The author makes an incorrect assessment without considering the appropriate context for China.
The gaping hole in his assessment of "Chinese cultural exports" is the failure to account for China's population and GDP per capita, which currently is only about $17k PPP. This is no position to be exporting culture to the globe from; that would just be a waste of resources. Culture is a result of being rich, not a cause of being rich.
In other words, China is not "culturally-stunted" than any other country with a similar GDP per capita PPP.
Chinese culture is also all in the Chinese language, and China has no strategic reason to make any effort to export it globally into English, a foreign language, where fitting translations would cost even more resources.
Culture doesn't need any kind of "official" export. If it is good, it gets discovered, now more than ever in social media. I didn't grow up watching Atom Boy, Voltron, and Robotech because the Japanese government invested in exporting it. Those were pulled into the US by some distributor in the Midwest who discovered them by accident, and decided to have them translated and show on US television.
A lot of KPop and Anime was exported to the US by fans, who free of charge as a labor of love, did translation and distribution. In the 70s, 80s, even 90s, a lot of this happened by an underground distribution network, people would make copies and trade.
Indeed, I grew up in the 70s and 80s watching lots of Hong Kong Kung-fu films, eg Shaw Bros, Golden Harvest, etc. There didn't need to be a "strategic reason" for HK canto films to have atrociously bad translation and dubbing slapped on them and marked to Americans. It was done because someone noticed that Americans loved watching these things.
You're making excuses for the fact that domestic mainland Chinese art is suffering a crisis of creativity caused by the crushing censorship of the state. People only make "safe" art in China. If you make any art that criticizes the establishment, or tells history in a way other than they want it to be seen, you may find yourself punished.
Ask Ai Weiwei. This is not a conducive environment for artistic expression.
If you a "business owner in Hong Kong" then you should be able to see with your own eyes whether Hong Kong is "just another Chinese city" or not, rather than believing the anti-China propaganda that western media regurgitates repetitively and predictably, paying only the most basic level of lip-service to actual events.
You will know then that Apple Daily and Stand News were pushing "freedom of the press" into territory that no western media dares to push in their own countries, including actively calling for foreign military intervention in Hong Kong.
"the only solution to bad speech is more free speech"
"the only solution to a bad market is more free market"
"the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
edit: Hacker News that bastion of "free speech" where all opinions not conforming to the "western liberal" doctrine gets downvote-censored because the readers are too fragile to read different opinions
> US media personalities calling for military invasion of Australia
(1) That's not the same thing as calling for military invasion of the US. (2) No government cares about random small articles that only random internet commentators know about to make a "irrelevant counterexample fallacy"; what matters is large-scale media exhibiting a long-term pattern of behaviour and trying to organise large numbers of people (which they failed at in HK; most people stopped going to the protests after a small group started extreme violence).
> You will know then that Apple Daily and Stand News were pushing "freedom of the press" into territory that no western media dares to push in their own countries, including actively calling for foreign military intervention in Hong Kong.
I recall very recently some US media personalities calling for military invasion of Australia; doesn't seem very different.
"If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States"
Are you for real? The suffering of Assange, Manning, Peltier, and many others demonstrates that this is not true. Heck, you can even throw right-wing loons associated with Jan 6 in there. Washington simply does not tolerate challenges to its authority.
Evidence-free invocation of "demonstrably true" is an oxymoron.
It would be more like if Trump or Q crazies took over power on Jan 6, then the NyTimes called for Canada and Britain to come to our rescue and restore Democracy.
The proportional male surplus in China is just over double that of the US. Of course there is something different happening in China, but asserting that this is mostly due to people "killing female infants" is ludicrous. By your logic, there "only" about 2/5 (portionally) of female infants getting killed in the United States as well.
The natural ratio between male and female births averages around 51:49, the US is almost bang on this number. China is currently closer to 55:45... clearly there is some unnatural pressure going on.
