benpenguin wrote:After all those nice things I said, ...
Calm down, this is nothing personal, you have your views/experiences, I have mine, unless we can talk openly, what's the point? Incidentally, I did live in the Far East for quite some time, so I'm not the greenhorn you may take me to be.
Remember that we are discussing about the chances that China will dominate you? That's what I was trying to discuss. There is noting to fear from your end. That's the only point I was trying to make.
And who are you to make such a claim? Do you represent 1.3 billion Chinese? Nobody could make such a claim. History develops its own dynamics. Nobody can stop that. A dominant economic position will invariably translate into a dominant political position. Nobody can change that. China is set to replace the US as the first economic superpower soon. Short of an all out war, nothing can stop that. So all your assurances that China will not dominate are not worth a thing.
My point is that the West has to clearly face this fact and act accordingly, not by suppressing China by political or military pressure, but by adopting an industrial policy that will make sure we can compete economically with China in the future. Europe has been loosing technological leadership and industries to the Far East for too long.
But we are actually being misunderstood! I lived in both worlds for an extended period of time, so I do have some perspective. For me, it is very hard to explain Western mindset to my compatriots, and vise versa. We live in a completely different world with a very irrelevant set of values to each other, and we couldn't even begin to acknowledge it.
Just look at your Western news anchors. BBC, CNN, Reuters, NYT...pick one. Search all articles about China for the last 15 years. There is simply nothing worth praising about China.
Oh stop complaining! That isn't going anywhere. I have monitored Anglo media for nearly 50 years, and I can tell you that the BBC has for decades depicted a totally distorted image of Germany, for example. You just don't notice it because you are Chinese, so you are very sensitive about any news about China, while probably taking the BBC news, for example, about Germany at face value.
And as I said, the little known about the Far East is known through the biased views of people studying Chinese, Japanese, etc., who invariably have a soft spot for their object of study. This has a long tradition. Already Voltaire believed that the Chinese had an enlightened system of government because of the reports sent back by the Jesuits, even though Chinese rulers often exhibited a cruelty that would have make you hairs stand on end. Likewise, the European left still idealized Mao's teaching while millions in China were suffering during the great leap forwards or the cultural revolution. These are only two examples to show you that the image of China is often more positive than reality warrants. But it is a general phenomenon not limited to these examples.
But don't be jealous! If Turkey stop exporting terrorism and start exporting real stuff, you can perhaps catch up with Guangzhou's GDP in a decade or two!
China is not a big power yet, but you are certainly doing well at picking up big power arrogance ;-)
What happened to the humble Chinese you were talking about earlier?