[1]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/assistant-dictator-book-clu...
Commentaries on the book hold up Wang as some kind of incisive critic of US society. This was not my impression. My impression was that he opened a newspaper, read the criticisms Americans were making about themselves, and relayed them back to the Chinese.
Any discrepancies are more likely to arise from drift over time and Wang's lack of affiliation with any American political tribe, so he freely mixes Democrat and Republican narratives. Republican media stress how Democrats suck, Democrat media stress how Republicans suck, outsiders consuming American media get the impression that Americans suck.
Seems like a loss to them (I don't think American self-conceptions are accurate enough to be worth studying) and to us (it would be nice to have better information out there).
On the other hand, if all it takes to be an expert on America in China is reading some American newspapers, that does say some things about general Chinese cultural insulation from America.
... anyone who read one of my pieces was separated from the original sources by at least two intermediate layers of analysis: my writing was a gloss of other people’s research, which itself was a summary of multiple sources in Chinese. This way of doing things is no longer sufficient. To resolve debates over China policy, all participants need to read what the Chinese are saying in their own words. Wise China policy will not be made until the generalists are able to access the same sources as the specialists.
There is no American media. There’s leftist American media and rightest American media. I’m guessing Chinese experts (who are leftists) cite leftist American media, not the Epoch Times.
[1] "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange" https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w11005/w110...
Qutb argues that the American way of life, with its focus on hedonism and consumerism, corrupts the moral self and reduces human relationships to short-lived pursuits of pleasure. Qutb sees the American focus on individual pleasure as primitive and animalistic, erasing the gravity of death and the sanctity of life
He's the intellectual behind the modern jihad, distance 2 to a young Bin Landen.
> “what do you unify your thoughts based on?” would be a good icebreaker question on dates.