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Cherry picking and then overgeneralization are the two poisonous pills that are been fed to westerners about China. Western media pick all the authoritarian me

by fqye 5y ago

Cherry picking and then overgeneralization are the two poisonous pills that are been fed to westerners about China. Western media pick all the authoritarian measures CCP did or is doing and blow them up and make them all about China. They ignored many things Chinese government (here most westerners or media couldn't tell the difference between Chinese administrative government and CCP and thought they were the same thing), and Chinese people did right in the past decades. I often say China today has been built on three things: 1. Equality between men and women. China did very well in this. There are lots of problems still obviously but in general women in China are quite equal to men. China has the most self-made female billionaires, maybe more than the rest of the world's combined. 2. Unleashed entrepreneurship. No need to say much about it here. 3. A very solid education system together with Han Chinese tradition of valuing education. Nine years of free and compulsory education for the entire nation before high school and many options for next level education.

icedistilled 5y ago
From my understanding of Chinese culture from having a minor in chinese, I'm very skeptical of equality of women in china except as a CCP official "fact". And pointing to the absolute number of female billionaires should really be talking about rates not absolute numbers but that does not say anything about the average woman. Quick googles shows this: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-gender-inequality/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-gender-inequality/ And why is the gender ratio so skewed? Gender selection of babies. That doesn't signal equality.
- onethought 5y ago
  I think it’s a nuanced point. There is definitely a strong patriarchy in Chinese culture, and there was never anything like the Women’s liberation movement. But Women weren’t excluded from the workforce since the rise of communism… so it was more a slight head start on higher participation rates of employment.
  - russli1993 5y ago
    There was a huge women's liberation movement. The reason ccp got women on their side was by campaigning for equality between men and women. The slogan was "women can hold half of the sky". ccp pushed for women to get access in education, be free from their husbands, from traditional family roles. Why women can't do what a man can do? Why women can't learn how to read? Why women can't make decision in the house? Why women can't handle money in the house? Why women have to have their foot bound? Why women can't be industrialized workers (In 1950s, working as industrial worker was the cool job), Why women can't become soldiers? My grandma was born in 1931, she had her foot bounded, didn't learn how to read, and was arranged married to my grandpa. After the PRC was founded, she was in her 20s, a young woman, She joined ccp. And went around in her village to talk about women's rights. Why couldn't women do this, why men are so privilege etc. She got a lot of illiterate women to join a study club, learning how to read, telling the women how to standup, grow a spine, not be weak. I am surprised people didn't know there was a women's movement. If you look at the movement just by itself, the transformation of women's standing in the society and culture before and after is massive. Comparing across the global, it is still one of the largest transformations. But prephas it is all buried in the ccp, communism, and mao, all that bad rep. What actually caused, triggered, happened in the Chinese revolution between 1930 to 1960s is never talked about, never being looked at objectively. Only those who lived through that history, personally experienced it, knew the good, the bad, the legit and craziness. The world is not black and white. Things always happen for a reason. Before my grandma passed away, she had a portrait of mao in her home. And talked fondly of what ccp meant to her and the changes it brought to her life.
    - onethought 5y ago
      Because it was inseparable from the communist movement. The slogan you referenced was the communist slogan. Communism requires equality, there was no independent women’s movement. Your families experience as you described corroborates that. To strengthen my point: how many women are in political leadership positions? People’s Congress looks very male heavy…100%? communism brought equal participation, but didn’t stop patriarchy.
- russli1993 5y ago
