One evening, I was chatting online with a friend here in China, another American expatriate living in another city...

Is this a copypasta or some shit

It must be understood that liberalism and nationalism developed in China in lockstep, with one, in a sense, serving as means to the other. That is, liberalism was a means to serve national ends—the wealth and power of the country. And so when means and end came into conflict, as they inevitably did, the end won out. Nationalism trumped liberalism. Unity, sovereignty, and the means to preserve both were ultimately more important even to those who espoused republicanism and the franchise.

China's betrayal at Versailles did not help the cause of liberalism in China. After all, it was the standard bearers of liberalism—the U.K., France, and the United States—that had negotiated secret treaties to give Shandong to the Japanese.

Former liberals gravitated toward two main camps, both overtly Leninist in organization, both unapologetically authoritarian: the Nationalists and the Communists. By the mid-1920s, the overwhelming majority of Chinese intellectuals believed that an authoritarian solution was China's only recourse. Some looked to the Soviet Union, and to Bolshevism. Others looked to Italy, and later Germany, and to Fascism. Liberalism became almost irrelevant to the violent discourse on China's future.

For anyone coming of age in that time, there are few fond memories. It was war, deprivation, foreign invasion, famine, a fragile and short-lived peace after August 1945, then more war. Violence did not let up after 1949—especially for the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who were "class enemies" on the wrong side of an ideological divide; or for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers sent to fight and die in Korea so soon after unification. And even with peace, prosperity didn't come: 1955 saw Mao announce a "high tide of collectivization," which was followed by the tragic folly of the Great Leap Forward and ensuing famine, in which tens of millions perished.

A friend of mine named Jeremiah Jenne who taught US college students at a program here in Beijing once said something to the effect of, “When Americans create their movie villains, when they populate their nightmares, they create Hitler and the SS again and again: Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers.” The fear of the liberty-loving American, he implied, is of a surfeit of authoritarianism.

What of the Chinese? The Chinese nightmare is of chaos—of an absence of authority. And such episodes of history are fresh in the minds of many Chinese alive today—only a handful are old enough to actually remember the Warlord Period but plenty can remember the Cultural Revolution, when Mao bade his Red Guards to go forth and attack all the structures of authority, whether in the classroom, in the hospital, in the factory, or in the home. And so they humiliated, tortured, sometimes imprisoned and sometimes even murdered the teachers, the doctors, the managers, the fathers and mothers.

In the 25 years since Deng inaugurated reforms in 1979, China has not experienced significant countrywide political violence. GDP growth has averaged close to 10 percent per annum. Almost any measure of human development has seen remarkable improvement. There are no food shortages and no significant energy shortages. Nearly 700 million Chinese now use the Internet. Over 500 million have smartphones. China has a high speed rail network that's the envy of even much of the developed world. China has, by some measures, even surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest economy.

So try telling a Chinese person that anyone willing to trade a little personal liberty for a little personal safety deserves neither liberty nor safety, and they’ll look at you like you’re insane.

Therein my friends lies the values gap.

WTF is this?

you must understand that within a single generation china went from the cultural revolution famine violence and terror garnished with major amount of poverty to prosperous state having it's citizens able to afford more material goods than ever before

In the eyes of a person born in the 50-60ties the change is so massive, that I find it quite normal for him/her to defend the current system.

In the eyes of the young, they grew up with their families going around with bicycles to driving new cars, and from having second hand japaneese electronics to producing most of the worlds one today.

We also have the history before the commies, filled with civil war and massive foreign exploitation.

Garnish that with massive internet censorship and you'd get a population that while have quarrels with their government is quite content with the current state of things because of the massive positive changes they are experiencing.

Why China doesn't hate its government like everyone else thinks it should.

I read on Veeky Forums once that bread and circuses are not inherently a bad thing, and are in fact the end goal of all government. It makes sense to me: as long as the people are fed and entertained, they're willing to put up with all sorts of bullshit.

Why not just ask that rather than posting this wall of text?

>not appreciating OC
Thanks, OP.

Get those propaganda shits back to Chinkland.

Because we'll get /pol/ and Maoist "answers"

>everyone who disagrees is X

So what do the mainland Chinese think of Taiwan, where the Kuomintang ruled with an iron fist for decades and built a strong economy before releasing their control and allowing democracy into the system? Or Hong Kong, where they have long had democracy and also built a strong economy? Or even Singapore, a majority Chinese city-state that has some semblance of a democracy even if it is often a sham?

I live in Taiwan. Please realize that although their economy is larger in absolute terms, most of China has not reached the level of development of HK, Taiwan, or Singapore. In fact, they're not even close. Life outside the Tier I and a handful of the more developed Tier II cities (e.g. Harbin) is not hellish by any means but a lot of China is still very backwards. To give you some idea, its GDP per capita today, even after several decades of very rapid economic growth, is still well below what the USSR's was RIGHT BEFORE IT COLLAPSED -- after several decades of relative economic stagnation.

The Chinese people that OP has been talking to online, or the ones you'll meet if you visit Beijing or Shanghai or Shenzhen, and the ones who are able to attend college abroad, will tend to be unusually educated and politically engaged. The truth is, most Chinese are not like that. Most Chinese people don't really have any opinion on the other East Asian countries that have democratized at all.

