Minima
19th February 2012, 22:54
Brainwashed by decades of maoist drivel in a mutated reformed state capitalist system, It’s intellectual scene a heritage of the cultural revolutions, all confucian, christian, liberal scholars disenfranchised and wiped out, Critical leftist dissent practically non existent, the academic institutions of china, in continuing their heritage of a national examination system, rote memorization, has created the basis for a completely static intellectual culture. Imported western theories of neo-liberal economics and blase rhetoric of democratic reform gradually seeped in from Taiwan and Hong Kong, dominiating discourses of politics and society outside of the CPC
The status seeking nature of the pursuit of education in many middle class families has lead to an increase in overseas exchanges to schools like (ideally) Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, where western ideologies are consumed voraciously and brought back to bear on the politics of a new technologically “literate” generation, (who compose a large majority of those who blog about this bullshit) The education culture ingrained upon the youth of exchange programs usually follows their highschool and elementary school experiences, habitually rote learning and uncritically consuming official knowledge from western universities with a predominantly liberal basis in the humanities, and a careerist and go-getting attitude in practical degrees like commerce or science.
The “Intuitive” autodidacts of the Chinese intellectual world such as han han and other "whistle blowers" are discursively limited to the knowledge they can access or have a chance to be exposed to. These liberals concern themselves with human rights politics, with anti-corruption, with national and foreign policy issues, eschewing economic analysis, and outright avoiding any talk of ideology. (for fear of censorship and worse) there is alot of practical, personal reasons for not being outspoken, but they are not entirely blameless.
This, while still under the pressure of state censorship, direct repression via jailing or worse, while and uncritical consumer culture runs rampant, nullifying the benefits of exposure to the culture and intellectual legacy of western intellectual traditions (history, poli-sci, anthropology, philosophy etc all engage again and again with marxist ideas,) This, in a culture of plagarism, counterfeit culture, and personal egoism in the form of indignant righteousness, all masquerading as the future politics of china.
The "radical" bloggers of china, made up of mostly middle class intellectuals in the city, parrot a pro-democracy, anti-communist, anti-corruption rhetoric that has little to do with improving the situation of people in china, while they are genuine, many bloggers echo an popular cynicism, a reaction to a culture of complete political impasse, of complete disillusionment with any possibility of political agency.
The status seeking nature of the pursuit of education in many middle class families has lead to an increase in overseas exchanges to schools like (ideally) Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, where western ideologies are consumed voraciously and brought back to bear on the politics of a new technologically “literate” generation, (who compose a large majority of those who blog about this bullshit) The education culture ingrained upon the youth of exchange programs usually follows their highschool and elementary school experiences, habitually rote learning and uncritically consuming official knowledge from western universities with a predominantly liberal basis in the humanities, and a careerist and go-getting attitude in practical degrees like commerce or science.
The “Intuitive” autodidacts of the Chinese intellectual world such as han han and other "whistle blowers" are discursively limited to the knowledge they can access or have a chance to be exposed to. These liberals concern themselves with human rights politics, with anti-corruption, with national and foreign policy issues, eschewing economic analysis, and outright avoiding any talk of ideology. (for fear of censorship and worse) there is alot of practical, personal reasons for not being outspoken, but they are not entirely blameless.
This, while still under the pressure of state censorship, direct repression via jailing or worse, while and uncritical consumer culture runs rampant, nullifying the benefits of exposure to the culture and intellectual legacy of western intellectual traditions (history, poli-sci, anthropology, philosophy etc all engage again and again with marxist ideas,) This, in a culture of plagarism, counterfeit culture, and personal egoism in the form of indignant righteousness, all masquerading as the future politics of china.
The "radical" bloggers of china, made up of mostly middle class intellectuals in the city, parrot a pro-democracy, anti-communist, anti-corruption rhetoric that has little to do with improving the situation of people in china, while they are genuine, many bloggers echo an popular cynicism, a reaction to a culture of complete political impasse, of complete disillusionment with any possibility of political agency.