Blue is Me

Tag: ccp

  • Why do some overseas Chinese desire to see China collapse and fail?

    I’m a first generation Chinese immigrant. I was born in China but grew up and educated in the West (Canada).

    I don’t want to see China collapse and fail at all, my main concern is the actions that the CCP has taken in recent years has resulted in quite concerning consequences.

    The Hu Jintao years were great for China, that was when China became a major world power, the 2008 Beijing Olympics really being the point where I could say wow China has come a long way and now they are on the world stage, caught up to Japan and Korea technology wise, and catching up to the US GDP wise. At that time Chinese were still quite humble about themselves and saw a desire to improve their country.

    But after Hu stepped down and Xi Jinping took over, I saw a much more protectionist shift.

    Websites blocked in mainland China – Wikipedia

    Check out this list of websites blocked in China, and take note of how many of those websites were blocked post 2011 when Xi Jinping came to power. That’s most of the list. Now if you go to China as a tourist, 95% of your apps and websites will probably be blocked. You also won’t be able to use your credit cards anymore, since China is now largely cashless. It’s basically a big F U to foreigners when you go to China.

    I myself saw a huge difference when I went to Shanghai first in 2011, then last year in 2018. Back then, I could still access my websites and apps, there was more friendliness to foreigners, and I didn’t sense as much materialism or arrogance back then. Then last year I went back, and although technology has improved a lot – the people have gotten more unfriendly, being a foreigner made you a target, everyone was very materialistic and judged you if you didn’t support China etc

    Since Xi took over and in recent years, China has gotten increasingly more aggressive when it comes to blocking or censoring foreign websites and apps. They’ve gotten much more politically sensitive and eager to ban or boycott foreign companies or persons (notably Korea, Japan, Canada and US all suffered some kind of ban or boycott in recent years).

    I can see the motivation for Xi Jinping’s approach – which is to protect the Chinese industry and people – but I also think its unhealthy for the people. Because of the degree of censorship, anti-Western bias played by Chinese media and political sensitivity in China these days, Chinese have become more and more nationalistic, less humble and notably, anti-Western, especially compared to the Hu Jintao era.

    Now all it takes to get yourself banned from China is to is to be on good terms with the US (Korea, Canada), say something about Hong Kong (NBA, various celebrities, etc) or criticize their human rights abuses (Soccer club Arsenal, South Park etc) or mentioning Winnie the Pooh, Tibet, Taiwan etc any number of things will get yourself banned and criticized on Chinese social media.

    Take a look on Quora for example, or other social media (Chinese have to use VPN to access Western social media) and all I see are anti-Western answers and comments saying how Western democracy has failed, Americans are arrogant, theres a anti-Chinese conspiracy going on, Westerners want China to fail (i.e this very question is an example of that), Westerners are all brainwashed to hate China, Americans are hypocrites etc that’s all I see.

    I don’t think its healthy to have this anti-Western, pro-Chinese sentiment going on at this degree, and that’s led to Chinese losing their humility and lose sight of what made them improve from the 1990s in the first place which is the ability to self-criticize, learn from their mistakes and improve their country.

    What a marked difference from the Hu Jintao era. Now it’s all about ‘China is the best country in the world, we have the best economy, we are allowed to bully other countries because America does it, and anyone who criticizes us must have been brainwashed to do so’

    This is a rather concerning development, and its a result of the protectionist / nationalistic push that China has taken in the Xi Jinping years. So it’s not that I have any desire to see China fail, I just disagree with the current Xi Jinping government and most Chinese netizens because I think that their actions in recent years is what leads to a lot of deserved criticism from foreigners and foreign countries, and they don’t seem to acknowledge it or want to change/improve that.

    I supported China in the Hu Jintao era. Now, I don’t want to anymore – a lot of China’s uber nationalism, arrogance, hypocritical actions, banning/boycotting and economic bullying of other countries just makes me think of China as the Eastern version of the USA, and that just makes me ashamed to associate myself with Chinese in recent years. I thought China/Chinese were better than that and wanted to be better than USA/Americans, not become like them.

    Lest Chinese forget, protectionism and arrogance is exactly what caused the Qing Dynasty to fail…

  • What are the advantages of strict censorship like they have in China?