Their political engagement will come in time, I'm sure, once they reach a comparable level of development. For now. the standard of living in most of China has been rising for some time. In the four or five largest cities it's never been higher, and so long as people's quality of life keeps improving it'd be pretty strange for any of them to rock the boat or worry overmuch about politics. I think that's the point the OP was trying to make, although he really didn't need to use so many words to make it.

tl;dr

The reason Americans can't understand why China doesn't think like Americans do about China is the same reason Americans can't understand why the rest of the world doesn't think about America the same way Americans do

Also, even if they do get democracy into the system people will probably just keep voting for the CCP anyway for the same reason Singaporeans keep voting for the PAP, because they have a proven track record with managing and improving the country.

Lucian W. Pye

>CHINA: ERRATIC STATE, FRUSTRATED SOCIETY

>Why does China thwart, frustrate and even embarrass those who are only trying to help? For all who befriend China, the story is the same: high hopes, then disappointment. The exhilaration of the Beijing Spring followed by the rage of the Tiananmen massacre was only the high-theater version of the countless commonplace ways China continually brings hope and then despair to its well-wishers.

>China seems to evoke in others, particularly Americans, an irresistible desire to serve as China's teachers in the ways of the modern world, and thereby presumably help China improve itself. Yet, from the time of Lord Palmerston's efforts to get the Chinese to accept the conventions of Western diplomacy, to President Bush's humiliating attempts to alter the behavior of Beijing's current rulers, China seems impelled to reject the helping hand and to act in ways that seem perversely self-damaging in the eyes of those who believe they have that country's interests at heart.

>The problems with China are far more than just those associated with conventional communist oppression. China has a political system in which accountability seems to be absent altogether, in which no one appears to know where responsibility should lie anyway and, consequently, one in which awful things can happen to the ordinary citizen.

>Unfortunately, the problems are not ephemeral; their roots extend deep into China's historical experience. Any true understanding of these problems, therefore, calls for an analysis of the complex and unique ways in which the Chinese state and society have evolved.

>The starting point for understanding the problem is to recognize that China is not just another nation-state in the family of nations. China is a civilization pretending to be a state. The story of modern China could be described as the effort by both Chinese and foreigners to squeeze a civilization into the arbitrary, constraining framework of the modern state, an institutional invention that came out of the fragmentation of the West's own civilization.

>Viewed from another perspective, the miracle of China has been its astonishing unity. In Western terms the China of today is as if the Europe of the Roman Empire and of Charlemagne had lasted until this day and were now trying to function as a single nation-state.

>The fact that the Chinese state was founded on one of the world's great civilizations has given inordinate strength and durability to its political culture. The overpowering obligation felt by Chinese rulers to preserve the unity of their civilization has meant that there could be no compromises in Chinese cultural attitudes about power and authority. Whereas pragmatic considerations have readily guided the Chinese in other spheres of life, this has not been possible with respect to the most fundamental values that determine the basis of the legitimacy of the state and govern the relationship between the state and society.

>Chinese civilization has produced a distinctive and enduring pattern of relations between the state and society. Although the affairs of the state were always secret and tainted with the suspicion of scandal, the realm of government projected grandeur and thus gave all Chinese a right to pride and dignity. Chinese society, on the other hand, was peculiarly passive toward its government, made no claims on state policies and concentrated its energies on the private domain. It has always been a society composed of inward-looking groupings, and thus cellular in its structure. Society in China existed only at the local level; there were no national institutions of society, such as the church in Europe.

>One secret of the unity of China has been a conspiracy of make-believe, which masks the strengths and limitations of both the state and society. The Chinese state, both imperial and communist, has always pretended to omnipotence, but in reality its policyimplementing authority has been surprisingly limited. Chinese society for its part has gone along with the pretense of official omnipotence while following its own lead and making almost no demands on the government. Rulers and subjects have thus tended to keep their distance from each other while pretending to be harmoniously close.

>This peculiar relationship sets the stage for the great Chinese political game of feigned compliance. Central authorities issue their "absolute" orders and local authorities proclaim their obedience, even as they quietly proceed to do what they think best. Higher authorities are hesitant to check too carefully about implementation of their orders for fear that it might reveal their impotence and shatter the pretensions of absolute power. Lower authorities are careful not to be too blatant in disregarding more troublesome orders, while overzealously carrying out those that are untroublesome. Should central authorities be embarrassed, however, they can act with mad fury

>In traditional China, as in present-day China, the clash at politics occurred among the uppermost rulers and their bureaucracies. The people as a whole had almost nothing to say or do about public affairs, even though the fiction might be that all policies were executed in their name. The struggles of factional politics among the elite operated to neutralize policy initiatives, and thus spared the population undue obtrusiveness. The Confucian mandarins understood that the purpose of bureaucratic government was to uphold the ideal of stability, which is best achieved when bureaucrats bend all their wits and energies toward blunting each other's initiatives.

>Although government in the People's Republic involves more concerted policy efforts, it is one of the great illusions of the day that Chinese authorities are as omnipotent as they pretend to be. In a host of fields, from tax collecting to controlling economic activities in Guangdong, Fujian and other dynamic provinces, central authorities know that feigned compliance still reigns and that it is best not to attempt the impossible by demanding precise obedience. Sovereignty, after all, calls for theatrical representation.

>In the meantime, the Chinese public ignores its aged leaders' buffoonery when they shrilly promise the imminent collapse of capitalism. The words of officialdom can hardly be taken seriously by an intelligent, pragmatic people when their leaders warn that "Western capitalist nations have never relinquished their goal of plundering China," while these same leaders simultaneously call for more foreign investment.

>The regime has now mounted a campaign warning that the West is plotting a "peaceful evolution" for China from socialism to democracy, a danger the people can only hope will come sooner rather than later. The political language of the elite at times loses all contact with reality. It speaks of the "bad old days" of Western domination, when only two percent of China's national income was related to foreign trade and investment; it touts a proud new anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist era, when nearly one third of China's national income currently depends on the world capitalist system. State and society in China have quite different realities indeed.

