Three Common Misconceptions About China | Hacker News Reader

Three Common Misconceptions About China

supchina.com

103 pointsThevet75 comments

The misconception I carry is that the Rule of Law[0] doesn't hold the same weight as in America or Europe, due to extreme Selective Enforcement[1] - basically the person in power can arbitrarily apply the laws against those they personally dislike. This leads to the dependence on guanxi[2], where your families have been so close for generations that you're like siblings - who will arrest their own brother or sister? And people who can't leverage these guanxi relationships have barely more social leverage than a foreigner - so they diasporize.

And leveraging a Chinese person with few guanxi relationships is a common mistake of companies doing business in China.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi

Are you saying "the Rule of Law doesn't hold the same weight as in America or Europe" is your misconception? Or rather that you assume the rule of law would hold the same weight, it does not, and therefore "rule of law holds the same weight" is your misconception?

Single-party systems by definition have either rule-by-decree or rule-by-consensus as a feature; so I’m not even sure the “rule of law” applies in the same sense when the rules are that the people in power are a hegemony that can change the rules whenever they want.

Because those who abuse power often do it through selective enforcement, and because the population has no “acceptable” way to depose those who abuse power, you get a situation where the things you do matter less than who you are.

I wouldn’t claim rule of law systems are immune to this type of influence, but a feature of a strong democracy is having checks and balances on who writes the rules vs who enforces them. You don’t have that in China, and there are definitely different sets of rules for different people.

I have no idea how this addresses my question asking GP to clarify its misconception.

How is this different from networking in the US? don't most American companies hire e.g. account managers or business development folks with long lists of industry (and in specific industries, government) contacts? Is it just the case that the implied "guanxi" relationship has to be deeper than the circumstances in which an American would say "I know a guy who"?

If you assign a foreign-sounding word to it, it sounds more official.

It's perhaps best to think of guanxi as an umbrella term for a number of different things you'd definitely see in any Western society too - crucially, that would include both 'good' and 'bad things.

So it encompasses business networking, social favors, family favors, but also nepotism, political corruption, perjury, bribery etc.

So if the guy at the print shop gave me a good price after my firm helped him out the week earlier with his broken air conditioning, then that's guanxi. If I managed to illegally obtain environmental certificate for my horrendously polluting plastics factory because my brother works at the environment department, that's also guanxi.

It's more a question of degree.

"I know a guy" might get you a job or back stage passes for a concert in the US.

"I know a guy" can get you off of vehicular homicide in China.

Granted, the US still has an occasional taste of the second, but it's far less common.

Not for the rich

http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-mart-billionaire-alice-wa...

Being a relative of a cop in the jurisdiction in which you ran someone over will prevent you from ever being charged with it the US (they'll probably give you some slap on the wrist charge though).

Being good friends with the right folks at city hall will make sure your company wins the contract to do the landscaping at the city park.

Knowing the right people will generally get any permit you need expedited or at the very least it won't be delayed.

If special treatment is corruption then corruption is very much alive and well in the US. The difference is that the image of corruption is corruption is much less tolerable. If the details of the story of you running over someone makes the news or someone points out the conflict of interest of the person awarding the contract the corruption won't happen in that case. "I'm sorry I can't do that" is a much less common phrase than "I'll put in a good word for you".

Corruption in US (federal, state and local) is a lot like the restaurant that only cleans up its act for the health inspector. Government is the restaurant and publicity is the inspector. When there's a spotlight on the problem everyone plays by the rules. When nobody's looking it's business as usual.

Acts of obvious corruption (trading favors, bribes, etc) is rarer in the US than some other countries but leveraging relationships for special treatment is just as common as anywhere else, we just keep it under the table.

This isn't an attack on government but government is certainly not the consistent and impartial organization that some people seem to think it is (though I think that's a good goal to have).

Edit: I find it odd/interesting that whenever I say something that isn't positive about government it gets up-voted a couple times then down-voted a couple times. I really should write a script to track it because I have a hunch that the timing follows a particular pattern.

In my experience, it honestly isn't even close. Think about it this way:

In the US, you have an army of groups who will actively/passively work against a corrupt person: free media, lawyers, civilians with strong rights, judges, police, opposition politicians, civil liberties groups, government oversight committees, industry regulators, consumer groups, and generally speaking, a law-abiding and non-corrupt population.