You seem to have a bit of sour grapes that a non-Western country dares to talk positively about their own policies.
You should understand that translations often lose some cultural context, so when you have a prejudice against the English word "harmonious", understand that the Chinese equivalent is used much more freely in everyday speech. "Solidarity" might have been a better translation.
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> I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han children dress up as them [..]
In a big place like China or the US, there are always going to incidents like this. Furthermore, most news stories will exaggerate the headlines or twist the details, so I am not even sure if this particular incident is as you described. What matters is what the policies are doing for the larger scale of individuals. You can't judge anything about this larger scale by looking at a few incidents, especially when Western media have a vested interest in showing you these news items and ignoring the vast majority of what is going on. (To be fair, the vast majority is quite boring.)
"Ask the people themselves" is used typically in these discussions as a weasel phrase, as if Western liberal democracies are truly "asking the people themselves". You have mass media bombarding the general population all the time with pre-ordained narratives. Nobody votes in elections with an independent analysis. So sure, it depends on what you mean by "ask the people themselves". There's lots of content on social media including from ethnic minorities, people are generally happy with their lives and the amount of freedom they have. Are you going to pick holes in that? Why not pick holes in what's happening with mass media de-jure "independent" de-facto manipulative elections in the West?
You seem to have some sour grapes about criticism of China and some kind of twisted, paranoid presumption about Western attitudes toward non-Western policymaking.
The point was not to make fun of the word choice “harmonious”, but rather to point out that CCP-led China is functionally an ethnostate that bluntly prefers and privileges one identity over the others.
There was no indication whether that poster was Western or not. Only you read that aspect into the comment. The poster was ripping on China specifically. And then you magnified it into higher stakes: that the presumably Western poster must be skeptical of or hostile to all non-Western policymaking. That says more about your presumptions about Westerners than it does about the comment.
And yes, the poster ribbed on the word harmonious, but again, that wasn’t the point. The meat of the post was about being ruled by big brother Han. Interestingly, you didn’t object to that bit at all!
I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han children dress up as them instead of letting any ethnic minorities represent themselves.
I don't think "harmonious" or "solidarity" or whatever other positive word you come up with would be an accurate representation of the relations of ethnic minorities. Especially if you were to ask the ethnic minorities themselves to come up with a word.
Ya but is that any different than Beijing? The Chinese government has to keep the propaganda and slogans up everywhere, it’s really the only tool they know of to communicate broadly their apparent successes to the people.
It actually was, both in sheer intensity and in style. For example, in Beijing (at least when I last visited) it was kind of hard to find posters of Xi Jinping, while in Lhasa you had a lot of this kind of thing: https://imgur.com/a/GRN9VZz
Which to me seemed remarkably tone deaf (nothing like reminding Tibetans to celebrate their "liberation" and its mastermind Mao), but presumably worrying about how the message would land was not among the KPIs of the cadre responsible.
China is not a totalitarian regime - you shouldn't believe all the propaganda out there, you should actually go there yourself and you'll find that you can live your life quite normally and happily.
China's identity isn't based on a single ethnic identity - the various restrictions (such as the now-3-child-policy, and permanent immigration between cities) apply to everyone. In fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various places such as state examinations - because it's recognised that a majority ethnic groups have disproportionate power.
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> As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government positively quite frequently.
The ways in which this statement is both true and false in its details, is not particularly different from the West.
In China, there are local protests quite regularly, and local governments respond.
In Hong Kong the protests were incredibly violent and disruptive. You cite the crackdowns by the government, but you don't cite the actions by the protestors and opposition legislators, that also attack innocents and filibuster the legislature for years, much more disruptively and disrespectfully than anything that's happened in the West, including shouting "Fuck China" during legislative oath-taking.
In China, mass organised protest against the national government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write some stuff on social media. In the West, in the rare case that actual mass protests ever get too rowdy they are shutdown quite brutally by the police. In China the government stops the situation before it gets to that point. In the West, anyone that sticks out enough to really be a bother, like Julian Assange, gets shut down very brutally too.
