3 ms·

Xi Jinping and his gold-meddling flunkies

2 points by graderjs 5y ago

graderjs 5y ago
How should we reconcile China’s impressive athletic dominance of the Games with its officials’ adolescent hypersensitivity to offences, real or imagined? Does Beijing realise how silly it looks? Olympic coverage of China is biased, as are attitudes. It seems people can't cover their achievements without criticizing them or accusing them of doping. Don't such critics realize how silly that makes them look, as they're devaluing the very Games the pretend to value? But also, no country ever really covers another country's achievements in as glowing terms as it covers its own, even for allies. For me, the above dismissal of the feelings of the Chinese people is racist, low empathy and normalizing being abusive to Chinese people; as in, why should we, Westerners, care that Chinese people are upset, their concerns are trivial, and we can do no wrong anyway? Typical fake justification bully attitude. It's basically admitting we don't understand them and are not bothered to even make the effort to walk a mile in their shoes or get their perspective. It's sad to see that attitude because it makes mutual respect seem a god-damned long way off. Maybe my recall is inaccurate but i think things were different in the coverage of Beijing 2008, the world was a lot kinder to them, i think, before the CIA spy purge of 2012, but I'm sure other trends are important too. In truth, the Australia I know has always been racist against Chinese. From seeing kids from HK get bullied in elementary school, to hearing my own family's ignorant and racist attitudes, even before people saw China as successful, Westerners have inexplicably hated them. But in the current holy war against all forms of hate speech, it seems this particular brand of bias is just too appealing to give up. Which weakens the moral stance of the crusaders by making their values seem self serving and arbitrary. A sad dynamic.

3 ms·

Xi Jinping and his gold-meddling flunkies

2 points by graderjs 5y ago

graderjs 5y ago
How should we reconcile China’s impressive athletic dominance of the Games with its officials’ adolescent hypersensitivity to offences, real or imagined? Does Beijing realise how silly it looks? Olympic coverage of China is biased, as are attitudes. It seems people can't cover their achievements without criticizing them or accusing them of doping. Don't such critics realize how silly that makes them look, as they're devaluing the very Games the pretend to value? But also, no country ever really covers another country's achievements in as glowing terms as it covers its own, even for allies. For me, the above dismissal of the feelings of the Chinese people is racist, low empathy and normalizing being abusive to Chinese people; as in, why should we, Westerners, care that Chinese people are upset, their concerns are trivial, and we can do no wrong anyway? Typical fake justification bully attitude. It's basically admitting we don't understand them and are not bothered to even make the effort to walk a mile in their shoes or get their perspective. It's sad to see that attitude because it makes mutual respect seem a god-damned long way off. Maybe my recall is inaccurate but i think things were different in the coverage of Beijing 2008, the world was a lot kinder to them, i think, before the CIA spy purge of 2012, but I'm sure other trends are important too. In truth, the Australia I know has always been racist against Chinese. From seeing kids from HK get bullied in elementary school, to hearing my own family's ignorant and racist attitudes, even before people saw China as successful, Westerners have inexplicably hated them. But in the current holy war against all forms of hate speech, it seems this particular brand of bias is just too appealing to give up. Which weakens the moral stance of the crusaders by making their values seem self serving and arbitrary. A sad dynamic.