Blue is Me

Tag: Politics

  • If China followed the same capitalist path as Taiwan, would it have become as successful as Taiwan? Taiwan GDP per capita is more than double that of China. A true Asian success story.

    No, it would have been even more successful than Taiwan.

    China before capitalism (pre 1978)

    China after capitalism (post 1978):

    China only started catching up to the West when it abandoned the centralized economy that other communist countries had in the 1950s and opened it up to the market economy in the 1980s. During the Mao Zedong era 1949–1976 China’s economy was stagnant and Chinese were all equally poor. After Deng Xiaoping opened up China’s economy, China flourished and now has become the 2nd leading GDP in the world (soon to be #1).

    Basically 1949–1976 due to massive mistakes such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China set back their economy by quite a few decades. Safe to say if they followed Taiwan in opening up their market economy right from the beginning in 1949 then they would have been even more successful than now.

    Safe to also say that if China did not censor all their intellectual output, then China’s dominance would have been even more – see Hong Kong’s influence on the music and cinematic industry in the 1980s, once mainland China took back Hong Kong, all of that influence is gone and HK is now just a shell of what it once was.

    If China had become capitalist from 1949, instead of waiting until 1978, then I’m willing to bet that China’s GDP per capita would be right up there with South Korea’s by now.

  • Why do some mainland Chinese see the Western democratic system as a joke these days?

    We have to differentiate between “Western” democratic system and US democratic system because the US differs in a few ways compared to say Canada or Australia or Europe.

    • US has a presidential system, where the head of government – the President matters far more than a prime minister does in a parliamentary system. In the US, it’s almost defined by who the President is. In Canada or Australia or Europe, the prime minister is just the head of the party. It really doesn’t matter too much who the head of the party is, it matters more which party is in charge. In the US, it matters who is in charge. You can see within the same party – Trump is quite a different President from George W Bush. so the person in charge matters a lot more in the US.
    • US has an electoral college system where the states vote on who become President. The popular vote doesn’t matter. Trump and George W Bush both won the election despite losing the popular vote. In a parliamentary system the popular vote actually matters and will influence the election. Also, the US holds an election every 4 years and have to wait 4 years to force the President out if they don’t like him (because the impeachment process is obviously broken). In a parliamentary system, an election can be forced by a vote of no-confidence at any time if the people feel that the prime minister is not doing a good job. Also, US Presidents can only serve up to 8 years in office. Western Prime Ministers do not have a term limit; they serve as long as the people feel they are doing a good job.
    • There’s a lot of quirks about the USA that other democratic Western countries don’t have. ie. the US has very loose firearms policy and gun control is very lax; it is strict in other Western countries. the US’s healthcare system is a privilege not a right and the employer covers healthcare; in other Western countries the healthcare is provided by the government free of charge (free in the sense that you don’t pay upfront; it is paid for by taxes). US has prohibitively expensive higher education – in other Western countries higher education is subsidized or free of charge (paid for by taxes). The US also has abnormally low tax rates compared to other Western countries, probably because the US government doesn’t really provide much social benefit to its citizens.

    So I keep telling Chinese people you have to differentiate ‘Western’ countries from the USA because the US is so different from other Western countries. Also, we have to talk about what is a ‘Western’ country. Generally I find when Chinese talk about Westerners or Western countries they mainly mean the US and Americans, but generally also include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe as well. What about Eastern Europe? Mexico? Central America? South America? Are these included? Cause they are part of the Western hemisphere but are pretty different in their social welfare compared to other Western countries. So yeah I don’t like it when Chinese generalize Western countries like this when really they just mean the USA.

  • What do you think of Chinese people?

    Things I like about Chinese people:

    -Hardworking

    -Ambitious

    -Confident

    -Willing to take risks

    -Brutal honesty

    Things I don’t like about Chinese people:

    -They lost their humility. Now they are too nationalistic, they always like to brag about China and how its better than other countries a lot, their cities, their food, their women etc and they get extremely defensive and offended when you say anything perceived as negative towards their country.

    -Ironically even though they criticize other countries like USA/Japan/Korea etc all the time they cannot seem to take criticism of their own country well. They cannot seem to accept that their country has flaws. Yes we all know the CCP did some great things like lifting Chinese people out of poverty, but we also have to accept that they made some mistakes, especially in the past in the Mao-era with the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. Don’t jump down my throat for giving some honest feedback/criticism about your country. And they will inevitably talk about you are ‘brainwashed’ by Western media even though you are being the open minded one here.

