On social reality in China
Thread
Loading the complete thread in the background. This saved snapshot is available now. Refresh
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
On social reality in China
Loading the complete thread in the background. This saved snapshot is available now. Refresh
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
maonnaise · · focus · HN ↗
zb3 · · focus · HN ↗
No, fck you, we need more open models, not more cartels.
dang · · focus · HN ↗
You may not owe cartels better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
plastic-enjoyer · · focus · HN ↗
ramesh31 · · focus · HN ↗
nonethewiser · · focus · HN ↗
whatshisface · · focus · HN ↗
MisterTea · · focus · HN ↗
whatshisface · · focus · HN ↗
Maxatar · · focus · HN ↗
The same is true of Chinese culture. China has an unbelievably diverse range of music, film, theater, etc... but what gets exported to a Western audience is not going to be things like Beijing's underground punk and experimental noise scenes, Chinese shoegaze, Sichuan and Yunnan folk music, Mongolian throat-singing fused with metal, dozens of completely different regional opera traditions like Kunqu, Yue opera and Qinqiang, underground queer cinema, or Sichuanese rap.
Westerners will mostly get the small slice of Chinese culture that is easiest to export, translate, market, and fit into familiar expectations about what "Chinese culture" is supposed to look like.
Al-Khwarizmi · · focus · HN ↗
Take the Condor Trilogy, for example. It's not even underground or punk, it's a major cultural touchstone. Written more than 50 years ago, over 300 million copies sold, dozens of TV and cinema adaptations. And as far as I know, only the first part has officially been translated into English, and nothing into Spanish. Even the TV adaptations, I have watched some with fan subtitles, but they haven't been brought to the West officially.
If even such major works don't reach us, judging Chinese culture by what does reach us is nonsense.
applfanboysbgon · · focus · HN ↗
dang · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
applfanboysbgon · · focus · HN ↗
dang · · focus · HN ↗
[editing - bear with me...]
applfanboysbgon · · focus · HN ↗
The claim being made is so obviously, categorically incorrect that it falls apart within a single second of examination. For example: Hoyoverse, a Chinese company, produced Genshin Impact and Nodusfall, two games with completely different art styles. And yet, in typing this, I have already spent an order of magnitude more effort[1] than somebody professing their racist worldview is dignified to receive. I think the actual productive response is shutting that down. I mean, really. A billion people who can only produce one artstyle like a factory? The claim is so patently, obviously, intentionally racist and incapable of holding up to reality it's absurd.
I could spend an hour scrolling back through my Twitter likes and collecting links to a huge array of Chinese artists with divergent artstyles, but in doing so I would be doing nothing more than wasting my own time, because someone with such a flagrant disregard of reality to come to that conclusion in the first place isn't going to change their view based on being shown reality.
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
Whatever. I unfortunately have a compulsion to check this site, but I'll do my best to refrain from posting in the future, since your vision of the site is one where posting racist comments is welcome and calling them out is unwelcome.
F3nd0 · · focus · HN ↗
And with that single sentence, you have provided a great counter-example. Had you included it in your first comment, you would have saved yourself yet another order of magnitude’s worth of words to type out and contributed to the culture here far more, no?
For what it’s worth, the original comment did not read as blatantly racist to me, though I see how one could read it that way.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
RobotToaster · · focus · HN ↗
EA-3167 · · focus · HN ↗
Western reality tv, procedurals, game shows, soap operas and so on are incredibly samey after all. BUT the other factor is that creative endeavors in China take place under a censorship regime. Some topics are safer than others, so the mainstream tends to be quite formulaic and focused on fantasy, sci-fi, or pseudo historical shows.
comboy · · focus · HN ↗
devindotcom · · focus · HN ↗
cyberax · · focus · HN ↗
marssaxman · · focus · HN ↗
ramesh31 · · focus · HN ↗
If it were a question of genre, sure I get that. But we're talking about effectively all commercial art at this point. It has nothing to do with "western superior" racism or anything like that. Japan does not have this problem at all, even though they invented the anime aesthetic.
Where is the Chinese Mario, Elden Ring, or Metal Gear? What studio is producing a truly original distinct visual language?
pezezin · · focus · HN ↗
I live in Japan and I strongly disagree. The products you mention are the ones strong enough to get exported overseas, but within Japan itself you get a thousand manga/anime/dorama/idols/games per year that all look pretty much identical, everything feels extremely derivative.
jampekka · · focus · HN ↗
For example I don't listen much electronic dance music (house, techno, trance etc), and whenever I end up in a club it sounds to me that its always the same loud thumping song playing. Those who go frequently do seem to find a lot of variation though.
dang · · focus · HN ↗
It's fine, of course, to disagree; we just want conversation to stay in the key of curiosity: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
scarybarry · · focus · HN ↗
dang · · focus · HN ↗
devindotcom · · focus · HN ↗
Of course that may just be me projecting my own perspective onto them, but I did get the feeling that there is a performative aspect to the culture described in this article, and that whatever lies underneath it is likely, as in so many places, not really accessible to anyone who was not born and raised in a place.
lanesun · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
zeusdclxvi · · focus · HN ↗
F3nd0 · · focus · HN ↗
zeusdclxvi · · focus · HN ↗
F3nd0 · · focus · HN ↗
nixon_why69 · · focus · HN ↗
One big disconnect the US has with China is that it's a putatively communist state running a hypercapitalist economy. So they frequently do capitalist stuff with that scary word "socialism" attached to it. Like introduce a fleet of pilot credit systems and calling it social credit.
Mix this phenomenon with US high school civics class and a few propagandists and you get the American view of "social credit score".
boc · · focus · HN ↗
The whole reason you have entrepreneurs in the US is because people DON'T judge for you failing. You can always start again.
jimbob45 · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
chihuahua · · focus · HN ↗
pavo-etc · · focus · HN ↗
paimapi · · focus · HN ↗
I think part of this bias is due to not having any actual domestic, critical understanding of the home country culture and so you end up not applying the same analytical tools you'd use to analyze, for eg, why Youtube Shorts/IG Reels/etc took off here
some glaring examples from the essay:
> Chinese consumers already had a high tolerance for slop and AI content fit naturally into this ecosystem without ever triggering an uncanny-valley reflex.
yeah, this isn't due to some inherent acceptance of unreality, the massive volume of low-budget vertical 微短剧 (weiduanju) on Douyin and Kuaishou is driven by economic factors like digital ad-arbitrage [0]. most of these studios spend the vast majority of their budget on advertising with an incredibly small amount reserved for actual production and so you get AI filtered slop because it's cheaper than paying actors or make up artists or the whole supporting crew
plus, the CAC cracks down a lot more on cruddy micro-dramas than US regulators do on low-quality TikTok/YShorts/IG Reels content (ie not at all, ever)
> This basic message is inculcated throughout Chinese upbringing: push through and ignore physical discomfort, but attend to and be subject to social censure. It's okay to be buffeted by the elements, but if your grades are bad, you'll be too ashamed to face your parents.
this is again blaming individual psychological conditioning and not systemic forces. like in the US, managing reputation has to do with high-stakes institutional checkpoints, not an irrational preference for perception over physical reality. when the 高考 (gaokao) and your 户口 (hukou)[1] literally dictate whether or not you have access to housing, schools, and healthcare, you would of course focus your attention on grades and social standing. if there were other gatekeepers, the 'culture' would shift to focus there too
> Dark World thinking sees all virtue and kindness as pretense. Among many such tropes, a common derogatory trope is of women who act nice and innocent 白莲花 (white lotus) while being deceitful and manipulative on the inside. Chinese media creates trapped priors that people acting kind, altruistic, and pure are more likely to be evil."
this happened because they dismantled the 铁饭碗 (tiefanwan) [2]. the state basically dismantled the kind of sub-utopian socialist give-everything social programming (that certain propagandized Western leftists seem to believe are still in place) and let the market fully take over. when your universal safety net is gone, extending trust or finances to others who are economically incentivized to compete with you becomes a sub-optimal play. it's why 内卷 (neijuan or involution) is a widely discoursed about issue in Chinese society
also, it's very funny to see 白莲花 (white lotus) used... seriously here? in Chinese social media, that's a satirical term and positions the bailianhua as sanctimonious. it's not aspirational, it's like calling someone a Karen here
[0] <a href="https://36kr.com/p/3547915143655305" rel="nofollow">https://36kr.com/p/3547915143655305
[1] <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324106192_China%27s_Hukou_System_at_60_Continuity_and_Reform" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324106192_China%27s...
