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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19709355 This isn't over.
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Sep 25, 2012 02:14
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I wanted to reply to FSAD and say its interesting because my experience with the people I know are very different. First: my wife (who doesn't speak English, so she can't go read American news sites or whatever) is usually pretty much up-to-date on all the big things. We also talk about politics and current events daily (Not just in China but the global economy, and everything else that's been going on the past number of years). The same with her uncle and family. We always discuss current events and things and they all know what's going on. My wife, for example, is a huge supporter of LGBT rights (supports anti-discrimination, same-sex unions, etc.), and likes to follow updates on what's been going on on that front in China. Second: Circle of friends are all also knowledgeable and discuss the same kinds of things as above. These are also just normal Chinese people, no or very very limited English and still have developed opinions about all of these things. Basically with any of my friends or family I could have as developed conversation about modern China as with anyone I've known from the US. I'm not saying there aren't ignorant people, that's true everywhere. I also wouldn't use college students as proof that no one has an idea of what ethnic minority cultures are, etc. College students generally don't have developed opinions of the world regardless of where you are. Again, the people I usually hang out with have discussed minority stuff and the differences between different minority and Han cultures, religious ideas, foods, languages, etc. The point I want to make is that large numbers of people DO know these things, are well aware of what's been going on, and like to discuss it. You just need to find those people.
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Sep 25, 2012 03:04
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Fall Sick and Die posted:How did the Manchu not assimilate? They did assimilate, I said as much in the post you quoted. It's just a longer story than the Chinese story you get that is pretty much "we invited them in and they became us." They were a distinct culture. They aren't really a distinct culture now, but as I said that's something modern Chinese like to focus on because it helps them ignore the conquest and foreign rule. Those cultural distinctions are confused by the Manchu's behavior, because they were actually really good propagandists. Manchu nobles routinely presented themselves as nobles of whatever culture they wanted to interact with in their multi-ethnic empire. That meant a Manchu administrator would be expected to adopt the traditional regalia of noble office wherever he went as standard policy. So in the case of an administrator in the core Han territory of China, that meant a Manchu lord would wear Han robes and have Han officials and issue proclamations in written Chinese (and later spoken Chinese) but still wear fur and hunt with a bow from horseback and go hawking when he came back to Manchuria. When the Qing conquered Tibet they played up their Buddhist credentials and wore Tibetan robes, when they conquered Xinjiang the Emperor published letters praising Mohammad and Islam; in China they adopted the Chinese rituals and regalia. The objective was to present the appearance of being culturally acceptable and I'd say the policy was a wild success, since you see Qing propaganda repeated as fact today. The Qing were really good at imperialism actually. Oh and of course they didn't translate Manchu texts into Chinese, it was a security measure. Later on the Chinese never bothered translating Manchu texts because everyone knew the Han culture was superior and adopted wholesale by the Qing. There's actually a lot of recent scholarship on the Qing since Qing scholars finally bothered to learn Manchu and translate the heaps of documents from the first half of the Qing. Turns out that what the Manchu were saying to each other was not what they were saying to the Chinese. Shocking, I know. It really speaks volumes about Chinese historiography's attitude towards the Manchu that Qing experts never thought it might be important to learn their language. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Sep 25, 2012 |
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Sep 25, 2012 03:10
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It could be a regional thing, but in Sichuan I've had a taxi driver or two express distaste at the whole Bo thing. He is/was rather popular around here.
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Sep 25, 2012 03:42
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Fall Sick and Die posted:They don't know, they've never heard of Wang Lijun, they never noticed Bo Xilai disappeared, they know he was powerful and now his wife is in jail because she's bad. Echoing this and FSAD's wife's account. The Bo Xilai case is 'the biggest scandal to hit the party for 40 years' or whatever in the Western press, but due to the censorship people have basically forgotten all about it if they even knew about it in the first place. A Chinese girl who had been abroad once said to me 'If you want to learn to be Chinese you just need to learn not to care about anything [big]'. A cynical view, but one that is echoed in the words of people I met when I first came and naively assumed people were secretly raging against the machine. Part of western thought is that its important to be active in doing the right thing, not voting makes you a coward, Plato - “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”, etc. Compare this to the Daoist philosophy of wu-wei which still has at least some influence, "to do nothing is almost always the best solution". Whether the apathy is really this deeply ingrained or just a by-product of the political system I am personally still unsure. China has no voting system and if they rail against anything they can get in serious trouble, or at least lose out on promotions, embarrass family etc. There's a lot of pressure to 'go along with the stream'. The angriest I've seen a person get was actually disheartening because they were an ordinary farmer-type bellowing with a student about how the government was infallible, had never done anything wrong, the system was perfect, politicians were allowed to be corrupt to get the job done, if we don't trust the system the japs will be back, etc. For every 1 Chinese person who knows things are not always what they seem, there's 6-7 that believe the party line coz they've never heard anything different.
