4 ms·
Does Chinese history show they are any more immune than others to our weaknesses in living together?
by notch656c 4y ago
Does Chinese history show they are any more immune than others to our weaknesses in living together?
- mrtnmcc 4y agoChina is about 10x older than the US. We're like a six year old thinking they knowing better than grandpa.
- notch656c 4y agoOh I see you are comparing countries not cultures. In that case US is older.
- mrtnmcc 4y agoThe Europeans are not obsessed with taking down China, nor are Europeans ardent individualists as Americans are. Chinese and America have a bigger cultural gap than Europe and China in this respect.
- yorwba 4y agoAs a Chinese-speaking European, I'm getting the impression that you're using faraway places you know little about as convenient projection surfaces for an ideal contrast with the things you dislike about America. Dislike of America's recent history of conquest turns thousands of years of warfare on what is now Chinese territory into thousands of years of living on the same land without any invasions. Dislike of American individualism turns Europeans into... I'm actually not sure whether you associate any specific qualities with not being ardent individualists. Anyways, I'm quite annoyed by this, so consider yourself officially taken down.
- mrtnmcc 4y agoAmerican Individualism is a well studied value w.r.t Europeans, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/11/17/the-american-western-european-values-gap/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/11/17/the-american-w... Of course generalizing like this about groups is a cloudy lens at best but it's the premise of OP and may predict voted policy of respective countries. That said, it's been a number of years since I lived in Switzerland and I see things have changed measurably regarding official EU policy on Chinese trade, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93European_Union_relations https://wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93European_Union_rela...
- CogitoCogito 4y agoI find this perspective pretty amusing. The United States is in fact more than 3 times older than China (i.e. the PRC). The idea that modern China is wise because its ancestors were ruled by Chinese emperors seems to me basically the same as saying the west is wise because its ancestors ruled by Roman emperors. But I guess historical myths and culture are quite powerful ideas for many people.
- georgeg23 4y agoThis is the same logic hawkish American Republicans use when they say they are defending Western Values against the Chinese. What are those values? Where do they come from? Most rural Americans from Alabama who say these things haven't been to England or Germany, and if they did, they sure wouldn't recognize "their culture". Heck, they don't even need to travel to Europe.. try NYC!
- CogitoCogito 4y agoI don’t really understand your point. Are you comparing hawkish nationalist Americans to hawkish nationalist Chinese?
- georgeg23 4y agoNo, but they are not comparable because Chinese are not hawkish by any American definition.
- jemmyw 4y agoThe febrile public comments about Taiwan recently suggest they are just as hawkish
- CapricornNoble 4y agoIn your view, what is "hawkish by an American definition?" Some research on the subject: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10670564.2019.1580427?journalCode=cjcc20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10670564.2019.15... Five surveys of Chinese citizens, netizens, and elites help illuminate the attitudes that the Chinese government grapples with in managing international security policy. The results suggest that Chinese attitudes are more hawkish than dovish and that younger Chinese, while perhaps not more nationalist in identity, may be more hawkish in their foreign policy beliefs than older generations.