[2] <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Individualization-of-Chinese-Society/Yan/p/book/9781847883780" rel="nofollow">https://www.routledge.com/The-Individualization-of-Chinese-S...
dang · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ambione · · focus · HN ↗
dang · · focus · HN ↗
Generally it's not so good to silently edit a post in a way that deprives a reply of its original context. It's better to mark the comment as having been edited. Not doing so risks being disrespectful to both the other commenter and to readers, and is even—the internet being what it is—sometimes used as a passive-aggressive trick to make a reply sound foolish after the fact.
I don't believe that was the intention here though—most likely paimapi was simply reacting to "can you please edit out the swipes".
And even if it were, we can cut some slack because (1) it sucks to get a moderation reply. We know it stings, despite applying every way we know to not come across that way; and (2) if the corrections make the comment into a more positive contribution to the discussion, we all win—especially when the comment has a lot of good information in it, which paimapi's posts do.
Btw, when we post moderation replies in that way, it's because of the good things in the comment, not the bad things. We have a different way of responding to all-bad comments.
ambione · · focus · HN ↗
2OEH8eoCRo0 · · focus · HN ↗
paimapi · · focus · HN ↗
>Even among strains of nationalism, Chinese nationalism seems to be particularly chip-on-your-shoulder. My impression is that this kind of insecurity is less in your face, but still present, in younger Chinese today. It is concerning how much Chinese AI models catching up in the AI race is entangled with this national insecurity.
investment in domestic computing and foundation models is guided by industrial policy (科技自立自强) [0]. this isn't some kind of ego issue shared across 1+ billion people, it's literally policy set up by central planninng
> "My current hypothesis is that the locally optimal message to China is in the vein of “give us your autists who feel alienated by the monoculture,” but others may prefer a more conciliatory approach that directly appeals to the dominant culture."
the lived reality of Chinese neurodivergence is not some abstract thing that's fun to joke about. it's, instead, families carrying a child through an educational system that offers minimal specialized scaffolding, navigating intense social stigma, and absorbing the terror of what happens to a dependent adult when their aging parents die. instead of seeing this population as a recruitment pool of "hyper-logical code monkeys" waiting to be drafted into an American AI safety crusade, maybe think of them as people. otherwise you're no different from the people who are just calling them slurs
also, to describe Chinese culture as 'monocultural' is just wrong. a migrant worker on a factory floor does not share the same culture as a tech worker at Baidu - and neither of them share the same culture as a factory owner. there's also like a billion subcultural niches in China - lie flat 躺平 and letting it rot 摆烂 just to name two more popular ones. it's not as if the people there are stupid to knowing their culture is exploitative - the critique of 996 is widespread
[0] <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095809924005058" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209580992...
jacobgkau · · focus · HN ↗
> yeah, this isn't due to some inherent acceptance of unreality, the massive volume of low-budget vertical 微短剧 (weiduanju) on Douyin and Kuaishou is driven by economic factors like digital ad-arbitrage [0]. most of these studios spend the vast majority of their budget on advertising with an incredibly small amount reserved for actual production and so you get AI filtered slop because it's cheaper than paying actors or make up artists or the whole supporting crew
> plus, the CAC cracks down a lot more on cruddy micro-dramas than US regulators do on low-quality TikTok/YShorts/IG Reels content (ie not at all, ever)
I'm not following your argument with this one. American production companies also certainly care about their bottom line, and would cut the budget of "paying actors or make up artists or the whole supporting crew" as much as they could get away with. As you note, the reason they can't get away with cutting that stuff more isn't because they're regulated more in America. Rather, they can't cut more because viewers wouldn't tolerate it. What argument are you actually making about why Chinese companies getting away with the low-budget (low-quality) "slop" isn't the fault of the people tolerating it by watching?
david927 · · focus · HN ↗
Europeans feel exactly like this as well. And as an American who's lived in Europe for decades, I couldn't agree more.
bigfishrunning · · focus · HN ↗
eloisant · · focus · HN ↗
It's either healthy organic vegan, or junk.
999900000999 · · focus · HN ↗
This is largely correct across cultures.
“Trust is a luxury I can’t afford.” - Cormega
Your best friends will screw you over for fun.
Your friendly boss will lie to your face.
Family members have no issue with ripping each other off once money is on the line.
How many probate attorneys eat well because siblings need to sue each other ?
I don’t even think it’s a matter of capitalism or economics.
Something is off about humanity at a fundamental level.
mhog_hn · · focus · HN ↗
And that these positive actions happen 100x more often, at least.
But indeed, nobody is perfect
lelandfe · · focus · HN ↗
999900000999 · · focus · HN ↗
That’s eviction #1.
You can see the hate and xenophobia coming out. When times are tough people need someone to blame.
vharuck · · focus · HN ↗
The bad experiences stand out because that's how our minds are wired, and they're so uncommon as to be surprising.
Barrin92 · · focus · HN ↗
that's exactly what happens when state power vanishes. It's always fun to recall historical events, in 1977 when New York lost power for 24 hours (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977#Crime" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977...)
In those 24 hours 1600 stores were looted, 1000 fires laid, firefights broke out, the mafia in little Italy hat to defend the quarter with barricades and arms, robbers were being robbed by other robbers, almost 4k people were arrested to the point where they had to be put into basements and gyms. That's one day without order. The bad experiences don't stand out because they're uncommon, they stand out because we all instinctively know we're one bad week away from eating each other. Which by the way given that this is a thread about China, happened in the living memory of some people: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre
"In the massacre, methods of slaughter included "beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, group slaughters, disemboweling, digging out hearts, livers, genitals, slicing off flesh, blowing up with dynamite, and more".[1][8] In one case, according to official records, a person had dynamite bound to the back and was blown up into pieces by other people (so called "heavenly maiden scattering flowers", 天女散花)—just for fun"
999900000999 · · focus · HN ↗
We see people fight over Black Friday deals. God help us if there was an actual food shortage.
ThrowawayR2 · · focus · HN ↗
tolerance · · focus · HN ↗
999900000999 · · focus · HN ↗
HeavenFox · · focus · HN ↗
All the authors observations ring true, and they all stem from one simple fact: China was a very poor country just forty years ago, and even today is only a middle income country.
The uncomfortable truth is a lot of the things westerners take for granted are, in fact, luxuries. Arts and creativity is a luxury. Freedom to pursue passion is a luxury. Compassion is a luxury. Self-esteem is a luxury. If you barely have enough food to feed your family, as a significant number of Chinese people were in the 60s and 70s, you cannot afford any of these.
