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menino posted:Keep in mind this was when I walked in this morning. I am very curious about why you have this information to hand.
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May 23, 2012 05:11
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ReindeerF posted:Please do this! Just draw a big smug-faced smiley on the whiteboard and walk out of the room like the haters-gon-hate cartoon. Okay you lost me. That was a rhetorical question. What I meant is that the kids I tutor in private (as opposed to the classroom) are quite earnest about learning English and I was asking rhetorically if I should give them some cynical rant for the crime of being genuinely interested.
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May 23, 2012 05:40
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I know, I was just being facetious, heh. From what I've seen, I agree with what you're saying generally, that people here are often just scoring rhetorical points on the backs of easily flogged bogeymen. That said, it's not like there's not a sizable contingent (that grows exponentially - I have no idea what that means - as you head South). Still, I've never taught and my associations are at top universities, so I don't see as much as teachers do. \/\/\/ I was ridiculing my own unintentional use of a trying-to-sound-like-a-smartey-mans word instead of hitting backspace, heh. Sometimes I catch myself using cheap sentence steroids like EXPONENTIALLY or LITERALLY and I find it eye-rolling enough to just go ahead and make fun of myself instead of deleting it. ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 06:25 on May 23, 2012 |
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May 23, 2012 06:12
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ReindeerF posted:that grows exponentially - I have no idea what that means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth  It means the growth rate of a function is proportional to the function's value. Content: North Korea now literally a den of pirates. Hong Kongers still dogs.
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May 23, 2012 06:21
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ReindeerF posted:That said, it's not like there's not a sizable contingent (that grows exponentially - I have no idea what that means - as you head South). Are you suggesting that the number of crappy English teachers approaches infinity at the south pole?
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May 23, 2012 07:02
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Arglebargle III posted:Are you suggesting that the number of crappy English teachers approaches infinity at the south pole?
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May 23, 2012 07:21
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So Sina has set up a portal for decent foreigners. 
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May 23, 2012 12:12
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Throatwarbler posted:So Sina has set up a portal for decent foreigners. Hahaha, that loving poll. quote:Beijing started a three-month campaign on May 15 targeting foreigners illegally staying in the capital.Your say? Hard to say indeed.
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May 23, 2012 14:06
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I'd like to see a little questionnaire form on that site that would help us "laowai" do a little self testing. Have you: 1. Puked in a KTV (yes) 2. Taken a Chinese woman away to another country (yes) 3. Hurt the feelings of Chinese people (?)
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May 23, 2012 14:25
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Reminds me of this poll: http://www.arableagueonline.org/wps/portal/las_en/home_page/!ut/p/c5/ (scroll down to the lower part of the left-hand nav bar)
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May 23, 2012 14:32
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Throatwarbler posted:So Sina has set up a portal for decent foreigners. Oh my god. China Daily Show should just throw in the towel now, real life is much funnier.
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May 23, 2012 15:00
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http://english.sina.com/china/2012/0520/469057.htmlquote:Criminal crimes involving foreign offenders have seen a stark rise in recent years, in particular, when it comes to those illegal aliens, referring to the foreigners enter China without a legal visa, the foreigners stay in China with an expired visa, and the foreigners have a job in China without a working permit. EDIT: "It is advisable to bear in mind: 'Only good scouting is likely to preserve the respect and freedom so dear to the heart of the eternal Boy Scout.'" Hahahah, what the? EDIT EDIT: Oh man, China is awesome - this is like Chinese Bill O'Reilly: http://english.sina.com/china/p/2012/0520/468975.html quote:"The public security bureau wants to clean out the foreign trash. To arrest foreign thugs and protect innocent girls, they need to focus on the disaster areas of Wudaokou (a student area) and Sanlitun (a bar area). Cut off the traffickers, including those who can't find jobs in the US and Europe that come to China to take money, engage themselves in human trafficking and illegal immigration. Identify foreign spies, who live with Chinese women while collecting intelligence and GPS information for Japan, South Korea, the United States and European countries while holding a tourist visa. That foreign bitch has been expelled and closed Al-Jazeera's Beijing bureau. We should kick out those who demonize China." ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 16:20 on May 23, 2012 |
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May 23, 2012 15:09
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Speaking of China Daily Show, their latest on the foreigner crackdown:quote:
Staring at papers for a long time before announcing that there's some huge problem, if you haven't gotten through a few of those then you haven't really been in China.