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Sep 25, 2012 04:08
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DaiJiaTeng posted:The point I want to make is that large numbers of people DO know these things, are well aware of what's been going on, and like to discuss it. You just need to find those people. That depends on which part of China you are in as well. People at Hong Kong are normally quite knowledgable about such stuff, and as Tom Smykowski mentioned, regional heroes tend to get more people talking about. But on the whole, FSAD's wife's response is typical.
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Sep 25, 2012 07:33
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People in Hong Kong are aware of what the Apple Daily tells them. Not much more. It's like the Fox News of the SAR. Often there is not much more detail than "the Communists are bad" and "look at this idiot mainlander doing something rude and/or gross."
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Sep 25, 2012 08:24
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Japan has opened fire on Taiwanese ships near the islands... with water cannons. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/09/20129255327498152.html If they were to try and do this to the PRC oh so much glorious poo poo would go down.
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Sep 25, 2012 10:10
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Jeek posted:That depends on which part of China you are in as well. People at Hong Kong are normally quite knowledgable about such stuff, and as Tom Smykowski mentioned, regional heroes tend to get more people talking about. Yeah its "typical". My wife is from Hangzhou and lived there all her life. Most of the people I mentioned above are from Zhejiang, some are from Xi'an. I guess I've been living in a different world or something. I've seen lots of ignorant people, I've seen many who don't care, or just want to make money, or feel that it's pointless to discuss anything since they are powerless. Yeah there are plenty. But at the same time there are so many who really keep up with things, who actively discuss political problems, who discuss the party struggle with Bo Xilai, domestic disturbances, etc. There is alot of discussion that goes on about social issues of all sorts. I don't know, it's just interesting to me. I know there have to be more people who have this kind of experience. Am I the only person who married a Chinese person who is really into politics and social issues/have family who are the same?
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Sep 25, 2012 10:18
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When you're talking about a large portion of the population that has severe apathy toward national political problems, humans rights issues, who can't describe ethnic minorities with any good qualifiers besides "likes singing and dancing", that believes everything the party line tells them because they've never heard anything different, where anyone who isn't super-patriotic is publicly shamed and lambasted as a horrible person...if this was a different thread, I'd think you were talking about the United States. Right down to the part where you say that not everyone is ignorant, and that a sizable portion of people (typically ones you know personally) have educated opinions on political issues and like to follow them. I'm not trying to minimize China's problems here. I'm just questioning whether this is really a China problem or whether this is the kind of thing you expect to happen with really large, homogenized cultures where people are increasingly disconnected from their governments and minority cultures. quote:'If you want to learn to be Chinese you just need to learn not to care about anything [big]' This is pretty much the mushy middle of American politics right there. The one that's let the Tea Party run amuck the last several years because they can't be arsed to actually read the Republican platform and will listen to anyone who has a painless plan to solve problems regardless of how moronic that plan actually is. My knowledge of China is limited (most of it probably comes from this thread, honestly). I'm not trying to assert intellectual superiority here. Just noting that this is what I'm interpreting from you all, and would really appreciate it if you could give more unique details.
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Sep 25, 2012 11:02
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Bloodnose posted:People in Hong Kong are aware of what the Apple Daily tells them. Not much more. It's like the Fox News of the SAR. As opposed to the two free tv channels that both basically spew out pro-China rhetoric all day long, especially ATV (owned by mainlanders, surprise surprise). The whole media culture in Hong Kong is just sad. Nobody has anything of any substance to say.
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Sep 25, 2012 11:45
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19710040 Anyone think the aircraft carrier's unveiling was sped out because of the island dispute?
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Sep 25, 2012 11:49
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DaiJiaTeng posted:Yeah its "typical". My mom thinks that sometimes I am too into politics and social issues, and that makes her worried; although all I do is bitching about red songs at dinner table. I don't go on street to campaign for democracy or putting up banners outside the window. I understand her concern though, after all it is still a country in which posting anti leader words would put you in prison. My theory is that middle aged population look ignorant because they dont want to risk their lives. They are aware of what could the party do to individuals because they've survived tiananmen, cultural revolution and all the waves before that. They are very cautious when it comes to social issues and politics. They are also aware of how propaganda works, therefore are less active in the public discourse. Like when my mom heard I was going on a TV interview from a Taiwan tv station, her first reaction was: don't say anything anti-revolutionary! Later she explained: 我们åªæ˜¯è€ç™¾å§“，讲这些没æ„æ€ï¼ˆbecause we are just ordinary people, there's no point for you to express radical opinions). My mom's generation is scared of foreign media because in 80s they saw people arrested for being interviewed by CNN and they've seen media twisted interviewee's words. Younger generation, I don't know. I've seen teenager that knows tiananmen and cultural revolution, but still is very pro-communist; an she lives in HK! I think this kind of people are more brain washed than older ones because they sincerely believe that China is great and flawless. Their parents are also great influence I think. If the parents are cautious, they wouldn't encourage discussion at home, like my mom used to tell me not to say certain things at school and don't make jokes about political figures. At the same time, this generation started to have national education, and that made some of them idiots. I would say that thinkers do exist in China but their English is usually not good enough or they are not hot girls so laowais can't find them 
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Sep 25, 2012 11:51
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Typical doesn't mean they don't exist. I've had some really long conversations with people about politics in China and the U.S. who definitely care, but the majority of people I meet just aren't nearly as interested. Really, we are on D&D right now so the vast majority of people in the world are probably less interested in these kinds of issues than people posting here.