China has grown richer at a remarkable rate, but the mentality shift can take generations.
sublinear · · focus · HN ↗
This entire century of media has been an endless splitting of hairs and casting of doubts.
keybored · · focus · HN ↗
This is supposed to be uncomfortable? Why? Most inter-national discussions here are about how their country is better because they have bigger houses, more toys, and how they can remain oblivious to how the rest of the world works because of how good their “soft” or “hard” power is at managing the rest of the world.
0xDEAFBEAD · · focus · HN ↗
10000truths · · focus · HN ↗
Sure.
> Compassion is a luxury. Self-esteem is a luxury.
No. These are virtues, not luxuries. You don't need a high income to be compassionate or have self-esteem.
phoe-krk · · focus · HN ↗
It's not about you, it's about others around you. If they do not have a "high income" (or, in other words, materially comfortable life), you cannot expect them to be comfortable enough to be compassionate or have self-esteem. And then, if they don't, but you do, it's an easy recipe for your compassion to be exploited and your self-esteem to be perceived as danger. It's a self-leveling system.
It's not an individual matter, but a social one. Always has been.
And it's not specific to China - I see it in Poland, a relatively "we've been damn poor forty years ago" country as well.
IncreasePosts · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe it's bias because I'm an "exotic" white guy in many areas and not just a random down on their luck average guy from their own region.
I've also been offered generosity by rich people, as well, but, I will generalize, that mainly came after I demonstrated some proof that I didn't actually need their generosity
alightsoul · · focus · HN ↗
daymanstep · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
sublinear · · focus · HN ↗
Everyone who downvoted you are the type to step into another pile of dog shit the moment they finish scraping their shoes. Regressing into spirituality doesn't fix this. High trust paired with opportunity does.
thin_carapace · · focus · HN ↗
sublinear · · focus · HN ↗
Right back at you, I'm not sure what the deal is lately with some comments insisting on quotes or citations or "proof" of anything. To me, they seem like gambits by paid trolls. I'm just making observations from experience.
Something to ask yourself is where the honest truth is supposed to come from if it's always borrowed from somewhere else.
neural_thing · · focus · HN ↗
Not a lot of the world is like that today, you'd have to go pretty far out of anything considered tourist-friendly to see conditions similar to Mao-induced famine.
nixon_why69 · · focus · HN ↗
numpad0 · · focus · HN ↗
NooneAtAll3 · · focus · HN ↗
orrrr maybe poor people you've encountered are poor exactly because they are generous in competitive environment - and non-generous became rich and successful
Der_Einzige · · focus · HN ↗
sublinear · · focus · HN ↗
I'm only speaking from my own experience here. When I've seen stressed out people who are expected to believe in "virtues", they just become more dishonest to hide their bad behavior. The bell curve of human behavior stays the same no matter what time or place.
Qiu_Zhanxuan · · focus · HN ↗
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
quadragenarian · · focus · HN ↗
swat535 · · focus · HN ↗
If you are starving, you don’t even have that option. You need to prioritize your survival.
rambojohnson · · focus · HN ↗
mathisfun123 · · focus · HN ↗
> No. These are virtues, not luxuries.
According to your particular ethics. Has it ever occurred to you that the ethics you have isn't universal but is simply an artifact of your culture?
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
10000truths · · focus · HN ↗
swat535 · · focus · HN ↗
If you can hardly find food or medicine, there is very little room left in your brain for virtues.
This is why religion was developed to help people cope. Society collapsed very quickly when there is scarcity.
We saw a small glimpse of that in COVID with people hoarding basic toiletries in US.
mathisfun123 · · focus · HN ↗
I have to daily remind myself that people on here probably haven't had a single liberal arts class (like philosophy or anthropology) because they're stemlords.
> But the virtues exist in every society.
And also not to do bright - brother you're literally commenting on your own response to a post about how such a virtue is potentially absent in some society
throwforfeds · · focus · HN ↗
If it really came down to the famine, I'd ask why isn't this mentality seen in Bangladesh, who also lost around 5% of it's population to famine in the 20th century? They're some of the kindest, most welcoming people I've been around in the face of a poverty that China no longer knows.
So I'm having a hard time believing that TFA isn't completely off on this one, as I'd expect a society that had 2000 years of contact with Buddhism to have absorbed at least a little of the Buddha's teachings on karuna. Especially one whose main school was that of Mahayana and it's ideal of the Bodhisattva.
kurthr · · focus · HN ↗
Japan, post war was desperately poor, but everyone shared what they had. A friend who grew up in rural China in the 60s-70s described very compassionate behavior. Communism is often born of necessity and not political will. Those who cheat and steal are ostracized, if not hunted.
Der_Einzige · · focus · HN ↗
There's a good chance that for the survivors from that era, their parents almost certainly did some extremely evil things to survive.
kurthr · · focus · HN ↗
Please study some history and stop assuming literally everyone is evil. That leads to the very expectations, political apathy, and actions that allow this kind of situation. It's unhelpful.
Der_Einzige · · focus · HN ↗
Go ask anyone from, say, Myanmar (especially Arakan state) what they think of Bangladeshi people. You might find that opinion of "They're some of the kindest, most welcoming people I've been around in the face of a poverty that China no longer knows".
Maybe you should ask Bangladeshi's what they think of the Rohingya people. It turns out that Myanmar is not the only country oppressing them and refusing to give them citizenship!
The tendency to want to group an entire race/people with opinions based on hundreds of experiences with them, let alone dozens or a few, is the same tendency in us that spawns racism and prejudice. Your experiences have no influence on the reality of "the goodness of a people".
throwforfeds · · focus · HN ↗
My comment was responding to the author's argument that compassion only arises when material needs are accounted for, that compassion is some middle class thing. They were arguing that Chinese culture doesn't emphasize it because of their history of war, famine, and poverty. I think that's a horrible misunderstanding of both compassion and Chinese culture, and was merely countering it with an example of a people that have also experienced a famine that had a similar mortality rate who display perfectly normal human levels of compassion and kindness despite that history. I then went on to conclude that the original writer is likely completely off on how they view Chinese culture, that compassion is fundamental to being human and has nothing to do with bourgeois material comfort.
We tend to want to think in binaries -- people are compassionate or not. People are welcoming or not. That's not how reality works though, it's more nuanced. I was in no way arguing that an entire community of people aren't capable of mistreatment of others. Of course they are. But can a people that have experienced a massive amount of trauma and poverty and loss capable of displaying compassion? Of course they are. Because compassion is a fundamental aspect of being human.
charlieyu1 · · focus · HN ↗
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
mythrwy · · focus · HN ↗
veritascap · · focus · HN ↗
lenerdenator · · focus · HN ↗
Societies thrive when humans cut each other a little slack. They die when people are constantly looking for ways to take advantage of others.
cpursley · · focus · HN ↗
christophilus · · focus · HN ↗
talon8635 · · focus · HN ↗
Read about the dehumanizing effects of concentration camps on individuals hiding food from their family or praying their father dies so they can get his food
Its arguable that our ability to build luxurious enough societies has allowed out compassion to flourish far beyond what is witnessed elsewhere in the state of nature
lenerdenator · · focus · HN ↗
Concentration camps are an example of humans taking advantage of one another. Arguably, it's the ultimate example.
talon8635 · · focus · HN ↗
boelboel · · focus · HN ↗
talon8635 · · focus · HN ↗
boelboel · · focus · HN ↗
dbspin · · focus · HN ↗
True.
> Its arguable that our ability to build luxurious enough societies has allowed out compassion to flourish far beyond what is witnessed elsewhere in the state of nature.