  You need to look at where was women's standing in the society and culture 80, 90 years ago before the ccp. My grandma was born in 1931, to a farmer household in a village in hebei. In that age, the culture, the believe in a significant portion of the Chinese society, was that women should abide by the husband, should stay at home, do house chores, raise kids. They don't need to study. For a commoner, if you want to teach your kid, you personally contact a teacher and the teacher decide if they want to keep the kid. Like, if the teacher says this kid looks dumb, doesn't have a future, he will not take in the kid. My grandma's foot was bounded. My great grandparents didn't sent her to the teachers. She couldn't read. She was married to my grandpa through arranged marriage. During the ccp revolution between 1940 to 1950s, women joined the ccp, and pushed for women liberation. They campaigned for no more feet binding, no more arranged marriages, the right to learn how to read and knowledge, women should do whatever men can do, become industrialized factory workers, soldiers, no longer confined to their traditional female roles. That was Chinese women's equal rights social movement. No less significant then women movements elsewhere. The saying was "women can hold half of the sky". ccp's leaders started the messaging, it resonated with the people, and then people reinforced that messaging. This is how the political movement had strength and kept alive. You have to understand ccp's revolution became a wide scale revolution because the political goals matched with people's desires. People voted with their feet. My grandma joined the ccp as well. She campaigned and learned how to read from her activities with the ccp. My grandparents had 5 kids, 2 girls. My grandma was always a strong supporter of the girls, encouraged them to be strong and independent, telling them to chase big dreams and do want their hearts tell them to do. My grandpa not so much. He sided with the boys much more. Like the vast majority of Chinese families before 1990s, the family was resource constraint. They could only afford to eat meat during big holidays. My grandpa would try to give the boys better pieces of the meat to eat. Same thing with cloths. 重男轻女(preferences for boys) is Chinese culture and custom issue. Its people's thinking, its the culture, not desire or mandate of the government. The government didn't tell the people to have only boys and not girls. Its the people who did that. If you want the official and legal stance, since 1950, Chinese constitution says "women enjoys same political, economic, cultural, social rights as men". Marriage law says "Both parties must be at will, no third party shall interfere". So technically, my grandpa's action of favoring boys is against the constitution. Before the 90s, there were still places that practiced arranged marriages, technically its also illegal. You could say it the government's fault for not enforcing the laws. The reality is preferences for boys is ingrained. And if the government enforces bans on practices like arranged marriage, people say its destroying traditional culture, limiting cultural freedoms. I think the government was trying to change people's mentality and culture on gender. One of the important action was making education mandatory. This forced parents to give girls and boys both education, regardless of the social economic status of the family. And when I was going through Chinese school, we were all taught on respecting each other. Text books have many stories about heroines, women liberation, equality etc. My classes treat everyone the same, everything was based on merits. Girls did well on grades, and the teachers would tell the guys "shame, look at the girls". Many class reps were girls. At least I view girls with utmost respect. And the common saying goes "In front of women, the women is always right" I think for the young generation of Chinese, the mentality and culture is changing. Women are very much independent. Guys showing respect to a women is the baseline. There are still gender discriminations in the workplace, like some employers are reluctant to hire girls because they fear girls would get married, have kids, take parental leave, causing hassle to the business schedules. We need to fix this. But still, female bosses, engineers, managers are pretty common. Did you know one of core founder of Douyin/Tiktok is a women? Or many team leaders and managers in China's space program are women. And lots of people today actually prefer having daughters over sons. Compare the women's society standing in 1930 and now. Of course one shouldn't ignore all of the current problems. But one shouldn't dismiss the progress and efforts made in the past.
shoto_io 5y ago
ad 1. there is a very interesting Ted Talk making exactly the same point by contrasting it with the situation of women in India. https://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang_does_democracy_stifle_economic_growth/ https://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang_does_democracy_stifl...
rasz 5y ago
> Equality between men and women as evidenced by gender ratio in 0-14 and 15-24 brackets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio

by fqye 5y ago

icedistilled 5y ago

From my understanding of Chinese culture from having a minor in chinese, I'm very skeptical of equality of women in china except as a CCP official "fact". And pointing to the absolute number of female billionaires should really be talking about rates not absolute numbers but that does not say anything about the average woman. Quick googles shows this: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-gender-inequality/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-gender-inequality/ And why is the gender ratio so skewed? Gender selection of babies. That doesn't signal equality.

onethought 5y ago
I think it’s a nuanced point. There is definitely a strong patriarchy in Chinese culture, and there was never anything like the Women’s liberation movement. But Women weren’t excluded from the workforce since the rise of communism… so it was more a slight head start on higher participation rates of employment.
- russli1993 5y ago
  There was a huge women's liberation movement. The reason ccp got women on their side was by campaigning for equality between men and women. The slogan was "women can hold half of the sky". ccp pushed for women to get access in education, be free from their husbands, from traditional family roles. Why women can't do what a man can do? Why women can't learn how to read? Why women can't make decision in the house? Why women can't handle money in the house? Why women have to have their foot bound? Why women can't be industrialized workers (In 1950s, working as industrial worker was the cool job), Why women can't become soldiers? My grandma was born in 1931, she had her foot bounded, didn't learn how to read, and was arranged married to my grandpa. After the PRC was founded, she was in her 20s, a young woman, She joined ccp. And went around in her village to talk about women's rights. Why couldn't women do this, why men are so privilege etc. She got a lot of illiterate women to join a study club, learning how to read, telling the women how to standup, grow a spine, not be weak. I am surprised people didn't know there was a women's movement. If you look at the movement just by itself, the transformation of women's standing in the society and culture before and after is massive. Comparing across the global, it is still one of the largest transformations. But prephas it is all buried in the ccp, communism, and mao, all that bad rep. What actually caused, triggered, happened in the Chinese revolution between 1930 to 1960s is never talked about, never being looked at objectively. Only those who lived through that history, personally experienced it, knew the good, the bad, the legit and craziness. The world is not black and white. Things always happen for a reason. Before my grandma passed away, she had a portrait of mao in her home. And talked fondly of what ccp meant to her and the changes it brought to her life.
  - onethought 5y ago
    Because it was inseparable from the communist movement. The slogan you referenced was the communist slogan. Communism requires equality, there was no independent women’s movement. Your families experience as you described corroborates that. To strengthen my point: how many women are in political leadership positions? People’s Congress looks very male heavy…100%? communism brought equal participation, but didn’t stop patriarchy.
russli1993 5y ago
You need to look at where was women's standing in the society and culture 80, 90 years ago before the ccp. My grandma was born in 1931, to a farmer household in a village in hebei. In that age, the culture, the believe in a significant portion of the Chinese society, was that women should abide by the husband, should stay at home, do house chores, raise kids. They don't need to study. For a commoner, if you want to teach your kid, you personally contact a teacher and the teacher decide if they want to keep the kid. Like, if the teacher says this kid looks dumb, doesn't have a future, he will not take in the kid. My grandma's foot was bounded. My great grandparents didn't sent her to the teachers. She couldn't read. She was married to my grandpa through arranged marriage. During the ccp revolution between 1940 to 1950s, women joined the ccp, and pushed for women liberation. They campaigned for no more feet binding, no more arranged marriages, the right to learn how to read and knowledge, women should do whatever men can do, become industrialized factory workers, soldiers, no longer confined to their traditional female roles. That was Chinese women's equal rights social movement. No less significant then women movements elsewhere. The saying was "women can hold half of the sky". ccp's leaders started the messaging, it resonated with the people, and then people reinforced that messaging. This is how the political movement had strength and kept alive. You have to understand ccp's revolution became a wide scale revolution because the political goals matched with people's desires. People voted with their feet. My grandma joined the ccp as well. She campaigned and learned how to read from her activities with the ccp. My grandparents had 5 kids, 2 girls. My grandma was always a strong supporter of the girls, encouraged them to be strong and independent, telling them to chase big dreams and do want their hearts tell them to do. My grandpa not so much. He sided with the boys much more. Like the vast majority of Chinese families before 1990s, the family was resource constraint. They could only afford to eat meat during big holidays. My grandpa would try to give the boys better pieces of the meat to eat. Same thing with cloths. 重男轻女(preferences for boys) is Chinese culture and custom issue. Its people's thinking, its the culture, not desire or mandate of the government. The government didn't tell the people to have only boys and not girls. Its the people who did that. If you want the official and legal stance, since 1950, Chinese constitution says "women enjoys same political, economic, cultural, social rights as men". Marriage law says "Both parties must be at will, no third party shall interfere". So technically, my grandpa's action of favoring boys is against the constitution. Before the 90s, there were still places that practiced arranged marriages, technically its also illegal. You could say it the government's fault for not enforcing the laws. The reality is preferences for boys is ingrained. And if the government enforces bans on practices like arranged marriage, people say its destroying traditional culture, limiting cultural freedoms. I think the government was trying to change people's mentality and culture on gender. One of the important action was making education mandatory. This forced parents to give girls and boys both education, regardless of the social economic status of the family. And when I was going through Chinese school, we were all taught on respecting each other. Text books have many stories about heroines, women liberation, equality etc. My classes treat everyone the same, everything was based on merits. Girls did well on grades, and the teachers would tell the guys "shame, look at the girls". Many class reps were girls. At least I view girls with utmost respect. And the common saying goes "In front of women, the women is always right" I think for the young generation of Chinese, the mentality and culture is changing. Women are very much independent. Guys showing respect to a women is the baseline. There are still gender discriminations in the workplace, like some employers are reluctant to hire girls because they fear girls would get married, have kids, take parental leave, causing hassle to the business schedules. We need to fix this. But still, female bosses, engineers, managers are pretty common. Did you know one of core founder of Douyin/Tiktok is a women? Or many team leaders and managers in China's space program are women. And lots of people today actually prefer having daughters over sons. Compare the women's society standing in 1930 and now. Of course one shouldn't ignore all of the current problems. But one shouldn't dismiss the progress and efforts made in the past.

shoto_io 5y ago

ad 1. there is a very interesting Ted Talk making exactly the same point by contrasting it with the situation of women in India. https://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang_does_democracy_stifle_economic_growth/ https://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang_does_democracy_stifl...

rasz 5y ago

> Equality between men and women as evidenced by gender ratio in 0-14 and 15-24 brackets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio