I don't think the 1.4 billion Chinese people will appreciate you saying their country is run by air quotes Petty dictator. But if you're an American you may be continuing the proud American tradition of speaking with self serving authoritative ignorance about that which you know not.

I'm always somewhat agast at how much these intended criticisms of China's political system and government, seem completely tone deaf and low empathy to how the Chinese people will feel about these statements.

And if you bring this point up the utterers will simply shrug and say, "well how they feel is based on propaganda and I'm right about their country they're wrong." Which is like a complete psychosis for those commenters to believe.

Or they'll backpedal and say "oh no I'm not saying China hasn't achieved many good things but...", or they'll try to artificially split and say "oh no I'm not attacking the Chinese people I love the Chinese people I love Chinese food but you know I'm just attacking the Chinese government" failing to understand that the Chinese government is a direct creation of the Chinese people and their revolution, any you can't separate them at all, not really.

I suppose maybe you'll think "well what am I supposed to do if I disagree with what China is doing you're saying I can't say anything because Chinese people feel upset about it and by saying something I'm being inconsiderate to them and therefore that's bad?" Well that's a fair point. I think you got to be able to criticize but I think you got to criticize from a place where you actually understand the picture like if you're making a criticism without understanding how Chinese people feel about something your criticism is inconsiderate and it's invalid and off base and it doesn't make any sense. Now I'm not attacking you specifically so it's sort of unfortunate that you know it will look like that but your comment is like representative of a whole genus of comments so you're not unique in this view and I'm not attacking you specifically but these types of attitudes that people have which are very common.

Nothing's probably going to change from me saying this because I think the population is always going to be uninformed about things but they're going to have strong feelings about them anyway and that's how the world keeps turning around and wars happen and all this kind of stuff and I don't think the population is ever going to become more informed because for the powers that be it's useful to keep people uninformed so they can be used to manufacture consent for war and conflict that's profitable and so on.

But I guess I just like to think or believe in a sort of civilizational dialectic where you have this conflict and debate about different systems and it's based on to some extent a well-informed position of either side and also respect: like people keep the f** out of each other's way, you know. okay China runs their experiment and do their things their way, and America runs their experiment and do their things and they don't interfere with each other really, but yeah they can criticize each other and learn from each other I think that's ideal. but it's got to be based on the mutual understanding and respect otherwise it's just abusive. You know if you're just criticizing without any kind of understanding or respect it's just abuse.

And it's so often presented as "oh well I'm right and I know I'm right and I'm absolutely right."

I know I'm kind of going on a bit but it's my first comment of the day and I'm on a roll so you know why stop now? The other point is I noticed that people have this view that Chinese live in a sort of very highly censored information controlled society and so they're unable to kind of think the "lofty thoughts with the freedom of their liberal Western compatriots" or people in other countries who are brought up in a more free system and they can think more freely. But strangely I've actually observed like the quality of Chinese people's critical thought is super advanced like they are able to be very flexible and look at an idea from multiple aspects and have a very clear perspective on it, and make good arguments, you know where as I think in comparison to a lot of the western commentary it's like the Western commentary is very sort of afraid to consider different perspectives and there's sort of this covert censorship and you know peer pressure if you will to stick to a certain sort of consensus line. For example the consensus line about you know the Ukraine Russia war right it's like you can't go against that the consensus line. about vaccines the consensus line. about China you can't go against these things. so Western discourse has these very very strong blinkers and guidelines on it but apparently it's the most free and liberal and arises from the most free and liberal system in the world. Wtf? Whereas the Western idea will have you believe that the Chinese system is actually extremely sort of like foot binding for the mind and it will twist and and keep you locked without thinking clearly but actually if you look at Twitter and you look at how the Chinese people will argue back with Western people on Twitter they are very flexible and very sort of good at rhetorical arguments. (And you'll probably say here what you're basing your hole worldview of thesis here on twitter? Bahaha you're ridiculous. And I suppose yeah I mean I get what you're saying but I think Twitter is important and you can really see discourse in the world from looking at it. But my worldview comes from a lot wider experience than just looking at Twitter but I think the Twitter is a good case if you want to look at the quality of rhetoric an argument in thinking from different cultures). While it looks like the Western people are the ones locked in sort of stubborn inflexible ideology and an inability to see and learn.

And me I feel that is sad, that's sad for the future of the world and it's also very interesting because it goes against the common idea of what those systems are and can produce.

And another thing I think is like looking at the way that the discourse is responding to you know China's China's threats and promises of action and statements about the pelosi visit to Taiwan is you know people are ridiculing them and belittling them sort of like "oh look you think you can stand up for yourself no you're not you're this like weak stupid backward country and we don't have to care about you"

Look for instance at the Twitter comments people are making in response to this

https://mobile.twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/155468019676651...

which is like this it's this huge geopolitical change like China's doing these incursions into the ADIZ and drills like really really close to Taiwan I don't think that's ever happened and then all the commenters are like "haha you must be butthurt"

So I think some of this is like a sociological defense mechanism where people are resorting to sort of humor and ridicule to try to take away power and to try to make themselves feel better about something they actually feel threatened by. I think some of it is definitely that but I think a large and troubling amount of that attitude is like you can see how people think about China from how they're responding to China on this, and I think this sort of belittling ridiculing comments you know it speaks to this legacy of the way that people have viewed China in the past which is like you know they kind of look down on it they don't think they have to take it seriously and it kind of reminds me of like you know say you have like this the schoolyard the little kid that get picked on by the bullies and everyone's mean to him and then one day he decides to stand up for himself and all the bullies are like, "you think you can stand up for yourself? Hahaha... you're so weak" you know what I mean? just making fun of him. So I think you know you can actually tell how people really think about like the legacy perspective they have on China from how they respond to China asserting itself.

And I think that's super sad like that people will just be not yet having updated their past you know racist superiority complex attitudes towards China.

I wonder how the Chinese people feel about you know the way they're viewed in the world like do they feel frustrated that people don't see them clearly or do they just not care? Or something else... But I think definitely a correction is coming you know there has to be a correction in the viewpoint like the rest of the world that doesn't understand China will have to update its perspective to understand China and so there has to be that correction that comes eventually. I just wish it didn't have to be so drastic that people were already sort of part of the way there.

This is definitely too long but the final thing I'll say is like the other thing is like this sort of ridicule and wanting to control the narrative to pretend China is like "bad and evil kind of thing that is nevertheless sort of weak and it's feelings don't matter" I think is this really really sad, for the West, reaction by the West because it's like an admission that, "s** we don't know how to compete anymore so we're just going to compensate by trying to drag them down in the optics by just playing you know a narrative control game. we don't even know how to compete so we're just trying going to try to pretend they're bad."

You know it's like the bully who gets s** grades at school but just dumps relentlessly on all the kids that you know arr better than him and it's like that's all he can do. That's what I see the west running right now and I'm like, "are you f*** kidding me? how did you guys drag yourself so low with this s**? like you have no other options than to engage in this like bullying distorting the narrative way? like you got nothing else?" That to me is sad.