To Many Chinese, America Was Like ‘Heaven.’ Now They’re Not So Sure

Maybe it's a good thing. Moving away from seeing America as an economic goldrush where everyone can come and "get theirs", and more toward a place where people actually live in. This is my home, not an all you can eat buffet. If America cannot take care of its own poor and suffering, what are we doing trying to take care of the entire world?

The officials and rich are always the smarter and informed ones, just look at where they put their families and wealth at, watch what they do rather than what they say.

As an individual in a society, I am no more than an ant who serves her queen. Yet, each ant has a purpose, however small, to maintain the health and well-being of the colony. An ant lost is a tragedy, a colony lost is another step towards extinction.<p>This is not the reality we live in. We are less than proverbial ants, we are grains of sand beat back ceaselessly into the past. We disintegrate, we stagnate; but for every tiny piece of sand extinguished, thousands more are borne out of the granite slabs of time.<p>I admire the Chinese for awaking to the artificial construction of American exceptionalism. I only wish each nation&#x27;s citizenry could use that same looking glass to peer within.

For most Chinese, as long as they have their needs met, probably their system of government is fine. Some may know no better (historically the world wasn&#x27;t democratic) and others might rationalize with &quot;just don&#x27;t insult the leaders &#x2F;state and you&#x27;re fine. Small price to pay&quot;

Doesn’t this boil down to China having developing country status, being allowed to block imports?<p>The issue being with China being so large, there are millions of people still quite, poor despite China being such a large industrial power, so there is some justification to it still being a developing country. I imagine the rules were written for smaller homogenous countries.<p>Things work best when trade goes both ways.

This is great. America never was a heaven. Before, people had false belief. Now, they have true belief. That is to be celebrated.

The love-hate relationship illustrated in the article has been around since at least 1999, when the US bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.

It is a very interesting article to discuss, yet it sunk to page 3 so fast...

Personally, I want to keep myself neutral as a Chinese. But I think I can provide some interesting perspective from China, according to the order of timeline. I&#x27;m by no mean historian so errors and non-seriousness are expected, you can think of this as an OverSimplified[0] cartoon on Youtube:<p>0. China was a 3rd world communist country after WW2.<p>1. The Korean war broke out, USSR ordered China to strike back to maintain the iron curtain. China also worried about the border so it joined the war. The result of the war is basically a draw, but the border and iron curtain was &#x27;saved&#x27;.<p>2. After the Korean war, China&#x27;s self-confident increased, and sort of complaining USSR&#x27;s control. Then these two countries start to hate each other.<p>3. Vietnam war, China also joined because of the alliance relationship. This time the North won.<p>4. Meanwhile, Nixon visited China. Since China was one of the promising countries could weaken the iron curtain.<p>5. &#x27;Reform and Opening&#x27; started in China.<p>6. After the Vietnam war, Vietnam became very powerful. There was quite a risk Vietnam could unify the Indochina. China was in the middle of the USSR and Vietnam. This became embarrassing after China and USSR hated each other, and the USSR was keeping investing in Vietnam. Then there was another war broke out between China and Vietnam. Both of the countries claimed they were self-defending. There was also no winner, but Vietnam seems less dangerous in China&#x27;s perspective.<p>7. Japan grows really fast in the 80s. China was just started to grow after the opening policy and found the importance of the economy growing.<p>8. After that, the US feels threatened, there were some economic sanctions going on. There was an essay &#x27;The Japan That Can Say No&#x27; from Sony co-founder. But eventually, it seems Japan said yes for most of the time.<p>9. The Gulf War. The US almost beat Iraq in no time, and Iraq was actually pretty powerful at that time. According to the rumor, this made the Chinese military pretty shocked. After the Korean and Vietnam war, China was kind of self-overrated and reduced a lot of military margin in order to grow the economy.<p>10. According to 8 and 9, the US shaped a very powerful image to China, and China also realized it&#x27;s not wise to like Japan which always be the &#x27;yes man&#x27; or omitting the military advancement.<p>So the competing mindset was already formed pretty early. But there was also &quot;闷声发大财&quot; according to the president Jiang at that time, which basically means don&#x27;t let other people notice you while you are growing fast.<p>Another interesting thing is about cultural defense. Korean TV series and K-pop was very popular in China, but the first Korean TV series was introduced by official TV Channel. There was some theory believe the US and Japan culture are very influential and hard to replace, so China tried to guide people to consume Korean (and also Thailand, etc, since Asian culture are easy to introduce) culture instead of from the US and Japan. And then in recent years, Korean TW series and K-pop is largely replaced by Chinese own products, which seems pretty similar.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;Webzwithaz" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;Webzwithaz</a>

I respectfully disagree that waning respect for America in this context illustrates what you say it does. Chinese culture is fundamentally opposed to American culture, and those things you mention, open democracy, religious and cultural tolerance, etc. are expressions of American culture. What nations like China and various others respect about America is <i></i>money<i></i>, and how to make a lot of it even at the expense of American people and industry, all while laughing at how we live our lives and making a mockery of us. As a person of Asian descent and having lived amongst other non-American groups, I can say most do not want to live like Americans at all and often spit on &quot;western values&quot;. They love our money but they don&#x27;t give a damn about our democracy and cultural tolerance. Hate to say it, but it&#x27;s for the most part accurate.

Another Chinese Regime sponsored psyop article.