China is teh evil, OMFG!111!@

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Joseph
Our Army is just over 500,000. Our Air Force is around 350,000, The Navy is under 400,000, and the Marine Corp is at 180,000. China has around 2,000,000 in the Army along.

Yeah, but they have four times the population.

[:) Smiley]

Military headcounts aren't the whole story - the US Army relies on contractors to do stuff such as cook food and drive trucks that other militaries do in-house.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I can't help but getting the impression you much prefer to attack opponents integrity to addressing their claims, which rather suggests you can't address their claims. Care to prove that impression wrong?

Nice try, but I have addressed his claims in numerous posts and provided numerous examples that prove his claims are false. I'll provide more later, although there is really no need to do so.

Mindseye's argument can be summed up as: he has met some Chinese people who are greedy and selfish, therefore, he concludes that 1.3 billion Chinese are greedy and selfish. His claim is so self-evidently flawed that it should not require evidence to prove it is wrong.

[Agathon]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: China is teh evil, OMFG!111!@

Originally posted by Joseph
Our Army is just over 500,000. Our Air Force is around 350,000, The Navy is under 400,000, and the Marine Corp is at 180,000. China has around 2,000,000 in the Army along.

Yes, but most of the Chinese are armed with sharpened pieces of fruit.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Smiley
Military headcounts aren't the whole story - the US Army relies on contractors to do stuff such as cook food and drive trucks that other militaries do in-house.

I think that's absolutely correct. Headcount is a poor indicator of military power in China's case, because in China the military serves other important purposes than just defense. For example, the military is the primary organization for dealing with natural disasters, of which China sadly seems to have so many (major killer floods, for example, have been a near-annual occurance for centuries).

I think the military also serves as sort of a state-sponsored safety valve for offering poor rural kids a path off the peasant farm. For many out in the Chinese "sticks", the military might be the only real chance to get an education. I think this is a significant reason for the army's enormous size. And really, as I have mentioned before, when you see some of the provincial soldiers wearing their "high-water" pants and civilian woollen sweaters or flannel shirts under their uniform jackets, riding around in pontoon-fendered 1930's-style trucks, you have to wonder just how potent a fighting force they represent.

As for the recent hardware and technology build-up, I think China is just playing catch-up. Are there many nations of comparable population or economic strength who have an insignificant military? Most great powers have a substantial military for a number of reasons (including national pride & prestige). I don't think China is so different in that respect.

I used to think that wars of agression just didn't fit the Chinese psyche very well - it was hard for me to imagine Chinese caring enough about another country to want to attack it (Taiwan aside). However the recent growth of anti-Japanese sentiment has been a little worrying, and I am now re-assessing that opinion. In general, I still feel that there really aren't many likely targets within China's reach (or near-future reach) which could possibly be worth the price of war, excepting the potential wild card of Taiwan.

Chinese people like to claim they are peaceful and not given to wars of aggression. While that claim may not be exactly historically correct, I have to say I'm generally I'm inclined to think that this is more or less true. Chinese have seen so very much upheaval and turmoil in the last 150 or so years, and have only recently begun to taste the prosperity of peaceful development. I don't think it's hard to see why most Chinese feel that national stability is the paramount priority, more important than things like political reform.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Tingkai

Mindseye's argument can be summed up as: he has met some Chinese people who are greedy and selfish, therefore, he concludes that 1.3 billion Chinese are greedy and selfish. His claim is so self-evidently flawed that it should not require evidence to prove it is wrong.

Well, I'm not terribly surprised you would sum up my argument that way, but I think anyone who bothered to read what I wrote might get a different take.

By the way, have you ever - even once - set foot in mainland China? Just wondering.

[mindseye]

By the way, Tingkai, I'm still waiting for your comments on Lu Xun's criticisms on this very topic. Are his arguments also discredited because he is a "self-evident" racist?

[Agathon]

When did you first become become a racist bigot, Mindseye?

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Agathon
When did you first become become a racist bigot, Mindseye?

Uh, when I stopped beating my wife?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Nice try, but I have addressed his claims in numerous posts and provided numerous examples that prove his claims are false. I'll provide more later, although there is really no need to do so.

If by "addressed" you mean "said they're wrong", well, yes ...

