Official China Discussion Thread

Tired: Dealing with the lockdown with impulsive online purchases.

Wired: Dealing with the lockdown by annoying your ex.

Inspired: Shandong woman sends a tonne of onions to ex-boyfriend with a note saying "I cried at home for three days, now it's your turn". Local auntie proceeds to complain about the neighbourhood smelling of onions.

In Chinese internet culture, 20th of May is treated as an ersatz Valentine's Day, as "520" (wǔ èr líng) is a rough homophone for "I love you" (我爱你, wǒ ài nǐ).

That is why I refuse to use the bullshit term "new normality", because this is not fucking normal by any means.

If by "new normal" they mean this, I rather stay safe in my house instead.

Just do the same as I do and call this wartime society, once the fight is over we should return to how things are supposed to be run.

New Normality might be the worse marketing failure I've seen in my life. You want to calm down people but you use words that are used in Dystopian Fiction.

...Seriously, why

It's not even in fiction mind you, one could argue that there was a "New Normality" when you compare life in the High Roman Empire with the one during the Low Roman Empire. The problem of course is that the latter is admittedly more unstable and violent than the former, so the message becomes "yeah, this crapsack situation is now the new standard, get used to it."

That'd be climate change. Our governmental and societal responses to the current pandemic are more or less a small-scale dress rehearsal for it.

Everyone is socialized by the system they exist within, we consider relinquishing freedom for security horrible because our system taught us to believe that. Arguing that a different society's socialization is uniquely bad just seems fallacious, if you want to criticize it then you should engage with the substance of their argument.

If only there was some kind of example on why it's bad for the majority of Chinese society to unquestioningly support totalitarianism in the name of security. Like maybe a racist police state somewhere.

I find your unrelenting defense of the current Chinese society, with its oppression of the rights of its own citizenry, genocidal policies and imperialist ambitions, to be getting a bit galling.

Yes, if only.

Good thing that's not what I did, or have done.

If you have a rebuttal to my argument then make it. I am unmoved by anything else.

This is exactly what I'm talking about, concrete arguments instead of declaring people brainwashed because they like a government that you dislike.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 20th 2020 at 2:32:08 AM

For the record, I don't think that the Chinese populace is brainwashed.

I just think that it has more than enough racists, fascists and opportunists to prop up a racist police state and the kind of media environment that gets everyone else to play along if they want their cut of that sweet, sweet GDP growth.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on May 20th 2020 at 3:29:14 AM

You do have show more leniency of china policies out of now, specially brushing aside unconfortable stuff they have done in post they will help later and doing what can be consider soft balling them a lot.

Which is indeed galling.

I think this is a fair assessment, but I would probably add "people who are loyal because they have been benefited by the government's economic reforms" to the list.

I imagine the people whose lives have materially improved because of CCP's policies are likely to be loyal, the man quoted seems to solidly fit in this category.

Even if this is 100% (it isn't) that's not relevant, my post did not object to anyone criticizing the Chinese government harshly. After all, I considered Eagleofthenith's post to be a good argument and it called them totalitarian.

My problem is reducing any Chinese person who likes the Chinese government to just brainwashed sheep, it's patronizing and infantilizing. It's more than possible to disagree with people without denying their agency.

"My problem is reducing any Chinese person who likes the Chinese government to just brainwashed sheep, it's patronizing and infantilizing. It's more than possible to disagree with people without denying their agency. "

We dont deny their agency but we see the influence of the CPP, in the same way nobody deny agency to trump suporters while pointing it out the influence of republican propaganda.

I think the difference is that Trump supporters by and large like him because of the harm he has inflicted upon others, that’s different from people liking the CCP because it has improved their lives economically.

@Sparten, you may not have directly said that nobody should criticise the CCP, but you have managed to give a lot of people the impression that you consider the CCP either above criticism and/or entitled to a lack of opposition on all/most matters.

If thouse aren’t the messages you’re intending to give to people then it may be worth reviewing how you’re communication your views on this subject.

Edited by Silasw on May 22nd 2020 at 1:18:36 PM

Yes, because people have a reflexive zero-sum view of relations with China where any talk of cooperation to deal with greater threats or opposition to counterproductive action is submission.

