It is hard to see with naked eye, your phone camera has more sensitive sensors.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
cant see anything at Toronto. might have seen some green behind the clouds but could just be reflected streetlights and hopium
A fascinating and on otherwise unsurprising discussion about "UNDERSTANDING CHINA'S ESTABLISHMENT INTELLECTUALS"
The question and answer portion was the highlight for me since one of the questioner from the audience, a Chinese from the mainland asked the most obvious and pertinent question to the panel. The answer(s) from the "experts" show which one of them do practice an open mind, and which one presupposes and imposes a caricature of a country, culture, society, and people from their own self-imposed intellectual overdrive or over imagination.
How Do Chinese “America Watchers” Interpret America?
Audience Member:. So I'm Chinese myself and I came here kind curious to see, you know, what the West is doing to try to understand my country. I guess my question is whether you have an understanding of how the Chinese are trying to decipher the West. Now we know there is a language asymmetry in ability where – at least in academia – Chinese researchers all speak English. They're reading directly from American papers, but Americans, or Westerners, often don't do the same. And I'm wondering if in the field of politics or strategy, [you] think Chinese have similar [translation] initiatives [like CST]. Are they trying to translate Western primary sources and documents for their understanding of the world?
David Ownby: China has a huge translation industry, which I assume you know. You can see this very much in the citations when people write about the United States a vast amount, and they're very well informed, as you just said. It’s stunning that the Chinese know so much more about the United States than the Americans know about China.
It's a strategic disadvantage, which I think, is worrying to some degree. I'm always stunned. [For example,] I like the debate on Black Lives Matter within China. These are not American specialists. These are just Chinese intellectuals who are engaged with the world, who make it a point to read broadly.
Jude Blanchette: So in terms of the quantity, the translations are extraordinary.You know, [CSIS] just did a report on the war game in Taiwan, and within 24 hours, that large chunks of that report were on the Chinese internet.
What I would say though is that when you read it [their translations and commentary on them] you realize how there still are some pretty significant gaps in understanding, or in their interpretation of what is happening here. And of course, their interpretation is affected by their own political ecosystem. So if you're working on US-China relations at a Chinese university, it's not an apolitical field where you can say whatever the heck you want. But I do feel like it highlights the point of how mere translation is not the same as interpretation.
Tanner Greer: Plus there's an interesting problem of why someone looks abroad for something.
To give you an American example first: There are many, many American discussions about China that are not really about China. They're actually about the United States. I noticed this back when I was just a journalist. [One thing] I wrote about was American conservatism and its internecine debates. China is a big part of those debates. [Participants in those debates] are very not interested in China itself, though. They're interested in what China means for their [domestic] political program. Or what China might represent as a cautionary example, as a villain, as a model to aspire to or to avoid.
A lot of Chinese social commentary on America is doing the same thing. You can comment far more freely about America than you can about China [inside China’s borders]. One of the reasons you might have a debate about Black Lives Matters is because you cannot have quite as open a debate about sensitive issues in China. But debates on America can serve as a sort of proxy for what many of these intellectuals and commentators really care about: their own society.
The question and answer portion was the highlight for me since one of the questioner from the audience, a Chinese from the mainland asked the most obvious and pertinent question to the panel. The answer(s) from the "experts" show which one of them do practice an open mind, and which one presupposes and imposes a caricature of a country, culture, society, and people from their own self-imposed intellectual overdrive or over imagination.
How Do Chinese “America Watchers” Interpret America?
Audience Member:. So I'm Chinese myself and I came here kind curious to see, you know, what the West is doing to try to understand my country. I guess my question is whether you have an understanding of how the Chinese are trying to decipher the West. Now we know there is a language asymmetry in ability where – at least in academia – Chinese researchers all speak English. They're reading directly from American papers, but Americans, or Westerners, often don't do the same. And I'm wondering if in the field of politics or strategy, [you] think Chinese have similar [translation] initiatives [like CST]. Are they trying to translate Western primary sources and documents for their understanding of the world?David Ownby: China has a huge translation industry, which I assume you know. You can see this very much in the citations when people write about the United States a vast amount, and they're very well informed, as you just said. It’s stunning that the Chinese know so much more about the United States than the Americans know about China.
It's a strategic disadvantage, which I think, is worrying to some degree. I'm always stunned. [For example,] I like the debate on Black Lives Matter within China. These are not American specialists. These are just Chinese intellectuals who are engaged with the world, who make it a point to read broadly.
Jude Blanchette: So in terms of the quantity, the translations are extraordinary.You know, [CSIS] just did a report on the war game in Taiwan, and within 24 hours, that large chunks of that report were on the Chinese internet.