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May 23, 2012 17:50
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Nigeria has also joined the crackdown parade!quote:Nigeria accuses Chinese traders of 'scavenging' in Kano I also heard the US State Department sent a directive to crackdown on Chinese scholars from teaching pre-collegiate classes in the US.
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May 23, 2012 20:57
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Oh-ho-ho, lest the Chinese crack down on Chocolate City.
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May 23, 2012 21:01
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Oh crap, wrote up a megapost. WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH TIBET? THE POST Tibet is probably one of the topics that people get most worked up about in regards to China. From Tibetan exiles protesting at Chinese embassies across the world to the Chinese nationals coming out to protest them in turn, we’re left with irreconcilably different takes on the situation. Foreigners tend to support the Tibetan cause, although there’s also a strain of ‘but you see, the Uyghur have it much worse and by the way, did you hear Tibetans sometimes exaggerate the number of kills China has racked up in Tibet?’ thought among some China watchers. The truth might technically lie somewhere in the middle between Hu Jintao and Richard Gere, but in the end I don’t think you can reasonably dispute that the truth is far closer to the Tibetan side than to Xinhua. In this post I would like to explain what the fuss is all about. To do that we need to start somewhere, so let’s take a look at exactly what Tibet is.  WHAT IS TIBET? If you look at a Chinese map today, you’ll see a large province in the southwest labeled ‘Tibet,’ or Xizang in pinyin. Right from the start we’ve hit a snag, though, because this term doesn’t line up at all with any word in Tibetan. Tibetans (bodpa) come from Tibet (bod), which is a far larger entity than what exists today in China. Sometimes people will fall back and refer to Xizang province as ‘central Tibet,’ but even this is really inaccurate! Xizang today is a weird Frankenstein province stitched together with random pieces of Tibet: U-Tsang, Ngari, and a sizeable chunk of Kham. Tibetan doesn’t even have a word for this amalgamation, or at least it didn’t until China foisted one upon it. The piece of Kham in Xizang is particularly indicative of how much Xizang is a weird fiction of a province- if Xizang is central Tibet, why are there Khampas in it? And if part of Kham is also Tibet, then why is the rest of Kham divided into prefectures in Sichuan, Qinghai, and Yunnan provinces? The reality is that Xizang today is more or less modeled on the areas of Tibet directly administered by the Ganden Phodrang dynasty at the time of the Chinese annexation. Their reluctance to acknowledge even the existence of the previous Tibetan government frequently leaves Beijing unable to come up with a good reason for why Tibet is divided like that today. The rest of Tibet, which was ruled by a mixture of monastic institutions, local monarchies, nomadic clans, and (especially around the edges) Chinese or Hui warlords, was split into the surrounding provinces in a way that seems to violate Chinese laws forbidding the unnecessary division of ethnic minorities. IS IT TRUE THAT THE TIBETAN EXILES CLAIM HUGE CHUNKS OF CHINA AS THEIR TERRITORY? Not really! This is a misunderstanding that Beijing has worked hard to promote, but one glance at a Chinese map dispels it. Go ahead, check it out: starting from Xizang province we have an unbroken contiguous territory of Tibetan autonomous prefectures stretching through Qinghai, southern Gansu, western Sichuan, and northwestern Yunnan. If you line up the areas claimed by Tibetans with the areas designated ‘Tibetan Autonomous’ by Beijing, you’ll see that they are almost identical. Is Beijing itself promoting separatism these days?! The gap between Xizang and Tibet has been the largest sticking point in the negotiations between the Dalai Lama and Beijing, with Beijing claiming that the Dalai Lama has no authority to talk about anything, and especially not the areas outside of Xizang. Again this is another point where they get weirdly roundabout, because explaining why Tibetan areas outside of Tibet aren’t his domain would involve admitting that Ganden Phodrang existed, so this is the point where they tend to start mumbling and looking for exits. Does the Dalai Lama really have the authority to negotiate over an area larger than Xizang? I would say that Tibetans in Amdo and Kham have made it very clear that the answer to that is yes, but they’ve been systematically denied a voice by China so I guess you could theorize that Amdowas and Khampas don’t actually want to be part of a Tibetan state and I wouldn’t technically be able to prove you wrong. Do note that waving the Tibetan national flag is a big part of protests anywhere in Tibet, not just in Xizang, and that Tibetan nationalism has been growing