Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

They might take over the world (I think it's unlikely), but in my opinion, the main reason isn't their political system: it's human capital (1/7 of the world population) and homogeneity (very cohesive culture due to China's history). Western countries lack the former, India and others lack the latter.

View on HN

I think you're vastly overestimating China's cultural homogeneity. 30% of the population (so, a greater number than the population of the U.S.) doesn't even speak Mandarin. Just like in India, regional loyalties are very strong despite modern attempts to unify; see the continuing efforts to wipe out Cantonese, a language with 60 million speakers in China and that is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-forcing-its-biggest-... . And this isn't happening in some backwater part of the country; in addition to Cantonese being the official language of Hong Kong, Canton (a.k.a. Guangdong) is the most populous province in the country, and the location of Shenzhen itself.

> Cantonese, a language with 60 million speakers in China

Most of cantonese speakers can speak mandarin as well.

That doesn't refute my point; most French Canadians can also speak English, and yet French Canadian retains its own distinct subculture, so distinct that Quebec has repeatedly voted to secede from Canada. Language is merely one very obvious indicator of cultural heterogeneity, and the point remains that China is not nearly as culturally unified as the typical Westerner understands (which should not be so hard to believe; it's a country with a freaking billion people!).

> Quebec has repeatedly voted to secede from Canada.

I believe your point may be refuted by the fact that you state outright lies like this whopper here.

seriously? it took me 1 second to google and confirm its truth. or is 1995 too long ago for kids these days?

also, refuting one argument does not shoot down unrelated arguments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995

They did not vote to succeed and there was only one referendum.

I understood the GP argument as "having voted on the issue", not "having voted to leave". The former implies that a significant portion of the population want independence.

and i'm not sure i understand you correctly, but the very first sentence in the wikipedia link says that the 1995 referendum was the second one... this [1] was the first.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1980

Your point is completely refuted. You never had one since it was based on made up facts.

Feel free to cite a source and enlighten me, then. :)

>> I think you're vastly overestimating China's cultural homogeneity. 30% of the population (so, a greater number than the population of the U.S.) doesn't even speak Mandarin.

Mandarin is basically the Han dialect of Chinese. The Han people are 92% of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese

In addition, Mandarin is the standard language used in most or all public schools. I volunteered multiple times in an area where the majority of people are the Yi minority group (location: Zhaojue in southern Sichuan). The Yi people's language doesn't even share the same characters as Chinese. When I first heard their language, I swear it sounded like it was from Africa, a lot of similar phonemes. But even there, they used Mandarin in the public schools.

>> And this isn't happening in some backwater part of the country; in addition to Cantonese being the official language of Hong Kong, Canton (a.k.a. Guangdong) is the most populous province in the country, and the location of Shenzhen itself.

Shenzhen is a city built on top of a fishing village in the 80s that had very few incumbent people. Most of the people who live in Shenzhen come from outside of Shenzhen and never spoke Cantonese. As such, they have no choice but to speak Mandarin to each other, as that's the only common language out of all the people who come from all the other provinces. The fact of the matter is that I cannot remember the last time I heard Cantonese in Shenzhen. Guangzhou has a lot of Cantonese, but that's because there were a lot of Cantonese people in Guangzhou from the beginning, as Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong (the Canton province). Shenzhen's economy is forecast to outpace Hong Kong's economy, though Hong Kong will by no means become insignificant. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-05/as-shenzh...

If Cantonese is dying, it's a natural death brought on by social and economic factors, not a forced death. Mandarin has been the standard language used in public schools since the days of the Republic of China, China's attempt at democracy, in 1912. This is not some kind of new malicious strategy brought on by the modern Communist government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Modern_Standard_Chi...

So many factors are making it a natural death for Cantonese. My Cantonese speaking friends agree with this.

Source: I live in Shenzhen

edit: formatting

well I live in Shenzhen too (live and work in Nanshan) and I hear Cantonese and Teochew on the streets daily. You can hear people speaking Cantonese all over the place: in markets, in office building elevators, restaurants, etc. In certain areas you can hear tons of Teochew being spoken as well (most electronics markets and wet markets seem to be run by people from Chaoshan), which is another regional culture with a strong identity that's strongly resisting getting wiped out.

Mandarin is _NOT_ the Han dialect of Chinese. Each region has its own dialect and while they are not taught in school (mostly due to central government's policy), regional dialects are often spoken at home.

