Why "the West" gets China wrong

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solarz

solarz

Brigadier
airsuperiority said:
Look maybe it's true that for the older generations they had some Cold War mentality in their lifetime, but you really shouldn't think that modern generation's negative perception of China = Cold War mentality. Even the oldest Gen Y would be only 11 years old when the Iron Curtain came down, which leaves their entire adolescence to learn from school, experience it on their own in campus, and early years working and raising their family in a Cold War free environment and exposure to the world. It's most likely that they didn't experience much of China anyways, and professors and teachers still taught them of Communist China, but definitely none of those mean much because their lives didn't grow up under the shadow of living in a Cold War environment. I myself grew up just in time of one year before the Tiananmen event, and then had only 2 more years of Cold War which I won't remember a slightest bit as I was still too young to remember anything, and before I knew it, it's gone. And certainly even kids who are born earlier than me and were 6-7, or even 11, won't have cared or given a single bit about Communist China in their toddler and preteen years. That said, the new generation doesn't think or continue to live in a Cold War mentality. No one even puts these 2 words next to each other these days, and the last time that happened, it was from Black Ops.

And if Cold War mentality of China you mean green uniform armed police, corrupted bureaucracy with human rights violations and Communist regimes, then yes many do still think that way. However, other than the green uniforms, everything else remained factual of modern day China. Maybe more Chinese are wealthier off now, and Shanghai looks better, but the last thing on people's minds of impressions of others would be wealth (unless we're talking about Wall Street bankers, stockholders AIG execs)
The only possible Cold War mentality I could imagine would be aggressive China, but that's just because of the recent rise of China and territorial disputes, not the Red scare ideology of Communist China seeking to spread Maoism as it was prevalent in Cold War.

In fact to prove a point, you can even click into that link and use the find function (ctrl+f) to look for the term "cold war" to see how many times it's been mentioned in that forum.
Click to expand...

I dare say those South Korean and Japanese kids have had more exposure to Cold War propaganda than they've had to Chinese mainlanders. So how can you so casually dismiss the influence of such propaganda and take at face value their prejudice against mainlanders?

While there is no doubt that mainland China has a long way to go toward forming the kind of civil society that Canada has, you really need to take into account population size in order to make valid comparisons. New York, for example, is far more similar to Shanghai in terms of common etiquette than it is to Vancouver. Even Toronto is a lot more "ill-mannered" than Vancouver.

I find the idea that mainlander Chinese need to "have more manners in order to be accepted" to be, quite frankly, offensive. How would you react to the following statement: "black people need to commit less crimes in order to be accepted"?

I hope I don't have to explain why both are wrong!

I guess my point is, ignorance is not to be respected, no matter where it's coming from, and how many people share it. The opinion of those kids on that Asian forum is no more valid than the opinion of kids from Chinese forums who believe all Japanese are unapologetic warmongers.
 
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superdog

superdog

Junior Member
airsuperiority said:
Look maybe it's true that for the older generations they had some Cold War mentality in their lifetime, but you really shouldn't think that modern generation's negative perception of China = Cold War mentality. Even the oldest Gen Y would be only 11 years old when the Iron Curtain came down, which leaves their entire adolescence to learn from school, experience it on their own in campus, and early years working and raising their family in a Cold War free environment and exposure to the world. It's most likely that they didn't experience much of China anyways, and professors and teachers still taught them of Communist China, but definitely none of those mean much because their lives didn't grow up under the shadow of living in a Cold War environment. I myself grew up just in time of one year before the Tiananmen event, and then had only 2 more years of Cold War which I won't remember a slightest bit as I was still too young to remember anything, and before I knew it, it's gone. And certainly even kids who are born earlier than me and were 6-7, or even 11, won't have cared or given a single bit about Communist China in their toddler and preteen years. That said, the new generation doesn't think or continue to live in a Cold War mentality. No one even puts these 2 words next to each other these days, and the last time that happened, it was from Black Ops.

