Are the Chinese political prisoners even behind their own computer screens?

[Lord Merciless]

If Americans are patriotic, why can't others?

UR and Tassadar may whine about their countries all the time in private, but they will always jump to their own country's defense publicly.

[mindseye]

Serious question.

Fair enough, I'll try to give you a serious answer.

I was in an internet cafe the other day, and in debate had some of the stupidest and short sided political misconceptions tossed at me by Chinese internet users.

First of all, you were probably dealing with young people (i.e. college-aged or younger). Not a lot of job-holding adults are killing time in chat rooms. Young people here are more nationalistic than westerners. They don't go through the same kind of rebellion and alienation phase that young westerners do. For this and other reasons (e.g. the one child policy), young Chinese are often rather immature for their age by western standards.

Together, these reasons go a long way in explaning the responses you received. I venture to guess if you had a similar chat with 14-year old American high school boys you would get a similar response.

but wouldn't it make quite a bit more sense if each zig zagging comment we are troubled with daily were first identified as laced with a dose of fear?

No, it wouldn't. What have they to fear? It would be extremely difficult to track down the speaker. There are zillions of "internet cafes" all over China, using them gives you complete anonymity.

People are jailed and downright abused for speaking out against any and every government policy in the middle kingdom

That's what you might conclude if you based your arguments solely on western press stories. Certainly this does happen, however it is exceptional. Generally, you have to do something very public to call down that kind of wrath. I hear people complain all the time about the gov't, they dont' vanish in the middle of the night.


A more fundamental, problem with your apprehensions regarding life in China is that you are applying western standards to a Chinese situation. You have to understand what Chinese do and don't care about before you can accurately decide what is and is not a problem in China. For example, many westerners blame Beijing for China's extensive use of capital punishment, yet most Chinese people support it.

I'm not faulting you for this, it's human nature, but you need to be more wary of it if you want to speak credibly on cross-cultural issues. Of course this works both ways.

Like any place, China has it's share of problems, some of them enormous. Unfortunately many are traceable to the political system. However, this is a nation and culture in a period of transformation of astonishing speed and scale - including change in the political sphere. The recent firings of the national health minister and the mayor of Beijing are evidence of this.

By and large, most Chinese are satisfied with their current political system. They feel it's stable, and guiding the country in the right direction (i.e. economic development). These two things are critically important to Chinese. They complain about corruption, the lack of an independant press, and many other issues. However, they dont' think a revolution is necessary to fix these problems.

[Mao]

Great job mindseye, I kinda gave up trying to defend the PRC, take on my standard!

(...and for those that have actually read my babble, you all know I'm not a rabid commie)

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Re: Are the Chinese political prisoners even behind their own computer screens?

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Is UR really that annoying?

Ah, failing to tackle my arguments, DD resorts to ad hominems.

[DinoDoc]

Re: Re: Re: Are the Chinese political prisoners even behind their own computer screens?

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Ah, failing to tackle my arguments, DD resorts to ad hominems.

You weren't here. There weren't any arguements to tackle.

[loinburger]

Curse the repeated RE:'s. They're vomitorious.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by loinburger
Curse the repeated RE:'s. They're vomitorious.

Wutang! Preach on!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by mindseye
A more fundamental, problem with your apprehensions regarding life in China is that you are applying western standards to a Chinese situation. You have to understand what Chinese do and don't care about before you can accurately decide what is and is not a problem in China. For example, many westerners blame Beijing for China's extensive use of capital punishment, yet most Chinese people support it.

This is the fundamental reason underlying the question, "Have you been to China?"

Certainly, it is not essential to go to China to understand the cultural differences, but it certainly helps, and you'll get first information.

Now, let me qualify that a bit. A sightseeing tour that rushes you around various places won't give you a deeper insight of the Chinese culture. You actually need to stay in the country for an extended amount of time, and actively seek out and study how your average Chinese tick.

[Cruddy]

This thread seems to be about foreigner having warped, twisted views of reality.

I've never known anything different on any forum.

Perhaps you were chatting to a Chinese version of Eliza to give the impression there was a human being on the other end?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Cruddy
Perhaps you were chatting to a Chinese version of Eliza to give the impression there was a human being on the other end?

That's a pretty sophisticated piece of software

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by loinburger
It'd be fine with me if we weren't allowed to criticize a country if we've never visited it -- the number of ignorant "Lol, it's America's fault" or "Lol, Americans are stupid" posts would suddenly take a nosedive.

I don't think that's the point. The point is your starting position of criticism should not be that of ignorance.