Do you want to know anything about China?

[pennyliu123]

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@pennyliu123 I heard a while ago that some Hearts of Iron games got banned in the PRC for presenting China of the interwar period as a bunch of warlord-controlled countries rather than a unified nationalist China. How often is it that foreign historical content is censored for not being in sync with the party line, and could you shed some light on what you were taught in school of China's 20th century history before the CCP's rise to power?

It's true that the games which have different idealism with CPC will be officially banned in China, the famous one should be Red Alert. But as you know, we can still play it in China without many difficulties even when it's officially banned.

I'm interested in the topic about history, but it's a very big topic, maybe it will be easier if we focus on some historical events which China was involved. I'm not very good at history but I can tell you what I learnt.

 

[zegh8578]

One question, maybe a bit vague of difficult, but does China have any "sub-nations"? I'm not talking about small minorities, but rather parts of the country that feels like another nation than the other part, yet still accepting a full part in the country?

I can only think of the difference between Mandarin or Cantonese-speakers, would they feel this difference?
In many countries, there are these "nations", and the feeling does not have to be very strong - for example Spain has Galicians, Catalans, Andalucians - they all agree they're Spanish, but they also feel strongly as these "sub-nationalities"
The danger with sub-nationalities is of course separatism, and Catalans in Spain have, as of late, been requesting independence

Another example I can think of in China are the "five nations", Mongols, Uyghur, Manchu, Han - and Tibetans? But! How relevant are these nations anymore, since they all would rather fall under minority? Does anybody think of China as "five nations" anymore?

I guess I could rephrase as: How many major identities exist in China, apart from "Chinese"?

(I am working on a comic book, and it is set 2000 years in the future. I am mostly planning the background world so far, and I broke up the big superpowers into many smaller countries. USA, Russia, China - and this was when I first realized I had no "hints" for China, other than the obvious autonomous regions, but not for "China proper". The various identities of American states - at least regions - is pretty evident, but for China I didn't find any - or I just don't know China well enough. I also could hardly find ANY sub-national flags, while Russia and USA have plenty of flags for all of their sub-national entities, states, republics, etc.
If you could, I'd appreciate if you took a glance at the map I've made, to see if my "future broken China" makes logical sense. And take no offense for China being broken, I broke every country, I threw Norway into a civil war )

India is another one with no sub-national flags to find. It could be on purpose, as a means to avoid separatist symbolism and such)

Sorry if I ramble a bit here, lemme know if I'm not making sense

 

[pennyliu123]

One question, maybe a bit vague of difficult, but does China have any "sub-nations"? I'm not talking about small minorities, but rather parts of the country that feels like another nation than the other part, yet still accepting a full part in the country?

I can only think of the difference between Mandarin or Cantonese-speakers, would they feel this difference?
In many countries, there are these "nations", and the feeling does not have to be very strong - for example Spain has Galicians, Catalans, Andalucians - they all agree they're Spanish, but they also feel strongly as these "sub-nationalities"
The danger with sub-nationalities is of course separatism, and Catalans in Spain have, as of late, been requesting independence

Another example I can think of in China are the "five nations", Mongols, Uyghur, Manchu, Han - and Tibetans? But! How relevant are these nations anymore, since they all would rather fall under minority? Does anybody think of China as "five nations" anymore?

I guess I could rephrase as: How many major identities exist in China, apart from "Chinese"?

(I am working on a comic book, and it is set 2000 years in the future. I am mostly planning the background world so far, and I broke up the big superpowers into many smaller countries. USA, Russia, China - and this was when I first realized I had no "hints" for China, other than the obvious autonomous regions, but not for "China proper". The various identities of American states - at least regions - is pretty evident, but for China I didn't find any - or I just don't know China well enough. I also could hardly find ANY sub-national flags, while Russia and USA have plenty of flags for all of their sub-national entities, states, republics, etc.
If you could, I'd appreciate if you took a glance at the map I've made, to see if my "future broken China" makes logical sense. And take no offense for China being broken, I broke every country, I threw Norway into a civil war )

India is another one with no sub-national flags to find. It could be on purpose, as a means to avoid separatist symbolism and such)

Sorry if I ramble a bit here, lemme know if I'm not making sense

Wow, this one is difficult. I can hardly tell you "how many", as there are "too many", but let me tell you what I know.

