french lies posted:

Pro-PRC Laowai is what happens when you integrate too well and end up with the political opinions of a shaokao vendor or a middle-aged cab driver.

Fiendish_Ghoul posted:

Is there a Confucius Foundation? I assume you're talking about the Confucius Institute. It is not an international organization, it is a Chinese government-controlled organization, intended to be a soft-power tool. Most schools that have them seem to agree that despite their affiliation they are not exerting undue pressure over aspects of Chinese studies that they don't like in those schools, but you can bet that their materials are going to follow the government line. Not, of course, that early non-CI Chinese classes are or should be particularly edgy and political.

french lies posted:

Details are emerging on Neil Heywood. He was connected to the Bo family mainly through his wife, and had done various jobs for them, with some suggesting that he played a role as a low-level fixer. Others are saying that he was entrusted with taking care of Guagua at various points, corroborating the rumors that he was a "nanny". Maybe butler is a more apt description?

Throatwarbler posted:

You're pretty opinionated for someone who knows "very little about the Chinese economy beyond what I hear on Sinica".

Vladimir Putin posted:

Interesting article in the NYTimes today. They talk about the brewing animosities between China and the US.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/asia/chinese-insider-offers-rare-glimpse-of-us-china-frictions.html?hp

hitension posted:

Hey, no need to cross out the link to the original publication! It's so much better.
NY Times really sensationalizes China-related issues.
Also, there is a very big difference in Authoritarianism in China and the United States.

VideoTapir posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wines

NY Times's Beijing bureau is run by Horse Semen Pie Guy.

french lies posted:

In other news, The Economist (which I usually hate) had a pretty decent long article on China's military build-up and what it means for the region and the world at large.

China's Military Rise: The Dragon's New Teeth

I'll be the first to admit I don't know the first thing about military hardware, but what I read from the article pretty much confirmed my notion that the anxiety over China as a military power is overstated. The PLA hasn't seen real combat for thirty years and much of their technology is still out of date. The article writer also makes the point that even though China will get some aircraft carriers soon, it will still take them many years to learn how to use them well. This is probably applicable to other sections of the army as well: The hardware is catching up, but the combined expertise and human capital of the PLA is still ways behind.

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

There's a whole lot more behind it than that. It goes back to the idea that it's a substitute for actual medicine and that Li Hongzhi was some sort of mystic god who would use his spirit to kill you if you stopped. No, that's not you getting deathly sick and having kidney failure... that's the sickness leaving your body, be sure to force it on the kids too or else my magical voodoo will kill you all, ditto if you try and use medicine instead.

They got really violent and creepy when media started to call it hokum and that was basically the end of that. It wasn't a social movement it was a damned cult full of crazy bullshit dreamed up by a fraud. Once they ran away overseas they started trying to sell it as a religion or whatever in the hopes of gaining support.

It's like trying to claim that all Scientology does is try to lower your stress levels. There's a whole lotta batshit insanity beneath the surface.

In more recent years, it's basically become a "get out of China free" card to play in some countries. Get visa, buy plane ticket, claim you are FLG, get asylumin Canada/Aussie.

edit: this is seriously one of those things that you can't rely on wikipedia for any real information at all. Fighting with the 轮子 is futile as there is literally an entire swarm of them out there determined to force their bullshit. Basically every single thing they reference is a FLG website. You can fight, sure, but they have a few admins in their pocket and you'll just get yourself banned... then they'll dig into all your other articles and screw with them. It would be funny if it wasn't so loving creepy.

mitztronic posted:

Can you explain this or provide some sort of citation/credibility? I've seen this idea a few times and never understood it.

Throatwarbler posted:

So Sina has set up a portal for decent foreigners.

quote:

Beijing started a three-month campaign on May 15 targeting foreigners illegally staying in the capital.Your say?
[]Support, as management is desirable.
[]Hard to say.

hitension posted:

e; Upon rereading the articles I really wish people would stop quoting Mao Zedong he was not exactly a paradigm of women's rights

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

The stuff that doesn't get passed, you basically never hear about. It's more or less all behind the scenes as to the debates that go on and the concessions that are made. Stuff can get railroaded through, but doing it is basically something that's never done.

Fangz posted:

Enh. Any discussion regard the role of women in the Chinese revolution needs to include the figure of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Qing.

hitension posted:

Wu Yi (吴仪)?

Then again, name some prominent female politicians in any country that's not Finland or Germany(and even those countries have more men than women in parliament)

whatever7 posted:

Stalin never trusted the Chinese "redneck communist". He gave more aid to the KMD than the Chinese Communist party. Even after Japanese surrender (which is the most critical moment between the CCP/KMD civil war) Stalin continued to cooperate with KMD in Manchuria instead of CCP.