In both cases, these types of mass protests don't generally change anything in the political system. And in both cases, most ordinary people actually really just don't care to do these things, because the situation is fine in both China and the West - certainly not like the levels of the revolutions in the 1800s or the wars in the early 1900s. So when you criticise China for not allowing these things, this comes from a position of privilege, you have forgotten what it's like to be hungry. Not being hungry matters more, and China has found an efficient way to do that, so I am happy for them (and "us" as far as I can claim that). Maybe later things will become more relaxed, but it's not a particularly big priority.
> brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK?
Most of the "evidence" regarding Xinjiang is fabricated, the Hong Kong stories are exaggerated and one-sided. I'd be against any actual specific cases of brutal suppression that's going on. But that still wouldn't make me "anti-China" in the same way you're not "anti-US" or "anti-West" presumably (I am not either). But that's what Western media portrayals seem to be trying to do - saying that, oh China is doing some bad things, they are evil, they need to be stopped. China is not evil, the world is a complex place.
> we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still controlling,
Nobody really knows the details of these things high up, it's all conjecture. It's sure convenient that Democrat and Republican policies, compared to the rest of the world, are very similar. How do you know they're not essentially in cahoots and just putting up a show of being "opposites" for the rest of the world?
> In China, mass organised protest against the national government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write some stuff on social media.
Is there a typo somewhere or are you really saying there is no consequence for posting on social media in China? Because that's certainly not the case[1,2,3], unless all of Western media is misleading about this.
I lived in China, in Shanghai, near the French Concession, speak Mandarin, read 汉字，(not fluently, but HSK5-6), and have been to pretty much every province in China. About as privileged as you can be as an ex-pat, and I can still say, IMHO, it's pretty totalitarian.
Totalitarian: "relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state."
Is China centralized? Yes, it has a top down system, top-down industrial policy, top-down internet policy, state owned enterprises (30% of economy), state-owned media, etc.
Is China dictatorial? You can talk all you want about the Politburo Standing Committee sharing power, but Xi Jinping essentially holds total power (now for life with no term expiration), and even if Li Keqiang took power, we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still controlling, otherwise there would have been no reason for removing term limits for Xi. Xi controls the PLA loyalty, and he could arrest Li Keqiang or people from his faction if he wanted.
"you can live your life quite normally and happily."
As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government. Ask the Hong Kongnese. Or if you prefer, ask Feng Ti Mo, who was invited for a cup of Tea with the gestapo because she sang the Chinese National Anthem in a way that displeased the government, and is now forced to carry Communist Youth League content on her streaming channels. Or ask Jack Ma, who offered a milquetoast criticism of out-of-date financial regulatory framework in China and found himself with a Tea date with the gestapo. (The analogy here would be Colin Kalpernick being held by the CIA, and then forced to make pro-Trump speeches at football openings, or Elon Musk criticizing the SEC, and being told the SpaceX IPO is cancelled)
In other words, sit down, shut up, keep your head down, and you'll be ok.
Oh, and woe unto you if you want to access internet outside of China, and waste time everyday trying to find which VPN server you can connect to that isn't blocked. The sum total knowledge of mankind is now available to most people on the planet, but foolishly blocked in the Mainland.
"In fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various places such as state examinations". Yes, and I hear and see Han complaining all the time about Uighurs, Tibetans, and Miao, etc getting preferential treatment on the Gaokao, which is very much like whites and asians in the US complaining about affirmative action.
But does that make up for the abuse? Does the US government setting up Affirmative Action programs make up for a terrible criminal justice system biased against African Americans, or police brutality against African Americans? So the Chinese government has affirmative action for ethnic minorities, that makes any other brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK?
