Official China Discussion Thread

I feel like Xi is a ideologue that's pragmatic enough. He wants China to thrive and become a Superpower that can overturn the American hegemony, so he's willing to betray his own principles with a "Just this time" perspective that later has to morph into finding Post Hoc Justifications.

Or in other words, China might not be "Really Socialist" (as far that term made sense) because Xi is too ambitious and pragmatic to take risks with his Ideological Project to have China become a new and sucessful URSS.

It honestly makes a lot of sense given China's turbulent history. Xi is a Chinese nationalist in a country where both Nationalist and Communist dogma walked side and side, enough that he don't see any contradiction between them unlike Western Internationalists Leftists (Short version: Cultural Dissonance) and thus he's willing to try the "Whatever works best for us" approach, when that approach ended up being Capitalist reforms...Xi put himself in the massive struggle to try to council his ideology with reality, and here we are.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 21st 2019 at 3:46:08 AM

Basically, Xi wants to Make China Great Again, but he's also trying to find a way to do that without becoming a bootleg of the USA itself.

Edited by M84 on Sep 21st 2019 at 4:48:09 PM

Unfortunately he’s doing the exact same awful shit the US is known for, except worse.

Some news, it turns out the protesters against the CCP in Hong Kong have some problems with racism. Hong Kong Protesters called Chinese American Reporter "yellow thug" at Hong Kong protests.

Which is just... yikes. I really hope these kinds of sentiments aren't common or else I'm going to have a hard time offering much sympathy.

Edit: Edited for increased clarity. Thanks.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 23rd 2019 at 12:07:51 PM

Careful with your phrasing. The way you said it, it sounds like the Protesters were the ones who got called 'yellow thugs', not the other way around.

I should explain the phenomenon: in the grand tradition of trying to inflict grevious harm on themselves when not fighting their neighbors, the Han Chinese like to mock Chinese Americans for supposedly not being Chinese enough.

Just because the Cantonese don't speak Mandarin Chinese doesn't mean they're not Han and hold onto the traditions accordingly.

I don't think this is particularly common, but yeah, there's a marked difference between the student protesters and the rioters that make up the Vocal Minority.

Furthermore, years as a colonial subject mean that Hongkongers tend to be nasty to each other but get all polite and docile when a white person shows up.

Oh, and a reminder that a good deal of Chinese Americans have expressed very anti-Hong Kong protest sentiments. Hence the backlash.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Sep 23rd 2019 at 1:44:46 AM

Ah, it makes sense that the rioters and the protesters would not be identical groups. Thanks for the correction.

But I have to say, some Chinese-Americans being supportive of Bejing doesn't justify racism, not in the slightest. Not to mention that some people of a certain race/ethnicity doing something shitty doesn't cause bigotry, there has to be existing undercurrents of prejudice for one to react like that.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to say that Bejing is in the right or that the Hong Kong people are bad. Just that it's disheartening to see such ugliness.

Then throw in the fact that the Chinese-American person in question was born in the Mainland, and you have some high-grade xenophobia bait.

Calling a person's place of birth a bait for racism is incredibly disturbing. There aren't any excuses for bigotry.

Bad wording on my part, yeah. But you can see how the reactionary elements of the movement might take it.

I didn't read their post to be justifying it, just that her origin was likely to cause bigots to come out the woodwork.

Edit: Heh,

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 23rd 2019 at 2:13:36 AM

There is a bitter history of right-wing Hongkongers calling mainlanders "locusts" and hardline mainlanders calling Hongkongers "cockroaches". I believe the rioters think that the Chinese-American reporter being of mainland descent makes her worthy of racism. Granted, this ain't the first time they've done this - if you don't appear to speak Cantonese, they'll assume you're a mainlander and try to rough you up

Otherwise, I am very annoyed that many Chinese-Americans are against the protests. Some oppose it because white people are in favor of it and this ruins a 100% Asian matter. But I've always felt that many feel more loyalty to the culture and values of their faraway place of ancestry rather than their actual home. They're the types who feel that because China is a world power now, people should fear them when they say they're Chinese, because that makes them feel strong.

Plus many Chinese-Americans are raised heavily on Confucianism, which promotes order and stability over petty concerns like human rights and civil liberties.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Sep 24th 2019 at 8:54:48 AM

I'm not sure how many Chinese-Americans actually feel one way or another about the protests. No one seems to have conducted any actual polls on the matter.

My immediate family has some sympathy for the protesters, but they don't think the protesters are going to get everything they want.

That said, since I don't speak Cantonese, I'm probably going to avoid going to Hong Kong in the near future. A shame too — I've been wanting to try authentic Hong Kong cuisine again for a while.

Edited by M84 on Sep 25th 2019 at 12:02:59 AM

Let's hope that the localists - that's what we called the rioters before - don't end up becoming the dominant voice of the protests.

I fear that may be inevitable unless there's a concerted effort on the part of the other protesters to prevent that from happening.

Most of the people in the Chinese American community I grew up in are specifically from the Guangdong/Hong Kong area including my family, so there's a pretty uniform support for the protesters there.

I just saw this video. Absolutely horrific. I really can't fathom how this kind of mob mentality can just erupt from one day to the other

There was already five years of state-sanctioned mob violence, and that's not accounting for the mob violence that acted as executions for many ordinary folks accused of state enemies. In the early years of land reform after 1949, the accused were often beaten or stabbed to death by huge crowds, some being killed by their own family members.

Back in Yan'an in 1942, following dissidents being forced to brainwash themselves, they were nearly hounded to death just to make sure. Many were Driven to Suicide in the end.

Aside from Islamophobia and the traditional right-wing Han nationalism, the Hui have a long history of fielding some of the finest cavalry divisions for the old Nationalist regime, and curb-stomping the communists until being defeated during the last civil war. Even after that, the Hui waged an insurgency with other Chinese Muslims all the way until 1958.

It's been nothing new ever since the CCP rose to prominence and adopted Mao's hardline stance.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Sep 24th 2019 at 11:17:17 AM

Wang Shuping, an early whistleblower in China's AIDS crisis, passed away a few days ago.

It's worth mentioning that the Hui should not be confused with the Uighurs, who are considered to be Turkic in ethnicity and not Han. The Hui are ethnically far closer to Hans (though still distinct) and actually have feuded with the Uighurs throughout history when they weren't putting aside their differences fighting the Communists.

In other news, Trump has commented on the Hong Kong protests for the second time

I've said it before, but it's interesting how the subject of Hong Kong is one of the only subjects that Trump speaks carefully and diplomatically about.

It makes me suspect that those words aren't his but rather stuff advisers are helping him craft. Though Trump listening to advisers at all is also out of the norm for him.

If I have to guess is because the thing barely care or give a shit, the moment trump cares about something, the more off script he goes.

Even then, Trump said those words out loud in a speech to the UN, meaning that this time he actually stuck to what was on the teleprompter/script instead of going off on his own tangents like every other speech he ever gives.

Especially since a Vocal Minority of the protesters are decked out in his campaign slogans and paraphernalia.

I kind of agree with — Trump probably isn't particularly passionate about Hong Kong.

...Now that I think about it, I don't think Trump has any hotels in Hong Kong yet. If he did, I suspect he'd be ranting more.

Edited by M84 on Sep 25th 2019 at 12:28:04 AM