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A couple interesting things I noticed. First, and least importantly, despite the book being (I assume) primarily a critique of America, at the start of the first chapter he essentially criticizes Japan from an American perspective. Of course, there are obvious reasons why a Chinese person in the 20th century would have a bone to pick with Japan. What's really interesting is the doubts he openly entertains about Marxism and "socialism." It surprised me to see that in a book published in China by someone who was already writing for CCP publications and would later become a top CCP leader, even in the Deng Xiaoping era. Though perhaps he's not entertaining actual doubts so much as adopting a false pose of neutrality - the "every coin has two sides" rhetoric that goons in the Venting About Students/Something TOEFL thread in A/T are always complaining about. Then again, he seems to be expressing some pretty heterodox thoughts in general; Kangxi has already noted the surprising "Ugly Chinaman" reference. It's odd that someone who expressed that kind of ambivalence, even in the context of a critique of the US, would become one of the top people in a government as hostile to dissent as Xi Jinping's.
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Nov 20, 2019 02:50
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:China thread is lately about HK drama and fishmech drama, so I'm going to leave this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/dhjhck/what_are_the_chances_and_possible_consequences_of/f3p48op/ A depressing but interesting analysis. It ignores regional/“separatist” dissident movements, but it can be argued that they’re irrelevant in this context.
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Nov 20, 2019 04:20
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GoluboiOgon posted:It seems really odd to me that he thinks of the amish as ethnic minorities. they certainly don't think of themselves as non-white. Not non-white, but non-Anglo, surely? They speak their own German dialect and refer to non-Amish as "English," after all. Though on the other hand, the Old Order Amish themselves would consider "Amish" a religious designation rather than an ethnic one.
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Dec 1, 2019 23:59
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