In China, you have none of those.

However bad you think corruption in the US is (and I believe you when you say it's bad), it's degrees worse in China.

There's "I know a guy who" as a way of getting a job, and then (the original topic) there's "I know a guy who" as a way of not getting arrested. The second is much less common in the US.

And even when it's to get hired, the "guy" had better be able to do the work...

>The misconception I carry is that the Rule of Law[0] doesn't hold the same weight as in America or Europe, due to extreme Selective Enforcement[1] - basically the person in power can arbitrarily apply the laws against those they personally dislike.

You're quite right, stephengillie. Corruption in the US is as bad as China. That means there is no point in the Chinese trying to get China as clean as the US is portrayed as being. It also means that US citizens should stop supporting their government. The world would be a much better place if the Chinese stopped criticizing their government, and the Americans stopped supporting theirs.

For the first part, I still think that Chinese culture is quite special with culture that passed on for that long.

As a normal Chinese with standard Chinese education till 10th grade (then move to a foreign country), I can understand fragments of writings carved in stones 1500 years ago in museums, which I felt quite amazing.

I guess the problem here is that the article really mixes up two different things: "continuosly existing state" and "continuosly existing civilization".

E.g., when people talk about Ancient Egypt nobody doubts its continuity even though there were at least 3 Intermediate Periods similar to periods between Chinese dynasties.

its continuity

> As a normal Chinese with standard Chinese education till 10th grade (then move to a foreign country), I can understand fragments of writings carved in stones 1500 years ago in museums, which I felt quite amazing.

Is this unusual, though? Fairly certain most romance language speakers can understand at least some latin if they put their minds to it.

And so, for that matter, can we from the cold, benighted, Germanic north.

> Is this unusual, though? Fairly certain most romance language speakers can understand at least some latin if they put their minds to it.

Yes it works for basic texts, you can understand some words here and there.

> Yes it works for basic texts, you can understand some words here and there.

Even as an English speaker, which is not a romance language, I can understand quite a few Latin words here and there, due to the fact that something like 50% of English vocabulary was borrowed from Latin or other romance languages.

It pivots on what we mean by "understand fragments".

The average English speaker cannot make sense of Latin prose. Picking out a few words here and there, isn't the same thing.

"Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur."

All but 'Latine', and perhaps 'dictum', is gibberish to the average English speaker.

English is not a Romance language. It is Germanic.

Oops, I missed that.

Even Old English is pretty much unreadable by most speakers of Modern English. They still used runes rather than Latin letters 1500 years ago, but even transliterated you'd have a hell of a time.

First stanza of Beowulf in Old English, transliterated into Latin characters:

> Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning. ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned, geong in geardum, þone god sende folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat þe hie ær drugon aldorlease lange hwile.

It seems painful. I feel that in Romance languages is easier to identify the roots.

Now that I think about it, I have never read Romance text written before the XIII century: Cantigas, Dante, etc.

It has multiple roots, thanks mainly to the Normans. It also has a habit of plundering vocabulary from other languages, to the point where a single thesaurus entry might list synonyms with etymological origins from a dozen different languages. It can also smash affixes from disparate languages together without shame, particularly prevalent as mixes of Greek and Latin.

There is a decent chance that an English speaker with a broad vocabulary would be able to recognize individual words in any foreign language that can be expressed with the ASCII character set.

I think it is amazing you can read and understand 1,500-year-old writings on museum pieces. That is awesome!

I am French, interested in middle age history. There is simply no way I can read something which is 600 years old. I could maybe decipher one word out of 50.

I heard old French read aloud. I understood 10% (optimistically) and not even the overall meaning.

I would say that starting from the 1700's the language slowly makes sense.

It's not necessarily unique, however. While European civilisation is more fragmented by nationalism, by comparison there's clear lineage through religion, law, culture, etc. Much like China's lineage was really kick-started by the Han, Europe still owes much to Rome. If you get right down to detail then sure, there's a difference in the character of the cultural journey, but I think the principle is similar.

