This is to do with my ext 2 major work, I'd be grateful if people could contribute.
+ What I'm particularly curious about is about how the West sees China.
- a commentator once said that the West can't see past the problems - but quite obviously there must be problems, there are problems in any sort of society. Another thing - China understands the West much better than the West understands China. Maybe not in Sydney or places where Chinese immigrants form a substantial part of the population, but in rural Australia you really notice it. Also the Western view of China is shaped by various contexts - historical, social, cultural, and also by the view of socialism. I think the Western view of socialism is tainted in that it does not distinguish accurately between the various types of socialism - the Stalinist repression of the USSR, the more nationalistic form in Vietnam, and the, I suppose, very NEP inspired form in China today. Which is really not socialism, but a sort of capitalism masquerading as socialism - I doubt very much that communism will be achieved in the PRC.
+ Please don't just look at the political aspects - the society, the culture, the history of China is also vital, they all supplement and influence each other.
+ What comes to mind when the word 'China' comes up?
Do you only see the problems - or can you look past it to see I suppose, I don't know, a nation victimised by history - think about this for a moment. The Manchu Dynasty (which should actually be the Man Zhu Dynasty, but anyway), or Qing, that is, the last dynasty, meant that the Han ethnicity was dominated by an ethnic minority group, centralised in the north of the nation (that's the chicken's head folks - most people were dispersed more around the nation) - it's sort of akin, in numbers, to Australia being ruled by the ATSI. Shortly afterwards the nation was racked by a series of revolutions and by foreign intervention, then WWII - I need not go into the atrocities involved. Has anyone read 'Empire of the Sun'? That's a very European view, I don't like Ballard at all. 1949 was the declaration of the formation of the PRC, and then a couple of decades ruled by that...*omits epithet* Chairman Mao, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution. Etc. The CCP has admitted that the Cultural Revolution was wrong, but not the GLF - though everyone knows it was wrong, hardly ever mentioned anymore. sorta like when everyone knew Stalin was executing everyone but no one dared to say anything about it. Then Deng came to power...you know, he did a lot of wrong and crappy things but he did quite a bit of stuff for China economically. This only came to an end...well it hasn't really come to an end, the nation is still suffering the ramifications of that. Oops there's my bias, but see that's the kind of response I was looking for, something deriving from one's own context, sorry, ignore that, give me your personal insights and by that I don't mean mindless spamming or trolling.
+ What is your view of the society at the moment, and why do you think this way -do you have any justification for your views or do they derive from a desire for conformance with the general opinion?
+ Be unique, the individual versus society, think Isabel Archer trying to take on Europe with her unconventional education.
+ It would help if your uni course has a little to do with this, eg social science, l'histoire, or you do modern, etc. I'd actually prefer if you weren't Chinese, because the purpose of all this is to develop a Western character, but please post if you have something to say.
Since I even went to all the trouble of italicising some key words, no one mention Taiwan - well mention it by all means, if it has to do with the point you're making, but don't go into a debate about it, there's another thread for that. And no anti japanese tirades either, we've got one for that as well. extremists hijack my thread and die. DIE. *waves baseball bat for emphasis*
thanks
cb
An entire generation of North Korean youth have delayed puberty and are significantly stunted as a result of the decade long famine...you think these guys will make great fighters when they get conscripted into the army? 
