This was such an eye-opening read. I have a better understanding of why my family had a horrible experience when we backpacked through southern China coming overland from Laos. I’m Australian - white, my partner French - white, my two sons half Australian/Japanese - very Japanese looking .
I remember vividly arriving and needing a taxi as it was raining and the taxi driver wound the window up when I approached him, then crept forward away from us.
Most interactions with local people were negative for us.
Except with one young English-speaking guy we met on the bus who was well travelled.
I’d been to China many years before as a travel journalist on a luxury famil sponsored by Shangri-La hotel group. I was treated like royalty but admittedly our whole press trip was scheduled and staged and we weren’t allowed to do non-itinerary things like go off wandering around the markets or interact with real local people.
On the flip side, I lived in Japan for 10 years. My ex-husband is Japanese. He hates Chinese people, as do many Japanese, so I feel there’s a similar hate ideology at play there.
I majored in Asian studies at Adelaide University and I wish the curriculum had included more investigation into hate ideologies across Asian countries. From my travels, hatred towards neighbors in Asia is not isolated to China/Japan relations.
And then it’s not just isolated to Asia, either. Netanyahu’s UN speech on Friday was completely based in hatred for all countries he deemed on the ‘curse’ side of his map placards.
Sigh, it’s all a lot to digest for Sunday morning (I live in France) before my coffee.
Also, do people take those little martial arts videos seriously? Maybe it’s because I don’t speak the language, but to me they just seem corny -- almost laughable.
It’s funny that the “Japanese” “villain” is always the same guy. I wonder if they are boyfriend and girlfriend and if it’s a kinky thing with them, her beating him up all the time.
Vicky, your story and the videos are fascinating. "How is an average Chinese individual’s worldview influenced by ultranationalist hate," and "Generally speaking, xenophobic hate is a sport for the poor, the uneducated, the conservative and the rural or small town residents" and also "It is universally true that lower socio-economic groups are more susceptible to extremist ideologies due to their limited access to education, isolated viewpoints, and sense of desperation and hopelessness," among other comments, sound sadly familiar to me as a resident of the US. You could easily substitute "American" for "Chinese," and it would readily explain why so many millions in this country are so virulently racist, sexist, ignorant and uninformed - and willing to blindly support insane, authoritarian, narcissistic charlatans best exemplified by the tawdry buffoon Donald Trump. It's truly amazing how the constant repetition of twisted nonsense can so effectively influence the mindless dolts who proliferate in this country and elsewhere. Good to hear from you, hope that you are well.
I lived in Japan from 1977 to 1993. Whenever I met Japanese of a nationalist persuasion ( including one older colleague at work) who tried to justify Japan’s past, especially in China, I always took the Chinese side. In 1993 I went to China and encountered the anti-Japanese war movies (which shocked me) and the rhetoric against Japanese imperialism, as well as the glorification of China and its history. My earlier sympathy for China gradually disappeared. I also encountered the feeling of “possession” Han Chinese hold for ethnic minorities, their territories, and their culture. Later I happened to take up Mongolian. Now I find that the Supreme Leader is attempting to eradicate cultures and languages, and most Han Chinese really couldn’t care less. It’s only natural that these small ethnicities should disappear, seems to be the unspoken attitude. I still like Chinese people, but the unreflecting cultural supremacism and Han chauvinism, along with the government’s enflaming and manipulation of anti-foreign, anti-splittist sentiment (they seem to go together) irk me no end.
Thank you for writing this comment. Very interesting perspective for me to learn about! I find myself having less empathy or patience for Chinese people sometimes for reasons you described which is quite horrifying. Also feeling sick the dance Chinese people do when they first meet and too cautious to admit dissent
Very interesting thanks. In your experience do some Chinese people living abroad just avoid any talk of politics and try to keep their head in the clouds (not challenge anything they’ve learnt growing up and living in China).
I suggest you watch fox news while living in Australia. It will prepare you for the hate propaganda the average blue collar is fed about the Chinese people living in Australia.
Thankyou for your article. It was very interesting. Unfortunately it is obvious you ate still full of hate when the article could have been far more constructive if you spoke about the similarities between the hate based rhetoric found in Asia and the west.
I am an Australian living Asia. I am constantly told i am stupid. I have been told that i cannot drive a car better then the rich guy who just got his first car at the age of 54. I am 52 and have been driving since i was 17 years old.
Explaining the similarities and differences in culture is more beneficial to the reader then your realisation that you now hate what you were told to love.
