Meyerlemon
21hr 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
22d 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
23d ago
Cao Pi in mandarin sounds similar to fucking. People use it on the internet to avoid being censored.
Meyerlemon
23d ago
A couple of reasons.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
23d 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
23d 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
23d 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
27d 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.
Meyerlemon
27d ago
Thanks, I’ll look it up. Hopefully I won’t have to slowly import the entire Amazon river fauna into my tiny tank.
Meyerlemon
27d ago
Does anyone here keep a freshwater aquarium? I’ve had a 40 gallon planted tank for about two years. It’s been gorgeous and heavily planted, but I’ve grown tired of trimming stem plants every couple of weeks. I’m thinking of switching to a lower maintenance setup with a pair of apistos and some tetras, and replacing most stem plants with floaters and vallisneria since those don’t seem to need as much trimming. I still want to keep the tank well planted to keep water quality stable and keep algae under control. Any recommendations or suggestions?
Meyerlemon
28d ago
I don’t think I agree with you on your diagnosis of the party, but I think this disagreement mostly comes from how we interpret the same phenomenon.
My main issue with the party is that, not unlike all its predecessors, it shows a profound disregard for human value. And that attitude is so pervasive in the society. It sometimes manifest itself as “greed and materialism” like you complained, as a result of grading all human on a single variable that is wealth or power. It sometimes manifests itself as the destruction of nature, which is of course what you do when you don’t even value human let alone animals or plants.
Mao once made a less famous but in my opinion quite insightful remark: 百代皆行秦政法 孔学名高实秕糠 (Age after age, governance follows the laws of Qin, Confucianism enjoys great renown, yet in reality it is empty husk). The Chinese state preaches Confucianism, which despite endorsing a hierarchical social order, still places emphasis on the well-being of individuals (I especially like Mencius on his humanitarianism. Almost got his spirit tablet removed from Confucius temple by the first Ming emperor because of that). Yet the Chinese state, as both ancient and modern observers have noted, is extraordinarily ruthless. Like a giant in Lilliput it tramples over small people without even noticing.
Where does this utter contempt for human value come from? I think it ultimately traces back to Legalism, the “laws of Qin” Mao referred to. Legalism is a philosophy obsessed with control, governance, and the organization of people, concerned primarily with how to persuade, manipulate, or coerce the people to achieve the will of the “great man”. Think of Machiavelli, but born in 400BC and also getting his philosophy adopted by a country the size of Rome for two millennia. Humans are nothing more than means to an end. This is the core of Chinese state philosophy, “outer Confucianism, inner Legalism” 所谓外儒内法.
You see this influence everywhere. From the burning books and burying scholars to the pervasive censorship of today. The state is everywhere. Nothing lies outside its grasp, and nothing should lie outside of its grasp. I’m glad that perhaps for hbd reasons the country is usually run by competent people (unlike you, I don’t seriously doubt this), many of them are even well-intentioned. Most of the time, this system works great and even preferable, since the values of the great man and the commoners mostly align. But that competence of the bureaucrats is also what makes them dangerous (and that’s partially why I don’t think you should see them as incompetent, because they are dangerous not stupid). These intelligent people often have little sense of how much power they wield, and even less humility in how they use it. They could actively abuse it, or merely to crush the weak by accident. To them anything is possible if the will is strong enough and one is willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary and that includes people “beneath” them. It would be nice if their values always align with others but of course that’s not the case.
This is also why I’m glad societies like the US exist, although it is also deteriorating at an unimaginable speed. I believe our societies can benefit from each other, to maintain a delicate balance so that neither slides too far into the seductive and destructive extremes.
I gave my society too little credit here for the sake of discussion. But thats all I wanted to say today.
Meyerlemon
28d ago
This does, in the Chinese way of seeing things, make him Chinese and not Canadian.
That’s your imagination. People in China don't view Chinese-Canadians as solely Chinese and not Canadian. They’re both, obviously. Or solely Canadians, for the hardcore nationalists. Their opinions on the Chineseness of the Canadian Chinese also do not matter. They live among Canadians after all.
