The China Politics Thread - Page 9

On May 22 2022 04:13 JimmiC wrote:

Chinese people travel over seas to Canada, wow it is sure nice amd the governmemt is not as awful, people treat them well. Then they stay.

On May 23 2022 01:48 No0n wrote:


Not so sure about this. When it comes to chinese students studying abroad, theres been a huge increase in those returning home compared to staying in foreign countries. This is an older article from 2018, but it shows the trend of chinese students electing to return home rather than stay in their study abroad countries. https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-home-after-studying-abroad/

I think a major factor people don't understand that Carnivorous Sheep doesn't really explain is that, at least for the young people of China born maybe 1985 onwards, all they've seen is growth in the economy and living standards go up. It's not like young people are idiots that are brainwashed either. It's not incredibly difficult to get a VPN in China. IIRC Huawei phones when they were still on Android literally came preinstalled with a VPN lol. Young chinese people know much more of what's going on in the west compared to western people knowing whats going in China. A lot of my friends who were overseas students initially came here with high expectations of the US being welcoming and friendly and ended up being disappointed. Imagine, you come to a foreign country to study that you have respect for. But when you get there, all you see every day in their media is how shit your country is and how bad it is, even though that doesn't line up at all with your actual lived experience, then get insulted for almost no reason just because you came from that country. That would leave a bad taste in your mouth wouldn't it? You'd probably think "man, the government was right. western people really do not like us. And at least our government is doing a good job improving our living standards" That would push you farther into just hanging out w/ people from your home country and desire to go home.

For the HK situation, they kind of fucked themselves in 1997 when they were ~20-25% of the GDP of China. HK people are notorious for being snobby and assholes to people from mainland China. They did not try to help improve the situation of the entire China, nor did they attempt to be friendly with the mainland people back in 1997. Much of the problems in HK really don't come from being governed by China, but their own system e.g. HK is such a business hub because of low taxes, but they are only able to have such low taxes since a large portion government income comes from sales of land. This incentivizes the government to increase the price of land by limiting supply of it i.e. no new housing. Plus a third of their voting population are literally companies, not people, since their system includes a vote for industries. So you have a generation of young people who grew up living in a place controlled by corporations and a perception that the future will not improve. That's a really easy group to take advantage of to further political goals; in this case, independence movements or if you buy into conspiracy theories, western insurrection. But in reality even independence wouldn't help HK at all. And the only people that possibly could've helped HK were the mainland people, but due to shitty behaviour, HKers already burned that bridge a long time ago.

edit: Just wanted to mention the perception of the strength of chinese censorship is greatly exaggerated in the west. You can totally criticize the government in personal conversations and on the internet. It just gets sketch when you have a huge audience and are calling for some sort of action against the government. But yeah, where do you think the xi = pooh meme came from lol.

On May 23 2022 04:10 PtossParty wrote:


Chinese have such a gigantic chip on their shoulder. Everything is westerns fault or HK fault. They come in and take up education slots in top US universities and well paying US jobs while allowing zero Americans to do the reverse and that is still not good enough for them. On top of that they are so incredibly arrogant about how everything is so much better in China while living in the US and doing zero to integrate.

On May 23 2022 05:09 Sermokala wrote:
You can criticize a lot of stuff about Chinese people, like their tourists.

On May 23 2022 05:57 Djabanete wrote:

This strikes me as racist. The conversations we were having before Carnivorous Sheep showed up and said "ya'll are racist af" did not strike me as racist because I didn't see anybody making or implying generalizations about Chinese people.

Also pretty uncharitable IMO.

On May 23 2022 05:09 Sermokala wrote:
To be fair college educated Chinese people work a lot of benefits for America and for those they are coming over.

The economic opportunity for college educated people in China is electronically better than staying in America. The education gap between the average worker and a graduate of an American university is massive. They will be able to bypass any censorship from the government and still enjoy every economic benefit possible. These aren't the people buying concrete coffins in an empty city.

They staff a lot of teaching assistant positions eagerly, especially in the stem fields, allowing for the university system to provide a lot more of the same classes without burdening professors. Anyone who says they "take up spots" is perpetuating a racist trope and a misunderstanding on how colleges work. Yes asians are overrepresented in stem fields and colleges in general but it has nothing to do with Chinese students.

On a more perverse side for America these college students are a fertile ground for spy recruitment and creates a long term destabilizing influence on china. They need to get through liberal arts classes to get that degree and the ideas in those class's are not compatable with a dictatorial regime. Not everyone is going to be converted to western propaganda but ideas like political representation and human rights can and will be spread back to China by people that have money and will be in positions of economic authority.

You can criticize a lot of stuff about Chinese people, like their tourists, but you can't expect to extrapolate examples of things to the entire nationality with authority.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Communist Party has invested massively in science in order to make China the leading world power by 2050. The state aims to achieve this goal through "military-civilian fusion." According to this doctrine, civilian research must also serve the People's Liberation Army. Patriotism is a researcher's duty.

