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“Loss was the hesitation in his voice when he spoke his mother tongue, the myths he did not know, a childhood that felt so vast and
alien from his parents' that he did not know how to cross it.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

“Normally, the easiest way to [use money to get more money, i.e. capitalism] is by establishing some kind of formal or de facto monopoly. For this reason, capitalists, whether merchant princes, financiers, or industrialists, invariably try to ally themselves with political authorities to limit the freedom of the market, so as to make it easier for them to do so. From this perspective, China was for most of its history the ultimate anti-capitalist market state. Unlike later European princes, Chinese rulers systematically refused to team up with would-be Chinese capitalists (who always existed). Instead, like their officials, they saw them as destructive parasites--though, unlike the usurers, ones whose fundamental selfish and antisocial motivations could still be put to use in certain ways. In Confucian terms, merchants were like soldiers. Those drawn to a career in the military were assumed to be driven largely by a love of violence. As individuals, they were not good people, but they were also necessary to defend the frontiers. Similarly, merchants were driven by greed and basically immoral; yet if kept under careful administrative supervision, they could be made to serve the public good. Whatever one might think of the principles, the results are hard to deny. For most of its history, China maintained the highest standard of living in the world--even England only really overtook it in perhaps the 1820s, well past the time of the Industrial Revolution.”
― David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years

“Opening her handbag, she took out a small bottle of perfume and touched the stopper behind her ears. Its cool, glassy edge felt like her only point of contact with tangible reality.”
― Eileen Chang, Lust, Caution and Other Stories

“Life in China was not as tricky as the western media portrayed it to be, nor was it as simple as people thought it was.”
― Santosh Kalwar, Where the Pandemic Started

“A smiling assassin will always show you the white of his teeth as he smiles with happiness.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“In Xi Jinping's China, it's uncomfortable for two strangers to go too deep into the subject of politics. There are no clear cut consequences for discussing politics. After all, this is preceisely how the system of censorship works, with a shadowy unease that looms over public conversations. Censorship is not made explicit, you just censor yourself. No one knows the consequences of critique, but no one wants to find out.”
― Xiaowei Wang, Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside

“The result is a constant, unintelligent elaboration of the Chinaman as a stage fiction, which is as childish as it is untrue and with which the West is so familiar, and a continuation of the early Portuguese sailors' tradition minus the sailors' obscenity of language, but with essentially the same sailors' obscenity of mind.”
― Lin Yutang, My Country And My People

“What thus emerged from the Russian Revolution was a new model of state capitalism which, in turn, would become attractive to the bourgeoisie of ¡°backward¡± countries and colonies of the Western colonial powers (like Cuba, Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, etc.). They could use the State to keep Western multinationals from bleeding the country dry, and try to ¡°develop¡± independently through state mobilisation of the population. Devoid of real proletarian initiative, this was a flawed model, and even the Communist Party of the Chinese People¡¯s Republic abandoned Stalinism after the death of Mao by setting up Special Economic Zones to attract international capital and build a new Chinese capitalist class (so-called ¡°socialism with Chinese characteristics¡±). What they have in fact returned to is the type of state capitalism that Lenin advocated in 1918, opposed by the Left Communists of that time. Across the world many workers in the former Eastern European bloc still think it was better than what they have now. But neither ¡°state capitalism¡± nor ¡°state socialism¡± are socialism as understood by Marx. Both depend on the exploitation of workers whose surplus value is the basis for capitalist profit and who have no actual political say in the system.”
― Jock Dominie, Russia: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1905-1924. A View from the Communist Left

“Communism in its Leninist-Stalinist version seems to have been crushed; 'capitalism'¡ªi.e., the market¡ªseems to be continuing its triumphant conquest of the world. Let us not forget, however, that the most populous country on earth, China, now experiencing a flamboyant, dazzling expansion of the market (accompanied both by gigantic corruption and by an extremely high rate of growth), is in some important respects continuing its insane Marxist past¡ªa past which, unlike the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, it never officially repudiated.”
― Leszek Ko?akowski, Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown

“China lets me see the philosophy for myself.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“You need to visit China to see Chinese proverbs up close.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“F-35C & The South China Sea...
Now what could possibly go wrong with that combination?
I guess China will now be looking for that needle in a haystack.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Celebrating Valentine's Day is like falling in love with China all over again.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Celebrating Valentine's Day is like falling in love with Beijing all over again.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Come and see what the world looks like at the Shanghai Tower, Shanghai, China.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“A proverb goes, "The mastery of a practical skill is more dependable than loads of hoarded treasure." And to my mind, no worthwhile skill is easier to acquire than the ability to learn through reading.”
― Yan Zhitui, Admonitions for the Yan Clan (Library of Chinese Classics: Chinese-English Edition)

“From A Ride Along the Great Wall, Page 112:”
― Robin Hanbury-Tenison

“Page 121:
We left Xi'an through a fine gateway in the massive walls and plunged at once into a ghastly industrial suburb. I found my mood, my whole attitude towards China often changed as swiftly, so that I sometimes alternated between awestruck admiration and outright disgust. Their past and present attainments are outstanding. The level of culture reached repeatedly during succssive dynasties was so superior and produced so many exquisite objects. Life at court must have represented at many times civilization of a very high order during eras when most of the rest of the world was producing nothing remotely comparable. But we are told, and unquestionably it was true much of the time, that, like many empires, it was based on great cruelty, slavery and the oppression of the vast majority of the people.”
― Robin Hanbury-Tenison, A Ride Along the Great Wall

“Beginning at Tiananmen Square, the CCP sought to prove that even the newest information technology could be subverted to tyrannical ends, and that ideas really could be killed with the right amount of violence”
― Michael P. Senger, Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World

“THE STRATEGIC CONSEQUENCES OF CHINESE RACISM: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States
Draft Report
Submitted 7 January 2013
Project Number: HQ006721370003000

Since our genus Homo first evolved in the Pliocene, humans have favored those who are biologically related. In general, the closer the relationship, the greater the preferential treatment. The vast majority of animals behave in this way, and humans are no different. In a world of scarce resources and many threats, the evolutionary process would select nepotism, thus promoting the survival of the next generation. However, this process is relative. Parents are more willing to provide for their own children than for the children of relatives, or rarely for those of strangers.

