Steve Simon announces WTA’s decision to suspend tournaments in China

Fuck all Chinese people right? They shouldn't able to bring food to the table, they shouldn't live right?

Here is my perspective as a Chinese national. I agree the peng shuai case is terrible and I support WTA actions. But I also realize how much Chinese government's actions have transformed people's lives in the country for much much better.

I wonder if you have knowledge of the culture, history and the perspectives from the Chinese side. Have you ever seen a video of Chinese people 1930s, learn about what the society was like back then? For the average Chinese, you are a peasant, you slave at the fields for the rest of your life. You will not learn to read, only the elites learn how to read. If you are a women, your best bet is to arrange marry to a rich family, your foot is most likely bounded, you will be a housewife, you will give birth to kids, and you will give birth to boys, if you can't, you will be seen as a failure by the family you marry into. Did I mention the rich and elite men will have multiple wives and mistresses? Women going out to work? Having money? No way. Parents want boys not girls. But you can't blame them, there is no social status for women back then.

My grandma was a typical women from the 1930s, farmer, arrange marriage, never taught in reading and writing because there was no need, foot bound. After the ccp and PRC was formed, the local party branch gathered all the women in her village and taught them how to read, how to farm like men, how to work in factories like men, how to tell their husband to fuck off and how to fight them if they beat them. The ccp propaganda that people outside of the country are "disgusted" by were telling people women can hold half the sky, women can do anything men can do. Women are equal to men. Marriage require consent of two the man and the woman, and only themselves have the right to make the decision. And men having multiple wives were made illegal, and under ground practice were heavily sanctioned.

Women's social status today in China is massively different. Some guys I know say girls are so lucky, because guys are suppose to serve the girl, guys should earn most of the money in the home, husband should hand all the money to the wife, should never pick a quarrel with wife, etc.

SCMP reported that China has two-thirds of top women billionaires. Chinese females also do very well in sports. In Tokyo Olympics 38 golden were won by women vs 13 by men.

And of course I know the difficulty still facing women today. Sexual assaults, verbal harassments, discrimination in some work places, domestic harassments and violence. The good thing is these issues are being talked about in the media and on the internet. Very frequently you hear about court cases involving women and justice being served. I do believe they are getting better.

I think one of the biggest reason for the change in women's status is Chinese government's education system requires boys and girls to attend 9 years of education. And in school, the vast majority of girls are taught to be the same as guys (sure, I know some teachers do discriminate against girls, but on average). At least in my up bring in China, girls generally do better than guys in school, and my teachers taught to us to respect each other. Almost all girls I grew up with are now working as professionals, none had to drop out of school, or married off and became housewives, all very independent. Most of my guy friends are very respectful of women, I believe owning to correct values and world view established when one is young.

And there are so much more about china. It's complex and multi-faceted

China has a different political system. The political system has done bad things, but also a lot of good things. Poverty alleviation, my dad side came from a poor village, for the past 20 years, I witnessed how much that village transformed. Ability for people to feed themselves, housing, jobs, education, healthcare, safety. A lot of Chinese people won't say this, but it is true that they are direct results of government's actions. People say China has no democracy, but the government is acting on people's demands and giving them their demands.

I want to make a plea with you, forget about political systems for a second, on a personal level, I believe people are more alike than they are different. Chinese people believe in freedom, justice, fairness, rights and the power to make demands and have them be acted upon and becoming the reality. I and many others believe in value of work, creation, and personal effort. I believe there is no free lunch. I believe socialism is not about a disrespect of personal property, it is about the society offering or making an effort in offering equal opportunities to everyone, and attempt to make an leveled playing field.

I also believe in freedom and freedom of expression. Although I have to say I believe freedom is not without limits. Conflict arise when one's freedom conflict with the freedom and wellbeing of the others. In these scenarios, I generally support sacrificing some personal freedom if it means there will be clear benefit for a collective wellbeing. You could have a different ideals, but I am happy to talk about why I think this way and listen to your perspective.

I also want to say the vast majority of news about China is extremely biased and a lot of them are absolutely false. They are about making people hate China, destroy relationships and make people going to war with China. By the looks of it they are doing an excellent job.

One last plea, Japanese in North America were targeted during ww2 due to the war. Nowadays, it feels like Chinese nationals are being treated the same. The issue is not about standing up to particular issue. The issue is about labeling an entire group of people and saying they are evil or against my way of life and my ideals, and thus they should be eliminated, without realizing it's people, humans, on the receiving end of punishment, attacks and destruction. And I think the vast majority of Chinese people and also Chinese government has said this, we don't want to export our ideology, our model. And we want to respect the ideals and values of every other country. We believe its fine for different countries to have different approaches and different takes on various ideals, and they should be able to coexist. We never wanted to replace or change western beliefs.

As a Chinese national, social credit score has it is talked about in the west is basically fake news by international media. There is a credit score system, and it similar in practice and intention to US's credit score. The intent is it is used to judge someone credit worth when it comes to borrowing money (credit cards, loans etc). Your credit history, payment history on loans (credit card, mortgage, and now online loans) goes into it. And in some provinces, whether hydro, water, civil penalties paid on time goes into. There were cases where some government branches tried to put controversial things into it, for example, if you donated blood that will add to your credit score. But people voiced disapproval and the government stopped doing it. So yes, in China, people definitely is able to talk about government policies and voice disapproval for them. And government do listen. There is no such thing as singing praise for the government, or ccp, or xi and you get social credit score added, and you will be disappeared if you say bad things at the government. I regularly criticize government's policies online and my account is still alive.

On your last point about respecting ideals and values of other countries, I will note the punitive, heavy handed China’s reaction to Australia’s request for investigation on Covid-19. And the list of demands from the Chinese embassy in Australia, including control on the freedom of the press. Using your opening statement Australians according to China should not be able to bring food to the table…they should die.

For the rest of your argument, I can say you read too smart to not see the gaps in there. “Bread and circuses” as the Romans said. And I am even someone who appreciates socialist ideals, but maybe that’s why I am also not impressed by the story. You went way back in 30s when many western countries’ populations were not that different to what you described.

It's a good thing you can pirate the NBA or use a VPN. Less committed fans will simply accept that China just censor the NBA for telling "lies." You can't pirate your way into hosting a international tournament.

I agree with you for the most part, so I am not exactly sure what are we arguing? :)

FWIW, I did not make an argument that economic prosperity or equalisation will bring them to streets at all, but that:

1. Their current "flourishing economy" is not a reason to consider China as "one of the greatest threats of our freedom ever", and

2. How "flourishing" Chinese economy is will change relatively quickly (say in the next 10-30 years) as their median salaries approach those of who they export most to (if that's Japan, Korea or Taiwan, then their salaries instead of US ones).

I would even say that this situation with WTA shows that 1 is exactly not the case: people in charge of large organisations (like Simon) have learned from how eg. NBA handled the case and the flak in the media they received, so now they are being more protective of democratic values (or maybe their image, but regardless) instead of their business interests.

FTR, this was part of the comment I was replying to where economy is highlighted as a big contributor to them being a great threat to "our freedom":

> We're looking at one of the greatest threats to our freedom ever; this time they have nukes, reliable delivery mechanisms and a flourishing economy (which the Soviets lacked).