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The level of ignorance well-educated Americans have about China is honestly baffling, especially considering how many Chinese nationals literally live among them, how easy it is now for anyone with enough curiosity to see at least what Chinese social media is actually like, and how the civilian and bureaucrats pretend to take China seriously. A few weeks ago Scott Alexander in his open thread, quoted someone claiming that China has a whopping 50% youth unemployment rate (to his credit, he did acknowledge that he hadn’t verified the number). And of course during any discussions you get the usual “social credit score” or “cook the book” talk points. If people wants to talk about overproduction or involution or demographics or the pathological striver culture or the weak cultural output, I’m all for discussion. But using those recycled talk points from ten years ago is all so tiresome.
I sometimes wonder whether Americans today have roughly the same level of understanding of China as people had of the Soviets back in the day. Or maybe Russia being (at least in our Oriental mental map) Western meant it was better understood? Genuinely not sure. Don’t you want to know your enemy, if thats what we are?
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