Is repression over anyone criticizing the central government publicly (and being loud enough to be noticed) made up for by marvelous infrastructure projects? Is this the price of high speed rail? Is it not possible to have freedom to compare Xi Jinping with Winnie the Pooh, and also have High Speed Rail and Shiny new airports?
Look, I don't hate China, otherwise I wouldn't have traveled all over it, learned Mandarin, and lived there. But I criticize US government policy HARSHLY, especially foreign policy, and I believe people have a right to criticize their government, and that China would be a much better agent for positive change in the world if it could shed the legacy of Mao, and move on to become a more open society, even going back to Deng-era policies would be better than the neo-fascist/nationalism that Xi is promoting these days.
The last 4 years saw rising nationalism in the US, and it has also been rising in Europe and in China. This is not good. We're trying to tame out nationalist Trump-wing here, and IMHO, Xi's pursuit of stroking nationalist sentiment is creating additional danger.
Rare to see such high quality content here. I share your analysis. But I believe Xi came at a time the mainland needed to be strengthened, to avoid being trumped over again (opium war like)
He is still needed? Maybe, because you said:
> The last 4 years saw rising nationalism in the US, and it has also been rising in Europe and in China. This is not good.
It is not good. Eventually the future for the mainland is bright, with good material condition and freedom. The situation is not ready yet. You can not "impose" democracy, the population must be ready.
But I believe all is done right and set for the generation being born now ("3 children per family") to be the happiest in the world.
Look, I understand the sentiment and context. China saw what happened in the USSR, and what's happening in India, and they are rightly fearful that a mob of 1 billion people who have not risen to the level of the 300-400 million middle class Chinese, pose an existential threat to the stability of the country if a power vacuum were left. They need to bring up the rest of the country to, ironically, prevent a communist revolution to the current "state capitalist" system they have.
The US came frighteningly close to instability during the Great Depression until FDR launched massive infrastructure projects, created social security, built 40,000 schools, created the GI Bill, etc.
But there is a such thing as overdoing it. I don't believe the current censorship is actually creating stability. Most educated Chinese know what's going on, can use VPNs, and the creativity of using anti-censorship terms on Weibo, shows people still want to criticize the government. (for example, mentioning Chloe Zhao was banned, so Chinese netizens started using her pinyin initials or English initials like CZ to refer to her, and the algorithms didn't pick it up)
Scarily enough, Xi has created such an atmosphere of nationalism, that "cancel culture" on behalf of "patriots" these days is enough to ruin someone, you don't even need the government to censor. If you criticize the government or China online these days, netizens will crush you.
Thank you for writing this epos. Your points are valid and even thou many chinese would disagree (I think), the parallels you draw between western and chinese phenomena are striking.
From afar (I have never been to china), I have to admit with a cold shiver, that the chinese control over the media might be working as intended. Usually, wealth and security encourage laicistic world views but like you said, nationalistic tendencies are on the rise everywhere and very useful for totalitarian regimes.
Maybe, the CCP even manages, with stronger measures, to rule away the demographic crisis, they are heading for and western governments will be even more jelly. It’s very concerning.
I spent years travelling around SE Asia, and met plenty of Chinese, enough to decide I did not want to go there. All of them were openly racist (mind you, all of SE Asia is openly racist, so this is nothing unusual). I accept that there are minority ethnic identities within China, but I have been told over and again (by Chinese people) that China is Han.
I have Chinese friends here in Berlin who still won't talk about Chinese politics within hearing range of their phones. If this isn't a totalitarian regime, what is?
My direct experience contradicts your statements. What are you basing them on?
My direct experience contradicts your direct experience. I'm Chinese, grew up in China until I was 5, and visit it every now and again.
> I have been told over and again (by Chinese people) that China is Han.
You are either selectively reporting, or selectively misremembering things based on your own existing prejudices. I have certainly talked to more Chinese people than you, and nobody has ever said this.
I lived in Berlin for 3.5 years, I found plenty of racism there as well; also in the UK and US where it's more subtle.