>This distinctively Chinese relationship between the state and society was sustained by a shared belief in a moral order, the upholding of which gave the government legitimacy, and the existence of which gave the people security and peace. Although most traditional societies had comparable moral orders, elsewhere the process of modernization involved transitions to political orders based on competing economic and social interests. With successful modernization the balance of power shifts in favor of society and the emerging interests of the people. The authority of government comes to depend on the outcome of political processes. Instead of legitimacy being derived from an orthodox moral order, it is invigorated by the play of politics as codified in a system of laws.

>In the case of China, however, significant competing interests never emerged. Instead of a drive toward pluralism and a system of legitimacy anchored in the realities of political processes, there was a frantic search for a new moral order to replace the eroding Confucian order. Marxism-Leninism in its Maoist form became that new moral order that re-energized rulers' pretensions of moral superiority and invincibility.

A large part of living chinese people remember the cultural revolution. The famine, the purges, the red guards.

Today compared to the 50s and 60s, they live in paradise. They have regular 2-3 meals a day, heating, hot water, a steady income, "some" welfare and education, access to goods and materials, etc...

Basically no one there grew up with western style free speech, free assembly, free press and democracy. So they're actually pretty content with how life is going.

That China went from purely farming lands that was bullied by everyone in the modern era to a now distant #2 power in the world also gives them some pride.

Its also not exactly true to say you cannot fight against the government. You just cannot do it in such a direct and public way. You cannot hold protests, but phoning their government ministries or "respectfully" talking about it online has pushed the government to at least try to clamp down on corruption and pollution. If nothing else but to maintain power.

I suspect that a generation that grew up with the relative luxury and who have seen what other countries are like from travels, work or study will be less tolerant of failures in the future.

The result is a distinctive system, which can be called Confucian Leninism, in which rulers, especially under Mao Zedong, claim to have a monopoly on virtue, society is guided by a moralistic ideology, and the hierarchy of officialdom is supposedly composed of exemplary people skilled in doctrinal matters. This continuing Chinese emphasis on a moral order explains the exaggerated importance of ideology in the Maoist years, the current propensity to revert to orthodoxy at every sign of political difficulties, and the generally erratic behavior of the state.

Mao sought to do something that Chinese emperors and mandarins were far too prudent to try. He sought to use the legitimacy of
the moral order to mobilize the people for material advancement, especially during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
When this effort failed, the legitimacy of the new moral order eroded and there was a crisis of faith. For a brief time Deng Xiaoping
reestablished a sense of legitimacy by providing immediate materialistic payoffs from his reforms. When economic problems began to
emerge after 1985, however, the government had neither a moral order nor the benefit of a political process to provide it with
legitimacy. The only immediate alternative was repression. Tiananmen has become the universally acknowledged code word for
repression in the search for legitimacy.

For a time the horrors of the Cultural Revolution seemed great enough to extinguish any lingering legitimacy of Marxism-LeninismMaoism.
When Deng initiated his economic reforms, there existed a debate between party theorists advocating the "two whatevers"—
whatever Mao said and whatever Mao did—and those advocating "seeking truth from fact."

The debate confused the issue of what should be the criterion for evaluating policies with the larger question of what should be the basis of legitimacy now that Mao, the
Superthinker, was dead. The pragmatists' argument that "practice is the sole criterion of truth" provided far too risky a basis for state
legitimacy. No society has been so foolish as to make successful policies the basis of the legitimacy of its government, since the very
essence of legitimacy is that it should sustain the government regardless of how partisan policies are working out. In practical terms,
Deng used the debate long enough to eliminate his rival Hua Guofeng and his "whatever" faction, and then reasserted the authority of
the Four Principles, which gave primacy to the party and to the moral order of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought. The debate helped party
leaders to liberate their thinking from the silliness of Maoist rhetoric, but it failed to usher in a new basis of legitimacy for the state.

The inestimable importance of a moral order for political legitimacy has made Chinese leaders, both Confucian and communist,
dogmatic believers that values can be vividly categorized into those that are at the core or essence of the moral order; those that are
foreign but useful, such as Western science and technology; and those that are an abomination because they contaminate the purity of
the core values. The third are to be vigilantly~guarded against and denounced, for example, as they are today, as "spiritual pollution"
and "bourgeois liberalism." All Chinese leaders, starting with the reformers at the end of the Qing Dynasty, have steadfastly followed
this formula in trying to modernize China while still preserving its civilization.

Serious troubles arise, however, when in practice it proves impossible to ensure that the three categories of values are being kept neatly separated. Panic grows at the thought that the purity of the core values Is being contaminated by Chinese who are supposed to be learning only practical matters from alien cultures.

This hypersensitivity to what is precious in the Self and what may be useful in the Other makes the Chinese more extreme than other
transitional peoples in having at the same time a superiority complex and an inferiority complex, a contradiction which does not
particularly bother them.

Enough has been said elsewhere about the "Middle Kingdom complex," but what needs to be noted here is
that this complex is accompanied by a keen awareness of the need to learn from others, to send students abroad, to search for what is
best and to replicate it in China—with little regard for patents or copyrights. In this process the Chinese have elevated science and
technology to the ranks of their core values and have come to revere science in much the same spirit as the earlier mandarins did
Confucianism.

Thus, instead of science having the liberating effect it did in the West, in China it has become a new orthodoxy for a
state-supported technocratic elite. The Chinese political approach to science and technology therefore has an absolutist character; it is
assumed that there is always a single, best answer to all technical problems.