Firstly, about the nations, it's true there are 5 biggest "Autonomous Regions" in China, and they are,

Zhuang Autonomous Region (in Guangxi Province)
Xizang/Tibet Autonomous Region
Hui Autonomous Region (in Ningxia Province)
Mongolia Autonomous Region
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region

If you add Han nation, there will be 6.

However, it's not that simple. If you have seen my post about my journey to Yunnan Province, you will noticed that I mentioned a Nation "Dai", they don't have an Autonomous Region of their own, but they have an "autonomous state", which is smaller than autonomous region. The nation Dai has their own language and writings, which is very similar to what is used in Thailand. In fact, the nation Dai can be regarded as the ancestors of people now live in Thailand.

And the nation "Yi", "Jing Po", "Miao" also have their own autonomous state, although they are all inside Yunnan Province. There are 8 autonomous states in Yunnan, and it's only one province of China. And there are even more "autonomous counties" in China, which is even smaller than autonomous state. And there are some small races which have not been officially identified as a "nation", like "Ke Mu" people I mentioned in the journey post. Then you may see why I say it's very difficult to tell you "how many" are they.

Then we can talk about the problem you find about people who speak Cantonese. In the province of Guang Dong (Canton), there are 3 major languages/dialects, Cantonese, Hakka and Teochew, I will skip the less important dialects, as they are also "too many". People who speak different dialects in Guang Dong live in different area of Guang Dong in tradition, and they do feel the difference between each other. If in a university in Guang Zhou, a student who speaks Hakka has some serious dispute with a student who speaks Teochew and they decide to resolve it by , it's very "normal" they both talk to their “townsmen association” in the university, gathering their townsmen, who speak the same dialect, to fight together. It will be some scene and really happened a lot in about 20 years ago I've graduated for a long time so I don't know how often this thing still happen nowadays.

However, the language Cantonese is more like an "old official language" in Guang Dong, although it is also a dialect and the native language of some people who live in Guang Dong. In the past, like in about 200 years ago, when Mandarin is still not the national-wide official language, knowing Cantonese can be a symbol of "being well educated" in Guangdong. Just like nowadays if a Chinese can't say Mandarin, we can conclude that he is not very well educated, or at least did not work hard in school when he was a student.

Maybe I'm a little off the topic and let's get it back. As I explained above, a people who speak "Teochow" may have triple "identities", he will regard himself as "Teochow people" when he faces other native of Guang Dong, and he will regard himself as "Guang Dong people" when he faces people who comes from another province, and then he will regard himself as Chinese if he faces a foreigner.

But if we talk about sub-nation flags, I can say there's none of them (legally). I know Tibet may have it's own flag, which is forbidden in China and only be used by Da Lai and his supporters. But if you would like to use it in your comic map, I'm pretty sure your book will never been published in China

And as far as I know, only Tibet and the Uygur may have potential danger of claiming independent, the rest nations or dialect speakers don't have that kind of intention. "Offence of splitting the state" is also a serious crime in China. Any public discussion like "Tibet should be independent" is not allowed.

 

[Vanguardbr]

Such a complex country man! Must have a very rich culture!

How does the government deals with political opposition? For example a anarchist group. Would the State use violence or are you free to have a different political view and express it?

 

[Walpknut]

Are there any Squatters or secret cults on or under the Great Wall?

 

[Crni Vuk]

Such a complex country man! Must have a very rich culture!

How does the government deals with political opposition? For example a anarchist group. Would the State use violence or are you free to have a different political view and express it?

Well billions of people, what did you expect
I guess China is in that sense very comparable to Europe, with a government/leadership that has a lot more power of course. It was always a nation with a very diverse culture and history! And since the Communist party took over, they also anexed a few regions, like Tibet, which have been independed nations.

It's a totall myth, in which sadly many see China as this one uniform nation, comparable to France, the Swiss or something like that, and in some cases with the idea that China is working day and night on ploting against the west or taking over the world or something. All while the actuall reality is that China has a very high number of ethnic groups inside their borders, with their own cultures and language. Like the Uyghur people - you can look for informations about Rebiya Kadeer.
And Chinas political landscape is after all as diverse like ours, even if they are not strictly democratic.

 

[JamesGoblin]

Besides WoW, are people there playing other MMOs? I have in mind things like Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV, Guild Wars 2 and so on.

