06-29-2019, 08:51 PM
With most of us, it is "like the people, distrust the government", It's been that way since Pearl Buck novels were best-sellers. I've met lots of overseas Chinese, and they seem good enough. I recognize the great divide in language and history between China and America.
The cuisines are very good. So good that I can almost say that the difference between Italian cuisine and Chinese cuisine is often one ingredient: dairy.
The Chinese government is not particularly socialist. To be sure, personal property is not particularly safe, but one can make a huge profit, thanks to underpaid workers. Figure that many American plutocrats would love to import the low pay and bad working conditions of China to America -- and of course eviscerate labor unions and stifle any liberal opposition to crony capitalism. It is dictatorial. Under Mao China was no democracy and nowhere near being one. Under what China has now it is just as undemocratic.
As for Japan -- Japan would be wise to recognize what the thug regime that died nearly three-quarters of a century ago did from Manchukuo to Indonesia was monstrously wrong.
The cuisines are very good. So good that I can almost say that the difference between Italian cuisine and Chinese cuisine is often one ingredient: dairy.
The Chinese government is not particularly socialist. To be sure, personal property is not particularly safe, but one can make a huge profit, thanks to underpaid workers. Figure that many American plutocrats would love to import the low pay and bad working conditions of China to America -- and of course eviscerate labor unions and stifle any liberal opposition to crony capitalism. It is dictatorial. Under Mao China was no democracy and nowhere near being one. Under what China has now it is just as undemocratic.
As for Japan -- Japan would be wise to recognize what the thug regime that died nearly three-quarters of a century ago did from Manchukuo to Indonesia was monstrously wrong.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