Mindseye's argument can be summed up as: he has met some Chinese people who are greedy and selfish, therefore, he concludes that 1.3 billion Chinese are greedy and selfish. His claim is so self-evidently flawed that it should not require evidence to prove it is wrong.

So, in tinkiverse, if a sample is small, it is necessarily unrepresentative?

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Nice try, but I have addressed his claims in numerous posts and provided numerous examples that prove his claims are false. I'll provide more later, although there is really no need to do so.

This was the same BS he gave me before he put me on his ignore list. I showed him how all his points were basically wrong and he still kept claiming he had presented evidence to support his case.

I'd like to see Tingkai show us how the police in China are a charitable organization. I do remember that Asher had a thread about it.

Mindseye's argument can be summed up as: he has met some Chinese people who are greedy and selfish, therefore, he concludes that 1.3 billion Chinese are greedy and selfish. His claim is so self-evidently flawed that it should not require evidence to prove it is wrong.

I believe he cited a published source for his claims. It wasn't even some quickly googled minutia that you seem to rely solely on.

Question:

Is calling someone clueless worse that calling someone a racist and continuously vehemently attacking their character on this forum? Frankly, I'm now confused by the rules here. Tingkai is definitely a repeat offender in this issue. Although it has been ignored each time.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Agathon
Great, this is degenerating into another Sinophobic thread.

I dislike many things that China does, but I'll be the first to admit that the welfare of individual Chinese has been greatly improved in the last 15 years. I also believe that a sudden democratic revolution would probably be a bad thing. Look at Russia for example.

Again, where are you in China, Aggie? We should hook up sometime.

But that doesn't mean that it isn't painfully obvious that many people simply resent the growing power of China for their own nationalistic reasons. I think that's silly – it won't make a difference anyway. Better to be accepting of the Chinese. The fact is that they aren't particularly belligerent anyway. They get pissed over territories that they think are theirs, and they do have good cases in many of those. What they don't have is the British, American, French ideal of travelling thousands of miles to make war on people for no good reason.

I don't see any claiming nationalism here at all. Could you please point it out, if it's so obvious.

As for the belligerent claim. I'd say China is about as belligerent as any other nation. I've provided quite a few examples the last time we discussed this. Here's something that didn't come out in the papers concerning those peaceful Japanese riots: Not a single Japanese person was harmed during the riots. However, there were multiple cases of beatings of Chinese and Koreans, including some instances of murder. It seemed that in their furor some protestors didn't even bother to check the identity of their victims. Shocking from the Chinese, who are so much better and more peaceful than us.

I know what you'll say: this happens everywhere. Which means that we should just ignore it and talk about homicide cases by nutjobs in America, because they represent all westerners. Afterall we're only here to promote our nationalist agendas.

[mindseye]

Ok, Tingkai, this post is for YOU.

Since I put a lot of work into it, I hope I can expect a reasoned response, at least something a little more reasoned than "no evidence is required because mindseye's racist arguments are self-evidentally flawed".

Below are what some others have to say on the topic of "ma mu" ("indifference") in China. The various writers have slightly different takes: "selfishness", "indifference", "apathy", "numbness", "lack of empathy", "voyeurism" (i.e. watching but not helping others in trouble), but they are all writing about aspects of the phenomena I was referring to, i.e. Chinese treat people they know very well, but treat strangers with utter disregard. I don't think any of these writers could be fairly called a "racist". Most of them live in, or have lived in China. In fact, some of the quotes are from mainland Chinese themselves.

I don't necessarily agree with every last conclusion voiced below. Rather, my point is to show that I am far from the only person who has noticed this aspect of mainland Chinese culture, and that I am not, as you have claimed, making unfounded racist generalizations from a few personal encounters. As for my own observations, they are based on hundreds if not thousands of incidents great and small, personally witnessed on a near-daily basis over the course of 4.5 years of living in China and studying its culture first-hand.

As you are reading, I hope you will pay special attention to phrases such as "widely commented on by foreigners", "nearly every expat I have known in China has many stories that validate this point", "veteran expats in Shanghai", "media around the country have carried many reports", "pervasive throughout the entire public space". These phrases appear to pose a significant problem for your claim that I have just picked a few biased, personal anecdotes and generalized.

The quotes below are excerpts, I have provided links to the original texts.

