As I understand it, it's somewhat encouraged by the government. China's the sort of place where, if the government has a preferred wacky theory, one may be inclined to smile and nod rather than arguing.
In western democratic countries, the government doesn't typically exercise very much control over academia (and in fact academia is a huge source of criticism of the government and its policies in most such countries). There are exceptions (eg that thing recently where the government of Texas harassed an A&M academic over criticising His Holiness the Lieutenant Governor) but that was exceptional enough that it got significant news coverage, and the government of Texas is definitely on the dysfunctional end of western democracies.
somewhat similar to the demonization of communism that the west pushed for decades?
Apparently there are many people that are more incline to just smile and nod rather than arguing. Probably the geographical location of these is not really important. They're equally distributed across the globe
Yes I'm taking about that, you're the only one that understands it apparently.
The thing is that my comment couldn't be anyhow related to today's situation (I've used the past tense) since communist doesn't exist anymore (not the way it used to) and most of the country that implemented it widely abandoned it (probably the only exception is perhaps North Korea)
I don't understand why people get so emotional when you mention the word communism
It was a simple comparison point on the previous comment that, by my standard was also wildly off base (given that he said dumb to a whole country basically)
the fact is that the west seems to be so attached (weirdly) to communism despite even those who implemented it already abandoned.
What an idiotic question. In my case, the sensitivities are familiar. My ancestors in Ukraine were starved to death by communists during the Holodomor. Is that something you're familiar with?
The West is "weirdly" attached to communism for many reasons, the foremost being that the past 50 years has been spent trying to clean up the mess left by communist regimes.
Do you ever stop and wonder what Russia could have been like had the Bolsheviks not terrorized it? Does it scare you to face just how badly your ideology has globally failed, and will be forever remembered as a point of shame in the grand story of human development?
I'm glad you mentioned that! Plenty of Wikipedia users much more knowledgable on the topic than you or I had a lengthy discussion on whether it makes sense to try and make such comparisons.
> somewhat similar to the demonization of communism that the west pushed for decades?
I'm not sure what you mean with 'the west', but in Western Europe communist political parties were allowed just like any others.
When I went to high school in the 80's it was even kind of fashionable to have communist sympathies. This was before the fall of the iron curtain though, once it went down it became clear how terrible communism had really been.
that doesn't make it less demonized. Unless you forgot the media campaigns on it and the plenty of wars that started in the attempt to stop the spread of communism.
No, because the government doesn't need to demonize communism to make it sound dumb. Hell if anything, the contrarian nature of Americans caused many to entertain the idea after witnessing the demonization, which makes it basically the opposite of China's situation.
it doesn't matter if I've experienced it or not. My comment it's not a praise to communism, perhaps just read it again (and read the context from which it started too)
As somebody who intimately saw on my closest ones and everybody else various horrible things that communism does to society and every single individual in it, and how the legacy of it can't be shed easily even after decades and multiple generations, you don't need to demonize communism a slightest bit .
Just point out well known facts, in balanced manner, and that's more than enough.
After a lifetime of being on the boot end of capitalism, I don't think communist systems are special in being full of horrors. I don't think the particular system humans use to justify those horrors is the issue.
You don't think... well experiencing both systems would give you much better opinions to compare rather than just thinking about it. Unfortunately I had, and my opinions are clear.
You can see it yourself if you look closely enough, go to let's say Vienna, and then go to Bratislava or further east. Even after 34 years. I don't mean financial aspect of difference, I mean everything else that makes healthy society thriving.
In capitalism, you always have freedom of thinking, traveling, freedom to not have a job for example. You can bash it as much as you prefer, and its leaders. Your parents won't be put in gulag or uranium mines for 10 years because of that. My friend, you frankly have no idea what you write about...
This kind of whataboutery is an ignorant and insulting to people who’ve actually had to live through the horrors of communism, which are on a different order of magnitude to the horrors of capitalism, bad as they might be.
I have yet to see a single example of a horror done under any modern human system that wasn't done under every system before and next to it. If I'm ignorant, it's a failure to persuade on the part of people who have a special hatred of communism.
Sure, tell that to the relatives of the 4 million Ukrainians who died during Stalin's farming reforms, to the 2 million Chinese who died during the Cultural Revolution, or to the 2 million Cambodian victims under Pol Pot.
I could rattle off a list with similar numbers for capitalism (or proportional numbers for older systems), too. This does not persuade anyone who isn't already in the choir that your pet gripe is special.
Humans do horrible stuff to each other in the name of ideology. Systems are just one of the ways they rationalize it.
The "demonization" of communism is wholly deserved. Every communist country, ever has been am impoverished, totalitarian, shithole. The most successful "communist" countries are those that have given up on economic communism (China, Vietnam), though they'd be even more successful if they gave up on political communism too.
The track record of communism is so insanely bad that it is literally the second worst ideology of the 20th century, beat only by facism which caused the instant self-immolation of every country to ever try it (while inflicting terrible harm on their neighbors).
The only scientists Chinese people are approved to listen to are most likely to stay within the party line and the ones who aren’t are smart enough to not be very vocal about it, it won’t earn them any gain anyhow and may otherwise attract unwanted attention from authorities. In China you can easily be summoned in by a local police and get harrased. It’s just how it is in totalitarian states.