I'd assume your Chinese friends are a non-representative sample of Chinese people - likely, you are friends with them because they ran into issues with the government, and hence had similar interests and were attracted to the same events and locations. China has 1.4 billion people, this is bound to happen.
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> little point in discussing anything China-related in Western internet forums.
Thanks for the advice, I am indeed trying to take it in moderation. I think it's important to try to maintain some level of healthy discourse though, the anti-China propaganda is taking the world down a dark path.
> Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the Uyghur people. Do you believe that this is fabricated by all these media outlets?
Yes, they are all citing the same fake reports written by a few people working non-independently, driven ultimately by geopolitical strategy and taking advantage of liberal media's existing prejudices to portray China as "evil". See https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang - a collection of a large number of sources from many different people, working independently.
I'm sorry you experienced racism. As an Australian and Brit, I apologise for our countries not living up to our ideals on these things. I can't speak for Germany - I'm a guest here too - but I know that most Germans are working towards eliminating racism from their culture.
That's not my experience of the Chinese, however. China is not working to eliminate racism. It doesn't have these ideals. As a white person I will never be accepted as a Chinese person by the Chinese, because in Chinese people's eyes, Chinese == Han (from my experience). This isn't unusual in Asia - Cambodians only recognise Khmer people, Japan only recognises ethnic Japanese people, and so on. I have white friends who have lived in Cambodia for decades, speak the language perfectly, have Cambodian families, but who can never become citizens and will never be accepted as "Cambodian" because of their race.
This isn't true of Australians (for example). Australia doesn't equate Australian = caucasian [0]. You can emigrate to Australia, and become a citizen, and the vast majority of Australians will accept you as an Australian because of that. Being Australian is not about race, but more about culture and commitment. Australia's sense of identity is not linked to its ethnic identity in the same way that SE Asian countries are.
[0] There are always some racist dickheads who will disagree with this. Sorry for that.
These days, I find that there is little point in discussing anything China-related in Western internet forums. There's an overwhelming amount of ignorance, misinformation, prejudice and propaganda about China from tons of different parties. People largely post to get their standpoints confirmed, and nothing you post will change anything.
As a fellow Chinese raised in the West, I know it's hard to resist getting drawn into such thread. I try to avoid posting/reacting as much as I can, and sincerely advise the same to you. You're probably not going to change anybody's mind and just wasting your own time.
As a Brit (though I have travelled and worked a bit in China), I'm constantly dismayed by the thinly-veiled (and sometimes overt) racism, biases, prejudice and ignorance that are on display in just about any HN thread about China - the comments for this article are particularly shocking.
Yes, the Chinese government has done some bad things in it's time, but plainly not everything they do has bad intentions. And bejesus, people in glass houses and all that.
It seems very much like the USA's anti-China propaganda machine is working well - particularly telling since I would have assumed that the average US HN reader was educated.
A culture of ostracizing what's perceived as 'the dumb and uninformed' is what got the US Trump. Putting up a wall against them didn't get the US to a better place. Like it or not, there's a substantial amount of misinformed and misguided people and if you do not at least interact/counter-argue there's a real chance that more people get misinformed to the point something goes horribly wrong, they're in support of it and you can't do anything against them.
As chinese there's a sense that we should keep our head down in favor of the harmony. But I've come to realize this isn't enough we should let the truth speak louder. Keep fighting the good fight.
I think this is equivalent to someone not arguing back because theres no real evidence to support their bias. Saying that all these media outlets are spreading misinformation for some reason is really not supported by fact. Is there fake news, sure. But that's different from saying that everything critical of a country is propaganda.
What are people ignorant about here? There's been several countries/states that deny China and confirms what everyone believes (Taiwan, Hong Kong).
Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the Uyghur people.
Do you believe that this is fabricated by all these media outlets? I would think that genocide of a particular ethnicity would count as totalitarian and racist.
