China also has a more efficient energy transfer system than elsewhere in the world, so the loss is a lot less than you would expect, lower than, for example, it would be in US.

I only realized it’s NOT an armband after you pointed it out x)

OK, here’s a couple more that are famous and great for touristic reasons of history /culture /good food /great landscape /etc

Xi’an (one of the ancient capitals of China, starting point of the traditional and new Silk Road), Guilin (every single time they show China in cartoon, with giant mountains and winding rivers, they’re basically showing here), Shenzhen (the new hyper modern high tech city), Guangzhou (old English name was Canton, as in Cantonese food), Suzhou and Hangzhou (historically famed for being chill and beautiful, lakes and canals etc), Hainandao (Chinese version of Hawaii), Nanjing (another ancient capital of China, lots of culture), Harbin (lots of Russian architecture here, and a FANTASTIC and huge ice sculpture show every year)

Was not expecting 济公 here along with the Marxists xD

…sounds grim and surreal. Pretty sure I’ve read post-apocalyptic fiction with similar backgrounds :|

China has been working to increase the PLAN’s power and reach this past decade. They are nearing to a blue water navy at this point, and have broken through the first island chain, within which they are no longer considered to be defeatable without extreme cost.

The US has withdrawn their concentration back to Guam (previously, they didn’t bothered to arm the second island chain).

China has 20x the manufacturing power of the US and a bigger PPP (more efficient use of their military budget) , and they have known the US will one day come for them since Mao. Their recent ships are lighter in tonnage but newer than the American fleet by several decades, carries better equipment, radar, with greater fire power that makes them more equal to traditional ships one category higher in tonnage.

Finally, they aren’t building a navy to project power around the globe like the US navy does. The PLAN intends to have the capability to defend their home waters and to protect their economic interests abroad, that’s it, so it will never need to have as many ships as the US navy, so a tonnage or ship number comparison would not be an accurate measure of the PLAN capabilities.

To be fair they are parliamentarian and have been for centuries.

But, the parliament is literally staffed by aristocrats and other types of ruling elite, so…

有没有 have or not have 时间 time 陪我 accompany me/accommodate me 聊聊天 chat a bit

It’s a way to turn any action into a question. It could be a more casual and informal, more endearing /soft way of questioning something (depending on the actual emotional tone you say it with, if course) .

看没看过？have…seen it? 吃没吃过？have… eaten it? 玩没玩过？have … played it? 读没读过？have … read it?

是不是 （很好玩）？isn’t it (fun)? 好不好 isn’t it good? 看不看xyz–do (you/we/they) wanna watch xyz? 知不知道xyz–do…know xyz?

Etc.

To sound less like a robot, here’s my suggested rewrite for you ;D

你好，我叫xxx，我正在学汉语。你好吗？你会说普通话吗？有没有时间陪我聊聊天？

Etc.

I can’t do americanized Chinese food I confess, I’m not American enough for that ;D

I honestly thought you made up this quote to be ironic, only to find it’s actually in the article. Orz

There was a period when foreigners, especially English-speaking white foreigners, were treated effusively in China, elevated above all Chinese people and often far above the natural social place these folks had back in their own countries. They got better jobs, better job situations and benefits, and Chinese people in general gave them respect and admiration based on their whiteness and exotic Westerness alone.

Then China opened up to the world at ever increasing pace, Chinese people became more sophisticated, and an entire generation of previously-fêted foreigners lost their elevated place in society. They crashed back to earth and drifted back to the social positions they always would have had based on their personal abilities and talents.

Laowhy and Serpentza lived through the tail part of that shift. The good and easy time they’d had in China soon ended, they were barely making ends meet, and soon had to leave. They became deeply bitter, and attributed that natural change in society to the CPC ruining the good times for everyone, not just themselves. Thereafter they fell in with various anti-China crowds within and without China, and also found just how lucrative anti-China videos are on yt.

So it’s a combination of both a personal sense of being wronged, plus the good grift, that resulted in their channels and stance today. They were always grifters at heart, the change in money merely changed the nature of their content.

Also, why is the talk only about tritium and carbon-14 in this report, ignoring 64 other elements present in the water that potentially contain harmful effects. The IAEA report states they only investigated these two elements by Japan’s request, it does not imply that there are no other elements they can or should also investigate, just they didn’t because they weren’t requested to.

What? That’s exactly what happens. Various stations in Washington DC have been closed, for 6+ months at a time, the past two years, for renovations. They made do with route workaround and shuttles in the meantime. Are you implying stations shouldn’t update just because it might cause inconvenience? Safety trumps inconvenience.

This “underlying trend of things” is the dao, by the way :) Daoist philosophy and worldview, and Confucian philosophy and worldview–in addition to an awareness of history–still deeply underly Chinese thought and society. The way Judeo-Christian philosophy underlying the West. It’s part of what accounts for the “with Chinese characteristics”.

