I spent almost equal amount of my life in China / North America now, it's interesting to see and compare what one side think about the other.
In north America, what I get is China is controlled by dictators. Life sucks over there because there is no freedom, a lot of corruption, no respect to rules, and is generally a chaotic mess. While in north America, democracy and freedom is wonderful, and everyone has the power to make changes of society, and in the end the government has to care about people to stay in power.
In China, what I get is the US (Canada is usually less discussed) is controlled by a corrupt and impotent government. Life sucks over there because the majority of the people, who actually has the power, believes the doublespeak of the government and are easily manipulated by the wealth. While in China, people make jokes about the official media, and if the government decides to do something people don't like, people simply ignore it and with enough people (there is always enough people in China) doing this, the government has to care about people's opinion to do anything.
I'm a little worried about the situation of both sides now. They seem to go towards what the opposite believes: on one hand in China, the government starts to get better at propaganda and manipulating public opinion; on the other hand in the States ... there is enough happening in the past year.
Most of the Chinese people I know in the US are well educated programmers. They are not true believers in the Chinese Govt supremacy and wonderfulness. But then probably most people are not that well educated, just like the us. China is a large country and will have many diverse opinions, just like the US. I don't meet that many people in the us who are unthinking believers in the supremacy of our country or believe we are special and god loves us. But if you look at a trump rally, or listen to members of congress speak, its like they are from a different planet.
Here in Kenya, infrastructure investment by the Kenyan government is very poor. Whatever money gets theoretically assigned to things like building and maintenance of roads and the power and water grids usually goes missing at various stages until the final project, if implemented at all, is shoddy.
Enter China, who have been directly funding infrastructure here. They are managing the supply chain and personnel themselves, and it's having a huge effect. Beautiful roads have sprung up around Nairobi in the last year especially, built using modern techniques and quality materials.
One can't help but wonder what concessions the Chinese government will eventually come looking for in return, because it's pretty certain that the debt will never be repaid in money.
A friend of mine spent a few years working in a few different places in Africa. He said that the impression of the locals was that the Chinese are the new colonizers, full stop. The labor conditions and treatment of African workers on Chinese run projects was really bad, and the out-and-out racism by the Chinese was crazy.
are you serious? It's crazy to see point blank the effects of western brainwashing on people. Open your eyes. What China is doing is nowhere close to colonization
This is highly anecdotal and based on personal (and professional) experience here in Kenya. Though the Chinese have been present in the country for a while, their signature project was the Thika Superhighway (2009-2012). This captured the imagination of everyone from citizens to the government. Since then, virtually all the major infrastructure projects have been undertaken by Chinese contractors that have set camp in the country. Their model of financing (through grants and ‘cheap’ loans), designing and building has ensured Chinese firms have an upper hand compared to local contractors. This has pushed many local contractors out of business and consequently rendered majority of local young engineers highly unemployed. Generally, there is a quiet uneasiness with the dominance of the Chinese in the infrastructure arena but as it stands; they’re having a field day here in Kenya. I’m convinced this is playing out in many other African countries.
If you're a civil engineer in Kenya you can't simply create an infrastructure startup and build the country. Such a business requires many skills not related to engineering, for starters. You need to know which wheels to grease in government and how. You need to have appreciable investment to fund your equipment. You need to have reliable supervisors who won't steal and will keep the work on schedule. You can't simply start up, get funded and move fast while breaking things.
According to the Kenyan resident in the thread , it was corruption that was stymiying progress. That's something that Chinese contractors have bypassed.
> built using modern techniques and quality materials.
Uh, I would double check that, they've been building bridges, malls and apartments in Eastern Europe and the quality was found to be subpar even by local standards (not to mention EU)...
OK yeah so I haven't closely inspected them, but compared to the way roads built by the Kenyan government are made, these ones are high quality.
For example I've seen a road being laid between Nairobi and a nearby town since last June. The original road made by the county council only had a few centimetres of tarmac rolled over the bare dirt (the money for the proper materials all went missing). It disintegrated pretty quickly and led to a horrific cratered road that was impassable to all but the hardiest of vehicles - much worse than the original dirt track.
The new road was dug deep, hardcore laid, months of surveying, measuring, marking out, then several layers of different materials laid over the hardcore adding up to a couple of feet of solid road, with a beautifully smooth finish. I'm not qualified to say whether it meets international standards but it's a lot better than what was being built before.