Concentration camps and famines are not the 'state of nature'. A closer analogue would be tribal societies in the Amazon basin, Eastern Africa and the like. Constant hunger and scarcity are not the norm for well adapted human cultures, nor have the been for most of recorded history.
talon8635 · · focus · HN ↗
Of course a concentration camp isn’t the state of nature
I’m saying human compassion far exceeds anything witnessed in the animal/plant kingdom. Some animals show affection for their offspring, but it usually doesn’t extend beyond that. There is no dog or lizard or tree version of mother Teressa
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
talon8635 · · focus · HN ↗
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
They did not emerged as force of nature out of ground. They were intentionally and conciously build. And guards were well fed.
fuzzythrowaway · · focus · HN ↗
These aren't the problems of a society rising out of a state of nature; as TFA states, "The narrative is that China experienced a “century of humiliation”". I think certain aspects of Chinese culture as we know it, writ-large, make more sense coming from people who weren't just recently struggling as a society, but who are well aware of how that condition compares to their historical one.
esafak · · focus · HN ↗
xandrius · · focus · HN ↗
handle584 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
vondur · · focus · HN ↗
ninalanyon · · focus · HN ↗
It still is.
bettercallsalad · · focus · HN ↗
My counter argument though is how the elite class have a certain scarcity mentality and still holds on to these observations made in the articles.
In college, I dated a few Asian (Mainland) who all had similar mindset. Dating wasn’t about finding the right match but more about “upgrade your social face being accepted by foreigners”. It was shockingly weird at the beginning until the pattern was obvious. They were all wealthy (paying international tuition) I would think so the scarcity mindset you speak of seems like should have waned off at a local proximity (family or social circle).
HeavenFox · · focus · HN ↗
Those ladies may be part of the elite now. But remember their parents or grandparents went through the Great Chinese Famine where an estimated 15-60 million people died.
AzzieElbab · · focus · HN ↗
accidc · · focus · HN ↗
Also my personal belief is that courtesy is a luxury born of abundance. I have observed how minor ‘scarcities’ in the advanced economies can surface behaviour that some would attribute to less developed places e.g. an unexpected slew of cancelled transit
fooker · · focus · HN ↗
Growing up, I was used to cars honking all the time.
Not a thing in US suburbia.
One fine day, there was a gridlock because of people exiting a stadium after a fireworks event, lo and behold, honks all over the place from all cars.
burntbridge · · focus · HN ↗
arw0n · · focus · HN ↗
In developing countries, including China, my experience has been that this is the standard, and people will act accordingly even if there is abundance. Cancelled transit is a good example as well, it interacts with a primal fear of ours of being left behind or drawing the short stick, even if rationally, it is pretty inconsequential.
julianlam · · focus · HN ↗
To give more anecdata — Union Station in Toronto has trains that leave in all directions. The ones going East and West tend to form queues on the platform at rush hour. The train heading north-west to another city tends to form mobs that rush the door upon opening.
Lots of reasons why, but geography and SES may not factor as much. Could be something as simple as supply/demand of free seats.
sdeframond · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
nixon_why69 · · focus · HN ↗
Family friend got hukou in Wuhan recently and picked up a crappy job as a convenience store clerk. 10 hrs/day, 3 days off a month. But! She can comfortably live off it in a major city with a studio apt and even save a bit. Doesn't even need roommates.
jltsiren · · focus · HN ↗
I'm from Finland. My grandparents were of a generation that knew poverty and hunger and fought in wars. They raised their families when the country was still poor, and food security was always at the back of their minds. My parents grew up in a country that was rapidly getting wealthier. Their generation took food for granted, but owning things was important to them, as it was something they could not have in their youth. For my generation, the country has always been wealthy, and we have always been able to take basic necessities for granted. Our focus has been in choosing what we want to do with our lives, as the world is open and there are many options to choose from.
ares623 · · focus · HN ↗
t0mpr1c3 · · focus · HN ↗
cyclopeanutopia · · focus · HN ↗
This one is interesting. I'm from Poland, and I'd argue that during very shitty communist times people had a whole lot more compassion than now, when the country is in a much better shape.
petre · · focus · HN ↗
seydor · · focus · HN ↗
TitaRusell · · focus · HN ↗
We take our decadence and degeneracy for granted but it is all new. There are people alive now who remember Christianity.
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
And accusations of "degeneracy" and "decadence" were there all the time anyway. We have centuries of those complains.
3371 · · focus · HN ↗
insane_dreamer · · focus · HN ↗
Pretty strong disagree. Compassion -- and humanity towards other humans -- isn't based on what you have. The degree to which you are able to act on your compassion and do something, yes, that's certainly limited by what you have. But not the compassion itself.
I've met many very poor people in very poor countries who had more compassion and humanity than rich people in rich countries.
insane_dreamer · · focus · HN ↗
Recent poverty is a factor, but I disagree that it's where these characteristics stem from. I've lived and worked in countries as poor or poorer than China, and I also lived 6 years in China (and not in an expat bubble) and the characteristics described in the article* are not directly related to an escape from poverty. (*which I largely agree with, though maybe less so the Dark World frame; instead I think instead Chinese have historically a different moral framework than Westerners. For example, being "clever" enough to do something that Westerners would consider wrong (stealing, cheating, etc.) and get away with it, is a sign of strength.)
In my view, Chinese behavior is pre-eminently impacted by filial piety, social appearances, and the fact that when you live in a country with 1.5 B people if you don't push and shove, and even step on a few hands and heads, you're not getting anywhere. And you _must_ get somewhere because of your parental expectations and the need to fulfill your responsibilities to care for your parents when they get old.
Added to that is the more recent development that the CCP has achieved a level of information and social control that other authoritarian countries could only dream of. It's very effective to a degree that Americans would find shocking. (The author's first point about the ubiquity of social media in China goes along with this, and has become a highly effective means of "guiding" public thought.)
afpx · · focus · HN ↗
OroPla · · focus · HN ↗
This has also been true where I am from (formerly East Germany), yet we still had arts, creativity, freedom to pursue passion, compassion and self-esteem. We might have had only barely enough food to feed a family, but that didn't mean that we acted like animals.
tsoukase · · focus · HN ↗
kakacik · · focus · HN ↗
No, most good characters are chinese. I liked technical aspects of the book a lot, but on societal level there was quite a bit xenophobia up to including racism against white people.
Still interesting, maybe something akin to picking up some pulp novel from 1920s that had other races in stereotypical cartoon evil roles. Not something pleasant to read in 21st century for anybody with more modern values (where average typical Chinese stand on this I leave to them here, no idea).
zug_zug · · focus · HN ↗
- Nationalism stemming from insecurity (I tend to notice the poorest, most desperate tend to be the proudest)
- "social death" - Is that not so different that being canceled or fear of being canceled? To me it seems very apparent that people who get ostracized on the national stage take a huge personal toll and have their personality changed for years.
- Also for the Dark World example he uses a Peter Thiel quote. I think optimism/trust/community is lower here now that a few decades ago. But I do agree that in tech jobs I've anecdotally seen more cutthroat approaches (e.g. refusing to share knowledge with a coworker) from other cultures more often.
Jtarii · · focus · HN ↗
In everyday life the description in the article is nothing like what I imagine America to be.
boc · · focus · HN ↗
I think this is where folks go astray. There are tons of well-off or even wealthy people who love America, give to their churches, cheer on their kids at sporting events, and have what appears to an outsider as an unbelievably high amount of nationalism. It's not really the poorest, most desperate slice of society by any measure. Have you lived outside of a major city in the US?
zug_zug · · focus · HN ↗
Looking at the research it shows that subjects who self-identify as loving America can be preducted by best by being older, and political party, though not wealth at all.
