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China's TikTok users are being told that Aristotle did not exist (scmp.com)
39 points by belter 7 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments



I'm actually interested in the reasons but I can't view the article unfortunately. Can anyone give bullet points as to why this Jin Cantong person believes Aristotle isn't real?

A lot of westerners really enjoy Chinese history, and some (Western) Christian sects have even incorporated aspects of it such as the yellow emperor (Huangdi) as a special incarnation.

Just wondering if its some lame ideologically subversive thing or they have inconvenient truths for us.


> I'm actually interested in the reasons but I can't view the article unfortunately.

https://archive.today/VT85I

> Can anyone give bullet points as to why this Jin Cantong person believes Aristotle isn't real? > > Just wondering if its some lame ideologically subversive thing or they have inconvenient truths for us.

It seems to be skepticism that a westerner could achieve more than a Chinese person of the same time period with some misunderstandings thrown in.


Jin said there was zero records of Aristotle until 13th century


Isn't TikTok just called Douyin in china? Same company Bytedance (CCP Controlled), but the chinese version pushes Chinese politics and nationalism over the US version (TikTok) that pushes clickbait?

Same thing China does with its other social media apps, still a chinese controlled company, but its mainland version is Weixin and WeChat for the international uses.

Seems common knowledge, China bans or promotes its politically correct view on its mainland versions of apps.


Can't read much because paywall. China... you know their name means "the center" (or "the middle" if you prefer the inoffensive interpretation). The thing with a center is there can only be one, and very far east of Athens. They have struggled throughout the 20th century to establish that there is such a thing called "Chinese philosophy" as it would be a unified, logical, coherent body of knowledge. Ironically it was to measure up their national ego with the "Western philosophy" (the continuity of dialogue throughout centuries). Unfortunately for them, they don't measure up when using that yard stick. (They could measure using other ways than confrontation). Now it seems they've decide to beat that dead horse again but the new strategy is to deny the existence of Western philosophy? Like these guys existence meant so much anyway.. look at Plato, we're not even half sure what came from him or not. What matters is what's written and the continuous dialogue throughout history. They can say what they want but I can still read all these sources and participate in the dialogue if I want to. They can't have that.


> look at Plato, we're not even half sure what came from him or not.

What are you talking about? While there may be a few spurious letters and dialogues, Plato is about as complete as we could possibly hope for.


Interesting and worth challenging imo. I had never thought about it it until this post.


Agreed. It never hurts to do a bit of research, we should seek to understand all that we hold to be true from the pages of history and perhaps spend a moment (or an evening) doing bit of reading on various topics. Trust but verify I suppose.


s/China's TikTok users/Users of China's TikTok/


China does not have TikTok users.

I see what you did there.


https://archive.today/VT85I

I'd post a link to the page on the wayback machine as well, but they apparently haven't found a way around the paywall.


China does not have TikTok.


Whats is this then? - https://www.douyin.com/


It's Douyin, which shares a parent company and code, but has a mostly distinct universe of videos. It's accessible via the US last time I checked, in case you want to try to confirm that. That their universe of media obeys local politics isn't at all surprising. After all, TikTok has a long list of prohibited media and will delete content upon proper request in the US as well, just need to file a DMCA letter for it.


Pay-op, probably. I mean not the theoretical academic conclusions (to the degree they exist, idk, not a scholar), but the media around this. Reasons to hate China (western pov), reasons why the west is dumb (eastern pov).

I mean, in the pragmatic sense, who cares. Socrates, as we know him from Plato didn’t really exist either precisely. Doesn’t mean he ain’t interesting.


Wow, got downvoted. @dang dafuq


It's incredibly dishonest to suggest that the demand for a non-whitewashed history is just some crackpot bullshit being done exclusively by Chinese nationalists. It's a widespread and very reasonable demand, and the idea that it has "nationalist" intent is itself a big bunch of propaganda by the west who doesn't want people investigating the validity of history.

It makes sense though; "history" in the west is nothing but pure propaganda. They lie to us and convince us that Columbus and Mother Theresa were good people, or that the US is founded on "freedom". We do need a non-western-centric history.


there's a huge leap between "Columbus was a good person" and "Aristotle didn't exist." the former is a matter of perspective, of how you read the historical record. the latter is a conspiracy theory, and requires outright denying the historical record.


China already have a rich literary history, why does the west need to give up ours?


Framing this as the West “giving something up” is essentially a dog whistle. I hope that we are all above this.


Please share with us the true history your honor!!




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