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The scale of some Chinese people's commitment to support of their government's chosen narrative against facts is quite impressive / scary. Zealots make great c

The scale of some Chinese people's commitment to support of their government's chosen narrative against facts is quite impressive / scary. Zealots make great cannon fodder, and the more cannon fodder the higher the chance of winning. It bodes poorly for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and any other country with a coastline along the South China Sea.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ~ George Orwell, 1984
- toxik 5y ago
  Whenever you think that you’re on the outside looking in, seeing the world for what it is while others seem blind, you should reconsider your perspective. The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. I wince when I see quotes like these spoken about a people of literal billions.
  - roastytoasty 5y ago
    You do not know how easy it is to control mass populations. Open a history book
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      You don't even need to open a history book. Just open a newspaper.
      - slig 5y ago
        Just open the window and look outside.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. Have you read 1984? Neither are the Party members. (And also, the quote doesn't mention the people.)
  - nasmorn 5y ago
    The Chinese people will surely not write about the Americans like this. 1984 is banned there.
    - bildung 5y ago
      That's apparently wrong, and your comment thus a wonderful example of what toxik meant.
      - nasmorn 5y ago
        Apparently nowadays you can buy a physical book but not talk about it online. Guess my conclusion still stands.
      - notRobot 5y ago
        In-depth view into Chinese censorship: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/why-1984-and-animal-farm-arent-banned-china/580156/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/why-1984-a...
      - oolonthegreat 5y ago
        maybe not the book itself, but if you read the article you'll see that even weirder stuff are banned: The government disallows the publication of any work by Liu Xiaobo, the determined critic of the Communist Party who in 2017 became the first Nobel Peace Prize winner since Nazi times to die in prison. Again, for a time last year Chinese citizens could not type 19, 80, and four in sequence—but they could, and still can, buy a copy of 1984, the most famous novel on authoritarianism ever written. Prefer Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World? They can buy that text, too, just as easily, although its title also joined the taboo list last winter.
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    Do you know of any examples of descent against the government that ended well for those that spoke up? I highly doubt the people are sheep and I'm pretty positive I would act in the same exact way and keep my mouth shut in order to live my life if I was living in a country with an oppressive government.
    - flohofwoe 5y ago
      The collapse of the Eastern European socialist countries 30 years ago is an excellent example. But it only works when the general public had suffered enough and isn't willing to support the regime anymore. And the economic situation needs to get worse for one or two generations, it won't happen overnight and in a working economy. A few dissidents "speaking up" to incite change is a romantic idea, but it's not enough.
      - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        It's a kind of miracle it happened in most these countries without bloodshed. You need to mobilize large parts of society and have a favorable political situation to perform a coup like this without a civil war.
      - bostonsre 5y ago
        Yea, I meant in China but those examples you provided definitely illustrate how unlikely it will be to happen in China. It's pretty sad and I can't imagine having such a bleak future, especially for those that are more oppressed than others over there.
  - dpratt 5y ago
    So, should the outside observers who noticed the mass hysteria, death and destruction in Russia, Germany, Cambodia, Myanmar, Romania, Turkey and myriad other examples during the 20th century just have realized that they needed to "reconsider their perspective"? It's entirely possible, and in fact, highly probable, that entire mass groups of people can be manipulated into collective insanity quite easily. That doesn't make them sheep, it makes them Human, and it's up to us to be aware of this aspect of our collective psychology and point it out where visible.
  - bboygravity 5y ago
    Except the quote isn't criticizing people. It's criticizing the political party which is defined by 1 person. Not billions. The (Chinese) people are the victims in this.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    I don't see anything in that quote that's specific to the Chinese in general. Most people make an at least intuitive distinction between individuals of an ethnic or national group and the ethnic or national group as an organized political entity. When we say "the Russians exterminated thousands of Polish officers in Katyn", obviously we don't mean every Russian exterminated Polish soldiers. When we say "the Germans exterminated millions of Poles", we don't mean every German was murdering Poles. We mean that the the Russians or Germans as organized political entities, led by certain people, perpetuated those crimes. Some individual Russians and Germans themselves payed for opposing such actions. Similarly with "the Chinese". That's why when there is animosity between two groups, the cautious presumption might be that someone of the other side is an enemy, but personal contact can reveal what their individual stances are and that they may differ from the political stance. FWIW, Americans themselves often suffer from a great deal of myopia and Americentrism, regardless of political leaning, and lots of people who lived under the boot of the Soviet Union who've moved to the US are sensitized to the subtler forms of psychological warfare the American public has been subjected to for decades.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties" Neither were inhabitants of all the other nations where totalitarian regimes seized power, but it did not help them. Totalitarian systems are really adept at controlling people. It is a matter of survival for them.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    I'm beginning to think this is an intentional tactic made in bad faith. Criticisms of the CCP are not criticisms of Chinese people. This was used two years ago regarding the cover up by the CCP of the Wuhan Lab. Direct parallels can be seen in US discourse regarding the actions of the Israeli government being equated to antisemitism.
  - doodlebugging 5y ago