in all parts of Tibet- not just the parts boxed off by China as “Tibet.” WHEN DID THIS WHOLE THING START? Hard to say! In brief, we can say that China and Tibet have disagreed about how their relationship works for centuries. Chinese emperors have tended to view Tibet as part of their territory but been unable to project force there for extended periods of time, while successive Tibetan rulers have struggled to take advantage of Chinese military strength while also studiously avoiding any implication that Tibet is somehow subordinate to China. This reached a head in 1913, when the 13th Dalai Lama wrote a declaration clarifying Tibet’s position on its relationship with China- namely that of patron-priest, and even that relationship was cancelled due to what the Tibetans viewed as abuses on China’s part (armed incursions, half-hearted attempts to annex Tibet, etc). In 1913 China was obviously in no state to take on challenges like that, and this document has been considered the Tibetan Declaration of Independence by Tibetans. After the conclusion of the Chinese civil war things changed considerably, with the PLA peacefully liberating the poo poo out of most of Amdo and Kham. After defeating the Tibetan army at Chamdo things slowed down, though, while the Chinese negotiated with the 14th Dalai Lama. This pause gave rise to the current Chinese map of Tibet, with the northern and eastern parts of Tibet being integrated into Chinese provinces while soon-to-be Xizang cooled its heels. The 17 Point Agreement made a bunch of promises Mao never intended to keep, and over the years the situation in Amdo and Kham deteriorated while it became more and more clear to the Tibetan government that China was not going to fulfill their promises of sharing power in Tibet. In 1959 Tibet finally exploded, with the Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa and the unified anti-Chinese uprisings in Amdo and Kham leading to harsh reprisals from the PLA and the flight of the Dalai Lama. THIS IS ANCIENT HISTORY! WHAT ARE TIBETANS COMPLAINING ABOUT THESE DAYS? In my experience different sectors of Tibetan society have vastly different complaints, although a few extend broadly between different classes, regions, and occupations. Some of the biggest problems include: -Resettling Nomads The eventual end of nomad life is probably largely inevitable, if the last few thousand years have taught us anything. There’s a reason it’s come to a stop across most of the planet, and why such an end is probably in the cards for Tibet as well. That said, Beijing and the various provincial/prefectural governments have been making an enormous hash out of it, because improving the lifestyle of the people themselves isn’t really their ultimate goal. Other than a handful of successful programs in which houses are built near winter pastures and roads are built to connect grasslands to the stores, schools, and hospitals in towns, the nomad resettlement experience has been a nightmare for Tibetans. Take a trip through the remote parts of Qinghai to see what they’re complaining about : ghettoes, little box houses clustered together in the absolute middle of nowhere. No place to work, no chance to improve your livelihood, no hopes for your children beyond living in a tiny joke of a house. There are many reports of nomads being forced to sell their herds and then being forcibly resettled, and given that many of these families were formerly able to make much more money than the stipend given to them by the government (and were able to provide many of their daily needs from their herd, at that), it shouldn’t be surprising that we’ve seen nomads and formerly nomadic regions at the forefront of recent protests against Chinese rule. Meanwhile grasslands which were cleared in the name of ‘environmental protection’ are being mined for gold and metals, which clearly does far more damage to the land than yak grazing did. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on whether or not removing the herds would even theoretically improve the grasslands because of the importance of grazing to many of the plants and animals on the plateau. -Tibetan Language Right now the oldest generation of Tibetans can still remember a time when Tibetan was the lingua franca of Tibet. No more. The political and ethnic dominance of Han Chinese has also brought the dominance of Hanyu, which is far more important of a language even in Lhasa itself now. Tibetans are angry that this is happening in spite of promises made to them over and over again during the last few decades and in spite of ethnic autonomy laws that were supposed to uphold Tibetan as the ‘national’ language in Tibetan areas. Communist Party officials might congratulate themselves for protecting Tibetan, and big red signs might praise the Party for nurturing the language, but it’s clear to everyone on the ground that Tibetan is being eroded as Han immigration, education policies, and attacks on pro-Tibetan language organizations continue to take their toll. This is one that I’ve heard from almost