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Sep 25, 2012 12:17
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Arglebargle III posted:Typical doesn't mean they don't exist. I've had some really long conversations with people about politics in China and the U.S. who definitely care, but the majority of people I meet just aren't nearly as interested. Really, we are on D&D right now so the vast majority of people in the world are probably less interested in these kinds of issues than people posting here. I think that's my problem with the conversation though. People are going on about how some people don't care or are ignorant of something and turning it into "Oh the Chinese are ignorant about X, Y, and Z" when there are large numbers of activist movements, discussions about economics, politics, social issues etc. I feel like alot of people are bringing up college classes they taught and kind of acting like dialogues about topics like ethnic minorities just don't exist based on student reactions. I mean if you want to say lots of people just don't give a poo poo, then yes, but that's going to be true wherever you go. It just seems alot more productive to go look at what kinds of research, discussions, etc. are actually going on than bitch "God, Chinese people just don't get (insert topic here), no one even discusses these things. Look at the class I taught, or some guy I heard who said a stupid thing." These discussions do happen. It just seems silly to pretend they don't. Weibo, blogs, websites, TV (there's a number of good talk shows that discuss a number of different issues), alot of different things exist. Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression from some of the other posters, (FSAD, etc.). If I have misrepresented what you said or feel that I'm getting the wrong idea please let me know, I don't mean this as an attack.
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Sep 25, 2012 13:24
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Is it really that shocking though? If you spend your life in a country with censored news, government control of media, a propaganda-filled school system, and internet filtering then unless you are interested enough to go out of your way to get around it--and risk getting caught, as small a risk as that may be--you're just not going to know what's going on. It's not their fault, it's from a lovely totalitarian government. I'd agree that I don't think the average person in any country is that well informed, but I also don't think it's a big stretch to say the average Chinese person is probably less informed. The Chinese government has put a lot of effort into making it that way.
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Sep 25, 2012 13:30
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I've always felt that the parallels between the attitude towards Native Americans in the US and towards Tibetans in China are truly striking. As for "propaganda", remember learning about this in school? 
hitension fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Sep 25, 2012 |
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Sep 25, 2012 13:39
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Yeah, but even my podunk rural upbringing where my Aggie 6th grade science teacher told us we were skipping the chapter titled evolution because, no matter what anyone said, God made us how we are, we learned about stuff like the Trail of Tears and things of this nature - and while it was a dumbed down version, it wasn't a massive whitewash on the level of what you see in Asia. It was just basically, we killed a bunch of Indians and maybe sometimes there were legitimate conflicts (focus on conflicts, not genocide) then we spent the next century or so breaking treaties with them and pushing them off of whatever land we'd just given them. I'm not in the Chinese educational system, but if it's anything like the Thai educational system - and I'm guessing it's even technocratically more efficient at propaganda - this kind of poo poo doesn't even come up. This whole topic of the Chinese distrust of government authority is interesting outside of China, too. The girlfriend's parents are both born to 100% ethnic Chinese, meaning that she's Chinese and so the whole clan is pretty much Chinese still. I mean they speak Thai and have Thai names, but get them in a room where there are no Thais around and suddenly they're proudly Chinese (which they also speak several dialects of). In many ways they're every bit the diaspora stereotype, so when we were discussing it the other day I brought up that basically their family-centered existence is a result of a historic inability to form, or then trust institutions that outlive personalities. She hadn't ever thought of it, but this really explains a lot about the diaspora and, I assume, China itself. The second anyone gets some education and makes any money, the first thing they do is pass it on to the family and then start figuring out how to use family members, servants and other methods to hide their wealth from the local population. Living here a while I can understand it, but from a Western perspective it's 0_o when you first see it all going down. At some level it's not too different from folks hiding money in the Caymans, but the difference I've observed is how pervasive it is. It's not like something just the ultra-wealthy do, like it is in America, it's something the entire Chinese diaspora does as soon as they can afford to. It almost feels like they're constantly planning for the moment that the tide turns and someone swoops in to steal all their poo poo. ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Sep 25, 2012 |
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Sep 25, 2012 14:08
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Isn't Americans generally acknowledging that we were dicks with are dealings with the Natives a more recent phenomena though? I've watched older westerns and generally it seems that at best Native Americans are presented as naive and in the way of progress. There was also that thread in GBS were you had some older white folks mad that some Republican politician visited some Native Americans because they felt he was disrespecting the memory of an "American hero", General Custer (mostly remembered these days for a tactical blunder that got himself and his command killed).