    >about a people of literal billions. I think that so far there, billion is singular since the population of China is only about 1.5 billion. The population growth rate is also in decline and has been for a while. One and a half billion is still a big number though.
  - dqpb 5y ago
    > The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. Can Chinese people freely communicate with each other? The ability to do so is critical for unimpaired mental faculties of the collective.
  - CWuestefeld 5y ago
    Whenever you think that you’re on the outside looking in, seeing the world for what it is while others seem blind, you should reconsider your perspective. My wife's an immigrant, having grown up in Shanghai during the cultural revolution. She's got countless stories of how she was systematically lied to the entire time. For example, when she was little she was taught that children in America were largely starving too death, which the children of China were lucky that the leadership of Chairman Mao had brought them such bounty. My wife's family was systematically persecuted, in part because of their cosmopolitan exposure (her uncle was already in America, and her father was a sea captain traveling the world). Every member of her extended family, other than her grandmother, spent time in prison or work camps. I've read the forced "confession" documents from some of her family. All through this time, we know that China has been consistently suppressing information about the Tienanmen Square massacre, for example. While under Deng's regime the pendulum started to swing back toward freedom a bit, it's completely reversed again over the past several years under Xi. On a number of occasions my wife's own communications to her family in China have been filtered (e.g., postings on WeChat being removed after the fact, or email attachments being stripped out of messages). Your point that we need to be cautious about assuming that others are blinded while we have a unique ability to see the truth is well taken. But I think in this case it's really warranted.
    - killjoywashere 5y ago
      I wonder how much business Western cyber companies have with China? If I recall, the Great Firewall was actually started by a US company built out of either an IARPA or DARPA project. It wasn’t until many years later that DoD started using similar products, only then after they jailed (Shawn Carpenter).
  - javajosh 5y ago
    >The Chinese people [are] not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. Meta: sure doesn't take much bad faith to sour a good debate! "One bad apple spoils the bunch," they say. One of the two core ideas in 1984 is a) the extreme plasticity of the human mind, and b) that power finds its ultimate expression using that plasticity to cause suffering. The ruling society of 1984, the "inner circle", as represented by O'Brien, is highly self-aware (also, insane). The people, like Smith, are not sheep although he, like everyone else around him, must act like one on command, by threat of force. To characterize the victims of 1984 as sheep is miss the stunning evil of the antagonists, which is that they first found ways to make people act that way on a gross level, and who are now methodically finding ways to make them act that way on a subtle, universal level. Perhaps you, and rugged individualists like you, believe you wouldn't have anything to worry about under such a regime, and by extension if you accuse a population of actually suffering under such a regime, then it is an attack on them. I encourage you to consider the possibility that your hypothesis is wrong. Namely that you would not, by hypothesis, have survived the events of 1984. And that doesn't make you, or anyone, sheep.
    - justicezyx 5y ago
      The point in 1984 is that *everyone* can fall victim to mental manipulation, and an observer can discover the manipulation easily. Like American sees the hypocrisy of Chinese democracy, and, equally, Chinese seeing the hypocrisy of American one. They are virtually identical in the observation, and both sides can easily convince themselves of their own conviction. God, I only wish this time the leaders from the both sides are responsible ones, people like Trump on both sides can easily make wars in a wink of eyes with both sides seeing each other this way. The sideline point is that one is the worst judge of themselves...
bsjks 5y ago
People in China are taught to love their country. Seems to be working better for them than what we do in the west, the exact opposite.
thesuitonym 5y ago
We have the same problem in the US. Certain "Freedom loving" sects applaud military intervention, increased police presence, spying on citizens, and the death of any protester, peaceful or otherwise.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  That seems like a very, very, broad brush.
  - hkt 5y ago
    Sadly not - remember, the US with the UK's complicity is going to let Julian Assange rot in prison probably for the rest of his life. For engaging in an act of journalism which in all likelihood ended the Iraq war, or at least made a substantial contribution to doing so.
  - yholio 5y ago
    It's the same type of problem, but much more limited in extent. Every country has it to some degree, authoritarian regimes typically go crazy with nationalism since it's the most powerful tool they have to force their victims on the side of the aggressors against the evil foreigners.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them, as opposed to burying them as deeply as possible whilst simultaneously threatening every single citizen with, essentially, removal from society, if they speak against the chosen narrative. No country is innocent, some are, however, free (moreso, at least, enough to matter, enough to choose if the need arises).
  - stelonix 5y ago
    Those movies are more often than not glorifying such embarrassments, which make them propaganda. As an analogy for China & the US, you can say one of them is Orwellian while the other is Huxleyan. They're both oppressive, but it's about time to stop pretending only coercion is bad; propaganda is everywhere in american media and it's the same tactic used by autocracies in the 40s: spin everything you do as "us vs them they evil" and dehumanize anything your foes do as "they evil not free genocide". People who say there's a genocide in China with 0 Uygur deaths are the same to dismiss the Iraq war with millions dead; calling it what it was, a genocide, will never even pass by their brains. Double standards.
jahnu 5y ago
One of the best ways for those of us in the democratic West to combat this is to not tolerate when our own governments promote false narratives. This displays the virtues of our imperfect system better than anything else, imo. Don't tolerate lies, hypocrisy, or sophistry from our leaders even if they are nominally on 'our side'.
- hef19898 5y ago
