[natch]

There is a lot of bitterness toward the US in China possibly stemming from their perception that they should be leading the world in every respect, and the irksome reality that for much of the past century or more the US has been at the forefront. Yes that is changing or has already changed now, but they are still very unhappy about having been behind for so long, given their rightful place as the superior (in their mind) civilization.

Yeah our (US) civilization has plenty of flaws, I'm not meaning to suggest otherwise. Just saying since you asked, if it seems they are targeting the US a lot, this could be part of it. Plus the obvious fact that the US is the biggest and softest target.

[baybal2]

A simple explanation:

In China, the manager class, the bureaucrat class have an opinion of their own people as worthless.

They don't believe that a Chinese engineer can make a widget better than an American engineer, because they think there is something inherently wrong with everything Chinese.

In their disturbed minds, they think if everything Chinese is bad, this also makes them bad too. Thus, they make themselves appear as un-Chinese as possible:

See, the only place in the world where American car brands making "falling apart as you drive" cars made a dent in the market is China!

In reality though, this conduct of theirs, acquiring material attributes of "Americanness" themselves, is just a psychological compensation.

I'm not trying to insult anybody here. This is my observation from working in trade with China for 10 years, and living there for 3 years.

What needs to be fixed, is the toxic "Laoban" culture, an "old boys club" of inept, privileged, people currently running China.

A real world example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16217995

[yourapostasy]

> ...the toxic "Laoban" culture, an "old boys club" of inept, privileged, people currently running China.

Is this largely a generation-specific culture, that will mostly pass on as the generation dies off, or embedded within the Chinese culture itself, and has a far greater inertial momentum to overcome and thus will take much longer to turn around (perhaps even generations of change)? My gut feel from my general reading is this is an intrinsic part of Chinese culture, though slowly changing starting at the more youth-oriented demographic-populated fringes that interact the most with the outside world.

[ambicapter]

Given the way their government work (one-party rule), I would blame it more on their political system than their culture. Obviously you can make the argument that culture precedes political system, and also the same argument the other way. Bit of a nature vs nurture thing.

[tw04]

>making "falling apart as you drive" cars

That hasn't been reality in a LONG time. And even at their worst, American cars were still light years ahead of what China has managed to produce thus far.