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Not sure if it is fair to compare India and China/Korea. I don't know much about the history of China and Korea, but I doubt if both those countries faced full

• JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > I don't know much about the history of China and Korea...I doubt if both those countries faced full scale colonialism like India China had a much harder time through the colonial era than India. Remember, China spent decades being traded between warring imperial powers (France vs. Britain, Britain vs. Japan, Japan vs. the Soviets, et cetera). In that process, its institutions were wrecked and cultural memory wreaked havoc with. When all was said and done, they had no equivalent to India's nation-spanning railroad system; systems of law, governance and courts; or (relatively) unified linguistic bloc.
  • alskdjalsd 10y ago
    Amusingly, the opium that was peddled into China was grown in India; in fact many of India's current elite trace their wealth to this era (not surprisingly). Indians are generally too stupid and banal in conversation IMO; they keep whining about the minor '62 war with Mao (and Tibet, OMG Tibet), but are completely clueless about the role their own country played in the destruction of Asia. Perhaps it's not surprising that Obama chose the old Jewel for his pivot.
    • nojvek 10y ago
      > Indians are generally too stupid and banal in conversation IMO Way to generalize 2b people. Wow!
      • rajathagasthya 10y ago
        1.2B people :) 2B population would be unimaginable!
    • sremani 10y ago
      I downvoted not because you sounded condescending but you did not back it up with sources given the scale of "facts" you are presenting to us. For a person complaining banality, you post can use better style and structure to make your case.
    • happy-go-lucky 10y ago
      You're obviously trolling and created this throwaway account just for that.
    • dang 10y ago
      We banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.
  • ptaipale 10y ago
    I tend to disagree slightly, though I don't see why you're downvoted (I don't think you should downvote a civilly written comment just because you disagree). China was subject to colonialism, but not in the same way as India; it was never fully controlled by colonial masters like the British controlled India. There were colonial enclaves and much of humiliation with being forced to hand over areas for trade posts; there were the opium wars and later there was the Japanese expansion and imperialism, but the deep Chinese countryside was always managed by the Chinese for the Chinese. And there were decades of unrest and civil war. But still, I don't see how China was suffering from colonialism more than India. They both had their hardest times in their early independence after colonial times. China with civil war, Great Leap Forward, Cultural revolution; India with jumping to the Soviet boat, socialism, planned economy and protectionism. Korea, on the other hand, has throughout its history been a smaller nation which bigger neighbours try to run over. Sometimes - like in the case of Japan in earlier half of 20th century - it has indeed been completely overrun for decades. So, to survive, it has become fiercely nationalistic. But Korea also definitely faced absolute full scale colonialism, in my opinion in much more depth than India.
    • walshemj 10y ago
      But China suffered from warlords and persistent low level violence for the first half of the 20th century
      • ptaipale 10y ago
        Definitely, but that was not colonialism. The warlords were Chinese; the power bases for these warlords were built during the late Qing dynasty. They of course had some Western influences (one even proclaimed himself Christian, another announced he was admirer of George Washington) but primarily they were just Chinese men of power, with short-term visions that were ultimately defeated by determined nationalists.