His connclusion mirror's the central tenant of bhagavad gita. "Karmanye vadika raste ma phalechu kadachana". Do your duty as best as you can , without expectation of results
The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
11–20 of 232 posts
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#12Slightly off topic, but in the early 90's I had to help rewrite the resume of the Chinese friend of a Chinese friend and she was very proud of the fact he graduated from the number one university in China. He had very poor English writing skills so I just unmangled it, did not have difficulty conversing with him, but I was not aware of the admissions difficulty being so high there compared to the Stanford/elite US universities as the writer says, this was about the time the WWW came online so was not so easy to google the answers back then.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#13"... randomness is not merely the noise but the dominant factor. And those reasons we assign to historical events are often just ex post rationalizations. As rising generations are taught the rationalizations, they conclude that things always happen for a reason. "
I didn't realize it until contemplating this statement, but this applies to interpersonal relationships as well as nations. It is the root of tolerance and acceptance. People wind up where they are largely through circumstance, not intention. Circumstance may be as finite as meeting a person in a purely random situation who then goes on to change your life.
Yet we lionize persons we deem successful and study what led them there, rationalizing that the set of attributes that we can observe about them must be the cause of their success. And in speaking with them personally, you'll find, in many cases, impostor syndrome because they understand the randomness that played in their favor.
I make a conscious effort to keep that in mind. It helps keep me from becoming judgmental.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#14> "In Communism, the future is certain; it is only the past that might not be" A fine essay, the above quote gave me a chuckle.
I'm not so sure what is meant by it. Adherents of Marxism-Leninism utilise the method of dialectical materialism to analyse the past and to provide a model for the structure of the future based on the resolution of dialectical contradictions. The contradictions of feudalism led to capitalism, and the contradictions of capitalism (the value-form in particular, class antagonism) lead to Communism.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#15Slightly off topic, but in the early 90's I had to help rewrite the resume of the Chinese friend of a Chinese friend and she was very proud of the fact he graduated from the number one university in China. He had very poor English writing skills so I just unmangled it, did not have difficulty conversing with him, but I was not aware of the admissions difficulty being so high there compared to the Stanford/elite US un…
> I was not aware of the admissions difficulty being so high there compared to the Stanford/elite US universities
China has a population of 1.4 billion. Peking University has 33k students and Tsinghua has 45k.
Obviously this isn't a great comparison because lots of foreigners come to study in the US, but I think it does give a sense of scale.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#16> My parents by then had reached the conclusion that I was not going anywhere promising in China and were ready to send me abroad for high school. Maybe the title should be "The Western Elite from a Chinese Elite Perspective". Surely sending kids to school to UK as plan B is not in the average Chinese family's abilities. Doesn't mean we should discount the article or its ideas but it's useful to keep the author's bac…
I agree with your statement, but if you turn around that logic, it is meaningless. Will you read about a blue collar worker's view on Chinese society? Probably not, since they are unlikely to have experienced it. Only Western elites will have been likely to experience Chinese society. Obviously someone who will be published in a magazine is elite. I am willing to wager than all the other writers are 'elites' in some…
> We want to see success!
We do, but this success is presented as if coming from an average Chinese experience. But it's very much not so. A lot of success to him came not just from pure hard work but because his family could afford to have "plan B" of sending him abroad.
Like someone here on HN said it, it is not that the elites don't fail, they do, but after each failure they can just keep trying until they succeed.
> Will you read about a blue collar worker's view on Chinese society?
I would love to actually. What would an American welder think about China or, maybe what they would think about how Chinese welders work and vice-versa.
> As societies, we don't really want to read about some Cantonese kid working after school at his parents restaurant for 6 hours a day.
No, but they would love to read about the Cantonese kid working after school and then based on his hard work end up at GS.
The bottom line is growing in up in a family like it doesn't matter what country or culture you come from you already won the lottery. You can live in Venezuela or Africa and still take weekend flight to shop in New York. Your perspective is already very different.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#17> "In Communism, the future is certain; it is only the past that might not be" A fine essay, the above quote gave me a chuckle.
I'm not so sure what is meant by it. Adherents of Marxism-Leninism utilise the method of dialectical materialism to analyse the past and to provide a model for the structure of the future based on the resolution of dialectical contradictions. The contradictions of feudalism led to capitalism, and the contradictions of capitalism (the value-form in particular, class antagonism) lead to Communism.
When the author describes "communism" or "capitalism" he appears to be writing about his experience with them as he has seem them actually practiced, rather than the theory of how they are supposed to work according to their adherents.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#18Interesting that in one section, he casts doubt on the notion that mathematical models can accurately describe reality, and in another, he uses a heart rate monitor to conclude that he doesn’t have emotions.
I don't think our economic models are comparable in accuracy or reliability to a heart rate monitor.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#19> Her life, up to that point, was very similar to the life that I have been living. And I am sure that, at the time, she was as optimistic about her life as we are today about ours. But she went to the UK in 1935, and she went back to China around the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Her education abroad, in a capitalist country, and her belief in individual rights and freedom often placed her on the wrong side of various political campaigns and the Cultural Revolution. She lost numerous friends and family members, including her husband and daughter during these years. She barely survived a long period of imprisonment herself. It was not until the 1980s when she managed to get a passport and could move to live with her relatives abroad. On the ship to Hong Kong, she kept thinking about her decision to return to China all those years ago.
For those of you wondering, the book he was reading is "Life and Death in Shanghai" by Cheng Nien. For me, that was the most interesting part of the article.
I know very little about modern Chinese history and this seems like an interesting place to start.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Shanghai-Cheng-Nien/dp/080...
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not so sure what is meant by it. Adherents of Marxism-Leninism utilise the method of dialectical materialism to analyse the past and to provide a model for the structure of the future based on the resolution of dialectical contradictions. The contradictions of feudalism led to capitalism, and the contradictions of capitalism (the value-form in particular, class antagonism) lead to Communism.
When the author describes "communism" or "capitalism" he appears to be writing about his experience with them as he has seem them actually practiced, rather than the theory of how they are supposed to work according to their adherents.
Upon second reading, that makes more sense, however it would be clearer if this were the case. "Chinese Communism" can refer either to the ideology which the CCP claim to adhere themselves to, or it can refer to the actual state-capitalist bureaucracy as practiced in China.