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Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

nytimes.com

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Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#21

Post by whooshee »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #10

I think I posted this before but my old university buddy who's from Zambia, jokes with me that the Chinese are colonization 2.0 The Chinese government have no scruples which is why they are out-competing Western companies and governments in Africa, who are tied behind political and moral restrictions. Also the Chinese have a major resource in man power which they can deploy anywhere for cheap.

Yup, China built railroads and other infrastructure at a relatively low price in Africa, they have no scruples. Not to mention died dozens of workers in 80s. Some Western companies are plumbing oil in Africa, they are moral heros.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/04/shell-ni...

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#22

Post by Lordarminius »

User23 wrote: post #2

The ongoing Chinese colonization of Africa is one of the biggest stories the western news media has absolutely no interest in reporting.

The ongoing Chinese colonization of Africa is one of the biggest stories the western news media has absolutely no interest in reporting.

Perhaps because the Chinese are not (being allowed) to 'colonize Africa'. They may have a large presence in East Africa but are of limited significance elsewhere in the continent.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#23

Post by zozbot123 »

Simon_says wrote: post #17
jxramos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you were possibly exaggerating. There really is such an ad. Pretty horrible. I never heard of this news almost 3 years after the fact. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-racist-d...

Horrible is a matter of taste. I thought it was hilarious. > “If we just show laundry like all the other advertisements, ours will not stand out.” He's right. I haven't paid as much attention to a detergent ad since Tide's Superbowl ad.

> “If we just show laundry like all the other advertisements, ours will not stand out.”

Very similar to the Gillette thing, in a way. Makes sense when you think about it.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#24

Post by jmknoll »

messe wrote: post #20
reversengineer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With the exception of Guangdong and Hong Kong, you aren’t going to find many TV stations or newspapers that are carrying content in non-Mandarin Chinese. Just a quick clarification: Mandarin is a spoken form of Chinese, and therefore cannot be "printed" in a newspaper. In Guangdong, the newspapers are printed in simplified Chinese characters. In Hong Kong, the newspapers are printed in traditional Chinese characters…

Um. No. Mandarin is a language. Cantonese, which in your example is used in Hong Kong, is grammatically distinct from Mandarin. Changing from simplified to traditional characters or vice versa is not sufficient to translate from one to the other.

We don’t really have an analogue to this in the West, but Mandarin and Cantonese are very similar in their written forms, yet mutually unintelligible in their spoken forms. There are some differences due to different history and some different vocabulary, but broadly speaking, Chinese characters maintain the same meaning across dialects (and also when they’re used in Japanese), while changing their pronunciations.

Simplified vs traditional is a different issue, and all dialects can be written in either simplified or traditional. Which is more prevalent usually depends on tradition, and relations with the PRC. Singapore and the PRC use simplified, while Taiwan, HK, and Japanese Kanji use traditional.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#26

Post by someperson »

jxramos wrote: post #6
m3nu wrote: post #3

With China being very homogeneous in terms of race, they never worked through those issues. I don't blame them. My grand parents, who lived in the countryside all their life would react in a similar way. Small anecdote: I attended an English class at a Chinese business university. The teacher (young girl, never left China in her life) told us that everything "French" means "sex/porn/etc", i.e. "french book", "french…

I thought you were possibly exaggerating. There really is such an ad. Pretty horrible. I never heard of this news almost 3 years after the fact. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-racist-d...

Racism in China is a big problem, but the laundry advert alone isn't certainty not a big issue and is pretty over blown: being overly political correct around lighthearted comedy.

The skin pigment 'melanin' is what causes a black person's skin to be black, and is also the same as in a non-black person's tanned skin. It's a added pigment that the absence of causes light skin. Removal of melanin can happen (through non-laundry!) causes such as developing vitiligo, or being born with albinism (a genetic condition which exists in all ethnicities not just black people). Removal of melanin literally turns a darker skinned/haired person white (but obviously not changing other features).

The American TV show Everybody Hates Chris, based on comedian Chris Rock's childhood experiences made almost THE EXACT SAME JOKE more than once [1] [2], making fun of the very strict African-American mother trope of threatening a misbehaving child with 'slapping the black out of you'.

The laundry commercial may have some problematic connections with the ideas of 'clean' and 'attractive'.

America has a long history of minority TV shows aimed at mass audiences tackling stereotypes, Everybody Loves Raymond for Italian-Americans, Fresh Off the Boat for Asian-Americans, and a huge number of African-American cast shows including The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, Fresh Prince of Belair etc. Comedy shows with characters with minority experiences are a good way to improve understanding. It will be unfortunate if lighthearted comedy dies because excessive political correctness.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44mTfEcP76o [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPmqVW_qLmk

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#27

Post by stefanfisk »

jmknoll wrote: post #24
messe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um. No. Mandarin is a language. Cantonese, which in your example is used in Hong Kong, is grammatically distinct from Mandarin. Changing from simplified to traditional characters or vice versa is not sufficient to translate from one to the other.

We don’t really have an analogue to this in the West, but Mandarin and Cantonese are very similar in their written forms, yet mutually unintelligible in their spoken forms. There are some differences due to different history and some different vocabulary, but broadly speaking, Chinese characters maintain the same meaning across dialects (and also when they’re used in Japanese), while changing their pronunciations. Si…

Interesting! Is it at all comparable to how Scandinavians can read each other’s languages but most have a hard time understanding the spoken languages?

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#28

Post by improbable22 »

jmknoll wrote: post #24
messe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um. No. Mandarin is a language. Cantonese, which in your example is used in Hong Kong, is grammatically distinct from Mandarin. Changing from simplified to traditional characters or vice versa is not sufficient to translate from one to the other.

We don’t really have an analogue to this in the West, but Mandarin and Cantonese are very similar in their written forms, yet mutually unintelligible in their spoken forms. There are some differences due to different history and some different vocabulary, but broadly speaking, Chinese characters maintain the same meaning across dialects (and also when they’re used in Japanese), while changing their pronunciations. Si…

And if I understand right, the reason is that the written language is more distinct from the spoken one(s) than in the west. Perhaps more like written mathematics, is this a terrible analogy? Russians write the same formulae with the exact same meaning, but say them over the phone completely differently.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#29

Post by forkLding »

reversengineer wrote: post #18
cepth wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the parent commenter is far off here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#Ethnic... . Granted, Han Chinese in the modern sense is a bit of a constructed identity ( https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6e312e/is_th... ), but it’s a construction that has held up in China. With the exception of Guangdong and Hong Kong, you aren’t going to find many TV stations or newspapers tha…

>With the exception of Guangdong and Hong Kong, you aren’t going to find many TV stations or newspapers that are carrying content in non-Mandarin Chinese. Just a quick clarification: Mandarin is a spoken form of Chinese, and therefore cannot be "printed" in a newspaper. In Guangdong, the newspapers are printed in simplified Chinese characters. In Hong Kong, the newspapers are printed in traditional Chinese characters…

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is correct.

Mandarin and Cantonese are regional dialects, Mandarin gained prominence because emperors from about the 1600s resided in Northern China and in Beijing which used a lot of Mandarin Chinese, thus it spread due to being a prestige language used by the royal family and their courtiers. Cantonese is prominent in certain areas of Southern China in the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese

Hong Kong and Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese, Mainland China and Singapore/Malaysian Chinese uses Simplified Chinese for their text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters

I personally find fangyan as a better descriptor than dialect:

http://dictionary.pinpinchinese.com/definitions/s/%E6%96%B9%...

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