The Chinese tradition of orthodoxy suggests that technocrats should have a common solution to any problem, with disagreements
fought out within the circle of the elite, in the style of defenders of a moral order. Chinese political leaders have refused to recognize
that technical problems usually have multiple solutions, and that choosing among them calls for a clash of values and power inherent in
competitive politics. Debates over alternative technocratic solutions in other countries have generally widened political participation and
strengthened pluralistic tendencies. This is not so in China, precisely because "science" has been made a part of the Chinese core
values that, ironically, must be from contamination from other aspects of Western culture that are not "science."

Expecting that science should provide absolute certainty, like answers to arithmetic problems, Chinese political leaders are easily
angered by the fact that technology generally calls for probabilistic thinking. They thus imperiously demand the single "best" answer to
a policy problem. Of course political leaders in other countries also have their frustrations with the contingent nature of applied scientific
knowledge. Harry Truman, for example, once complained that he wished he could find a one-armed economist, one who would not
always be talking about "on the one hand, and on the other hand." In China, however, the authoritarian traditions of the emperors and
of Leninism-Maoism combine to produce hostility toward any suggestion of ambiguities and probabilities. Chinese rulers' reactions thus
tend to be of the old imperial stripe: "Don't tolerate, exterminate."

This dogmatic approach to science, along with adherence to "scientific" Marxism-Leninism, has produced a troublesome
psychological problem for communist leaders as they try to preserve the dichotomy between essential "Chinese" values and the
"dangerous" values of foreign cultures.

The core values now to be defended are, in fact, foreign imports: science and MarxismLeninism.

In an effort to get around this awkward reality, the leadership talks of "building socialism with Chinese characteristics." This
does not solve the problem, however, because for forty years the party has been denouncing just about every feature of Chinese
culture as a feudal abomination that should be obliterated. In the end it is not easy to articulate what exactly are the Chinese qualities
that should now be defended. In practice all that is left of "Chineseness" is the belief that leaders have a claim to moral superiority as
the defenders of the moral order, even if this means acting in erratic and arbitrary ways that set back the nation.

The stunted growth of interest groups in China is rooted in part in the nature of traditional Chinese society, which was essentially
agrarian, and in which the only established channel for upward mobility was the government bureaucracy. China did not have the
diversities that emerged in Europe with the rise of cities, the development of a merchant class, the growth of professions and
occupations, and all of the other social changes that contributed to the pluralism basic to modern Western politics. In the West the rise
of interest groups in society was also fueled by religious beliefs that valued the individual and gave legitimacy to individualism and the
search for self-realization. In China the society was community oriented; individuals were expected to find their identities as a part of a
group and to conform to the conventions of the collectivity.

This characteristic of Chinese culture had profound implications for the way Chinese political life developed, and explains why today
the government can be so troublesome. The fact that all Chinese derived their identities from being members of a group, starting most
importantly with the family and the clan, gave stability to China's unique structure of state-society relations, making it relatively easy for
the government to rule. In the Ming Dynasty as few as 100,000 officials managed an empire of 100 million people, and a single
magistrate responsible for a county averaging 50,000 people. Collectivities governed themselves and the state could rely on the
principle of collective responsibility. In policing it was not necessary to apprehend the particular person who committed a crime;
Chinese justice could be administered by arresting, torturing and punishing the culprit's father, grandfather or the head of his or her
clan. Since fathers had no desire to suffer for the bad acts of their sons, they could be counted on to go to great lengths to bring them
up in the right way. Filial piety had practical as well as spiritual implications.

Society also benefitted from this system in that individuals could derive a strong sense of security from being a part of solidarity
groups that provided mutual support. Under the Chinese system of social connections, called Guanxi, an individual might also have
access to reciprocal ties with people beyond his or her primary group. An individual could thus become a part of a complex network of
associations extending outward from the family to people from the same town, province, school or other institutions. People who shared
any commonly recognized identity could count on each other.

For both the mandarins of the past and the cadres of today, these networks of personal relationships have provided the latent
structures of factional Chinese politics. Grand ties, however, have not always provided security. In a forthcoming study, John K.
Fairbank tells how the Hongwu emperor of the Ming Dynasty became so furious with his prime minister that he had him beheaded,
along with all the members of his extended family. His fury still unappeased, the emperor then went after everyone who was known to
have been in any way associated with any of them, to the extent that this early Stalinist-style purge exterminated over 40,000 people.
Fairbank observes, "Guanxi has its dangers."

Since Tiananmen, state terror has been reimposed with ease, partly because the students and dissidents who need to use guanxi
can never be certain that their networks have not been penetrated by informers. The environment became one in which people felt safe
trusting each other only if they had some damaging information in reserve that could be used if necessary against another. The
problem of trust has contributed to the factionalism that has splintered the opposition to the regime, even among those outside the
country.

The group-oriented character of Chinese society also makes governing easier because the collectivities are expected to look after
their own members, while not making demands on the government. China has always had protective associations, but not pressure or
interest groups. This was true of the family and clan in traditional China and is true of the work unit and the "iron rice bowl" in today's
China.Just as individuals are not supposed to assert their own interests above those of the group that provides their identities, likewise
all subordinate interests in China's hierarchical society are expected to defer to higher interests.

The taboo on the articulation of interests no doubt contributed to the unity of China, but it also set sharp limits on political
development, even to the point of dictating the scope of discourse and determining who was a proper spokesman on public affairs. This
prohibition meant that China never developed a real political economy in the sense of openly acknowledging that political power might
be harnessed to advance economic interests. Those with interests that might be affected by governmental policies could not publicly
call for allies or seek to mobilize opinion in favor of their interests. They could instead only try to operate quietly by seeking special
favors in the implementation of policies, and thus risk being seen as a source of corruption.

