矛⋅盾

when it’s people you think should be your friends it’s incredibly isolating. In the last 5ish years of increased sinophobia ive had both trans and asian friends who are “left” of democrats try to get me to affirm sinophobic stances (eg through jokes) and the sad thing is, this is the norm. most westerners can expect ABCs (and CBCs) to pop out with some assimilatory “I’m one of the good ones” signifier.

anyway as an ABC I’ve definitely noticed that the torchbearer of sinophobia is other chinese diaspora. I loathe it so much, but it’s definitely an avenue towards personal success, particular in careers related to media, writing, art, etc. white society audiences crave to hear their sinophobia affirmed through a chinese face. I dont even have to scrape the gunk on the bottom of the barrel, the whole “container” is just infested, like these are just two randos I found on goodreads (diaspora writing in english on topic of china) (1) (2). on the flip side, if you don’t give them that (sinophobia affirmed through a chinese face), and stay quiet or ambivalent on the topic of the mainland, well that’s the hard road of proving yourself through pure merit. on the worst end, if you as a chinese diaspora dare say that communist china is actually good for chinese people, you don’t get a platform, you get brushed aside and more or less forgotten. han suyin (who published in english) is out of print since the cold war ended and the nonaligned movement evaporated. meanwhile pearl s buck’s the good earth is still being taught as required reading in american high schools.

yall have no idea how mad I was that I couldn’t see 30000 miles from Chang’an on big screen theaters when it came out because no theaters in the US was putting it on, at least in my area. tbh I was surprised that Nezha 2 is getting any screens in the US now

iceberg moment or whatever but the first movie had insufferable fandom 🫠

movie itself was fine, both 2 and 1 have some kid-level basically fart jokes or whatever, overall agree that the direction had/has younger target audience

1/ unsure for every case

2/ don’t have enough data but just stating the trend: the top ranked schools are all public, just check out the rankings, tip top ones are all public nonprofit.

3/ I’m not super familiar with the entire landscape to know if all public schools are strictly better or not; I’m just aware of general public opinion that private schools are more expensive and more mid. Generally, less prestigious. However, at least as a personal observation, wealthier parents tend to choose to find a way for their kid to go to an overseas university if they don’t like the private schooling options after midling gaokao results. (as american born chinese these wealthy “princess complex” international classmates colored my impression of mainlanders for a while during my uni years… i suppose that’s both to my own and their detriment :/ it is what it is)

iirc rural area hukou students and ethnic minority students get boosted points for gaokao also, there’s definitely affirmative action in that regard.

edit: clarity

the gaokao competitiveness for top schooling actually is inverted (monetarily speaking) compared to the west. The top schools are usually publicly funded and have lower tuitions compared to private schools. (that said gaokao is very intense, I had a cousin who spent a whole year to redo it to try to get better placement)

I mean, purely on the medical part, I’d say no. Dentistry and lowering infant mortality rate along with lowering maternity mortality rate is a very very very recent thing, although dispersal and access to these qualities aren’t evenly distributed today, globally and even among class divides in the imperial core.

Anyway, I just can’t imagine likely dying to childbirth in the course of having 10+ kids where 3-4 survive to adulthood if you’re lucky being Better :/

!! Also no baby formula. If you have a hard time producing [enough] milk (this is a common problem!) your infant is likely to have a hard time thriving. Animal milks are NOT a substitute for human milk for an infant. Peasant women who recently had a child/still produced milk would often be the ones providing nursemaid services for higher class families. Many other points about pests (even royalty had fleas…) and hygiene also. I’m yammering a lot but obligatory: technological progress in these measures aren’t necessarily brought about by specific economic models, eg not specifically capitalism in and of itself.

哪吒！！！！！！！！！

tamen de gushi by tan jiu is really cute… (err its manhua not manga but, anyway)

Dongfeng missile program 🫡

Don’t know if we’ll be seeing chinese scientists in US under house arrest or worse again (hopefully not) but, for those unfamiliar: 钱学森 Qian Xuesen co-founded NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1940s), later got the attention of McCarthy-ites and his family was subject to basically house arrest and surveillance for 5 years (deferred deportation), went back to China and led a bunch of programs and never looked back, became known as the “Father of Chinese Rocketry”.

