This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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 think we've had almost the exact opposite experience, although probably part of it is what kind of people I'm meeting now vs in 2017(ish).
A decade ago, I spent most of my time living in the pearl river delta (mostly Shenzhen) and the outlook on China and it's future was overwhelmingly positive. 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. Even the people who wanted to leave wouldn't say something like that, but again, my sample set is quite biased. I can't speak Chinese well anymore, (not that I was ever great) so all my conversations are with people who can speak English or another East Asian langauge I'm fluent in. A lot of my experience with Chinese people is from dating, or people who I work with who I left for a variety of reasons, but even my limited experiences on the mainland had a completely different mood. There's still a lot of pride around China as a culture, kind of like America or Russia viewing itself as the center of the world, but not nearly as much about the current state of China. As an addendum, I do kind of get this sentiment all around the world recently though, so maybe it's a global phenomenon.
Now, back in 2015 I also spent some time in a couple small and mid sized cities (I forgot the names, frankly I've always been shit at remembering the names of things in Chinese) and it was like a different world. It wasn't really developed at all, the people weren't educated well (whereas I would say that the average person in Shanghai or Shenzhen is probably more educated than the average American) and their views of the world differed greatly as well. I suspect if I went there again I'd get a completely different experience and I have no idea what that experience would be.
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)
Secondly, obviously China has improved a ton for most people. I think there is an unfortunate truth that people feel the acceleration in their standard of living much more than the standard of living itself. The so called "hedonic treadmill" is a huge factor in human psychology, and a lot of people in China seem to feel that their lives aren't getting better or maybe even getting worse, kind of like some poor people in America. I don't think either case is true (with exceptions) but I also do think the competition in life is much harder (in both cases) and expectations have become unsustainable (particularly in America, although China has absurd expectations in the dating sphere from what I understand).
I think this is quite a different phenomenon from what I experience. I know what you mean though, and this sort of weird fetishization of white people, and things like hiring a white guy to stand in front of your business to look cool is completely gone (thankfully).
I've known enough Chinese to realize that most of them don't particularly understand or admire American culture, and those who lived in America are included. It's quite difficult for a hedgemonic culture like those seen in America or China (Russia and Japan have this as well) to leave their cultural bubble. There are exceptions though, much like I'm would like to think I'm an exception as an American who really loves learning about and partaking in other cultures (particularly those types which totally dominate their own media and social spheres). I'm an absolute American chauvinist, but I'm aware of the cultural differences that exist. Somehow, that seems very rare.
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.
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 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.
Anyways, I appreciate the effort you put into this post. Most certainly you have more experience with Chinese public opinion than I do, but I'm mostly shocked by how different it seems than it did 10 years ago. It's interesting that your experience is kind of the opposite, even if I think we're talking about different examples.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link