What I would say though is that when you read it [their translations and commentary on them] you realize how there still are some pretty significant gaps in understanding, or in their interpretation of what is happening here. And of course, their interpretation is affected by their own political ecosystem. So if you're working on US-China relations at a Chinese university, it's not an apolitical field where you can say whatever the heck you want. But I do feel like it highlights the point of how mere translation is not the same as interpretation.
Tanner Greer: Plus there's an interesting problem of why someone looks abroad for something.
To give you an American example first: There are many, many American discussions about China that are not really about China. They're actually about the United States. I noticed this back when I was just a journalist. [One thing] I wrote about was American conservatism and its internecine debates. China is a big part of those debates. [Participants in those debates] are very not interested in China itself, though. They're interested in what China means for their [domestic] political program. Or what China might represent as a cautionary example, as a villain, as a model to aspire to or to avoid.
A lot of Chinese social commentary on America is doing the same thing. You can comment far more freely about America than you can about China [inside China’s borders]. One of the reasons you might have a debate about Black Lives Matters is because you cannot have quite as open a debate about sensitive issues in China. But debates on America can serve as a sort of proxy for what many of these intellectuals and commentators really care about: their own society.
You’ll notice that TFR of all Asian nations under the Anglo American yoke have low or even negative values, as though the anglos want all asians to die or at least be an endangered species.
Angloid westerners have a deepseated fear of Chinese and asians judging by their jack London type fantasies and their ready use of bioweapons and chemical weapons during the Korean and Vietnam war to say nothing of various black bag ops. Depopulation of Asia is entirely in their intentions as they depopulated native america. North America used to look like North/East Asia and Siberia, just look at inuits and the natives of Greenland.
What's this? white supremacy not cutting it for lithuanians? Perkunas strike you down!
White supremacy means having your women go to hungary and czech to star in porno films and men going to ukraine to die because there's no money and capital? Why didn't they go to the capitalist anglo america for investment? Or didn't taiwan buy enough lithuanian rum? Rum?! in lithuanian climate? what the hell were they thinking, what's next, sugarcane from scotland?
That's Orientalism defined.
Where the West often attributes their own fears, desires and projections onto the East be it thee Ottomans or the Chinese. Look at how their propaganda was used and is still used to describe China today and you can see it they are all western attributes: greedy, sneaky, avaricious, cruel, narcissistic, violent etc.
It's even personal as well, look at how many sinophobes have asian wives because they were deemed unfit for mating by their own caucasian women and since these sinophobes didn't go through the character development of becoming a man who gets a nice sweet wife, rather, they get henpecked by ambitious tiger women in the asian wife (stereotyping i know), these sinophobes then project their own frustrations at calling for war against China. They're castrated at home so they want a war against China to take revenge at the nagging asian wife who nags them cuz they realise the sinophobe isn't the kevin costner american film star she thought he'd be.
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
That's because the US used all its leverage when trying to cancel China even before Russia invaded Ukraine. So what's left? Things that will hurt the US just as much or more than it will against China. Then you have regular Americans more wanting to believe this will hurt China as a symbol of US might so they go along even though they know their politicians lie to them. Just look at how many Americans believe China owns the US. Then why would China need to militarily conquer the US?
Remember the cringe of hong kongers singing Les Miserables and ruining 'Do You Hear The People Sing'? Let the anglo ruling class Hear The People Sing, Singing The Song of Angry Men.....
Funny how the Americans are all about freedom yet in deed and action the culture supports a system of inequity, inequality and debt entrapment. I suggest the MSS start using AI to compose american BLM and anti anglo secessionist anthems.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Per capita GDP is meaningless when the top
1% has more wealth and earn more than the bottom 50%. It would be far more accurate to strip out the GDP generated by the top 1% for America and then calculate per capita GDP to give a true reflection of the quality of life for ordinary people.
For me the key point the audience member made, which isn't the question at the end, is: Many Chinese speak/read English, they understand your primary sources. Few Americans speak/read Chinese. Unspoken part: You not getting info from primary sources, you getting filtered stuff.
At least first panelist acknowledged that the comparative disparity (whether due to direct command of language or the "huge translation industry") is a strategic disadvantage. The other two talked nonsense.
FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
That's taking it a little too far. Korea is kind of an extreme case, but TFR in Japan is not much different from that of most of Europe.
I feel the third panelist made a good point too, at the least his first claim regarding American discourse concerning China. As for his second point regarding Chinese discourse on American issues, I don't know. I'm not sure if it is just projection (ironic considering his first point) or if its based on a fact, as I don't really Chinese discourse on American issues (though his argument sounds at least somewhat reasonable to me).