  I am less worried about our democratic governments then I am about private entities, especially in sports and entertainment bending over to various totalitarian governments for a handful of bucks. Because that is making it easier for our governments to do the same, simply because people are used to it.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  I mean I think that is a very simplistic, limited and isolated point of view to address a population, but also very optimistic about the democratic West population capability to logically read situations. I see tennis players in China being incarcerated for speaking out, I saw recently a video of a guy trying to report about Uyghurs concentration camp, and if I was worried as Americans right now about China (not even Taiwanese are giving as much of a fuck), I am sure I would be aware of more examples. What I mean is that there are servants in the world, patriotic people that are willing to put 1 kilo of ham slice on their eyes at every press conference, we have people who believe in the second coming of god and people who believe in Q theories, we have accepted the incarceration of people who reported about war crimes in the middle east, we have accepted attacks on women right to abort, we have accepted the killing on our streets of black people and minorities. All this spotlight on NK, China, Russia, is nothing more than a way to keep the people of the west distracted from their own misery, if people of the West were able to solve anything, there are already enough problems that internally need to be taken care of what kind of example can the west be to the world
  - asimpletune 5y ago
    Well, because despite those failures, things can always be worse. This game is not zero-sum.
api 5y ago
America was like this during the run-up to the Iraq war. The last iteration of "cancel culture" was when anyone questioning the war was shouted down as un-patriotic. Search for the Dixie Chicks, a country group who spoke out against the war, and read about what happened to them. One of the things I've learned in my years on this planet is that propaganda works. It works very very well. That's why governments, corporations, and special interests spend so much money on it.
- areyousure 5y ago
  > Search for the Dixie Chicks, a country group who spoke out against the war, and read about what happened to them. In case anyone is curious, the group fka the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the Iraq war in 2003. In 2005, they won a Grammy award. In 2007, they won five Grammies, including all three overall major categories (excluding "best new artist" from the four general field categories, because they weren't new). They are also the first female band in chart history to have three albums debut at No. 1. In 2020, the group dropped the word "Dixie" from their name ... because of cancel culture? In any case, the Chicks then performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. It seems like the summary of their story is that at worst they "switched sides", attracting fewer fans from Texas (though their tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_%26_Accusations_Tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_%26_Accusations_Tour still finished with a couple shows in Texas) but more from the rest of the country, something they had struggled with. Harvey Weinstein even produced one of their films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks:_Shut_Up_and_Sing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks:_Shut_Up_and_Sing
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I agree with your main point, and it definitely adds some pessimism to my world view. Regarding the Dixie Chicks, I'm not sure that's a good exemplar to support your main point. (See sibling comment that suggests they did quite well.)
yalogin 5y ago
I used to think but the last few years in the US taught me that people everywhere have the same capacity for zealotry, they may have to be reached/triggered differently that’s all.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  My commentary is (intended to be) more about how effectively it's been triggered than any particular group of people's susceptibility to it. The effectiveness of the execution of it. Plenty of groups of Western folks get super amped up over any threat to the continuity of their chosen self destructive, unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyles to which they've become accustomed. Because freedom!
  - asimpletune 5y ago
    Plato talked a lot about this. It's very easy for politicians to feed people things that they like but aren't good for them, and this is the normal course of affairs in history. It doesn't really mean anything bad about the USA in the great picture, because we're no different than the rest of the world. That being said, good things happen when "divine providence" (or whatever) produces leaders who feed the people things that improve their health. History in this way is sort of chaotic and kind of a waiting game. The best way to minimize the time in between downward spirals is by strengthening the fabric of society when you have the opportunity, by teaching them - for lack of a better word - how to recognize knowledge.
    - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
      Education is the silver bullet. But... You can bring a horse to the library, but you can't make it read
mherdeg 5y ago
My low-information view is that the Chinese government is an extraordinarily effective communications agency who very clearly understands the role that university students play in transmitting culture, especially when studying abroad, and has very openly worked to help spread their message throughout their diaspora. Many US universities have a Chinese Student & Scholar Association and it's not like they try to hide that they are arms of the CCP. (Just for a random example https://myinvolvement.org/organization/cssaatualbany https://myinvolvement.org/organization/cssaatualbany - "The Chinese Student and Scholar Association at the University of Albany is joined and organized by the Chinese students and scholars at the University of Albany of their own record. It is a nonprofit organization that is supported and guided by CCP through the Consulate-General of the PRC in New York.") Mass organization can do incredible things -- a group of people is much more effective than the individuals.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  I wonder how much of it is similar to East Germany with their informants, it's possible that even overseas the students don't dare speak out because someone in their friend group could report them. And as the press release said, even the student's parents back home got harassed by the cops. It'd be an effective way of control, "Hey why didn't you come to our student org meeting last week?".
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
  The CSSA is part of the CCP’s overseas surveillance and intimidation arm. I speculated last year that the CSSA was also involved in the arrest of Chinese student Luo Daiqing from the University of Minnesota. He was arrested when he set foot in China for Xinnie the Pooh meme tweets he made while in the states.[0] [0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/university-of-minnesota-student-jailed-in-china-for-tweeting-memes-of-chinese-president-xi-jinping-how-was-he-caught/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/university-of-min...
stelonix 5y ago
You only have to look at this very website to see the same happening with US citizens' support for their government's chosen narrative. It bodes poorly for Puerto Rico, Cuba, Nicaragua and every other nation who had military juntas propped up by the USG and still suffer from american influence. Some will go to great lengths to foment hatred against whistleblowers, such as Assange or Snowden.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Oh yes, I totally agree, but I just think this is on a different scale, and I might be way wrong on this, but... Imagine a US college student studying overseas commenting about the US failures in the Vietnam War or the Iraq War over nonexistent WMDs. Would other US students harass that individual, and if so, would they report the individual to US "authorities" to make sure a message was passed on to the individuals parents? I get riled up about bad opinions, but I'm not going out of my way to make their lives miserable or report them to authorities. Fuck man, I've got shit to do of my own.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    > I'm not going out of my way to make their lives miserable But things like that often happen in the US, like, for example, in the case of people who spoke against the invasion of Iraq. This can even escalate further, I will never forget the “freedom fries” or “Today Baghdad, tomorrow Paris!”
    - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
      These are other students though, if that makes a difference. Kids, in a foreign country, who should be either studying, drinking, or fucking. Doing shit because their parents are a thousand miles away. Anything but home country goddamn politics. Again, maybe I'm wrong, but usually that level of zealotry requires a few years of career and relationship failure that's out of reach to the average student.
- someguydave 5y ago
  The US governemnt is inept and oppressive in its ways, but you are acting exactly as a hostile foreign agent would, stirring up strife and making exaggerated equivocations to create division.
bostonsre 5y ago
I personally haven't met anyone from China who has liked their government. I would assume there is some selection bias there and those that love their country are more likely to stay home, but would be really interested to talk to a true believer. I wouldn't be surprised if pressure was applied to those individuals to harass the one that spoke out against the party. The regime is brutal and most will toe the line when their family is threatened back home.
- vidarh 5y ago
  If you want to talk to a true believer, go to reddit, on /r/sino. /r/china has the people critical to China, /r/sino has the pro-CCP crowd. As for similar subs I'd expect the threshold for getting banned to be fairly low, though.
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    I'd be pretty curious to know if there are many people working for the CCP in propaganda in the /r/china forum. The possibility of astroturfing makes it kind of impossible to know the truth. But, I will definitely give it a read.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      /r/china is very critical of the CCP, so I doubt there are many there - even relatively innocuous-looking stuff positive on China tends to get piled on there. /r/sino is opposite.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Have you met them at a $30k+/yr university? I think that's an important piece of context here. The current Chinese system affords these students the ability to go to prestigious universities abroad. Things are going good for these students, so why wouldn't they like the government that grants them such privilege? Folks who've immigrated for other reasons might have a different experience...
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d0mine 5y ago
The same can be said about the citizens of the empire. Unfortunately, it is the global problem. Especially, countries with the oil are affected (e.g., remember Iraq and fake 911, WMD connections). Though, countries with social leaning should be concerned too I'm looking at you Europe: universal health care is a cardinal sin that will be corrected by the empire sooner or later.
4bpp 5y ago
Eh, I don't think that this pattern is even remotely a uniquely Chinese thing; this is just how most people react defensively of the country and narrative they identify with when it is seen as threatened by a hostile country. Look into any Reddit thread on the topic of Russia and Ukraine, and you will see the same patterns play out with Americans giving each other backrubs for the most implausible theories imputing cartoonish evil to their geopolitical opponents (these days I quite often see celebrated posts suggesting that the US should withdraw its military protection from the ungrateful Germans which surely will result in Russia invading them), while accusing every disagreeing poster of being personally on the payroll of the Russian propaganda apparatus. Of course, the situation in Russian popular forums is not better in the slightest, and the relevant patterns of conspiratorial thinking are reproduced at even the smallest of scales all the time. It has become a bit of a trope on 4chan that some contingent of posters will, if more than one post disagrees with their viewpoint, immediately claim that the two posts were actually made by the same person sockpuppeting; and last time I checked the recurring threads for some video games I play (still among the best sources for real-time information and gossip about updates and what-not...), they were all getting torn apart by mutual accusations of off-site conspiracies (usually on Discord) to push some viewpoint or meme or another.
Workaccount2 5y ago
There is also a large contingent of young english speaking CCP loyalists who go around liberal American social media and absolutely shred the US about everything (to much applause). It just looks like typical, albeit extreme, young liberal anti-establishment (and race centric) rhetoric. Dig through their profile though and you'll see they are oddly sympathetic to China. These are people who are simultaneously calling for America to be dissolved on the grounds of repaying for slavery while also arguing that the youth of Hong Kong are confused and mislead.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ~ George Orwell, 1984