I'm not the person you spoke to but I can answer this question from my own perspective:
I'm Chinese, grew up in the UK, but I do consider moving back to China as a long-term option that I'll have to think seriously about. The main barrier for me is language & culture, my Chinese skills are awful; for other similar people I'd expect finances too but luckily that's not the case for me.
My parents came to the UK from China to study because they wanted a better life. That was in the 90s where China was admittedly a bit of a shithole, relative to other countries including the UK. My dad went back to China after a few years of working, because he felt he'd do better in a country where he understood the culture better. My mum stayed in the UK because she really really dislikes the Chinese government (for historical reasons). These days they occasionally mention that some of their classmates, that stayed in China, are doing better than them. My mum is quite stubborn though so she doesn't consider moving back as an option.
My cousin visited the UK a few years ago and told me "oh is that all it is" - there's still a cultural impression that western countries are really great, so he thought it'd be way more impressive (he only visited Aberdeen and Manchester, never London, but still London is not that much better), and that's why rich parents still send their kids to school in the west; similarly there's still a cultural impression from western countries that China is a bit of a shithole & authoritarian to boot - but reality has changed a lot in the past 30 years.
The problem today is that you have these nice laws to protect the media, but they themselves are not taking responsibility for their own actions, instead they pander to the prejudices of their readers. They have failed to realise that "free speech" (and other rights) can be exercised in a very negative way, and are undermining their own society for the profit motive, or other political motives.
I do not believe there is any systematic suppression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang (where they are a majority), this is not consistent with Chinese history. As far as I can make out, a very small minority of people are being held for anti-extremism purposes; but generally the Uighur population and culture are thriving in Xinjiang - there are lots of primary sources on this, search "life in xinjiang" on youtube for example.
The media is certainly currently waging a disinformation war against China, blowing the reality up into "genocide", "cultural suppression", "sterilisation", etc - this is all inconsistent with the masses of primary sources, and the cheap propaganda tactics are disgusting and shameful. The few concrete individual reports that we do have, many of them have also been debunked or are obviously inconsistent (e.g. changing stories multiple times).
The camps may not be great compared to regular life in a first-world country, but compared to what the US did in the middle east - killing 100ks-millions of muslims - Xinjiang is probably the best result that a country has achieved in the world (so far) in fighting terrorism, and that's why most muslim-majority countries in fact support China on this issue. Of course, everyone can strive to do better, but that's not how western media is portraying it.
This methodology is biased towards a western perspective on how democracies "must" be run. Taken literally, a democracy is a direct democracy, but no country today is a direct democracy because everybody recognises that it has flaws. So every democratic system tries to make a balance.
Yes, China fixes a 1-party state, but how does that differ from fixing e.g. the judicial branch in the US system which also cannot be elected?
The minorities angle is just weird and shows you have no understanding about China - minorities generally have preferential policies in many aspects of law, e.g. the One-Child policy (now Two-Child policy). That's more than you can say for the US.
China's censorship system is not that sophisticated it's just large scale. The purpose is more to ensure large-scale stability, and they don't care about small-scale private conversations between individuals. The US is currently grappling difficult questions about how to moderate fake news, large corporations are stuck in a difficult place - on one hand they are accused of promoting fake news, on the other hand they are accused of suppressing free speech. So just because China took a strong stance on this, does not mean they are "evil" for doing so.
Again, you need to have some cultural background of China before judging it, rather than judging it based on western preconceptions of how a democracy "must" work like.
The gaping hole in his assessment of "Chinese cultural exports" is the failure to account for China's population and GDP per capita, which currently is only about $17k PPP. This is no position to be exporting culture to the globe from; that would just be a waste of resources. Culture is a result of being rich, not a cause of being rich.
In other words, China is not "culturally-stunted" than any other country with a similar GDP per capita PPP.
Chinese culture is also all in the Chinese language, and China has no strategic reason to make any effort to export it globally into English, a foreign language, where fitting translations would cost even more resources.