossible for an expat, Chinese language skills notwithstanding, to experience society the same way a native speaker does, much like how I experience the US now. It’s absolutely true that a large number of people are dissatisfied with the current state of the economy and with their own upward mobility in China. I also agree that more people now will say online or in person, “The job market is shit, wages aren't going up anymore, and I'll probably never be able to own a home/have a family/be as succesful as mom and dad.” especially the part about never owning a home because that is probably true (although the housing bubble has deflated a bit much to my aunties' dismay). Housing prices are one of the biggest concerns for Chinese people in general. That said, I think it’s mistaken to say this kind of thinking wasn’t more prevalent 10 or 20 years ago.
I was born and raised in a tier-1 city, and back then uncles and aunts never hesitated to say the country was shit and hopeless, that their lives were miserable, that the Communist Party was corrupt as hell, and to go on wild rants about officials abusing power in every imaginable way. Everyone I knew who had the means to migrate at least tried. There were relatively high level government officials who went on a government trip, landed in NYC, and disappeared into the greasy streets of Flushing, maybe doing the dishes somewhere in greasy Chinese restaurants. That alone is very different from 2025. Obviously the desire to migrate doesn’t depend solely on how shitty your home country is. But I think pessimism was much, much more widespread one or two decades ago than it is now, among the educated and uneducated, among the old and young. It’s just harder to see before because people can voice their pessimism to an expat in broken English in 2024, whereas people from the same slice of society in 2015 would have less change to talk to foreigners. That suggests a sampling bias might be at play here. But of course, despite being Chinese myself I’m still limited to my own social circles which is by no means representative, although I'm not even sure what representative means for a country with 1.5 billion people.
So there's two things I think I should clarify here. First, when I say people are unhappy with corruption I mean something different from bribing the police or whatever. I see a lot of people complain about systemic unfairness or how Xi holding onto power is bad for the country (often using the "anti-corruption campaign" as an example of him hoarding power, which surprised me as an American considering I thought that was only a Western view)
I think I may have unintentionally conflated petty corruption with large-scale corruption, but I’m not sure ordinary people really distinguish between the two. The Chinese government and the communist party is perceived as a single entity, and every societal ills or benefits get attributed to this amorphous whole without much distinction. It’s unclear to me whether petty corruption or nationwide scandals have eroded public trust more, and if I have to guess I think petty corruption by their proximity to people actually mattered more in public discourse. That said, we can talk about large scandals. I think I know what you’re referring to with the medical exam scandal. That level of scandal honestly wouldn’t even register in people’s minds in 2015. Back then, corruption scandals were things like the Sanlu milk scandal where a milk powder company bribed the equivalent of Chinese FDA to avoid testing and added melamine to infant formula, causing development defects in thousands if not millions of kids, or the minister of railways taking bribes in the tens of millions and may or may not involved in covering up a major accident, or Bo and Xi’s political struggles and purges. Kids of corrupt officials at that time didn’t even need to take medical exams; they could go wherever they wanted (and many times they don't want to go to any college in China anyways, and instead smuggle their wealth to Canada to buy up properties). People simply knew this. In that sense I actually see an improvement. Today’s major scandals are much less serious, and many serious scandals that blow up today actually happened many year ago. What you’re observing, I mean the complaints from Chinese people, largely stems from the solidification of social strata in China. After a period of explosive growth, it’s now much, much harder for people to change their fate through the usual (or unusual) channels. There is simply no means for a commoner to be as rich and resourceful, like they could after the reform until maybe 10 years ago. That understandably makes people feel like shit, and that their life "won't be better than their parents". But I think this reflects a society that has progressed and then stratified. And the stratification issue is hard to solve anywhere.
As for using anti-corruption campaigns to purge political enemies, this has literally been a thing since antiquity. It’s not surprising at all for any Chinese person to talk about, whether pro (except the rabidly pro government loons of course) or anti-government. Certainly nothing western about it at all.
expectations have become unsustainable (particularly in America, although China has absurd expectations in the dating sphere from what I understand).