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Sep 25, 2012 14:55
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DaiJiaTeng posted:I think that's my problem with the conversation though. No one has ever suggested that these discussions don't happen. You are indeed getting the wrong impression. I dunno why you said it like this in your post, "Yeah its "typical"." with typical in quotation marks which I'm going to have to take as though you don't feel it is actually typical? I dunno how else to read that. There is indeed a world of difference between the lives of typical people and those who actually discuss topics like this regularly. In my own family dinner table growing up in the US we were never discussing the failure of the US government to uphold treaties with native people, I'd say we were typical in that regard, though that doesn't mean no one talked about it. Many Chinese people care deeply and passionately about social issues, LGBT stuff, ethnic minority rights. But you've got to be kidding yourself if you really believe that these are large percentages of the population. Bring up LGBT issues with 100 Chinese people and I would guess the response from 95% of them would be a giggle or 'ick'. You're just handwaving away the differences. "Oh if you're going to say large numbers of people don't give a poo poo sure that's true everywhere." That's a really useless argument to make, because you're ignoring the fact that there's a large difference between even 1% of the population giving a poo poo about X and 10% giving a poo poo about X. Yes we've all seen Jay Leno walk around Los Angeles asking people to identify America on a map. Maybe 65% of US high school students think Abraham Lincoln won WWII or whatever else. But there's a difference because here these things are deliberately kept from discussion, so to discuss a lot of social issues you have to actively be investigating to see what you can find. In the US if I wanted to learn about Sioux attempts to secede from the US, I could go to Russell Brand's website, read some articles, get a book out, whatever. Here you wouldn't even know that the problem existed in the first place, and if you did hear something about it you'd have to then assume it was true, that it was being hid from you, and then somehow find information about it, much of which would be patently unreliable or based on nothing more than forum chat. This is part of the reason rumor is such a big path for information spread here, because people don't trust the government media, but even if they don't believe the narrative they have no other source. Chinese people are on average, far less informed about the state of the world, and even if they don't believe the media, it affects them in a subconscious manner because it's the only media they have. It doesn't matter if in your brain you know the evening news is bullshit, because it's the only news in town. That is why they do it, if you reject the government media to the point that you're actively looking for other news sources anyway you were already lost to them, so it's pointless. All they can do is mitigate the damage and make it as annoying as possible for you to read New Tang Dynasty TV or whatever other source you like. Just don't back yourself into making a false equivalency about the state of the discussion here in China because you associate with a family of intellectuals. Also Wonton that's really disgusting to suggest that foreign men are only interested in Chinese girls for sex and thus we won't find these hidden magical not-hot thinking girls who can't speak English according to your incomprehensible statement. Why would you imagine that 'thinkers' would be less able to express themselves in English than who... KTV girls who dropped out of middle school? Prostitutes? Bar skanks? What sense does that make? If a foreigner came to China for sex all I could say is that he's probably not very good at decision making and he should probably draw up one of those 'positives vs negatives' charts next time he goes on a sex tour.
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Sep 25, 2012 15:05
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Numlock posted:Isn't Americans generally acknowledging that we were dicks with are dealings with the Natives a more recent phenomena though? It was going on in the 80s when I was in grade school. Anyway the point isn't that it's recent or not, it's that we should stop reflexively saying "yeah but America too guys" when that's not remotely the case in regards to whitewashing history and hasn't been for a long time.
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Sep 25, 2012 15:23
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menino posted:It was going on in the 80s when I was in grade school. Anyway the point isn't that it's recent or not, it's that we should stop reflexively saying "yeah but America too guys" when that's not remotely the case in regards to whitewashing history and hasn't been for a long time. It may be more of a case of comparing apples and oranges. I'd say China is closer to the 1984 view of dystopia, where information is actively filtered and the populace is actively misinformed, while the United States is more like Brave New World, where the information is available, but the population has been so heavily conditioned to favor apathy it would never occur to most of them to actually look for it. 1984 had plenty of that going on too, for what it's worth- Big Brother didn't really care about the proles, and the proles in turn didn't really care about the specifics of how exactly Big Brother worked. I'd argue that specific technique isn't as important as the actual result. The anti-Japanese demonstrations in China lately have certainly been worrisome, but they at least have some basis in historical fact. Anti-Arab sentiment in the United States, on the other hand, is based almost entirely on the beliefs of a small number of non-representative Muslim whackjobs. And it's led to much worse results for much more petty reasons than this dick-waving contest over islands is likely to amount to.