    -The whole society cares too much about wealth and is too materialistic. And before you say well other countries are materialistic too, no China is on a different level. They judge everyone by their wealth, everything is about money, money, money. How much do you make? What car do you have? You need a car and a house before marriage, and likely an expensive ring too. All this is crazy. You might find *some* Koreans and Japanese and Westerners like this, but definitely they will be in the minority and criticized if they think this way. For Chinese, this is considered a normal way of thinking.

    -They think that being patriotic means supporting the CCP. Patriotism does NOT mean supporting the current government. Patriotism means love of your country, not love of the current government of your country. Many Chinese call me a ‘traitor’ because I don’t support the CCP and I say negative things about China. They don’t understand that you can still love China but be against the government. In America, over half the population opposes Trump, the current head of US government. Does that mean they do not love America? You must separate the concept of government from the country. Some of China’s greatest patriots were revolutionaries. Sun Yat-Sen was considered a great patriot, but opposed the Manchurian government in rule at the time. Most of Chinese dynasties were overthrown by someone who disliked the current government in rule. Heck, even Mao Zedong, the founder of the CCP, decided that the current government was not good and sought to overthrow it. Chinese must realize that going against your government does not mean you do not love your country.

    -Gender inequality. I hate the BS ‘women hold up half the sky’ talk. If they hold up half the sky shouldn’t they pay for half of everything too? I don’t get why in the country with the lowest gender wage gap, the men still gotta pay for everything. Everything should either be equal and fair to both sexes, or if they insist men pay for everything, then they should do more than men at home or something like Koreans or Japanese women. Otherwise its not equal.

  • What do you think about China?

    I guess I come from the unique perspective of having been to all the East Asian countries (China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea) and my feelings about China has changed because of this. Roughly 30% of my friends are Chinese and 40% Korean.

    Before I lived in Korea, I was in China for a few months, visiting such places as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou.

    My impressions are that North China has really bad air.. and although Beijing has lots of history, it just wasn’t as interesting to me as Central and South China were. In contrast, Shanghai was probably the most modern city in China, and Suzhou and Hangzhou had some of the most beautiful natural scenery I’ve experienced.

    I had lots of (mainland) Chinese friends in university, and also met Chinese people in China of course.

    I feel that my feelings for Chinese people changed a lot after I met Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese after I graduated university and started working and traveling to other Asian countries.

    After having visited Japan and Taiwan and living in Korea for 2 years, here’s my observations:

    -China is a great place for traveling and still has some of the most naturally beautiful places in the world.

    -China is a massively diverse country full of different races and cultures

    -Chinese food is very different from American Chinese food

    -Chinese people are very blunt; For example they do not hesitate to mince words on anything really. Korea/Taiwan/Japan tend to soften their words in order not to offend people too much, but Chinese just straight up say whatever is on their mind. This is often taken as ‘harshness’ or ‘rude’ by other countries but I think this is just their culture.

    -China has way better gender equality than any of its surrounding countries. And the women act very different from Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese women. They are less traditionally feminine, more assertive, more ambitious, and in a lot of cases can actually be more dominant than the men. It’s almost a role reversal compared to other countries, lol. It’s better in China to be a girl. Everything is paid for by the guys. The guys are pretty subservient to their gfs. The groom’s family pays for the wedding, not the bride. There’s a dowry that the men have to pay. And because of the skewed gender ratio, girls have the pick of the litter. Pretty big contrast to Korea/Japan where its pretty much the opposite. Heres a nice graphic that is based on the stereotypes:

    -Chinese people are very prideful about their country, and more uniquely is how prideful they are about the specific region where they are from. A lot of times I would hear not’ Chinese ___ is the best’ but rather ‘Sichuan ___ is the best’ or ‘Beijing ___ is the best’ or ‘Shanghai __ is the best’. They like to boast a lot, and its not hard to see that they are biased in favor of China and their region on a lot of issues. It’s not so different from USA where Americans boast about their country too, but it is different from Taiwan/Japan/Korea where I don’t really hear them boasting about their country that often. Chinese people are not really aware of the culture differences between their country and Japan/Korea/Taiwan either, but that’s a forgivable point I suppose considering most Chinese have not been outside their country before.

