An American and a Mainland Chinese were talking…

[gzz]

American: Unlike China, in the USA, we are allowed to criticize our President in public.

Mainland Chinese: Unlike America, in China, we are allowed to praise our President in public.

[zk]

Not sure I get it.

An American is free to praise his president. He only risks being called out for praising such a wicked and revolting human being. In other words, he risks hearing the free speech of others.

[scaredyclassic]

Tell that joke to peter strzok

[zk]

[quote=scaredyclassic]Tell that joke to peter strzok[/quote]

Yeah, apparently we’re not all free to criticize our president.

[FlyerInHi]

Same version of an old joke.
I think it’s a true story — back in 1971 a senior American diplomat traveled to China and told them that we have the rule of law. The Chinese answered that they have the rule by law. The point was that the Chinese were revolutionary peasants and did not know anything about governance. That was then and this is now.

Kishore Mahbuhani said that Francis Fukuyama caused “brain damage” to Americans by making us think that our system is the “end of history”. We think of communism as static and we still believe that Russia and China are the communists that existed under Reagan. We generally can’t fathom that people with different systems can be successful.

Kishore Mabubhani also said, and I paraphrase, if you’d asked him back in the 1970s to go to any world capital, would he rather talk to the American ambassador or he Chinese ambassador? Of course, the American who is brilliant — went to Harvard or Yale, reads the new yorker, etc… Why waste time with the Chinese guy can only wave Mao’s red book.

Fast forward to today, and the Chinese Ambassador likely has a PhD from a prestigious institution, had been posted several times in the region, speaks the local language, and has a nuanced views of the country where he is serving. The American Ambassador is a political hack.

I was watching a CSIS panel in the Middle East for an Arab audiance. The American experts were the same old regular people. The lone Chinese guy spoke fluent English and Arabic and he addressed the audience in Arabic.

So yeah, Americans like to reduce everything to feel good cliches. And we wonder why the Chinese are successful despite being communists.

[zk]

The original post seems like a typical meme du jour that bounces around the right-wing propaganda sphere. And, as usual, it doesn’t stand up to 0.5 seconds worth of scrutiny or thought. The beauty of such propaganda, though, is that if you want to believe it, you won’t scrutinize it for that necessary half of a second.

[FlyerInHi]

So I have a mailand Chinese friend who just moved to Princeton so their 14yo son can go to high school. Another friend has a son about to enter Cornell.

They don’t particularly like Xi Jinping’s authoritarian streak; and they want to move some money out of China to shelter from currency depreciation. But the freedom of speech that Americans enjoy, they are not clamoring for it. In fact, fake news can do real damage to democracies as we saw with Trump and Brexit. They are afraid of the gun culture.

I asked them: are you happy with the opportunities you had in China or would you rather have been ordinary Chinese-Americans who were born in SF or NY Chinatowns in the 60s and 70s, knowing the history of race relations in USA at the time? To be sure, 1990s and beyond were different for Asian Americans.

Do you think that as a Chinese American you would have had the opportunity to make the money you made in China. Would you be better off, had you been born in USA? Or are you better off having been born in China, and now having access to all you can purchase thanks to globalization?

For context, remember that homeownerdhip was only legalized in 1994 in China.

[Myriad]

Still waiting on aliens to blow up both countries so I don’t have to think about the stupidity of both governments.

[spdrun]

A lot of Chinese banks have headquarters and servers on Hong Kong … it would be unfortunate if the power and Internet links on the island suddenly went down due to labor actions. Make Father Xi squirm.

[The-Shoveler]

Xi is in a tough spot,

From most mainlanders perspective XI giving in an inch on hong kong or taiwan would probably be the last you hear of Xi.

Interesting times.

Not really helping us get a trade deal done either as they see it as being our fault somehow (the protests).

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=The-Shoveler]

Not really helping us get a trade deal done either as they see it as being our fault somehow (the protests).[/quote]

I am sure our secret service is helping just like in Ukraine and Venezuela. Do you know that aid money Trump cut off to Central America is now going to pay the salaries of the Guaido opposition?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-07-16/usaid-diverting-humanitarian-aid-to-political-opposition-in-venezuela%3F_amp%3Dtrue

I’m surprised Trump is not using Hong Kong more publically to pressure China.

[gzz]

Flyer you are usually more solid on politics than to conspiracy theorize.

[FlyerInHi]

You should read up more about the CIA involvement in China over time.
We used Muslims against China without success. The Uighur separatists were enabled by us, maybe not now but certainly in the past. American officials have admitted as much.

I’m not making a judgement call, I’m just saying that what we do is meddle in the internal affairs of countries around the world. Let’s just face it.

About HK, it’s too early to tell but it would be malpractice for our secret services or diplomats not to be involved in some way, if only in a small way such as assuring assylum to people who face arrest.

[Myriad]

The deterioration in HK wouldn’t have happened if the HK government wasn’t clueless and incompetent. Could have made some minor concessions back in June and it would have been over for now (at least 5-10 years).

[carlsbadworker]

[quote=zk]Not sure I get it.

An American is free to praise his president. He only risks being called out for praising such a wicked and revolting human being. In other words, he risks hearing the free speech of others.[/quote]

Really? All the “political correctness” mob on the Internet is free speech as well?

[Author]

Posts