Cup of Cha
This is China

So I’m back on Tianya, a Chinese message board, and I’m broadening my horizons. When I found a post entitled “What would the world be like if there were no America?” I of course had to check it out. (I should mention that I was turned on to the Tianya channel by a reader named Merlin.)

So when I found the post I suspected that it would be talking about the golden paradise that the world would be without the big, bad America. Instead, the poster seemed to be saying that the US gave balance to world affairs. He/she made three main points:

1. Chinese resistance against the Japanese would have taken years longer without US help (although the implication is that it would have necessarily succeeded)
2. Japan and Germany would not have become economic powers without the US after the war
3. Without the US’s stabilizing influence there would be more wars in the world
4. Eastern European countries had more autonomy under Soviet rule than they might have without a strong US

Points 1 & 2 are not really open to debate, although 3 & 4 are somewhat less clear. The reactions to this are also interesting, and while a number of people do bash the US, there is a fairly mixed response. Someone called 荷香豆 argues that since America is about 300 years old, there would not have been a world war with the country (presumably because there were no world wars prior to the US). Another person going by 放开那熊猫 says that 90% of wars are caused by America.

However there are other viewpoints as well. One poster called inliberty1 wrote:

中国现在有个P经济地位！
如果不是共产主义那一套，中国就不会走计划经济再返回自由市场主义的弯路！浪费了几十年的时间，二战后同样是从废墟起步，看看日本台湾韩国的经济成就，再看看中国，不觉得很丢人吗？？

The first sentence takes about China’s current economic situation, although I’m not sure what a ‘P’ economic standing means. However, the rest of the post clearly implies that China wasted several decades focusing on communism rather than a market economy. (S)he points to Taiwan, Japan, and Korea as examples of how China could have done better (or at least reached success earlier. Although the author never explicitly mentions America, clearly the implication is that these countries’ strategic alliance with it served them extremely well. (This sparked a fierce debate among a number of posters.)

Then there was the strangest racist accusation out of a Chinese person I’ve ever heard–although it does cast doubt on my theory that Chinese are particularly racist against black people. In response to someone pointing out that if there were no US, American Indians would be better off, one person wrote this:

　　印地安人除了会吃turkey以外.没什么创造力

Roughly translated “Other than eating Turkey, American Indians have no ingenuity.”

Point. Counterpoint.

One last curious post:

如果没有美国，北韩扔几个核弹，中国玩完

Without the US North Korea would shoot off its nuclear weapons, and China would be finished

It’s slightly ironic, because my thought has always been that China keeps North Korea in line to a large degree, primarily as its most significant benefactor. One could even argue that without the US Pyongyong would be less interested in aquiring nuclear weapons. So it’s interesting to see that at least some Chinese see it the opposite way.

I wonder, what would the world be like without America?

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Tags: america, Chinese chat rooms, North Korea
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