toxik 5y ago
Whenever you think that you’re on the outside looking in, seeing the world for what it is while others seem blind, you should reconsider your perspective. The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. I wince when I see quotes like these spoken about a people of literal billions.
- roastytoasty 5y ago
  You do not know how easy it is to control mass populations. Open a history book
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    You don't even need to open a history book. Just open a newspaper.
    - slig 5y ago
      Just open the window and look outside.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. Have you read 1984? Neither are the Party members. (And also, the quote doesn't mention the people.)
- nasmorn 5y ago
  The Chinese people will surely not write about the Americans like this. 1984 is banned there.
  - bildung 5y ago
    That's apparently wrong, and your comment thus a wonderful example of what toxik meant.
    - nasmorn 5y ago
      Apparently nowadays you can buy a physical book but not talk about it online. Guess my conclusion still stands.
    - notRobot 5y ago
      In-depth view into Chinese censorship: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/why-1984-and-animal-farm-arent-banned-china/580156/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/why-1984-a...
    - oolonthegreat 5y ago
      maybe not the book itself, but if you read the article you'll see that even weirder stuff are banned: The government disallows the publication of any work by Liu Xiaobo, the determined critic of the Communist Party who in 2017 became the first Nobel Peace Prize winner since Nazi times to die in prison. Again, for a time last year Chinese citizens could not type 19, 80, and four in sequence—but they could, and still can, buy a copy of 1984, the most famous novel on authoritarianism ever written. Prefer Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World? They can buy that text, too, just as easily, although its title also joined the taboo list last winter.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Do you know of any examples of descent against the government that ended well for those that spoke up? I highly doubt the people are sheep and I'm pretty positive I would act in the same exact way and keep my mouth shut in order to live my life if I was living in a country with an oppressive government.
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    The collapse of the Eastern European socialist countries 30 years ago is an excellent example. But it only works when the general public had suffered enough and isn't willing to support the regime anymore. And the economic situation needs to get worse for one or two generations, it won't happen overnight and in a working economy. A few dissidents "speaking up" to incite change is a romantic idea, but it's not enough.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      It's a kind of miracle it happened in most these countries without bloodshed. You need to mobilize large parts of society and have a favorable political situation to perform a coup like this without a civil war.
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      Yea, I meant in China but those examples you provided definitely illustrate how unlikely it will be to happen in China. It's pretty sad and I can't imagine having such a bleak future, especially for those that are more oppressed than others over there.
- dpratt 5y ago
  So, should the outside observers who noticed the mass hysteria, death and destruction in Russia, Germany, Cambodia, Myanmar, Romania, Turkey and myriad other examples during the 20th century just have realized that they needed to "reconsider their perspective"? It's entirely possible, and in fact, highly probable, that entire mass groups of people can be manipulated into collective insanity quite easily. That doesn't make them sheep, it makes them Human, and it's up to us to be aware of this aspect of our collective psychology and point it out where visible.
- bboygravity 5y ago
  Except the quote isn't criticizing people. It's criticizing the political party which is defined by 1 person. Not billions. The (Chinese) people are the victims in this.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  I don't see anything in that quote that's specific to the Chinese in general. Most people make an at least intuitive distinction between individuals of an ethnic or national group and the ethnic or national group as an organized political entity. When we say "the Russians exterminated thousands of Polish officers in Katyn", obviously we don't mean every Russian exterminated Polish soldiers. When we say "the Germans exterminated millions of Poles", we don't mean every German was murdering Poles. We mean that the the Russians or Germans as organized political entities, led by certain people, perpetuated those crimes. Some individual Russians and Germans themselves payed for opposing such actions. Similarly with "the Chinese". That's why when there is animosity between two groups, the cautious presumption might be that someone of the other side is an enemy, but personal contact can reveal what their individual stances are and that they may differ from the political stance. FWIW, Americans themselves often suffer from a great deal of myopia and Americentrism, regardless of political leaning, and lots of people who lived under the boot of the Soviet Union who've moved to the US are sensitized to the subtler forms of psychological warfare the American public has been subjected to for decades.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties" Neither were inhabitants of all the other nations where totalitarian regimes seized power, but it did not help them. Totalitarian systems are really adept at controlling people. It is a matter of survival for them.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  I'm beginning to think this is an intentional tactic made in bad faith. Criticisms of the CCP are not criticisms of Chinese people. This was used two years ago regarding the cover up by the CCP of the Wuhan Lab. Direct parallels can be seen in US discourse regarding the actions of the Israeli government being equated to antisemitism.
- doodlebugging 5y ago
  >about a people of literal billions. I think that so far there, billion is singular since the population of China is only about 1.5 billion. The population growth rate is also in decline and has been for a while. One and a half billion is still a big number though.
- dqpb 5y ago
  > The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. Can Chinese people freely communicate with each other? The ability to do so is critical for unimpaired mental faculties of the collective.
- CWuestefeld 5y ago
  Whenever you think that you’re on the outside looking in, seeing the world for what it is while others seem blind, you should reconsider your perspective. My wife's an immigrant, having grown up in Shanghai during the cultural revolution. She's got countless stories of how she was systematically lied to the entire time. For example, when she was little she was taught that children in America were largely starving too death, which the children of China were lucky that the leadership of Chairman Mao had brought them such bounty. My wife's family was systematically persecuted, in part because of their cosmopolitan exposure (her uncle was already in America, and her father was a sea captain traveling the world). Every member of her extended family, other than her grandmother, spent time in prison or work camps. I've read the forced "confession" documents from some of her family. All through this time, we know that China has been consistently suppressing information about the Tienanmen Square massacre, for example. While under Deng's regime the pendulum started to swing back toward freedom a bit, it's completely reversed again over the past several years under Xi. On a number of occasions my wife's own communications to her family in China have been filtered (e.g., postings on WeChat being removed after the fact, or email attachments being stripped out of messages). Your point that we need to be cautious about assuming that others are blinded while we have a unique ability to see the truth is well taken. But I think in this case it's really warranted.
  - killjoywashere 5y ago
    I wonder how much business Western cyber companies have with China? If I recall, the Great Firewall was actually started by a US company built out of either an IARPA or DARPA project. It wasn’t until many years later that DoD started using similar products, only then after they jailed (Shawn Carpenter).
- javajosh 5y ago
  >The Chinese people [are] not some herd of sheep without mental faculties. Meta: sure doesn't take much bad faith to sour a good debate! "One bad apple spoils the bunch," they say. One of the two core ideas in 1984 is a) the extreme plasticity of the human mind, and b) that power finds its ultimate expression using that plasticity to cause suffering. The ruling society of 1984, the "inner circle", as represented by O'Brien, is highly self-aware (also, insane). The people, like Smith, are not sheep although he, like everyone else around him, must act like one on command, by threat of force. To characterize the victims of 1984 as sheep is miss the stunning evil of the antagonists, which is that they first found ways to make people act that way on a gross level, and who are now methodically finding ways to make them act that way on a subtle, universal level. Perhaps you, and rugged individualists like you, believe you wouldn't have anything to worry about under such a regime, and by extension if you accuse a population of actually suffering under such a regime, then it is an attack on them. I encourage you to consider the possibility that your hypothesis is wrong. Namely that you would not, by hypothesis, have survived the events of 1984. And that doesn't make you, or anyone, sheep.
  - justicezyx 5y ago
    The point in 1984 is that *everyone* can fall victim to mental manipulation, and an observer can discover the manipulation easily. Like American sees the hypocrisy of Chinese democracy, and, equally, Chinese seeing the hypocrisy of American one. They are virtually identical in the observation, and both sides can easily convince themselves of their own conviction. God, I only wish this time the leaders from the both sides are responsible ones, people like Trump on both sides can easily make wars in a wink of eyes with both sides seeing each other this way. The sideline point is that one is the worst judge of themselves...