every Tibetan I’ve ever met. Even my Tibetan tutor last year, a student at a Nationalities University, who never brought up politics, brought this one up. He was angry about seeing Tibetans unable to say basic things in their own language, and the slow creep of Mandarin place names supplanting the Tibetan names that have been used for generations. When Tibetan textbooks were replaced by Mandarin ones in one part of Qinghai last year the students tore the books up and threw them out. The Lhakar movement calls on Tibetans to speak pure Tibetan at least one day a week. If there’s any upside it’s that Tibetans seem increasingly aware of the value of their language to their identity as Tibetans, and of the different means China uses to try and erase Tibetan. -Religion The recent decades have brought a religious revival in China, although Buddhist and Daoist institutes in China proper remain mostly gutted- perhaps rebuilt as money-makers and tourists traps, but very rarely revived as actual places of religious thought and activity. This seems pretty much ideal for Beijing, because the Communist Party isn’t very big on the idea of anyone replacing them at the center of the Chinese altar. Drawing tourists is one thing, but potentially having another source of authority outside of the Party isn’t considered acceptable (see FLG and house churches, for example). This is the problem for Chinese authorities, because Tibetan monastic institutions have managed to thrive in the post-Mao era. Restrictions on the major monasteries lead to the growth of places like Larung Gar, which held more than 10,000 students before it was bulldozed a few years ago. Monks complain about government interference in their studies, campaigns against prominent lamas, restrictions on the monastery population keeping them at skeleton crews (for example, Drepung Monastery outside of Lhasa used to hold between 7 and 10 thousand monks. Today it has 300 to 500), midnight raids on monks quarters, and incessant spying and camera installations that leave them feeling like criminals. Restrictions on travel between Tibetan areas has also taken a big toll, with the tradition of monks studying in different monasteries more or less destroyed. This, combined with the language issues I mentioned earlier is one of the main reasons that so many Tibetan parents try to send their children to India, where they can study a number of things which would be impossible to teach in Chinese territory these days. -Marginalization This is pretty much the exact same thing the Uyghur see. Economic marginalization comes with the territory, given the Han-centric nature of Chinese society. Job postings will sometimes outright state Han only, other times Tibetans simply won’t get the job. The end of Tibetan as the main language of Tibet means that Tibetans are disadvantaged against Han immigrants. Hotels are wary of admitting Tibetan guests, passports are a thousand times harder to obtain if your nationality status isn’t Han, police and paramilitary police tasked with keeping Tibet under control are naturally be suspicious of the group they’ve been taught to see as stupid, violent, and treasonous. From all of the Communist Party leaders of Xizang since the creation of the TAR, guess how many have been Tibetan? Nah go ahead, guess. Anti-Tibetan discrimination is a constant reality in Tibet, and Chinese media and education constantly work to present a vision of Tibetans as dumb, easily mislead traitors to the rest of China, if they’re given any thought at all beyond that of a smiling woman in shiny clothes holding a khata out for male Han guests. -Political Reeducation, Denouncing the Dalai Although political reeducation often falls on monks, it can happen to any Tibetan. Take the pilgrims returning from India recently, many of whom were elderly retirees, as an example. After they were given permission to briefly go abroad for a Kalachakra initiation, they were arrested upon their return and assigned to political reeducation, which normally consists of patriotic browbeatings, forced confessions, and demands for denunciations of the Dalai Lama. When people say the Cultural Revolution never ended in Tibet they might be exaggerating, but not by much. Although the Dalai Lama might not still have the position of god-king that he held before, he remains extremely popular among Tibetans and China has consistently created ill-will among Tibetans by forcing them to denounce him in written and oral statements. Personally, I assume that these policies continue because portraying the Dalai Lama as a boogieman is an important part of keeping Han Chinese in support of the current policies towards Tibetans, even if it makes Tibetans angrier as a result. -Restrictions on Tibetan Culture This one has sped up since 2008, when massive protests started in Lhasa and spread out to every corner of Tibet. In the following years Tibetan writers have been arrested, singers have been disappeared, comedians have been beaten, teachers have been blacklisted, festivals and holidays have been