 

[GlutinousRice]

That may be obvious to many, it's true that China has switched from a planned economy to a capitalist economy, but they are some nuance to it.

Most of the time, when we think about capitalism, the words free market, liberalism, private entrepreneurship and ownership of the mean of production come to mind. China is maybe in some aspect even more liberal than most Western country on the lower/medium scale of economy, especially when it come to street market, where farmers sell directly their product, street food vendor, or profession like barbers, where you don't even need a license, administrative regulation (like safety control), or if there are very little (although that might change in the future, due to growing concern on health towards food).

But ultimately the State is the biggest economic actor more than any Western country, and so China is rather state capitalist than liberal capitalist as it is in the West (well not quite, since a lot of government still intervene to save big industry, or recently banks, and pass laws to enforce quota on importation, or other type of market regulation, like maximum works hours per week, or pensions, but the way China is not liberal is quite different). As pennyliu123 mentioned, every bit of land is owned by the State, and you can only purchase a right to use a flat or a house for a period of 70 years. And more importantly, China didn't get rid of his state-owned companies, rather than that, the government has strengthen over the decades the power of their company to compete on international level, and give China important strategic infrastructure, foreign investment, technology, and financial reserves to help his economic development. The biggest power of Chinese economy come from state-owned company, and you can see this through ambitious railroad construction, power plants, massive investment in Africa, or acquisition of big foreign companies. Also the Chinese government still hold in his hand a major role in deciding the direction and the goal of China's economy, and at the end, it's the CCP who decide what is correct, and what is wrong, and they have in their hand the means to direct it, by being directly involved in the country's economy with his own S-O companies.

I don't want to minimize the importance of private entrepreneurship in China, but China's capitalism is not the same as what you have in the West, and that the only point I wanted to make.

On a side note : when you think in the West of SOE you think of monolithic, uncompetitve, unprofitable, bottomless pit for taxes payers money, but apparently the SOE in China are doing quite well on the market, maybe due to the cheap labor. And the government is starting to give more incentive to Chinese private investors to increase their activity both in the domestic market, and foreign market.

EDIT: How did you came to know about Fallout? Especially FO1 and FO2.

I think there were an other Chinese on this forum, under the name of the Gunner of Shi, who made an impressive Enclave mods for Fallout Tactics.

And two last question, which I'm very interested in.

Do you watch Japanese animation, how popular is it? I know that Doraemon and Detective Conan at least were cast on Chinese TV, and were popular among kids (or maybe I'm just projecting, as I had very fond memory of watching Doraemon when I was visiting family in China).

And to finish, what is your opinion you have on Chinese animation? I personally found it very disappointing, badly animated, voiced, and rather uninteresting plot (but that may have changed, since I haven't gone back since half a decade). Even more disappointing when I have seen what they used to do until 1970s. Havoc under Heaven (大闹天宫) by the Wan brothers is one of my all time favorite animated movie, and seeing how today China animation is, is a deception. Now that I have said that the quality drop with 1970s, maybe the Cultural Revolution is responsible for this.

Here is a link for those who are interested in seeing Havoc under Heaven.

 

[pennyliu123]

Such a complex country man! Must have a very rich culture!

How does the government deals with political opposition? For example a anarchist group. Would the State use violence or are you free to have a different political view and express it?

Yes, it's complex. For example, there is a Chinese word "zou" 走, in Mandarin it means "go" or "walk", but in ancient Chinese, it means "run", and in Cantonese, this word still means "run", so if someone who speaks Mandarin say "zou" to you, it's nothing urgent, usually, but if you hear some one tell you "zou!" in Cantonese, you must run as there maybe a fire or something like that. The pronunciation in Cantonese is a little bit different with Mandarin and sounds more like "zau", by the way.

About political opposition, as I explained before, there are really not many of them, Chinese people are used to be tolerant, but if there is any, and they don't have any violent activities, the police may come and watch, and wait till the guys dismissed. But if the demonstrator blocked the road or shows violence, or their slogan is illegal, of course the government will use violence to arrest some people (the leaders, normally). But I think no demonstrator is allowed to appear in Tian An Men Square, as that place is too special.

 

[pennyliu123]

Are there any Squatters or secret cults on or under the Great Wall?

Not at all, as far as I know People will say "you can only prove yourself a strong guy after climbing up the Great Wall", but that's it.

Besides WoW, are people there playing other MMOs? I have in mind things like Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV, Guild Wars 2 and so on.