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Sep 25, 2012 15:42
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Numlock posted:Isn't Americans generally acknowledging that we were dicks with are dealings with the Natives a more recent phenomena though? What menino says is correct. It was wrong when we ignored it and it's wrong when we sideline it. It's wrong if the Chinese do the same. It doesn't matter what we did in comparison to what they do internally. What America did may have a position in a comparative discussion of how to handle these things, but it has no place in an isolated discussion about how they are handled today in China. If China does a thing with education policy, China does it, full stop. Bring up America and you're a Republican sputtering, "b-b-b-but the Democrats...." This continent is a century behind on multiculturalism, minimum, anyway, but that's another topic.
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Sep 25, 2012 15:59
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Fall Sick and Die posted:
Why on earth would you visit an English comedian's website to learn about the Sioux?
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Sep 25, 2012 16:14
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Some Guy TT posted:It may be more of a case of comparing apples and oranges. I'd say China is closer to the 1984 view of dystopia, where information is actively filtered and the populace is actively misinformed, while the United States is more like Brave New World, where the information is available, but the population has been so heavily conditioned to favor apathy it would never occur to most of them to actually look for it. 1984 had plenty of that going on too, for what it's worth- Big Brother didn't really care about the proles, and the proles in turn didn't really care about the specifics of how exactly Big Brother worked. I have to disagree about technique versus result. The techniques used in China prevent people from having the tools to become informed, whereas the technique in the West is basically "flood the market with Honey Boo Boo and they won't notice". The Chinese one seems like it's much harder to overcome than the Western one. I think the US ignorance is way more embarrassing, even though it's not as pervasive (I have yet to see multi-city anti-Arab riots in the US). We're a multi-cultural developed society, and we should know better. Maybe that's condescending, but this kind of stuff is expected in a developing country, even if the tone of it is uniquely "woe unto us, child-like innocent NE Asian nation-state that we are" in China. E: In regards to multi-culturalism in China, this just popped up from the China Daily on my fb feed: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2012-09/25/content_15780878.htm quote:Sierra Leone native and Miss World winner Mariatu Kargbo has captured China's heart with her devotion to its culture and people. Chen Nan reports in Beijing...Maria says she brought the art to the world's attention to show her special gratitude to China. "I have two dreams: becoming Chinese and bringing Chinese culture to the world," she says. This to me sums up Chinese media about the other cultures: The rest of the world is a canvas on which we will paint our culture, look how they adore us for our beneficence! Soon the tribute will flow again as it has for centuries! This Chinese style "Tribute system" thinking is probably more palatable than neo-conservatism and has killed less people, but it's more all-encompassing than Paul Wolfowitz is in the US. menino fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Sep 25, 2012 |
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Sep 25, 2012 16:26
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Fall Sick and Die posted:Many Chinese people care deeply and passionately about social issues, LGBT stuff, ethnic minority rights. But you've got to be kidding yourself if you really believe that these are large percentages of the population. Bring up LGBT issues with 100 Chinese people and I would guess the response from 95% of them would be a giggle or 'ick'. You're just handwaving away the differences. "Oh if you're going to say large numbers of people don't give a poo poo sure that's true everywhere." That's a really useless argument to make, because you're ignoring the fact that there's a large difference between even 1% of the population giving a poo poo about X and 10% giving a poo poo about X. Yes we've all seen Jay Leno walk around Los Angeles asking people to identify America on a map. Maybe 65% of US high school students think Abraham Lincoln won WWII or whatever else. But there's a difference because here these things are deliberately kept from discussion, so to discuss a lot of social issues you have to actively be investigating to see what you can find. poo poo man, that's a lot of percentages and hard stats. Care to back them up with citations? You mentioned that you taught a subject in China, so you're acting as an authority figure in a room meant for groupthink. That could bias your responses heavily toward accepted cultural norms. When I eat with my (Chinese) cousins in a private atmosphere, they freely say something politically incisive or satirical that requires an admonishment from their parents - as another poster mentioned, you're not supposed to say this stuff in public. They goof around and trade CDs of god knows what all the time. There's a lot of information exchange in the private sphere that's independent of state media. menino posted:I have yet to see multi-city anti-Arab riots in the US That's because we have multi-nation anti-'Arab' wars in the world that's condoned by the population.