The first part is interesting. Don't know the exact geographical mobility, but it is easy to surmise that you and your family probably had very little or no connection to the attrocities and the war itself. It would be interesting how prevalent the anti-japanese sentiment is in Jiangsu, Anhui or Jiangxi provinces. I bet that it can still be a huge influence for many around those parts and some are basically suckling the anti-japanese feelings with their mother's milk to paraphrase Ahmedinejad.
Do you have anything about this perhaps? If my assumptions are right, they would try to suppress those sentiments as that is a different kind of revanchism and it is much more disruptive for the CCP. I think there's no clear supremacist sentiments because then you would have written about it. What I mean is, although there are appeals to historical greatness, but no "We are better than everyone and we will crush anyone".
That type of ultranationalism would be too dangerous to the government as that could quickly fragment into local supremacist ideologies (hakka, cantonese etc.). Also they would like to avoid having self-organising groups thinking that they are better than everyone...especially of those in the leadership.
From the viewpoint of the government, they must go down on the victim posturing road. This is where their 5th gen warfare capabilities really shine as I see. For one, it looks like huge swaths of the chinese populace are unaware of how big China actually is. Their agentic properties are also severely downgraded as you demonstrated with your own example. The mixed signalling is also there to keep a constant feeling of impending doom from which only Big Brother can protect us. They actually seem much weaker now. And that is a problem. I can only imagine, how much resources are wasted on keeping up this farce.
I actually agree with the thought that violence is power. More precisely violence and the promise of violence. I think that the western nations too should go into this direction. I don't think that I have to explain to you that in a fight before anything happens, posturing is first. I got out almost every potential fights simply with the right posture and signalling(and there was that robbery attempt of mine that failed because I failed to notice that the dude was trying to rob me...but I digress). With all these mixed signalling China can really find itself in a position where they can only go forward or losing the support of a huge chunk of the population. Being the unpredictable one in the room can have it's perks but it can't be held up long without shit hitting the fan.
As this is already getting very long I only put here one more. I actually loved those videos. The motorcycle one is a clear favorite. Maybe ultranationalism might not be the right word here...but I'm european and a local ultranationalist would be deeply offended if these were his deadly enemies. I guess the target of these videos and it again shows the incredible wastefulness of the regime. So many human resources(I hate this term) held down just to stay in power...
Some of the history stuff really is true. Japan really did invade China in the 30s, and the behavior of its forces really was quite beastly. Not sure many martial arts fights took place, but the invading Japanese forces were hardly nice. Before that, England really did fight The Opium Wars to force China to continue to import opium which it grew in its imperial territories.
However, Japan today is hardly an imperial power. The notion that it wants to launch China Invasion 2.0 is just silly. All the people who did that stuff are dead now, and long out of power. Getting worked up about it today would be like me getting worked up about Pearl Harbor or the Bataan Death March. I’d rather buy a Nikon camera, watch Godzilla, and eat sushi.
Wow. Thanks for this. The douyin posts are chilling but I most admire your honesty about your personal evolution. That must have been difficult to write. I suppose I assumed that any Chinese person with enough education to live abroad would already be skeptical of the anti-foreigner anti-Japanese indoctrination in schools.
I liked all the hate insights and need to follow up more.
Definitely liked you inserted into the story and all observations made. Making someone inhuman is a completely foreign idea to me personally. I guess I don’t hate anyone or anything. I subscribe to Martin Luther Kings statement about it being all about the content of a persons character that matters.
Most of us western types I feel, me included, don’t have any real understanding of what Chinese point of view is so it is all valuable to see it presented and reflected upon. Keep it up.
Luv the “spitting out wolf-milk” we also have our own myths and propaganda. Drinking the Kool Aid does not sound nearly as cool as spitting wolf-milk. Nasty stuff!
To add to short circuiting is what is called “illusory truth effect”. This is particularly important in our un$ocial media age and can literally be applied to any issue, idea or made up BS and lies to condition us all.
“… people were more likely to judge a statement as probably true if they had encountered it before, a behaviour psychologists called the “illusory truth effect””
““The cognitive science is pretty clear that repetition is a very powerful tool because of how we process information. The more we hear something, from multiple sources, including those we trust, the smoother it becomes to process, the more accepted it is as ‘just known’.”
Very insightful and thank you for adding the deeply personal experiences
This was such an eye-opening read. I have a better understanding of why my family had a horrible experience when we backpacked through southern China coming overland from Laos. I’m Australian - white, my partner French - white, my two sons half Australian/Japanese - very Japanese looking .
I remember vividly arriving and needing a taxi as it was raining and the taxi driver wound the window up when I approached him, then crept forward away from us.