This is how China is penetrating in most of the developing world, be it Africa or Asia. Consider the recent, and on-going, example of the CPEC in Pakistan.
There's a soft power war going on in Asia. Korea has a major effort to make K-pop a major cultural influence. Korean drama has become an export. In response, Japan has the Cool Japan Fund [1], funded by the Government and some of the big banks. They now run the largest anime translation operation, and a large anime site, "daisuki.net".
(Somebody should propose to the Cool Japan Fund that they do something to make Japanese technology more visible in Silicon Valley. Everybody here thinks Shentzen, not Tsukuba.)
Yeah I remember when Japan was hot (manga/anime) then it was S Korea (Haliu wave), at least in South East Asia. But the soft power war is not so clear cut though. Like Viki streams mostly K-dramas but it's owned by Japanese company Rakuten.
China on the other hand is definitely playing that game. Like only last month they banned most imported children's picture books, especially from SK and Japan, and they've pumped a lot of money into their content industry to match their nationalistic agenda and S Korea's. Hollywood seems to be helping too :)
China is getting better at this, but it's not going well. Too many Chinese movies are period pieces, fantasies, or are not set in China, because the censorship on present-day topics is strict. China's movie censorship is explicit; at the beginning of a movie you'll see the golden dragon logo of the censorship authority. This limits the topics of movies.
There are feature films produced directly by the People's Liberation Army, such as "Sky Fighters". This is the Chinese version of "Top Gun". It's not very good, because the entertainment takes second place to the propaganda. It's possible to do a good feature film which is also propaganda; "Strategic Air Command" with Jimmy Stewart is one such. But China isn't there yet.
Hmm. I know that propaganda and originality don't go well together, but strangely I've always felt that Chinese cinema got it right. I may be biased as I come from an Asian family. For sure they're different from Western cinema, most notably it's usually less cynical and multifaceted, and more linear and nationalistic. But there's such an adventurous spirit (those martial arts sequences help!) that I can look past all that. Perhaps because I'm Asian too, those anti-colonial sentiments are also more easily related.
But I don't know, maybe their creative machine really is running out of steam. I haven't really watch much recently (currently on a Scandi kick!) But I do recommend you to explore the classics like Once Upon a Time in China and Infernal Affairs.
It's a digression (because honestly the fact that China markets itself is not hugely notable, nor "bad" or "good" no matter how effective or ineffective it might be), but:
Toward the bottom of this article is a favorability chart of China in different nations. And there is a huge crater (like 37% to 5%) in Chinese support among the Japanese between 2011-2013. Other nationalities see a little blip, but nothing like this.
What happened between China and Japan in 2011? I'm genuinely ignorant.
There was also the anti-Japanese riots in China in 2012. I was in Shanghai at the time and a lot of my Japanese friends living there were very worried. Some of them went back to Japan for a few weeks to wait for things to calm down...
And yes the LDP does not help things with their racist nationalist discourse. They tend to use foreigners as a scapegoat responsible for all problems Japan has... (Abe Shinzo might not be as bad as Trump but only just..)
Just to add to this, the anti-Japanese riots in China were a really big deal:
The Japanese Embassy advised Japanese people in Nanjing to stay in door.
Japanese clothing store "Uniqlo" temporarily closed all stores, and covered store windows with giant Chinese flags and removed/hid other visible branding for fear of rioters razing the stores.
Some stores around Nanjing would even give you a discount if you yelled "I hate Japan"
Japan's conservative party (LDP) retook power following the mishandling of Fukushima, and proceeded with a full court press of their textbook nationalism. This includes constantly vilifying the Chinese and Koreans, although they have little to do with the internal problems plaguing Japan.
Lots of things have been happening between the two countries for a while now, not since 2011.
As others have said, there is a territorial dispute that to the best of my knowledge really flared up when Japan actively nationalized the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. China's moves in the South China Sea have not made things better.
Aside from that,
China blocked rare earth minerals to Japan in 2010. [1]
There have been numerous boycotts by China (to the point of outright vandalism of Japanese cars, business property) over political issues [2]
There is always the whole WW2 apology issue (over comfort women, wartime crimes, etc.) In 2015, China made a jab at Japan during their 70th anniversary of WW2 victory. [3]
On the bright side, China did help Japan out during the big earthquake/tsunami of 2011. [4]
The first sentence in your linked page clearly says it's controlled by Japan. It's ok to not be an expert but at least read the links you post yourself.