cancelled, magazines and literary journals have been shuttered, and any gathering or association of more than four people has been shut down. I probably don’t need to spell it out for you, but Tibetans haven’t really been happy with these developments, especially given their obviously punitive and wide-ranging application. THAT’S IT? Yep. Well, nope, but that’s the end of the big ones I’m going to put in list form. I think it’s important to say something else here, though, which is that taken together these rafts of policies seem to constitute something more than the sum of their parts. Overall they form an attack on Tibetans themselves: their culture, their race, their nation. The end result of the game as it’s played right now will be the destruction of Tibet. That still might be a generation or three away, but that tension is what sets off so many of these protests. Tibetans have merely to look towards Dongbei to see what Tibet might look like in a few decades. WHY SHOULD I CARE? I don’t know, you certainly don’t have to. I admittedly do find it curious when China watchers assume some sort of skeptical attitude towards Tibet, especially when the same people mention Xinjiang as a ‘real’ example of ethnic conflict in China. Perhaps the Tibetan Freedom Concerts and overly strident statements from Hollywood have turned some people off, but merely spending a small amount of time talking to Tibetans reveals a situation that has nothing to do with Richard Gere or Adam Yauch, however wrong or right they may be. In writing this post I hoped to show that there’s a little bit more to the issue than some blazed college kid talking about how the Dalai Lama, is, like, so cooool, man! This is a very real conflict that is playing out right now, all exaggerations aside. BUT WAIT! THE DALAI LAMA WANTS TO INSTITUTE FUEDAL SERFDOM, AND ALSO THE CIA CREATED THE TIBET ISSUE, AND HAVE YOU HEARD OF DORJE SHUGDEN? Fun fact: Tibetan exiles have their own democracy! It has its fair share of issues, but on the whole Tibetans outside of China enjoy democratic processes that their family members could get (and often enough, are) imprisoned for just mentioning. The Tibetan exile administration has put forth a number of proposals to China for how they would like to end the conflict, exactly none of which could ever lead to the recreation of a theocracy. They’re all designed to be implemented by China itself, how could that possible work?! “Ah, poo poo, we were just setting up a local democratic government in Lhasa but on the back of the paper it says the Dalai Lama gets to be super pope of China for all time, wrap it up gongchangdangailures.” As for the CIA, suffice to say that there’s a reason China gets so vague about exactly what they did. While active in the region for years, their contributions were limited mainly to providing arms and training to Tibetan guerilla armies that had been operating for years before the CIA arrived on the scene. Chinese accounts tend to purposely attribute everything done by Ganden Phodrang or Chushi Gangdruk to the CIA, as blaming outside imperialists helps paper over the massive holes in the official history of Tibet. Why were the Khampas rebelling in the mid-50s? The CIA did it. Why did negotiations in Lhasa break down? CIA did it. Why is Tibet still an issue, half a century later? Goddamn CIA, dude. Tibetans themselves have no agency or role in the story as written in China, and are reduced to dumb brutes who hulk the gently caress up and start betraying the motherland the moment a CIA spy starts talking to them. This is a massively insulting portrayal of the issue for Tibetans, but obviously the Communist Party isn’t writing it with Tibetans as the intended audience. Dorje Shugden is a thing, and some sad stuff has indeed happened there, but (wow huge surprise!) the entire story has been turned upside down and inside out by Beijing, which is trying to use it as a wedge issue between Tibetans. I don’t think it’s working, but you still see it get dragged up every now and then. WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW? I don’t know! Since the end of the Mao era China has occasionally played nice with Tibetans, although such moments are few and far between. Since 2008 things have gotten a lot worse, too, with the general transformation of Tibet into a police state noticeably accelerating. The self-immolations are a kind of response to that, with every other avenue of expression cut off by a regime that has no idea how to engage Tibetans other than through force. Qinghai province is the one somewhat bright spot, or at least less dark than the other largest Tibetan areas in the TAR and Sichuan, with a provincial government that at least remembers that carrots can be an occasional alternative to sticks. I suspect that Tibet’s future is tied up with general political reform in China, although future leaders who have a better understanding of what will happen to Tibet after the Dalai Lama dies than the current ones might be inclined to engage with him before it's too late. We’ll see.