Of course, Chinese people play almost every popular game in the west. But those games which have no Chinese Edition will be less popular in China. In China the "cracker" often work with some "Chineslizing team", who will translate a game from English to Chinese. I used to be the leader of a team which translated FF7 PC version to Chinese.

 

[pennyliu123]

EDIT: How did you came to know about Fallout? Especially FO1 and FO2.

I think there were an other Chinese on this forum, under the name of the Gunner of Shi, who made an impressive Enclave mods for Fallout Tactics.

And two last question, which I'm very interested in.

Do you watch Japanese animation, how popular is it? I know that Doraemon and Detective Conan at least were cast on Chinese TV, and were popular among kids (or maybe I'm just projecting, as I had very fond memory of watching Doraemon when I was visiting family in China).

And to finish, what is your opinion you have on Chinese animation? I personally found it very disappointing, badly animated, voiced, and rather uninteresting plot (but that may have changed, since I haven't gone back since half a decade). Even more disappointing when I have seen what they used to do until 1970s. Havoc under Heaven (大闹天宫) by the Wan brothers is one of my all time favorite animated movie, and seeing how today China animation is, is a deception. Now that I have said that the quality drop with 1970s, maybe the Cultural Revolution is responsible for this.

Here is a link for those who are interested in seeing Havoc under Heaven.

I read about Fallout2 in a PC game magazine, there were quite a few game or computer related magazines in China before 2000, when internet is still not so popular in China. There will always be some articles about a new released great game. Many Chinese played FO2 as their first FO game. The reason is when FO released, PC is still very rare in China, most of the computers are owned by universities or research institues. But when FO2 released, even me had a 2nd hand PC equipped with Pentium mmx CPU. FO2 is popular in China also because it has a traditional Chinese version.

About Japanese animation, it is very, very popular, I think I can't find a young people who doesn't know about Doraemon or Detective Conan, unless he is so poor that he never watched TV or never used internet. There are many Chinese who studying in Japan and will always upload new released animations to internet and even make Chinese subtitles for them, the government usually need a long time to notice that there is a "improper" Japanese animation which is not officially imported but spreading over internet and ban it. They banned "Death Note" last year but I still watched it

I love old Chinese animation like "Havoc under Heaven" or "天书奇谭”. If you have not watched 天书奇谭，I highly recommend it. And I do hate the Chinese animations nowadays, they are only trying to copy Disney or Pixar's works (in a very poor way) and have lost every characteristic in Chinese drawing arts.

The Cultural Revolution has some responsibilities, but in my opinion, the main reason why we don't see Chinese animation like 大闹天宫 nowadays is "marketing". The project of 大闹天宫 was begun in 1960, and completed in 1964, it's too long for a commercial animation or even a movie. Nobody will invest on such a time-consuming project without remarkable payback. Another reason is lack of artist. The drawing technique in 大闹天宫 is typical "Chinese drawing", but nowadays there are very few people still use that kind of technique, the old artists died, but almost no people follow and inherit their techniques. This is very sad.

 

[zegh8578]

I have only ever seen one Chinese animation, years ago, while studying animation for a year.
I hardly even remember it now, but I remember it had a distinct style. Although it wasn't similar with East European animation - it still felt like it, in that it was so different from the typical American style

In the 80s, during the cold war, there was a lot of animation being done in Czechoslovakia, and a lot has a very typical "east block" style

Spoiler

The mole, Czech animation

Spoiler

The Jungle Book, soviet/russian version. I really want to see this

 

[Crni Vuk]

Hey! You know what? I would be very curious to see some Chinas 50s vision of the future!
Are there any illustrations, concepts, ideas or information somewhere about what the Chinese of the 1950s thought the future would look like? You know in 2000 or 2070 or something.
Similr to this:
Soviet Vision of the future

Retro future glorious urbanism

 

[pennyliu123]

I have only ever seen one Chinese animation, years ago, while studying animation for a year.
I hardly even remember it now, but I remember it had a distinct style. Although it wasn't similar with East European animation - it still felt like it, in that it was so different from the typical American style

In the 80s, during the cold war, there was a lot of animation being done in Czechoslovakia, and a lot has a very typical "east block" style

Spoiler

The mole, Czech animation

Spoiler

The Jungle Book, soviet/russian version. I really want to see this

I like "The Mole", it's one of my favorites when I was a little boy. The mole is very funny and always has interesting ideas.

