China is teh evil, OMFG!111!@

[GePap]

Originally posted by mindseye

GePap, could you maybe go read the other examples I listed in the other thread first? I'm getting tired of re-typing this stuff. Like I said before, it's something you see in a myriad of ways, great and small, every day.

If you want more examples, just let me know how many and what type. I could also point you to articles written by others (other "racists"?) on the same topic, but like I already said, better yet is to ask anyone who actually lives here.

I added this particuliar example because (1) it was such a grotesque, extreme multi-layered example, and 2) it's been on my mind lately.

Instead of giving me "examples" of everyday horros of corruption, which you can get from around the world, not only China (which is my point), why not some of that cultural annalysis you spoke of?

Because again, examples of corrupt and self-interested officials letting the public get screwed for their own personal profit are a dime a dozen in the third world.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
More specifically, the problem is linked to low paid officials who see people enriching themselves around them. This creates a breeding ground for corruption. You can't mix capitalism into a socialist system without tearing apart society.

This isn't specifically a Chinese problem. My Indians friends keep calling India the most corrupt country inthe world. You can't get anything done without a bribe. Markets and socialism just don't mix.

I quite agree on poorly paid officials, but I don't really see how it's tied to a capitalism/socialism mix. The phenomenon, after all, is well known from plenty of pre-modern bureaucracies, and Western countries closer to the socialist end of the mixed economy aren't generally more corrupt than those closer to the free market end.

[chequita guevara]

But we aren't dealing with pre-modern societies, but with modern ones.

As for the Western welfare states, it's like cooking. You can pour hot oil into water safely. You cannot pour water into hot oil without an explosion. Adding socialist elemetns to a capitalist society won't cause things to fall apart, but the reverse is true.

[Last Conformist]

I suspect that underpaid officials would be a recipe for corruption in a capitalist society too.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

Ya think? Like its been asserted for decades by Arendt and others that totalitarianism is isolating, and you take a population only recently (and barely) out of totalitarianism, and you start telling them to enrich themselves, and they end up money grubbing indivualists. Will wonders never cease!!!

No, that's not it. It's not money-grubbing or enrichment. It's at a more fundamental level.

As I have said many times already, Chinese view their social sphere in a fundamentally different way than westerners do. It's split sharply into two worlds: the people you know -- and strangers. To people they know, Chinese are very kind, polite and generous. I agree with DaShi that Chinese exceed westerners in these respects, with people they know. I think both DaShi and I have said this multiple times before. It seems to get lost amidst the charges of racism.

On the other hand, people Chinese don't know usually count for little or nothing. So, it's not just about money.

Example: many westerners have witnessed the sight of a huge crowd gathered around someone in distress, but no one helping. Someone struck by a car may lie bleeding in the street. 100 - 200 people may come running from blocks away to gather around and ogle (inevitably, there will be a few @ssholes laughing and joking). But not a soul will assist the victim. Because they are a stranger.

I have witnessed this phenomenon myself, and I know many others who have as well. There are similar accounts in the blogosphere. I don't think this happens in many other cultures, regardless of income level. This happens less often in big modern Chinese cities (more evidence that these attitudes can be changed), yet it does still occur, even in Shanghai.

It's this attitude that provides the foundation for other issues like putting personal profit ahead of public welfare. It's because the general public are strangers that Chinese don't care much about them, not because they are money grubbers.

IMO, this is also the reason why so many Chinese resent westerners haranging them about human rights. Most Chinese simply don't care about some dissident imprisoned somewhere, he's a stranger. And since they don't care, they cannot conceive that foreigners actually could care. So instead, they interpret the western criticisms as thinly-veiled attempts to "hold China back".

Personally I think it's sad and extremely regrettable that so many Chinese don't care more about strangers, but I certainly don't HATE them for it.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by GePap


Instead of giving me "examples" of everyday horros of corruption, which you can get from around the world, not only China (which is my point), why not some of that cultural annalysis you spoke of?

Because again, examples of corrupt and self-interested officials letting the public get screwed for their own personal profit are a dime a dozen in the third world.

I have written on the topic of the Chinese "split" view of the social sphere at least several times now. Must I re-type it each time a lazy GePap slouches into a thread?

[mindseye]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

More specifically, the problem is linked to low paid officials who see people enriching themselves around them. This creates a breeding ground for corruption. You can't mix capitalism into a socialist system without tearing apart society.

This isn't specifically a Chinese problem. My Indians friends keep calling India the most corrupt country inthe world. You can't get anything done without a bribe. Markets and socialism just don't mix.

Che, you may be interested in the following SF Chronicle story (from my "hope springs eternal" file). It's one of the most encouraging articles on China I have seen in some time. By the way, did you get my recent pm? I really meant it.

