Conversation

They ran a low-tech version of this playbook in Tibet in the 50s. That erasure feels pretty complete now. Tibet is like some mix of history and dated fashion now. Fading along with Richard Gere. The refugees in India are basically 3rd gen immigrants with no live ties.
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Anyone who thinks China represents an alternative future for the world is indulging in pure wishful thinking. They are merely reproducing the worst of the West’s past, with better technology, and bigger bribes for the rest of the world to just look away.
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Did China ever have anything like even a brief historical period of liberal pluralism and open intellectual culture? This civilizational insistence on stability by any means necessary seems kinda insane. Especially for such a huge population.
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Only a designer could admire China’s governance model. It’s an aesthetocracy. Everyone I know who admires the “Chinese way” is an aesthete in some way.
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Pop culture matters here. Increasing soft power of mainland China enforces monoculture through one language. Dunno how different India is here.
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more like shared literacy, no? i vaguely remember there are at least a dozen variants with over 50MM ppl speaking each but not mutually intelligible, except in writing (i.e. further in pronunciation than English vs German)
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Languages spoken across the territory of PRC are not all mutually legible. A Cantonese-only speaker cannot converse with a Mandarin-only speaker; areas like Xinjang or Tibet even use other writing systems. CCP is forcing a shared language though; entrapment but more prosaic.