The resentment is quite reciprocal as well. Almost every Chinese mainlander shows resentment toward Japan (and Korea) to the extent that they don't even buy their products.
Chinese people going to Japan in droves to buy their products is enough of a thing that it has its own word (bakugai[0].)
"Almost every Chinese mainlander" is, what, almost a billion people? I doubt that any statement describing what most Chinese think or believe is likely to be very true.
The most remembered phrase of the orange demagogue inaugural address was "America first, always". As a non-American I'd argue that "me first" are words that a leader should never say, even when it is what he always believed.
As opposed to China? They don't say it, but they have basically ran a "China first" agenda for the last decade or two. Does China maintain a friendly policy toward refugees and minorities? Sure, they do enact policy for the environment, but it's heavily sold on cutting their own smog and air pollution. "Let other countries settle things bilaterally without interference" were China's words originally, not Trump's.
One could even say Trump is America's most Chinese president, considering his proposal to build a "Great, great wall" (his words, not mine)[1] and proposal to up America's military by nearly double digits to mimic China's recent years. [2]
As a non-American I have a very different understanding of American role in the world. I don't buy the whole concept of "American exceptionalism". I don't believe that America's actions in the world are moved just by benevolent preoccupations.
> they have basically ran a "China first" agenda for the last decade or two
I totally agree, but that is what every country, tribe and empire has done for thousands of years. I don't expect anyone to be different. My issue is about how you sell it. Soft power (the theme of the article) comes from the empire sales pitch, from being able to convince others that you are being good when you are protecting your assets.
Again: my point is not what you are, is what you sell. And the "art of the deal" president is actually a very bad salesman. This is an overture for the Chinese. No, I don't "trust" China as much as I don't "trust" America.
I've heard it's a pretty straightforward language --- every syllable is a word in its own right, and multisyllable words are compound words[ * ]; and that the grammar is supposed to be really straightforward, at least for English speakers, with no inflection, SVO sentence order, limited tenses, and sentences made from gluing words together.
Unfortunately every written tutorial I've found seems heavily focused around ideograms, which I find completely impossible, so I don't know what it's like in practice. Can any beginner learners comment?
(It's also a tonal language, which I am completely unable to pronounce intelligibly. On a trip to Beijing a few years ago I tried to learn a few basic phrases, like 'hello', 'please', 'thankyou', etc. Ha ha fat chance.)
[ * ] It can be interesting to use Google Translate to turn an English word into Mandarin, then insert newlines between each ideogram and reverse translate it to see what it is literally. 'Grammar' is 语法, which is 'language law'...
I'm not a beginning learner - I grew up in a Chinese household with weekly lessons from a young age. However, this is still a far cry from real, immersive learning, and I've recently recommitted to learning the language more fully.
If you don't mind being thoroughly unable to read or write the language, you can ignore the ideograms. I've found that spoken Chinese and written Chinese differ quite significantly anyway in grammatical convention, word choice, and concision, so it kind of feels like learning two separate languages with overlapping vocabulary sometimes. Of course, you'll probably still want to learn _some_ ideograms so you can navigate around, but luckily English translations are widely displayed in China nowadays.
Spoken Chinese is really only challenging because of the tones; the rest is vocabulary and a _small_ amount of grammar. Written Chinese is challenging because of the need to recognize thousands of characters, and the general concision of the written language.
If you're going to focus on spoken language, you'll have to get good at the tones - there's no way around that. I lucked out by hearing Chinese [Mandarin] spoken consistently from a young age, but this will be a big challenge for people who only speak English (or any number of other Western European languages).
Does such a thing as a completely pinyin tutorial exist everywhere? I am quite happy (or would be, if I had the time for this to be more than a theoretical exercise) with ignoring the ideograms completely.
...when I was working in Beijing, with 45 minute tedious taxi journeys to and from work, I amused myself by trying to learn enough ideograms to puzzle out street signs. The only one I can remember now is 门, mén, which is 'gate'. Beijing had quite a lot.
Despite the article's enthusiasm for polysyllabic characters, these remain exceedingly rare in day-to-day use, whereas polysyllabic words in English are basically unavoidable. There's no equivalence here.