bsjks 5y ago

People in China are taught to love their country. Seems to be working better for them than what we do in the west, the exact opposite.

thesuitonym 5y ago

We have the same problem in the US. Certain "Freedom loving" sects applaud military intervention, increased police presence, spying on citizens, and the death of any protester, peaceful or otherwise.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
That seems like a very, very, broad brush.
- hkt 5y ago
  Sadly not - remember, the US with the UK's complicity is going to let Julian Assange rot in prison probably for the rest of his life. For engaging in an act of journalism which in all likelihood ended the Iraq war, or at least made a substantial contribution to doing so.
- yholio 5y ago
  It's the same type of problem, but much more limited in extent. Every country has it to some degree, authoritarian regimes typically go crazy with nationalism since it's the most powerful tool they have to force their victims on the side of the aggressors against the evil foreigners.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them, as opposed to burying them as deeply as possible whilst simultaneously threatening every single citizen with, essentially, removal from society, if they speak against the chosen narrative. No country is innocent, some are, however, free (moreso, at least, enough to matter, enough to choose if the need arises).
- stelonix 5y ago
  Those movies are more often than not glorifying such embarrassments, which make them propaganda. As an analogy for China & the US, you can say one of them is Orwellian while the other is Huxleyan. They're both oppressive, but it's about time to stop pretending only coercion is bad; propaganda is everywhere in american media and it's the same tactic used by autocracies in the 40s: spin everything you do as "us vs them they evil" and dehumanize anything your foes do as "they evil not free genocide". People who say there's a genocide in China with 0 Uygur deaths are the same to dismiss the Iraq war with millions dead; calling it what it was, a genocide, will never even pass by their brains. Double standards.

jahnu 5y ago

One of the best ways for those of us in the democratic West to combat this is to not tolerate when our own governments promote false narratives. This displays the virtues of our imperfect system better than anything else, imo. Don't tolerate lies, hypocrisy, or sophistry from our leaders even if they are nominally on 'our side'.