    The advantage is that you keep the (majority) of the population brainwashed to support your policies. if Chinese people can’t interact with foreigners, can’t go to foreign websites, only consume Chinese media (which of course, they believe is totally unbiased all the while screaming that Western media is biased), and everything is controlled by state media, then its no wonder that Chinese people all think alike.

    How many mainland Chinese people do you meet that think Taiwan is independent? That have the ability to criticize their own country/government? That think outside the box? That knows what self-deprecation is? Probably none. On the other hand, you’ll meet lots of Japanese/Korean/Westerners that are more than likely to criticize their country and government. Because once you censor everything online and control the state media, it becomes a police state and you lack the ability to think independently. You swallow up everything the government does as ‘good for the stability and harmony of the people and the nation’, even though you are giving up your freedom and rights to do so.

    If a country really was ‘the greatest country, better than democratic countries / West / America etc’, they would never need to censor anything from the people, they would never fear protests or demonstrations (because if a country is great why would people protest?) and the people would willingly want to live there and not be moving or studying abroad in large numbers. Just some food for thought when a Chinese person proclaims this sort of thing.

    Edit:

    As expected, a Chinese robot has commented below with the typical reply. Allow me post my response to his comments below, so you can see a little bit about what I’m talking about with typical Chinese netizens.

    “Since when has criticising one’s government been something that is to be boasted about? A government being criticised routinely by its very only people only proves one thing – that this government sucks.”

    You miss the point here. The point is not that our government sucks, but that we have the capability to criticize it. Chinese do not. Do you really think the Chinese government (CCP) will be great and prosperous forever and until the end of time? Of course not. But you cannot protest against them, you cannot criticize them. You *must* support them. That’s a problem of lack of freedom. And just like a robot, you respond with the typical “Chinese government has raised billions out of poverty blah blah” so is the Chinese government perfect? is there NOTHING you don’t like about the CCP? Tell me. There must be something. Let me guess -” mass censorship is ok because it’s for the harmony and stability of the country.” “If we uncensor sex and violence everyone will turn into violent criminals”

    “And besides, I don’t understand why on Earth you yourself as a Chinese can’t get the slightest sense of respecting the authority”

    I respect authority – when authority deserves respect.

    “Every day people like you who are brainwashed by Western capitalistic democracy try everything they can to reproach their government”

    Again, with this “brainwashing” argument. How are we brainwashed? I’ve traveled to over 20 countries before. I rarely read the Western media news. Most Americans don’t even trust their own news media, they think fake news is a major problem. All of my opinions come from my own experience traveling the world. So tell me, why do you think I’m brainwashed? It’s not like I haven’t been to China before. I have been to China several times already. Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing etc. It’s not like everything from China comes from what Western media says like you assume.

    “if a government can’t manage to let its people shut their mouths up willingly, again the government sucks.”

    People only protest if they dislike something about the government. I’m from Canada. Nobody is on the street protesting Justin Trudeau right now because although he’s not perfect, he’s not doing terrible either. If we decide we don’t like him, then he can be replaced. This is democracy and freedom at work. In China – you *have* to support the government no matter what – you have no choice.

    “While over 80% of Chinese have absolute trust in our great government, you guys just elect awful people like Trump and Johnson as your national leader and practise “freedom of speech” to throw criticism and dissatisfaction towards the government. “

    Not every leader we elect has been awful. Obama did a pretty good job, actually. So did Jean Chretien and Bill Clinton.

    “If my government raised hundreds of millions of people from poverty, increased literacy rate in a country with 1.4 billion population from a pitiful negligible number to 96%, and developed the economy from a third-world nation to the second largest economy in only 40 years, while all your government cares is to receive criticisms fron citizens, then your government for sure hopelessly sucks.”

    Keep bragging about that economy of yours – can the Chinese government keep going? I don’t think so. There’s already lots of signs of the economy slowing down. And this is just basic economic principles at work here. The more developed a country gets – the slower the economic growth will be. The CCP has a lot of work on their hands just to keep the growth rate constant. Look at South Korea and Japan in the 60s – they were just as fast as China in the 2000s – but now they’ve slowed down a lot. China will eventually slow down as well – if not already.