So I don't really have any hard-data to justify my impression that it's uneducated blue-collar white men without much going for them that vociferously love america, maybe it's just country music that gives that impression, or the type of uneducated poor who enter the army with blind faith in our institutions, etc.
carefree-bob · · focus · HN ↗
Now, people who are younger and urban tend to also be childless, but if you control for child bearing, you will get some eye opening stats. There is also a correlation with depression and the number of visits to therapists, but that could also be due to the loneliness of being childless in a major urban area.
defrost · · focus · HN ↗
Lot of room to speculate.
carefree-bob · · focus · HN ↗
The axis is childlessness/more concerned with online social standing/less patriotic on one side, versus having kids/being more patriotic, fewer accounts of depression.
Much of the push for parasocial relationships is, I believe, the result of people not having kids to come home to but living life online. That also is responsible for the fear of "social death", e.g. online ostracism. People who come home to kids and grill with their friends on weekends don't particularly care about conforming to the beliefs of strangers online.
defrost · · focus · HN ↗
Read carefully, I didn't disagree.
> it's childless people who see therapists more.
Possibly because they have more free time and disposable income.
As I said, there's a lot of room for speculation, probably best to avoid sweeping generic explanations based on keyhole PoVs.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
advael · · focus · HN ↗
HeavenFox · · focus · HN ↗
Chinese government actively shapes the online discourse, so the messaging is already filtered. To make it worse, it meant people found out that the easiest way to silence your opponent is to brand them as anti-China, so you see a lot of pro-China virtue signaling. Finally, people also realized patriotism is lucrative.
MrMan · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
bananaflag · · focus · HN ↗
stuxnet79 · · focus · HN ↗
"Am I German or Autistic?" [1]
[1] <a href="https://german.millermanschool.com/" rel="nofollow">https://german.millermanschool.com/
A_D_E_P_T · · focus · HN ↗
They're otherwise generally in support of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, at least ostensibly, so I wonder what it is about China -- which has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty domestically and is looking to export wealth abroad (most notably in the form of accessible "luxury" goods such as electric cars) -- that seems to trigger them so much.
China's political economy is also far more "rationalist" than anything you'll find anywhere else.
And yet I swear, and I'm not exaggerating about this in the slightest, that the average EA/LW poster hates China far more than the average /pol/ poster -- and is perfectly comfortable making sweeping generalizations where 1.4B Chinese are concerned. Guys like Scott Alexander rarely (if ever) have a good word for them; Zvi Moshowitz discounts and belittles every technological advance they make, despite otherwise being very fair; and you see what LW itself is like...
Leary · · focus · HN ↗
Ekaros · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe they just are lot less rational and altruistic than they claim to be. With significant biases...
keybored · · focus · HN ↗
blast · · focus · HN ↗
keybored · · focus · HN ↗
waterheater · · focus · HN ↗
In reality, there's two separate economies within the PRC. Around 40% live in the modern world we see in images of China (skyscrapers, EVs, high-speed trains, etc.). Awesome stuff, to be sure, and that same environment has been engineered to track every single interaction you make with it. You must use Wechat; no exceptions. Say the wrong thing on the Internet? You might lose the ability to take long-distance train or airplane rides within China, let alone international travel rights.
The other 60% live with dirt floors, hand carts, and engage primarily in subsistence farming. (It's been about five years since I last looked up those stats, but it should be around the same.) The US has eliminated this level of poverty; having even access to an automobile is enough.
The PRC argues they're able to take care of all their people, but they're nowhere near out of the woods when it comes to food insecurity. Due to population and geographic realities, they simply cannot grow enough food to feed their own people, so importation is an absolute necessity. For this reason, "unlicensed" fishing fleets (no Chinese group larger than 20 people operates without de-facto government consent) sail across oceans to fish just outside a country's territorial waters.
The Chinese political economy appears to be rationalist, but few countries have more political dishonesty than the PRC. According to an old friend who extensively knows Chinese politics, there's three main political factions: pro-Xi reformers, anti-Xi old guard Communists, and everyone else. Their ability to disappear a political enemy without what we'd term "due process" is truly unheard of in the West. Local politics is arguably worse; bribery is how anything gets done, and local officials suppress incident fatalities because over a certain threshold (around 30), the higher-ups will shame them. In such a media-controlled environment, that's less difficult than you might think living in the West.
When you talk about exporting wealth with EVs, that comes with the understanding that the PRC has de-facto control of your vehicle. Most people dislike the idea of the PRC not only retaining all data gathered by your car but having remote access to disable or drive it. If that's alright with you, go right ahead.
A_D_E_P_T · · focus · HN ↗
Your "60% live with dirt floors and engage primarily in subsistence farming" claim is utterly indefensible. At the end of 2025, China’s population was 67.9% urban and 32.1% rural. Even in 2021 -- approximately when you say you last checked -- it was already 64.72% urban.
Here's Chongqing, China's largest city by population (~31M): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOjZPCeZzGw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOjZPCeZzGw
You'll agree that it's by no means a slum.
Also, and even more importantly, rural residence does not mean subsistence poverty. Look at stats on Chinese rural household possessions -- they're actually reasonably well-off. (e.g., >100 air conditioners per 100 households, whereas in France only ~25% of households have air conditioners!) Little surprise, then, that the World Bank credits China with lifting almost 800 million people out of extreme poverty.
Even if I grant your claim about food insecurity -- which is also fundamentally untrue, but not worth getting into -- how is it relevant? They need to import soybeans for animal feed, so they are evil?
You don't like them for some reason -- but I still don't get it, as the reasons you've put forth here make no sense and are flimsy, paper-thin.
keybored · · focus · HN ↗
A_D_E_P_T · · focus · HN ↗
> <a href="https://www.istat.it/en/press-release/household-energy-equipment-year-2024/" rel="nofollow">https://www.istat.it/en/press-release/household-energy-equip...
> <a href="https://www.idealista.it/news/finanza/casa/2026/07/26/406719-quante-case-hanno-l-aria-condizionata-in-italia-regione-per-regione" rel="nofollow">https://www.idealista.it/news/finanza/casa/2026/07/26/406719...
Point is, the Rural Chinese aren't pre-industrial dirt farmers. When it comes to things like air conditioners, cell phones, TVs (~100% of households), internet use, etc., they usually rank quite highly.
As such, "60% live with dirt floors, hand carts, and engage primarily in subsistence farming" is either a lie or shocking ignorance, plain and simple.
xanthor · · focus · HN ↗
waterheater · · focus · HN ↗
Say data leaves the US and goes back to the PRC. Did you know it's actually easier (from a legal perspective) for the US government and its business interests to collect the data outside the country than inside? It's actually in the intelligence and industrial communities' best interests for data on US persons leave the country. My point is, even with your beliefs, you should very much dislike that PRC automotive data will leave the country.
Remember the OPM hack? Perhaps the data should have simply been given to the PRC, since they're better data stewards and have our best interests in mind (/s). Ultimately, PRC vehicles will be used for facial recognition, home address identification, employer identification, and more. If you think I'm being hyperbolic, consider that the PRC can locate any person inside their borders (at least within an urban area) within ten minutes.
lukewarm707 · · focus · HN ↗
Authoritarianism is bad, except for when I do it (to protect you).
abecedarius · · focus · HN ↗
I have seen Zvi pushing back against the narratives that open-weights models and Chinese ICs have caught up to the frontier. Was he wrong? But I can't recall any animus against Chinese people or their talent there.