Communist China never had good relationship with Soviet, except the brief period in the 50s when China got all the technology aids from the Russians. After that it was northern border low level territory conflict in the 60s; and then another proxy war thru Vietnam. Most recently there was a Chinese fisher boat getting shelled near a Russian harbor.

TheBuilder posted:

This foreign angle is feeling rather obtuse.

caberham posted:

Cool thread and awesome OP. About the Beijing flood, weren't there a lot of horror stories on mismanagement of disaster response and people drowning in their cars. I got to dig for the weibo story and the news from Phoenix television. Apparently there was a horror story of a man trapped in his car and he called his wife for help. The wife asked the firemen in person to rescue his husband but nothing came to action until the firemen got orders to move out. Unfortunately, it was too late and the autopsy revealed a fractured skull as the man tried to head butt and other means to escape from his flooded car Out of the 77 official deaths, I think over 20 were drowning in car. After this tragedy there were lots of information, articles on how to escape from a car. Think taobao had a surge in hammer sales.

But nobody in the Chinese internet seem to believe the official death toll numbers, "it's just as accurate as the earth quake numbers" Then people started saying how awesome, and orderly Hong Kong was in responding to natural disasters It's not true, look at SARs, the city went bat poo poo afterwards.

I guess I'm just lucky from the coast and watch enough hollywood action movies to know that if you drive your car into the water, you got to get the gently caress out.

Rated PG-34 posted:

What was this exhibit about? (Canon is superior anyway)

Arglebargle III posted:

The Chinese are seriously a lot worse about othering and orientalist essentialism (occidentalism?) so living in China it's hard to feel too bad about it. In fact some Chinese students who come to the U.S. get a very nasty surprise when they discover they aren't the master race outside the Middle Kingdom. Having to explain "If you are rude to the black students, they will not be nice to you either." is kind of ridiculous.

Fine-able Offense posted:

Yes, I was absolutely a member of the Modern British Raj, travelling as I was by third-class rail and cheap local busses throughout the entire country, perfecting my Mandarin by yammering on with any local no-shoe-having migrant worker who wanted to chat with the crazy yangguizi sitting in Peasant Class, for the better part of a year. Clearly the ivory tower I was gazing down from gave me altitude sickness. I was the veritable Cow's Vagina.

Please just shut the gently caress up already, you idiotic white-knighting smugboat. I probably have more Chinese friends from a more varied background than you've met in your entire life. Bonus laffo points for citing Said, you goddamned caricature of a freshman year, read-one-book subjct matter expert.

In the name of Lu Xun, I beseech you: go to your mom.

Baby Huey Newton posted:

It is especially ironic, since China is the only country in the world which underwent a cultural revolution,

Baby Huey Newton posted:

quote:

_{Background: In recent years, many studies have focused on adolescent's sex-related issues in China. However, there have been few studies of unmarried migrant females' sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, which is important for sexual health education and promotion. Methods A sample of 5156 unmarried migrant female workers was selected from three manufacturing factories, two located in Shenzhen and one in Guangzhou, China. Demographic data, sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviors were assessed by self-administered questionnaires. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to examine the factors associated with premarital sexual intercourse. Results The average age of the unmarried female workers included in the sample was 20.2 years, and majority of them showed a low level of sex-related knowledge. Females from the west of China demonstrated a significant lower level of sex-related knowledge than those from the eastern or central provinces (p < 0.05). Approximately 13% of participants held a favorable attitude towards premarital sexual intercourse, and youths from the east/central were more likely to have favorable attitudes compared with those from the west (p < 0.05). About 17.0% of the unmarried female workers reported having engaged in premarital sexual intercourse, and females from the east/central were more likely to have experienced premarital sexual intercourse than those from the west (p < 0.05). Multivariate analysis revealed that age, education, current residential type, dating, sexual knowledge, attitudes, and pattern of communication were significantly associated with premarital sexual intercourse. Conclusion The unmarried migrant female workers lack sexual knowledge and a substantial proportion of them are engaged in premarital sexual behaviors. Interventions aimed at improving their sexual knowledge and related skills are needed. -Sexual Knowledge, attitudes and behaviors among unmarried migrant female workers in China: a comparative analysis
Tang, Jie ; Gao, Xiaohui ; Yu, Yizhen ; Ahmed, Niman ; Zhu, Huiping ; Wang, Jiaji ; Du, Yukai
BMC Public Health, 2011, Vol.11(1), p.917 [Ritrýnt tímarit]}

punk rebel ecks posted:

I don't know about anyone else but I got a "yearning for ol' left" years from people interviewed in that NPR article, or at the very least a movement toward the left again (economic). I'm not sure why, I mean China has been doing very well.

