Off topic, but on one hand you all want quality, independent news sources. On the other, you don’t want to pay the 5 dollars or so per week for one, and go above and beyond to practically pirate them...
It's impossible to discuss an article that is never created because there was no money to create it...
I empathize with your need to have easy access to information, and I hope you can empathize with journalists and news media needs to make a living wage.
I personally don’t give a damn about the financial viability of the New York Times, but the paper still wields so much cultural and political influence that I feel compelled to read some amount of what they publish just to keep current. If their power wanes, so will my interest in proportion.
The fact that Confucianism has been dutifully promoted and propagated by nearly every Chinese emperor, either insurgent-turned or self-proclaimed like the current one, attests that it's truly a powerful reigning tool.
Also Shang Yang's five principles of subjugating subjects: 愚民(idiotizing)，弱民(weakening)，疲民(exhausting)，辱民(demeaning)，贫民(impoverishing)。
Confucius Institutes are a bit more than merely promoting Confucianism. This was an interesting video by a westerner who is in China (often) and thus has to walk a fine line, but was able to subtext exceptionally well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tsXtk7psUc
They are not promoting Confucianism. These institutes are an extension of state power projection outside borders and have questionable ethical standards when it comes to free speech.
Seems acceptable to me. No need to search for hypocrisy, comparisons, etc as it's clear there are different values. So long as the actions are transparent (and I wish the reasons were too to avoid guessing), at least reasonable people can make up their mind about what approach is right or wrong. The constant search for moral equivalence is fruitless. That's where the propagandists find niches. Instead, just search for accuracy and make up your own mind about the rest.
According to the article, the centers were "offering English lessons, screening movies and hosting visiting music and dance performances".
However, there are plenty of unofficial sources for those in China, without the help of the State Department. For instance, pirated DVDs of virtually every American movie/TV series are widely available despite official censorship, etc.
I would look at the history of the Soviet union for an example of how brutal authoritarianism can influence the cultural evolution of a people. The Soviets were fairly isolated, and more or less their censorship did work. In China there was also the cultural revolution which wiped out a lot of traditional things. If the brutality of the CCP is sufficient to destroy their own culture, why can't it destroy foreign loan-culture?
Is it? Even in other English speaking countries, often only a veneer survives. America is the proverbial elephant with a billion blind people touching and describing it.
Hell, even people in the US don’t understand what other people are up to.
>> According to Mr. Stengel, who was in the conversation, Mr. Kerry turned to Mr. Cui and asked: “Have we ever limited where you can go?”
> Mr. Cui replied: “Not yet.”
That's an interesting reply. It seems the Chinese govt. doesn't shy from and would even benefit from a higher intensity conflict with the West especially US. So they are trying to ratchet it up a bit. They didn't give any official reason for closures, but it seems one of the reasons is to have US respond and close Confucius Institutes. Which in turn would elicit another response from the Chinese and so on, up until it gets to a level they are comfortable with.
Perhaps the US administration stands to benefit from tensions too? After all, it is the US (Trump) that has started unprovoked giant trade wars with the result of the world (including China), not the other way around. Sometimes it is silly to argue "who started it" but other times it is not. In this case, afaik, Trump started it.
> Perhaps the US administration stands to benefit from tensions too? After all, it is the US (Trump) that has started unprovoked giant trade wars ...
Ok, but how did he manage to do that during Kerry's and Stengel's time? I don't remember Kerry being his Sec. of State. And if US stands to benefit, why did Kerry ask Cui why they were doing it?
There might be some confusion here about the timeline. Blaming him for overfeeding the koi, shaking Macron's hand for too long, or drinking too much diet coke is fun but traveling back in time is a bit too much one might say ;-)
> Sometimes it is silly to argue "who started it" but other times it is not. In this case, afaik, Trump started it.
Alright, then so then Trump is justified in his trade wars because he didn't start it?
Counterpoint: China is engaged in extreme mercantilism and its declared goal and modus operandi has been state sponsored IP theft up to sabotage of abroad markets, something that was even declared in the "China 2025" program.
CCP is even coercing and blackmailing nationals or people with ties to China to spy for them. Indeed, the last weeks have been filled with report about that.
Ever tried to actually sell things in China, compared to the US?
Forced technology transfers has been a cost Western companies have been willing to shoulder to get access to China's lucrative markets. It is also a policy that has been in place for a very long time and is not directed at the United States specifically. Grievances against China can be brought through the WTO.
And the Trump tariffs has hit a lot more countries than China. For example, I don't think the EU started the fight with the US...