The essence of an inclusive fitness explanation of ethnocentrism, then, is that individuals generally should be more willing to support, privilege, and sacrifice for their own family, then their more distant kin, their ethnic group, and then others, such as a global community, in decreasing order of importance. ...

The in-group/out-group division is also important for explaining ethnocentrism and individual readiness to kill outsiders before in-group members. Iren?us Eibl-Eibesfeldt draws on psychologist Erik Erikson¡¯s concept of ¡°cultural pseudo speciation,¡± and says that in almost all cultures humans form subgroups usually based on kinship; these ¡°eventually distinguish themselves from others by dialect and other subgroup characteristics and go on to form new cultures.¡± ...

When an individual considers whether to support a larger group, several metrics are available. One of these ... is ethnocentrism, a continuation of one¡¯s willingness to sacrifice for one¡¯s family because of the notion of common kinship. As I discussed above, the ways humans determine their relations with unrelated individuals are complex, but the key factors are physical resemblance, as well as environmental causes like shared culture, history, and language. ...

I have shown that in-group/out-group distinctions like ethnocentrism and xenophobia are not quirks of human behavior in certain settings. Instead, they are systematic and consistent behavioral strategies, or traits. They apply to all humans... They are widespread because they increased survival and reproductive success and were thus favored by natural selection over evolutionary history. ...

Chinese racism ... is a strategic asset that makes a formidable adversary. ... The government educates the people to be proud of being Han and of China. In turn, the Chinese people are proud and fiercely patriotic as well as ethnocentric, racist, and xenophobic. This aids the government and permits them to maintain high levels of popular support. ...”
― Anonymous

“Vietnam is an irritation for China. For
centuries the two have squabbled over territory, and unfortunately
for both this is the one area to the south which has a border an
army can get across without too much trouble ¨C which partially
explains the 1,000-year domination and occupation of Vietnam by
China from 111 BCE to 938 CE and their brief cross-border war of
1979. However, as China¡¯s military prowess grows, Vietnam will be
less inclined to get drawn into a shooting match and will either cosy
up even closer to the Americans for protection or quietly begin
shifting diplomatically to become friends with Beijing. That both
countries are nominally ideologically Communist has little to do
with the state of their relationship: it is their shared geography that
has dened relations. Viewed from Beijing, Vietnam is only a minor
threat and a problem that can be managed”
― Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography

“Rural culture is marked by a different sense of time, a different cosmology. At the core of rural culture, he says, is a belief that the universe is already perfect as it is, and that our duty as humans is to maintain that harmony. This was a sentiment I heard often from farmers as I traveled throughout the countryside . One farmer told me that the future is a created concept, and that in the fields, in the long dark of winters, there is no future, because every day depends on tending to the present moment. An act of care. In contrast, urban culture is centered on the belief that the universe must be constantly corrected on its course, and that life is defined by the pleasure of overcoming future challenges.”
― Xiaowei Wang, Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside

“The USA was not prepared for a pandemic.”
― Steven Magee

“There are lots of stories around of how COVID-19 emerged into humans. Secret China laboratory leak, jumping the species barrier, government engineered virus, and so on. I wrote a book about the environment called ¡°Solar Radiation, Global Warming and Human Disease¡± that I first published in 2010. I was aware human disease was going to spiral out of control as the environment changed. I was not surprised a decade later we were in a global pandemic!”
― Steven Magee, Magee¡¯s Disease

“The Pacific will soon speak Chinese as the full moon comes to the light of day.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Now and for as long as it can reasonably be predicted there will be only three genuine Global Powers: the United States of America, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China.”
― Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, The Myth of Independence

“ÊÀÉÏÎÞÄÑÊ ֻҪ¿ÏµÇÅÊ”
― ëÔó¶«

“Do you miss it?" Lily asked. "China?"
"Always," Irene said. "How can I not?"
Lily had expected that answer. Still, she kept her gaze on the ceiling, the heavy dark. "Even though it's not yours?" she said.
"It is," Irene said. In the darkness, her voice softened. "And it's yours too, whenever you want to claim it.”
― Grace D Li

“It was a hard existence for these slow-witted and incompetent people. They had lost their grip on life long ago and now did not know how to recover it. They were hungry, unclad and cold, and nothing they did helped to fit them again into the world. Their efforts to survive were pitiful and futile because nothing they made or produced was vital any more to the changing economy of the world.”
― Peter Goullart, §©§Ñ§Ò§í§ä§à§Ö §Ü§à§â§à§Ý§Ö§Ó§ã§ä§Ó§à

“America is no longer a real country. It¡¯s a reality TV set. The UK, the effective 51st State of America, isn¡¯t far behind. China isn¡¯t mired in superhero culture. It¡¯s obsessed with making itself truly great. The USA and the UK are up to their necks in their demented fantasies. They have a comic-book psyche. Superhero stories and deranged conspiracy theories are the only things they understand. It¡¯s all coming down. It¡¯s all falling apart. Mad beliefs produce mad people, and a mad people is a doomed people. Enough of superheroes. The people themselves must become the heroes, or it¡¯s game over.”
― David Sinclair, Superheroes and Presidents: How Absurd Stories Have Poisoned the American Mind