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I'm surprised by the remarks (in both posts) about China. People in China cannot be unaware of the country's shortcomings (as a repressive totalitarian state)

I'm surprised by the remarks (in both posts) about China. People in China cannot be unaware of the country's shortcomings (as a repressive totalitarian state) while also having a strong awareness of, and often direct family or business connections to the rest of the world, which China has influenced and been influenced by for centuries. Traditionally, Chinese people have had no objection to emigrating, working and settling in other countries, in Asia and beyond - exemplified by how many cities in the world have a Chinatown - and have never struck me as being particularly racist, nationalistic or xenophobic.

notahacker 10y ago
I'm reminded of a time when somebody at my university wrote a piece critical of the Chinese government in a student newspaper, and the following weeks were filled by comments from Chinese students infuriated by this slur on their national character and threatened boycotts by student recruitment organizations. The same article written about any Western state - including the apparently highly non-internationalist Germans - would have passed without comment and certainly without the taking of offence. And that was highly-educated, middle class Chinese citizens studying in a foreign language overseas. So whilst Chinese people certainly may have reservations about shortcomings of their government, claims it makes and the people that work for it, I'm not inclined to believe that the vast majority of them are similarly sceptical about the importance of Chinese national and ethnic identity their government works so hard to promote. In particular, I don't perceive a country which rules dual nationality impossible to be likely to be more internationalist in public outlook than countries where large proportions of the population trace their ancestry to other continents, foreign languages are universally spoken, foreign media is consumed as often as domestic media, international travel is something most people actually do, immigrants are not novelties even in rural areas and the government couldn't give two shits about patriotism. Sure, there are plenty of people born in China who see things differently, but the survey implies that two thirds of Chinese people living in the People's Republic of China don't really see themselves as Chinese. You don't have to think that Chinese citizens are disproportionately racist, nationalistic or xenophobic (I don't) to find it quite hard to believe that they're substantially less attached to their national, ethnic and cultural identity than most of the rest of the world. Even the diasporas - which undoubtedly would give different survey results - are as good at preserving their cultural identity as they're economically successful.

notahacker 10y ago

I'm reminded of a time when somebody at my university wrote a piece critical of the Chinese government in a student newspaper, and the following weeks were filled by comments from Chinese students infuriated by this slur on their national character and threatened boycotts by student recruitment organizations. The same article written about any Western state - including the apparently highly non-internationalist Germans - would have passed without comment and certainly without the taking of offence. And that was highly-educated, middle class Chinese citizens studying in a foreign language overseas. So whilst Chinese people certainly may have reservations about shortcomings of their government, claims it makes and the people that work for it, I'm not inclined to believe that the vast majority of them are similarly sceptical about the importance of Chinese national and ethnic identity their government works so hard to promote. In particular, I don't perceive a country which rules dual nationality impossible to be likely to be more internationalist in public outlook than countries where large proportions of the population trace their ancestry to other continents, foreign languages are universally spoken, foreign media is consumed as often as domestic media, international travel is something most people actually do, immigrants are not novelties even in rural areas and the government couldn't give two shits about patriotism. Sure, there are plenty of people born in China who see things differently, but the survey implies that two thirds of Chinese people living in the People's Republic of China don't really see themselves as Chinese. You don't have to think that Chinese citizens are disproportionately racist, nationalistic or xenophobic (I don't) to find it quite hard to believe that they're substantially less attached to their national, ethnic and cultural identity than most of the rest of the world. Even the diasporas - which undoubtedly would give different survey results - are as good at preserving their cultural identity as they're economically successful.