    BTW – I noticed a common deflection tactic by Chinese netizens is that they always talk about the shortfalls of the Western government instead of their own. This is just backing up my point about all Chinese people behaving and acting the same way. Almost robot-like, [response about how I am Chinese but am brainwashed by Western media], [response about American government sucks and Chinese government being way better]. I would like to see you post a different response. Show some independent thinking.

    And again if you are in China right now – you have to use a VPN to use Quora because Quora is blocked. Why would the Chinese government block Quora? Because there’s people criticizing them on Quora? A government unable to accept criticism and to improve itself is a government doomed to fail. This happened in Chinese history many times already – the stories of Emperors who couldn’t accept any criticism, and kept telling himself he was the greatest – their presumption is their downfall.

    “I see no reason why the CPC is not the authority that deserves the most respect in human history.”

    How about the famine that wiped out millions of people during the Great Leap Forward? the Cultural Revolution? I don’t know how you can say the CCP deserves the most respect in human history when so many lives have been needlessly lost and the needless destruction of Chinese culture. Try telling that to my parents face – who couldn’t even go to school during the Cultural Revolution because they were all shut down – that the CCP deserves the most respect in history. What a joke. Yes it’s admirable that they lifted so many people from poverty but they did it at a very heavy cost. And it’s not like other countries didn’t do it. the Industrial Revolution did the same thing to create a gigantic middle class for the UK and US, and Korea and Japan both went from countries completely destroyed by war to first world developed countries in less than 30 years. It’s not like the CCP did something that other countries didn’t do before, having any kind of modernized capitalist government would have achieved the same results. Notice that CCP didn’t actually raise many people out of poverty until after they switched to a market economy.

    “Common sense would tell us that the less educated a person is, the more vulnerable he will be under influence of misleading information or anti-social sentiment. “

    Common sense from a non-biased view, would also tell us that less educated people should benefit from receiving more education. Quora is a place of education. You see it as a place of misinformation and anti-China groups? Well take a look at most of the China-related questions on Quora. The top-voted answers are all pro-Chinese. For example take a look at Why is western media so hostile towards China? What are some common misconceptions about China? What is wrong with a lot of western media coverage of China? in particular one of the most popular writers of the China topic Paul Denlinger you can read his answers – they are mostly all praising China. So much for Quora being filled with anti-Chinese groups eh? If anything, there’s misinformation that’s anti-Western, not anti-China. Some of these answers generalize Western media and Westerners way too much.

  • Why do some overseas Chinese really dislike the mainland Chinese?

    A bunch of reasons. Me and my parents left mainland China 20 years ago to immigrate to Canada. My younger brother was born in Canada. So we are Western-educated. However, I wouldn’t say I’m “brainwashed” by Western media as Chinese people would say. I’ve visited China on several occasions, and have mainland Chinese friends.

    Here’s my problems with most mainland Chinese (not all mainland Chinese because you can’t paint 1.3 billion people with a broad brush)

    -they talk/argue too loudly. Mandarin isn’t a language that requires you to talk loud. Taiwanese people for example, speak Mandarin normally. I speak Mandarin normally at normal levels. My parents do as well. You don’t need to shout or argue all the time.

    -they are too prideful and nationalistic. see my answer here: Tong Zou’s answer to Is the CCP encouraging the rise of Chinese nationalism?

    -they talk down about other Asian countries (Korea, Japan) for no good reason, its as if they were educated and brainwashed to dislike other Asians or something without ever acquainting themselves with those people.

    -they show off too much and care too much about money. expensive brands, expensive cars, jewelry, etc. too materialistic. This is ‘face culture’. If you look at all the richest people in the world (Bill Gates, Warren Buffet etc) you will notice one thing they have in common is that they don’t show off. Money is just a means. It’s not something to judge someone on. I mean, I had half a million dollars in net worth last year, but I lost it all this year in that QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency scam (see here: Software Engineer Loses Life Savings in Quadriga Imbroglio) . Will a Chinese person look at me differently now? because I haven’t changed as a person. just my net worth. Then again, this is more of a Western culture thing that you should pursue your happiness rather than money.