Typo posted:

I feel this statement could be made for a number (ok every other) country that's not China.

Typo posted:

The idea that China needs some sort of "new" ethic framework for society though has being around for literally the last ~100 years, starting around the May 4th movement (or even earlier) when old Confucian values showed itself to be clearly obsolete for the modern world.

So you had the 1920s and one version of nationalism (and a million other ideas), but that failed, then you had Marxist-Leninism in the 1950-1979, and that went out the window. So in some ways China never really got over the exactly same question which was asked in 1919, which is what exactly is suppose to replace "traditional Confucian values".

Arglebargle III posted:

Yes, but if you look at history it also meant being lucky rulers. Many dynasties lost the Mandate of Heaven (in the eyes of the court and literati because they're the only ones who wrote down what they thought) because of events that were completely beyond their control, like earthquakes or invasions.

Spiderfist Island posted:

Of course, I'm not an expert in Chinese history to say the least, but there probably is some grain of truth in this post. I didn't even cite late Tang radicals like Liu Zongyuan (773-819 AD), who's all about this stuff and hated his feudal society.

MaterialConceptual posted:

More specifically, from what I've heard from Sinologists, it tries to make Confucius into a Deweyan. I met Ames once, he seemed like a very very nice person, but he doesn't get much respect from his colleagues. If you want a more rigorous translation try the Slingerland edition. Definitely not a light read though.

Fine-able Offense posted:

You anti-guwen people are insane, I sincerely wish English had some kind of constrained allegorical dialect where meaning was entirely contextual.

caberham posted:

MEN CAN NOW APPLY 3 DAYS OF "maternity leave" drat I sounding chingrishy, i was going to type "pregnant leave". He wants to fast track this into legislation.

Imperialist Dog posted:

The school I work at offers five days, which I am currently using at a rate of one per week.

LP97S posted:

Just a fun reminder, that is still infinitely more time than one can take in the US.

Vladimir Putin posted:

The latest on Japanese-Chinese tensions is that Chinese vessels locked on their fire control radars onto a Japanese ship and a Japanese helicopter. This poo poo is getting out of hand.


So I guess this is equivalent to if you are in a fighter jet in a dogfight and your instruments say someone locked onto you. You probably are starting your evasive maneuvers and countermeasures and are preparing to get blown up.

Vladimir Putin posted:

I wouldn't even fire a warning shot in this situation. A missed shot could be mis-construed as a hostile action and provoke a counter attack. And then after that, it's literally WWIII. In that situation, I'd rather go off to war than sit home all day without the internet (which will surely be under constant disruption/attack from China).

Warcabbit posted:

Let's play a little game. Two ships sink. One chinese, one japanese. Someone's fault. They blame each other. What happens next?

Vladimir Putin posted:

If a Chinese ship is sunk and people die, the government has to respond with force, otherwise they will be almost certainly be ousted. If the Japanese lose a ship, I don't feel that they will be compelled to start a war.

If a war does start up, I think the US will side with the Japanese, as will Korea, and any countries within the "US sphere" in Asia. China will cripple the internet in America and disrupt electronic communications. America will send in robo-stealth bombers and just blow the gently caress out of everything in China. China and America will both suffer casualties, but China will be set back hundreds of years.

Numlock posted:

I don't see why china has some magic ability to recover from a global economic collapse that other nations don't have.

Fine-able Offense posted:

I dunno, I suspect that immediately after the first yahoo starts an unauthorized shooting incident, all PLA officers will receive a memo to the effect of "Just FYI, Captain Tai Lihai has been shot, and the next one of you dickheads who tries a stunt like that will follow suit."

Bloodnose posted:

It just so happens there is a luxury apartment complex under construction right nearby that might have something to do with this. Honestly, I never gave too much thought to the real estate industry when I was living in the US. Since coming to Asia, it really seems like the shadiest, most evil business there is. Like I have a more favorable view of the Triads than land developers.

caberham posted:

For some activities Triads are great and they profit from price gaps. When you drive to a restaurant the valet service is run by them. They charge you for a cheap fee and park your car and guarantee a spot. Normally they just illegally park on the side of the road and if traffic cops come they will drive around the block until the coast is clear again. The restaurant owners are happy because it attracts customers, customers are happy for easy parking, and triads are happy for extra income and have extra surveillance. The police, not so much for illegal parking but as long as the mess is manageable and not blocking traffic and fire trucks they don't care. I would totally pay for legit parking but it's hard to find in Hong Kong.

Those sleazy sex packages to Macau that are unsold with ferry tickets included? Well they can break down package tour prices into individual bits and just sell you a cheaper ferry ticket.

Cheaper duty free cigarettes? Why yes, they have duty free border runners and old ladies buying cigs by the carton and reselling them in Hong Kong.

