Ningxia Prisons Allow Male & Female Inmates To See Each Other

The reason you should classify yourself as a racist is because you believe the current state of China, Chinese society, and Chinese people is immutable and unchanging.

“I guess this developing country can continue to develop out the brass whazoo, for as long as it wants or pretends to be doing so, but it will not change what is culturally and socially ingrained in the billion people who live here.

China may also do its best to copy everything that America does, but it wont change the way just about all Chinese choose to live their lives in a way that would sicken or at least shock most western people.”

Our own past experience as Western people shows that development inevitably changes social norms and behaviors. The Chinese didn’t individually nor consciously “choose” to be the way they are now, just as we didn’t “choose” to be the way we were back then. They are creatures of habit just as we are. As they are exposed to new values and modes of behavior through increasing global cross-pollination, some will adopt early while others will resist. Every single civilization goes through this continuous process, has before, and will continue to do so. You think Australia sprang up out of nowhere the way it is today?

It’s inevitable that some people like yourself will look down upon China and its people in their current state and situation with disgust and contempt, taking for granted everything you believe “should be”. That’s how many Chinese people felt ages ago when they saw “barbaric Europeans” with nary the “civilization” the Chinese then had over them. However, you’re just as wrong, foolish, and ultimately racist as those Chinese were for thinking things “won’t change”.

Guangjoe, I disagree. It’s definitely a learning process. It’s called socialization, and we all go through it. Our norms are shaped by our environment and it stands to reason that not all environments are the same. Urban areas are different from suburban areas which are also different from rural areas. This is true in developed Western nations as it is in developing China. How people behave are shaped by who they grow up with, and those people are shaped by who they grew up with. This shouldn’t be hard to wrap your head around.

Compassion and understanding for those around you is also learned and socialized. It’s not that Chinese people don’t have compassion and understanding for those around them. There’s ample evidence that they do. It’s that they don’t have it in specific areas or ways you take for granted. They may also have it in ways YOU don’t that THEY take for granted. Where do you think their stereotypes about Westerners not caring for their elders come from?

So they certainly have compassion and understanding for others, but where they don’t is a difference of how they were socialized, and that socialization is affected by the environment they live in.

Most of your examples aren’t really about basic compassion or understanding for others but more specifically about civic-mindedness. That too is socialized.

Babies shitting everywhere is not dissimilar to littering. It’s an abuse of public space because it’s seen as separate from the private.

Poor dental hygiene and talking to people? You’re kidding, right? You think Westerners all had sparkling clean teeth from time immemorial and are all uniformly conscious about bad breath? You don’t think rising living standards (and the dental, oral health care, mint and chewing gum industries, etc.) didn’t have a hand in training Western country-bumpkins, coffee-drinkers, cigarette smokers, and people with morning breath into giving a shit?

You may not have lived in a time where us Westerners coughed and spat as they pleased but surely you’ve encountered history about it, right?

No regard for their own feces is a ridiculous stretch. I’ve yet to see or hear of any Chinese person happily wallowing around in their own feces.

Holding the door for someone else is hardly a uniform virtue amongst Westerners and it is definitely a behavior you learned and weren’t born with. It’s a great virtue and one that doesn’t go unnoticed by Chinese people, especially Chinese girls, who will turn around and scowl at you when you find yourself holding the door open for an unending stream of people because most places in China have just that many people. Point remains, it’s learned.

Spoiling children? Really? You’re not even trying. Are you trying to argue that Chinese people have no compassion and understanding for others or are you just laundry listing things that annoy you completely oblivious to what I already said about us taking certain things for granted?

Pushing and shoving and being loud is also a product of environment and socialized norms. Think it is immutable? Look at Hong Kong and Taiwan, both were like this just decades ago, and in some parts there, even now.

So ultimately you have a chip on your shoulder against Chinese people because of some bad experiences. That’s understandable, but nothing you’ve said disproves anything I’ve said. You don’t think we Westerners had to socialize ourselves into not seeing things along racial, ethnic, or national lines? We struggle with that even today (you’re an example).

At the end of the day, many aspects of mainland Chinese society is at a different point of development than the societies we’re from. When there can be wide differences within our own societies, how much more so it is for a society on the other side of the world that has gone through countless different historical events and circumstances than we have. Why are we so eager to think and insist we’re superior to others or that others are inferior to us?

There’s nothing wrong with being upset when subjected to what you’re not accustomed to, but you guys need perspective.

Guangjoe, there are certainly many phenomena in China that are arguably more prevalent than in other countries. No one argues with that. What people argue with is when people say things that evidence a gross lack of perspective.

None of the things you mention are remotely unique to China or the Chinese people. The fact is, most of these issues are actually quite prevalent in most of the developing and underdeveloped world. We from the West take our situation for granted, and even then, we still find plenty of food safety and product quality issues to bitch and whine about (Antennagate? E. coli contamination?).

