> First off "China" in this context means "the CCP", not the Chinese people, not the Chinese culture.
At the risk of sounding xenophobic myself, I'd like to push back on this often mentioned excuse whenever "China" is criticized.
I really think there are major issues with Chinese culture, which of course implies its people. Whether this comes from decades of brainwashing by their government, lack of education, or something else, I can't say, but we must be able to criticize "wrong" actions by people, without dumping it all on the government (which has issues of its own, and is likely responsible for most issues the country is currently facing), or fearing to be labeled xenophobic.
Are there good people in China? Absolutely. But there's a widespread culture of xenophobia, abuse of the environment, and disregard for animal, plant and human life that just shouldn't go unnoticed. China is an enormous country, so I can't say whether this comes from a majority or not, but it absolutely exists in many places.
I do concede the possibility that I've been brainwashed myself by western media, so I'm open to counterpoints to anything I've said.
AIUI, not having first hand knowledge of the culture myself there are aspects of chinese culture ("cha bu duo" comes to mind) that are probably harmful to global society. However I think it's a lot more difficult to level criticism at those aspects for a few reasons. Chief among which being that modern much of modern chinese culture is some fiction/caricature of Han values created by the CCP as a tool. China is quite an ethnically and culturally diverse place, I think a lot of what we understand as "chinese culture" is a lot more top-down than you might imagine. I also think that culturally the US/west has some incredibly bad norms too (hypercapitalism type beat), and it's only because we have a more open/balanced form of government that those cultural flaws aren't as evident, which is why I focus more on the government and less on the culture/people.
Again, all of this with a grain of salt, I just read about this stuff and watch youtube videos.
At the risk of sounding xenophobic myself, I'd like to push back on this often mentioned excuse whenever "China" is criticized.
I really think there are major issues with Chinese culture, which of course implies its people. Whether this comes from decades of brainwashing by their government, lack of education, or something else, I can't say, but we must be able to criticize "wrong" actions by people, without dumping it all on the government (which has issues of its own, and is likely responsible for most issues the country is currently facing), or fearing to be labeled xenophobic.
Are there good people in China? Absolutely. But there's a widespread culture of xenophobia, abuse of the environment, and disregard for animal, plant and human life that just shouldn't go unnoticed. China is an enormous country, so I can't say whether this comes from a majority or not, but it absolutely exists in many places.
I do concede the possibility that I've been brainwashed myself by western media, so I'm open to counterpoints to anything I've said.