    -they don’t care about their appearance enough. Ironically, despite spending money on expensive products, they actually don’t know how to dress well, or match clothing. Chinese women will wear those dorky glasses even knowing that they look much better without them, or go outside without makeup, it’s as if they give zero F’s about what they look like. Sometimes I think they dress ugly on purpose or something.

    -they don’t care about others. I’ve noticed this whenever I go to China. It’s everybody out for themselves. People are not as closely tight knit as they are in Korea/Japan. It’s hard to trust people in China.

    These are not only my thoughts but also my parents as well, as they generally agree with what I’ve mentioned so far.

  • Is the CCP encouraging the rise of Chinese nationalism?

    I’m not sure if the CCP actually encourages extreme nationalism, but it certainly isn’t doing much to prevent it.

    Since the opening of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 I feel that Chinese have gotten considerably more prideful and dare I say, arrogant since then.

    I can only speak from personal anecdotes. I’ve seen Chinese people and Western people living in China post the most biased answers on Quora, upvoted 1k+ times by other Chinese nationalists. This is only the segment of Chinese who are either abroad or using a VPN (since Quora is banned in China), I can only imagine what it’s like on Zhihu.

    You can do a search on Quora: notice that all the answers regarding China written by Chinese that have massive amount of upvotes have something the lines of:

    [shows pictures of China’s high speed rail system and skyscrapers] -> China’s the best country! we have the best technology! see, there’s no poverty here at all!

    [shows pictures of Chinese food] -> China has the best food! way better than Japan/Korea! etc

    One poster even went out his way to search for the ugliest pictures of Korean/Japanese school uniforms he could find, and the best pictures of Chinese uniforms he could find, to show that Chinese school uniforms were actually ‘prettier’ (he failed, they still looked worse).

    And from personal experiences, it seems that Chinese almost never miss a chance to praise their technology, development, food, women, etc especially at the expense of either America, Korea, Japan or Taiwan. Whenever one of those countries have an issue, Chinese jump on it.

    Korea president goes to jail? we never have that problem! Our country is perfectly stable! Taiwan and Japan economy declining? Well that’s because our country is better! USA having issues with Trump? Well we don’t elect our leaders so we don’t have that problem!

    And they rationalize the CCP’s blanket decisions by thinking in the extreme. Ban on sex/violence/too much video game playing? It’s so that we don’t have a country of sex-addicted criminals! Censorship on social media? its for a more stable country just look at the chaos in the US! Everything is justified by thinking in the extreme. It’s actually not unlike how in the US, Republicans justify their expensive healthcare by assuming that anything socialist will lead the country to become like Venezuela or that any firearm restrictions will turn the whole country into a crime riddled dystopia like Chicago.

    Also don’t forget: Korea and Japan stole everything from China, and they are US puppets. Chinese never miss a chance to put down other countries, even if those countries never provoked them, even if they never talked to any Korean/Japanese before and personally I’ve never met a Korean/Japanese person who insulted any Chinese person, but Chinese cannot pass up a chance to assert their superiority.

    Of course Chinese also say ‘but Americans brag about themselves all the time too and are nationalistic too, so we can be like that too’. Hmm. I thought Chinese didn’t want to be like America. Oh wait.. biggest income inequality gap in Asia, likes to be bullies to their neighbors, almost no traditional Chinese clothing in favor of casual Western style clothing, everyone for themself culture, thinks that their political system and culture is the best.. China is almost exactly like America.

    Now where I have a problem is that Chinese people can’t seem to take any kind of criticism of their country well, they perceive everything as an insult, and are way too sensitive to any kind of feedback. If I ever criticize anything about China/Chinese, I get labeled a ‘traitor’ to my kind and/or ‘brainwashed’ by white people. I’ve had so many Chinese collapse my answers and comments on Quora, for no other reason other than because it was ‘anti-Chinese’ (really? my parents are Chinese FYI, since when is using empirical evidence + trying to be unbiased “anti-Chinese”?)

    Tong Zou’s answer to What do you dislike the most about Chinese people? I’ve already gone over this here.

    So look it’s ok to have pride in your country and achievements, but I just wish Chinese would tone it down a little. Arrogance was the main reason why they had that ‘century of humiliation’ last time. If this continues, it seems like it will happen again.

