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China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex centered on national pride and driven by the Century of Humiliation. https://en.wikipedia.org

• tprnz 8y ago
  So, like blacks in the US?
• jl6 8y ago
  There must be actual Chinese people here on HN. Can any weigh in on the reality of this? It’s a heavy charge to make against an entire population.
  • natch 8y ago
    Just to be clear，and I'm not saying your missed this distinction, but in case anyone did, I'm not talking about Chinese the race (which technically can be argued as consisting of many races, btw). I'm talking about what the education and state controlled media does to China's citizens who grow up in China.
  • baobrain 8y ago
    I've been through 3-8th grade education in Chengdu at a top 100 school. The rest of my education was in the US, so I may be biased in one way or the other. From my perspective, I didn't really see it that way. Like any country, the history curriculum focuses on China's history, focusing primarily on ancient history (pre-Qing dynasty) for 3 semesters with one semester of modern Chinese history (Qing to present). While there certainly was a nationalistic tendency in many topics I would regard the information as historically accurate (as compared to courses about east Asian history here in the US). And in reality, my many friends in China with whom I've maintained contact over the years do not have this sort of mentality and are against censorship and much of the nationalistic messaging. Another interesting note that people here have no knowledge of is professors in China are often times anti-CCP. Many professors take this to the extreme and in papers will often just give a bad grade if it mentions any good policy by the CCP. On a semi-related note, the comments many make here on HN about China make me extremely uncomfortable. Not because they touch on sensitive topics but because they smear an entire population of people as liars, thieves, and mindless followers. Replace the word "China" and "Chinese" with "Italy" and "Italian" in many comments and they could have been written back in the Ellis Island days.
    • natch 8y ago
      I should have made it more clear it's not all people, it's many people. And the problem is not the people, it's the system of government control of education, media, and now digital media at every level. You have been exposed to more voices (metaphorical) so you are one of the lucky ones. It's good to hear you find some of these voices to be inside of China still. I imagine being inside the system before encountering more viewpoints (grades 3-8 in your case) it would hard to see anything wrong. It's like being in the matrix and not knowing you're in the matrix.
      • whorleater 8y ago
        This comment is so incredibly patronizing ("oh it's good to hear you're one of the good Chinese") that I'd be insulted if I wasn't laughing so much.
  • whorleater 8y ago
    I'm Chinese and I can confirm that I am, in fact, a bloodthirsty monster fueled by vengeance as GP commented. In fact I am building a next-gen killbot in my basement as we speak. My education from the Chinese system has left me with no capability for individual thought and zero perspective of the outside world, and therefore all my fellow Chinese citizens are driven by stereotypical perceptions of Chinese culture, as Western internet commenters describe.
    • yesenadam 8y ago
      Thank you for this, one of the greatest comments I've read on HN. I have tears in my eyes. (Australia here)
  • echevil 8y ago
    I am a Chinese citizen and all my education was in China, from kindergarten to grad school. > China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex centered on national pride and driven by the Century of Humiliation. I’d say this is correct to a small extent — the history lessons in particular, took that stance when it’s covering contents about Chinese history from late Qing dynasty to the end of WW2. But the education also renders China as a peaceful nation, and the rise of China would benefit the entire world, which majority of the Chinese population agrees. > To say they are fervent about righting the wrongs and perceived wrongs of the past is an understatement It would be a correct statement if “righting the wrong” simply means “making China a great country again” so that “centuries of humiliation would never happen again”. Yes majority of Chinese citizens do have national pride, not unlike people any other country I’ve seen. Except maybe some extreme nationalists, most Chinese citizens would love to see China becoming stronger peacefully and be helpful to under-developed parts of the world. > But I think our more diverse (talking about points of view, not race here) and more activist anti-racism voices are a tempering force that China lacks. There are very little discussion about racism in China compared to US, simply because it’s less relevant. - Most Chinese don’t ever interact with a different race. But diversity in oppinions in other topics are very common. I’d say it’s virtually impossible to keep a billion citizens on the same page. Just as an example, at the core of China’s “nationalism education” (don’t know what should I call it) is the anti-Japanese war which was part of WW2. Like South Korea, plenty of Chinese hate Japan for not acknowledging the war crimes they’ve done and trying to erase those facts from their history books. There had been several movement to boycott Japanese products in the past two decades. At the same time, Japanese culture actually have a huge influence in China, especially among young people. Japan is also one of the most popular foreign destinations Chinese people would love to travel to.