The writing system remains very strongly monosyllabic, in that one character corresponds to one syllable >99% of the time.
The point I was referring to is that the words are not all monosyllabic. The existence or nonexistence of multisyllabic characters is irrelevant. Character != word.
Ah, I see. I was confused because you linked to a LanguageLog article specifically about polysyllabic characters. Yes, indeed, "compound words" as mentioned by the GP post are just plain words that are composed of multiple characters.
I don't really follow here. One of the examples of a multisyllabic word given is fēijī, 飛機, 'aeroplane'. But this breaks down into 'fly machine', which is a classic example of a compound word.
Later on it talks about 'library', túshūguǎn, or 'picture book museum' (according to the dictionary I just found). Again a compound word, and one which raises fascinating questions about whether they had museums before they had libraries. The article says that it can be written as a single character, 圕, or as multiple characters, 图书馆, but surely that's just an artifact of the writing scheme?
The meaning of the compound words isn't predictable in general -- a library is not in fact a picture book museum. And remember that many multisyllabic words in English are composed of morphemes with a distinct meaning, with varying levels of compositionality. E.g. we would not say that "airport" is two words just because its meaning has something vaguely to do with the meanings of "air" and "port", or that "return" is two words because it can be split into "re" and "turn" (again with each component contributing some element of its usual meaning). But of course, you can imagine a parallel universe where the orthographic conventions of English are such that we write "air-port" and "re-turn", and such combinations are referred to as "compound words".
As far as I can see I'm not saying anything controversial here. As the article I liked to earlier points out, there are at most a few thousand distinct syllables in Mandarin Chinese, and it would be absurd to suggest that Chinese is limited to a vocabulary of a few thousand words.
Do you have any examples of multisyllable words in Mandarin which don't break down like this? I have yet to find one.
Note that just because a word is a compound word doesn't mean it's not a word. A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts; otherwise it wouldn't be used. But the meaning of a picture book museum, or fly machine, or language law, though, is still quite clear. But a library has nothing to do with lies or bras, and the last syllable isn't even a valid word.
('Airport's not a good example in English because it actually is a compound word. Contrast with 'sea port'.)
But of course, if you already have the preconception that the parts of a compound word are independently meaningful, it's easy to tell yourself some kind of story about how they actually do contribute something to the meaning of the whole. Similarly, there are cranks who insist that particular non-morphemic sound sequences in English carry an independent meaning.
It really is amazing how confused people can get by orthography. Chinese has words composed of multiple syllables whose parts are not independently meaningful. Period. Again, this is information that's available all over the place, e.g.:
>The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which is only about an eighth as many as English.[b]
> Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words.
...but I never said it didn't.
I think you're trying to respond to a different argument than the one I'm making. I'm not trying to say that Chinese only has single-syllable words. I'm saying that it has multisyllable words made up out of single syllable words --- that's what compound words are. All the examples you've given are clearly compound words, including 'flower born' (which I'll admit is not very like a peanut).
The article you just linked to uses jī as an example of a word which is only used to make up compound words. But they're still compound words. jī has a meaning of its own (well --- several meanings, depending on context). You glue it together with another word to produce a compound word with additional meaning. That's pretty much the definition of a compound word.
Only in an orthographic sense. For example, the linguist list post that I linked to talks about the bound morpheme -zi. This is written using the character which in classical Chinese was the word for 'child'. But clearly there's no sense in which 'zhuozi' (table) is a "compound word" containing the word for child. It's just that since the final syllable of the word happens to be pronounced the same way as the classical Chinese word for child, it's written using that character. This is a purely orthographic fact. And in fact 'zi' cannot be used by itself as a noun in modern Chinese (except in a few fixed idioms).
It's as if English (a) was written like (b):
(a) I realize that.
(b) I real eyes that.
And we then said that 'realize' is a compound word made up of the monosyllabic words 'real' and 'eyes' (which of course "have a different meaning depending on the context").
I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted for this. It is a trivially verifiable fact that Mandarin Chinese has multi-syllabic words, and that these are not particularly uncommon. It's also trivially verifiable that the writing system is (to an extent) syllabic, which can give rise to the misperception that each character is a word and that each word is monosyllabic. This is all widely available, easy to verify information.