Of course there are bad sides to them like mini bus rackets, protection fee bull poo poo, loan sharking, peddling drugs, and all sorts of sleeping dogs craziness

pentyne posted:

I'm pretty sure the point was the land developers are worse then organized crime syndicates, with all that implies.

Bloodnose posted:

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised to hear about some of the developers actually having Triad connections, so maybe they're all one big group anyway.

Crameltonian posted:

And yeah, the Qing were already on the way down by the time the Europeans showed up in force but there's no contesting that they were completely blindsided by them. They almost certainly would have hobbled on for a while longer and maybe could have reformed if they weren't weakened so much by the endless concessions forced upon them.

Bloodnose posted:

I think more people live in my apartment building than in Iceland. Small, insignificant country joke. But seriously folks, I haven't heard anything about that.

GuestBob posted:

Didn't Iceland's government poo poo on some Chinese investors at some point in the recent past? I seem to remember that someone was preventing from buying something when your economy went tits up.

Throatwarbler posted:

Well the publicised aspects of his investment plan - build a golf course and resort on land that seems to be windswept tundra in the summer and buried under a lot of snow the rest of the year, do seem pretty implausible on the face of it. So it's sort of understandable that people might think he had other motives.

Of course these people don't understand China and think it's some kind of well run country where capital is allocated to those best able to manage it instead of just politically connected cronies. So a much more plausible and mundane explanation to most Chinese people is that the guy is either a) just a regular well connected fixer who's going to use the resort project as a front to either bilk money out of the government/investors, or launder the proceeds of corruption, or something in that vein, or b) a well connected half baked lunatic who doesn't care whether his crazy projects make money or not, because it's not his money so who gives a poo poo.

Bloodnose posted:

Finally got an article about this on the SCMP. But it's actually an AP article, and it looks like they failed with Iceland knowledge, since they keep referring to the Prime Minister as 'Sigurdardottir' which I understand is a patronymic and not a surname. So they failed at Iceland knowledge, and then proceeded to word the article like China did this in an inscrutable oriental plot to take over the Arctic. Pretty cool.

Bloodnose posted:

They still are. I have a Hebrew name with a patronymic, although it's not my legal name. We use them in the synagogue.

Bloodnose posted:

That one's actually by an SCMP staff writer, and again they used the patronymic. Come on people, it's right at the top of her Wikipeida page

Bloodnose posted:

But it's an interesting article nonetheless. I remember when she first got elected, it was a big deal that she's a lesbian, but I forgot about it until now. There's an article about a trans woman in Hong Kong who can't get married to her boyfriend because she was born a man and it would be a same sex marriage. That may sound par for the course in a conservative society, except that Hong Kong recognizes her legally as being a woman now, and actually subsidized her gender reassignment surgery. The government here does that. It's completely

The lawyers for the marriage registry are arguing that procreation is a necessary component to marriage, but at the same time recognizes that fertility isn't an issue, but merely something like the platonic notion of the possibility of procreation. It's really crazy.

Bloodnose posted:

I would hope that PM Jóhanna's visit would get some more attention to gay rights in Greater China, but I doubt it. I'd be really surprised if many Chinese people knew that
1. Iceland was signing this treaty
2. Where Iceland is
3. That Iceland is a country

caberham posted:

4. Iceland is not famous for ice wine

Modus Operandi posted:

I don't think people who want to discuss Tibet/Xinjiang are all troublemakers either but it does bring out the dickheads and culture warriors en masse. It's like horn of Gondor for idiots.

Bloodnose posted:

I'm sorry, Iceland.



(again this article uses the patronymic throughout)

Throatwarbler posted:

I don't understand what's happening. What is she supposed to be called? The Economist calls her the same thing so you guys must be pretty outraged at the English speaking world throughout your day.

ErIog posted:

Yeah, she even did an interview with Democracy Now where the issue of her name was talked about on the air, and she never objected to that being used in place of a family name.

Throatwarbler posted:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201304240082

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/04/24/2013042401169.html

SO the Japanese prime minister just said that Japan didn't really "invade" anyone during WW2, because you have to look at it from all kinds of different perspectives man.

Bloodnose posted:

Actually the patronymic thing was just a sidenote. I actually brought up Iceland because of the AFP saying the French president will be the first western leader to meet Xi Jinping as Chairman, when the Icelandic PM has just finished her meeting with him, proving how insignificant and forgettable poor little Iceland is.

caberham posted:

Bloodnose will probably link the article tomorrow, but even our incorruptible ICAC (independent commission against corruption), the shining beacon of light has been tarnished

Geeze China, just bring in the tanks, bring in the shock and awe and get over with it.