    • JackFaker 8y ago
      I'm curious to know if you can speak to how minority populations are discussed or addressed in a historical or modern context? I understand that there is something like 50+ recognized minority groups in China.
      • echevil 8y ago
• nashashmi 8y ago
  Being foreign born myself, I can see this pretty easily. When you have an external enemy outside of this country, the entire country will unite in that cause even in the endeavor to create very powerful weapons. (Think US affinity for nuclear proliferation during the cold war.) Few will pause to think that such weapons will be used against the best of our own people. And that is the mentality difference between the US and China. US (having no real enemies) citizens see development of these weapons as potentially being used against its own citizens. Whereas Chinese citizens sees these weapons being to protect themselves from external threats.
• zaru27 8y ago
  Tangentially, and anecdotally, I had Tinder-related relations with a Chinese girl studying at Columbia for awhile earlier this year. Definitely very bright. A lot of the conversations we had degenerated into how she thought white people/Europeans have been evil throughout history, especially over the past few centuries, along with other tidbits like Hitler was good and racial genocide is a good idea. She may have been a bit insane - but, generally, it dawned on me what students in China must be being taught in their homes and at history class. And, yet, tying into this article - the amount of Chinese students, studying at our universities, being taught subjects like AI that they can use to build weapons against us is growing at a superlinear rate. I noticed Trump was considering banning Chinese from studying here and I've heard various arguments as to why we must allow them to do so, but none of them seem to me even remotely convincing to outweigh the increasingly apparent downsides that may come in the incipient future. My, perhaps hyperbolic, conclusion is that we're displacing our own students, who may, granted, not be able to score as highly on the Gaokao, in order to line the pockets of a university bubble, and our knowledge that we're imparting may soon be used against us by a totalitarian, imperialistic society that has a cultivated hatred towards us. I hope that politicians take a more hawkish stance on this - even if some universities have to scale down.
  • spongepoc 8y ago
    We need to weaponise our education system against them. Full tuition for humanities; total restriction of access to science and technology programs. This will cultivate liberalism, democracy and dissent amongst Chinese students which would destabalize their regime, while depriving them of the technical knowledge they crave in their drive to overthrow the West. We have been very naive to allow so much access to our intellectual resources to a power that knows how to use it against us.
    • zaru27 8y ago
      I definitely agree with what you're suggesting would be a great idea, but I'm not sure something like that could happen in the near future. I get the impression that the Democrats and their media have not entirely endorsed the trade war and anti-Sino policies as a means to point out Trump's incompetence and divisiveness, but that seems to be shifting. Washington probably doesn't want to escalate too much at any given time, as well, but meter it out slowly. I'm hoping that they do not buckle.
• kopo 8y ago
  wtf...how many Chinese people do you actually know in real life? I am betting zero.
  • natch 8y ago
    Quite a few, in a wide range of contexts and places. Hope you didn't put too much money down on that bet.
    • kopo 8y ago
      Divide whatever your number is by 1.4 billion. Labeling and judging people is always tempting in the face of complexity, but it is also always a choice you make.
• ttls 8y ago
  It is time to pay for the West because they don't care the human rights in China
• Leary 8y ago
  lol exaggeration much? Psychoanalyzing other people, especially a whole country, without communicating with them is a sign of close-mindedness that I thought rational discourses on HN would preclude. There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese students in the US whose view on nationalism differs from individual to individual. Not only is the characterization of a purported hidden motif not warranted, it is reminiscent of Yellow Peril. Nationalism is certainly alive in China. But Chinese foreign policy is only assertive only in its immediate periphery. To think that they are harboring this deep seeded grudge against the West that would threaten our physical safety is ludicrous.