    -Chinese people seem to put a lot of faith into their government. I’ve seen them use extreme cases to justify certain questionable government decisions. For example, banning foreign websites: Foreigners think its extremely limiting to freedom but Chinese people think its a good thing because it protects their domestic industry. censoring sex/violence in entertainment: Foreigners think its extreme, Chinese people think that having sex/violence in entertainment will lead to people becoming depraved criminals. censoring social media: Foreigners think it limits freedom, Chinese people think having a free social media is too crazy and chaotic and unstable. The government makes them wear ugly track outfits for school. Foreigners think Korean/Japanese school uniforms look better. Chinese people think its distracts them from studying and looks too sexy. Chinese people seem to place a premium on stability and harmony over freedom and flexibility, I think.

    -Chinese people are very results driven, sometimes to the detriment of other qualities. You’ll notice that in whatever they do, Chinese care solely about the end result and how effective it is. If you look at Japan and Korea, they also care about other things like the visuals, the aesthetics, the process, the technique etc. This can pervade in so many different ways too, Chinese food focus solely on whether or not it is delicious. Korean/Japanese care about how the food is prepared as well. Chinese female sports players focus only on being good at what they do. Korean/Japanese female sports players focus on looking good, in addition to being good at what they do. Chinese students focus on getting good grades. Korean/Japanese students focus on looking good, in addition to getting good grades. When Chinese design phones, they make the phones have really good specs for a really good price. When Apple or Sony design phones, they care about the materials and crafting process as well as the specs. See the difference?

    -Chinese are very wealth driven. Now you may say well every person cares about wealth and being rich right? Of course everyone wants to be rich, but not everyone makes it the sole overriding goal of their entire existence the way Chinese do. Everything Chinese do is based on how to make the most money, which items to spend money on that will show off the most wealth, etc. The whole society is driven by how much wealth you have. They judge people based purely on their wealth. That is not the case in Korea, Japan, Taiwan or Western countries actually. It’s easy to say that some parts of the US like Beverly Hills are pretty materialistic, but you can’t say that about the entire country. China on the other hand… I can confidently say that anywhere in the country you will be judged by your wealth and what you own.

    -Japan is Tang Chinese culture, Korea is Ming Chinese culture, Taiwan is ROC culture, and China is its own culture. I find China the most westernized in culture out of all of them. For example, China is the least traditionally Confucist out of those countries, they have mostly done away with traditional ceremonies, religion, outfits (Chinese rarely wear Qipao compared to Japan’s Kimono or Korea’s Hanbok), and their fashion style is more similar to Westerners (i.e casual style) than to Koreans or Japanese. Perhaps this isn’t surprising since China underwent massive revolutions compared to those other countries.

    -Most Chinese are clean, nice and polite, but perhaps not to the same extent as Taiwan, Korea or Japan. My ranking of cleanliness / politeness in general is Japanese (TOO polite to a fault) > Taiwan > Korea > China.

    -Censorship. This is more of a problem for foreigners than native residents, but just be aware that unlike Japan/Korea/Taiwan, you need to use a VPN to use most sites in China, and they censor violent/sexual content. Too much so, IMO.

    -Cost of living. Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo are in the top tier of expensive cities to live in the world. In smaller Chinese cities, it is much cheaper. Seoul is a tier cheaper than those cities, and Taipei has the lowest cost of living amongst all the major capitals.

    -China has the most job opportunities, and the best place to start a company, by far. Shenzhen and Beijing are economic powerhouses for IT. Korea’s job market is too competitive (there’s a reason why they have #1 suicide rate), Japan’s economy is stagnant and Taiwan’s economy is also stagnant. If you are looking for work as a foreigner, China is the best.

    – Safety wise, all East Asian countries are safer than America. No comparison really. Very few mass shootings and gun murders if at all. In China you do have to be more careful of scams and thieves but its still relatively safe. In terms of safety I rank like this: Japan (zero gun deaths a year. seriously.) > Korea/Taiwan > China

    -Technology. Again, ALL of these countries have great technology. Japan is famous for its tech companies, robots and micro electronics (Sony, Canon, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Panasonic, Nintendo, etc too many to list). Taiwan is the #1 maker of computer hardware with such names as Asus, Acer, HTC, Gigabyte, MSI etc. Korea is home to electronic giants Samsung and LG. China doesn’t have the brand cache of those other companies but they are improving! Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, ZTE are some of the companies that are rapidly catching up to Japan and Korea!

    -Religion wise, because of China’s communist past, very few Chinese are religious, most Chinese are atheist. Taiwan and Japan are mostly Buddhist. Korea is uniquely a Christian country, perhaps relating to how socially conservative they are.