Most interactions with local people were negative for us.
Except with one young English-speaking guy we met on the bus who was well travelled.
I’d been to China many years before as a travel journalist on a luxury famil sponsored by Shangri-La hotel group. I was treated like royalty but admittedly our whole press trip was scheduled and staged and we weren’t allowed to do non-itinerary things like go off wandering around the markets or interact with real local people.
On the flip side, I lived in Japan for 10 years. My ex-husband is Japanese. He hates Chinese people, as do many Japanese, so I feel there’s a similar hate ideology at play there.
I majored in Asian studies at Adelaide University and I wish the curriculum had included more investigation into hate ideologies across Asian countries. From my travels, hatred towards neighbors in Asia is not isolated to China/Japan relations.
And then it’s not just isolated to Asia, either. Netanyahu’s UN speech on Friday was completely based in hatred for all countries he deemed on the ‘curse’ side of his map placards.
Sigh, it’s all a lot to digest for Sunday morning (I live in France) before my coffee.
Really love your writing and research Vicky 🙏🏼
Also, do people take those little martial arts videos seriously? Maybe it’s because I don’t speak the language, but to me they just seem corny -- almost laughable.
It’s funny that the “Japanese” “villain” is always the same guy. I wonder if they are boyfriend and girlfriend and if it’s a kinky thing with them, her beating him up all the time.
Thank you for this great report.
Like Russia, china opened up after "greed is good" but like Russia has gone ultra nationalistic, sure evidence of political failure.
Please be ultra careful. You are a marked woman now by the CCP.
Vicky, your story and the videos are fascinating. "How is an average Chinese individual’s worldview influenced by ultranationalist hate," and "Generally speaking, xenophobic hate is a sport for the poor, the uneducated, the conservative and the rural or small town residents" and also "It is universally true that lower socio-economic groups are more susceptible to extremist ideologies due to their limited access to education, isolated viewpoints, and sense of desperation and hopelessness," among other comments, sound sadly familiar to me as a resident of the US. You could easily substitute "American" for "Chinese," and it would readily explain why so many millions in this country are so virulently racist, sexist, ignorant and uninformed - and willing to blindly support insane, authoritarian, narcissistic charlatans best exemplified by the tawdry buffoon Donald Trump. It's truly amazing how the constant repetition of twisted nonsense can so effectively influence the mindless dolts who proliferate in this country and elsewhere. Good to hear from you, hope that you are well.
You could easily substitute "American" or "Chinese" for "East European" and you'd have the same results, racism, sexism, ignorance and misinformation.
Why are schoolchildren getting shot in the US?
I lived in Japan from 1977 to 1993. Whenever I met Japanese of a nationalist persuasion ( including one older colleague at work) who tried to justify Japan’s past, especially in China, I always took the Chinese side. In 1993 I went to China and encountered the anti-Japanese war movies (which shocked me) and the rhetoric against Japanese imperialism, as well as the glorification of China and its history. My earlier sympathy for China gradually disappeared. I also encountered the feeling of “possession” Han Chinese hold for ethnic minorities, their territories, and their culture. Later I happened to take up Mongolian. Now I find that the Supreme Leader is attempting to eradicate cultures and languages, and most Han Chinese really couldn’t care less. It’s only natural that these small ethnicities should disappear, seems to be the unspoken attitude. I still like Chinese people, but the unreflecting cultural supremacism and Han chauvinism, along with the government’s enflaming and manipulation of anti-foreign, anti-splittist sentiment (they seem to go together) irk me no end.
Thank you for writing this comment. Very interesting perspective for me to learn about! I find myself having less empathy or patience for Chinese people sometimes for reasons you described which is quite horrifying. Also feeling sick the dance Chinese people do when they first meet and too cautious to admit dissent
Very interesting thanks. In your experience do some Chinese people living abroad just avoid any talk of politics and try to keep their head in the clouds (not challenge anything they’ve learnt growing up and living in China).
"I can only delve into my own previously hate-filled heart."
You had me at "hell, oh".
Fantastic article. Do you have a Chinese language version by any chance?
I suggest you watch fox news while living in Australia. It will prepare you for the hate propaganda the average blue collar is fed about the Chinese people living in Australia.
Thankyou for your article. It was very interesting. Unfortunately it is obvious you ate still full of hate when the article could have been far more constructive if you spoke about the similarities between the hate based rhetoric found in Asia and the west.
I am an Australian living Asia. I am constantly told i am stupid. I have been told that i cannot drive a car better then the rich guy who just got his first car at the age of 54. I am 52 and have been driving since i was 17 years old.
