China internally makes a big deal about their 56 ethnic groups, living happily in harmony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China
And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about being ruled by their Han big brother.
And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about being ruled by their Han big brother.
You should understand that translations often lose some cultural context, so when you have a prejudice against the English word "harmonious", understand that the Chinese equivalent is used much more freely in everyday speech. "Solidarity" might have been a better translation.
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Reply to the comment below:
> I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han children dress up as them [..]
In a big place like China or the US, there are always going to incidents like this. Furthermore, most news stories will exaggerate the headlines or twist the details, so I am not even sure if this particular incident is as you described. What matters is what the policies are doing for the larger scale of individuals. You can't judge anything about this larger scale by looking at a few incidents, especially when Western media have a vested interest in showing you these news items and ignoring the vast majority of what is going on. (To be fair, the vast majority is quite boring.)
"Ask the people themselves" is used typically in these discussions as a weasel phrase, as if Western liberal democracies are truly "asking the people themselves". You have mass media bombarding the general population all the time with pre-ordained narratives. Nobody votes in elections with an independent analysis. So sure, it depends on what you mean by "ask the people themselves". There's lots of content on social media including from ethnic minorities, people are generally happy with their lives and the amount of freedom they have. Are you going to pick holes in that? Why not pick holes in what's happening with mass media de-jure "independent" de-facto manipulative elections in the West?
The point was not to make fun of the word choice “harmonious”, but rather to point out that CCP-led China is functionally an ethnostate that bluntly prefers and privileges one identity over the others.
There is no "paranoid presumption", that's literally what the comment I'm replying to was doing.
So, look at reality instead of sitting on your high horse, believing that all defenses of China are "paranoid".
> The point was not to make fun of the word choice “harmonious”, but rather to point out [..]
Again, read the comment. You are denying reality. They literally said nothing concrete, only imply negative connotations about the word "harmonious".
And yes, the poster ribbed on the word harmonious, but again, that wasn’t the point. The meat of the post was about being ruled by big brother Han. Interestingly, you didn’t object to that bit at all!
I don't think "harmonious" or "solidarity" or whatever other positive word you come up with would be an accurate representation of the relations of ethnic minorities. Especially if you were to ask the ethnic minorities themselves to come up with a word.
Which to me seemed remarkably tone deaf (nothing like reminding Tibetans to celebrate their "liberation" and its mastermind Mao), but presumably worrying about how the message would land was not among the KPIs of the cadre responsible.