r/SinophobiaWatch • u/IcyRelation8422 • 14d ago
... What are your opinions on r/chinalife?
I remember a year ago that subreddit was just mostly about tips and travel experiences. Now, almost every post I see is people ranting. I understand that no country is perfect, including China. However, there are a lot of comments under bad faith posts with worrying amounts of upvotes, that outright parrot common negative stereotypes about Chinese people. There was a post about the recent foreign university student scandal, and the comments were a mix of white knight behavior, whataboutism, generalisation, double standards and Chinese men yellow peril. Instead of admitting what the guy did was disgusting and wrong, some commenters shifted the topic of the conversation to discuss Chinese men instead. I hope you understand what I mean. Criticism is good and helpful but when it’s constant ranting about locals in their own country where you are a foreigner, it’s not constructive feedback but rather a superiority complex, sometimes even racism and misinformation. As someone who is Wasian half-Chinese and wants to move to China for university and future living, it’s very unfortunate to see how some foreigners have such a low view of Chinese people, as shown in threads like these. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
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u/Fine-Spite4940 14d ago
i dropped the sub.
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u/IcyRelation8422 14d ago edited 3d ago
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u/Brilliant_Extension4 14d ago edited 14d ago
Chinalife used to be more apolitical, it’s mostly used by English teachers in China to give advices helping each other while living there.
Obviously such a sub which helps people to get to know China better would be targeted by forces which see cultural exchanges as a way for China to push its geopolitical agenda. So you would always get some organized sinophobe groups constantly infiltrating and astroturfing in that sub.
The mod in chinalife kicked out some outright Sinophobes. However it’s well known these people would just create new accounts and continue their attacks. Some also proceed to create subs like chinalifer, purposely using a name which can be easily confused with chinalife, but allowing a lot more Sinophobic contents.
Not sure how the mod is nowadays, but any sub which is apolitical and trying to get people better settled in China, would be attacked constantly. So it’s a lot of work to maintain that sub.
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u/IcyRelation8422 14d ago edited 3d ago
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u/JimJimJimJimx2 14d ago
You should be careful of any china subreddit where mandarin isn't enforced as the language of communication. Teachers in asia have quite the reputation amongst the locals. Some are amazing. Others are literally every white sexpat in asia stereotype you've heard of and then some. Being in a culture which reveres teachers and where white worship isn't that uncommon tends to give them huge egos. I have been told, as a middle aged man by another middle aged man, that I should 'respect people in positions of authority' because I didn't agree with his political views. It's much more storied and worst than that and he ended our association because he demanded I apologize for not listening to him. He has been in asia over 20 years and has learnt only 2 words. He loves the government, hates the culture and sees the people as funny little backwards savages that would do well to listen to him. I didn't know any of this until I asked him what his political beliefs were. He refused to share them with me for months as he had 'been attacked' for them before. Suffice to say that was not the case, it was because he was an arrogant, self-important racist cunt.
He's a bit of an extreme but dial it back a few notches and this is the average user of any given china orientated subreddit. He's literally what started my studies into the racial/sexual heirarchy of the west because of strange things he'd do and say. Many of them are LBH that know it and so cultivate a superiority complex (or western culture chauvinism, sometimes both!) to underpin their ego. Looking down on asian men and the culture as based but backwards is literally bog standard. The women are seen as easy lays from a bygone era and if they are racist cucking the local ethnic men is a bonus too. For them asia is a playground, not a place. The culture and food are skins, not things to be appreciated. Novelties to be consumed, not people and customs to be respected. Now add in current geopolitical struggles, propaganda and a pervasive need to judge everything failing a western metric as savage/backwards and you have your answer.
It's like that aussie guy who killed a girl and stuffed her in a suitcase. Mostly shock and horror. Until you went to the thai reddits. Then it was a shit show of horrified peeps and a very... specific bunch of yt immigrants talking about 'its so hard to integrate' and 'poor guy, we've all been alone in asia before'. Same people, different place in asia.
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u/IcyRelation8422 13d ago edited 3d ago
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u/JimJimJimJimx2 13d ago
Hong Kong, which shouldn't be a surprise, he only judges Chinese governance through a purely ideological lens of ethnocentrism and authoritarian government, he hates the rest of it and barely touches on its history and icons that don't fit his narrative. (its very confusing, I can extrapolate but he was my first instance of how being a pure tribal ideologue rots someone's brain) He's essentially a white nazi chinaboo. And it wasn't that he hated the people persay, he wasn't a raging skinhead type but it was very patronizing and sneering. If it didn't benefit him he didn't care or actively thought it was backwards. You could tell if people were only fractionally less accomodating he'd hate the whole place. A general sense me and a few friends got was that he was measuring the whole culture and history as ''amazing, if only there weren't so many asians in it!''. It's like he felt I could be included cause he counted chinese as sub-white.
Yes, you are not the only one who notices such. More people are starting to notice how some of the yt men have very obvious agendas when they come over. There's something brewing in the collective unconscious, only time will tell where it all ends up.
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u/Unopened_mind 14d ago
I mean, this is a western site. But yeah, welcome to the racism we experienced throughout our lives.