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May 24, 2012 00:39
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ReindeerF posted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nUkiaDS3g4 This is my favorite Chinese Bill O'Reilly rant. It starts out relatively calm and innocuous with the anchorwoman interviewing this professor to get his 2 cents on the issues between Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong. Then he goes off the rails in a full on rant about Hong Kong Cantonese being running dogs etc.. It's pretty entertaining. The anchorwoman's face is all
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May 24, 2012 04:52
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Hey, small aside here: I'm writing up a thing about my experiences in the Tibetan exile community, and I wanted to read some things from modern Chinese soldiers perspectives. Not necessarily about Tibet, and definitely not from high-level people. Just "I'm a soldier, I get assigned places, this is my daily life" sort of books or articles that have been translated into English. All of the Chinese sources are pretty high-level people or people designated to talk to foreigners. Anyone have suggestions?
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May 31, 2012 21:25
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dj_clawson posted:I'm writing up a thing about my experiences in the Tibetan exile community Sorry, can't help with the soldier thing, but curious about this- have you been spending time in Dharamsala and the other big ones in India or Nepal or something? What have you been doing?
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Jun 1, 2012 22:56
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:Sorry, can't help with the soldier thing, but curious about this- have you been spending time in Dharamsala and the other big ones in India or Nepal or something? What have you been doing? Yes, I was in Dharamsala for 4 weeks, interviewing some senior citizens in the refugee community and teaching English at the Lha Social Work organization. I visited Nepal after that, but more as a tourist. Now I'm working on a book about the refugee stories, and I'd really like something from the Chinese POV that isn't just propaganda. Actual life stories of people who were born and raised in the PRC but aren't trained specifically to talk to Westerners. In the exile community, obviously, the Chinese are kind of monolithic in all being bad, like Cubans in Florida feel about Castro. It wasn't my business to tell them, "Hey most Chinese are just trying to make their way in the world and not starve to death, like you are." That wasn't what I was there to do. There's not many publications that address the real Chinese side, and when they do, it's not always thorough because of the language/culture barrier. "Waiting for the Dalai Lama" makes a real honest attempt to talk to Tibetans living under Chinese rule who like it and Chinese living in Tibet who are not party members, but you have to go through a lot of other people to get there.
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Jun 1, 2012 23:44
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China 'arrests high-level US spy' in Hong Kong - reportsquote:A Chinese security ministry official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the US and passing on state secrets, Hong Kong media reports say. Good ole CIA using the honeypot trap technique! Doesn't look good for Zhou Yongkang, head of security.
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Jun 2, 2012 05:14
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^^ That's a really interesting story. To take this on a slight derail, are these kinds of things really "major incidents" as the story stated? Of course, I don't think even the Chen thing was really a "major incident" either as it turned out, just a very well timed and ballsy move by Chen to ensure maximum exposure. Not that I'm privy to any special information, but it seems like the US was not really champing at the bit to make a big deal out of Chen and just found itself kind of overwhelmed after letting him in. Are these kinds of double agent things really big incidents to Beijing and Washington? Or is just a thing because it went public?
