Funny thing is, when I talk to Chinese people in China, nearly all of them understand why the US and China are fighting: economic reasons. There isn't the same level of hate/demonization of the US in China as there is the opposite in US.
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.
People in the US can recognize that the fighting is caused by economic reasons, and surely the average American citizen and the average Chinese citizen don't hold animosity towards each other on a personal level.
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.
I'm going to disagree on this one. It's not based on my personal observation.
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.
That’s a false premise. The government in the US does not need popular approval to do things. There isn’t direct voting on any of these actions and pressure on politicians is indirect and very slow for all but extremely egregious actions.
>That’s a false premise. The government in the US does not need popular approval to do things.
Are you sure about that? Every US history class I've ever taken growing up told me about some form of propaganda usage by the US government prior to some action. WWI, WWII, Cold War, Vietnam War, Iraq War etc.
Propaganda is as much about convincing "the people" as it is convincing the "internal apparatus". Of course, for something like WWI, you have to have propaganda because the effort required is too large -- you can't do WWI or WWII with the apparatus alone.
But it's very important, even for the people "on the inside", to believe that they are fighting for the right cause, to be able to rationalize their actions. If you need something morally fraught to be done (like fight a war), the people doing it, regardless of who they work for on paper, are much more effective if they believe in their hearts that it's the right thing to do. Propaganda isn't really about convincing people do to things, it's about giving them the emotional toolkit to justify doing things with purpose and pride.
There wasn’t propaganda before WW2. Japan hit Pearl Harbor and the US was at war by the time people were just hearing about it.
The only propaganda before Vietnam was the general red scare. Nothing specifically prepping people to go to war in Vietnam. Once there, propaganda definitely ramped up to keep people happy with a draft.
The point is that no approval is needed to do stuff. There is often propaganda later to help justify it, but that doesn’t limit the speed or capability of what can be done.
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
The fact that people actually ask this question, shows how people in the west (assuming you are from there) only see China through mainstream media. No offense to you in particular.
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.
I was under the impression there was a large demographic of Chinese who would buy Huawei phones over iPhones because they were Chinese and not American, despite the chip being being a few generations behind an iPhone.
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)
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.
Of course there are nationalists in China. I didn't argue against that.
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.
I don't think a few Americanized Chinese restaurants with American owners compare to my examples?
The cultural export power of America is precisely one of the main reasons why I sense that the level of anti-American sentiment in China is not nearly as bad as the anti-China sentiment in the US.
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)
The data is just me walking on any street in Shenzhen and almost never smelling any gasoline or feel the heat from cars.
That was notable because of how unusual it was. Chinese cities are extremely safe, generally speaking.
In the West we have a general consensus that any encroachment on freedom in the name of safety isn’t worth the trade. People even go so far as to claim that those who would choose safety don’t deserve it, which I find completely uncalled for and unnecessarily strident. A lot of Asian countries (China, Japan, Singapore) have no such problem, and view the US as a generally unsafe country.
China mostly exports goods lower on the value chain. When China tries to move up in the value chain such as exporting whole cars, phones, networking gear, software, that's where the "China bad" becomes much more of a problem for Chinese companies.
I have seen concerns about Chinese software and network gear along the lines of "if this is compromised we would loose everything", which is not a bad position from a security standpoint.
Phones: There was a very large acceptance of OnePlus and other Chinese phones in the US.
Cars: China has just recently started to try and export cars to the US and it looks like the US is putting up trade barriers to prevent that. There are several factors in this, i.e. domestic worker protection.
The only one that may be considered "China Bad" is network gear and software, since the concern is the state apparatus compromising the product being received.
For all other's I have not seen a daemonization of China or Chinese people.
None of the things you listed mean much when it comes to ethno-nationalism. There are a lot of Chinese that love American brands but still hate the US for nationalist reasons.
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.
I agree with most of what you said (especially the safety part). But in my experience anti-US sentiment is a part of anti-outsider skepticism more broadly. And there’s a justifiable history to it, with a century of humiliation and occupation that the US was a part of (although less than Japan/UK).
Basically they see anti-China sanctions as a continuation of foreign bullying.
I sonetimes come across Global Times articles which are subtly nuanced, not by demonizing the US but by promoting the Chinese narrative instead instead.
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.
The people don’t fight. The governments do. War is the racket where the government convinces the people to die for them.
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.
I mostly see that too, but I do want to point out some genuine patriotism within China.
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.
> 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.
Of course, if you analyze things logically you'll conclude that the dispute is merely economic, because the US was buying everything from China until a few months ago.
Yes, when you don't have access to independent reporting, you miss China building hundreds of landing and invasion vessels, ramming and threatening neighbors over absurd territorial claims, and you could ignorantly conclude there must be "economic reasons" behind the US and China fighting. I'm here to tell you that the economic conflict is merely an immediate and necessary consequence from the realization that when war happens, the US is too reliant on Chinese manufacturing - and so it is being aggressively decoupled.
Because the US is the primary enforcer of the world order that mandates, broadly, that everyone can trade with no fear of attacks on their shipping, and that we don't steal each other's land any more.
When the US gives up on that role, the world is going to change drastically, and not for the better.
Plus that conflict is quite complicated, predates WW2 and the imposition of this system, and the US does not support the settlers.
It's not that complicated, actually. The US is technically not a fan of the settlements, but its criticisms have been muted to the point of silence for several years now.
Meanwhile, what matters is what happens on the ground. As long as Israel keeps doing the settlements dance, and US military aid keeps flowing with no restrictions, and it does not take aggressive action against the settlers' base of support within the US itself, then de facto "the US supports the settlements", and that's pretty much all there is to it.
On top of this, other extremely regrettable actions it has taken (such as endorsing move of the capital to Jerusalem) signal tacit support of the Greater Israel project generally (which the settlements are the primary vanguard of).
That's not an invasion in the classic nation-state sense since the Palestinians have never had a country.
What matters is that it's both theft and plunder on a grand scale, and ethnic cleansing in the classic mold. Mincing words does not change this fact.
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.