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Sep 25, 2012 16:32
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flatbus posted:That's because we have multi-nation anti-'Arab' wars in the world that's condoned by the population. You're saying we'd be rioting if we weren't fighting in Afghanistan and droning in Pakistan? Really? When did rioting and drone strikes become mutually exclusive anyway?
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Sep 25, 2012 16:37
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cloudchamber posted:Why on earth would you visit an English comedian's website to learn about the Sioux? Err, sorry, Russell Means flatbus posted:poo poo man, that's a lot of percentages and hard stats. Care to back them up with citations? We're both operating on our own personal experiences. Again, no one is saying Chinese people aren't ironic about things, freely acknowledging that these things happen. I don't go into a class and say, "Hey who here accepts gay people?? No? How about AIDS carriers??" *writes down a bunch of names in his book* That's not how it works. But I have done extensive classes about homosexuality as an example with more than 600 students, where they had the freedom to anonymously ask Western homosexuals about their lifestyle and any other questions they might have. I can tell you that truly about 10% were vehemently against it, 80% were open-minded but had never thought much about it and had some very interesting questions (most common question was... if you and another man are gay, which one is the woman in the relationship?) and 10% wrote something like, "I know gay people, I think it's fine, good luck to you and your friends, hope you're happy." Of course there's a difference between public and private life, but again what point are people defending this trying to make? That Chinese people are just as aware and active in politics, knowledgeable about ethnic and religious conflict in their nation, aware of their past crimes against other ethnicities, understanding of the nature of unequal power relationships, supportive of LGBT rights, high environmental standards, and a host of other things as Americans and Europeans, they just choose to keep it a secret? Are you saying that the Chinese are in fact... inscrutable?? Fall Sick and Die fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Sep 25, 2012 |
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Sep 25, 2012 16:47
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DarkCrawler posted:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19710040 They've been testing it for a while, but I guess anything is possible. The only problem is that they've never actually flown a jet off of the thing. I suppose they can airlift some jets onto the deck using helicopters so that it looks like it has an active air wing, but I seriously doubt they could actually do anything with the jets at this point.
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Sep 25, 2012 17:05
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I'd like to thank you gentlegoons for all those points of view on relative political apathy, I'm really glad I asked! I guess we put more emphasis on the Bo stuff than the locals do? A fault of sensationalism, maybe. What with Taiwan doing its own spectacular Diayou thing, I wonder if there is a difference in interest levels among Chinese people between foreign and internal politics or is it about the same?
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Sep 25, 2012 17:06
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menino posted:You're saying we'd be rioting if we weren't fighting in Afghanistan and droning in Pakistan? Really? When did rioting and drone strikes become mutually exclusive anyway? No, that's nonsensical and wasn't what I had meant at all.  My apologies, I can easily see how you think I meant that.What I meant to say was, the American rage at Muslims isn't largely manifested in anti-Arab riots in the US (although there has been shootings), but manifested through a population-condoned anti-'Arab' war in the world. America has the privilege of invading other countries without incurring damage to home infrastructure, and that's the path the country chose. It's not as if we took 9/11 by turning the other cheek, we did kill a lot of Muslims in retribution. menino posted:This to me sums up Chinese media about the other cultures: The rest of the world is a canvas on which we will paint our culture, look how they adore us for our beneficence! Soon the tribute will flow again as it has for centuries! I'm puzzled by this insistence on viewing China through its classical dynastic lens. There was a Communist revolution in the 50s and several decades of cultural turmoil that changed Chinese culture. On top of that, this view is largely inconsistent with history - China didn't exist as a unified history through the entirety of history, it had its share of internecine wars and foreign conquests during which tributary system be unsustainable. To say that after the tumult and stability China experienced from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it still clings to its imperial foreign policy of hundreds of years ago sounds a bit implausible. Do you expect Mongolians to continuously scheme to take over half the world and demand tribute from Russia as well?
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Sep 25, 2012 17:15
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China is desperate for the rest of the world to validate its culture, and is constantly trying to promote and push its art forms, language and point of view on the world. This is different from the relatively passive (or at least more sophisticated) way a country like the US does it. Can you imagine a report on PBS like, "Man in Foreign Nation Who Is Not American Loves "Rap Music" Form Of Artistic Expression!?" Things like that African woman fit this government narrative brilliantly, so they're showcased. This is a government policy by the way, not the people individually, though of course it's something they enjoy hearing but don't really care about. If you don't buy it I'll find literally a thousand links and shove them down your throat one by one.