Consequently, although China has great regional differences, ranging from the rice economy of the south to the millet and wheat economies of the north, and from its
cosmopolitan coast to its provincial interior, these differences have never been openly acknowledged. Everyone has simply gone along
with the pretense that whatever the central authorities advocate is in the interest of all Chinese.

The rule against asserting one's own material interests has made selfishness China's ultimate political sin. Since openly advancing
personal interests is seen as dishonorable, severe limits have been placed on even the vocabulary of Chinese politics. The language of
Chinese politics has always been limited largely to supporting the values of the moral order. Political discourse thus becomes
moralizing, not the analyzing of problems.

No matter what scoundrels they may be as individuals, as self-conscious members of a
supposed virtuocracy, Chinese officials are trained to praise all acts of the government as morally unassailable. Other Chinese are
limited to two acceptable levels of discussion: the ad hominem level of remonstrating against particular officials for their selfish
wrongdoings, or the lofty plane of boasting of their own selfless patriotism. Thus Chinese political discourse is either thick with charges
of corruption against selfish officials or, as people seek to demonstrate their selflessness, highly idealistic and patriotic.

The imperative of always needing to appear selfless also limits who participates in political discussions. Most people remain mute for
fear of being viewed as selfish and concerned only with their own material interests. Intellectuals and students thus receive a near
monopoly on speaking out, for they are thought to have no special interests beyond their prime responsibility of defending the moral
order. This responsibility has made them prisoners of the status quo unable to freely advocate genuinely alternative approaches.

China never had the clash of church and state, of religion and science, that established the Western intellectual as a legitimate outside critic
of authority. As a result the Chinese governmental process has rarely had the benefit intellectual criticism. It is true that many
noteworthy Confucian scholars bravely remonstrated against officials of the imperial government, or even the emperor, but it was
almost always in orthodox terms.

The story of intellectual dissent in the People's Republic has been much the same. Intellectuals have criticized the personal failings
of officials, and some have at great risk even questioned the correctness of Mao's and Deng's policies. The tyranny of patriotism,
however, has imposed a form of self-censorship.

The Chinese tendency to blur the distinctions between party, government and country
has made it dangerous to challenge fundamental policies or the basic character of the political system for fear of appearing to be
unpatriotic and subversive. Liu Binyan, China's famed investigative reporter, even after 22 years of exile in the countryside, until
Tiananmen never questioned the values of the party and sought only to expose individual wrongdoing. In his essay "A Second Kind of
Loyalty," which electrified the Chinese reading public, Liu suggested that, in addition to the simple-minded obedience to the party of the
good soldier Lei Feng, there was a second kind of loyalty, typified by two people who had chastised officials for their failings.

As late as Tiananmen, few intellectuals questioned whether Liu was still too bonded to the party to recognize that there might be an even higher
kind of loyalty, that of criticizing socialism out of love for China. What makes Fang Lizhi, China's Sakharov, stand out among Chinese
intellectuals is his outspoken recognition that China has been cursed with what he calls "the problem of patriotism," which stops all
reasoning because once you "criticize someone for being unpatriotic it will shut him right up."

A further problem in a society in which self-interest must be masked and people pretend to selflessness is that people never feel
they know where others really stand. Everybody knows of course that people have hidden interests. There exists, therefore,
considerable suspicion about hidden agendas and real motives. From ordinary social relations to international politics, inordinate
attention is given to determining the real position of others. Are they potentially friends or foes? Stratagems abound, but they have to
be followed with the greatest care because of the danger of causing the other party to "lose face," which is the grievous pain people
experience when their masks are stripped away.

The social imperative not to offend, especially in face-to-face relations, contributes to an astonishing double paradox in contrasting
Chinese and American political behavior. American politicians, operating in a democratic political culture, paradoxically discount what
other politicians say publicly ("He had to say that for his constituents"; "it was only said for election purposes"), while believing that the
hard currency of political communication is found in the privacy of meetings held behind closed doors, where they can talk "man to
man."

Chinese leaders, operating in an authoritarian political culture, follow the opposite rule. They believe face-to-face meetings are
where hypocrisy prevails. That is where it is obligatory to tell others what they want to hear, where ceremonial rituals must be carefully
observed so that relations go smoothly; no one loses "face" and there is no hint of confrontation. In Chinese political culture one
discerns where the other party stands only by reading between the lines of public statements and attaching importance to the code
words employed.

This paradoxical difference between the Chinese and American evaluations of private communications makes even more puzzling
the secret visit to Beijing after Tiananmen by President Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.According to American logic,
the trip's purpose might have been to reassure Beijing that the U.S. president was not as angry about Tiananmen as his public
statements may have suggested and, further, that Bush's subsequent public statements about trying to keep China "open" should be
discounted as conventional American hypocrisy employed to pacify his political constituents. Seen from a Chinese point of view,
however, the trip was merely a ceremonial visit where flattering toasts are to be dismissed according to the conventional Chinese
hypocrisy of face-to-face meetings.

The need in Chinese social and political life to probe where others stand as they uphold the ideal of selflessness makes the
identification of friend and foe a constant concern. This produces layers of ritual about friendship that only further obscure whether or
not the reality exists in any particular relationship. In Chinese culture people can become instant "old friends," but the obligations of
friendship are vague; there is only the general notion that the more fortunate party ought to be helpful. Even a slight sign of coolness,
however, can raise the suspicion that the relationship has become adversarial. This is not the place to analyze the complex sentiments
associated with friendship in Chinese culture, but suffice to say that friendship is a highly valued ideal that is nonetheless hard to
realize in practice. It is also an inappropriate ideal in institution-to-institution relations for, ironically, just as cooperation seems to draw
closer, the likelihood of trouble usually increases sharply.