Farmer Chen is unlikely to be cutting corners to buy a new Audi. For the most part, farmers in China are quite squeezed for profits.

Do farmers or anyone else in the supply chain cut corners or engage in unethical behavior that put others at risk? Absolutely. So does Apple and the world’s electronics manufacturers when they turns a blind eye to labor abuses in their Chinese supply chains. Every day we in the West choose lower priced products over compassion for those toiling to make them for us at the lowest price possible. Our greed and self-entitlement has also been argued to demonstrate our lack of compassion for our own manufacturing sectors and labor who are out of jobs due to our outsourcing. Should we even bring up the financial crisis and all the Westerners who contributed to it? Where was our compassion?

The fact is that people make questionable compromises between personal profit and the risks they put others at all the time, every single day. We’re all capable of selfishness and greed. It just takes different form depending on what our environments allow. Farmer Chen can water down his milk easier than Farmer Smith because enforcement is more lax in China than the West, but there’s no shortage of people cutting corners and running cons in the West when they can get away with it. My point isn’t that these things are absolutely equivalent to each other, but rather that these examples are poor evidence for arguing about whether or not a people have something as general as “compassion”.

Compassion for animals? You think we in the West were animal rights activists since the beginning of time? We developed a social consciousness for respecting animals over time as well, and even now we still have sick fucks who abuse animals. Have you ever talked to a PETA supporter about how much compassion we treat our animals?

I’ve actually seen Chinese people help out complete strangers in instances of pickpocketing. Maybe you haven’t, or maybe you’re not remembering the things you take for granted and the exceptions to your worldview are what stand out. I get it that Westerners like to criticize the Chinese for their apathy and lack of civic-mindedness. Chinese criticize themselves for it too, as this website has shown repeatedly. But “minding your own business” and a fear of getting involved are hardly Chinese concepts. They’re dispositions largely born out of socialized necessity, where there is a conscious perception that personal risk outweighs someone else’s benefit. You don’t think there are bystanders in the West? You don’t think our people see shit go down and just keep on walking or driving by? Those of us who do “the right thing” are the minority at the end of the day, and we do it because we’ve been taught to and socialized to.

If you think China takes the prize, you really haven’t been to the shitholes of the Earth, my man. There’s shit in neighboring India that would boggle your mind, much less even less developed places like Burma or certain parts of Eastern Europe not to mention Africa or parts of Latin America. In so many areas, China is far and ahead of a lot of these places even as it is far behind places in the West. Perspective, man, perspective.

Yes, we like to make fun of China and Chinese people for being so proud of their 5000 years of history, but you’re not so stupid as to take that at face value, are you? You think the US as a society and civilization is only 236 years old? No, the US built itself upon European civilization. Names of nations change but none of us started from a clean slate and got where we are today without our forefathers and ancestors going through ups and downs twists and turns. You don’t think we in the West are capable of stagnating and regressing in our social development as the Chinese have in so many ways with Mao’s revolution? Have we forgotten the Dark Ages? Do we really think each French revolution several years apart was an actual leap forward for French society each time?

The current state of any human society on this planet is a function of a multitude of historical factors. The Chinese don’t think they’re more advanced when they claim 5000 years of history, they’re just trying to find something to be proud of and they’ve convinced themselves that their history of successive dynasties and warlord states that have waxed and waned is actually continuous, but you’re smarter than that, right? You know modern China isn’t 63 years old. You know the CCP would be laughed at if it tried claiming that it brought Chinese people from nothing to what it is now in 60-some years, so why use the inverse of that logic to make a point you already know to be stupid?

Come on, this isn’t that hard. You’re letting your emotions and ethnocentric contempt get the better of you. China isn’t up to our standards, that’s undeniable, but its awfully arrogant and self-righteous of us to judge it as if it existed in the same environment we do. Put things in perspective.

PS – I’ve been around many places in China and I’ve never seen any norm where people have no regard for their own feces. Yes, in some places, its accepted that you can shit where you have to, but that’s an incredibly minority. Even in the most backwater impoverished villages, I’ve never seen people treat their shit like it was nothing. They still avoid shit and believe shit it is a dirty waste product that isn’t to be wallowed in. I’d say that’s having some regard for one’s own shit. Fact is, if you’re in a place that has reliable internet access, you’re in a place that isn’t really THAT bad. You may not have been to India (some ghetto slums there are ridiculous compared to China’s worst ghetto slums) but surely you’ve watched Slumdog Millionaire, right? I’m willing to let you use Hollywood as a substitute for first hand knowledge here but really, if you think China takes the cake, man have you NOT been around. I’m not saying there aren’t things in China that are glaring to us, I’m just saying that most of China is actually quite decent compared to many other places in this world. You live in China so I can’t blame you for focusing so much on it, but sometimes you have to lift your head and look around. That’s perspective.

I’ve a nice fresh bag of jenkum for you sire.