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Comment by synergy20 | Hacker News Reader

Here is a perspective on China's current aggressiveness: those in power are from the culture-revolution age(1966-1976), which means they did not get good education(if anything at all). Most of them are not even middle-school graduates. Their youth time are filled with beating those well educated ones based on ideologies accusations.

Xi himself did not even finish middle school, his professional skill is the worst comparing to his past peers, he could not even read correctly many times in public since he came in power.

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He completed BE in Chemical Engineering from Tsinghua University [1].

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

Read my comments below. It's hard to know the real truth these days.

Hsi Chinping bought his degree paper from a ghostwriter, and barely showed for classes.

A practice deemed "almost" acceptable in the mainland among elites. People tell "for somebody already so high rank, merely buying a university degree is not really cheating"

I once had an argument over this 9 years ago with Chinese peers. The conversation came to "Maybe, if he was given a degree, and job even without a ghostwriter, then it may have been said he jumped the line."

It's problem with these people who genuinely believe that rank, and status is a license to violate things, and that is the reason to get it.

Out of all Westernised mainlanders exposed to overseas, or even out of the few who spent some years abroad, almost nobody gets past the superficial in understanding the world outside China. They are really a minority, among the minority.

So your claim is that Xi is only barely better educated than every republican US president since the nineties?

TIL that George Bush is "the only U.S. president to have earned an MBA", I'm not sure if that's better or worse than purchasing a BSc in Chemistry, though.

Why would you want all US presidents to have an MBA? Is the US a business or something

> It's problem with these people who genuinely believe that rank, and status is a license to violate things, and that is the reason to get it.

If you watch `donghua` (Chinese anime) you can see the same logic all around. Status is a license to violate things. It's funny how pervasive it is.

It should be noted that Xi is a son of a victim of Culture Revolution.

Stockholm syndrome? Based on what he has done so far, he actually forced most things his father hated, which is, illogical and ironic.

At least nothing in his Wikipedia page seems to suggest that he would had particularly hated any of Winnie Pooh's policies.

Bullied grow up to become bullies

Stop spreading nonsense.

Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering. Zhu Rongji studied electrical engineering.

Zhu took the tests and get admitted, like the rest of his peers(Jiang, Hu, Wen, Li,etc) they're all true graduates from the best universities in China then, which explains why China made leaps and bounds under their leadership.

Xi is the only exception among them. Xi got in college without _any_ tests, purely because he has a powerful father then. It's said he could not understand a thing taught and there is no way he could graduate(or admitted). Indeed it's unimaginable for a 6th grader to take calculus in the top universities all of a sudden.

Xi even said he has a PhD degree, it's so laughable he had to remove that claim himself.

> Indeed it's unimaginable for a 6th grader to take calculus in the top universities all of a sudden.

Top notch private tutoring and some work ethic can work wonders in fairly short periods of time.

Corruption is certainly possible, but not the only conceivable possibility.

>he has a powerful father then

His powerful father made him a target during cultural revolution

He was at least studying for PhD in Law, according to Xinhua News Agency. I’m not entirely sure whether he ended up getting the PhD. The wording in Chinese is a bit ambiguous.

Wikipedia mentions Xi studied chemical engineering at the University.

It would help if the West stopped fooling itself about the abilities of the Chinese government. The Chinese government is awash in people that have been selected, filtered, and tested as very well educated. Their average government bureaucrat would put our average government bureaucrat to shame in raw ability to get things done. We may be ahead in creative, rule breaking ideas, but do not underestimate the raw intelligence available in the Chinese government.

The West has been desperately trying to keep the wool pulled over its own eyes for the better part of a decade.

It's only become more obvious in the covid environment.

I couldn't imagine country run by a middle school bully.

Now I can.

As someone who have spent 13 or so years of their life in China, I absolutely agree with this perspective. The culture of modern China seem to support a strangely "macho" image particularly for men: it's acceptable and maybe even encouraged, for men to be overtaken by rage, and thrash and kick around while yelling things. [1] It looks like this mentality is reflected by the politics of china as a whole.

[1]: This is actually very accurate to how people get angry in China, I've seen teachers, businessmen, even customers, rage in this characteristic weirdly macho way. https://youtu.be/aCdFec3uu_g

This is also my experience. Except I have seen it a lot with females also. Maybe because my family in law is Chinese I am more exposed to it.

China sure has a lot of empty very loud barrels.

> https://youtu.be/aCdFec3uu_g

In what culture is this considered "macho"? He's acting like a little spoiled brat.

And now you understand PRC diplomacy - closing an embassy because an unofficial trade office used 'taiwan' instead of 'taipei'.

? I honestly don't see anything in this video that I wouldn't see in expressions of anger in the US, except that they are speaking a mix of chinese and english.

Emotional regulation issues are generally caused by childhood abuse. Mainland China is a society suffering from untreated PTSD and inter generational abuse.

This is ridiculously and demeaning to the Chinese people. Losing your temper is universal and I have seen plenty of white friends that lash out. To say that only Chinese people behave this way and not white people is well at best a sign of superiority complex and at worst a subtle _______ remark.

People of all color lost temper all the time, that normally gets improved when they age.

The "Red Guards" (i.e. culture revolution) generation from China indeed stood out as a group that acts very differently. They are always ready to _fight_ with anyone just because of different opinions, thus the aggressiveness. It's a life long disease that keeps getting worse with no cure.

I agree there are many in China that feel ready to fight. But I don’t judge all Chinese people like so. Just like I don’t judge all Americans act like their Republican politicians either. Imagine if someone called all Americans are loud, obnoxious, fat, and dumb. Something that is frequently claimed by most Europeans about Americans. This wouldn’t be fair to regular Americans, would it? What OP is doing is pre-labeling an entire country’s population. And it is wrong. If readers here can’t see how this is problematic, then I am simply disappointed how low HN has fallen over the years.

Where did you see someone targeting _all_ Chinese? I did not see that. The point here is the red-guard generation in general is a bit unique, that's about it. All or nothing argument is dead on arrival, we all know that.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic/ethnic flamewar, regardless of how many years you spent in a place. Nothing good can come of this sort of provocation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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