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Sep 25, 2012 17:31
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flatbus posted:No, that's nonsensical and wasn't what I had meant at all. Sure, we flubbed 9-11 responses and got really really bloodthirsty, but in terms of public opinion, it faded fast (not fast enough of course if you are a dead Iraqi/Pashtun/Pakistani). A plurality of Americans want out of the Middle East at the moment, even if they're not doing much about achieving this. quote:I'm puzzled by this insistence on viewing China through its classical dynastic lens. There was a Communist revolution in the 50s and several decades of cultural turmoil that changed Chinese culture. On top of that, this view is largely inconsistent with history - China didn't exist as a unified history through the entirety of history, it had its share of internecine wars and foreign conquests during which tributary system be unsustainable. To say that after the tumult and stability China experienced from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it still clings to its imperial foreign policy of hundreds of years ago sounds a bit implausible. Do you expect Mongolians to continuously scheme to take over half the world and demand tribute from Russia as well? No, but Mongolia lost its empire in a matter of two generations and ended eight hundred years ago. The Ming/Qing continuum lasted for six hundred years and ended only a hundred years ago. The Qing was of course weakened and decrepit for its last hundred years, but that wasn't due to an internal Asia problem, it was due to the Ocean People. It's an Asian (Chinese) system, not a Western one, and I think that's where its main appeal lies with regards to the foreign policy decision makers in the Chinese government.
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Sep 25, 2012 18:00
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menino posted:Sure, we flubbed 9-11 responses and got really really bloodthirsty, but in terms of public opinion, it faded fast (not fast enough of course if you are a dead Iraqi/Pashtun/Pakistani). A plurality of Americans want out of the Middle East at the moment, even if they're not doing much about achieving this. Right, that's what I was talking about. I think we're in agreement about the ignorance of the American public in matters of race relations and how Al Qaeda had no relation to Iraq. Current opinion of withdrawal has more to do with the mess we're making than feelings of regret for the innocents we've killed. menino posted:No, but Mongolia lost its empire in a matter of two generations and ended eight hundred years ago. Okay I gotta quibble with this one. Mongolia controlled quite a bit of Central Asia and Eastern Russia for several hundred years. It didn't die after Genghis and his ilk died; it gave birth to the Timurid heritage that spread itself to subsequent Afghan kingdoms and directly produced Babur of Mughal fame. There is a great bit of cultural warping as the Mongol diaspora took on elements of local culture, but the idea of the Mongolian empire itself lasted as a ideal for more than two generations after its founding. I imagine you're making a similar argument with China - that the idea of a Tribute-driven foreign policy is there even after its direct progenitors (Ming/Qing dynasties) have died. The actual Mongolian Empire dissolved and its ideal was kept for a period of time, but it was always adjusted in favor political realities. Timur was fervently Muslim and used Islam to his favor; Babur mixed Hindu architecture with his Persian favorites during his administrative phases, and also gave up on world domination. Anyway, if the idea of a Mongolian empire becomes subservient to political reality after two generations, I don't see why China is beholden to its foreign policy a hundred years ago. It's existence is a lot shorter than the usual 5000 year benchmark for Chineseness. Fall Sick and Die posted:China is desperate for the rest of the world to validate its culture, and is constantly trying to promote and push its art forms, language and point of view on the world. This is different from the relatively passive (or at least more sophisticated) way a country like the US does it. Can you imagine a report on PBS like, "Man in Foreign Nation Who Is Not American Loves "Rap Music" Form Of Artistic Expression!?" Things like that African woman fit this government narrative brilliantly, so they're showcased. This is a government policy by the way, not the people individually, though of course it's something they enjoy hearing but don't really care about. If you don't buy it I'll find literally a thousand links and shove them down your throat one by one. Spare my precious throat, I agree with you! No, I really do. China does want the world to validate its culture. There is definitely a feeling that westerners look down on the Chinese, because of the poverty of the people and its lack of industrial and military prestige. But that shouldn't be contrasted against the 'passive' way the US spreads its culture. US culture spreads through private commerce, and private commerce is being loud in spreading it (American movies and advertisements are for the most part unabashedly pro-American, and a specific vision of America at that). America can be just as loud as China, in fact louder because the export of American culture is tied to the profit motive as well. I understand that you picked PBS as an analogue to... say, CCTV, but the roles of private and public media aren't the same in both countries so I'm basing my analysis on the majority of American cultural exports, which happen to be commercial, private-owned media. But yeah, I agree with you that Chinese headlines can get ridiculous. I do disagree with the idea that China is somehow stranger or more desperate than normal rising powers when America is the one holding the loudspeaker.