The first piece is a great starting point, a lengthy and thoughtful essay on the topic. The author is a Chinese-speaking American who lives in Shanghai, and a well-respected blogger.

Andres Gentry
(blog)

http://www.andresgentry.com/thoughts/2003/10/instant_gratifi.html

Me first and the gimmie gimmies

(...)
This inability to see past your own person is something widely commented on by foreigners in China. It takes different forms: crowds that gather around accidents but do absolutely nothing to help the injured people, the prevalence of "mei you" when asking for something from someone who knows perfectly well they have it or know where it is, corruption that is an in-your-face expression of selfishness, and confusing government bureaucracies which are essentially codified no-responsibility zones.

All of these situations share a basic characteristic: only the very narrowly defined interests of a single person are considered. We can go through examples of each to get a better idea of this.

Yesterday (almost like manna from heaven for the purposes of this essay), there was a fire in the apartment block across the street from mine. I was walking back from buying vegetables at a nearby market and saw a gathering crowd and the unmistakeable scent of ash. The fire engines hadn't arrived yet, but I could predict what was going to happen: people would come running to stare, point, and laugh, but certainly not to help. I ran upstairs to get my camera to document it.

And it all happened as I had expected: people on foot, on bike, and even on motorized bicycle came galloping to the scene. A crowd many hundreds strong surrounded the apartment and chattered away on someone else's misfortune. Children ran across the fire hose lines, laughing as they jumped across them. It had the air of a fair or a carnival: someone else's misfortune was cause for their merriment.
(...)
The fact that a café (named "Mei You", or "Don't have it" - mindseye) would bank on the prevalence of the phrase to draw in customers is an unflattering commentary on the unwillingness of many Chinese to help out their fellow humans.
(...)
And that, indeed, is the crux of matters: things are so fashioned in China that oftentimes narrow-minded selfishness is the most reasonable choice. In simple terms, the culture rewards immorality.

From birth to old-age, the lesson of base selfishness is reinforced again and again. Your physical needs should be taken care of as soon as possible (he is referring to public urination and defecation - mindseye). If you are at a train station, screw everyone else and jump the queue because you want your train ticket now. As a government bureaucrat, steal as much as money as you can as quickly as you can because you might not have another opportunity at the trough. If you see someone else in pain, stare, amuse yourself, but never ever do something to help because if you help someone then you become responsible for that person and that is completely against your narrow self-interests.

This idea is sometimes taken to its logical, but most grotesque end. At accidents that occur at places and times where there are no witnesses, but one of the drivers is injured, the other driver sometimes intentionally hits the other person again to kill him. Why? Because if he stayed alive the other driver would be responsible for his medical bills, but if he's dead then he doesn't have an impact on the other driver's life or pocketbook. Pause and consider the twistedness of that. Then pause again to consider that such stories are common enough to make it onto CCTV.

Self-interest is not immoral by definition, but I think it is fair to say that in the above situations it has sufficiently metamorphasized into an indefensible immorality and I think it is also fair to say that its commonness points at deep problems in the culture itself.

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Peking Duck
(blog)
Excerpt from a comments thread, written by Richard, the site's author

http://pekingduck.org/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=2223

Sorry,but the mentality described (i.e. ma mu - mindseye) was never prevalent in America. There may have been gangs, there may have been violence, but never the ma mu described above, never the crowd that would gather around an injured person and not offer to help. I'll never forget when my boss in Beijing during my first week on the job told me how in China, if a person was lying on the sidewalk bleeding just about everyone would walk right past him. Now, there may be a lot of reasons for this, like a population so huge that you can't take everyone's problems on your own shoulders.But it is something unique to China, and nearly every expat I have known in China has stories that validate this point. Usually many, many stories, especially about the driving etiquette, which is where it comes out in a very scary way.

It was from here that Lu Xun began to develop his famous theories related to the Chinese propensity for voyeurism (mamu). As an essayist and short story writer, his manifesto was far from being political - instead, his target was the general pleasure Chinese people took in watching other people's suffering. In one such short story, entitled "Medicine", Lu depicted an execution scene of a woman, believed to be based on Qiu Jin, editor of the Chinese Women's Journal and one of the country's first feminist scholars, who was executed for a failed uprising. "Craning their necks as far as they would go, they looked like so many ducks, held and lifted by some invisible hand," Lu writes, equating his fellow countrymen with senseless waterfowl.