And if Cold War mentality of China you mean green uniform armed police, corrupted bureaucracy with human rights violations and Communist regimes, then yes many do still think that way. However, other than the green uniforms, everything else remained factual of modern day China. Maybe more Chinese are wealthier off now, and Shanghai looks better, but the last thing on people's minds of impressions of others would be wealth (unless we're talking about Wall Street bankers, stockholders AIG execs)
The only possible Cold War mentality I could imagine would be aggressive China, but that's just because of the recent rise of China and territorial disputes, not the Red scare ideology of Communist China seeking to spread Maoism as it was prevalent in Cold War.

In fact to prove a point, you can even click into that link and use the find function (ctrl+f) to look for the term "cold war" to see how many times it's been mentioned in that forum.
Click to expand...
You're missing the point that "Cold War mentality" was never just about seemingly outdated terms like "the cold war", the soviet, communism, or nuclear apocalypse. It was not just a conflict of interest between two superpowers, but also a conflict of ideologies and political philosophy that has significant impact to the future of humanity's economic-social-cultural evolution. Think about Francis Fukuyama's view in The End of History and the Last Man, in which he declares that we have reached an end point in this historical evolution. According to him, this end point is represented by the universalized values of western liberal democracy. Now think about how the younger generations grew up surrounded by similar ideas despite they may have never heard about Francis Fukuyama. If you live in HK you don't need me to tell you how many of those younger generations there are a firm believer in this, regardless if they're politically active or not. This is a fundamental belief that could lead to a dualistic world view of an oppressive China versus the democratic, westernized world. As a result, many stereotypical judgments became easier to make towards people in mainland China, such as that they are backwards, oppressed, ignorant, brainwashed, or uneducated in certain areas (e.g. manners). Some may claim that they could sympathize with the mainland Chinese, that they only acted that way because they are victims of the regime, and this is just another bias disguised under pitying. I'm also sure many people never engage in any serious talk about politics, they are not interested in it, but this doesn't mean they're never influenced by the mentality described in this paragraph. In fact, the less one think about politics, the more likely they will form a dualistic view towards it because this is the easiest way to make sense of things, just like the good guys and the bad guys in children's literature.

My point is that a big part of the cold war was about its ideological conflicts, and ideological conflict is certainly fueling today's negative stereotypes towards mainland China. The ideologies in conflict today are not the same as it was during the cold war, but there are certainly inherited elements especially in a historical context. Why is this important? At minimum, China's departure from a western liberal democracy provides a target to blame for many political and non-political issues. More importantly, I think it acted as a defining characteristic to single out China and a few other countries from the home country of those people who held these stereotypical views. Psychologically, it creates a safety distance so that the unfavorable traits they despise can't apply to them, or their Asian/Chinese friends, just to the Chinese who still lives on the mainland. This is especially important if they're Asian, not to mention if they're ethnic Chinese themselves. Besides, when it's not about race, everybody knows it becomes more "acceptable" to show your stereotypes. Another function of having a "common enemy" is to reduce friction between different groups in the so-called westernized world. NK or Iran apparently are not big enough, if there's no China to blame, to hate, to pity, to despise, "the westernized world" as an identity will start to fade away and it is possible that more attention will be focused on blaming, hating, pitying, and despising each other. There is a cold joke circulating around which stated something like this:

What's the best thing to bring the Chinese and the Korean together?
Answer: The Japanese
What's the best thing to bring the Chinese and the Japanese together?
Answer: The Korean
What's the best thing to bring the Korean and the Japanese together?
Answer: The Chinese

Personally, I don't see China and the mainland Chinese as being particularly more corrupt, more rude, more ignorant, or more selfish compared to other countries in the world that has a similar level of average development and faces similar challenges. The mainland Chinese are being picked out not because they really stand out in these bad behaviors, but because of something else, something more situational and political. The bottom line is, even if I'm wrong and it turns out that they are truly worse than everybody else in the world, it still makes no sense to make moral demands or apply moral labels on a huge group of more than a billion people as if that is one single individual. When you see bad behaviors, you can blame the behavior, you can blame the person, but you shouldn't blame the Chinese or "mainland Chinese" (doesn't make it any better). It is such an unwarranted stereotype that many people including many Chinese nowadays are being brainwashed to believe. I think solarz in the above post gave us a good analogy that if we don't feel saying "black people need to commit less crimes in order to be accepted" is appropriate, any similar attitude towards the mainland Chinese should also be deemed unacceptable. It's not just offensive, it is ignorant.
 