I actually think this is a much bigger issue for China. Not only in the dating market. The Chinese government cannot derive its legitimacy purely from ideology, like Mao did from communism, or the imperial Chinese from the Mandate of Heaven, or the elective democracies from the votes of people. It of course derive its legitimacy from Chinese nationalism, but since it is a government that proclaims itself one thing (communism) but act like another, there is always a level of 名不副实, a mismatch between name and reality that makes people from both side question its sincerity. It instead has to deliver real, material things to satisfy the Chinese populace, and that to me is quite inefficient. And if expectations become unsustainable it threatens their very source of legitimacy. I'm not sure how they will solve this issue and it will be interesting social experiment if I'm not a participant.
I think you're completely right, but it's more complicated than that. I will say that I left this place for a long while for a reason--it's not really reflective of the American reality. This forum is full of loons who spend too much time online. While the average discourse on here is much more well reasoned and articulate, reason detached from reality won't get you anywhere. It's like people arguing about the shadows in Plato's cave. The level of discourse being higher here hides the fact that this place is pretty detached from reality, much like reddit except reddit is obviously full of clowns who can't rub two brain cells together.
My understanding of American society doesn’t come from this place alone. Most of it comes from interacting with actual Americans. Though, as I’ve admitted, that sample is heavily blue. In those blue social circles, the sense of societal illness often feels even stronger and more paranoid than what I see here. Sure, this place has its share of lunatics, like those single-issue posters, or agitators who want to see everything burn for no good reason, but in my opinion it’s still saner than most of my coworkers (and redditors, of course, curse that place) who are otherwise normal people but hold crazy beliefs about society, about the economy, about politics, about dating market, about everything really. Both this forum and American public discourse are detached from reality, but I think the latter is more detached, to the point that parallel spiritual societies form within the same physical space in America. The three past elections and the intensifying culture wars are, to me, evidence that detached online shitposting really does shape the physical world. I’d call myself a Chinese nationalist, but I see no obvious reason for conflict between China and the US. In fact I see more reasons why both countries should exist, to serve as alternatives and mirrors for each other’s societies. It would be a shame if either of these social experiments failed spectacularly.
I think you're right. I don't think most Chinese yearn for Democracy. I do think the way Chinese propaganda and information in general is propagated plays a huge role in how I judge Chinese people's opinions though. I'm not laboring under the delusion that Americans aren't propagandized in some way, but the difference between the information Chinese people consume and American people consumer is largely this--Americans get told what they want to hear, no matter how stupid it is. Chinese people get told what the government wants them to hear, no matter how stupid it is.
I guess we have to agree to disagree here. The Chinese people absolutely get told what they want to hear, and your people absolutely get told what your government want you to hear, although the messages are becoming more and more incoherent because of the giant chasm between the two parties.
I have some illustrative examples (particularly pertaining to Chinese views on Japan) but I don't really want to get into it because I don't think I've ever had a productive conversation about it with a Chinese person.
That rubs me the wrong way because it assumes too much, so I’ll gladly tell you what I think about Japan at length and make this less “productive.” Because of my experience in the US, I’ve developed a more pan-Asian identity than the average Chinese person. I hate how irrational and bloodthirsty some of my fellow countryman can be toward Japan. After all in my mind they’re basically us with extra steps. I see Japanese people as part of my cultural brethren, like a set of concentric circles, China at the center, Taiwan in the second layer, Korea and Vietnam in the third, and Japan in the fourth, but still firmly within what I perceive as the broader Chinese cultural sphere. An unfortunate chain of events led to the breakup between China and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of which could have been avoided, but that’s history now. I don’t like how Japanese people remain oblivious to China and its development, while still retaining a holier-than-thou attitude toward my people (and the Koreans for that matter, which really tells you how delusional they are in my mind). But I also don’t care all that much. I think things will correct themselves over time, since the center of gravity in East Asia has always tilted toward China, and late 19th/early 20th century is in many ways an anomaly.
If that fits your stereotype, fine. But I doubt it does. The average Chinese person wants to firebomb Tokyo and claim all Japanese culture as their own. I see us more like humans and chimps: both evolved from ancestral chimps, parallel, related, but not the same. That makes me a chauvinist maybe but not fascist.