So I think it's true that China is, for a totalitarian regime, relatively science-friendly on high-stakes stuff (or, at least, it is _today_; it very much wasn't in the Mao era - see the whole War on Sparrows thing). Archaeology (with the exception of its intersection with climate science) is relatively low-stakes, though; the downsides of getting it wrong for ideological reasons are limited.
I find it interesting on what totalitarian regimes choose to put their foot down on. At some point I think the topic almost doesn't matter and it serves as as just a battle of wills where the authorities are please that they can impose whatever, and it also serves to separate their people from the rest of the world and create their own little "culture war" barrier.
When it comes to Archeology I always find it a bit confusing too. I doubt some randos from thousands of years ago would identify much with modern nation states, ethnic groups or etc, and yet that's often how arguments about such things go..
Archaeology’s a surprisingly common one. Rhodesia on Great Zimbabwe is another example of this; the nature of Great Zimbabwe was uncontroversial outside Rhodesia, but the conventional view could get you in trouble _in_ Rhodesia.
Even in democratic countries, you sometimes get a degree of weirdness around archaeology and to some extent geology; during the Bush II era, some pressure was put on US national parks to push creationist stuff, say (doesn’t early-noughties right-wing behaviour seem quaint, now?)
Most Chinese have probably never given a thought as to whether they are pro science or not. That seems to be more an American preoccupation. My Chinese relatives have all sorts if unscientific beliefs based around food and folk superstitions, and they are highly educated.
This might be well true, but they are also likely to believe science as well. It's just the two live in an easy parallel where one isn't necessarily valued over the other-- good or bad.
In the US the camps are FIRMLY pro or against science or many other topics, so things get alot more polarized.
I don't think US camps are anti-science as much they are against a small subset of science which disagrees with their religious beliefs. There are no anti-relativity or anti-magnetism groups as far as I know.
In China there are plenty of anti-vaxxers as well as a large number who would balk at anything implying being gay is biologically normal. They can't really form groups for this sort of thing, obviously, so you don't hear about it as much.
> As part of the Values and Beliefs Survey, Gallup called a random sample of 1,028 landline and cellphone users and asked them which of three descriptions most closely matched their beliefs
I lived in China for 10+ years. Most recently a few years ago. Lived in the US for 20+ years.
In China, I never met a single person who was anti-science. None.* Everyone knew that to get ahead in life, they had to get educated. Part of that education requires learning sciences.
Meanwhile, in the US, anti-Science is part of the culture. It even starts early in school. In the US, if you liked science as a kid, you were labeled as a nerd or uncool. In China, being good at science in school gave you more social status, not less. In the US, religion is also a huge blocker for many towards sciences. In China, people aren't religious at all or that their religion does not contradict with the sciences.
I think people here see how far behind China was in the 19th century and conclude that people there must be anti-science. China had different reasons for being far behind in science in the 19th century. Being anti-science is not one of them.
* I should clarify that of course there are people in China who are anti-science. I’m mostly referring to “normal” people. IE. people who contribute to society, have jobs, went to college, etc.
There is a big area in the middle between pro- and anti-science. And what you describe is more pro-education than pro-science. Education and science are not the same, even if it includes knowledge acquired by science. And we know from all around the world, that even well-educated people, even scientists, can fall in the intellectual pitfall of myths, superstition and strange unscientific theories and maintain both worldviews side by side.
> In China, I never met a single person who was anti-science. None.* Everyone knew that to get ahead in life, they had to get educated. Part of that education requires learning sciences.
That’s a pretty crude definition of “pro-science”.
As a nerd that did break out of that label, let me tell you that if you had any emotional intelligence or social skills, you don't lose social status in American schools for being smart, in science or any other subjects.
If you did other 'cool' things successfully - perhaps soft rebellion against teachers or administrators, music, athletics, parties, dance or cheer, or were physically attractive (took care of yourself and followed basic fashion), and had good social skills you don't stay at the bottom of the social ladder here, even in the Social Darwinism of middle and high school.
Competency and accuracy are the lowest form of interpersonal skills. If no other interpersonal skills or interests are cultivated outside of science, even the most competent and accurate individuals are likely to fail socially, which will also effect their career outcomes. Competency is used too often as a display of dominance or defensive mechanism. As bragging. As self-delusion. Connections with a diverse set of people outside of the competency only group will increase social skills and status, and with those connections comes a higher chance of success.
The people who are labeled nerds and derided for it constantly generally do not try or care to try to make these outside connections for fear of ridicule or oversensitivity, and occasionally physical safety. Non nerds see this as a superiority complex, and find overly sensitive and defensive people difficult. So they are devalued socially.
That is to say - make lots of friends and cultivate various interests outside of your core interests. Be interested in others and their accomplishments. Engage in the social jousting and own being the butt of a joke every once in a while. Don't lean on intelligence and academic achievement for everything. You don't have to win every debate to prove how smart and deserving to lead you are. You have more value than just being right all the time.
These values fit our American cultural ideals, where our leaders are typically selected on the basis of all their skills rather than a singular aptitude.
You are confusing being a user of scientifically-derived knowledge with being a practitioner of scientific principles. The former is just another belief system without the latter.
Your original statement was about the whole of the Chinese population. Your latest statement is about scientific output, which is driven by a small subset of the population. The two are not necessarily related.
That was my point. OP made it seem like China is an outlier because its 100% pro-science or something, when they have their superstitions and conspiracies just like the population of any other big country.
