
To Many Chinese, America Was Like ‘Heaven.’ Now They’re Not So Sure - cfarm
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/world/asia/china-america-trade.html
======
siedes
Maybe it's a good thing. Moving away from seeing America as an economic
goldrush where everyone can come and "get theirs", and more toward a place
where people actually live in. This is my home, not an all you can eat buffet.
If America cannot take care of its own poor and suffering, what are we doing
trying to take care of the entire world?

~~~
intopieces
Prosperity is not a zero-sum game whereby more Chinese success in America
means less success for the native born. The is nativist/nationalist myopia.

A waning respect for America illustrates that America has failed to make the
case for western values to the Chinese people — open democracy, religious and
cultural tolerance, etc — and we risk losing ground in other areas of the
world (The African continent, for example).

~~~
snaky
> Europeans, along with Canadians and Mexicans, are the most skeptical that
> the U.S. government respects Americans’ freedoms. Majorities in Spain,
> Mexico, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Canada all say that the
> U.S. fails to respect the rights of its people.

[https://www.pewglobal.org/2018/10/01/americas-
international-...](https://www.pewglobal.org/2018/10/01/americas-
international-image-continues-to-suffer/)

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AFascistWorld
The officials and rich are always the smarter and informed ones, just look at
where they put their families and wealth at, watch what they do rather than
what they say.

~~~
wrong_variable
Agreed, but having been to America - I think the assumptions made are slowly
collapsing.

The main assumption being that USA will protect your wealth much more than
then the Chinese state, but I think that is changing ( for the better ).

If suddenly Chinese HNWI are forced to redistribute their wealth among
americans, they might realize its better to just have stayed in China.

~~~
AFascistWorld
>Chinese HNWI are forced to redistribute their wealth among americans

I don't see that happen, but I'm seeing average minds are controlled more and
more thoroughly with the assistance of modern tech, while the "woke" ones are
rushing to America to give birth even if border officers told them they can no
longer obtain US citizenship coz Trump said this or that.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2hBtXdaYsQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2hBtXdaYsQ)

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ydb
As an individual in a society, I am no more than an ant who serves her queen.
Yet, each ant has a purpose, however small, to maintain the health and well-
being of the colony. An ant lost is a tragedy, a colony lost is another step
towards extinction.

This is not the reality we live in. We are less than proverbial ants, we are
grains of sand beat back ceaselessly into the past. We disintegrate, we
stagnate; but for every tiny piece of sand extinguished, thousands more are
borne out of the granite slabs of time.

I admire the Chinese for awaking to the artificial construction of American
exceptionalism. I only wish each nation's citizenry could use that same
looking glass to peer within.

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onetimemanytime
For most Chinese, as long as they have their needs met, probably their system
of government is fine. Some may know no better (historically the world wasn't
democratic) and others might rationalize with "just don't insult the leaders
/state and you're fine. Small price to pay"

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zeristor
Doesn’t this boil down to China having developing country status, being
allowed to block imports?

The issue being with China being so large, there are millions of people still
quite, poor despite China being such a large industrial power, so there is
some justification to it still being a developing country. I imagine the rules
were written for smaller homogenous countries.

Things work best when trade goes both ways.

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sanxiyn
This is great. America never was a heaven. Before, people had false belief.
Now, they have true belief. That is to be celebrated.

~~~
chii
The Chinese word for America is "Měiguó", or literally "the beautiful
country".

To the common immigrant, it was sold as a country of opportunity and wealth.

~~~
luckylion
Is that beautiful as in "the landscape is beautiful" or as in "your life there
will be beautiful"?

~~~
yorwba
It's just a phonetic loan (A-mei-rica) represented by a character with
positive associations (they could also have chosen e.g. 没国 "without country",
but that would've been impolite). Best not to read too much into it.

England is called the country of heroes, France the country of law, Germany
the country of virtue... people rarely pay attention to the literal meaning.

~~~
genghizkhan
Curiously, what is India called?

~~~
yorwba
The word for India has been around for much longer, Wiktionary has an
extensive section on the etymology:
[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8D%B0%E5%BA%A6#Chinese](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8D%B0%E5%BA%A6#Chinese)

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ETHisso2017
The love-hate relationship illustrated in the article has been around since at
least 1999, when the US bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.

~~~
Scoundreller
Just to be clear for everyone, you mean the one in Serbia. The former
Yugoslavia footprint has several Chinese embassies.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
In 1999, there was only one Yugoslavia around: after the departure of the
other republics, Serbia and Montenegro maintained the name "Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia" for their country. The OP was correct in saying that the
Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was bombed. (Only later did they change the name
to "Serbia and Montenegro", and it was only then that the name "Yugoslavia"
disappeared.)

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baybal2
It is a very interesting article to discuss, yet it sunk to page 3 so fast...

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namelosw
Personally, I want to keep myself neutral as a Chinese. But I think I can
provide some interesting perspective from China, according to the order of
timeline. I'm by no mean historian so errors and non-seriousness are expected,
you can think of this as an OverSimplified[0] cartoon on Youtube:

0\. China was a 3rd world communist country after WW2.

1\. The Korean war broke out, USSR ordered China to strike back to maintain
the iron curtain. China also worried about the border so it joined the war.
The result of the war is basically a draw, but the border and iron curtain was
'saved'.

2\. After the Korean war, China's self-confident increased, and sort of
complaining USSR's control. Then these two countries start to hate each other.