China still actively plays the theme of friendship in the old tradition of treating well those who have come from afar to partake of its
wonders. True, there is currently some embarrassment over the old Maoist slogans of "We have friends everywhere" and, in sports,
"Friendship first, competition second." Yet when Chinese behavior is more soberly analyzed, it is striking how few allies China actually
has and how easily its relations with others tend to sour. Usually trouble arises just when relations seem to be getting closer: as with
the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, India in the early 1960s, Vietnam in the late 1970s and Japan and the United States in the late
1980s. Since the post-Mao era of "opening" to the world, China has of course been seeking "normal" international relations. It is
significant, however, that China still has no particularly close allies.

Over the last few years when Chinese officials have been systematically questioned as to the countries with whom they have the closest and easiest relations, they have generally been hard put to specify any country other than their formal ally, North Korea. Few knowledgeable people, meanwhile, believe that China and North
Korea are really close friends.

The overriding duty to defend a great civilization by upholding a moral order seems to cause Chinese leaders to discount the risks of
irritating other governments. At the same time they are themselves hypersensitive to perceived slights. Thus Chinese officials generally
strive to claim the moral high ground in any diplomatic negotiations. Just as Chinese rulers traditionally believed they could shame their
subjects into correct behavior, and much as Chinese parents use shaming to socialize their children, so Chinese leaders today seem to
believe that it is to their advantage to tell other governments that their relations with China are either "bad" or not as "good" as they
should be.

They will speak of how there is "a cloud over the relationship," and claim that relations can be improved only if "he who tied
the knot unties it." There is no hint of a quid pro quo, however, no concrete indication as to what it might be worth for the other party to
improve its relationship with the Chinese. Other governments should simply do what is "right" and be thankful to China for providing
moral instruction and guidance. It must be conceded that the Chinese tactic of blaming others for any setback in relations is remarkably
effective when it comes to the United States.

America's puritan instinct dictates that if something has gone wrong it is proper first to
suspect that the fault is probably one's own; and even if it turns out to be the other's, one should remain as closemouthed as possible
for fear of making things worse. This tendency in turn only compounds the problem, because Chinese culture takes for granted that an
accused party who offers no defense must be guilty.

There an additional twist to the differences in American and Chinese thinking about the role of morality in international affairs. As
pointed out by George Kennan and Hans Morgenthau, among others, the United States tends toward a moralistic approach to foreign policy
that inhibits the advancement of American interests and allows others undue advantage.

Chinese leaders, as the practiced guardians
of a moral order, turn the issue of morality the other way around. They use arguments of "right" and "wrong" as a way to inhibit the
actions of other countries, thereby advancing China's own practical interests—interests that of course they pretend are of secondary
concern. Chinese leaders' commitment to the advantages of being morally superior is so great that even after the horrors of Tiananmen
they still thought they could benefit by blaming the United States and others for what happened.

The erratic behavior of the Chinese state in both domestic and international affairs is further exaggerated by the Chinese belief that
benevolent government requires rule by men and not by law. (The Chinese tradition of rule by law was one of arbitrary and harsh
authoritarianism.)

New vigor was given to the Confucian ideal of rule by superior men when China adopted Leninist elitism, and the
combination of Confucian Leninism has produced a system that gives successive top rulers extraordinary freedom. Consequently, and
paradoxically, ultimate power in a society that is otherwise group oriented rests largely in the hands of individual personalities.

The peculiarly personal quality of sovereign authority has made leaders acutely sensitive to the need to take advantage of their
every opportunity and to cling to power for as long as possible. Without a system of laws they cannot be sure their policies will survive
their hold on power. No leader, not even a Mao or a Deng, can leave behind statutes that will bind the country to any particular policy
course. New rulers bring new policies.

This also means that questions of succession dominate Chinese politics. When things are going
well, people wish long life to the paramount ruler; when they are going badly, people look forward to the arrival of the Grim Reaper. As
long as leaders' influence ends at the grave, it is natural for them to try to hold on to power for as long as possible. Gerontocracy is the
result. The "eight ancients" today rule over the entire political system and generational change is excruciatingly slow. Indeed, it is an
oddity that aspiring Chinese leaders seem to get old faster than those ahead of them die.

The zigs and zags of Chinese policies made possible by the rule of men rather than law is also exaggerated by the Chinese spirit of
pragmatism, which holds that changes in circumstances should prompt changes in action. In contrast to American politicians, who go
into contortions to prove that through thick and thin they have always been consistent in their views, Chinese leaders find it painless to
change their positions as circumstances change. For them it is a sign of wisdom to adapt to the logic of a situation, and it is an
indication of power to be able to order policy changes.

Proving that one has both wisdom and power is a combination hard to beat in
any culture, and thus it is not surprising that Chinese leaders will confidently alter their policies. Americans are puzzled that Deng
Xiaoping, who brought about such liberalizing reforms, could also be the butcher of Tiananmen. They forget that he is the same man
(although his name was then spelled Teng Hsiao-ping) who in 1958 proposed the Anti-Rightist Campaign and who sold Mao on the
idea of sending intellectuals down to the countryside to rusticate. Most Chinese leaders have likewise had several political incarnations.