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Sep 25, 2012 19:28
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^ I still don't think Mongolia had the established tradition, mostly by virtue of it being a nomadic culture. They Islamized where there was Islam and Sinified where there was Sino, and quickly fell into warring Cousin Khanates. Anyway, as an indication that I may not know what the gently caress I'm talking about in regards to my other point, I just read this really long article about white supremacists in Dearborn Michigan: Dearborn: Where Americans Come to Hate Muslims quote:In April 2011, pastor Terry Jones burned a Koran in Gainesville, Florida, sparking deadly clashes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One year later, he burned a Koran again, and no one paid any attention. That same month he came to Dearborn, Michigan, to protest in front of the Islamic Center of America, the nation's largest mosque. "Islam has one goal," Jones told the small crowd, and a much larger group of counter-demonstrators and police, according to the Detroit Free Press. "That is world domination."
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Sep 25, 2012 20:19
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flatbus posted:Spare my precious throat, I agree with you! No, I really do. China does want the world to validate its culture. There is definitely a feeling that westerners look down on the Chinese, because of the poverty of the people and its lack of industrial and military prestige. But that shouldn't be contrasted against the 'passive' way the US spreads its culture. US culture spreads through private commerce, and private commerce is being loud in spreading it (American movies and advertisements are for the most part unabashedly pro-American, and a specific vision of America at that). America can be just as loud as China, in fact louder because the export of American culture is tied to the profit motive as well. I understand that you picked PBS as an analogue to... say, CCTV, but the roles of private and public media aren't the same in both countries so I'm basing my analysis on the majority of American cultural exports, which happen to be commercial, private-owned media. But yeah, I agree with you that Chinese headlines can get ridiculous. I do disagree with the idea that China is somehow stranger or more desperate than normal rising powers when America is the one holding the loudspeaker. Ah, but here's the kicker. American movies are pro-American because the movie market is for the most part American, and thus they do it because that's what American people want to see. American movies aren't pro-USA because we want to show France what's up, nor because of some imperialist agenda to improve the image of America around the world. As China's movie market is developing, movies are getting more and more pro-China. Look at 2012, the movie-makers deliberately added in lots of stuff that was pro-Chinese just to improve their market. Americans movies are now self-censoring to avoid offending Chinese sensibilities, see the new Red Dawn for example, where a Chinese invasion was changed to a North Korean one even though it makes no sense at all, because the Chinese wouldn't have allowed the movie into China. Hollywood is getting more and more multicultural because they want to make money. Why was there a Japanese naval ship in Battleship? To help the movie do better there, gives the Japanese something to relate to. This is only going to get stronger and stronger, but since China is the only huge movie market I know who deliberately only allow a few foreign movies into China per year, and also heavily censor those movies, they're going to be the main beneficiary of this policy, because American moviemakers will gladly toe the line to make a few extra hundred million dollars.
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Sep 26, 2012 01:01
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It's kind of a wider Asian thing too. I just had this realization in Korea--when I learned languages, our language books also taught us about the culture of the countries where the languages came from. My German book was nothing but German/Austrian stuff, same with the other few languages I tried. A Korean English book is entirely about Korea. There are these recurring characters, and a typical chapter will be the Korean characters telling the foreign characters about some sort of Korean tradition or cultural thing, and whitey saying how wonderful Korean culture is. There is virtually nothing about the culture or history or anything from the English speaking world. At the end of the chapter there's a two minute video about "world culture" which usually talks about Korea for half the time then a couple other countries, and whenever the USA is one of those I end up having to correct it because it's just some random stereotype they pulled off the internet. Like the last one said everyone in Alaska travels by dogsled. To me a language class is just inherently going to be teaching another culture but here? Nope. Korea only. And yeah that's all about Korea but China/Japan at least are exactly the same when it comes to this. I'm not really being critical, more pointing out that you have to be able to think this way to try to understand the way these countries work.
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Sep 26, 2012 01:12
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menino posted:
Neoconservatism has existed for 20 years and killed a few hundred thousand people. Now that's a lot obviously, but it can't hold a candle to the Chinese tribute system which existed for centuries and killed millions over that time scale. Charlz Guybon fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Sep 26, 2012 |
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Sep 26, 2012 01:46
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Longanimitas posted:Yeah, but China directly supported Pol Pot, who was objectively worse than Hitler in every way. Except, you know, in sheer number of victims and countries invaded in every objectively measurable way. What the hell? Not to de-rail and to touch back on the ethnic self-determination reflected on here -- what is the probable future of Xinjiang? Perpetual Han dominance and neutralization of any Uighur political parity?
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Sep 26, 2012 02:24
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Fall Sick and Die posted:American movies are pro-American because the movie market is for the most part American, and thus they do it because that's what American people want to see. American movies aren't pro-USA because we want to show France what's up, nor because of some imperialist agenda to improve the image of America around the world. There is a lot of truth to what you're saying, but if you actually read the history of Hollywood you'll find that there have been plenty of interventions designed to promote an American imperialist agenda. The truth is not one or the other, it's some combination of both.
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Sep 26, 2012 02:47
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