>The most remembered phrase of the orange demagogue inaugural address was "America first, always"
I feel very good putting America first. Countries that do not protect themselves are exploited and overrun. Always. It has always happened and it always will happen.
You didn't get my point. It isn't about countries caring or not for their interests, it is about how they sell their interest to others, how do you convince others to side with you. It is about your sales pitch as a country.
Every empire pretends to be more than imperialism. Soft power comes from being convincing at it. No, China doesn't have good intentions, as much as the U.S., the British, the Ottomans, Spaniards, French and Romans also didn't. But, still, you are more powerful when you convince others that you are also "good".
If America explicitly gives up on even pretending to be good, what is the point of respecting America?
>If America explicitly gives up on even pretending to be good, what is the point of respecting America?
Putting your own needs first != bad. I greatly respect those who solve their own problems and have a sense of nationalism, rather than fleeing into other countries.
Where I live in DC, there are plenty of Japanese cultural events that I'm confident are funded in part by their government. My wife studies Chado, an intricate Japanese tea ceremony, and the cost-per-lesson is ridiculously low. No way they could charge so little if they weren't being subsidized from somewhere.
Cultural promotion isn't a uniquely Chinese phenomenon. I'd guess that most countries with the cash to spend will spend at least something on promoting and sponsoring cultural awareness abroad. Or their tourism bureaus will advertise in target markets. The crucial difference with China is the magnitude of the investment. It rises to the level of strategically significant state priority.
> Since 2004 China has established some 500 government-funded “Confucius Institutes” in 140 countries. These offer language classes, host dance troupes and teach Chinese cooking.
Sounds like a state-run version of Alliance Française (which is a nonprofit). I think that'll be really cool: China has a really old history and culture (the latter part wrecked with the rise of communism). The only thing though is that China should be prepared for increased immigration (it tends to happen when you go out and teach your language and culture, and your home country is a nicer place to live).
In the city Guangzhou there is a "Little Africa" of African immigrant workers. Though CNN has an article from last year, that they leave China again, as China has "hostile immigration policies, widespread racism, and at-once slowing and maturing economy":
> Over the past 18 months, although concrete numbers are hard to come by, hundreds -- perhaps even thousands -- of Africans are believed by locals and researchers to have exited Guangzhou.
This is going to sound flippant, but I mean it very seriously. This is a much better way to spend money than spending billions to make the world hate you.
The US does spend... Well, hundreds of billions on making the world love US.
The actual problem is two-fold:
1. We spend trillions on making them hate the US.
2. We aren't actually very efficient with the hundreds of billions we spend on making them love the US. It's spent on short-sighted projects that often transparently benefit the US at the cost of the locals. To some degree, this is getting better with leadership from eg, The Gates Foundation, but we could wield our economic power much more efficiently.
These problems stem from a fundamental lack of leadership in the US: the US population are emotional-high junkies who are led by a bunch of spineless, selfish people. This is crippling the US, at home and abroad, because we are unable to do anything but lurch between emotional highs, are unable to have an actual vision for the future (and make reasonable plans to see it through), and are unable to wield our power effectively.
The US is trapped in short-term optimization thinking because of the junky behavior of its population.
The US spends huge amounts on food, medicine, and development aid -- 32 billion a year in economic investments (as opposed to military, which is another 10 billion a year).
Since 9/11, the US has probably spent around 500 billion on helping countries develop, fighting famines, curing diseases, etc. We've just also spent something like 3 or 4 trillion on ineffective and damaging wars, spy programs, etc.
My point is that we're spending the money on goodwill already, we'rr just undermining it with other actions and not spending it effectively.
I guess that is why this happens totally unnoticed to many other western countries, if you cut it down to percentage on national income this is nothing compared to anyone else. On that scale United Arab Emirates did 6 times as much as the U.S.
I was wondering which affords the U.S. makes to be more loved in world. Your example is something that obviously nobody speaks about in other western countries as it is way less they contribute on a %/countries income factor than anyone else.
Nearly every country does a lot of foreign aid, the U.S. just happens to be one of those who do less than others so that surely does not help their global image.
Everyone I've ever spoken to who was serious about foreign aid and development spending was aware of the US, because they spend much more thab those nations by dollars.
I think you're just making a tangential nationalist dig, because this tangent has nothing to do with the US a) getting recognized for their work in poor countries (they do) or b) being able to use their money more effectively (which is what I was talking about).