Leary · · focus · HN ↗
0xDEAFBEAD · · focus · HN ↗
elktown · · focus · HN ↗
TheOtherHobbes · · focus · HN ↗
lelandfe · · focus · HN ↗
Am I misunderstanding this?
Is this person saying a reason the second book is named “The Dark Forest” is because it’s named after a term they just made up in this post, which also uses the word “dark?”
jhallenworld · · focus · HN ↗
Here are a few (check out the comments- working class people from around the world make contact):
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@kangkanginchina7" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@kangkanginchina7
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Chineseruralareas" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@Chineseruralareas
Anyway, I view this as one of the more positive uses for AI.
mostlysimilar · · focus · HN ↗
jhallenworld · · focus · HN ↗
talon8635 · · focus · HN ↗
krapp · · focus · HN ↗
satvikpendem · · focus · HN ↗
t0mpr1c3 · · focus · HN ↗
anomaly_ · · focus · HN ↗
miohtama · · focus · HN ↗
I enjoy these videos a lot, esp. if they are about history and engineering. Some of videos have really good production quality. I guess they are probably translated fron original WeChat etc. source material.
jhallenworld · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@zazainchina" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@zazainchina
savanaly · · focus · HN ↗
juiceland · · focus · HN ↗
toolsmax · · focus · HN ↗
I'm a native Chinese person born around the new millennium, and some of the observations in this article seem to apply only to specific generations.
"Dark World thinking as described in Truth or Dare": I personally don't feel this at all. But this mentality does apply to many people over 70.Some of the elderly people I met are mean and selfish by today's standards, but considering they might have literally survived a starvation, this shouldn't be that surprising.
"Primacy of social reality, and of shame and “face.”: I don't know about this. Maybe because I grew up in this environment, I am used to the social norm and don't find it uncomfortable at all. Yet I haven't lived abroad for a long time, so I don't know how different it is somewhere else.
"Chinese social media is like American junk food.": Basically true. Social platforms can be atrocious, but there are rational and comfortable circles. They tend to stay low though, since popularity usually destroys them. But I'd argue that this is the same anywhere on the internet.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
alex0015 · · focus · HN ↗
numeri · · focus · HN ↗
Terr_ · · focus · HN ↗
t0mpr1c3 · · focus · HN ↗
Spin The Bottle? Truth or Dare?
alex0015 · · focus · HN ↗
morkalork · · focus · HN ↗
OroPla · · focus · HN ↗
My grandfather survived starvation and much, much worse things during and after WWII (in Russian captivity). He died of old age a long time ago, but was a very kind and not at all selfish person.
orwin · · focus · HN ↗
The point about the cynical view however I disagree with. I don't think I have the correct words to explain this, but basically, unlike India, Korea and maybe to a certain point Japan, they distrust this kind of American, almost forced friendliness, cheerfulness and enthusiasm and see it as fake, which is very similar to how French, Belgians, Dutch or Germans feels sometimes (I know I did my first time around in California).
That's also the reason why out of all of Asia, I feel the best working with Chinese teams (Japanese too but I have more trouble with their English).
[Edit]: forgot the point about social shame: not untrue, but geographically limited to the more rural area in my casual observation. No one in Beijing takes themselves that seriously, but in poorer areas, pride and face felt more important.
fuzzythrowaway · · focus · HN ↗
bad_haircut72 · · focus · HN ↗
krapp · · focus · HN ↗
hollerith · · focus · HN ↗
If my main consideration in an interaction with a stranger is to avoid its escalating to violence, I'm going to be polite, but I'm not going to be enthusiastic or particularly friendly.
0xDEAFBEAD · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/ehe25w/why_are_americans_so_intensely_friendly/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/ehe25w/why_a...
<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/1k7sfbv/so_whats_that_famous_american_friendliness_exactly/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/1k7sfbv/so_w...
<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/1nq71lc/why_are_americans_so_friendly/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/1nq71lc/why_...
janalsncm · · focus · HN ↗
orwin · · focus · HN ↗
That was jut to tell the author that i think he misread how Chineese are on this specific point. It wasn't a criticism of North Americans at all. Really now, i think this is charming (as long as we don't work together, i will find this infuriating and bitch about it to my SO)
mncharity · · focus · HN ↗
eli_gottlieb · · focus · HN ↗
My experience is that everyone from outside the Northeast thinks those of us from the Northeast are assholes, and we think they're all two-faced sociopaths.
fragmede · · focus · HN ↗
t0mpr1c3 · · focus · HN ↗
When I have visited California it feels superficial and fake. People are like, we're all laid back and let's go surfing! But if you trip over someone's dog leash they are going to sue you.
theGeatZhopa · · focus · HN ↗
david2ndaccount · · focus · HN ↗
thomassmith65 · · focus · HN ↗
nialv7 · · focus · HN ↗
dang · · focus · HN ↗
I'm not saying your critique is wrong, nor (more importantly) uninteresting. What makes it interesting is the second sentence, which—not by coincidence—is the most specific.
But do please edit out swipes like "This is laughably inaccurate" - this is in the site guidelines: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and your comment would be fine (if a bit too generic) without that bit.
nialv7 · · focus · HN ↗
So instead I just want to say, like, they are just human too, like you and me. We may do things somewhat differently, but deep down we are all the same, we all have to breath, we all have a heartbeat, we all need to eat and shit, and we will all die one day. Remember that, instead of trying to build a reductive caricature of what "Chinese people" is like. If you ever interact with a Chinese person, be sincere, compassionate, and curious, just like how you would interact with anyone.
cyberax · · focus · HN ↗
In China this was also the case with the literary language (文言), but it went even further. You actually had to master it to advance in any official career. So a government official instead of, say, learning how to manage a city, had to learn the old philosophical texts written in a language nobody speaks. And they had to pass actual exams for that knowledge.
Now China has the Communist writings displacing these old philosophical texts. They are about as useful, and I don't think many people really care about them, but you have to show knowledge of them to advance in your career.
I don't think this is a _good_ pattern, it reinforces the belief that everyone around them is lying and that everyone's behavior is fake.
And since we're talking about culture, I highly recommend this book: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Tales_from_a_Chinese_Studio" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Tales_from_a_Chinese_S... - it's a series of short fantasy stories written around 400 years ago.
Some of them are just weird and have stories that are nothing like European fairy tales. For example, a story of a spirit befriending a man just to talk from time to time. And then the spirit had to eventually move to another location because it got a promotion. Just imagine the culture, where even your afterlife is going to be just as bureaucratic as your regular life!
r3trohack3r · · focus · HN ↗
The average citizen is not who you need to convince. The national narrative is set from the top, disseminated through the Central Propaganda Department, and enforced.
It’s not a grass roots effort to sway national policy in China AFAIK - you’re trying to convince a small group of key people who have enough of their hands on the steering wheel of a totalitarian state.
naveen99 · · focus · HN ↗
ntlm1686 · · focus · HN ↗
Suppose a country leading in AI invokes safety concerns to demand that countries trying to catch up restrict their development, while continuing its own. Calling this 圣母 would criticize the perceived double standard and moralizing at others’ expense, not concern for humanity.
The term can be misused, but presenting it as evidence that Chinese people reject ordinary compassion reflects a prejudice and misleads readers.
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
There's a huge amount of that stuff appearing as Chinese AI-created dramas. Although there seem to be only about ten standard plots. ("Banished girl heiress returns from the countryside to rich family" is very popular. Some of the vertical dramas with that plot are so similar it suggests re-use of the same prompt. Incidentally, if you don't watch Chinese drama and want to, see "Princess Agents", the original. That's a pre-AI big budget project with good plotting and characters.)