Of course China is authoritarian. It’s an iteration of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Lol.

To be more serious. Every single citizen of a country will have lots of complaints about their own country, even those who think most things are working ok. By sheer nature of living somewhere, you become intimately aware of its problems and weaknesses, and wants to see certain changes and improvements. Does this mean they dislike the country as a whole? Or love another country more than their own? No.

The CPC is enjoying an unprecedented high approval rating due to being a highly efficient government capable of implementing long-term plans to improvement the country. Many people have witnessed those changes with their own eyes, lived through them personally, and mostly approved of the results.

In addition, a part of the CPC’s mission is to protect and revive China and Chinese culture, which it has done so by alleviating poverty, strengthening the economy and the military, and enhancing China’s influence and reputation in the world. Not every single Chinese person is a socialist or at all interested in politics, but a great majority (even including overseas Chinese) DO resonate with that mission, with seeing how the country has improved, how traditional cultural elements are being preserved and incorporated with modern elements in creative ways in all forms of media, architecture, art works, ways of life, all the scientific achievements, etc.

Yes, there is censorship and an element of authoritarian control. Moreso in the past, and a little more relaxed in the present, but it’s definitely there. Arguably, the Chinese people is more familiar, even comfortable, with an authoritarian government (how else does one keep a vast country with huge population together throughout the thousands of years). However, because the government is vested with more power in general, the people have higher expectation for it to perform and to take care of everyone. It’s part of the Confucian social contract that hides deep in the structure of society. That being the case, when people fall through the cracks in various ways, they blame the government personally for failing them, more than a typical Western person would in a similar situation.

Also, the government makes policies primarily based on what benefits the society overall, and not the individual (by this, I do not mean ethnic minorities or classes of people, who are protected as part of a harmonious society; but the concept of individualism itself). If you’re an individual who happens to not conform with what is considered to be socially beneficial, or who wants to be disruptive in some way (and it may even be a perfectly acceptable type of disruption in the West), you would feel the boot of repression upon your neck.

With 1.4 billion people, even tiny percentage of unhappy people is tens of millions of unhappy people. Each have their own story, and justification, and many grievances are valid. Because no government is ever so perfect as to take the best care of every single person, no government is entirely free of corruption or negligence or ineptitude. The CPC has made mistakes that massively affected some people’s lives for the worse. It has also dramatically improved things in other ways. For some people, the two did not even out. For others, they imagine the West to be a shining beacon that is far better, more free, where people can truly make money and live a good life. Simultaneously, a current trend is for Chinese netizens to say they never realized how great their own country is and how much they love it, until they broke through the Great Firewall via VPN and started to see how the outside is doing.

Overall, the only way to determine how a country’s government is doing is to analyze vast statistics, and in comparison with other governments. In that light, the CPC’s numbers are pretty good, but there are always room for improvement.

Unfortunately, the separatist government on Taiwan has a 40% core base who firmly believe that the USA, Japan, and South Korea will definitely come help them fight the PLA. In fact, they rely upon it, because in actuality they themselves are NOT joining the army, which is having difficulties with recruitment. But they sure believe that the US with its awesome navy will crush the PLAN, since the mainland is practically falling apart in some type of 1970s communist dystopia.

While there may have been legitimate reasons for these folks’ reluctance to change their life and become a part of the mainland–many of which could probably have been addressed and negotiated if everyone were calm and relations were frequent and friendly as they were 15 years ago–they are also the product of intense anti-mainland propaganda that includes rewritten history books and rampant media misinformation.

So yeah, that’s why these things always work so well. First they have a whole system of information warfare that salts the ground, and then they use people’s genuine hopes and wishes against them, and even though everyone knows they’re being used, they still believe they can get what they want as a result of being used.

At that point of wealth you aren’t thinking about spending money as an individual, or even an individual family (even including hangers on and staff). You are essentially a representative of a power that parallels governments, with worldwide reach, and will think along those lines. You want to implement worldwide policies, dictate the tides of capitalism, play with your own regime change politics, break the barriers of old age, gene manipulation, and get the process started on astro-mining and colonizing Mars.

It seems like your standard to have “a positive impression of China” is only if it’s somehow perfect and free from problems. Sure, the country has got issues. Like all countries do. And it’s got a ton of positive points too, more than many countries in the world in fact. The world is a harsh place full of problems.

Item 6 is downright offensive. How “bad” are the rude people in any culture? Pretty bad. But do they represent the whole culture, even discounting the better-educated younger generation? No. There is high culture, the educated class, the warm hearted “real” people who may not have the most polished manners. There are normalized standard of politeness that everyone enjoys and upholds.

Why not consider how well the the Ugly American Tourist trope reflect the US as a whole. The infamous drunken Brits on all-night bashes trope, the Australian bogans trope. All kinds of folks from poorer countries who are “cheap” out of habit trope. And so on.