Source: I grew up in Hong Kong and have relatives in mainland China

Sorry, to be clear, I said that Mandarin is basically the Han dialect. It is true that a lot of people interchange the names Hanyu, Guoyu, and Putonghua, though they are not exactly the same thing. Just asked my co-worker about this to be sure, he said a lot of people consider Hanyu to be Putonghua even though it's not.

It's like me telling a Chinese person that Canadian English is basically American English, even though it isn't.

It's closer to saying "English is the European dialect of Indo-European". Cantonese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese are all languages spoken primarily by Han people, they are all Han dialects. Of course Mandarin has a priviledged position among them, but that priviledged position has not much to do with the Han people, since it shares that with all the others.

EDIT: it may well be the case that people use "Hanyu" (literally, Han language) as a synonym for "Guoyu" (lit. national language, the Taiwanese version of Modern Standard Mandarin [MSM]) or "Putonghua" (lit. common speech, the PRC version of MSM). "Han language" is a poor English translation for "Hanyu" if that's what you mean.

Shenzhen speaks Mandarin, not Cantonese. Cantonese is more common in Guangzhou but everyone there also speaks Mandarin. Mandarin is as much the first language of China as English is in the US.

I believe the 60 millions of so cantonese speakers includes the chinese over the world where many of them are from Canton

I understand that Cantonese is exceedingly popular among the Chinese diaspora, particularly in the US, but some quick searching implies that the number of worldwide speakers is closer to 70 million. The article that I linked specifically qualifies their 60 million figure with "in China", though they don't state what their source is.

It's more of forced homogeneity than something driven by their history. They ban anything remotely resembling a different opinion.

Human capital doesn't automatically indicate economic prowess; you have to remember there's around 700M in China that still lives in rural areas with under $1 a day, and they can't get the jobs in urban cities because those jobs are going away due to moving to cheaper SE asia countries, robots, and lack of skillsets.

But it does indicate potential for economic growth... South Korea is a good example of an economy that has outgrown the available human capital.

The current statistics in 2017 is around 600 million in rural area. Their monthly income is 3300 yuan or around 500 USD, more than $15 a day. According to World Bank, a country with $6000 USD a year is upper-middle income.

If you count their rural areas as a nation, its GDP is $3.6 trillion around the same size as Germany, 4th largest in the world.

Yes, but among many poor students there can be plenty of very smart and talented ones. When you have 1.4 billion people, you got a lot of chances. The prospect of a better life and the parenting culture geared towards education are powerful motivators as well.

From Word Bank: "According to China’s current poverty standard (per capita rural net income of RMB 2,300 per year in 2010 constant prices), there were 55 million poor in rural areas in 2015."

Your statement "there's around 700M in China that still lives in rural areas with under $1 a day" is simply wrong.

[1] http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/overview

You shouldn't overstate the homogeneity.

We're probably more homogeneous here in European Union. Granted, China is a log bigger.

The biggest industrial centers (like Guangdong or even Shanghai) don't even use Mandarin on a daily basis.

Yes, alas, the thing that makes this whole thing going is the central government.

All metropolitan areas use Mandarin mainly.

Judging from the populism happening in the US and various European countries, it seems that Western countries currently lack the latter too. See Trump's base, anger leading to Brexit, anger in Greece, etc.

Anger fueled by fake news that Russian extraterritorial propaganda department happily spreads with three help of their army of professorial trolls.

That's why they have all those knife attacks and bombings and hundreds of young Tibetans self-immolating in protest. All that 'Chinese homogenity' and 'harmonious society.'

I'm curious to know the ratio of these crimes to population, as compared to Western countries. Harmonious != 100% peaceful.

100% this. Violent incidents in China pale in comparison to the US in terms of both scale and frequency. Take into consideration proportion of population? No comparison at all.

There's no comparison because the data isn't there, not because the news report on something or not.

The Muslims have both, they're sure taking over the world.

No, we are actually not homogenous at all. Even Arabs are pretty culturally divided, especially the Middle East vs. North Africa. We do have a sizable population though.

I would argue that the main barrier between Arabs and unity is authoritarianism.

Muslims are actually very diverse group. Not only Sunni / Shia rift which is major one but also differences between African/Middle Eastern/Asian Muslims. I think Indians and Chinese are much more culturally homogenous and more likely to take over world.

Islam is not a homogeneous culture. Totally different.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com