Meyerlemon
28d ago
It’s farcical to claim that they’re pretending the demographic and pension crisis doesn’t exist. This is literally the central policy push right now. Increasing fertility through nationwide subsidies (there’s a 100B yuan subsidy rolled out by the ministry of finance), plus additional subsidies rolled out by provincial governments (from the dating hellscape Jiangxi of all places). And delaying the retirement age. You can argue these measures won’t work, but pretending the issue is being ignored is simply false.
Also, something I forgot to mention in response to your previous post: one of Xi’s personal pet projects is the whole “green water, turquoise skies” environmental campaign. To the point that this stupid slogan has made its way into fucking Arknights. You can say the policies will fail (maybe), or that they’re lying (I don’t think so, given how many peasants in Hebei are literally freezing in winter due to restrictions on coal). But saying they didn’t even try is just wrong.
You might need to get some news feed from the old country a bit. Overseas Chinese (whether you’re actually Canadian or not, I’m not confident either way) tend to get stuck in some pretty warped social media ecosystems, partly as an overcorrection for censorship back home. I get that people need to vent sometimes but still. Otherwise you end up with Russians challenging your Chineseness, which might be hilarious if you’re indeed one of us, but not entirely baseless either.
And Chinese gdp per capita is already more tha 1/4 of SK. Come on.
Meyerlemon
28d ago
Whichever way you slice it, it just had minimal impact outside of China. 50 million USD for Ne Zha 2 versus 1.3 billion for Zootopia 2. Add up the international earnings for all the American offerings and it's more than 2 OOMs higher. Expressed as a fraction of earnings, 50 million of 2.2 billion is 2% of earnings, whereas the majority of the American films profit was overseas.
Yes sure comparing ourselves to American it’s not that impressive. But consider this: I grew up in a time where your average Chinese laughs at you if you compare us to the Americans. What you listed here sounds pathetic to your people maybe, but sounds impressive enough to me.
But looks like we do have an agreement here that it’s getting better.
I played and watched a lot of badminton in the era when Lin Dan was a beast. Apparently Shi Yuqi is world #1 since Viktor Axelsen is aging out, but I've never watched him play. Growing up, most of my closest friends just happened to be Chinese.
Sounds like you’ve had a very Chinese social circle and probably still do, given you play badminton. My wife tried to get me into it, but I just can’t handle the smell of the courts around me, that disgusting mix of rubber and BO. Hope you don’t have to suffer that.
Agree with A anc C. Doubtful with B because it's a choice between truly believing a horse is a deer (them) or pretending to believe a horse is a deer (us). You're also seeing the outcome of their philosophy and how much damage it does to their own society. Assuming that truthfulness and untruthfulness being 50/50, our societies have roughly equal chance of being right.
All of these things are bad, and will destroy China if allowed to continue unabated, but the party has shown no signs of even recognizing that these are problems.
The biggest fault of our collective mind I guess is to always default to the rulers to solve our societal illnesses. The party absolutely does care about your point A (and point C for the sake of practicality). There is little that they can do about it. They wish they are the all powerful leviathan but they're simply not. Never stopped them from trying though.
Edit: for what it's worth I think you're mainland Chinese. The fact that you called the party "the party" is pretty telling. No need to tell me if my detective work is solid or not.
Meyerlemon
28d ago
Look at the top grossing movies of 2025. Ne Zha 2 tops the list with an impressive 2.2 billion, of which 50 million was from outside China.
Not sure what you're trying to imply here. 50 million outside of China is quite impressive. Not as impressive as the Japanese or the Koreans, of course, but still. Even if that 50 million consist of 20 million overseas Chinese primarily in SEA, still.
Next - some significant fraction of Chinese can talk intelligently about the lakers or European football. How many Americans have heard of Lin Dan or Shi Yuqi? What about famous American musicians? Half of Tay-tay's death march was sold out international venues. Globally, do you think more people can describe the gist of the declaration of independence or Xi Jinping thought?
The fact that you have heard of Lin Dan and Shi Yuqi (I have no idea who this is) is a win. I'm celebrating every win whenever I can. It's getting better, that's all I know.