I have very mixed feelings about my country, probably not so different from how many Americans feel about the US today. But I have patience and believe things will get better, even if slowly. There are many things I loathe and wish were different, and I try to do my part, however small, to improve them. I hope that adds an n = 1 to your sample of Chinese people.
Meyerlemon
1mo ago
I have to confess that I do not have much trust in Chinese media accurately reporting on this matter, nor do I trust Reuters - what/how would they actually know? What other evidence is there, even if only circumstantial, that would suggest there has been real progress toward developing domestic EUV capability in China?
R&D in different sectors can be extremely different, but at least in the sectors I’m familiar with, I’m not very impressed by the current academic and research culture in China. It is certainly better than in 2015, as more and more people trained in the US, Germany, or elsewhere have returned to China, and creating some shift within academia and shifting from publishing papers in shitty predatory journals to producing higher quality research and technological development at least in Peking, Tsinghua etc that can rival the “west”. But considering how the broader academic culture continues to treat people like candles, burning them up and then tossing them in the trash, I don’t think this creates a good culture or working environment for many of the most ambitious and talented researchers. Maybe I’m wrong and corrupted by the west and turned into a soft-hearted baizuo already, and with enough talent China can afford to waste precious human capital like this (e.g. this or this (Chinese) or this (Chinese)), but I’m not terribly convinced.
Without doxxing yourself, can you tell us when and where you were in China/East Asia? I feel this is one of the most important pieces of information when discussing the country. China in 2025, 2015, and 2005 are completely different places, and people’s views on the current state of the country, the outside world, and their own upward mobility differ dramatically. Without that context I find the discussion largely moot. I probably fit your description of the “well-educated, ultranationalist Chinese you find outside China”, although I’d describe myself as overeducated and only mildly nationalist. My social circle is obviously not representative of China as a whole, but at least within this overeducated slice of society, opinions about the Chinese state and future life prospects have changed substantially over the past two decades. During my childhood, among adults (and by osmosis among kids), there was a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction especially around corruption. As a kid, I remember adults constantly talking about “塞钱” (stuffing money) into police officers pockets to change a child’s name, birthday, etc. Corruption was absolutely rampant then. Ten years later to around 2015, when I was in university, tthe general sentiment at least in big cities had shifted a lot. There was a sense that the wind had changed, and unless you were very rich or very well connected, you couldn’t and shouldn’t expect things to work the old way. Gifting doctors money probably will get you a bed by the window but wouldn’t get you better treatment, police wouldn’t take bribes to change your kid’s name. Of course this wasn’t uniform across the country, corruption remained more prevalent in smaller cities, but the change was real. Other things like copy right also changed quite a bit. Gone were the days where I can find pirated movies on bilibili with a simple search, and now you’d need many layers of get-around to find those movies, although those are still out there if you try harder.
Another ten years later, here we are in 2025. The corruption issue is certainly not among the top things on people’s minds, which is why I think your information is at least 10 years out of date, especially the claim that “young people are very unhappy with the current state of corruption”. Young people simply have not experienced the level of corruption that will make them very unhappy with the current state of corruption. Xi's anti-corruption campaign created a shit ton of extra bureaucratic nonsense like asking dance club of elderly to fill fifty forms and only spend 20 rmb per person on their Chinese New Year gift purchase or what not, but by no means ineffectual. I think the top concerns on the average Chinese person’s mind today are wages, housing (which I actually think is a critical failure point of the country. housing price where I grow up increased 50 folds in 20 years), healthcare, and marriage/childcare. Corruption in China today is much more like corruption in the U.S. than in Nigeria: subtler, not a dominant factor in everyday life, but one that occasionally erupts into major scandals. I do agree that most young people think wages are bad and unemployment is bad, in a way not unlike the vibecession discussion in the US. But to be blunt it’s simply regarded to say that Chinese people by and large have not benefitted tremendously from the economic development, or better off than they were ten years ago. Claims that only a tiny fraction of people benefited from China’s meteoric rise, that only the “highly educated, successful ultranationalists”, or 富二代 who drives aston martin in Vancouver and driving up rent, or the red princelings, got their share, while everyone else was left behind, strike me as peak delusion if said by some Chinese youth and peak cope if from an American, NYT columnist or themotte frequenter. It’s just undeniable that a vast majority of Chinese people benefited materially from the CCP’s economic policies over the past two decades. Maybe one consider that to be only small achievement, but I disagree strongly. Or maybe we can do the usual “but at what cost” thing and I’ll even agree largely, but I don’t think that’s what you said.