I can't change that, and I won't remove all nuance from my rhetoric just to fit an us vs them narrative.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 22nd 2020 at 7:34:05 AM

Wow, way to be condescending to damn near everyone else here. “Dumb down”?

Edited by M84 on May 22nd 2020 at 10:26:32 PM

I will concede that was far more offensive then what I intended, I'll remove it.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 22nd 2020 at 7:43:57 AM

Think is, is less a sadic need for harm and more a sense to prove superior for other, much of trump rethoric is a way to prove he is better than other and even his kicking of other is feed is and their narcist and sense of importance.

Which is very similar to Xi.

Except as everyone have tell you over and over china have made overly move in every direction and to some level and their cooperation with them involved pretty much fed their nacionalist, power waving bullshit, somethign you seen to pass on in post of cooperation.

Edited by unknowing on May 22nd 2020 at 10:38:41 AM

This can be completely true and still prove irrelevant to my point.

You cannot force a major nuclear-armed power to behave through coercion, Iran is a weaker state and yet Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign has done nothing to meaningfully change their behavior. It defies all reason to assume that trying the same to a much more powerful state would somehow create better results.

Furthermore, nothing China does is even a fraction of the threat and potential for harm of Climate Change. So yes, I pass on confrontation, trying to start a fight when a massive threat looms over the horizon is the definition of poor priorities.

And this here is the problem, your automatic assumption that anyone who disagrees with you is trying to push a specific narrative.

Dear god, I asked you to explain your perspective and give nuance to it, you then disappeared from the thread.

I’m really trying here to assume that you’re engaging in good faith, it’s not unreasonable for me to ask that you meet me halfway.

It's not an automatic assumption, I've been here for a while, I know how people discuss China and how they don't. And there is absolutely a pattern of us vs them when it comes to discussing China's government. I don't think you yourself push it, I'm speaking in general terms.

Furthermore, I don't recall you asking such a thing. Regardless, I'll explain my perspective now.

I consider confrontation to be useless, we cannot browbeat China into behaving better. We need to balance the carrot and the stick, both because pure coercion has proven useless and because there is a greater threat that needs to be dealt with.

Hopefully that explanation satisfies you, if it doesn't then I would not mind elaborating.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 22nd 2020 at 8:08:59 AM

Amongst one or two people here, sure, but an awful lot more people than that have had trouble understanding what you’re saying.

And you simply missing my post was my assumption, but it’s hard to stick to that good faith assumption when you try and tar everyone with the same brush. I’m pretty sure it was in the COVID thread so I’m not gonna try and the post up.

What do you consider confrontation? Any disagreement? Sanctions? Strong rhetoric? Military action? Refusing to agree to proposals?

Why do you view climate change and all foreign policy to be connected? It’s genrally not considered such with other nations. China has a self-interest is combating climate change exactly the same as the west does, should it not be possible to work together on climate change while being opposed on other issues?

This by the way is what you say that gets the idea of China blackmailing the world into people’s heads, your sentence reads as if you think China will deliberately cause harm to the planet if people oppose it on other issues. I’m gonna take on faith that you don’t think that, but that’s why people keep bringing that idea up.

You mentioned carrot and stick, okay that requires both, when do you believe it is appropriate to confront China? When it’s making climate change worse? If it conducts genocide? When it abuses human rights? When it carries out military action against other nations? If it engages in regime change in other nations? If it attempts to annex another nation?

With the exception of disagreement and refusing to agree with proposals, all of the above.

Confrontation is when instead of constructively working towards a mutually beneficial arrangement you instead apply coercive measures to force them to back down or submit, it has its place in diplomacy but in my response to Unknowing's post I laid out why it's bad with China.

As people have mentioned the PRC is rather nationalistic, and thus they tend to have a chip on their shoulders when it comes to foreign bullying (that is how they would see it, I'm not saying it's objectively bullying). Thus confrontation would just backfire by empowering their nationalists.

I consider Climate Change to be connected to foreign policy because it is an international issue and thus you need international solutions to fix it. If this wasn't true then the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Climate Agreement would've been irrelevant, but they clearly aren't considering that people rightfully protested when Trump left the latter.

You're correct that I don't think that China would hold the world hostage. The risk is that by refusing to work with them much less global progress would be made to fight Climate Change. They don't need to intentionally sabotage anything for the fight to go poorly.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 22nd 2020 at 8:46:41 AM