hef19898 5y ago
I am less worried about our democratic governments then I am about private entities, especially in sports and entertainment bending over to various totalitarian governments for a handful of bucks. Because that is making it easier for our governments to do the same, simply because people are used to it.
lnxg33k1 5y ago
I mean I think that is a very simplistic, limited and isolated point of view to address a population, but also very optimistic about the democratic West population capability to logically read situations. I see tennis players in China being incarcerated for speaking out, I saw recently a video of a guy trying to report about Uyghurs concentration camp, and if I was worried as Americans right now about China (not even Taiwanese are giving as much of a fuck), I am sure I would be aware of more examples. What I mean is that there are servants in the world, patriotic people that are willing to put 1 kilo of ham slice on their eyes at every press conference, we have people who believe in the second coming of god and people who believe in Q theories, we have accepted the incarceration of people who reported about war crimes in the middle east, we have accepted attacks on women right to abort, we have accepted the killing on our streets of black people and minorities. All this spotlight on NK, China, Russia, is nothing more than a way to keep the people of the west distracted from their own misery, if people of the West were able to solve anything, there are already enough problems that internally need to be taken care of what kind of example can the west be to the world
- asimpletune 5y ago
  Well, because despite those failures, things can always be worse. This game is not zero-sum.

api 5y ago

America was like this during the run-up to the Iraq war. The last iteration of "cancel culture" was when anyone questioning the war was shouted down as un-patriotic. Search for the Dixie Chicks, a country group who spoke out against the war, and read about what happened to them. One of the things I've learned in my years on this planet is that propaganda works. It works very very well. That's why governments, corporations, and special interests spend so much money on it.

areyousure 5y ago
> Search for the Dixie Chicks, a country group who spoke out against the war, and read about what happened to them. In case anyone is curious, the group fka the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the Iraq war in 2003. In 2005, they won a Grammy award. In 2007, they won five Grammies, including all three overall major categories (excluding "best new artist" from the four general field categories, because they weren't new). They are also the first female band in chart history to have three albums debut at No. 1. In 2020, the group dropped the word "Dixie" from their name ... because of cancel culture? In any case, the Chicks then performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. It seems like the summary of their story is that at worst they "switched sides", attracting fewer fans from Texas (though their tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_%26_Accusations_Tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_%26_Accusations_Tour still finished with a couple shows in Texas) but more from the rest of the country, something they had struggled with. Harvey Weinstein even produced one of their films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks:_Shut_Up_and_Sing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks:_Shut_Up_and_Sing
CoastalCoder 5y ago
I agree with your main point, and it definitely adds some pessimism to my world view. Regarding the Dixie Chicks, I'm not sure that's a good exemplar to support your main point. (See sibling comment that suggests they did quite well.)

yalogin 5y ago

I used to think but the last few years in the US taught me that people everywhere have the same capacity for zealotry, they may have to be reached/triggered differently that’s all.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
My commentary is (intended to be) more about how effectively it's been triggered than any particular group of people's susceptibility to it. The effectiveness of the execution of it. Plenty of groups of Western folks get super amped up over any threat to the continuity of their chosen self destructive, unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyles to which they've become accustomed. Because freedom!
- asimpletune 5y ago
  Plato talked a lot about this. It's very easy for politicians to feed people things that they like but aren't good for them, and this is the normal course of affairs in history. It doesn't really mean anything bad about the USA in the great picture, because we're no different than the rest of the world. That being said, good things happen when "divine providence" (or whatever) produces leaders who feed the people things that improve their health. History in this way is sort of chaotic and kind of a waiting game. The best way to minimize the time in between downward spirals is by strengthening the fabric of society when you have the opportunity, by teaching them - for lack of a better word - how to recognize knowledge.
  - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
    Education is the silver bullet. But... You can bring a horse to the library, but you can't make it read

mherdeg 5y ago

My low-information view is that the Chinese government is an extraordinarily effective communications agency who very clearly understands the role that university students play in transmitting culture, especially when studying abroad, and has very openly worked to help spread their message throughout their diaspora. Many US universities have a Chinese Student & Scholar Association and it's not like they try to hide that they are arms of the CCP. (Just for a random example https://myinvolvement.org/organization/cssaatualbany https://myinvolvement.org/organization/cssaatualbany - "The Chinese Student and Scholar Association at the University of Albany is joined and organized by the Chinese students and scholars at the University of Albany of their own record. It is a nonprofit organization that is supported and guided by CCP through the Consulate-General of the PRC in New York.") Mass organization can do incredible things -- a group of people is much more effective than the individuals.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
I wonder how much of it is similar to East Germany with their informants, it's possible that even overseas the students don't dare speak out because someone in their friend group could report them. And as the press release said, even the student's parents back home got harassed by the cops. It'd be an effective way of control, "Hey why didn't you come to our student org meeting last week?".
bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
The CSSA is part of the CCP’s overseas surveillance and intimidation arm. I speculated last year that the CSSA was also involved in the arrest of Chinese student Luo Daiqing from the University of Minnesota. He was arrested when he set foot in China for Xinnie the Pooh meme tweets he made while in the states.[0] [0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/university-of-minnesota-student-jailed-in-china-for-tweeting-memes-of-chinese-president-xi-jinping-how-was-he-caught/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/university-of-min...