the US attracted brain drain candidates for decades now, but would soon rather let anticommunism and racism get the better of them again and repeat the same “mistakes” and shoot themselves in the foot… honestly better for the Chinese people who can and did return as sinophobia ramps up (and probably will continue apace again in Trump’s 2nd term, not that the western media didn’t try to elevate sinophobia during Biden’s term between Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan, weather balloon, accusing zoo of fielding a man in a suit as a sunbear, etc). Space Race then, chips/AI now (article mentions Mr Sun returned during Trump’s first term, motivated by the racist ‘China Initiative’)

fuller nuance (love to see libs beat the shit out of that word) perspective from someone who is black and of black culture who i think has better angles on all points than I could - tumblr post. excerpts:

The Super Bowl will always be a bread and circus event that lines the pockets of white shareholders. The fact that they allowed Black people to perform is simply to give the appearance of empowerment and progress, thus assuaging our appetite for real revolution by letting spectators woop and cheer and have the feeling that something happened.

context: US flag and americana imagery:

At the end of the above, all African Americans should be wary of narratives that corral them securely within the frame of the United States. This is an intentional set of blinders that keeps you seeing yourself as belonging to this outsized plantation. We made connection to this land, but we were brought here in chains.

in essence I agree it’s resistance liberal politics

so, with the whole drake thing, it’s larger and not specific to drake himself but what he “symbolizes” which is why the line "you’re not a colleague you’re a colonizer“ comes into play regarding black culture/outsiders who would discard the people of the culture he used and wrung out like a wet rag once he’s ready to move onto the next thing/larger more mainstream stage

/ I think the whole superbowl thing makes it feel more assimilationist and unchallenging rather than liberatory or empowering. im not sure if kendrick was fully ironic or what when incorporating “the revolution will not be televised” while he’s being played on America’s most watched televised event.

maybe im too harsh. maybe im importing too much frustration from assimilationist tendencies from my own background (chinese americans/canadians) into this situation (wherein a certain YA novel author is my own “drake”). idk

actual article aside, I’ve never heard of this site before and i’m astounded in the sheer volume of regular comments on each post. interesting.

but she’s “already aware they are terrible people (except Sanders and AOC) but at least they are trying.”

oof. Those two might be left of dems but their track record speaks for itself… :/

I haven’t read the Ghodsee book, but wouldn’t be too surprised if it was eurocom.

Hang in there. I don’t really know what to classify my own partner politically but I at least know theyre somewhere on the left and think liberals suck. And they don’t take the other side when I push back against our more liberal friends when they speak ill of China. Deconstructing atrocity propaganda is an arduous uphill battle, even more so when it’s some else, but you’re right, framing it in condescending or ad hominem/they’re just liars (even if true) rhetoric isn’t very effective.

It’s very frustrating when liberals blame the very small sliver of non-republican opposition as the reason their campaigns failed, because it’s clearly just trying to find scapegoats instead of critically reflecting on why their campaigns were really unpopular, they have proven track records of repeated and repeated failed promises while shaking hands under the table with corporations to pass horrendous stuff… why when Ds are in power they make very minute gestures towards progressive policies and make a fuss that their hands are tied against making anything more concrete like roe v wade, and always make the biggest fuss when Rs actually pass policies that they promised – and this is somehow our fault when we point it out. The cherry on top of this shitty cake is their audience believes in this scapegoating.

that’s his online handle… truck nuts mentality anyone?

hm, I generally try to avoid blanket adjectives like “bad” for entire movements or events. at least for those with targets that aren’t obvious “we’re setting out to exploit people”

western propaganda likes to overexaggerate famine (yay atrocity propaganda), while one of the main concerns of GLF was land reform-agricultural reform (speaking of agricultural reform and development - i remember reading about xi jinping’s background/starting from the bottom of bureaucracy: he had a hand in agricultural reforms for his municipality that boosted yield.). Without hitting the books at this very moment, I’ve also heard the famine situation reframed as residual of the pattern of famines that were already starting to phase out as stability returned to china (coming out of a century of strife, occupation, and wars–conditions that prevent a largely agrarian society from being able to focus on tending crops) + agricultural developments were works in progress to deal with naturally occurring cycles of drought years and flood years. regarding agriculture x climate, the biggest progress is towards drought and disease resistance in crops, but afaik that’s closer to contemporary era than GLF

of course there were errors or mistakes made in GLF (also discussed by internal critiques and taught to future generations) but the gist and spirit of “we need to industrialize and catch up” was not considered an error. off the top of my head as an example, low quality iron produced in rural centers obviously short of goals towards quality steel production