A joint investigation by 11 European media outlets [...] documents the importance of collaborative research with European universities to China's plans for its own advancement. [...] We discovered that German scientists have collaborated closely with colleagues affiliated with the Chinese military. Almost 350 joint studies attest to this, many of them in sensitive fields like artificial intelligence and quantum science that will decide the future of warfare.

For the next stage of the investigation, DW and its partners scrutinized the publicly available data of a number of top Chinese scientists, who [...] had been in Germany for an extended period during the past 10 years, and who were conducting research in the fields of mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology. With the help of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., we identified 80 people.

We then analyzed 26 particularly striking profiles in detail. All of these scientists now work at elite universities that cooperate particularly closely with the military. Twenty-two of them were [...] brought back via the Thousand Talents Plan. Twelve of them had a fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation, a renowned [German] state-funded body that supports academic research.

According to the Max Planck Society, "around one-third" of all scientific management positions in China today are held by people who were trained in Germany. These include the chemist who is advancing military materials research and the engineer who is training the next generation for the defense industry.

Didi Kirsten Tatlow [...] believes Germany's great openness to visiting Chinese scientists is a serious security risk. "In English, I like to say that there's a saying: Don't bite the hand that feeds you. I would actually turn it around and say: Don't feed the hand that bites you."

On May 23 2022 06:55 PtossParty wrote:


There is nothing racist about it. I was supporting people from HK. They are the same ethnicity as people from mainland China. The guy I am responding to said the people from HK were snobby and assholes.

On May 22 2022 09:59 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Ya'll are racist af and it strengthens chinese ultra nationalism in a reactionary manner

On May 23 2022 12:35 No0n wrote:


Here's an article detailing some actions certain hong kongers have committed upon finding out you speak mandarin or are from mainland china. It's unfortunately a paid article, but I think the examples in the first few paragraphs are good enough to get some examples of why mainlanders might not be so friendly to hong kongers. Celebrating china getting invaded by Japan, who committed some of the worst atrocities against, as you said, the same ethnicity, might not be seen in such a friendly light and make you not want to support the HK protesters.

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3032041/hong-kongs-hatred-mainlanders-feeds-xenophobic-undercurrents-its

I also didn't say everything is the west or HK's fault. I was explaining how some chinese feel about the situation and adding some background info to better explain Carnivorous Sheep's posts. There are many complaints chinese people have with the chinese government. As JimmiC said, some people decide to stay in the west because they prefer it. If you wanted to hear complaints about chinese government from chinese people from china, just ask them.

For sure I could have worded my thoughts better, and if what I said was confusing, then that's on me.

On May 23 2022 23:41 ghost7754 wrote:

China is violently repressing the people of Hong Kong but that is ok because a paywalled article says some Hong Kongers were rude. Keep carrying that facist water.

On May 24 2022 01:21 gobbledydook wrote:


Look, having lived in Hong Kong for a long time, it is actually true that many Hong Kongers hate the Chinese and call them all sorts of bad name. One popular one was to call them locusts, as in they sweep in with overwhelming numbers and take everything. That was used in particular to refer to the vast numbers of Chinese tourists before Covid happened.

There are also Chinese netizens who call Hong Kongers ungrateful brats that need a lesson beaten into them. The mutual disrespect is real here.

On May 23 2022 01:48 No0n wrote:


Not so sure about this. When it comes to chinese students studying abroad, theres been a huge increase in those returning home compared to staying in foreign countries. This is an older article from 2018, but it shows the trend of chinese students electing to return home rather than stay in their study abroad countries. https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-home-after-studying-abroad/

I think a major factor people don't understand that Carnivorous Sheep doesn't really explain is that, at least for the young people of China born maybe 1985 onwards, all they've seen is growth in the economy and living standards go up. It's not like young people are idiots that are brainwashed either. It's not incredibly difficult to get a VPN in China. IIRC Huawei phones when they were still on Android literally came preinstalled with a VPN lol. Young chinese people know much more of what's going on in the west compared to western people knowing whats going in China. A lot of my friends who were overseas students initially came here with high expectations of the US being welcoming and friendly and ended up being disappointed. Imagine, you come to a foreign country to study that you have respect for. But when you get there, all you see every day in their media is how shit your country is and how bad it is, even though that doesn't line up at all with your actual lived experience, then get insulted for almost no reason just because you came from that country. That would leave a bad taste in your mouth wouldn't it? You'd probably think "man, the government was right. western people really do not like us. And at least our government is doing a good job improving our living standards" That would push you farther into just hanging out w/ people from your home country and desire to go home.