And, I know Americans here care less about "jungle Asians" than us even, but they do like our cultural exports. It might be true that any good upright western nation do not like us or consume our cultural exports. But I consider dominating the SEA novel/drama/whatever slop that's getting created in the millions by uninspiring Chinese youth a major win. Not a historical anomaly either.
Meyerlemon
28d ago
Might be helpful to articulate your major concerns with our glorious motherland. Autocratic? Yeah sure. Backward and broke? Depending on who you compare us to. Culturally barren? Pretty much but I think it could get better. Constantly sitting in the cuck chair? Couldn't agree more. Communist? Unless you're specific types of deranged people (by that I mean both the 粉红 and the 反贼), it's feels unserious.
Meyerlemon
28d ago
The EU is fine to take a "stronger" stance against Russian. Russian launched invasion on European land on a massive scale at the expense of their own people and their cultural and genetic siblings (and for some who cares, white people), and it's incredibly sad to see given what these people could have achieved, artistic or scientific. Utter tragedy, like how I would hate to see missiles hitting Taipei. I have my own grievances against the Russians, especially on how they changed the ethnic makeup of Outer Manchuria, and by extension I sympathize with people who want to resist the Russian imposing their brutal approach on other people. But the question is not if the EU should take a stronger stance. It is how strong these stances are, and how effective they are. I don't believe the like of Kallas, who is fanatically against approaching the Russians at any cost, to have the EU best interest in mind.
But also this, which I consider unserious: EU top diplomat: We don’t need a European army. “We need 27 European armies that are capable and can effectively work together to deter our rivals and defend Europe,” says Kaja Kallas.
Are the German concerns wrt energy not legitimate, or not important for the EU when they are one of the major economical driver in the union? The German lost that debate anyways, because of the pressure exerted by said Eastern European Countries. You mentioned Poland that I have not listed in the joke countries list, that's because I don't know Poland, aside from their equally rabid hatred towards the Russians (again, no problem with that given what the Russians did together with the Germans to them, just that they also need to think of the Germans and the French who are likely going to suffer from their hostility towards Russians beyond what their people ask for). I could put them on the list if you want, again I simply don't care as much.
My biggest issue with them is again with how they deal with China. The Chinese did "support" the Russians in the sense that we export more crap in exchange for more of their fuel at better price when they are bleeding dry on a fight with (in my opinion) their own people. The Chinese however did not explicitly support the Russians with drones, weapons, etc. that is beyond what I would consider normal business. Russian drone production capability is a joke, Russian drone supply, a joke, compared to China. If we have indeed supported them with any seriousness but not the usual indifference, the Ukrainians will have much more serious trouble. That doesn't seem to concern people like Kallas, who see any trade with Russian as provocative, and thus we're becoming a collateral damage between her and her archnemesis. Again feel free to do that in the Baltics. But pretending it does not hijack the German or the French interest in the EU is wrong.
Meyerlemon
28d ago
I’m not talking about how white a country is, nor do I care. You can have your nice white ethnostate, good for you (and good for us in an abstract “ethnostates are not intrinsically evil” sense) but I mostly don’t give a shit. I’m also not butthurt about its foreign policy toward Russia. That doesn’t concern me. What I care about is my own country, China (and the US since I have vested interest in it).
What I dislike is a puny, joke of a country playing with fire, pretending to stand up to a big bully, while conveniently hiding behind others.
What I’m really talking about is a major multinational organization being hijacked by narrow special interests. The Baltics have their own axes to grind with Russia, and that’s completely understandable. But appointing their incompetent politicians to run EU diplomacy is just sad.
Meyerlemon
29d ago
Certainly one of the best and optimistic post about China from a non-Chinese perspective on this website for me. Thank you.
China is, above all, fascinating. It is a state that is capable of astonishing feats of engineering and yet it will occasionally build a bridge that will collapse within months of its completion. Its government seems at times to be preternaturally competent, and at other times to be singularly dedicated to causing misery and dysfunction for its own people. It has a cultural history as expansive and complex as any on Earth, and long periods of stability during which one would expect great works of music and visual art would have been made, and yet its actual output in these domains has been, and continues to be, distinctly third-rate. In the past, there were long periods where it was unquestionable strong enough to conquer much of the world, and yet it didn't. Today, it is—or will soon be—strong enough to expand far beyond it borders, but I expect it will again choose not to.
