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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   20708 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025

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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.

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