very-smart mfw I am chinawatching

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I mean the lie flat movement is a natural response to how turbo-charged the competition in China's education and work systems have become in the last generation. It's a genuine problem in Chinese society right now and to refuse to participate in that aspect is a good thing - but what I hope those in the lie flat movement understand is that liberalism does not offer them an escape from that aspect of Chinese society, just look at South Korea and Japan. The only way for China's work culture to improve is for it to be reformed within the socialist model while the people still have control over their society, rather than having yielded control of it over to market forces.

    • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I don’t disagree, but these are taken as signs of the opposite, that more markets and more treats from the west surely solve the broader crisis of capitalism China (and all nations) must grapple with, rather than exacerbating it

    • meth_dragon [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      the main issue here is that just as many if not more chinese people don't actually want to fix the problem of competition, they LIKE the competition, the competition is GOOD, the competition is NOT the problem, because if there was no competition, they wouldn't be able to win

      the REAL problem is that they're not winning

      it's one step up from the american 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires'; chinese strivers are capable of recognizing wishful thinking for what it is, but the sheer need for and capability to execute on dumb striver shit to fulfill dumb striver motives just to be able to lord it over their peer group is quite literally ruining the country rn. the entire educational system (and culture at large tbh) is caught in a negative feedback loop of artificially inflated standards and the government has no fucking idea how to solve it

      an abundance of needlessly well made powerpoint presentations is a portent for the end of nations