For the HK situation, they kind of fucked themselves in 1997 when they were ~20-25% of the GDP of China. HK people are notorious for being snobby and assholes to people from mainland China. They did not try to help improve the situation of the entire China, nor did they attempt to be friendly with the mainland people back in 1997. Much of the problems in HK really don't come from being governed by China, but their own system e.g. HK is such a business hub because of low taxes, but they are only able to have such low taxes since a large portion government income comes from sales of land. This incentivizes the government to increase the price of land by limiting supply of it i.e. no new housing. Plus a third of their voting population are literally companies, not people, since their system includes a vote for industries. So you have a generation of young people who grew up living in a place controlled by corporations and a perception that the future will not improve. That's a really easy group to take advantage of to further political goals; in this case, independence movements or if you buy into conspiracy theories, western insurrection. But in reality even independence wouldn't help HK at all. And the only people that possibly could've helped HK were the mainland people, but due to shitty behaviour, HKers already burned that bridge a long time ago.

edit: Just wanted to mention the perception of the strength of chinese censorship is greatly exaggerated in the west. You can totally criticize the government in personal conversations and on the internet. It just gets sketch when you have a huge audience and are calling for some sort of action against the government. But yeah, where do you think the xi = pooh meme came from lol.

On May 23 2022 01:48 No0n wrote:


Not so sure about this. When it comes to chinese students studying abroad, theres been a huge increase in those returning home compared to staying in foreign countries. This is an older article from 2018, but it shows the trend of chinese students electing to return home rather than stay in their study abroad countries. https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-home-after-studying-abroad/

I think a major factor people don't understand that Carnivorous Sheep doesn't really explain is that, at least for the young people of China born maybe 1985 onwards, all they've seen is growth in the economy and living standards go up. It's not like young people are idiots that are brainwashed either. It's not incredibly difficult to get a VPN in China. IIRC Huawei phones when they were still on Android literally came preinstalled with a VPN lol. Young chinese people know much more of what's going on in the west compared to western people knowing whats going in China. A lot of my friends who were overseas students initially came here with high expectations of the US being welcoming and friendly and ended up being disappointed. Imagine, you come to a foreign country to study that you have respect for. But when you get there, all you see every day in their media is how shit your country is and how bad it is, even though that doesn't line up at all with your actual lived experience, then get insulted for almost no reason just because you came from that country. That would leave a bad taste in your mouth wouldn't it? You'd probably think "man, the government was right. western people really do not like us. And at least our government is doing a good job improving our living standards" That would push you farther into just hanging out w/ people from your home country and desire to go home.

For the HK situation, they kind of fucked themselves in 1997 when they were ~20-25% of the GDP of China. HK people are notorious for being snobby and assholes to people from mainland China. They did not try to help improve the situation of the entire China, nor did they attempt to be friendly with the mainland people back in 1997. Much of the problems in HK really don't come from being governed by China, but their own system e.g. HK is such a business hub because of low taxes, but they are only able to have such low taxes since a large portion government income comes from sales of land. This incentivizes the government to increase the price of land by limiting supply of it i.e. no new housing. Plus a third of their voting population are literally companies, not people, since their system includes a vote for industries. So you have a generation of young people who grew up living in a place controlled by corporations and a perception that the future will not improve. That's a really easy group to take advantage of to further political goals; in this case, independence movements or if you buy into conspiracy theories, western insurrection. But in reality even independence wouldn't help HK at all. And the only people that possibly could've helped HK were the mainland people, but due to shitty behaviour, HKers already burned that bridge a long time ago.

edit: Just wanted to mention the perception of the strength of chinese censorship is greatly exaggerated in the west. You can totally criticize the government in personal conversations and on the internet. It just gets sketch when you have a huge audience and are calling for some sort of action against the government. But yeah, where do you think the xi = pooh meme came from lol.

On May 24 2022 04:21 HaFnium wrote:

1. Funny how you are blaming the "HK government" and the HK system - which is nothing more than a puppet regime. China/CCP laid out a framework for Hong Kong - "one country two system" (Proposed by Deng XiaoPing as a "unique" idea) with eventualy universal suffrage for the governer. They did not really honour this promise and is interefering with the everyday politics, restricting HK ppl's freedom etc... Jiang Zemin also said “Well water [Hong Kong] does not mix with river water [the Mainland]”

2. Most of the hate of the Hong Kong people is directed against the CCP. In fact a lot of them or their parents/grandparents fled the CCP - obviously some fled the war with Japan/the civil war - most still have relatives back home. You get some feeling of anti-Chinese people but it is by no means a majority. Some of it could be behaviour issues/

Hong Kong people do want to improve mainland China - a year after Tiananmen Square protests/masscare more than 150,000 people went to the memorial. You can also look at the amount of fund raised during flooding/earthquakes. A lot of HK people are quite optimistic after the handover initially....

3. Not many people (if any) wanted HK independence - they are not stupid afterall. What they want is to have their freedom/rights - which has been promised in the treaty but never fulfilled.