Comments on: “Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land”

By: S.K. Cheung

S.K. Cheung — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 04:56:39 +0000

I guess the take-home then is that it pays to be Wen, and it sucks to be Bo. Aspirational CCP types should take heed of the lessons that lie therein, and go about their corruption accordingly so as to end up like one and not the other.

By: King Tubby

King Tubby — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 04:18:57 +0000

You can claw your way to the top of the food chain, and you can also get the slippery slide.

Bo just stripped on legal immunity acc to BBC. Expect a trial next Monday and two digits in the Qincheng big house on Tuesday. Wonder if he will get conjugal visit to Kalai also housed in the same institution. They might get the opportunity to trade STDs.

The Bo family team are alleged to have squirreled away around 1 billion
US. Will it be retrieved by the Chinese govt and feed into consolidated revenue. Divvied up among Bo’s shaftees. ????

By: S.K. Cheung

S.K. Cheung — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 03:32:07 +0000

To KT,
nice link. You have to be a greasy rat to be able to claw your way to the top of the rodent-infested heap that is the CCP, but it’s a lucrative position to be in once you get to be the king of that pile of crap. No wonder people like the Clock “admire” those who make it to the top, as he so graciously admitted on that other thread about CCP grease-balls.

It makes me wonder again, when Deng said some have to get rich first, whether this is what he had in mind.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 03:17:31 +0000

SKC: Osnos’ subject matter here is particularly of interest to me. It’s always fascinated me how apparently educated and likely intelligent folks like Allen Yu from his FM days could go absolutely ape-shit and lose all grasp of logic when the topic of China came around

I totally agree. Such smart people simply lose it when it comes to China and its alleged victimization.

By: Mike Goldthorpe

Mike Goldthorpe — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:55:53 +0000

Comment number 6 is a clear example of how polishing a turd still just leaves you with a turd.
Writing crap like a pseud doesn’t make the crap any better.

By: King Tubby

King Tubby — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:49:01 +0000

@SKC
I suppose I was arguing for a broad church approach to the forum. Even bad scholarship psychotic-types like The Clock and Jing have the right to exist.

When making that comment, I was thinking of political correctness and the way it controls the ‘what is permissible and not permissible’ to state. A practice which makes me think of eugenics. Get enough of that here in Oz.

And as you claim to be liberal-to-libertarian, I will pull that remark.
………………………………………………………………

I know I’m doing a 360, but that piece by Osnos on the whole fast rail empire was positively brilliant, such that railway contractors became prisoners of their own system of corruption. Making structural changes to the economy is all but impossible when such grand scale malfeasance prevails.

Similarly, reducing the reach of SOE’s is never going to take place when you have wealth concentration like the following:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

By: S.K. Cheung

S.K. Cheung — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:11:26 +0000

To KT,
not sure what you mean. I’m actually disagreeing with Richard here. The morals of those stories by those authors will either reinforce one’s preconceived notions about Chinese archetypes, or they won’t. But I’m not sure they’re of much probative value in determining what a Chinese person is or isn’t, or should or shouldn’t be. That said, this observation should be inherently obvious, so you can certainly ask why I’m pointing out something that’s plain as day.

If Jing’s and Clock’s raisons d’etre are to amuse, no argument from me that they discharge those duties exquisitely. I’m a science guy, and as liberal as they come, so I don’t believe in witches, nor would I have bothered burning them if witchcraft was what floated their boats. But hey, Salem is a decent town in more modern times, though I preferred going to Gloucester for clam-chowder when I was in that neck of the woods.

Osnos’ subject matter here is particularly of interest to me. It’s always fascinated me how apparently educated and likely intelligent folks like Allen Yu from his FM days could go absolutely ape-shit and lose all grasp of logic when the topic of China came around

By: King Tubby

King Tubby — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 07:44:17 +0000

@SKC. You comment like the grand inquisitor. Look, on forums like this most folk indulge in a bit of bs craziness.

What do you want? A Greek chorus echoing each and every one of Richards posts.

Jing and The Clock’s latest are not without their psychotic amusement value.

I think you would have been a very self-assured Salem witch burner in your previous incarnation.

By: S.K. Cheung

S.K. Cheung — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:21:17 +0000

It is reasonable, given the authors in question, to accept that these anecdotes accurately portray the 15 subjects in question. What is much less clear is whether these portrayals are generalizable to Chinese people at large.

I don’t think FQ need to be uneducated. I don’t find it surprising that Osnos’ subject is a highly educated FQ. But I agree with Handler that these types may well have a certain repression going on. Calm, perhaps even civilized IRL, only to save the bat-shit for the anonymous online world. Also a sobering example of how education alone does not immunize one against the institutional propaganda of the CCP.

By: S.K. Cheung

S.K. Cheung — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:09:17 +0000

I see that Jing has been sniffing his special glue and getting his delusion-of-grandeur on again. Pity the fool who listens to that Jerry. Anyone with cognitive capacity greater than a telephone pole would realize that “the truth” will be anything but what the Jing-ster “proclaims”. LOL.