stelonix 5y ago

You only have to look at this very website to see the same happening with US citizens' support for their government's chosen narrative. It bodes poorly for Puerto Rico, Cuba, Nicaragua and every other nation who had military juntas propped up by the USG and still suffer from american influence. Some will go to great lengths to foment hatred against whistleblowers, such as Assange or Snowden.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Oh yes, I totally agree, but I just think this is on a different scale, and I might be way wrong on this, but... Imagine a US college student studying overseas commenting about the US failures in the Vietnam War or the Iraq War over nonexistent WMDs. Would other US students harass that individual, and if so, would they report the individual to US "authorities" to make sure a message was passed on to the individuals parents? I get riled up about bad opinions, but I'm not going out of my way to make their lives miserable or report them to authorities. Fuck man, I've got shit to do of my own.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  > I'm not going out of my way to make their lives miserable But things like that often happen in the US, like, for example, in the case of people who spoke against the invasion of Iraq. This can even escalate further, I will never forget the “freedom fries” or “Today Baghdad, tomorrow Paris!”
  - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
    These are other students though, if that makes a difference. Kids, in a foreign country, who should be either studying, drinking, or fucking. Doing shit because their parents are a thousand miles away. Anything but home country goddamn politics. Again, maybe I'm wrong, but usually that level of zealotry requires a few years of career and relationship failure that's out of reach to the average student.
someguydave 5y ago
The US governemnt is inept and oppressive in its ways, but you are acting exactly as a hostile foreign agent would, stirring up strife and making exaggerated equivocations to create division.

bostonsre 5y ago

I personally haven't met anyone from China who has liked their government. I would assume there is some selection bias there and those that love their country are more likely to stay home, but would be really interested to talk to a true believer. I wouldn't be surprised if pressure was applied to those individuals to harass the one that spoke out against the party. The regime is brutal and most will toe the line when their family is threatened back home.

vidarh 5y ago
If you want to talk to a true believer, go to reddit, on /r/sino. /r/china has the people critical to China, /r/sino has the pro-CCP crowd. As for similar subs I'd expect the threshold for getting banned to be fairly low, though.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  I'd be pretty curious to know if there are many people working for the CCP in propaganda in the /r/china forum. The possibility of astroturfing makes it kind of impossible to know the truth. But, I will definitely give it a read.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    /r/china is very critical of the CCP, so I doubt there are many there - even relatively innocuous-looking stuff positive on China tends to get piled on there. /r/sino is opposite.
dfxm12 5y ago
Have you met them at a $30k+/yr university? I think that's an important piece of context here. The current Chinese system affords these students the ability to go to prestigious universities abroad. Things are going good for these students, so why wouldn't they like the government that grants them such privilege? Folks who've immigrated for other reasons might have a different experience...
- 5y ago

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d0mine 5y ago

The same can be said about the citizens of the empire. Unfortunately, it is the global problem. Especially, countries with the oil are affected (e.g., remember Iraq and fake 911, WMD connections). Though, countries with social leaning should be concerned too I'm looking at you Europe: universal health care is a cardinal sin that will be corrected by the empire sooner or later.

4bpp 5y ago

Eh, I don't think that this pattern is even remotely a uniquely Chinese thing; this is just how most people react defensively of the country and narrative they identify with when it is seen as threatened by a hostile country. Look into any Reddit thread on the topic of Russia and Ukraine, and you will see the same patterns play out with Americans giving each other backrubs for the most implausible theories imputing cartoonish evil to their geopolitical opponents (these days I quite often see celebrated posts suggesting that the US should withdraw its military protection from the ungrateful Germans which surely will result in Russia invading them), while accusing every disagreeing poster of being personally on the payroll of the Russian propaganda apparatus. Of course, the situation in Russian popular forums is not better in the slightest, and the relevant patterns of conspiratorial thinking are reproduced at even the smallest of scales all the time. It has become a bit of a trope on 4chan that some contingent of posters will, if more than one post disagrees with their viewpoint, immediately claim that the two posts were actually made by the same person sockpuppeting; and last time I checked the recurring threads for some video games I play (still among the best sources for real-time information and gossip about updates and what-not...), they were all getting torn apart by mutual accusations of off-site conspiracies (usually on Discord) to push some viewpoint or meme or another.

Workaccount2 5y ago

There is also a large contingent of young english speaking CCP loyalists who go around liberal American social media and absolutely shred the US about everything (to much applause). It just looks like typical, albeit extreme, young liberal anti-establishment (and race centric) rhetoric. Dig through their profile though and you'll see they are oddly sympathetic to China. These are people who are simultaneously calling for America to be dissolved on the grounds of repaying for slavery while also arguing that the youth of Hong Kong are confused and mislead.