I agree. China is more isolated geographically and hence less diverse than Europe and hence it is still quite different. It is definitely not the only culture that passed that long though.

I'm curious to know: Does the Chinese education system generally teach China's history in the way described in the article, as a "long series of sequential dynasties?"

Yes. Even when Mongolia occupies China, in textbooks it is called the dynasty of Yuan. But it is not invented by the communist party, it is told in this way following the tradition by the Chinese scholars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholar-official

In many European countries it's standard to learn latin. So we can understand whole texts written 2000 years ago.

Being from Europe, this has not been my experience at all. I'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has actually studies Latin.

Its awesome yes, but also - horrific in a way. I felt that way in italy. Everywhere you went, some master painter, artisan or historic figure went before you, all you ever did was but a footnote in history compared to the aeons gone before.

It creates this mindset of golden-ageism, where you expect everything to be already done, everything to be discovered and all of it, just some library lookup away.

Yeah, that kind of thinking still exist in China. Even in popular fictions the ancient masters are always better than younger generations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia

>For the first part, I still think that Chinese culture is quite special with culture that passed on for that long.

Of course you do, this myth of the "5,000 years of history" making China both unique and exempt from trends that affect the rest of the world is a very old part of the CCP's propaganda:

The Myth of "5,000 Years of History" http://camphorpress.com/5000-years-of-history/

I am just sharing thought base on personal experience.

I never mention 5000 years of History, only 1500. I am trying to not related with any politics here.

By your reasoning if there exists some propaganda then my personal experience should not be trusted?

In addiction, the long history is not created by CCP but following the Chinese scholar tradition. It is correct that CCP used it for creating nationalism, but they did not fabricate the whole thing.

To know more about Chinese culture not from [politic fueled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ross_(academic)) books, I suggest you to read The [Problem of China](http://www.freeclassicebooks.com/Bertrand%20Russell/The%20Pr...) by Bertrand Russell. It is authored by a well-known scholar and written before the CCP exists in case you accuse me of suggesting you propaganda. The opinions by the book may be too old but at least the facts are unbiased IMO.

Is it odd that I have never heard of any of these misconceptions?

Are these common for any "westerners" to have even considered?

If you have even a casual interest in China (say, read the international section of any major newspaper), you'll almost certainly run into them. Random samples from the New York Times:

"China is home to the longest continuous civilization in world history"

https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/q-and-a-will...

"For three millennia, since 1000 B.C., the Chinese had been supremely confident that they were the center of civilization, the Middle Kingdom..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13iht-edgardner.1...

"China insists it has no fights to pick. Its evolving foreign policy maxims -- principles of peaceful co-existence, peaceful orientation, peaceful rise, peaceful development -- have the same emphasis."

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/weekinreview/the-two-face...

Referring to a group of 1.4 billion people, the economy, the government, the economic pressures driving each of them, et cetera as a single entity can reveal a level of ignorance about these components of a society.

Doesn't that apply to every single modern country right now? Why do you think it's ignorant to view China the same as every other country?

The ignorant probably do view all countries through this same lens.

The Chinese government has something to do with it too. The 5,000 years of history narrative helps prop up the idea of “One China” as well as claims to Tibet and XinJiang.

It is doubtful that China has 5000 years of history that gives them so much of their cultural arrogance. Some carved bones 5000 years ago do not make a high civilization.

1. 5000 years ago Egyptians had a high civilization. China did not.

2. During the empire of Rome, China was on the same level.

3. During middle ages, China did indeed have a much higher standard of civilization compared to Europe.

4. This changed with the industrial revolution (the the precursors like the Renaissance) in Europe.

Part 4 and the problems that economic, cultural and military weakness of China brought with it, are a major trauma for China. Now they are on the rise again and start feeling the world is theirs. A random guy that worked in industry described it as: "When I met Chinese in the 80ies they had their believe of cultural superiority mixed with an inferiority complex because they were so far beyond. Now they have their believe of cultural superiority mixed with arrogance."

This will not end well. China is in a much weaker position that they want to make you believe and I don't see their culture (that has its strength!) well suited for the future.

You should not be afraid of the strengths of China. It comes with too many problems. If you are from Europe (like me), you should be more worried about your own weakness.