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Jun 2, 2012 17:28
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It depends on what exactly he leaked. It could be huge, it could be pretty minor, as far as actual effects of him being turned were. You'll have to wait for more info to come out to know.
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Jun 2, 2012 17:36
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Ronald Spiers posted:China 'arrests high-level US spy' in Hong Kong - reports China used a similar trap to get an FBI agent with the sexy asian woman ruse then mirrored his laptop when they had an affair. So I guess it's tit for tat with this sort of thing. It must suck being an official connected to an intelligence agency because you never know whether the woman you are dating or who shows interest is really an agent.
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Jun 3, 2012 01:33
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I'm listening to the newest Sinica right now and one of the guests just dropped a theory that really made me go  The whole concept of "剩女" or leftover women is a thing that the Communist party made up and propagated through state news and propaganda. The reason is that the Chinese leadership has seen the demographic changes that have happened in Japan and other East Asian countries that have become richer and less patriarchal - women who are highly educated and independent tend to marry at a later age, or maybe not at all, as being financially independent tends to reduce the traditional economic pressures to marry in patriarchal societies. The result of this is an magnification of the demographic "problems" that all these countries are currently going through, with very much reduced birth rates especially among st the upper strata of the economy. So, all the lovely Chinese dating reality shows and such are actually efforts by the Communist party to inject, through the state controlled mass media, an artificial urgency to marry into the current generations of young women to offset the demographic implosion that is going to hit China harder than other countries. The result of this is a massive rollback of status, especially economic status for women.
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Jun 3, 2012 02:40
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Modus Operandi posted:...tit for tat tle...  I haven't seen this pop up in this thread yet: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554.htm This year's CCP Report on the deplorable state of human rights in America. The report is mostly a rather strange cocktail of quotations from "The Guardian" newspaper, pressure groups and the US Government's own research. Many of the links are not accessible from within China.
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Jun 3, 2012 02:48
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Throatwarbler posted:I'm listening to the newest Sinica right now and one of the guests just dropped a theory that really made me go This isn't an east asian thing at all though most developed countries have had a birth rate implosion. Italy, Germany, Russia, etc.. are particularly bad if not worse than Japan. You're right about economics but the east/west culture difference has nothing to do with it.
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Jun 3, 2012 04:10
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Modus Operandi posted:This isn't an east asian thing at all though most developed countries have had a birth rate implosion. Italy, Germany, Russia, etc.. are particularly bad if not worse than Japan. You're right about economics but the east/west culture difference has nothing to do with it. What? I didn't say anything about any east/west cultural difference?
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Jun 3, 2012 04:14
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Throatwarbler posted:What? I didn't say anything about any east/west cultural difference? Some interesting population growth rate and birth rates from the CIA worldfactbook quote:Japan Germany is way more hosed and so is Russia but Russia's problem seems to be the really high death rate too. What's interesting is that in some developed european nations the birth rate would be far worse if it weren't for the recent north african/turkish immigrants. I don't want to sound all Eurabia but some of the fears generated by anti-immigrant groups probably stems from real insecurity from this shift in birth demographics. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 04:19
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Korea's birthrate is that of a much wealthier country. China is skewed of course b/c of the one child policy thing. I think it's definitely an East/West thing. Way too expensive to educate kids because of the stupid Gaokao/suneung testing that determines your entire loving life at age 17.
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Jun 3, 2012 04:20
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menino posted:
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Jun 3, 2012 04:23
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menino posted:Korea's birthrate is that of a much wealthier country. China is skewed of course b/c of the one child policy thing. I think its a metropolitan thing. Whenever you have a large modern city you get tons of unmarried working professionals. Personally I see way more bachelors/bachelorettes in their 30s and 40s from Hong Kong than other greater Chinese regions.
