People in China seem to be able to separate the emotions from the situation and able to understand the circumstance logically. Meanwhile, in the US, it's become more of a hate thing through nonstop anti-China propaganda.
I think manufacturing jobs moving to China hurt the middle class in the US, and that's caused a disdain for China (and US politicians who push for things like that). But otherwise, I don't think the China rhetoric is too out of touch with reality. It would be very interesting to talk to someone in China and directly compare perspectives.
Why is that China's fault? It's the American CEOs and financial consultants who are choosing to move jobs overseas, not Chinese people.
I recently read a comment on HN on why this is. The main point of that comment suggested that in a democracy, the government has to convince the public (voters) to hate something before they can justify the action. In China, they don't have do such thing obviously. Therefore, the level of propaganda is not nearly the same.
they have moved already, they're completely done moving. heck, by this point many are trying to move them back into the USA only to realize that it takes decaces to reach the level of quality we all want and even expect
In China, if you walk around the street in any city, you can see many American brands such as McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, Microsoft, Apple. American logos are proudly displayed. If you walk into a cafe, you will more often than not, hear American music. Chinese cinemas will show Hollywood movies. They have statues of Kobe Bryant and when the NBA plays there, they get hundreds of thousands of fans. This is all in 2024, by the way.
Meanwhile, in America, everything Chinese will inevitably get the "China bad" treatment. Chinese companies doing business in America have to hide the fact that they're Chinese. Google "Is company..." and often the top autocomplete results includes something like "Is x company Chinese?".
The level of propaganda is not nearly the same on both sides.
Go to China and see for yourself. I just came back from Shenzhen. Absolutely stunning modern city that feels like it's 5 years ahead of anywhere I've been to. It's extremely safe for foreigners. Ridiculously safe actually. By my estimation, 80% of the cars on the road are EVs. Super clean air, cleaner than most American cities nowadays. You never hear about this stuff in western mainstream media.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-American_sentiment_in_m...
Apparently 60% responded that the killing of Bin Laden was a bad thing because he was an anti-american warrior.
Meaning, there are people in China who are nationalistic, as there are in America. And these have enough of a Chinese over American view they would purchase an arguably worse product for their views.
As for cultural exports, I think America just dominates the world in that regard. If you want to use that as a comparison China would have to have equivalent cultural exports to be a fair point. And as far as I know most people have no qualms with eating Panda Express, PF Changs, or small Chinese takeouts, which is a Chinese cultural export.
>Super clean air, cleaner than most American cities nowadays.
I'm skeptical of that. I'd concede if you provided data but a quick Google search for AQI right now says the worst US city NYC is 54 AQI and Shenzhen is 56. Los Angeles is 33, SF is 19. (source IQAir)
I wonder if the parents of the Japanese boy stabbed on the way to school last month would agree?
China is either the 2nd or 3rd largest trading partner of the US. A large amount of our finished consumer good come from there as well are raw industrial inputs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa... https://usafacts.org/articles/who-are-the-uss-top-trade-part...
Among my relatives I would say all are anti-US. About 5-6 of them vehemently so and want the war to start immediately.
I grew up in China and if you think there’s less propaganda in China compared to the US I don’t know what to tell you.
Basically they see anti-China sanctions as a continuation of foreign bullying.
China is different. Really different. Our old adversaries the Russians/Soviets are like brotherly chums compared to the Chinese.
China has always had a separate sphere of influence, distinct language, culture, religions, geography. It's way out there.
Look at all the conflicts the West has had with Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Those were not merely economic wars. There was ideology involved at every step. Go back thousands of years, and see the Assyrians evangelizing China (not so effective or memorable.) See the Jesuits and other missionaries landing in Asia and making some inroads, then getting expelled, persecuted, martyred.
The big trouble is, with China, Americans have freely entangled ourselves economically with them for a long, long time. And this made for a tacit friendship, while we were fundamentally opposed in other aspects. But China patiently manufactured luxurious silk, delicious opium, cheap toys, and worthless crap to send us, and they Hoovered up all our debt, and our garbage and "recycling", and they bought controlling interests in businesses such as banks and whatnot.
But an economic relationship is not a friendship, it's transactional, and hopefully it's equalizing, and our economic agreements have been stable enough, but they're not strong enough to overcome ideologies.
So now you can see, perhaps, why Americans are scared and looking to extricate ourselves. I wouldn't say it's about "protectionism" because that has some negative or extreme connotations. I'd just say we're trying to be not so globalist, because the globalism eventually comes back to haunt us.
Nobody dislikes the Chinese people . But we also recognize that China has ambitions to expand its territory and we assume that the us government will oppose that.
In the US, it seems like any conversation about China is derailed into something unrelated that the party in China does, which is confounded by the inability to separate a private sector in China from the party. Its just not a 1-to-1 mapping to our system, alongside an unwillingness to see it any other way.
In reality, people in China are just trying to live their lives, and do. They know how to navigate the rules of their system and the day to day is fine.
You could make the same argument of Soviet Russia and other despotic regimes (like today’s Russia). Does it provide any special insight? The majority of people are not involved in the power system of governments.
Having government be intimately intertwined the way China does makes the economy makes the playing field unfair. China basically locked out a lot of US companies from the market and forced a tech and knowledge transfer instead and the US leaders let that happen. The US is starting to finally try to adjust its markets to reflect that and it’s sticking with free markets for now (módulo stuff like TikTok).
Another issue for China domestically is that the entertaining or economy and politics means that there’s an even strong danger of corruption than even the US with all its problems.
When the US gives up on that role, the world is going to change drastically, and not for the better.