Last week I saw a full page ad in our local paper, written by the Chinese government, "debunking" the stories of Falun Gong members being tortured. It seems they want it both ways.
Learning from the Soviet Union I see. The fall of communism in the USSR was in large part due to Western culture influences. A new generation grew up and they didn't give a shit about the old fogies in Politburo or the system they stood for. Instead they'd listen to bootleg Western records and Western propaganda on shortwave radio. The colossus was weakened. And then, once the critical mass was reached, an economic crisis (crude oil price crash coupled with unprecedented defense spending to counter Reagan's Star Wars) did it in in just a few years.
China saw all of that up close, and ever since then they have been trying to avoid the same fate.
The CCP will try to "mind control" the Chinese populace to the maximum extent possible, through censorship, incarceration/torture, "social" points scheme and whatever else they can come up with. But in the end the colossus will inevitably fall. It'll just take longer. The USSR too looked like it was going to last forever right up until it fell apart.
Anyone who played Civilization knows how important culture can be in the Great Power geopolitical game. And of course, the US player is generating more culture points, so the damage they inflict on other players is greater than the other way round. Only a noob would ignore that.
I recommend against using games as evidence. If nothing else: Civ2 was all about trade, Civ5 all about city improvements; 2 and 3 encouraged large empires, 5 gives you ways to win with just one city.
The program’s start coincided with a rise in nationalist sentiment in China.
Shortly after he came into power six years ago, President Xi Jinping rolled
out a campaign against Western values, investing Communist Party members in
academia with the power to redline even the most innocuous and apolitical
expressions of American culture.
And funding American culture in China became particularly unpopular in
Washington as the Trump administration worked to distance the countries and
anger built over Beijing’s propaganda in America.
Perhaps this is what the author was going for, I can't help but feel like I am reading about the development of Cold War 2.
I think a lot of the time people don't really think about what racism looks like when the shoe is on the other foot.
All bets are off when you're not on home turf. Understanding and opinions of how to interact with and treat people of different races/ethnicities are at remarkably different stages of development around the world because not everywhere has the same levels of immigration and immigrants and so they just haven't spent time thinking about there things and in some cases consider them completely non-existant issues.
I find it helpful to perform the thought experiment of taking any person of any nationality and dropping them into any other nation randomly and have them try to assimilate into society and imagine the challenges they might face and the treatment they might receive. Some situations fare better than others when I try to imagine this but suffice to say, the more homogenous the population and the less of your specific kind are visible in society the harder a time you have.
That's nonsense. If anything racism in China favors white Americans over regular Han Chinese. As a white guy who has lived in China extensively I can tell you this. Are there anti foreign sentiments which shift with political winds? Yes. A structured racism focused at keeping white people down? No. Keeping Chinese minorities down? Yes.
Only if you mindlessly praise anything Chinese, like how much better their food, systems, culture and products are, believe me they love these, that way you can probably become an internet celebrity.
But once they discovered you betrayed them in anyway, you are done, you are back to your "white-skinned pigs" normal.
So there are no situations where as a non-Chinese you have a different experience than Chinese would?
I call shenanigans on that. Anti-foreign(er) sentiment is a pretty narrow lense to view it through. Sometimes it's just the fact the system wasn't built to accommodate you and that causes you grief that a local doesn't experience.
This is a pretty reasonable discussion of the kind of things you might bump up against. I can't imagine these issues are wildly different for you than these guys describe?
The cultural stuff they talk about rings really true from my experience with Japan.
And let's not do a uni-dimensional analysis of what it's like to be white in China, but consider being Black, Japanese/Korean, Indian etc.
Using the words "structured" and "focused" is the wrong way to think about it. It's not usually something purposeful and sinister, it's mostly accidental and inadvertant. You're an edge-case that sometimes hasn't been accounted for.
Personally I laugh: China today is the most extreme implementation of USA business model. Actual "productive"/"developed" Asia is a push to the extreme before of the UK model, after of the USA one (witch is really similar)...
It is a very strange thing to see the “we are as we tell you” and not “we are as you see us” outreach to communicate culture. American culture, above most others, is very wide spread in its reach. Whether it is movies from Hollywood, TV shows and reality show formats, music, food in the form of burger and pizza chains, the jeans and sneaker attire, language (including Americanized pronunciation), gadgets (iPhone and the like), online services (with China being a slight outlier – just slight, as many local services are heavily influenced by the American ones) like facebook, twitter or even GPS and Google Maps there are very few aspects untouched by American culture. Deliberate attempts to communicate culture from any country tend to, in my view, focus on the high-brow interpretation of culture. This is true of other countries when they try to portray their culture too – easily visible in opening ceremonies of major sporting events. I imagine that such portrayals are important but do they move the needle in how a country is perceived or how others understand its culture? Hardly.