China's inequities energize New Left
Failures of reform buoy new thinking

Jehangir S. Pocha
San Francisco Chronicle
June 19, 2005

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/19/INGK0D963J1.DTL

Beijing -- This city's soaring glass towers and giant neon signs make it seem like the new mecca of global capitalism. But behind the glitz lie rising inequalities and falling social services that are fueling the rise of China's New Left.

This is a loose coalition of academics who challenge China's market reforms with a simple message: China's failed 20th century experiment with communism cannot be undone in the 21st century by embracing 19th century-style laissez-faire capitalism.

China is "caught between the two extremes of misguided socialism and crony capitalism, and suffering from the worst of both systems," says Wang Hui, a professor of literature at Beijing's Tsinghua University. His passionate denunciations of China's market reforms in Du Shu, a magazine he edits, are partly credited with energizing China's New Left intellectuals. "We have to find an alternate way. This is the great mission of our generation."

Such grand visions notwithstanding, the New Left's adherents don't offer a coherent set of alternate policies. Some are hard-liners, who say they rue the violence of the Maoist years, but remain enchanted with the sociopolitical initiatives of that period, such as collectivization.

But the majority of New Left intellectuals are moderates who recognize that old Communist dogma lies discredited. They say they simply want to rein in the excesses of China's market reforms, which have created widespread inequities.

China may be the world's fastest-growing economy, but it is also one of the world's most unequal societies. In a country where people used to save for months to buy a Flying Pigeon bicycle, the roads now are jammed with gleaming Audis and Buicks.

But among them, the unlucky ones who have missed the opportunities that have come with economic reforms still pedal their now-rusty Flying Pigeons. Free access to education and health care has been drastically cut, especially in rural areas, and property that was once seized from the rich and redistributed to the poor is being taken from farmers and given to developers.

Wang says it's time for people to understand that China's problems are the result of "bad policies and bad governance," not merely fallout from market mechanics.

Cui Zhi Yuan of Tsinghua University, a leading New Left thinker, says the crux of the problem is that "the government is more focused on helping export manufacturers than agriculture and rural welfare," which affect far more people.

One of the largest expenses in the budget is not education or health care, he says, but tax rebates to exporters. So, the government is returning money to domestic and multinational exporters while cutting welfare programs.

Wang and Cui say that with businesspeople now allowed to join the Communist Party, a government-business cabal is looting wealth that rightly belongs to China's workers, through the privatization of state-owned enterprises.

They depict reform of these enterprises as a wholly corrupt process, in which politically connected managers, in collusion with local officials and banks, strip enterprises of assets without any accountability, creating a might-is-right culture across the country.

Although both Wang and Cui say there is no doubt that China's state-owned enterprises, which generally lose vast amounts of money every year, need change, they are calling for a process of institutional renovation that would allow the enterprises to restructure without surrendering ownership or abdicating responsibility to workers.

The degree to which the New Left's rhetoric meshes with that of the government's indicates that President Hu Jintao and his team are tacitly supporting the New Left. Part of Hu's motivation is to discredit previous President Jiang Zemin, who committed the country to his awkwardly named Three Represents theory. Generally dismissed as a euphemism for Reaganesque trickle- down economics, Jiang's theory, enshrined in China's Constitution, is widely blamed for the deep inequalities in the country.

A recent confidential study of China's 20,000 richest people found that only 5 percent had made it on merit, according to a report in the China Rights Forum by Liu Xiaobao. More than 90 percent were related to senior government or Communist Party officials.

Such nepotism and corruption led to more than 50,000 protests across the country in 2003, seven times the number a decade before, according to government reports.

Chen Xin, a professor of sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and a self-described New Lefter, says Hu realizes he must correct the imbalances created during Jiang's term because although a democracy can balance extremes by throwing out of power a party or a president who's gone too far, "in a one-party system, the party must have its own self- correcting mechanisms, or else it will lose touch with the people."

Yet critics of the New Left, such as Professor Shi Yinhong, director of the Center for American Studies at the People's University in Beijing, say the group has no real alternative to the current global economic system.

Wang accepts that the major focus of the New Left is constructive criticism, but he says a new economic framework is being created. At its core is a focus on what the New Left calls the san nong (or three nong): issues concerning the plight of the nong min (peasants), nong ye (agriculture) and nong cun (rural communities).

Cui says focusing on these three issues is China's best hope for making the transition from a foreign investment-driven economy to one based on organic growth driven by domestic investment, which will raise local salaries and standards of living.

With dissent still a delicate business in China, Chen is quick to point out that the New Left's concern "is not politics but social welfare. We're only amplifying what we see happening around us. Hopefully, that will aid and guide the government."

Because the Chinese government is congenitally opposed to any sort of unsanctioned organization, Wang emphasizes, "We're not a group ... just a loose affiliation of people with similar beliefs."