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Jun 3, 2012 04:33
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Also Chinese women are already way more independent in almost all quantifiable ways (more female managers, women regularly report higher aspirations, higher involvement in the work force, greater number of self made m/billionaires) than those of Japan or Korea. Unless you mean the Chinese government is trying to curb that, which is kinda a dumb idea since women participating in the workforce more is great for big business (can offer lower wages/jack up prices for everyone since everyone is a double income household)
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Jun 3, 2012 04:39
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May I suggest reading Li Yinhe for further information on the status of women in China. This person is absolutely heroic in her pursuit of the rights of rural women and Chinese LGBT people. Example: Wiki: Li Yinhe posted:As a member of the national committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Li had submitted proposals to legalize same-sex marriages in 2003, 2005 and 2006. None have succeeded so far. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yinhe In addition to the bibliography listed here, she has published alot of articles in translation.
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Jun 3, 2012 07:03
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Modus Operandi posted:The statistics indicate that this isn't the case. A few eastern and western european countries are far worse off in the growth and birth rate department. No one is "far worse off" than South Korea, and the few that are (Japan, Germany) are among the wealthiest states in the world. South Korea is a rather sizeable country (50 million) and wealthy, but still in many repsects a newly industrialized state. There may be other factors aside from its militarized ultra-Confucian culture, but that certainly stands out. I suppose if I had to pick one, "militarized" is probably more influential than "ultra-Confucian", but admittedly it's hard to dissect which contributes to which. Just going off my own anecdotal evidence, Beijing strikes me as a much more female-friendly culture than Seoul. I'd say it's less East/West than Corporatist East (Japan/Korea) vs. West.
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Jun 3, 2012 09:44
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hitension posted:Also Chinese women are already way more independent in almost all quantifiable ways (more female managers, women regularly report higher aspirations, higher involvement in the work force, greater number of self made m/billionaires) than those of Japan or Korea. I'd love to hear you justify this further especially since your metrics sound really stupid - "greater number of self made m/billionaires"? Really?
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Jun 3, 2012 11:22
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shrike82 posted:I'd love to hear you justify this further especially since your metrics sound really stupid - "greater number of self made m/billionaires"? Really? It's inspirational! Just look ladies, you too can bootstrap your way out of that forced sterilisation clinic!
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Jun 3, 2012 12:22
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SharpyShuffle posted:It's inspirational! Just look ladies, you too can bootstrap your way out of that forced sterilisation clinic! An unintended consequence of the one-child policy is the extended period of economic activity during the lifetime of the average Chinese woman. Nobody agrees that meddling with a woman's uterus is the way to solve macro-political issues (though both the US and China seem to think it has potential) but "hurr hurr one-child policy" is not a valid response to every single issue related to China. Before the one-child policy, the average Chinese woman had five kids. Spending most of your life pregnant doesn't seem empowered to me. Obviously, neither does having state mandated abortion/rape. A fascinating and unique social situation requires nuanced discussion. [edit] Maybe you were making a joke though. GuestBob fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 12:44
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GuestBob posted:An unintended consequence of the one-child policy is the extended period of economic activity during the lifetime of the average Chinese woman. This is all very true but I'm not sure how it relates to my point, which is simply that 'number of millionaires' (what does this even mean? Percentage of the population? Ratio of women to men? Or actually just a completely meaningless flat number?) doesn't mean poo poo, especially in a country where women face very unique challenges. It's just an absurd thing to focus on, so I was trying to draw a simple contrast. I will say however that that was a very obvious intended -or at least completely predictable- consequence of the one-child policy. And I'm not sure how the number of kids women had before the policy is really relevant now, it's not like they'd be having five kids today if it didn't exist.
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Jun 3, 2012 13:26
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It's a flawed comparison, but it's possibly useful to compare things with the situation in India. http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/...ion+growth+rate Obviously, this hides the issue of the rural-urban divide. Most likely the rural indian population are having a lot more children than this indicates. Being extremely speculative for a moment, in terms of the demographic time bomb, my feelings are that China, perhaps, is actually rather uniquely placed to be able to implement certain drastic and probably unethical measures to deal with it, if it becomes necessary. Would euthanising the elderly Logan's Run style, for instance, be really unthinkable for the CCP in such a circumstance? Fangz fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 13:48
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