What's the Truth about China?

[LastPoet]

30 years ago was the Tianamen square massacres. There are unnamed heros. Like the guy with two big shopping bags that stood in front of a line of tanks.

The guy went all "you shall not pass" on the tanks, then dropped the bags , climbed the first tank and said something to the driver.

Beside the two shopping bags, guy was packing a big pair of balls

[Fake Messiah]

I love you FM, but you need better sources.

American TV Shows Popular In China

Top Hollywood Movies In China

Boru

I admit that it is a surprise, I didn't expect some shows were that popular.

Sure, I mostly wrote that post from memory collected of what I heard over the years and didn't research it prior, but I did check now and it seems I was correct that TBBT was banned in China

https://www.mic.com/articles/89051/china...s-loves-it

And I did a little checking and it seemed to be temporary, although it seems in censored (edited) version. So I guess that controversial capitalist message gets watered down after all?

In 2014, The Big Bang Theory was removed from Chinese streaming services by the then State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) for review. 

Fortunately, three months later, the show become the first US sitcom to pass SARFT review to stream in China and an edited version of the show was made available online.

Other shows that were removed during that same period, such as The Good Wife, NCIS and The Practice, were not so lucky as they never returned.

However, the new rules introduced another problem for fans of The Big Bang Theory and other foreign shows as the regulations required entire seasons of shows be reviewed before gaining permission for broadcast in China. This change meant that fans in China would face a long wait to see their favorite programs. 

For instance, while the 11th season of The Big Bang Theory finished showing in the US in May, it wasn't until August 15 that all 24 episodes were released for VIP users on Chinese streaming site Sohu TV, while non-VIP users get two new episodes a week. 

This seemingly hasn't impacted the show's popularity though. The currently season has earned 5,230,000 views in total over the two weeks since its release.

This delay is also certain to apply to the final 12th season, which is set to end in the US sometime in the spring. This means that Chinese fans most likely will have to wait until summer to bid their favorite characters one final goodbye. 

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1117242.shtml

[Anomalocaris]

Like all stories crafted to achieve an effect, it has many elements of truth, but those are admixed with falsehoods, distortions and irrelevant appeals to sentiment to create a story to advance an agenda rather than describe an accurate overview.

We Americans are so steeped in the mythology of American exceptionalism that nothing could appear to us to be more sentimentally true than the notion that anyone who is so forsaken as to not live in an America like system must crave what we have as soon as they catch a glimpse of what we have.   This seems as automatically and indisputably true to most Americans as genesis would have seemed to an medieval peasant.   

In fact most of what we think we have that makes us great and the rest of the world would crave, we don’t have, or no longer have in much abundance, while the part of the rest of the world do have, often in vastly greater abundance.

This is the case with China.

As far as access to material wealth and abundance, there is already little to choose between a coastal slice of China comparable to all of the US in population.   That part of China has perhaps 1.5 times the population of the US, and has material economic output roughly equal to the US.  There is little an average person can afford to buy, and have access to buy, in the US that the average person in those parts of China can not afford or have no access to buy.  Rather the reverse is true.    So for the parts of China that matter, that makes china influential in the world, they do not on the hole crave the material goods we have that they don't.  Because on the whole they have most of what we have, and some that we don't.

But it is not just material abundance, it is also the expectation that however the present is, the future will be better.  Here we think we are always the greatest.  They looked down at what we have and snicker in contempt.   Majority of Americans have not seen meaningful increase in standard of living since around 1973.   In so far as we seem to be able to afford more gadgets, that is largely because the Chinese, not Americans, have made the gadgets cheaper.   Yet in 1973, when our average standard of living had first attained its present level, Chinese standard of living was perhaps 1/10 what they are now.   In the past 30 years, the average Chinese had seen his purchase power increase by an order of magnitude.  Things previously unimaginable, such as routine foreign shopping sprees and yearly vacations to exotic spots are now common for the middle class.   Not only have the dominant parts of China for all practical purposes caught up to the US, but they continue to grow at 3 times our rate, with no end in sight.    For Chinese people less than 40 years old, it is simply unimaginable, inconceivable, that their income next year would not be much greater than this year, the year after that higher still, or their access to material goods and leisure will be ever greater, from now to in effect forever.        Our hope for the future resides with "USA Fuck Yah" after 45 years of income stagnation mitigated only by Chinese ability to make what we use to make expensively here cheaply there, while theirs is based on unbroken growth at 3-5 times our rate for 30 years.

It is true that China is 5 times larger than the US, and although 1/4 of it nearly first world in wealth and prosperity, 3/4 of it still agrarian and poor.  But those 3/4 have seen those amongst them who broke away into the big cities have been caught up in the rapid rise in wealth and prosperity.   They have realistic hope that within this generation, China's wealth will spread to them

[no one]

Their fortune cookies don't really tell the future.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Their fortune cookies don't really tell the future.

Not true.  I got one once that read, 'The meal you just ate is going to give you the trots.'

Boru

[no one]

Well, even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.

[Rhondazvous]

I've been watching a lot about China on youtube...

Ultimately, unless you live in a democracy, you are limited to what you say and do with big brother watching constantly.
It is still illegal to discuss the massacre at Tiananmen square ... 30 year anniversary yesterday or today...

NEWS FLASH!!! The US isn't a democracy. We are a republic. "I pledge allegiance to the flag...and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands."

Here we can say what we want as long as no one is actually listening. When we blow the whistle on our government, they just play their conspiracy theorist card and no one pays us any mind.

I remember that massacre. 30 years ago! damn. It seems like it was just the day before yesterday. I remember someone posted a political cartoon with the People's Republic of China communist officials looking down at the protesters. The caption said "Who do they think they are—the people?"

[The Valkyrie]

It's full of Chinese people.

They are so good at predicting the future that hundreds of years before Trump was born, they built a huge wall to keep Mexicans out.

[Anomalocaris]

It's full of Chinese people.

They are so good at predicting the future that hundreds of years before Trump was born, they built a huge wall to keep Mexicans out.

And the wall did such a great job keeping the Mongols out, that 700 years later a porous and shabbier version will no doubt keep the Mexicans out, because, like, the Mexicans don't even have that many horses.

[Lucanus]

That saying that its state capitalism is communism is much like saying that my Nutella sandwich is actually a shit sandwich, except in reverse

I am very drunk