As for “the Chinese want to be like Americans”, you’re not entirely wrong but you are still very mistaken. Again, there’s a clear progression in sentiment. Twenty years ago on Baidu Tieba, then the largest Chinese discussion forum, people requesting porn would often append “下辈子美利坚”, or “next life, America”, a pun implying a wish to be reincarnated in the US with a pun (坚means hard, as in harder penis) for a harder “weapon”. That kind of open and widespread worship of the U.S. (and, by extension, of whiteness. people even slapped “Made in Czechia” labels onto low quality chinesium as a supposed mark of superior quality) is nowhere near as common today. Those same people, I suspect, either turned into 反贼 (traitors, as pro-CCP pinkies 粉红 call them) or transitioned into 粉红 themselves. As a line from a Chinese movie goes, “they follow whoever wins”, and China has been doing a lot of “winning” lately, certainly less than those “winnologists” (赢学家, Chinese nationalists who crave winning) believe but more than enough for the mildly nationalists online to be 10x as vocal as they were before. Are people more pessimistic about their own future than a few years ago? Maybe, especially after the catastrophic handling of covid. But have they reverted to wishing everyone could be reincarnated as Americans? No. That era is gone. Maybe that’s a low bar, but a change is still a change.
It does pain me that many of my fellow countryman want to turn their cities into LED hellscapes, which in many minds signal “development”, a cargo-cult worship of I guess the American or their imaginary West with Chinese characteristics. Still, as many below have pointed out, the Chinese want to be like Americans not because your Americaness, but because you’re rich and powerful. To Americans, this distinction may seem unimportant, since being American is already synonymous with being rich and powerful. But I think it is not synonymous for most Chinese and when American economical gild fades you will see the distinction.
I’ve lurked on here for many years. My own social circle is a giant blue bubble, and this is one of the few places where I can read from a grayish-red slice of Americans who are thoughtful and articulate. Over time I’ve sensed a growing belief there that something is rotten in the US. Whatever their prescriptions for social illness, there’s a pervasive pessimism. Difficulty celebrating small wins (see the thread down below “small hiccups among decades of winning” re the OU placing the trans TA on admin leave); tech pessimism (more among general well-educated blue tribers, not here); cynicism toward government everywhere, but especially at home. Yet despite all this, most Americans on that forum still seem to believe that America, whatever she represents, is fundamentally great. They criticize her, but they also believe in her. I’d argue the Chinese are similar.
Why is it so hard to understand that, just as Americans can criticize America while loving and caring about it, the Chinese can do the same? Why assume that when they criticize the government for mishandling of covid, or flip-flop between one-child policy and infinite child policy, or letting real estate being a major source of local government income and get them hopelessly addicted to it, they are not simply voicing their concerns similar to red-blooded Americans, or like performative blue tribers ranting about silly shit, but are actually losing hope in CCP’s mandate of heaven and yearn for liberty and democracy? Why is it unthinkable that Chinese people, nationalist or not, mean what they say, not because they’re misled by the CCP, but because they’ve actually experienced the benefits of their country’s rise? Why default to cynicism when a much more straightforward explanation is available? I suspect the answer says more about Americans than it does about the Chinese.
I agree with some other points you made but this is a weird take (although it’s only a softer dismissal of our opinions, unlike the other commenters who simply assume that we’re all shills). It’s not like the Chinese government have some Eastern magic spell that forces us to keep our mouths shut.
I don’t know your friend obviously, but my reading of what you’re describing is much simpler: most of them just don’t have an opinion on Xi. Honestly many people, including the well-educated middle class you’d meet in Silicon Valley, have no opinions on almost anything and are just incredibly boring human beings. They care about money and status and their own hedonistic pursuit, and that’s pretty much it. That’s the result of years of grinding under Gaokao. It’s sad but not that mysterious.
More options
Context Copy link