3\. Vietnam war, China also joined because of the alliance relationship. This
time the North won.

4\. Meanwhile, Nixon visited China. Since China was one of the promising
countries could weaken the iron curtain.

5\. 'Reform and Opening' started in China.

6\. After the Vietnam war, Vietnam became very powerful. There was quite a
risk Vietnam could unify the Indochina. China was in the middle of the USSR
and Vietnam. This became embarrassing after China and USSR hated each other,
and the USSR was keeping investing in Vietnam. Then there was another war
broke out between China and Vietnam. Both of the countries claimed they were
self-defending. There was also no winner, but Vietnam seems less dangerous in
China's perspective.

7\. Japan grows really fast in the 80s. China was just started to grow after
the opening policy and found the importance of the economy growing.

8\. After that, the US feels threatened, there were some economic sanctions
going on. There was an essay 'The Japan That Can Say No' from Sony co-founder.
But eventually, it seems Japan said yes for most of the time.

9\. The Gulf War. The US almost beat Iraq in no time, and Iraq was actually
pretty powerful at that time. According to the rumor, this made the Chinese
military pretty shocked. After the Korean and Vietnam war, China was kind of
self-overrated and reduced a lot of military margin in order to grow the
economy.

10\. According to 8 and 9, the US shaped a very powerful image to China, and
China also realized it's not wise to like Japan which always be the 'yes man'
or omitting the military advancement.

So the competing mindset was already formed pretty early. But there was also
"闷声发大财" according to the president Jiang at that time, which basically means
don't let other people notice you while you are growing fast.

Another interesting thing is about cultural defense. Korean TV series and
K-pop was very popular in China, but the first Korean TV series was introduced
by official TV Channel. There was some theory believe the US and Japan culture
are very influential and hard to replace, so China tried to guide people to
consume Korean (and also Thailand, etc, since Asian culture are easy to
introduce) culture instead of from the US and Japan. And then in recent years,
Korean TW series and K-pop is largely replaced by Chinese own products, which
seems pretty similar.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/Webzwithaz](https://www.youtube.com/user/Webzwithaz)

~~~
east2west
I recognize some missing pieces, which I believe you will find interesting.

1\. The Soviet union did not order China to attack UN troops. The Soviets were
never powerful enough to order something like this, right after the conclusion
of a civil war and brutal Japanese invasion. If they were, there would not
have been a break-up shortly afterward.

2\. I don't think the Soviet being a control freak is the reason for Sino-
Soviet rupture. Even after public denunciation, the Soviets still delivered
prototypes and all the blueprints of Mig-21. Your impression of overbearing
Soviets might come from Communist propaganda about "three-year natural
disaster." That was purely to cover up Mao's catastrophic "Great leap
forward," a complete man-made disaster that the Chinese Communist party
refuses to allow a full investigation to this day.

6\. The Sino-Vietnam border war was China's admission ticket to Western block.
Normalization of relation with US followed immediately and arms sales were
permitted again. As for the military winner, Vietnam, I would say. Chinese
army suffered heavy causalities with little to show for. Chinese officers were
shown to be incompetent, and the Air force, despite deploying hundred of
fighters, did not carry out one sortie against enemy forces. Another infamous
incident is when China imported two sets of military radar for counter-battery
targeting and one set sent to the front (the other was sent to Beijing for
cloning), it was effective enough that Vietnamese sent in special forces and
destroyed it. Afterward, only a lowly company commander was court marshaled.

I have found that Communist propaganda is most effective in willful neglect
and ignorance rather than outright lies. Lies can be pierced more or less
readily, but ignorance hardened into opinions are much harder to change.

~~~
namelosw
Thank you for pointing out all of these.

> Lies can be pierced more or less readily, but ignorance hardened into
> opinions are much harder to change.

This is gold. I found it's hard to not be biased in the environment.

I also found all of the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Vietnam stories I know were just
too sketchy. And the 'three year natural disasters' you have pointed out is
also fair enough, as Soviet always someone to blame in propaganda in those
period. A popular saying is China needs to pay the debt during those three
years, which also sounds sketchy.

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siedes
I respectfully disagree that waning respect for America in this context
illustrates what you say it does. Chinese culture is fundamentally opposed to
American culture, and those things you mention, open democracy, religious and
cultural tolerance, etc. are expressions of American culture. What nations
like China and various others respect about America is __money __, and how to
make a lot of it even at the expense of American people and industry, all
while laughing at how we live our lives and making a mockery of us. As a
person of Asian descent and having lived amongst other non-American groups, I
can say most do not want to live like Americans at all and often spit on
"western values". They love our money but they don't give a damn about our
democracy and cultural tolerance. Hate to say it, but it's for the most part
accurate.

~~~
sho
> Hate to say it, but it's for the most part accurate

I hate to say it too, but statements such as yours, filled with sweeping
generalisations, oversimplifications and us-vs-them outgroup nonsense like
they want to "spit on our values" usually turn out to be very very far from
accurate, and indeed say more about the speaker than the subject at hand. Chip
on your shoulder much?

I'd like to think - and have generally observed - that 99% of people from
_anywhere_ are not in fact greedy sociopaths, but instead decent people trying
to live good lives inside their own cultural and economic context.

~~~
siedes
For the good of the world, I hope you are right. I admit I did get a bit too
passioniate in the earlier post.

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ycombonator
Another Chinese Regime sponsored psyop article.

