It's depressing how many Americans and Europeans seem utterly allergic to any kind of nuanced discussion or deeper understanding of China. I think the same applies to the former USSR. I'm not sure why this is.
A language and internet barrier makes it difficult to find unbiased news and views. Most of us have no primary sources, everything is relayed to us by:
- People in China who choose or are allowed to bypass the GFW
- People who decided to leave China, or whose families decided to leave
- People who decided to learn Chinese
There can be a political motivation for all three of these.
The problem is that the pro-China position almost always comes either from an outsider (who isn’t really credible) or an insider (who is scared of giving even meek criticism or caveated opinions).
There are not really insiders willing to offer those nuanced opinions. Instead it’s up to the rest of the world to figure out what’s true and what’s not, what’s omitted, how to reconcile the two differing opinions, but without the context.
And I don’t agree that the same applies to the USSR in the modern era. I thought it was common knowledge that in post-soviet countries a lot of especially older folks held mixed opinions on the USSR (liking the safety net and sense of personal security, hating the shortages and queues, liking the international prominence, hating the corruption, etc).
I don’t know about neither, but I think there are people who are “both” like expats or people who emigrated from China at an age (say 20+) at which they could have credibly fully understood what it’s like to live there. You could also include people like ABCs with strong familial ties to China although I think those are more firmly outsiders.
In any case it’s rare for either of these groups to be fully candid with non-Chinese, or at least bold enough about it to broadcast is via eg news media, anyway because of the cultural taboo on discussing politics and risk of negatively affecting relatives back in China.
From the things people liked post-communism countries you forgot the most important ones like older people liking having been young and also all material things being universally shit rather then some people having better things afterwards.
The folks who would provide insight to China would be the citizens of China. If you buy the premise that China is a totalitarian state, a consequence is that you can’t have a public, nuanced discussion with its citizens, because they may be victimized by the state. So your only source of insight would be history and private conversation.
I think a lot of opinions coming from first-hand perspective is, if anything, more biased. People get inured to the life they live in and don't have perspective. A lot of people I know who live comfortably in the US that are from places like China or the Soviet Union are still pretty biased in favor of their nationalist propaganda. Not all of them, but some.
On the other hand, there are also a lot of Western expats who were very happy living in China for several years, but are leaving or have left China in the past 2-3 years due to the political changes taking place. China is a much more totalitarian nation today than it was 5 or 10 years ago.
no it's not. most of those people just didn't like china's covid response. things in 2023 are almost back to what they were in 2019 (in regards to western expat life)
I don't think you can give an honest reading of those threads and come away with the conclusion that it's just about COVID. Nearly every comment mentioned reasons other than just COVID.
And even the ones that were about COVID weren't really about COVID, they were about the consequences of the totalitarian response laying bare the lack of social contact and waking them up to what was possible. COVID was the trigger but it could have been anything and they know it now, essentially.
sorry i didnt read those threads. i am a western expat in china and have been for 10+ years, and i'm talking about the people i know and have seen and summarizing discussions with them. many people i know have left since 2020 and this is why
China has always been China. Tibet, Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen, Xinjiang. A lot of expats thought they could bury their head in the sand because they had a chance to make money. Same way George HW Bush did.
Do we have a nuanced discussion or deeper understanding of iran? Libya? Vietnam? Ethiopia? Myamnar? Niger? Of course not. People just follow state propaganda. Doesn't matter who it is, americans, europeans, chinese, russians, etc.
Besides, nuanced discussion or deeper understanding of china wouldn't change the geopolitical realities of the situation. Whether it was the ussr, ottoman empire, japanese empire, etc, our enemies have to be caricatured and destroyed.
The real question is why the china, ussr, ottoman empire, japanese, etc aren't doing or didn't do the same. Why is it that china or the chinese are so desperate for american approval or understanding? While we don't give a shit whether the chinese have a nuanced discussion or deeper understanding about us.
Why do you think it's easy for most to have nuanced, dispassionate discussions about the ancient Assyrians but not the Nazis? Spacial/temporal/ideological proximity. We're not likely to become anything like the former, but we fear ourselves (or at least our leadership) becoming more like the latter.
Obviously it would be ideal to learn from the good aspects of even the most evil totalitarian regimes, but in practice it's easier to wrap the whole nationalist/collectivist/communist idea-space up in a bundle and throw it out as one, at least in conversations with strangers of unclear motives.
Mostly more dispassionate, but not necessarily more accurate? I gather from reading acoup.blog that popular culture gets ancient cultures wrong quite often too. Especially the sort of thing that engages people's imaginations.
The USSR perpetuated the Great Purge and the Holodomor, which together killed approximately 5M people (estimates vary). This is a matter of historical fact, not just belief.
Because if you don't say what you are expected to say you are branded a shill, you are told you are repeating propaganda points, etc. All in all a toxic way of ending the discourse. That causes some people not to try.
Isn't it obvious that this is the result of the US state propaganda system? The US likes to pretend all speech is free, but it sure seems like the speech that supports the narratives of people with power get amplified 1000x.