I've wondered if there was some way to demonstrate it was smarter than say military spending. Looking briefly it seems the US spends $26bn/yr on non military aid and about $600bn on military stuff. I'd guess if they spend $500bn on military and another $100bn on soft power / direct cash to the starving etc the world would be safer and happier. How to prove it for the budget controlling politicians though?
I mean $40bn for the 40m at risk of starvation in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia given directly would not only stop starvation but pull the whole region out of poverty and do more to make people think the US cool than spending that on nukes they don't need say.
Churchill famously remarked the film Ms. Miniver was worth, "either five battleships or 50 destroyers". Hollywood has immense propaganda value and is very effective at exporting American culture.
It is independent though, which gives it some grounding.
- lead by a billionnaire dictator and son of veteran communist party member, who has shown to purge his enemies, jail innocents/reporters without trial, disappear others. He oppresses the will of hong kongers to self govern, and acts like a crybaby whenever Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, does anything political
- controlled by a "congress" of billionnaires, who work together to exploit workers for pennies on the dollar, turn a blind eye to deadly air pollution/water pollution/poisonous food in favor of money, and when in danger, flees to Australia/Canada/US with billions
- member in WTO, but never abides by any of the rules. Foreign companies are forced to give up tech, partner with locals, suffer 30% import tax, and eventually, leave due to unfairness. And other countries loses factories/jobs/communities. Internet companies are sometimes banned outright.
Of course China needs to spend billions spreading its false/hateful messages via its 50cents army on reddit, facebook, etc. It has a cruel and evil authoritarian dictatorship, that if unchecked, will swallow the world
People who haven't lived in China have a hard time wrapping their heads around the grave implications of this.
There is no free press in China so you can only see a small fraction of the life-destroying problems that are pervasive throughout the country, let alone shine enough light on them to solve them.
An extended PR campaign such as this is only going to exacerbate the distortion of reality.
Boo. False equivalency. Can we acknowledge that this is the favored argument by authoritarian propaganda machines and it's a baseless distraction? It has no place here.
Huh? Not sure how that's relevant to you trying to use a garbage argument in response to very valid criticisms of modern China. Everything PP said was accurate, US doesn't come close by comparison, your observation is manipulatively off base.
The US is also still largely a transparent democracy. By soft-power do you mean the only modern country so defined by its achievements that it's culture is emulated across the world?
In the former Soviet Union and even in modern China it's fashionable and a sign of wealth to have American technology and fashion. Among many trade barriers, China artificially limits the number of American movies allowed in theaters to a couple a year because they're so popular.
Even countries with extremely friendly relations to the US take some actions to limit the pervasiveness of US culture. In the case of Japan, limiting the number of US baseball players on Japanese teams comes to mind.
It's telling that even with the magnitude of recent intel leaks there has been nothing found to indicate the US uses government funded propaganda. They don't need to.
Not to go too off my chain too much on why US culture is looked up to, but we're talking about the country that invented the car,microchip, transistor, computer, atomic weapons, GPS, and the internet.
Most of the great inventions of modern history were created in the United States, some of them by the government itself. Silicon valley continues to pump out the most valuable companies in the world at an astounding rate to this day.
So what is soft power exactly? Is it bad that a lot of countries look up to the US model of society? Is that unfair? Your claim is baseless, American culture is popular simply because the US is so successful.
Or in Chile, where the United States overthrew a democratically elected leader and installed a dictator who went on to commit over 300 human rights atrocities.
Indeed many of the technologies you cite as being invented by the US were invented within a military context! Atomic weapons were not, I'm sorry to say, America's wonderful altruistic gift to the world.
The US has certainly been successful projecting its power around the world - arguing that that has come from the sheer force of American global popularity is more of a stretch.
And here we go, meandering farther and farther from the point at hand. That article is not from a respectable news source and your claims, which have nothing to do with China, are not verifiable.
However, my arguments are easily verifiable and widely known. Why do other countries feel the need to block things like US movies and sports stars? Are your seriously suggesting that such things are secretly US govt propaganda?
The most reasonable explanation is that US movies and sports stars are known for their high quality and allowing the US to compete in those countries would totally wipe out local movies and sports stars. This would obviously contribute to the spread of US culture and continue propagating the believe that the US model of society produces superior products.