It's more like he's refuting the claims you usually hear from the CCP as part of their external (and internal) propaganda and national narrative.

I think one piece of Chinese narrative history that's curious and possibly relevant is: the "line of civilization" bit.

The Anglo-American "history of civilization" traces itself back through British, Roman, Greek periods. It's self aggrandisement and bias, but it demonstrates how hard it is to have a totally nationally centered history of urbanism/civilization if you want to go back a few millenia.

From at least the early bronze age (5000 ybp), the other great urban eurasian-african cultures had a lot of contact. Hindu Valley, Hittite, Persian/Sumerian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian. Their "suburbs" stretched into Greece on the edge of Europe, half of Africa...

China had the silk road and were aware of these distant consumers, but civilisational rivalry isn't a big part of the story. The important rivalries are either internal or "barbarian" facing. Everything was invented in China. There is no Plato (for example) sharing knowlesged sourced from india.

China was always a great power, but they were never a world power (until now) because there wasn't a world, in a sense.

Everything was invented in China. There is no Plato (for example) sharing knowlesged sourced from india.

Buddhism was absolutely sourced from India, and had a profound impact on Chinese culture, spirituality, and political thought. The Lieh tzu adopts a lot of Buddhist thought and adapts it into (already Confucian-influenced) Taoist thought.

Good point. I suppose my points are less valid, the closer to the present we get.

"the Xin dynasty, set up by a usurper named Wang Mang who might have made a decent emperor but had absolutely shit luck with natural catastrophes." I like the writing style...

Somewhat off-topic but peripherally related to misconceptions about China: In the U.S. we are conditioned to think that Amazon is the most innovative/out-of-box-thinking retailer in the world. But there are some new ideas out of China in the retail and surveillance spaces that are pretty impressive/scary, beyond anything we've seen from Amazon so far. There's a bunch of articles/videos/images on this Twitter feed [1].

I like the idea of the compactible smart locker [2] though.

Also, the parking garage gate that scans your license plate [3] and automatically raises the barrier arm -- it sounds like an invasion of privacy except (1) apps like Spothero already know my license plate number; (2) license plates are visible publicly.

On that note, some misconceptions that we have about China's innovation mindset are addressed here [4].

[1] https://twitter.com/conniechan

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsuDDBcJ18c

[3] https://twitter.com/conniechan/status/990730265239654406

[4] https://a16z.com/2016/02/16/mindsets-for-thinking-about-inno...

That's not exactly a fair comparison. China is the largest country in the world. Amazon is just a company. There's plenty of innovation coming from drone delivery and checkout-free grocery stores.

China is a country that many of us believe is only capable of copying and not innovating, hence the misconception.

Size doesn't really come into it. If it did, we would expect similar outcomes with with other large countries like India (which is innovative in its own way, but not to the same extent), Indonesia (large market, but little visible innovation), etc.

License plate scanners automatically raising the arm were in some Sydney supermarkets at least 3 years ago.

The 2nd point is indeed a view I hold (held?). Interesting though I need more proof to change my knowledge.

But first and third points are dispelled just by reading the Wikipedia article on China history.

There are great TED talks (generally not a big fan because too sensational) to learn about China and Asia in general. For example this one: https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_r...

This article reminds me of a line from Bojack Horseman: "Uh, this is general knowledge?"

I had the impression when going there- that many of the misconceptions where copy pasted from the Japanese stereo type of mid 80s fame.

At the southern coast, china actually has a Mediterranean, Italian/Cote d Azure flair- and the people seemed to have a similar relaxed attitude to live.

If you haven't seen it, recommend watching 'The Emperor and The Assassin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Assassin

Four current common misconceptions about China.

1.) China is a communist

China is now a dictatorship. China added term limit for its president in 1982, after mao's disastrous rule as a dictator. However, the parliament voted to remove the limit in may - giving xi jing ping 2958 votes and only 2 votes against 3 sustained - giving the president the ability to rule for life. xi jing ping has been adding his own thoughts into the constitution, making him as powerful as mao.