 

[pennyliu123]

Hey! You know what? I would be very curious to see some Chinas 50s vision of the future!
Are there any illustrations, concepts, ideas or information somewhere about what the Chinese of the 1950s thought the future would look like? You know in 2000 or 2070 or something.
Similr to this:
Soviet Vision of the future

Retro future glorious urbanism

There were still very few science fictions in China in 1950s, I only knew a book named "From Earth to Mars" was published in 1954, but I've not read it and can't find any interesting photos about it. And soon because of the Culture Revolution, there were almost none decent novels from 1960s to 1970s.

After 1970s, there have been more SF novels, and most of them have pictures.

But after 1984, these SF writers have been criticized by the government and many writers gave up their works. And this situation did not improve until this century. And as you may know, “The Three Body Problem” has encouraged a lot of people and maybe we will see more good SF novels and movies in near future.

 

[Crni Vuk]

So no Chinese moon bases :<!
Not even Chinese Mars people? The planet is called the Red Planet after all!

I guess people in China had different interests in the 50s and 60s. But it would have been nice to see what they could have come up with.

 

[pennyliu123]

So no Chinese moon bases :<!
Not even Chinese Mars people? The planet is called the Red Planet after all!

I guess people in China had different interests in the 50s and 60s. But it would have been nice to see what they could have come up with.

I believe in 1950's Chinese people were still working hard to "run to Communism” and aiming to "catch up with England in 3 years, be better than USA in 5 years”, please don't laugh at it, that's Mao Ze Dong's target

 

[Crni Vuk]

Well, heh not surprsing that people had more realistic goals and just trying to survive after a civil war and the Japanese occupation. I mean you need at least some stability and prosperity to have enough room for dreaming.
I was just curious if the Chinese government had like some idea in the 1950s or 1960s what China would look in 2000 or 2070 etc.

People very often forget what China had to go trough in the last 70 years. Seriously, they lost more people than the casualties in WW2. Some sources claim up to 70 million because of Maos politics and natural disasters leading to massive famines.

 

[pennyliu123]

Well, heh not surprsing that people had more realistic goals and just trying to survive after a civil war and the Japanese occupation. I mean you need at least some stability and prosperity to have enough room for dreaming.
I was just curious if the Chinese government had like some idea in the 1950s or 1960s what China would look in 2000 or 2070 etc.

People very often forget what China had to go trough in the last 70 years. Seriously, they lost more people than the casualties in WW2. Some sources claim up to 70 million because of Maos politics and natural disasters leading to massive famines.

I guess (I can only guess because I've not experienced 1950s) at that time, "Communism" is the biggest dream to Chinese, although nobody can really tell what is Communism. There was a famous saying at that time that "upstairs and downstairs, electronic lights and telephones" is Communism, and many people believed so. Then you can see in 1950s, even electronic lights and telephones can be the dream of many Chinese people. Moon base or Mars are too faraway for hem, every far than their "Communism". Please keep it in mind that in 1950s China is very, very poor and undeveloped.

If we talk about Mao's dream, I think he used most of his rest life to get prepared for "the 3rd world war" and his dream might also be "see Communism in China by his own eyes when he is still alive".

I think Mao's "running to Communism" dream is one of the most important reason why China lost many people in the so called "3 years of difficulties". Many officials reported that they had "greatest harvest ever" in 1958 to get promoted, in fact there was not such a great harvest, but they still had to send the huge quantity of grains according to their report, so the peasants had to send the grains they kept for their own use to the government, and then they had nothing to eat. And then the officials had to make another lie about "serious natural disasters", which made the peasant have no harvest and starved. But the government had exported too many food as they thought there were more food to come because of "the greatest harvest ever" in the officials reports, so they had not enough food to save the starving peasants. They decided to import food but it was too late. That's really astounding and crazy. There had not been any serious natural disaster from 1959~1961.

 

[Earth]

Oh no! You guys are having an interesting conversation and I just wanted to ask what movies do you like?

I've been hearing how Hollywood has been making films to cater more to Chinese audiences and just wanted to know your thoughts on this. What movies are popular in China?

I was also wondering if there are any Chinese films that you would recommend. We get a lot of South Korean and Japanese films here, but a lot of Chinese films don't get much exposure except for a few action films.