[K0SM0S]

I would just like to point out that this is exactly, almost word for word and certainly in spirit, how anti-Americanism is expressed e.g. in Europe (where I grew up, born 1982).

It's crossing a line where one's ethnocentrism paints the other not just as "different" but fundamentally "lesser": e.g. many Europeans consider the USA to be "ethically behind" comparably rich countries for its arguable lack of reverence for human life (comparative differences like death penalty, no generalized health care, weak labor and family protection, a certain love for the harshness of capitalism, scientifically flawed sex ed, etc). From this view to qualifying the "lesser" as "evil", there is but one step that some don't hesitate to cross.

It's always been somewhat painful to me, because knowing both sides of the pond, culturally, I just know that the grass isn't that much greener on either side; it's really a matter of perpective, and Europe also has ethically grey values (think history, think apathy).

So today, whenever I hear a blanket qualification of 1.5 billion people (or their regime), especially in absolute terms like "evil", I roll my eyes first, and then I'm afraid. Dehumanizing others, believing that they're lesser than us, is but the first step down a very dark path.

Don't forget that for all our cultural differences, you might be closer genetically to a Chinese person of the other gender than you are with your own neighbor who otherwise looks and thinks just like you.

[brobinson]

The OP's criticism was directed at the CCP, not the nationals of the PRC. You can dislike a government without having a negative opinion of its people.

[K0SM0S]

This is precisely one of the assumptions that I am, humbly, questioning. It's more complex than that. Are the French so unlike all their governments and regimes? Are Americans that much unlike their leaders and political system? Is any society, really, thus separable in parts, beyond the abstraction of analysis? And what happens to ideas formed abstractly, in a vacuum, as they land in reality?

I mean, you can make the factual, scientific category; you may reason about it and build models that work to some extent; but reality is never clear cut, it's always hyper-complex in comparison of any short statement (hence why it's hard to meaningfully discuss such concepts in less than articles, ideally books). That's one my take-aways from a few years of sociology. Some things you just can't condense, even if it makes for a witty and intuitive proposition. Rigid values, as opposed to starting from relativity, really is the enemy of the thinker in a complex/chaotic environment such as those attemptedly described by the social sciences.

Just my 2cts. Claiming that "politicians are A, but the people are B!" is already a dubious proposition that lacks substance beneath its romantic appeal; but generalized to a massively distributed yet pyramidal political system of 1.5 billion people, it's sociologically nonsensical.

[brobinson]

I don't really have anything to add, but thanks for the reply. It's an interesting topic.