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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.
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