[ben_w]

> If you ever listen to Russian propaganda, there's a similar theme: every big idea, everything good, all of it was definitely first developed in Russia - only Russians could ever have thought of it. Of course, Russia isn't actually a world leader in any of those things, or able to execute on them.

When I was a kid watching Star Trek VI, I was confused by the line "You've not experienced Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon".

And then I learned about how the Klingons (especially in that film) were a stand-in for the USSR.

[ButlerianJihad]

But that was more of a jab at literary snobs who would tout "Homer in the original Greek" or "Marcus Aurelius in the original Latin" or "Old Testament in the Original Hebrew". It has been such a meme, probably for centuries. Because it was not so long ago when university students were actually conversant in many classical languages such as those.

[torginus]

I mean, lots of things have been developed in European countries, and said countries either never commercialized the technology well enough, or lost leadership. I'm sure that prior to WW2, Brits would've treated the idea that they could be out-engineered by the Germans with ridicule.

[ben_w]

I'm not sure what you're arguing here.

Upthread, the point about it not mattering what China stole but what they can do? That "Made in China" has gone from a sign of low quality to being the default as it became the factory of the world? Yes, China's winning and the sooner the rest of us wake up and smell the tea the better. They learned lessons from how my ancestors were able to push them around despite coming from a small, damp, sheep-filled rock in the Atlantic, and don't want that to happen again; for most of "the west", being on the receiving end of such humiliation is a historical footnote if it's in our own history books (or living history) at all*, and most of the exceptions are former-Soviet-bloc/Warsaw Pact.

But specifically to the point about the USSR claiming all (good) things for itself, as parodied in this manner by Star Trek? AFAICT, that was just plain soviet propaganda.

* What happened in Africa and India/Pakistan, however, is recent enough to still be in living memory. Israel likewise, though now this is on the edge of living memory for the things which led to its reincarnation.

And while the Irish definitely still retell history lessons about the British and the Famine, I'm not at all sure if the stuff in NI in my lifetime counts as "humiliation" given I'm British and our newspapers just said "terrorist" about everything that came from there.

This is only relevant to the point that most of us are deeply oblivious to how bad things can get when someone else is the boss and we don't get to vote in their elections.

[yanhangyhy]

well speaking as a chinese, we only want our relics back.....nothing else from UK