Evan Osnos, writing for the New Yorker has an interesting article on the new generation of Chinese “neocon nationalists”.
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Chinese Neocons . . .
This entry was written by R. Elgin, posted on July 23, 2008 at 10:23 am, filed under China, East and Central Asia. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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22 Comments
Yet another person who doesn’t know what a neocon is or what the neocon movement is about…
Agreed. Chinese nationalists have little in common with US neocons. People need to think twice about applying culture-specific labels outside of their original context.
Yeah, I was expecting to read about Chinese ex-Trotskyites who thought Tel Aviv, not Beijing, was the capital of their country.
No guiding principle indeed, unless one counts vices.
These guys will get co-opted or eaten alive by the Party unless they can get connected to a larger entity of change.
#2. Maybe better to call them “NeoMaos”.
If Fenqing is neocon then I must say Korean nationalist is Regan conservative. I among many Chinese call them Shit Youth 粪青 but I don’t how Korean nationlist are described or is there any critism from Korean at all?
Question:
In 10-15 years, the imbalance between the number of men and women in China is going to increase. There may be more bachelors in China than there are women in the entire country of Vietnam, so importing ladies is not going to be a viable option. What do these men do? People who have a diminished prospect for the future and no women and kids making them think about the long term future. Could they possibily be an element that affects the political orientation of the country? Perhaps makes it more aggressive and/or instable?
They make good soldiers who have nothing to lose.
That’s what worries me…
Isn’t sex selection prevalent in S Korea too?
Yeah, but given the comparative smaller number of bachelors in Korea and the relative wealth of the country, they could import women from poorer countries such as Vietnam, the former Soviet Union, etc.
@10, it is but its leaning towards women now.
Well, maybe the government might intervene to have more baby girls. I have a hunch they’re more than capable of doing that.
@4, guiding principle has and will always be nationalism. Chinese culture is a form of social communism driven by jealousy control.
The real problem China is facing is not lack of principle but capitalism with social communism. The biggest change for the Chinese will be the opening of options and education for women. Once you get that women tend to choose especially mates.
If you want an example of the problem China faces on a massive scale take a look at Japan. It is facing a crisis with the lowest birth rate and more importantly marriage rates in the OECD.
The Durex sex survey ranked Japan dead last 3 years in a row with the bottom 5 being China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and some other country. Essentially the Asian male stereotype is going to hit them like a train just as it did to Japan.
If you couple this problem with future economic problems you get hundreds of millions of young guys who will never marry or mate, who have no jobs and will basically tear the country apart.
Forgot to mention you get alot of willing soldiers for wars.
#14
China is a communist country. It probably has more women participation than S Korea. Better take a peak at U.S. universities and you’ll be amazed how many international students are Chinese women.
@14 Korea isn’t included in the Durex survey, but a few years ago a similar poll, I believe done by a pharmaceutical company, did include Korea, and they were “competing” with Japan around the bottom. (unfortunately I couldn’t find the source, though I think it was the English Chosun…)
If we took all the Chinese nationalists (the ones in the article), all the Islamic fundamentalists, all the Dokdo specialists and all those who want to make Russia great again, and used them to colonise some new planet, how long do you think they’d last together? If they took all their toys with them, would they last longer or shorter?
Of course if we started depopulating the Earth along these lines it would eventually end up a very lonely place, inhabited only by Canadian English teachers and the Swedish women’s volleyball team.
You bring up a great point, Wangkon. What will all those young men do? I ask my students this question a lot in conversation classes, and nobody has ever come up with a decent answer.
In my opinion? They’ll become gangsters. No, really. Look for organized crime to become very disorganized. Gangs who, for what they lack in organization, they make up with sheer numbers. That’s what young men do when they have no hope for the future. They band together and take what they want from those who are weaker.
But that’s just a theory. I guess they could all become soldiers. You’d have to have one hell of a propaganda machine to convince these guys to join up, though. Even in China. They’re gonna be some seriously disillusioned hombres.
#19
Being a PLA is a honor for many Chinese young men but PLA is very selective about who they take…Have you imagine how many soldiers Chinese government has to feed? US and Japan has been talking about “incredeble” increase in Chinese defense spending etc but many do not know that of PLA money went to pockets of officers (salary increase) who then turn around and wasted them all on women and booze. Still good way to get the domestic economy going compare to Americans throwing money on bombs wasted in desert.
Up until the 20th century, many Asian countries had a social structure where female infanticide was much more common, and the wealthy land owners married many women. The less well off tenant farmers might marry 1 wife and have a family. But the landless peasant laborers, had little chance of ever being married. If they had money, they might visit a prostitute, if not, too bad.
That is the reality in Asia for many centuries. The situation in Communist China today is actually an improvement over Imperial era, as far as finding a wife is concerned. Despite the gender imbalance your chances are actually better today. Same with Vietnam, Laos, etc.
Watch the movie “Raise the Red Lantern” for the last (closing?) era in China where wealthy men married multiple wives or concubines and kept them under the same house. Today the same is unimaginable, even the wealthy have to keep appearances by hiding their “2nd wives” (bao er nai) in a separate apartment.
To mask its internal problems, China will start a war against Japan.