The AI fear for China should be that people will have to leave their city job, and return home in shame to their village, and farm. AIs and robots do most of the city work. There are still rich, modern, cities. You're just outside them.
The drama version would start like this: An employee is called into their boss's office and told they are being replaced with an AI. They pack their belongings into a cardboard box (a cliche of Chinese drama) and walk out of the building. When they get home, a petty official visits them and tells them their hukou is being revoked for being unemployed. Then we seem them with a small suitcase getting on a green train, headed for oblivion in the countryside.
nater5000 · · focus · HN ↗
I would have really liked it if the author offered their perspective of the US version of these dynamics in a more one-to-one way. It'd let me "calibrate" their characterizations based on how accurate their version of the US side of this is based on my experience.
Regardless, I do think this attempts to at least apply nuance to this kind of discussion, and, of course, the author made it clear that they're aware of the kinds of faults I'm describing, so at least there's that.
krapp · · focus · HN ↗
I take it with the same grain of salt that I would any religious missionary describing another culture, or any of the "angry foreigner in China" Youtube accounts. It may be accurate to some degree, probably more correct than someone with no connection whatsoever to the culture, but is it clearly not impartial.
frm88 · · focus · HN ↗
This.
A person raised in the US since age 4 and citing internet sites like the Chinese equivalent to RoyalRoad and Twitter as generalised examples of Chinese culture, nationalism and rejection of empathy should not in any way be taken seriously. Proselytising only enhances the disqualification, as does his endorsement of a complete misinterpretation of the Three Body Problem. There was a lot of xenophobia going on in that book and the positive characters were all Chinese.
hollerith · · focus · HN ↗
krapp · · focus · HN ↗
Apart from being obvious given the facts, the author even admits this. So I'm curious why you believe them to be a liar regarding their own lived experience?
satvikpendem · · focus · HN ↗
try-working · · focus · HN ↗
For social media, Xiaohongshu is about the same as international social media, except you don't have that very weirdest type of brainrot content.
0xDEAFBEAD · · focus · HN ↗
try-working · · focus · HN ↗
0xDEAFBEAD · · focus · HN ↗
try-working · · focus · HN ↗
news from Chinese media, translated into English.
jampa · · focus · HN ↗
On the second point, social status seems to come much more from education than from any other thing. I struck up a few casual conversations and quickly learned that people are very proud of their education. Every single conversation turned to where and what they had studied.
I disagree with the Dark World view. I found most Chinese people very welcoming and kind. Unlike other places I've visited, where the culture felt like all against all, people were helpful and seemed happy among themselves (except in HK). Of course, this is just my experience as an outsider.
pucas946 · · focus · HN ↗
A lot has been said about outdated scarcity mindset, and those beliefs being difficult to shake in this thread. But honestly, I whole heartedly disagree. The mindset around these kind of Dark Triad behaviors, fixation on social standing and wanting to raise China up stem from the current day reality that China might be the MOST competitive society in the entire world, other then south Korea. To literally just get into a good school and have a good job requires competition and dedication that students here have to do to get into Harvard. And failure along any of the steps up towards these goals in most cases will simply not be recovered: you will be part of the permanent underclass. It is a death battle that takes up every waking moment of your entire life.
I one time was dating a civil engineer who had managed to go to school and work abroad in my country. When I described how I thought the act of helping people, even when your own future was uncertain was a primal act of human dignity and greatness, she began crying. We talked a little bit after as she calmed down, where she explained that she was upset to hear me even talking about helping strangers instead of myself of her. "My whole life has been competition. How can you think about anybody else". It was an eye opening moment to say the least.
The unfortunate thing is that resource and job scarcity I think is increasingly driving everywhere in the world to have more of these mindsets. While people often complain about mass immigration and demographics, at current pace I believe the world will be a lot culturally similar to China 20 - 30 years from now, simply because of economic realities. Especially in a truly AI future where there just aren't enough high paying jobs left for anybody but the intellectual and economic super elite.
cman1444 · · focus · HN ↗
palmotea · · focus · HN ↗
"More abundance overall" could mean one guy with 1 quadrillion dollars of wealth, and everyone else with nothing.
johnsmith1840 · · focus · HN ↗
I think of the absurdity of "RRR" or gangnam style those may embarass stuffy people but much like drinking does to social situations seeing the dumb of society actually humanizes you. I think it's also the reason american culture is so pervasive.
I have never experienced a chinese show, movie, song, or played a video game but have experienced the culture from most other countries in some form. Even average chinese food is barely chinese! It was only when I moved to bay area I had real chinese food. Even their history requires effort to learn about, it's there but the depth is harder to learn about than others.
It's so easy to boogyman a country when you know nothing about them. All of their direct neighbors cozying up with USA is evident of their failure to spread a relatable cultural narrative. From this perspective China is more like the socially awkward kid that says and does weird things on top of being rude.
jackyinger · · focus · HN ↗
Sha1rholder · · focus · HN ↗
At its core, it is a kind of projection along the lines of: “I’m an enlightened, worldly Western person who is almost immune to propaganda, and Chinese people are a mixed bag, but overall they are xxx.”
This is not the social reality in China. As the author’s background indicates, this is the imagining of an American who moved to the States at the age of four and has some interest in China due to ancestry.
Just to give one example—because there isn’t enough space here, and I can’t be bothered to write out more:
> Here is the first verse of a popular children’s song: ...
And yet, in more than twenty years of my life interacting with people of different ages from all over China, I have never once heard of this supposedly “popular children’s song.”
After all this article is just another BS about “It is concerning how much China blablabla...” Actually, on _Social Reality in_ Chinese American is they consider those “Chinese Chinese” as basically gorillas, parading them in front of other European Americans as if to say: “Look, these Chinese Chinese are my ancestors! Let’s study them together—and just look at how much further we Chinese Americans have evolved compared with them.” It IS a fancy imagination for those who really don't know zero about what's the reality of the people in the GFW.
NooneAtAll3 · · focus · HN ↗
how often have you talked about your own childhood songs?
I could have agreed with argument "children songs are regional/vary family-to-family", but personal second-hand experience is definitely not it
Sha1rholder · · focus · HN ↗
And we do talk about it often.
This “childhood song” example is completely out of step with China’s social reality, just as you can easily recognize at a glance “an old British poem” forged by an American.
kubb · · focus · HN ↗
They’ll prefer to listen to that because this kind of communication is done using the language and concepts they understand. They’ll confidently and arrogantly tell other people what they are based on this „knowledge”.
People ITT are loving it and enjoying it.
Der_Einzige · · focus · HN ↗
janalsncm · · focus · HN ↗
Based on my experience, these kinds of cultural generalizations are interesting to talk about but as with many populations there is much more variance between people within the group than between groups. Therefore, it is much more effective to get to know individuals than to write to no one in particular.
Additionally, the question of how Chinese society looks in general is less important than how the decision makers think. You don’t need to convince average Chinese people. You need to convince the equivalent of a VP at Google.
Based on those two things, and especially because as far as I can tell the Rationalists have framed the entire thing as a sort of prisoner’s dilemma, the only way out is to build trust. And in my opinion the best way to do that is for Americans to meet Chinese people and for Chinese to meet Americans.
GPerson · · focus · HN ↗
kubb · · focus · HN ↗
clove · · focus · HN ↗
Before the rev, your social standing in China could be judged by dimensionS (plural emphasized): lineage, academics, religion, business reputation, regional identity...
The Cultural Revolution tore each of those dimensions down, by design, for teh purpose of creating a new single dimension (politically sanctified identity).