Countries like Russia and China depend on their propaganda machines to keep the population complacent. Allowing foreign competition to overtake local firms and show their superiority to the local populace would result in questions those governments don't want these citizens asking.
Foreign companies find little trouble competing in the US, because the US govt by large is not concerned with the influence of foreign culture. The government is slight corrupt but not to the point that it makes widespread lies necessary to maintain order. Many foreign companies have the US as their primary market, something China and other countries that depend on propaganda for peace would never allow.
Trump has proposed exactly the same kind of 30% import tax, is also happy to turn a blind eye to air pollution and has handed over the Department of Education to a billionaire who to all intents and purposes bought the job.
Perhaps those American exceptionalism rose tinted sunglasses aren't working so well for you.
I would expect the usual 10% for WTO members without other trade agreements. If you add the higher 17% VAT rate to that and round up, I guess you can sort of justify "30%", but that's misleading, since VAT applies to domestic companies too.
They spy on you, regardless of if you live in the country or not, committing global espionage[0][1]
They do not observe human rights when imprisoning you [2][3]
They are happy to bomb civilians using automated robots in the name of freedom and enlisting you to their brand of freedom[4]
They are happy to arm terrorists then assassinate them when they are no longer relevant to their cause[5]
They will wage illegal wars when it is convenient for them[6]
They were happy to obliterate people's homes to conduct nuclear tests in the name of freedom[7]
They institutionally protect the interests of the people with the most access to wealth[8]
They have elected a narcissistic nepotistic sexist bigot for their president, and do not have free healthcare [no citations necessary]
I'm not here to spark a tally of which country has committed more atrocities or which country is better - the world is simply a dirty place, and to this day, humans are still as capable of committing human on human sin.
China is no doubt guilty of many crimes too but I find China bashing by other countries reeking of hypocrisy and evidence that our own nations' propaganda machines are well oiled and in full-throttle.
At least there are articles/opinions written down for what is happening in US which you can quote. For China, in many cases, you can't even do that given press/govt restrictions.
Also, to say that China has better human rights record vs. US is almost blasphemy. Why even quote that?
For the last point, what are you trying to say? Democracy doesn't work - lets all most to the communist model!? I know you are trying to be a the devils advocate, but using one off examples (while ignoring everything that China represents) to justify your points seems wrong.
>At least there are articles/opinions written down for what is happening in US which you can quote. For China, in many cases, you can't even do that given press/govt restrictions.
Also, are you really trying to say that press in China has unfettered rights to publish anything? This is a country which has a giant firewall to prevent users from reading news/articles critical of it published outside China.
Yeah - as I said, I'm not saying China is without sin. I just find China bashing to really be nothing more than an exercise of "pulling the ladder up". Europe was perfectly happy colonising the world in its heyday, as was America in the past. Now that they've entrenched their position in the world, suddenly it's not ok when other people are trying to climb the ladder.
You are implying that China _must_ behave this way in order to become a developed country and then they can adjust to modern standards. Seems silly to me.
uh, this is 2017, not 1930s. let's judge China by today's standard. You can't absolve a sin from someone today because someone else "used to do it" 100 years ago
>They ...do not have free healthcare [no citations necessary]
When I lived and worked in China, for a government entity, the insurance didn't cover anything I ever needed it for and I had to pay out of pocket 100% of the time for all costs. The private healthcare industry is exploding in China right now because the public healthcare system is inadequate.
There is no such thing as free healthcare. Even if you install single payer and ration health supplies to the extent more people die on waiting lists like in Canada, the government will still be paying for the little care that remains through your own taxes or debt obligations.
People die on waiting lists in America too, so if you are going to make this argument, be specific. How many people, what are they on the waiting list for, and how is it worse than what we have in America?
The answer is in just one word to the left of that quote: "_more_ people die on waiting lists like in Canada."
It's not that the free market provides a panacea utopia, it's that it's empirically better than everything else. The government system in Canada predictably and steadily broke down as efficiency left due to the lack of a free market.
>The study, an annual survey of physicians from across Canada, reports a median wait time of 20 weeks [in 2016] —the longest ever recorded—and more than double the 9.3 weeks Canadians waited in 1993 [when single-payer began], when the Fraser Institute began tracking wait times for medically necessary elective treatments.
Well this will be my last response in playing the "but what about X" whackamole game where someone fires off a one liner and I gather data to create response after response when I've already demonstrated and evidenced the concepts and none of the axioms I've mentioned whose application would've answered that question have been addressed let alone refuted.
