Modern China Is So Crazy It Needs a New Literary Genre

As someone who has grown up in and is Chinese, I very much disagree with this sentiment, especially in modern day. There has always been a discordant and uncomfortable relationship with authority in Chinese culture- we are polite to put on airs to our authorities but we also secretly hate them in some respects. We understand they are human, like us, but for the sake of society rule airs are put on to keep them. It has always been understood that authority and corruption are tightly bound, perhaps even more understood than in America.

The young see all the holes the government has and both desires to being justice and also acutely feel the burdens of society's structure on them, but to upend society has an almost horrific cultural connotation, a cultural catastophe referred to only as "that critical time" or "those difficult times". In this triangulation we have also the need for simple food, water, love, shelter, peace. The modern world and the ancient world are so intertwined in China, that going of the cities is like a form of time travel. The difference between my mother's home village and the city less than 1 hour away by train is the entire industrial revolution.

Much of modern China is also influences from "the critical time" on the modern history. China still has not recovered, culturally, emotionally. It might never will, not in any real way. People have been producing this kind of literature since that time. The most accurate thing in the article is when the article notes that China might "always" have been like this.

Yes, China has always been like this in its own way. China has had these methods of storytelling for a long, long time. Now the new generation of writers is applying this methods to modern problems and modern society in its complex, cage-like structure that everyone is aware of in their bones.

I disagree with the assessment that this is "crazy" or "coming to grips with a fundamental truth is no longer true". It is a rational consequence of applying ancient storytelling methods to a complex triangulation of the new generation's situation, where we are all aware that the government is a corrupt and easily-swayed monster, but social upheaval is horrifically dangerous monster in its own right. It is a problem with no certain solution, so we write.

Only ordinary Chinese citizens are not childlike and easily led at all (that's an early colonial misunderstanding) -- they are just as smart and street-wise as we are, and understand all the gritty details -- they always did.

However, I think that it is too broad in its generalizations to be viable, and it does not pay enough attention to the actual historical context of circumstances in China.

In China's history the oligarchy/government/emperors were always been regarded as the oppressor, the enemy, the bad guy, by ordinary Chinese. They got power through violence or family line. So people didn't care much, other than paying the painfully exorbitant taxes. For people it's the village leaders/families that actually had intimate ties with them. I think perhaps a better analogy for the world-shattering change facing by today's China might be an isolated tribe being suddenly exposed to modern capitalism/commerce/ideas of freedom/etc., and felt lost, and is searching for ways to go forward, while there are no applicable lessons either from its own history or the hugely different western countries. It's truly remarkable.

You can't really talk about a Chinese society and only bring up Confucianism as it is also a mix of Daoism and Buddhism - all three of which are at odds with each other.

I would think Daosim and its ideas of the needs and rights of "self" would be closer linked to official corruption than that of Confucianism.

Faced with a crisis that was guaranteed to attract national attention, local officials reacted by attempting to quickly bury the derailed cars on the spot, to the sheer incredulity of absolutely everyone else in China.

This is not easily dismissed as a mere example of corruption, or cruelty, or societal failure; rather, it appeared more like a desperate innovation, an attempt to mitigate political damage that revealed serious disconnects between the worldview of the local administration and those of both the general populace and the national administration.

It was particularly curious and apt in that this was a national crisis about a great source of national pride, wherein perennial worries of Chinese governance were brought to the fore.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

And North America. And Europe.

> Corrupt politicians? We have Presidents and PMs, senators and MPs openly retiring and joining the boards of companies they helped during their political career.

You can't really call it corruption because it's just the system working as designed.

Big business and Big government are intertwined and interdependent. State governments protect and isolate corporations from competition domestically and they use state power to protect 'national interests' internationally. In exchange for this politicians and high level bureaucrats get their cut.

This is something that the state is designed specifically to do. Economic exploitation is the purpose of having centralized government.

People used to be much more honest and aware of this sort of thing. During the era of president Wilson it was common to talk about how it was important for USA to eliminate 'wasteful competition' by consolidating businesses into national-sized entities that could more effectively represent USA interests internationally. It was felt that is USA was allowed to remain a hodge-podge of small to medium competing businesses that it would not be able to compete internationally with other nations.

Nowadays it's a common belief that centralized democratic government is needed to counter the negative effects of corporate avarice instead of realizing that state government is necessary for these 'large corporations' to exist in the first place.

Whether or not this is bad is a matter of perspective.

Not to mention that problems are relative; you think an American balking at finding out their favorite restaurant was closed because of hygiene issues doesn't feel something comparable to a Chinese person who finds out their favorite street vendor used gutter oil? [0]

Also in all of those Western examples you gave, China was much worse off. How can you say that China's situation isn't bad with a straight face? This is a country where the smug is so bad you can't see a few feet ahead of you. Where people who criticize the government can be made to disappear. Where the internet goes through a firewall [1] and is closed off from the rest of the world. [2] Sure, there are many countries worst off, but that doesn't mean we can completely overlook issues with our own countries.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...

Your blasé phrasing strips away all the context. If Donald Trump was to be outed as a practising Muslim today, it would be unreal (to me a least), but one could equally say: "bah, hypocrite politicians are everywhere" - it still wouldn't make it any less "unreal", in context.

> Corrupt politicians? We have Presidents and PMs, senators and MPs openly retiring and joining the boards of companies they helped during their political career.

None of your corrupt politicians have been discovered with $31 million of cold, hard cash stashed at their lake houses. Seeing a fork-lift hauling 300kg of $100 notes on live TV would be 'unreal'. What's unreal is not the corruption, per se, but the context around it.

From what I can guess, he is from the inside of the system "体制内". So most likely, someone in the system needs to do some more "theoretical" work to prove/claim the advancement of "us" (Chinese). That's it. Don't worry about what it actually delivers, it is way less related than we think. The only difference nowadays is that we can make those propaganda seen by westerners. Even on HN.

Real dystopia is happening in the Sahel Belt in Africa and Indian countryside and slums. Unhindered population growth just increases people who face food insecurity in these places.