2.) China will overtake US as the most powerful country of the world

That might have been slightly remotely possible in 2008, when US suffered the great recession and the world saw China's economic growth faster than US. However, nowadays, with dollar still the hegemony, US has bounced back from the recession to have healthy jobs rate, gdp growth rate, investments rate, etc. Meantime, China's economy has stalled, its gdp lauded as fake, it suffered stock market crash, capital outflow, huge shadow debt, middle income trap, yuan depreciation, and foreign direct investments decline. With dictatorship came extreme censorship, concentration camps, social credit score, and public monitoring. Its per capita gdp has stalled at around $8000/year, nowhere near US's $56000/year.

3.) Chinese citizens have high savings rate

"what do we actually find when we look for the mythical Chinese saver in the real Chinese economy, rather than in the macroeconomic assumptions? Bank balances offset against enormous, rapidly rising, bad debts, a property bubble out of all contact with reality, a closed capital account to prevent money draining overseas while it still can, and an unregulated shadow banking sector where vast pools of notional value endlessly gyrate on air currents of uncertain origin"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2017/04/26/the-m...

4.) China's peaceful rise

South China Sea, island building, arming the islands with military weapons, threatened invasion of Taiwan, harsh crackdown of democratic demonstrators in Hong Kong, concentration camps in XinJiang, controlling buddhism in Tibet, interference with Australian and New Zealand politics, strong handed approach to other countries airlines in changing the official names of Taiwan, one belt one road as a way to finance dictatorships around the world and also bankrupt countries and steal their vital ports and infrastructures.

With regards to your first point, that doesn't make China a dictatorship, although it could evolve that way. The US didn't have term limits for its President until 1951 (22nd amendment) and we were still democratic.

We didn't, because FDR was the first president to break the two-term precedent. Immediately thereafter (in constitutional terms) came the amendment to say that nobody could ever do that again.

China created their two-term limit rule (not just precedent, if I understand correctly) after the experience of Mao. Xi repealed it. That raises the kind of red flags that would be raised if Trump had the 22nd amendment repealed. It doesn't make a dictatorship, by itself, but it's a step along the road...

Angela Merkel doesn't have a term limit, and has been in her office about twice as long as Xi Jinping. Is Germany a dictatorship?

You seem to be completely ignoring my point. It's not the term limits or the absence of term limits. It's the removal of term limits that is concerning, because it is an expansion of the leader's power. Worse, it's done to extend the power of the person currently holding power. It is therefore a bad sign about the person holding power who makes the extension happen.

So because China aligned their term limits to Germany's they're now moving to be a dictatorship?

Or Germany's not a dictatorship, because they never had term limits in the first place?

What part of "It's the removal of term limits that is concerning" don't you understand?

What part of "changing their laws to match other countries that you'd never call a dictatorship" don't you understand?

I believe what AnimalMuppet is trying to say is that it raises concern when you think about the motivation behind removing limits for the current incumbent, vs a situation where there were never limits in the first place.

Even if you think it's not cause for concern, you have to admit it's at least a different situation with different parameters.

The part where that's relevant to what I said. You said that like it was a reply to my point. It's not. You keep trying to reply to me with arguments that are beside the point.

Sure, and that's a troubling change. But I would rather have debate involve facts rather than hyperbole and appeal to emotion. As far as I know China still has elections every 5 years. There are plenty of real facts about China that are concerning. Let's focus on those rather than invented ones.

Sure, they have elections. And the probability of Xi losing is exactly 0% - and not because the people love him so much. "Democracy without a choice" isn't democracy. It's a favorite trick of dictators to make themselves look like they are democratically elected.

Now, if I understand correctly, local elections in China are much more real elections. But for the national leadership? No.

I didn't claim China is a democracy. I said it's not a dictatorship. The elections for president are by senior party members, not like the local elections. It's a hierarchical system.

I'm not defending the Chinese system of government. I'm saying that criticisms of it should be accurate, and there are plenty of legitimate things to criticize. Calling it a dictatorship is an exaggeration, at least at this point in time.

It's... kind of a dictatorship? But not so much of a man. It's a dictatorship of the party. Does that count as a dictatorship? Maybe, depending on your definition...

With regards to 1) the two are basically synonymous.

communist country == dictatorship

(with the possible exception of Uruguay and Nepal)

Are you sure these are actually common?

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