What irritates me most when people talk about China here is not the outright hostility but the lack of curiosity, so thank you for finding our society fascinating. Something I never get used to is how intelligent people who are active in political discussion show no interest in understanding China at all, despite pretending to care about it. Many rhetorical techniques were employed to never update on China, treating everything from the Chinese media as propaganda; treating all of our people, inside or outside or China, as nationalistic shills or payed propagandists; pretending all the changes and achievements inside the country as fake and unworthy of serious discussion. On some level I get it, after all that's my default opinion on anything too positive from my own country, and how can I expect better from the others. But on the other hand it's tiresome, especially since I feel some genuine urge to discuss with people and exchange opinions with people outside of my own as a mirror to allow some self reflection.
Sometimes, it is only when we look at another with a different combination of strengths and weaknesses that we start to more clearly see the spikeyness that exists in ourselves. Of course, the spikeyness of an entity with very different strengths and weaknesses is obvious.
This has been one of the most important thing I learned from my experience in the United States. For Chinese people in China, it is difficult to see ourselves clearly, just as a person in the mountains cannot see its entirety. Everything feels natural and inevitable. It is hard to imagine living or thinking differently, and even harder to appreciate the benefits that alternative might offer.
Chinese and American societies are polar opposites in many respects, but also intriguingly similar in others. This is difficult to articulate. Broadly, the individualism-collectivism divide is obvious, as is the very different relationship between the people and the state. The “main character syndrome”, the intentional or unintentional domineering attitude toward other countries, and the industriousness of the people feels familiar. For me, American society has been a useful mirror and a nice calibrator, helping me to see what the optimum would be. As you said, for many things the “right way” likely lies somewhere between the two. It is fortunate that these two societies exist in the same historical moment. Unfortunately, instead of learning from one another there seems to be an irresistible pull toward conflict. I hope that this is not our fate.
my most ardent wish is that China develops a genuine feeling of moral responsibility for its less accomplished relations in the Global South, ideally while still retaining the pragmatism and effectiveness it possesses today. Maybe this will happen naturally as it gets richer—I have to remind myself that there is still a lot of serious poverty in China, for all the incredible progress they've made on that front.
You mentioned this above in a different post but I want to share my thoughts. I think that poverty, or the memory and cultural residue of extreme poverty, has a profound effect on people’s capacity for charity. Some personal anecdote. My mom grew up in the 1960s. Their generation lived through the devastation of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and unlike my generation they usually have more than three siblings in one family despite barely able to feed them all. When resources are scarce survival becomes paramount, like how a family of mice trapped in a small cage that cannibalize each other. People resort to whatever works: lying, violence, corruption. When abundance returns, the psychological mechanisms developed in scarcity do not simply disappear. In this sense her generation “inoculated” itself against charity, and they will pass that fear of scarcity on to my generation. I grew up without extreme poverty, without rampant pickpocketing, without scammers lurking at train stations hoping to lure me to their fake tourist attractions, without (too many) cab drivers driving in circles and charging more money for the ride. But still I remember how my mother carried a constant fear that someone would take advantage of us. She taught me to be perpetually defensive, hold your bag in front when you’re on a train, always double-lock the doors, never fully let your guard down even among close friends. As a child I was confused because her ways of living does not align with my experience. I remember asking her if thieves will wear a balaclava, and why I never saw them on the bus even though she seem confident that they’re out there somewhere. I remember yelling at her for her paranoia around my friend, as I couldn’t understand why helping others is anathema to her when I usually receive kindness in return, something I crave. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate kindness either. She often spoke warmly of strangers who helped her, like an elderly couple who fixed her tire, or how Americans in the suburb seem to always “forget” to lock the door, after her six month stay in the US as a visiting scholar. But she could not translate that appreciation into generosity toward others. It’s not just her, so are the other aunties and uncles I grew up with.
