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PaperclipPerfector  22hr ago (text post)   3532 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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So there is a question that has been gnawing at me for the longest time: is PRC... Good? I mean:

  1. wildly economically succesful with a dynamic tech sector
  2. conservative and nationalistic population, proud of its' culture and heritage - this is the big one tbh, even the more liberal side of the population doesn't seem that bad, none of that self-hatred of the West
  3. technocracy - yeah, they may not be AS meritocratic as they advertise, and personal connections play a huge role, but comparing their officials to whatever the hell Western politicians are doing is not favorable to the latter
  4. willing to forego some comfort and economic progress for the sake of national power and sovereignity (as a European, seeing how our societies prefer to bend over looking for outside help instead of taking the harder route of building capacity for assertivness - yeah, China seems really vindicated right now)

I mean, there are obviously some tough things to get over (the whole free speech thing, how they handled COVID with safetyism that would make many in the West blush, all the other usual stuff), but genuinely, honestly... Following the news from China for a few years, I really can't help but envy the Chinese. Take down the communist iconography and I think that many on the right would see it similarly to Japan.

is PRC... Good?

Go live there for a while, travel the country and then come to the same conclusion as pretty much every other foreigner, which is "No, god no, absolutely not".

People here have touched on the topic of the PRCs moral bankruptcy and how unpleasant the culture is, but I'm going to focus on something a little more mundane and say that if the PRC becomes ascendant and starts trying to export soft power via cultural exports, you will weep and beg for the woke media to return to save you.

It is my firm belief that Chinese opera should be classified as a form of torture and America missed a trick by not staging mandatory performances at Guantanamo. Lion dances are great though, I'm fine with them exporting that.

The Western media's been nosediving in quality since the rise of wokeness, though. I'd prefer 20 year old Western highlights against current China stuff, but right now it's essentially Tiktok noise v Tiktok noise for a lot of casual media. I watched more decent quality Chinese films last year than I did Western ones, albeit maybe 2025 was just a bad year for Western Film.

The Chinese system isn't perfect but reigns in antisocial random battle encounters on public transport and seems to be trending in the right direction.

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