The tradition of government by superior people, acting as the guardians of a moral order, has inhibited the institutionalization of
government in China to the point that there is widespread speculation about how much of the communist system, built up over half a
century of struggle, will outlast the octogenarians who are now the supreme rulers. Yet, paradoxically, in spite of the apparent fragility
of a noninstitutionalized system of government, communism endures in its Confucian Leninist form, while being in crisis nearly
everywhere else.

Optimists take heart from actuarial considerations and belief in the doctrine that "nothing succeeds like a successor." Pessimists
recognize that the Chinese gerontocracy hangs on while American administrations come and go: an infirm Mao outlived Richard
Nixon's presidency, and now an elderly but vigorous President Yang Shangkun is a good bet to outlast the current U.S. administration.
Beijingologists scanning the ranks of the leadership to spot a possible future reformer place their hopes on Li Ruihuan, the former
carpenter and now party propaganda czar, or Zhu Rongji, the mayor and cheerful booster of Shanghai.

It is certainly wishful thinking, however, to believe that the Chinese political system is a well-integrated machine ready to respond to one man pushing a button
labeled "reform," and thereby bring back the happy visions of the early 1980s. Prediction is made difficult' precisely because the
Chinese political system is capable of sudden zigs and zags according to the whims of a few men, while simultaneously carrying the
burden of being true to a great and only slowly changing civilization. In a rhythmic way China's strengths turn into its weaknesses and
its weaknesses become its strengths.

It is prudent to have guarded expectations about the immediate actions of Chinese leaders and the outcomes of their factional
power struggles. It is nevertheless possible to be somewhat more certain about the evolution of modern China. It will probably continue
to be the story of a society composed of people with remarkable talents for adapting to the modern world, but cursed with a political
culture that constantly dashes any hope for smooth progress. The distinctive state-society relationship that has worked so successfully
in preserving the unity of China also works to make progress erratic.

The failure of significant interests to emerge politically suggests that there is little prospect in the foreseeable future that the balance
will shift from the state in favor of society, as has occurred in Eastern Europe and is occurring in Taiwan, South Korea and the other
countries that are leading the worldwide transition away from authoritarianism. Dissidents trying to think through the future of China are
mired in utopian debates that would at best call for heroic efforts to establish once more a new moral order. Some talk of a "third way"
between capitalism and socialism; others dream of returning to the heady days of the early 1980s, before reforms ran into increasingly
daunting problems and it became apparent that without solid political support there is no easy exit from a centrally planned economy.
The prospects of such support are made dimmer by the Chinese tradition of believing that all successful leaders must be supermen, for
today there are no charismatic figures among the dissidents.

Still others take hope from Chinese history. Out of the chaos of a disintegrating dynasty there have repeatedly emerged dynamic
founders of new dynasties. Such a reliance on historical analogy is questionable, however, because in the past the Confucian moral
order remained in place, ready to be reinvigorated by the new dynasty. It is harder today to identify what are the norms that could give
vitality to a new political order, and therefore the drift of inertia becomes a guiding force. The strongest consideration uniting the
opposition is a passion for revenge, for "settling scores," but there is no agreement even about which scores need settling first. Today
there is widespread hope that "democracy" could become China's new moral order, but it is hard to imagine that a democracy could
exist without a politics of competing interests.

China's distinctive state-society relationship has contributed to the peculiar rhythm of its politics. The factional struggles within the
elite have produced not the Western pendulum swings between left and right, liberal and conservative, but an up-and-down motion of
centralizing and decentralizing, of tightening and loosening the state's penetration of society. The vast majority of the population live as
peasants in some five million hamlets and villages with their own largely self-contained social and political systems. They see the
workings of government as much like the weather, to be thanked when favorable and cursed when bad. The urban population is not
organized into interests, but rather is made up of strata or segments, such as the intellectuals and technocrats, industrial workers,
managers, service people, entertainers, journalists, owners of small enterprises and the like.

Their response to the politics of the state is largely one of mood: when things are favorable for them they are capable of enthusiasm, when things go wrong, of alienation. Most
of the strata joyfully welcomed the early Deng reforms, but by 1985, and especially since 1988, they have one by one become
disenchanted. Swings in mood between enthusiasm and alienation are humanly significant, but they are not a substitute for real
politics.

Although it is hard to find a silver lining in the clouds, Chinese society, in spite of current repression, continues to have surprising
dynamism. The coastal provinces have fought back the forces of political repression and economic recession and, consequently,
economic progress at the local level continues. The modernizing elements in the society seek to expand their international contacts as
best they can. Just as Soviet society made significant progress in urbanization, education and professionalization during the political
stagnation of the Brezhnev era, so it is likely that Chinese society will advance in spite of its anachronistic government.

China's peculiar state-society relationship allows its leaders to rejoice in their presumed omnipotence, and its bureaucrats to engage
in their factional struggles, while the Chinese people are left to seek comfort and security in the personal groupings that can protect
them from more extreme political storms. Acts of make-believe smooth over the obvious contradictions and ensure that Chinese
civilization will change only slowly in spite of all the zigzags of an erratic state. The unshakable idea that China remains a great
civilization fuels a comfortable superiority complex and makes the vast majority of Chinese optimists, for they must believe that it is only
an anomaly that things are as bad as they currently are, and in the future greatness will inevitably return.

In coping with the civilization as a state, the outside world has every reason to follow its own optimistic instincts and try to build ties
with elements of China's distinctive society. At the same time, it should give careful heed to the pessimistic forebodings history provides
of the erratic ways of China's political system.