Explaining the similarities and differences in culture is more beneficial to the reader then your realisation that you now hate what you were told to love.
The first part is interesting. Don't know the exact geographical mobility, but it is easy to surmise that you and your family probably had very little or no connection to the attrocities and the war itself. It would be interesting how prevalent the anti-japanese sentiment is in Jiangsu, Anhui or Jiangxi provinces. I bet that it can still be a huge influence for many around those parts and some are basically suckling the anti-japanese feelings with their mother's milk to paraphrase Ahmedinejad.
Do you have anything about this perhaps? If my assumptions are right, they would try to suppress those sentiments as that is a different kind of revanchism and it is much more disruptive for the CCP. I think there's no clear supremacist sentiments because then you would have written about it. What I mean is, although there are appeals to historical greatness, but no "We are better than everyone and we will crush anyone".
That type of ultranationalism would be too dangerous to the government as that could quickly fragment into local supremacist ideologies (hakka, cantonese etc.). Also they would like to avoid having self-organising groups thinking that they are better than everyone...especially of those in the leadership.
From the viewpoint of the government, they must go down on the victim posturing road. This is where their 5th gen warfare capabilities really shine as I see. For one, it looks like huge swaths of the chinese populace are unaware of how big China actually is. Their agentic properties are also severely downgraded as you demonstrated with your own example. The mixed signalling is also there to keep a constant feeling of impending doom from which only Big Brother can protect us. They actually seem much weaker now. And that is a problem. I can only imagine, how much resources are wasted on keeping up this farce.
I actually agree with the thought that violence is power. More precisely violence and the promise of violence. I think that the western nations too should go into this direction. I don't think that I have to explain to you that in a fight before anything happens, posturing is first. I got out almost every potential fights simply with the right posture and signalling(and there was that robbery attempt of mine that failed because I failed to notice that the dude was trying to rob me...but I digress). With all these mixed signalling China can really find itself in a position where they can only go forward or losing the support of a huge chunk of the population. Being the unpredictable one in the room can have it's perks but it can't be held up long without shit hitting the fan.
As this is already getting very long I only put here one more. I actually loved those videos. The motorcycle one is a clear favorite. Maybe ultranationalism might not be the right word here...but I'm european and a local ultranationalist would be deeply offended if these were his deadly enemies. I guess the target of these videos and it again shows the incredible wastefulness of the regime. So many human resources(I hate this term) held down just to stay in power...
Some of the history stuff really is true. Japan really did invade China in the 30s, and the behavior of its forces really was quite beastly. Not sure many martial arts fights took place, but the invading Japanese forces were hardly nice. Before that, England really did fight The Opium Wars to force China to continue to import opium which it grew in its imperial territories.
However, Japan today is hardly an imperial power. The notion that it wants to launch China Invasion 2.0 is just silly. All the people who did that stuff are dead now, and long out of power. Getting worked up about it today would be like me getting worked up about Pearl Harbor or the Bataan Death March. I’d rather buy a Nikon camera, watch Godzilla, and eat sushi.
Wow. Thanks for this. The douyin posts are chilling but I most admire your honesty about your personal evolution. That must have been difficult to write. I suppose I assumed that any Chinese person with enough education to live abroad would already be skeptical of the anti-foreigner anti-Japanese indoctrination in schools.
I liked all the hate insights and need to follow up more.
Definitely liked you inserted into the story and all observations made. Making someone inhuman is a completely foreign idea to me personally. I guess I don’t hate anyone or anything. I subscribe to Martin Luther Kings statement about it being all about the content of a persons character that matters.
Most of us western types I feel, me included, don’t have any real understanding of what Chinese point of view is so it is all valuable to see it presented and reflected upon. Keep it up.
Luv the “spitting out wolf-milk” we also have our own myths and propaganda. Drinking the Kool Aid does not sound nearly as cool as spitting wolf-milk. Nasty stuff!
To add to short circuiting is what is called “illusory truth effect”. This is particularly important in our un$ocial media age and can literally be applied to any issue, idea or made up BS and lies to condition us all.
“… people were more likely to judge a statement as probably true if they had encountered it before, a behaviour psychologists called the “illusory truth effect””
““The cognitive science is pretty clear that repetition is a very powerful tool because of how we process information. The more we hear something, from multiple sources, including those we trust, the smoother it becomes to process, the more accepted it is as ‘just known’.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/08/repeating-climate-denial-claims-makes-them-seem-more-credible-australian-led-study-finds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
So, thanks for the deep dive down the rabbit hole.