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AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
I was in another non-military forum and I was engaged in a discussion with someone who was Japanese. The guy had to have been less than 25 years old because he did not believe that Japan was ever known for cheap and shoddy products and everything else that is said about Made in China products today. All the things you hear about bad quality Chinese steel was said about Japanese steel back in the 70s and 80s. He also didn't believe back then Japan was seen more of a threat than the Soviet Union. Either that was a generational thing or the Japanese government keeps its citizen in the dark about those things. But it just goes to show how easily people forget and are so easy to believe it about someone else.
 
A

airsuperiority

Captain
solarz said:
I dare say those South Korean and Japanese kids have had more exposure to Cold War propaganda than they've had to Chinese mainlanders. So how can you so casually dismiss the influence of such propaganda and take at face value their prejudice against mainlanders?

While there is no doubt that mainland China has a long way to go toward forming the kind of civil society that Canada has, you really need to take into account population size in order to make valid comparisons. New York, for example, is far more similar to Shanghai in terms of common etiquette than it is to Vancouver. Even Toronto is a lot more "ill-mannered" than Vancouver.

I find the idea that mainlander Chinese need to "have more manners in order to be accepted" to be, quite frankly, offensive. How would you react to the following statement: "black people need to commit less crimes in order to be accepted"?

I hope I don't have to explain why both are wrong!

I guess my point is, ignorance is not to be respected, no matter where it's coming from, and how many people share it. The opinion of those kids on that Asian forum is no more valid than the opinion of kids from Chinese forums who believe all Japanese are unapologetic warmongers.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying stereotypes are right. In fact, many times they are wrong, but in this case I'm attributing the causes more from stereotypes as I'm less persuaded of the sinister theories we had earlier.

As for Cold War mentality, I think the issue is we didn't define what this "Cold War mentality" is, and I have issues of it being called Cold War mentality because the quickest normal impression I had was something more of Red Scare and such. The new mentality or whatever you call it is something new that alters bit by bit with time.

You also got to know that once again they(or we) grow up in an increasingly open world, and with traveling, globalization, and interracial interaction more and more frequent, accessible, and common, as well as the flow of information and interaction, I'd caution against calling them having experienced more propaganda than personal experience, as none of us even know them at all and thus we can't call out on them like this. In fact, if we turn this around in a sense, denouncing them this way would be the equivalent to how a lot of online folks denounce Chinese netizens as brainwashed as their primary ad hominem when they engage in debates with someone defending the Chinese argument. Therefore I'd say it's invalid to label/generalize them in such a manner, especially from their particular forum, many members seemed to have experienced they had some interactions with Chinese in their experiences. In fact, the only safe logical claim would be to say that they judged or generalized too quickly.

As for the ill-mannered thing, I also won't say that Vancouver is necessarily better neither. Vancouver is actually known for having a lot of snobbish people.

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Although there's some stereotype in it, I do kinda agree with this article in certain aspects.


I find the idea that mainlander Chinese need to "have more manners in order to be accepted" to be, quite frankly, offensive. How would you react to the following statement: "black people need to commit less crimes in order to be accepted"?
Click to expand...


As for mannerisms, I think there are many aspects to this argument. One way to see is that some of their etiquette violates standard norms, and violating norms can lead to shunning by others. One theory I propose is because the actions of the ingroup would be considered a norm, so for someone to act outside of the norm would be considered outgroup, and depending on whether the ingroup members agree with the action, in case of non-acceptance they could be antagonized. (sometimes even someone who acted positively against group norms could still be shunned by ingroup members) That said, I won't agree that it's right to necessarily to have to act as the group in order to be accepted, but instead I feel should maintain an open and critical mind and judge from the context of the actions, not by appealing to the masses.

Lining up, not littering are personal etiquette and social responsibilities that everyone should uphold their own part of, despite culture differences and shouldn't use the argument of culture relativism. On the other hand, speaking loud and using a non-English language at public places on their own, which I hear people often complain of, are things that I disagree with them for complaining.