  • natch 8y ago
    >But Chinese foreign policy is only assertive only in its immediate periphery. This is a good point which seems to hold for now, at least with regard to exertion of military force. It’s mostly defensive although there is disagreement about the boundaries of what is to be defended. Longer term though there are concerning matters like the extension of predatory loans to African governments in exchange for mineral and other development rights. Ironically similar to some of the abuses China suffered in its past.
• rv-de 8y ago
  The Chinese Government is suppressing free speech regarding Tibet, Taiwan, Uyghurs, corruption, forced displacement and plenty of other socially relevant topics. And just as it takes two to tango it takes two to suppress free speech. One party to suppress (in this case literally as there is just one) and another to effectively obey - that's the Chinese society pretty much in its entirety. That means Chinese society is effectively brought into line. So from that perspective I don't understand why 'natch' is receiving so much protest here. Totalitarian regimes are as easy to predict as a linear function and the Chinese "government" is totalitarian. The goal is to maximize power by all means necessary and - to err on the side of caution - also all means available and obtainable. Humanitarian concerns exclusively play a role in governments and societies where at least some level of democratic processes and transparency can be carried out. The bottom line is - expect the worst.
  • kwizzt 8y ago
    It's not Chinese people aren't aware of what the Chinese government is/has been doing. This is why natch's comments have received so many negative feedbacks. natch doesn't give any evidences to support his arguments. Instead, he just bluntly said that 'Slaughterbots would excite them' as if he has seen it in person. This is an insult on the intelligence and moral standard of Chinese student or common man. I know what the Chinese government has been doing and I was born and raised in China. However, that doesn't make me the immoral, senseless and vengeful entity he is trying to portray in his comment. I know it's easy to generalize a certain group of people with whatever you hear from the news or read on the Internet, especially if you've not had too much meaningful interactions with individuals from that group. So I don't blame him, as I was somewhat similar before I came to the US and get to know the US people.
    • rv-de 8y ago
      First of all the practical difference between believing in something and behaving as if one believes in that is often neglectable. Especially when either of both things can be said about the majority of a society. Secondly, nobody is immoral, nobody is vengeful or senseless - but having said that - the enemies of the state of course do not deserve moral standards as they don't adhere by those standards themselves ... "just watch the news if you want to know how many children they killed with their latest terror attack!". The truth is - everybody loves slaughter bots as long as the right people get slaughtered - and who is that? Well, for the majority it's those labelled bad in the information sources they consume ... and are Chinese news independent? No, they aren't. The Americans and Israelis love their drones - which aren't philosophically different from slaughter bots - and as long as those remove terrorists or taliban nobody would question those.
• yourbandsucks 8y ago
  They're right, though. If China were staying 'beneath' the west, like they're 'supposed to', we wouldn't have scare articles every week in the economist and the NYT, and we wouldn't have this comment at the top of the thread. You're demonizing them as scary others and proving the point of hardliners there.
• dang 8y ago
  > China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex > China drills bitterness into its people about their past humiliations, and uses this to develop racist nationalism I don't believe you meant to, but you crossed into nationalistic and racial flamewar with this comment. Imagine how it must feel to read something like this if you're on the receiving end. It's surprising how many of the replies below managed to remain thoughtful. When I read those comments and compare them to yours, it's clear who the model HN users are in this case. I don't think you were being malicious, I think you underestimated the difference between musing in a personal conversation and broadcasting to potentially millions of people. For example, it isn't enough to protest that you didn't mean all Chinese, just the ones who <insert caveat here>. That is far too crude to undo the impact such claims make on the ones who are being categorized. If you can imagine yourself in that position, this is not hard to see; yet it is hard to imagine, because we're mostly so certain that none of it could ever be justified in our own case, so it feels like no big deal.
  • natch 8y ago
    Point taken, thanks.