    In general I think it really depends what you want but China has its pros and cons. I did a comparison between China and other East Asian countries because I feel that this is a unique perspective I can contribute to, if others are interested. I would say work opportunity, diversity and natural beauty China is #1. Japan for the super polite / clean culture with a unique flavor. Korea is a mix of Japan and China but is also the most socially conservative and traditionally Confucist out of all them. Taiwan is much smaller than any of those countries but is a mix of Japanese and Chinese culture. I almost want to say they are Chinese people but with the manners of Japanese people.

    Let me know in the comments if I am missing any comparison.

  • What are your most controversial or unpopular opinions?

    Oh I have many, this has caused many of my friends to avoid talking to me about certain issues, here are just a few controversial opinions that I have:

    1. I think men and woman are fundamentally different and I don’t think traditional gender roles are a bad thing. I think that just like with other animals, human males and females were designed to perform different tasks. Males performing the more labor intensive and hands on work and females performing more service oriented work. I don’t think that we should force some ‘diversity’ quota onto some industries to force men and women to do what they are not good at naturally doing.
    2. Playboys are not misogynists. The definition of misogyny means the hatred of women. Playboys are quite the opposite – they love women, they don’t hate them. I don’t like it when so many people misuse the word ‘misogynist/misogyny’ like ‘that guy goes to clubs every night to bang women! he’s a misogynist!’ that’s not the right way to use that word. A misogynist would be for example a serial killer or rapist that specifically targets women because he blamed women for all of his life’s troubles. That’s a misogynist. James Bond or Casanova? not misogynists. Hope people can understand this difference.
    3. Also, diversity quotas / affirmative action are a form of discrimination. There I said it for what it is.
    4. Western people’s lives do not matter more than others. But, we treat it as if it does matter more. It’s true. Tragic events like 9/11 or the Paris ISIS attack get TONS of news coverage – because they happened in the West. Nobody cares about suicide bombings in the Middle East, Earthquakes in China or famine in Africa that kill an order of magnitude more because those people do not matter as much as Westerners. And you might be saying ‘but that’s because you live in a Western country that’s why you see more news coverage of Western incidents’ no that’s not really true, even in non Western countries, Western incidents get more coverage, sometimes even more than domestic events. People around the world know when a terrorist attack or a mass shooting occurs in the US or other Western country. The reverse is not true. When that happens in Asia/Africa/Middle East it gets pretty much no coverage in Western countries.
    5. I think every state should have Romeo and Juliet laws. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a college student having sex with a high school student. The age gap is not that big. Most people think of a 21 year old having sex with a 17 year old and think that’s pedophilia or that he’s sexually ‘preying’ on her, just because she’s under 18 and he’s over 18. That’s ridiculous. It’s a 4 year gap. He could have been dating her as a senior when she was a freshman. A 50 year old dating a 25 year old is way more creepy and that’s legally allowed. Pedophilia is when a 50 year old preys on a 10 year old. That’s pedophilia. but a college student dating a high school student is the same kind of monster? It’s not the same. Also, the argument that 16 or 17 year olds aren’t ‘mature’ enough to have sex is ridiculous, they already seen tons of sex in movies and tv, that’s the age they just passed puberty and are sexually curious, and already can drive cars and in some states handle handguns. And then when they turn 18 they are magically mature enough to have sex now? a 1–2 year difference? That’s just silly.
    6. There’s nothing wrong with sex in video games and movies. I honestly think it’s ridiculous how Americans censor sex in so many forms of media and entertainment but they have so much violence in those same media. What’s more normal, killing someone, chopping someone’s head off – or having sex? Now which scenes are the ones to get censored? Japanese hentai games? All censored in the West. Porn? Yeah we don’t talk about that. But we have movies like SAW which are insanely violent and games like Last of Us 2 which have us murdering everyone we come across in long drawn out death sequences. Sex is a normal thing that all human beings do. I don’t understand why it’s considered so taboo in society.
    7. Women who abandon their babies are not necessarily monsters. You got to hear me out on this one. Women are allowed to get abortion in most developed countries in the world now. Are they cold blooded killers? But let’s say you are not able to get an abortion for whatever reason, maybe it’s still illegal in their country, and you know many irresponsible men in the world do not use protection, so when a woman gets pregnant what can she really do? If abortion is illegal and she was too young or struggling financially? What can she do at that point? She has to give birth and then what can she do with the baby? If she has no money? I may be a guy but I can’t imagine being put in that situation ,which is all too common. There’s many many instances where some asshole accidentally impregnates a girl and then runs away from that responsibility and leaves the woman to deal with it herself. There’s little the woman can do at that point.
    8. The majority of people are tribal and think in black and white, as if everyone belongs on either one side or the other. I’ve debated a lot of people on Quora and on social media, Facebook, Twitter etc. This is what thing I’ve noticed, that most people are very tribal and will always take one side or the other and assume that if you aren’t on their side then you must be on the other one, which comes along with a whole bunch of other assumptions. They don’t believe in gray areas.