The fundamental goal in dealing with China should be to strengthen elements within
Chinese society that can in time serve as more effective checks against the troublesomeness of the state. Even after Tiananmen,
during a year when officially relations were "bad," this process has continued as, for example, trade with the United States has grown.
Until a more substantial shift in power occurs in favor of society, however, the question of whether other governments have "good" or
"bad" relations with the Chinese government will remain a trivial distinction.

>Lucian W. Pye is Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and immediate past President of the
American Political Science Association.

So its as simple as
>Communist totalitarian exploitation is preferable to Three kingdoms/Red guards/Taiping

tl;dr China is treating the CCP the same as they treated the dynasties before them.

Eh, China imported modern science and technology from foreigners and now people pretend the credit should go to the authoritarian party rather than the radical developments that took place outside of China.

>people raised comfortably in a culture without experiencing other cultures generally find the culture they were raised in acceptable
wow it's fucking nothing

Basically, the worst times in Chinese history were when nobody was in control, rather than when bad people were in control.

In a democracy everyone is supposed to be in control.

That's how you get nonsense like Brexit and the modern Republican Party.

That's the only way to make a democratic society work, it's what decentralized decision making and prevents one person from leading too many people down the wrong path.

China has their own priorities such as maintaining order and giving them the flexibility to plan long term without having to pander to special interests every five years.

Also as states Chinese politicians don't have to go to extreme lengths to prove that they are ideologically pure and have always held the views they do now, rather they are actually expected to be able to change their minds pragmatically to deal with the situation and avoid doing dumb shit because they said they would ten years ago.

And they also have their own ways of ridding themselves of poor leaders (see how Deng Xiaoping's faction kicked out the extreme leftists) when they shit up the country by doing stupid shit.

>mfw never thought of this being the comparatively good period to be chinese

god their history is depressing

Just lie back and think of the Tang.

China has always been basically space aliens to the West. The West can trace its ancestry back to the Cradle of Civilization that exists in the Fertile Crescent, whereas China is an altogether separate Cradle of Civilization that developed agriculture, language, organized society, and so on along a separate unrelated course from what became the West.

The Chinese know their government does these things, but none of them want an open rebellion, revolution or civil war.

They want gradual smooth change, and while their government does those things, it's also made them rich and able to afford anything they want within reason and the future for their children looks bright.

>the future for their children looks bright.
I wonder if the chinese really think that right now.

They do, they really do. This collapse of china myth is just that.

China has collapsed so often in the past the dynastic cycle is basically a cultural meme. Why not again?

>The modern Chinese party-state, after all, is a notorious violator of human rights

user, you can't violate something that doesn't exist.

They absolutely do.

>people raised in different cultures have different priorities
Shocker.

You're a fucking idiot. Let me ask you, why couldnt they have imported modern science et al during the Qing dynasty?

Kill yourself you iqlet

Butt-mad chink detected

TL;DR fuck off commie

>or their children looks bright

YEAH....SO BRIGHTTTTT

No you stupid stemautist, I'm pointing out that institutions count for something in the success or failure of a nation state.

The authoritarian party were the ones who ended the warlords and created a situation where it was possible to develop.

Fucking kys, filthy chink commie

China isn't even a nation-state, it's an empire pretending to be a nation-state.

not an argument

Fucking braindead /pol/tard. The same could be said for the Meiji government, Taiwan under the KMT, or South Korea.

They all modernized and industrialized under extremely authoritarian governments.

>b-but muh communism

Get BTFO you negroid with off-color skin

Well you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette for your kids.

Interesting read OP thanks for sharing

>tfw the same is true of Mesoamerica and we've lost basically all of their history and culture thanks to the spainish

Chinese mentality is grounded in Confucianism and has been for two millennia. It says that if you are subservient to your superiors and your superiors are benevolent to you, then this is in accordance with cosmological harmony and all will go well.

>when Mao bade his Red Guards to go forth and attack all the structures of authority, whether in the classroom, in the hospital, in the factory, or in the home. And so they humiliated, tortured, sometimes imprisoned and sometimes even murdered the teachers, the doctors, the managers, the fathers and mothers.
So when an authoritarian exercised his absolute authority and power?

Mao wasn't in control of the country at the time, genius. At the time he had lost a lot of his prestige in the Party thanks to fucking everything up with the Great Leap Forward, and the economy and affairs of state were being managed by others. Inciting the youth to start fucking everything up in the Cultural Revolution was part of Mao's attempt to use them to purge "revisionists" and bring the Party and China back under his personal control.

>or "respectfully" talking about it online
How am I supposed to picture such a way of talking?

Are they trying to avoid exaggerations, insults, opinions, and use very formal language?

Do they add honorifics? Do they try to formulate their point as "just opinions" or as "just a review of the facts and anyone should make up their own mind with those facts"?

>or "respectfully" talking about it online
How am I supposed to picture such a way of talking?

Are they trying to avoid exaggerations, insults, opinions, and use very formal language?

Do they add honorifics? Do they try to formulate their point as "just opinions" or as "just a review of the facts and anyone should make up their own mind with those facts"?

>Hong Kong, where they have long had democracy

Lol

There are tens of thousands of protests in China, many of which lead to government reforms ("reforms").

For example, the nuclear disposal site protests post-Fukushima that led to a temporary 3 years construction freeze.

Ask yourself why they are able to import that technology

bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-37570965
>Looking into the future things will apparently get even better: 76% of people think the economy will improve over the next 12 months, 70% said their personal financial situation will improve and eight out of 10 people believe that their children will have a better standard of living than they do.

They've literally had several corrupt officials with too much power arrested. One corrupt big shot in the government got his sex tapes released and was taken down from power just from l33t haxxors spreading that shit.