The main issue with doing this to a Chinese culture, specifically, is that now the concept of face - already extremely important culturally - becomes basically everything. Every social interaction becomes zero-sum because there's only one thing to compete over.
In a pluralistic status culture, you can lose face in one domain and maintain it in another.
The Cultural Revolution removed that defensive buffer.
IN the past couple decades, China has added a second dimension, wealth. But it's hardly a real axis due to wealth being easily achievable through party alignment. In other words, the two dimensions are entangled. I doubt a principle component analysis would find them to be separate domains.
In any case, the younger Chinese generation who has access to global online subcultures, international credentials, professional specialization, etc., is recovering the pluralistic status axes. So... well, I could write my predictions, but that wasn't the point of my comment, so I'll end it here.
ksymph · · focus · HN ↗
clove · · focus · HN ↗
My prediction is that the pluralistic axes will come back to China, but they will be superficial and strictly controlled. The recovering axes will be aesthetic and consumptive such as fandoms, hobby subcultures, fitness, foreign credentials... They will give young people somewhere to hold face when the main ladder rejects them.
Notably, these axes will be different from the pre-1949 ones: lineage, religion, and reputation came from institutions that were alternative sources of authority. The 2021 crackdowns on fan clubs and gaming showed the state will regulate any subculture that starts organizing people outside the approved channels. So I expect a split: people with exit options (e.g., overseas degrees, foreign income, portable skills) get a real pluralistic status life, while everyone else stays on the single entangled axis, where competition likely intensifies as the pool narrows to those who cannot leave.
As this progresses, we basically just watch to see if any new axis produces its own gatekeepers not credentialed by the state. I'm guessing every one instead gets an official association within a few years of reaching noticable scale.
nooneshere · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
writtenone · · focus · HN ↗
yipinwong · · focus · HN ↗
Now you see Han-fu in chinese dramas.
Hanfu is made up shit, I tell ya, I never seen that shit until 15 years ago. I had my g/f wear that in China, and chinese shooshed her cuz they thought it was either korean or japanese.
Saving "face" is just funny, because if you make someone lose face, they will sometimes even kill you (check out chines emedia for that)
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
lanesun · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
aucisson_masque · · focus · HN ↗
crvdgc · · focus · HN ↗
Obviously, the author has deep engagement with the Chinese internet culture (the "junk food" part that I would avert), but the over generalization is comical.
Or maybe that's the point? The author is trying to be provocative? For someone with zero background of the Chinese internet culture, this could be a starting point (although an extreme one), but don't take this to represent the whole reality.
One example, the quoted book review Three Body Problem draws the complete opposite conclusion that the aliens are Chinese. To anyone with actual Chinese culture context, they are obviously "Westerners".
<spoilers>
- Far more advanced technologies. - The Trisolarians cannot lie, so that becomes the only advantage of humanity. -> Art of War - The Trisolarians are blocking physical experiments to stop science and technology advancement. -> Entity list and export control. Huawei. - The factions in human that supports the invasion. -> Evans hated humanity because of The Silent Spring, which is supposed to represent the Western self-guilt culture. - The emaciated generation that failed at launching the mutually assured destruction device is an image of "Westernized" generation.
The overarching background of the book is a discussion of which direction that China should take after 1989 stopped the democratization process and drove the Western powers into hostility. The author Cixin Liu has a more or less social darwinism answer for that ("Dark Forest"). Not that he endorsed social darwinism, but that's the main theme of the book.
</spoilers>
ksymph · · focus · HN ↗
cloudie78 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
Markoff · · focus · HN ↗
Restaurant bill or job offers posted everywhere are basically same as 9 years ago and didn't changed, similar with real estate prices, in-laws bought investment apartment years ago, if they would sell it now, they would sell it at loss probably, similar thing with rents.
China is stucked in one place with less and less jobs for young people while there is less and less young people at same time (as share on whole population), sounds like deadly cocktail to me similar to Japan, the difference being Japan at least reached pretty developed status before getting into this status quo.
So much for the permanent GDP growth somehow not projecting into daily lives of Chinese.
kubb · · focus · HN ↗
Markoff · · focus · HN ↗
handle584 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
jan_m_savage · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
sdeframond · · focus · HN ↗
On a similar note, as a Frenchman, I felt somewhat closer to the Japanese described in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" by Ruth Benedict than to the Americans, although the Japanese are the "aliens" from the point of view of that book.
Der_Einzige · · focus · HN ↗
I don't care about the rest of the China discussion, but I really hope China simply accelerates and doesn't get screwed by "pause" rhetoric.
danlugo92 · · focus · HN ↗
China: 76%
USA: 36%
Everything else is bullshit if you're homeless, whatever metric you can think about to refute my post, it's worthless if you're homeless.
nobody42 · · focus · HN ↗
But when it comes to owning a home in China, you can't do it - because you can't own the land, only lease it. So effectively, anything could happen with your home.
Then, construction in China is a pyramid scheme. Highly praised amount of infrastructure and empty ghost cities is an effect of that [0]. Combine that with rampant corruption (guanxi)[1] and culture of corner-cutting (chabuduo)[2], and you will end with bridges and multi-story buildings crumbling like sand, waiting to collapse at any moment.
All of that with an addition of aging population due to half-witted decisions of delusional, unchecked power (one child policy) leaves China with construction it wont be able to maintain, not even with immigrants, because of recent decisions of tribal nationalism[3][4].
Trends are saturated about China's prosperity and superiority. But if you want actual prosperity - you cant rely on algorithms alone.[5]
With your stats you imply that a person could feel safe owning a home in China. Could you feel safe accounting for all of that?
[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWDty6iNcgA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWDty6iNcgA
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi
[2] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/ub6lwn/what_is_the_cultural_origin_of_chabuduo_is_it/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/ub6lwn/what_is_the_c...
[3] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUaYNhzEq_E" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUaYNhzEq_E
[4] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jilv0b27m4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jilv0b27m4
[5] <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/world/tiktok-manipulates-content-brainwashes-users-into-liking-china-finds-research-13850766.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.firstpost.com/world/tiktok-manipulates-content-b...
eunos · · focus · HN ↗
And cynically I think they still are.
maxglute · · focus · HN ↗
4. it's 2026, the sentiment have shifted from PRC insecure to PRC IS strong. Apart from national soccer eon of humiliation - a devils bargain to transfer all national failure into soccer, I think last 10 years has proven PRC/chinaman working twice as hard has paid off across domains. Chip on shoulder still remains, of course there's misguided netizen comment on foreigners in general, but even post china-maxxing general foreign perspective on PRC across domains is every bit as myopic and ridiculous.
oliculipolicula · · focus · HN ↗
akomtu · · focus · HN ↗
fmajid · · focus · HN ↗
t0mpr1c3 · · focus · HN ↗
"Low trust culture" is becoming a racist trope.
xinan · · focus · HN ↗
Try it out.
belviewreview · · focus · HN ↗
The fellow said that when the Cultural Revolution ended, the culture never went back to the old values, and didn't have anything to replace them. so since then it has been every person, or at least every family, for itself.
bleki_one · · focus · HN ↗
Also, saying that Chinese are this and that are the same as saying all Poles are drinking vodka and steal car in Germany stereotypes.
hulitu · · focus · HN ↗
> Background: I’m a “first-generation” Chinese-American who moved to the States at the age of four. The beliefs in this essay are primarily drawn from interactions with my parents and their generation of immigrants, and from consumption of Chinese media (dramas, webnovels, games, and manhua) which are not necessarily representative of the realities on the ground.
But the CIA pays well, isn't it ? /s