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Running Dog
(blog)

http://www.running-dog.co.uk/news.asp?NewsItem=0115

Does being Chinese mean never having to say you're sorry?
(excerpt)

VETERAN EXPATS in Shanghai have usually come to terms with the fact that things are different here. They have lost the sort of moral disgust they felt when they first arrived, when they noticed the way that everyone on the street seemed lost in their own private world, attending directly to their personal concerns and caring very little about anyone else around them, particularly when it came to forming queues. If someone is in distress or requires help, the People's people turn away. The People's people don't get involved. And generally, the People's people never say sorry for anything.

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China Through A Lens
Interview of famous director, playwright and photographer Feng Xiaoning

http://big5.china.com.cn/english/2002/Jul/36837.htm

(...)
(Lu Xun) quit his profession as a doctor and became a professional writer after seeing a movie in which, when a Chinese farmer was killed cruelly by Japanese soldiers, many of the Chinese audience laughed. Deeply hurt by people's numbness and indifference, Lu Xun began to use his pen to wake up those Chinese people who were lacking in basic national feelings.

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City Weekend Magazine
(Shanghai-based monthly print magazine)
From an article on Lu Xun
Laura Johnson-Hill

http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/en/beijing/features/2004_20/Cover_LuXun?portal_skin=printable

(...)
A patriot determined to improve what he viewed to be a national flaw, Lu Xun's reputation rapidly became one of a critic who would offer to write searing insight into the nation's flaws. And in many ways, say scholars, he hit the mark. "The voyeurism he described is alive and well today," says Wang Ling, a Beijing-based journalist.
(...)
"Lu Xun wouldn't be shocked to see voyeurism is still an issue today," says Sun Yu, curator of the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing. (...)"People would watch, but not really care. The idea is to look out for yourself."

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Shanghai Star
(blog)
December 15, 2003

http://www.tuur.be/internet/cruelty.html

Cruelty and Crowds
(...)
The spectators just gather as observers to enjoy the spectacle (of an accident or fight). But these on-lookers murmuring and even joking are often accused of selfishness and apathy. Recently, media around the country have carried many reports criticizing such spectators.

In May this year, a man with a mental disorder in Xiangtan, in Central China's Hunan Province, attempted to commit suicide and climbed to the top of a six-storey building. After the police and rescuers had managed to calm the man down, hundreds of viewers on the street below started to cry, "Jump, jump". The man finally jumped off the building after a three-hour stand-off with the police. Applause and cheers burst out from among the crowd.

Last month, China Central Television reported that last year in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a 15-year-old girl was forced by another three girls to take off all her clothes and stand naked in public as punishment for stepping on one of the girl's feet.

The three even compelled the naked girl to parade through the streets among whistles and screams from surrounding viewers, yet no one stepped forward to stop the cruel behaviour. Four young men under the age of 18 from among the on-lookers then grabbed the scared girl, led her away and raped her.

"I was frightened," the victim told CCTV. "Yet, I was not afraid of the villains insulting me. It was the complicated expression in the viewers' eyes that scared me. It was these people who made me helpless."

In yet another incident, last month, a thief jumped into a canal in Ningbo, of East China's Zhejiang Province, after he was cornered by his pursuers. Many people stood around the canal and watched the thief drown in water. A man finally went down into water to pull the thief out after being promised by the police that he would receive a reward of 500 yuan (US$60).

Such phenomena are not new in China. Rather, they have deeply-rooted cultural connections to the country's long social evolution over thousands of years.

Cai Keping, a columnist, wrote that the great curiosity among Chinese resulted from the nature of an agricultural society, with farmers usually living dull and uneventful lives without variation or entertainment.

He recalled that when he was a child, local villagers would flock onto the narrow road, sometimes with bowls and chop-sticks still in their hands, to watch passing trucks, which were mysterious to them.

"Such spectators revealed a mentality of lowliness and self-belittlement," he said. "The viewers had been accustomed to following blindly, yet were unaware of this. The syndrome is a major defect of the Chinese personality."

