China Launches First Crew to Live on New Space Station

Sigh.

But if that sort of news is all you read about China and Russia, you seem to be clicking only on the political headlines. Plenty other news is covered from those countries.

During the ccp revolution between 1940 to 1950s, women joined the ccp, and pushed for women liberation. They campaigned for no more feet binding, no more arranged marriages, the right to learn how to read and knowledge, women should do whatever men can do, become industrialized factory workers, soldiers, no longer confined to their traditional female roles. That was Chinese women's equal rights social movement. No less significant then women movements elsewhere. The saying was "women can hold half of the sky". ccp's leaders started the messaging, it resonated with the people, and then people reinforced that messaging. This is how the political movement had strength and kept alive. You have to understand ccp's revolution became a wide scale revolution because the political goals matched with people's desires. People voted with their feet. My grandma joined the ccp as well. She campaigned and learned how to read from her activities with the ccp.

My grandparents had 5 kids, 2 girls. My grandma was always a strong supporter of the girls, encouraged them to be strong and independent, telling them to chase big dreams and do want their hearts tell them to do. My grandpa not so much. He sided with the boys much more. Like the vast majority of Chinese families before 1990s, the family was resource constraint. They could only afford to eat meat during big holidays. My grandpa would try to give the boys better pieces of the meat to eat. Same thing with cloths.

重男轻女(preferences for boys) is Chinese culture and custom issue. Its people's thinking, its the culture, not desire or mandate of the government. The government didn't tell the people to have only boys and not girls. Its the people who did that. If you want the official and legal stance, since 1950, Chinese constitution says "women enjoys same political, economic, cultural, social rights as men". Marriage law says "Both parties must be at will, no third party shall interfere". So technically, my grandpa's action of favoring boys is against the constitution. Before the 90s, there were still places that practiced arranged marriages, technically its also illegal. You could say it the government's fault for not enforcing the laws. The reality is preferences for boys is ingrained. And if the government enforces bans on practices like arranged marriage, people say its destroying traditional culture, limiting cultural freedoms.

I think the government was trying to change people's mentality and culture on gender. One of the important action was making education mandatory. This forced parents to give girls and boys both education, regardless of the social economic status of the family. And when I was going through Chinese school, we were all taught on respecting each other. Text books have many stories about heroines, women liberation, equality etc. My classes treat everyone the same, everything was based on merits. Girls did well on grades, and the teachers would tell the guys "shame, look at the girls". Many class reps were girls. At least I view girls with utmost respect. And the common saying goes "In front of women, the women is always right"

I think for the young generation of Chinese, the mentality and culture is changing. Women are very much independent. Guys showing respect to a women is the baseline. There are still gender discriminations in the workplace, like some employers are reluctant to hire girls because they fear girls would get married, have kids, take parental leave, causing hassle to the business schedules. We need to fix this. But still, female bosses, engineers, managers are pretty common. Did you know one of core founder of Douyin/Tiktok is a women? Or many team leaders and managers in China's space program are women. And lots of people today actually prefer having daughters over sons.

Compare the women's society standing in 1930 and now. Of course one shouldn't ignore all of the current problems. But one shouldn't dismiss the progress and efforts made in the past.

They seek to set a precedent for an Orwellian nightmare across the whole world. As a citizen of an ex-communist country (who was thankfully born after that era), I am keenly aware of how dangerous an extensive surveillance, censorship and propaganda network can be. They stifle thought, and in China's case, I am afraid that this time it will work. They have the track record. The West (or let's face it, those keen to join in with the US militarily - and not all of the West participates) might have killed people, but China wants to kill independent thought. This is the one principle that I consider near-sacred. Without our free will*, what are we as a species? I know my view is extreme, but China is doing nothing to reassure the West that it's not actually planning on doing that.

I did not mean to suggest that they are merely copying, on the contrary. My point is that they bootstrapped their own understanding and manufacturing of the technology, and then took it much further and in a different direction to the West. It's not a bad thing as such. It just means that they got the Western "tech tree" (for lack of a non-video game analogy), recognised the value of what they are holding, then made it their own and did honest work to build upon it. The same likely happened with the space station. Even if the current one is more Russian than Chinese in its design, you can be sure that this ratio will rapidly shrink in favour of Chinese designs and expertise.

* Yes, I know there are debates about whether it's actually free. I'm talking about the apparent effect.

2. Sorry if it came off that way. It's just that in my personal experience, China is much more dependent on this kind of ingratiation compared to America. (e.g. I've never had to give the people who reviewed my college application gifts to increase my chance of admission or anything like that.)

From what I can see, the reason China is pulling out ahead is basically:

- they have a humongous population, with a fair portion in poverty, giving easy access to productivity gains by lifting them out of it

- they possess probably a majority of the industrial complex of the world

- they have a reasonably competent government

All of which breed technological development. You probably have different insights though.

(Also, things like patent and technology copying, etc. probably help.)