I've already spent significant amounts of effort in this thread gathering and summarizing data only to be repeatedly downvoted for bringing hard evidence that challenges the status quo opinion.
The study I've already cited more closely than international comparisons isolates the variable of single payer because it measures the same data points over time using the same methodology in the same country.
Comparing the US and Canada tends to be less reliable in comparison because the properties involved are more fluid, although it's still a useful comparison in some ways. Furthermore, the US healthcare system already has major single payer elements such as Medicare, which would complicate the isolation of the variable.
I just googled "difference in procedure wait times between the united states and canada" and literally every result on the front page supports the longer wait times in Canada that you asked to be shown.
The same goes for the English youth who get wasted in different Southern European countries. The only two times when I got verbally harassed on the street while I was minding my own business (I'm talking as an adult) happened on a Greek island during the summer months, on both cases the culprits were English guys in their late-teens, early-20s we were drunk out of their minds.
Chinese tour groups are notorious for disrespecting and/or destroying everything they come in contact with. I've had to personally deal with them in several countries and it is never a pleasant experience.
Same could be said about Americans. I rather be cut in lines from some old Chinese ladies than have Americans shouting disrespectful stuff next to me. In fact Chinese people seem to be aware and respectful of local cultures usually, something that can't be said about Americans.
It would be cheaper to open up the country, introduce a democratic system and actual human rights, and abolish the death penality. Make peace with Tibet, agree with Taiwan on a good neighborhood. Support a democratic change also in North Korea.
These would actually make China a country I could support, but currently: no, thank you.
this is such a prototypical example of utter western bullshit. Likely near zero understanding of politics, just grew up with the words "democracy" being shoved into your ears repeatedly.
Do you really believe that China's 1.3 billion people would be better off if the country just switched itself to American styled "democracy"? Look at who our democracy just elected.
You don't know anything about the Chinese society, if a pure democratic system was introduced abruptly in China, do you honestly think the chaos it introduces among 1.3 billion people is a good thing? Regardless of if people actually like it. About Tibet, do you know anything other than several celebrities shouting out words they have no idea what so ever? Do you know they had slavery before the Chinese came in in the 50s? Do you know they had been part of the country for centuries? Agreeing with Taiwan ... Man why didn't the U.S. just chill and hangout with Cuba when the Russians carries their missiles over?
You guessed it, don't like China? Nobody gives a damn.
I guess, reading between the lines isn't your strong suit. I'm not talking about democracy tomorrow, I'm talking about a process of democratisation in China, they could start with Hong Kong and go on with abolishing the death penalty and stop censoring the media so much. That democracy don't happening over night should know everybody who is seeing what is currently happening in countries like Poland and Hungary.
Taiwan is a defacto independent country for 60+ years now and until the 1970s, the Republic of China was China. It is time that the relationship between those two countries find a way to recognize each other. West and East Germany reached this in the early 1970s, See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Treaty,_1972
Btw, the US opened itself to Cuba again. Way too late, way too slow. The embargo on Cuba did nothing against the regime. Embargos rarely work.
This isn't about if I like China or not. It was an idea how China could improve its imagine, by actually improving. Recently I heard Chinese scientists complaining, that the censorship in China is preventing research.
The US could also finally get rid of the death penalty, but it is still a democracy, with a working court system. Can change faster than you think but maybe, just maybe, it won't.
In north America, what I get is China is controlled by dictators. Life sucks over there because there is no freedom, a lot of corruption, no respect to rules, and is generally a chaotic mess. While in north America, democracy and freedom is wonderful, and everyone has the power to make changes of society, and in the end the government has to care about people to stay in power.
In China, what I get is the US (Canada is usually less discussed) is controlled by a corrupt and impotent government. Life sucks over there because the majority of the people, who actually has the power, believes the doublespeak of the government and are easily manipulated by the wealth. While in China, people make jokes about the official media, and if the government decides to do something people don't like, people simply ignore it and with enough people (there is always enough people in China) doing this, the government has to care about people's opinion to do anything.
I'm a little worried about the situation of both sides now. They seem to go towards what the opposite believes: on one hand in China, the government starts to get better at propaganda and manipulating public opinion; on the other hand in the States ... there is enough happening in the past year.