Originally posted by Pffefer on Danwei, which I copied it below.
I have similar thoughts on the American voters. What happens when Obama is the President of the United States, is that Americans will continue to complain about the electoral college system, the suburbs, the health care system, big corporations, high gas prices and China. :)
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I love how some people love saying "it is not you, it is your government that we have a problem with". It's got to be the cheesiest line ever. Has it ever occurred to you that if one day China democratizes you might not like it any more than you do today? Has it ever occurred to you that a free and democratic China might be no less threatening than you think it is today?
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I chuckle every time when I see people making the China argument a "human rights" and "democracy" one. While I don't doubt that there are people out there who geuinely care about these, but make no mistake: Whether you admit it or not, it has always been about "us" vs. "them" driven by diverging interests. China has been propped up as a bag guy, challenging the west with its non-Judeo-Christian culture, its non-democratic model and above all, its reluctance to succumb itself to a world order which first and foremost seeks to maximize western interests. Us, the good guys vs. them, the bad guys. So naturally China becomes a bad guy and no good things can ever happen to a bad guy, right? Those western journalists who came to China came with the preconception that China is all about human rights violations, oppressed people etc., so it is only natural for them to see what they want to see which will only reinforce their preconceptions that China is a bad guy (unlike us good guys). So they keep spoon-feeding those negative stuff and BS to people back home and presenting as the only face of China, overtime that's what most people are used to reading and it does not make any financial sense (bottomline-wise) for those western media outlets to break from this decades-old tradition.
Typically this is what you hear about China: A dictatorship who has no regards whatsoever for human rights and common decency ruthlessly suppress its people who are vastly unhappy and fed up with the regime and the only thing that keeps them from rising up is the economic growth that this regime has been able to deliver. What? PEW says some 80% of the Chinese are satisified with the direction in which China is heading? Oh God that's wrong! PEW must be infiltrated by the evil Chinese government and their survey sample consisted of people who are members of the Womaodang only!
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