He adds, "Even the term 'New Left' is not ours. It was first used to discredit us and to portray us as the old socialists. But I don't really mind. When something new is happening, it's normal for people to try to define it in old terms."

If Wang's benevolence toward his labelers seems magnanimous, it is partly because the "left" label has begun to work in favor of the intellectuals.

"I've been reading some New Left articles, and they make me feel very warm, because they remind me of the values my parents used to talk to me about, " says Maria Zhang, 24, a student at the Beijing Forestry University. "I feel like China has lost its bearing by bending too much toward Western ways. We're out of touch with our past and core values."

With such sentiments increasing, Hu has brought a different tone to decision-making in Beijing. His government has said it will look beyond economic growth to issues such as environmental decay, regional inequality and unemployment.

Lu She Zhong, 55, a village leader in central Henan province who's been battling local authorities for six years over unpaid compensation, after his entire village was resettled to make way for the giant Xiao Langdi Dam on the Yellow River, dismisses such talk as "only words" to mollify restive groups.

But Chen says rhetoric is always the first step toward change in China. "That sets the national mood," he says.

Jehangir Pocha is a member of the Chronicle Foreign Service.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap


As much as I like Arendt, I think your annalysis here is wrong. And the claim is that this self-interest predates the establishment of the now defunct (for 25 years) Communist totalitarian state anyhow.

I was agreeing with you - but expanding the causality a bit - am i that unclear?? Sorry.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
But we aren't dealing with pre-modern societies, but with modern ones.

As for the Western welfare states, it's like cooking. You can pour hot oil into water safely. You cannot pour water into hot oil without an explosion. Adding socialist elemetns to a capitalist society won't cause things to fall apart, but the reverse is true.

so youre saying shock therapy - dump the hot oil first, then add the water - is the only option for transition???

I dont know. Both China and India managing dramatic growth, despite the corruption.

[mindseye]

On last thing before I go to bed: in attempting to evaluate whether or not my anecdotes are biased, please do not overlook my mention that Lu Xun, widely regarded as China's greatest 20th century author and social critic, wrote on this very issue, describing it as a major problem in Chinese culture. He used the term "ma mu" ("indifference").

This is not some secret or something I personally cooked up in a racist fever. In fact, the first person to clue me into this aspect of China was a Chinese woman, one of my first teachers while I was studying here in Shanghai, during a classroom conversation about differing cultural standards of courtesy.

Wan an! ("Good night!")

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by mindseye
On last thing before I go to bed: in attempting to evaluate whether or not my anecdotes are biased, please do not overlook my mention that Lu Xun, widely regarded as China's greatest 20th century author and social critic, wrote on this very issue, describing it as a major problem in Chinese culture. He used the term "ma mu" ("indifference").

Wan an! ("Good night!")

was he the guy who wrote short stories in the 20's? May 4th movement, or whatever?

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Tingkai


But he didn't say land was given to people who didn't know how to farm, now did he.

He said: no one ever showed the black how to farm.

Obviously, there have been black farmer since pre-history.

There were alot of farmer in this country the USA that though they knew how to farm, until the 1930s dust blow came along and their farms were just blowed away.

[MichaeltheGreat]

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

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
It's amazing how much of a hate on so many of you losers have for China.

I have yet to see one thread started by you bozos on Burma, a country whih is committing genocide and slavery. Oh, teh evil Zimbabwe of teh evil China.

But real evil just goes unmentioned by you. What about Sudan and Mali?

China is a nascent superpower with global influence. The others are just sad little ****holes. Do I see you volunteering to get in uniform and risk your life doing something about it?

Or should we all maybe get together and ask the UN to "strongly condemn" what's occuring in those countries?

[Spiffor]

FYI, Mali is not a hellhole that looks anything like Sudan or eastern Congo. Mali is dirt-poor, but it's been at peace for decades now, and it's one of the most democratic countries in Africa. It's not a place where you fear for your life every day.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Where's the genocide in China?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/cult.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/great.htm

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2004/12/state-sponsored-genocide-in-china.html

Then we have the cultural genocide being ragged against the Tibetian people to this day, the attacks on religious minorities (Fulon Gong, Christians, muslims, anyone who doesn't want to be in a religious organization operated & controlled by the CCP), the ongoing government sponsored displacement and forced assimulation of dozens of ethnic minorities, the forced abortions & sterlizations of "undesirables", the mass imprisonment of democracy rights advocates, the mass killings in Tiananmen Square, and on and on and on.

China has an extremely repressive government. Some people believe that just because they stopped running people over with tanks just over a decade ago that means they aren't repressive any more but they'd be wrong. I especially love who the hypocrits at Amnesty International want to hold daily press confrences about how evil the US is but china only gets one or two reports per year for doing orders of magnitude worse.