GenZedong

yea i cant really understand why my relatively irrelevant country (mexico) has this deeply internalized sinophobia, it gets old quick having the same silly racist remarks whenever i bring up China in a conversation especially coming from "catholics".

when it's people you think should be your friends it's incredibly isolating. In the last 5ish years of increased sinophobia ive had both trans and asian friends who are "left" of democrats try to get me to affirm sinophobic stances (eg through jokes) and the sad thing is, this is the norm. most westerners can expect ABCs (and CBCs) to pop out with some assimilatory "I'm one of the good ones" signifier.

anyway as an ABC I've definitely noticed that the torchbearer of sinophobia is other chinese diaspora. I loathe it so much, but it's definitely an avenue towards personal success, particular in careers related to media, writing, art, etc. white society audiences crave to hear their sinophobia affirmed through a chinese face. I dont even have to scrape the gunk on the bottom of the barrel, the whole "container" is just infested, like these are just two randos I found on goodreads (diaspora writing in english on topic of china) (1) (2). on the flip side, if you don't give them that (sinophobia affirmed through a chinese face), and stay quiet or ambivalent on the topic of the mainland, well that's the hard road of proving yourself through pure merit. on the worst end, if you as a chinese diaspora dare say that communist china is actually good for chinese people, you don't get a platform, you get brushed aside and more or less forgotten. han suyin (who published in english) is out of print since the cold war ended and the nonaligned movement evaporated. meanwhile pearl s buck's the good earth is still being taught as required reading in american high schools.

To be fair, I wouldn't exactly expect the people you find on the hoi4 subreddit to be best humanity has to offer.

My family is very very anti-west, but most of my extended family has emigrated to the West and have been inundated with this funky anti-China shit (despite us being Chinese diaspora). It gets worse because a few of them are married to people who work in government of these Western countries, so they're sure to be getting political knowledge from them.

I plan on having them go to China, because I have seen anecdotes of people being cured of their anti-China brain worms, or at least it plants the seed of doubt in their mind. But also I just kinda want to see their chud reactions, in awe that the supposed authoritarian state is literally 10x better.

I can't speak for the entirety of the USA but at least in my neck of the woods the odds of running into someone with anti-china sentiment is extremely high. I try my best to break through to my own family and the few friends I have but even the extremely few left wing people we have in this place struggle to break through the propaganda.

I know what you mean about what's happened with Hoi4 lately, I've been browsing those posts myself, and you're right that the usual racists and very "funny" jokes about China's government were obviously present, but for the first time in years, I also noticed that a significant portion of people, maybe even half or possibly more, were very pragmatic and fair when discussing the subject matter, even going so far as to sympathize and agree with the chinese viewpoint. To my shock I even saw plenty who were outraged at the racist comments and confronted them (hell, it might have been you for all I know).

If you told me just a few years ago that this sort of thing would happen on a Gaming subreddit of all places I would not have believed you. So I think there is some progress being made, and I know it disturbed you to see those shitty people voice their shitty views, but don't succumb to doomerism, the truth is currently taking hold, and more and more westerners are seeing it.