Of course once again, if we're referring to the stereotype of mainland Chinese having ill manners, then it's wrong to generalize everyone like that. My main point is to argue that statements which are valid to the individual should be heeded, but shouldn't be used for generalizing anyone as a whole anytime.
 
A

airsuperiority

Captain
AssassinsMace said:
I was in another non-military forum and I was engaged in a discussion with someone who was Japanese. The guy had to have been less than 25 years old because he did not believe that Japan was ever known for cheap and shoddy products and everything else that is said about Made in China products today. All the things you hear about bad quality Chinese steel was said about Japanese steel back in the 70s and 80s. He also didn't believe back then Japan was seen more of a threat than the Soviet Union. Either that was a generational thing or the Japanese government keeps its citizen in the dark about those things. But it just goes to show how easily people forget and are so easy to believe it about someone else.
Click to expand...

This example seems like more like a collection of ignorance of knowledge, from history and government's intervention. I have a few Japanese friends and they told me stuffs like Nanjing Massacre don't really get covered too much in their textbooks.

It's a shame, really
 
A

airsuperiority

Captain
superdog said:
You're missing the point that "Cold War mentality" was never just about seemingly outdated terms like "the cold war", the soviet, communism, or nuclear apocalypse. It was not just a conflict of interest between two superpowers, but also a conflict of ideologies and political philosophy that has significant impact to the future of humanity's economic-social-cultural evolution. Think about Francis Fukuyama's view in The End of History and the Last Man, in which he declares that we have reached an end point in this historical evolution. According to him, this end point is represented by the universalized values of western liberal democracy. Now think about how the younger generations grew up surrounded by similar ideas despite they may have never heard about Francis Fukuyama. If you live in HK you don't need me to tell you how many of those younger generations there are a firm believer in this, regardless if they're politically active or not. This is a fundamental belief that could lead to a dualistic world view of an oppressive China versus the democratic, westernized world. As a result, many stereotypical judgments became easier to make towards people in mainland China, such as that they are backwards, oppressed, ignorant, brainwashed, or uneducated in certain areas (e.g. manners). Some may claim that they could sympathize with the mainland Chinese, that they only acted that way because they are victims of the regime, and this is just another bias disguised under pitying. I'm also sure many people never engage in any serious talk about politics, they are not interested in it, but this doesn't mean they're never influenced by the mentality described in this paragraph. In fact, the less one think about politics, the more likely they will form a dualistic view towards it because this is the easiest way to make sense of things, just like the good guys and the bad guys in children's literature.

My point is that a big part of the cold war was about its ideological conflicts, and ideological conflict is certainly fueling today's negative stereotypes towards mainland China. The ideologies in conflict today are not the same as it was during the cold war, but there are certainly inherited elements especially in a historical context. Why is this important? At minimum, China's departure from a western liberal democracy provides a target to blame for many political and non-political issues. More importantly, I think it acted as a defining characteristic to single out China and a few other countries from the home country of those people who held these stereotypical views. Psychologically, it creates a safety distance so that the unfavorable traits they despise can't apply to them, or their Asian/Chinese friends, just to the Chinese who still lives on the mainland. This is especially important if they're Asian, not to mention if they're ethnic Chinese themselves. Besides, when it's not about race, everybody knows it becomes more "acceptable" to show your stereotypes. Another function of having a "common enemy" is to reduce friction between different groups in the so-called westernized world. NK or Iran apparently are not big enough, if there's no China to blame, to hate, to pity, to despise, "the westernized world" as an identity will start to fade away and it is possible that more attention will be focused on blaming, hating, pitying, and despising each other. There is a cold joke circulating around which stated something like this:

What's the best thing to bring the Chinese and the Korean together?
Answer: The Japanese
What's the best thing to bring the Chinese and the Japanese together?
Answer: The Korean
What's the best thing to bring the Korean and the Japanese together?
Answer: The Chinese