    It’s ok to be humble about your achievements. But I’ve never met a Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese that boasts about their country and achievements as often or as voraciously as mainland Chinese people do. And although Chinese like to say Americans are arrogant and nationalistic, you will notice a lot of Americans don’t like their country these days either. The USA is split between half of which support the current President and half of which hate his guts. On the other hand, I think something like 80–85% of Chinese people support Xi Jinping and the CCP. quite a big difference from the 35% that support Trump in the USA.

    If I had to guess, I think the extreme nationalism is not solely because of CCP propaganda and education but an overcompensation for the century of humiliation and the Mao-era where China was far behind other powers. Now that China has caught up – Chinese people have been so caught up in the rapid progress of their country that they express their patriotism (i.e extreme patriotism is nationalism) in extreme ways, and are very defensive about it.

    -my 2 cents from interacting with Chinese-Canadians, Chinese-Americans, mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Japanese, Americans etc  btw keep this answer saved. It might be collapsed by Quora soon as well. Quora is surprisingly pro-Chinese, which you will notice in which answers gets upvoted the most and which answers get collapsed the most.

  • Is China too big for a democracy? After speaking to some Chinese, their view is that the country is too populous, diverse and it would reduce economic progress and institutions to a crawl

    I actually agree with Chinese people for this one. The problem with having a big populous diverse country while being a democracy is that you cannot possibly represent everyone with only two or three parties. In the USA this is particularly the case. Two parties representing 320+ million people. How is that possible? No wonder they bicker and argue all the time – and as a result nothing really gets done.

    The US government is currently under a shut-down due to the inability of the politicians to compromise. That’s what happens when you have a few parties that tries to represent a large mass of people.

    India’s population is on par with China’s now and they are also a democracy – but I would say China’s leadership has been more efficient than India’s as well.

    One party leadership is undoubtedly more efficient: you don’t have to deal with lobbyists or corporations trying to influence your party, and you don’t have to deal with trying to compromise with the other party, and you don’t have to worry about being voted out by your constituents if they don’t like your plans (in a country of 1.3 billion it would be pretty much impossible to get a plan going that satisfies everyone), meaning the party can put forth their plan with little to no opposition. That’s why China can do things relatively quickly while the US might take years and years to do the same thing.

    Now granted I’m not a big fan of the CCP or anything, I really hate how they have to censor things “for the sake of the country” when really its just limiting people’s freedoms, but I can’t disagree with how efficient the CCP is at getting stuff done.

  • Why do so many people love China’s government?

    I think you gotta see it from Chinese point of view not from Westerner’s point of view.

    For Chinese people, their lives improved dramatically from the Cultural Revolution days to now. My parents couldn’t go to university, couldn’t own a TV, had to carry red books with them all the time. That was the time that they grew up in.

    Now, China is modernizing, just a few years ago they didn’t even have 3G networks now they have full LTE networks everywhere, bullet trains, skyscrapers everywhere, smartphones everywhere etc so the economy improved a lot for the middle class.

    Now as Westerners think, there are problems with the Chinese government, mainly lack of freedom + censorship.

    Here’s the thing: Chinese people don’t value freedom as much as Westerners do. They value stability more.
    -We think not being able to access Facebook, Google, Youtube, Wikipedia etc is hard to live with. Chinese people don’t really miss it – they have their own domestic competitors WeChat, Baidu, Youku, Zhihu etc and since most Chinese cannot speak English well, its unlikely many Chinese would use foreign websites even if they had access to it. The Chinese that do speak English well, are usually tech savvy enough to use a VPN, so it’s not a problem for them.
    -We think censoring sex/violence in entertainment is too extreme. Chinese people are fine living without a rating system because they think it will corrupt the youth (not saying this is true, but that’s what they believe)
    -How about having political opinions online censored? Well there’s an easy solution, just don’t talk about politics. As far as I’ve noticed, talking about politics and religion almost always leads to fights and arguments in Western countries anyways.
    -We put a huge premium on privacy online, as Facebook has gotten into troubles about these days. Chinese people don’t care – they know their government spies on them, but they don’t care. As long as you aren’t doing anything bad, you don’t have a problem.

    So there you have it, Chinese people like the economic progress and they are fine with censorship in the name of stability.