Lu Xun, a great man of letters in China, was famous for his sharp criticism of Chinese people's inherent weaknesses, such as fatuity and indifference. He wrote in one article that when he was studying in Japan, his compatriots even cheered when seeing pictures of Chinese people beheaded in a film. He said such morally benighted people could only be senseless viewers or objects for public discussion, no matter how physically strong they were.
(...)
Lin also attributed Chinese's indifference to the lack of legal protection. He cited the traditional parting instruction of Chinese mothers to their sons: "Don't meddle in public affairs."

"That is because, in a society where legal protection is not given to personal rights, indifference is always safe and has an attractive side to it difficult for Westerners to appreciate," (renowned writer Lin Yutang) wrote.

He said that the indifference was not a natural characteristic of the people, but rather a conscious product of Chinese culture.

"The Chinese people take to indifference as the English take to umbrellas, because the political weather always looks a little ominous for the individual who ventures a little too far alone. In other words, indifference has a distinct 'survival-value' in China," he argued.

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Beijing Review
(online Chinese news magazine)
R. Scott Macintosh

http://www.bjreview.com.cn/En-2005/05-16-e/expateye.htm

I, Me, Mine

(...)
Sadly, the “me first” attitude is not relegated to cars. It seems pervasive through the entire public space, encompassing bikes and rickshaws to those who push onto subways or into the front of a line. And it consistently tops Westerners’ biggest complaints about China.

(...)

In my experience of living in Beijing I have come to know the Chinese as wonderful people: friendly, accommodating, and incredibly sweet. So why don’t people behave that way in public? In the public sphere the paradox couldn’t be more drastic.

(...)

Another writer, Lu Xun, felt the indifference in Chinese society amounted to a lack of empathy for others, as illustrated by the voyeuristic tendency to rubberneck.

(...)

Chinese indifference can be difficult for Westerners. I watched recently, with a dozen or so others, as a woman and a child took a spill from a bike into the middle of the road. I wondered if I should break from the group to help her. I realized that if we were in Europe, or Latin America, or the United States, or somewhere else, some chivalrous chap might have dashed out to her aid. I’ve never felt comfortable with being the one who is first to prove their heroics, especially if the situation is minor. I feel embarrassed. And it seems like I’m embarrassing the other persons as well. So I stood with the others and watched as the woman struggled to pick up the bike and laughed uncomfortably. The kid was wide-eyed and trembling like a Chihuahua. The light turned green and the group walked past her. It felt strange to think that one does right by doing nothing at all and for a moment I felt caught in the crossfire of cultural ethics. Should I have helped her even though she did not expect help? Was it my place to set some kind of example? Would it have helped at all or caused her a further loss of face? Would I have been injecting the values of the West into a situation where it was not welcome? Is it best to adopt the social norms of the place you’re living or act in a way that is more becoming of the society you’re from? What would you have done?

-----------

China Herald
(blog)
Fons Tuinstra

http://www.chinaherald.net/2005_06_05_chinaherald_archive.html

(...)
In the big cities I do see that the importance of the place where people come from might sometimes lose some of its importance, but are then replaced by other alliances, that divide the Chinese. That lack of feeling of belonging to each other makes it very hard to develop any cooperation that surpasses region, educational and other divides.

-----------

One final mention: I'm told that Jasper Becker's latest book, "The Chinese", treats this social phenomenon in detail. I cannot quote from it because my copy is currently in transit from Amazon.com. However, Becker is a highly regarded Chinese-speaking sinologist, his recent work "Hungry Ghosts" was a ground-breaking study of the famines during the Great Leap Forward. He was the first westerner to do on-the-ground interviews and research in some of the rural provinces worst affected.

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Okay, Tingkai, there's my evidence. Now, let's see yours.

I'm looking forward to your reply, and sincerely hoping that it will rise above the name-calling and "no evidence is required" level you have displayed so far in this thread.

- mindseye

[Spiffor]

Mindseye: There's a psychological mechanism called "dissolution of responsibility" (or something like that - I don't know the English word for it). Basically, when there are many people around, people do not feel compelled to help their fellow man because they expect somebody else to do it.

A typical (harmless) example is that of a hitch-hiker, who'd have much more chance of being picked up by each individual car on a deserted road than on a busy one.

Since China has had a huge population for a long time now, don't you think that such a "dissolution of responsibility" simply took root in the Chinese collective psyche?

[Az]

this is not the debate, Spiffor. you're answering to the causes of any such phenomenon, if exists.