      -For example, in American politics, they think that if you don’t like Trump then you must be a socialist liberal gun hating Democrat, and if you don’t like Obama then you must be the opposite – a conservative gun loving Republican.

      -In basketball, people believe that if you are a fan of Michael Jordan then you cannot be a fan of Lebron James. You have to be either a Jordan fan or a Lebron fan but you cannot be both. And both sides are dedicated to making ‘hate’ posts trying to convince the other side about who is better.

      -talking with mainland Chinese people, they believe that if you don’t support the CCP and China / support HK protestors / support Taiwanese independence then that automatically means you must love the USA, love democracy, was brainwashed by Western media, must support Trump and US policies, and (in my case because I’m of Chinese ethnicity) that I’m a traitor because I didn’t support the country where my blood comes from. Also that every Western country = same as USA. And on the other side, if you like China and the CCP then that means you automatically hate US, hate democracy, think Taiwan is a part of China etc

      see where I am going with this? a large portion of people love generalizing and assuming things about others merely based on a single viewpoint and extrapolate that to a whole array of assumptions. This is not how the world works. The real world is a lot more gray than this. You can’t just assume so many things based on one piece of information.

      I am neither a Democrat or a Republican. I’m neither liberal or conservative. I like both Jordan and Lebron. I don’t love the USA and I don’t love China. I’m an example of a person who’s firmly ‘gray’ in many many areas but people love to assume things about me depending on my viewpoint. Case in point is an answer I wrote about ‘things I dislike about Korea’ caused some commenters to mention bad things about China – as if saying negative things about Korea meant that I was somehow a CCP supporter, then in another topic where I said I preferred to live in Korea compared to Japan and China, commenters called me a ‘koreaboo’ and in a lot of my answers in the China topic where I talked about you can’t generalize HK protestors to be all terrorists or about Taiwan being ruled by a separate government, I was viciously attacked by Chinese commenters who told me I was a traitor to my country, that I was brainwashed by Western media, must have experienced racism when I was young (because we all know that everyone who has actually gone to China loves it there right? You can’t possibly have negative opinions of China unless Americans brainwashed you to) and that I ‘loved’ the USA or Trump. I had never said a single thing about America! and they assumed all these things about me.

  • Are Japan and Korea really colonies/puppet-states of the USA like so many Chinese users say?

    No, Chinese netizens just have an unfortunate inferiority complex so they feel the need to put down other countries to make themselves feel better about their country. What does US Puppet state even mean anyways?

    Usually when Chinese netizens say this, it means that the US military has some control over that country therefore it’s a ‘puppet’ state. Well how many countries does the US military have a presence in?

    Where in the World Is the U.S. Military?

    Over 70+ countries. So I guess that’s a lot of US ‘puppet’ states eh?

    In day to day life, this doesn’t really matter or have an effect on the lives of normal people. Yes, Korea shares joint command of their military with the USA and Japan’s constitution was written by the USA, but that doesn’t mean either country just bows down (as Chinese people like to say ‘like a dog’) to the US’s demands.

    In fact, Korea can and has turned down demands from the US before: South Korea refuses to pay US$5 billion to cover cost of US troops

    In every other way, Korea/Japan elects their own president, runs their own politics, and the USA has no influence in that.

    I think China often uses this putdown to Korea/Japan because they are jealous that Korea/Japan developed much earlier than they did and still have higher GDP/capita so per person, Koreans/Japanese are still generally more well off than Chinese are. Plus, their soft power is far more recognized globally than Chinese soft power (Chinese wuxi isn’t exactly in high demand like kpop concerts or Japanese anime are).

    So what can a Chinese do to make themselves feel better? Well, accuse those countries of not being independent, that’s what. And especially since USA is China’s enemy right?

    Well, actually USA is China’s biggest trading partner – so much for being independent from the USA. It’s kind of a moot point to accuse other countries of being too dependent on America when your own country imports $150B worth of goods from America every year.