eugh, I cannot state how much I hate broad, categorical psychological traits gettinng assigned to entire countries of people. that might come from the fact that people would ask me 'hey does your family do this' based on some Amy Tan movie they watched and me having to be 'yeah my family does not do that whatsoever, that's not all Chinese people'

I think part of this bias is due to not having any actual domestic, critical understanding of the home country culture and so you end up not applying the same analytical tools you'd use to analyze, for eg, why Youtube Shorts/IG Reels/etc took off here

some glaring examples from the essay:

> Chinese consumers already had a high tolerance for slop and AI content fit naturally into this ecosystem without ever triggering an uncanny-valley reflex.

yeah, this isn't due to some inherent acceptance of unreality, the massive volume of low-budget vertical 微短剧 (weiduanju) on Douyin and Kuaishou is driven by economic factors like digital ad-arbitrage [0]. most of these studios spend the vast majority of their budget on advertising with an incredibly small amount reserved for actual production and so you get AI filtered slop because it's cheaper than paying actors or make up artists or the whole supporting crew

plus, the CAC cracks down a lot more on cruddy micro-dramas than US regulators do on low-quality TikTok/YShorts/IG Reels content (ie not at all, ever)

> This basic message is inculcated throughout Chinese upbringing: push through and ignore physical discomfort, but attend to and be subject to social censure. It's okay to be buffeted by the elements, but if your grades are bad, you'll be too ashamed to face your parents.

this is again blaming individual psychological conditioning and not systemic forces. like in the US, managing reputation has to do with high-stakes institutional checkpoints, not an irrational preference for perception over physical reality. when the 高考 (gaokao) and your 户口 (hukou)[1] literally dictate whether or not you have access to housing, schools, and healthcare, you would of course focus your attention on grades and social standing. if there were other gatekeepers, the 'culture' would shift to focus there too

> Dark World thinking sees all virtue and kindness as pretense. Among many such tropes, a common derogatory trope is of women who act nice and innocent 白莲花 (white lotus) while being deceitful and manipulative on the inside. Chinese media creates trapped priors that people acting kind, altruistic, and pure are more likely to be evil."

this happened because they dismantled the 铁饭碗 (tiefanwan) [2]. the state basically dismantled the kind of sub-utopian socialist give-everything social programming (that certain propagandized Western leftists seem to believe are still in place) and let the market fully take over. when your universal safety net is gone, extending trust or finances to others who are economically incentivized to compete with you becomes a sub-optimal play. it's why 内卷 (neijuan or involution) is a widely discoursed about issue in Chinese society

also, it's very funny to see 白莲花 (white lotus) used... seriously here? in Chinese social media, that's a satirical term and positions the bailianhua as sanctimonious. it's not aspirational, it's like calling someone a Karen here

[0] https://36kr.com/p/3547915143655305

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324106192_China%27s...

[2] https://www.routledge.com/The-Individualization-of-Chinese-S...

On social reality in China