Personally, I don't see China and the mainland Chinese as being particularly more corrupt, more rude, more ignorant, or more selfish compared to other countries in the world that has a similar level of average development and faces similar challenges. The mainland Chinese are being picked out not because they really stand out in these bad behaviors, but because of something else, something more situational and political. The bottom line is, even if I'm wrong and it turns out that they are truly worse than everybody else in the world, it still makes no sense to make moral demands or apply moral labels on a huge group of more than a billion people as if that is one single individual. When you see bad behaviors, you can blame the behavior, you can blame the person, but you shouldn't blame the Chinese or "mainland Chinese" (doesn't make it any better). It is such an unwarranted stereotype that many people including many Chinese nowadays are being brainwashed to believe. I think solarz in the above post gave us a good analogy that if we don't feel saying "black people need to commit less crimes in order to be accepted" is appropriate, any similar attitude towards the mainland Chinese should also be deemed unacceptable. It's not just offensive, it is ignorant.
Click to expand...

Seriously, good sir your posts are nothing but brilliant. I wholeheartedly agree with you with the annoyance I get from witnessing many in my generation fighting for freedom without knowing what they are truly doing. And of course as for Fukayama, if I recall well, this guy endorsed the Clash of Civilization, a very faulty Huntington thought.

For the rest of your argument, you shred a lot of insight and I'm very persuaded and also agree with you on a lot of points. People, especially many in HK and are probably those who never traveled, loved to think the US and the West is way more advanced. To me it just showed more stereotypes and lack of awareness of the outside world. Many of us here would probably know how dirty the New York subways are, how limited the Vancouver Skytrain system is, how corrupted the RCMP is, how much "dirt" the US government has with their history of questionable actions..but all the same time, HK has been ranking top 5 as world's most competitive place for several consecutive years, and yet people continued to complain and whine on just about everything. (Also heard a similar phenomenon in Singapore, leading me to question whether the face pace competitiveness in these 2 societies had burdened so much stress in its people that they also themselves became their own judge of others and their societies, perhaps placing blame for their life problems in their society to compensate for their frustrations in life)

Anyways, Superdog thank you for this very beautiful post. In my engagement of my discussions with you I had learneda lot by replying to you and even hearing myself think.
 
R

RedMercury

Junior Member
superdog said:
You're missing the point that "Cold War mentality" was never just about seemingly outdated terms like "the cold war", the soviet, communism, or nuclear apocalypse....
Click to expand...

Great post.

Call me an old grumpy geaser, but I have seen and read enough hate against Chinese people that I don't give a flying fck what others care anymore. They hate us? Fck em, their hate gives us strength and motivation to improve ourselves. It will make us stronger than they can possibly imagine. Fck soft power, we will win with hard power. And then they can bow down to us.
 
A

advill

Junior Member
Please take care when referring to "Chinese People" - there are the China-Chinese, HK-Chinese, Taiwan-Chinese, Overseas Chinese, American Chinese etc. etc. This thread is on "Why the West gets China Wrong" - and NOT the Chinese people. It shows the lack of knowledge and understanding of differences between the various Chinese sub-cultures & their politics. The use of swear words show lack of professional etiquette and sheer crudeness when expressed in the Sino-Defence Forum.




RedMercury said:
Great post.

Call me an old grumpy geaser, but I have seen and read enough hate against Chinese people that I don't give a flying fck what others care anymore. They hate us? Fck em, their hate gives us strength and motivation to improve ourselves. It will make us stronger than they can possibly imagine. Fck soft power, we will win with hard power. And then they can bow down to us.
Click to expand...
 
Equation

Equation

Lieutenant General
advill said:
Please take care when referring to "Chinese People" - there are the China-Chinese, HK-Chinese, Taiwan-Chinese, Overseas Chinese, American Chinese etc. etc. This thread is on "Why the West gets China Wrong" - and NOT the Chinese people. It shows the lack of knowledge and understanding of differences between the various Chinese sub-cultures & their politics. The use of swear words show lack of professional etiquette and sheer crudeness when expressed in the Sino-Defence Forum.
Click to expand...

True, but the implication are the same. The media still stereotyped Asians and Chinese alike here in the West. You and I will never see a near perfect representation (or even close to it) of Asians in Hollywood anytime soon.
 
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