Thing do seem to be improving. Like many things this is the reason why I have my hope high for my country, despite how it is at the current moment. When I return home now I genuinely feel that more people are willing to help one another. After all I could easily see myself as someone who fixes other’s tire, and I do think people will be more likely to reciprocate now than it was before. We may be building a higher-trust society slowly, one in which people help others because they expect it to be reciprocated, and eventually because it becomes second nature. That path might be via harsh and draconian laws and immense social pressure, but I think it's worth it.
What I regret most about our low-trust society is how suboptimal it is. Helping others in our very homogeneous society would not harm you in most cases. On the contrary it should benefit you more as mutualism enriches everyone. Unfortunately we find ourselves stuck in a kind of social prisoner’s dilemma. The encouraging part is that we appear to be moving out of it, however slowly. Hope that trend continues before the society getting eaten by other societal illnesses which slowly start to manifest themselves.
Back to your point about the lack of moral responsibility to help the unfortunate. It may be true that the Chinese ordo amoris resembles a solar system, with most of its moral weight concentrated at the center, our own people, rather than the onion-like layers in a westerner’s mind. But I do not think this difference is immutable. Given a generation or two I believe we will converge.
Indeed, in the long run, China and the West could have a very productive and fruitful relationship that could enrich the whole world enormously. I hope we get to see it happen.
From your mouth to God’s ears.
Vietnam has a cultural identity. They have been actually resisting us, usually violently, for millennia. That resistance is part of their cultural identity too, as an antibody against being absorbed by China. Do Canadians have a cultural identity as strong as the Vietnamese, other than being Americans that also have Canadian passports?
Fun fact: the Vietnamese and the Koreans have to do this “emperor at home, king abroad” thing to avoid the Chinese messing with their country. The modern equivalent would be “the 51th state but with Canadian characteristics”. Kinda similar to what Trump wanted.
Meyerlemon
29d ago
I guess I should have given the Europeans more credit. Yes, they are technologically competent, and yes, they do hold trillions of dollars in assets which, if leveraged well, could seriously challenge the Americans. But I don’t have any trust in their will. The EU is as fragmented as ever, headed by incompetent, out-of-touch bureaucrats (I’m thinking of the likes of Kaja Kallas or von der Leyen) who care more about pretending more than anything. There is a serious coordination problem in the EU, and from my limited understanding, there is no obvious solution or resolve to fix it. Maybe the European countries that are not a joke, i.e., France and Germany, plus a few more like the Netherlands (and absolutely excluding the Baltics, if they want to maintain any solidarity. Imagine letting bureaucrats from Ningxia to turn China into an Islamic state), could come together to actually reassert themselves as credible powers alongside the US, China, and (to a lesser extent) Russia. I’m not well-informed enough to see if that’s actually possible, or if anyone is pushing for it.
Also, what percentage of Europeans think of themselves as Europeans or as nationals of their own country first and foremost, as opposed to some flavor of “world citizen”? All my limited interactions with actual Europeans, inside or outside of work (heavily biased, of course; I live in a blue bubble) give off this “Civis Romanum sum” feel, even if they will occasionally say “… in GERMANY”. Do they care about their own country, let alone Europe, more than the “rules-based international order”?
Meyerlemon
29d ago
What are the chances that the Canadians, Europeans, etc., actually do anything to decouple from the Americans? Zilch, I think. They’re all pretending to #resist. After all, that’s what their people demanded, no more, no less. At best, they’re hoping Trumpism will be gone in three years and they can go back to business as usual. Maybe the French actually do have a spine, idk. I guess if this trend outlasts this presidency, then we might see some actual, substantive changes in transatlantic relationships. But nothing that’s happened so far is very reassuring.
Kinda hard to blame them, honestly. What do they have against American might? Sending a platoon to Greenland is pathetic. Cozying up to China won’t help either. The Chinese didn’t care about the Syrians, Venezuelans, Iranians, or random Central American countries we’re allegedly courting. We certainly won’t care about Europe just for Europe’s sake. Then there are the Russians in the picture, and it’s pretty unclear if the Russians or the Europeans are more reliable or competent as partners for China. Unclear what benefit we might get from ditching the Russians.
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?
More options
Context Copy link