43 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadOutline continues to be a helpful resource for paywall avoidance. I'd prefer common paywalls auto-converted to their Outline equivalents.
I empathize with your need to have easy access to information, and I hope you can empathize with journalists and news media needs to make a living wage.
- Some people have spent considerable time and effort writing an entire long wiki page for "Criticism of Confucius Institutes".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Confucius_Institu...
- The "Reception and controversies" section of main wiki page for Confucius Institute is considered not neutral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute#Reception_...
Also Shang Yang's five principles of subjugating subjects: 愚民(idiotizing)，弱民(weakening)，疲民(exhausting)，辱民(demeaning)，贫民(impoverishing)。
However, there are plenty of unofficial sources for those in China, without the help of the State Department. For instance, pirated DVDs of virtually every American movie/TV series are widely available despite official censorship, etc.
It doesn't happen by itself.
Hell, even people in the US don’t understand what other people are up to.
> Mr. Cui replied: “Not yet.”
That's an interesting reply. It seems the Chinese govt. doesn't shy from and would even benefit from a higher intensity conflict with the West especially US. So they are trying to ratchet it up a bit. They didn't give any official reason for closures, but it seems one of the reasons is to have US respond and close Confucius Institutes. Which in turn would elicit another response from the Chinese and so on, up until it gets to a level they are comfortable with.
Ok, but how did he manage to do that during Kerry's and Stengel's time? I don't remember Kerry being his Sec. of State. And if US stands to benefit, why did Kerry ask Cui why they were doing it?
There might be some confusion here about the timeline. Blaming him for overfeeding the koi, shaking Macron's hand for too long, or drinking too much diet coke is fun but traveling back in time is a bit too much one might say ;-)
> Sometimes it is silly to argue "who started it" but other times it is not. In this case, afaik, Trump started it.
Alright, then so then Trump is justified in his trade wars because he didn't start it?
CCP is even coercing and blackmailing nationals or people with ties to China to spy for them. Indeed, the last weeks have been filled with report about that.
Ever tried to actually sell things in China, compared to the US?
Who started it? Why not China?
And the Trump tariffs has hit a lot more countries than China. For example, I don't think the EU started the fight with the US...
China saw all of that up close, and ever since then they have been trying to avoid the same fate.
The CCP will try to "mind control" the Chinese populace to the maximum extent possible, through censorship, incarceration/torture, "social" points scheme and whatever else they can come up with. But in the end the colossus will inevitably fall. It'll just take longer. The USSR too looked like it was going to last forever right up until it fell apart.
All bets are off when you're not on home turf. Understanding and opinions of how to interact with and treat people of different races/ethnicities are at remarkably different stages of development around the world because not everywhere has the same levels of immigration and immigrants and so they just haven't spent time thinking about there things and in some cases consider them completely non-existant issues.
I find it helpful to perform the thought experiment of taking any person of any nationality and dropping them into any other nation randomly and have them try to assimilate into society and imagine the challenges they might face and the treatment they might receive. Some situations fare better than others when I try to imagine this but suffice to say, the more homogenous the population and the less of your specific kind are visible in society the harder a time you have.
The tribalism is real.
Only if you mindlessly praise anything Chinese, like how much better their food, systems, culture and products are, believe me they love these, that way you can probably become an internet celebrity.
But once they discovered you betrayed them in anyway, you are done, you are back to your "white-skinned pigs" normal.
I call shenanigans on that. Anti-foreign(er) sentiment is a pretty narrow lense to view it through. Sometimes it's just the fact the system wasn't built to accommodate you and that causes you grief that a local doesn't experience.
https://youtu.be/Y2_L71lFItk
This is a pretty reasonable discussion of the kind of things you might bump up against. I can't imagine these issues are wildly different for you than these guys describe?
The cultural stuff they talk about rings really true from my experience with Japan.
And let's not do a uni-dimensional analysis of what it's like to be white in China, but consider being Black, Japanese/Korean, Indian etc.
Using the words "structured" and "focused" is the wrong way to think about it. It's not usually something purposeful and sinister, it's mostly accidental and inadvertant. You're an edge-case that sometimes hasn't been accounted for.