• finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The Chinese have sort of lost their credibility on Politics and History, this last century.

    I’m actually less inclined to listen to anything associated with them.

    The only proverb I wanna hear out of China is “of the 36 stratagems, fleeing is best.”

    • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Maybe you wanna hear this:
      “上有政策,下有对策”
      “When above has policy, below has countermeasures/resistance”;

      “above” meaning the government from the north, aka Beijing, and “below” means the people in the south, far away from the reaches of Beijing and therefore its policies are harder to be enacted upon. (But the “above” and “below” could also be reference to social status, because the emperor is “above” and us “peasants” are “below”)

      One of the best examples of this is the one child policy, anecdodally, my existence is from the direct violation of this policy. I don’t know the whole story my mother and I aren’t really on speaking terms these days, but she told me that she was supposed to get mandatory birth control (aka: sterilization) after giving birth to my older brother, but she lied to the authorities about it then she had another pregnancy (which was me), her hukou was in the village where she was born in, so she went into the city, and PRC isn’t actually that centralized btw, they delegated a lot of law enforcement to the local government and I think because either jurisdictional issues or because the city has too many people and its easier to blend in, and therefore harder to find people, the government never found her and so I was born. (My mom said they weren’t allowed to “terminate” me after my birth already happened) In the end, my parents only had to pay a fine, so I get to live. So that’s one example of people just disobeying the government. (Honestly, I’m not entirely sure if I enjoy being alive, my parents are kind shitty and abusive, I much rather be reincarnated in Norway or something, but… oh well… life doesn’t let you choose 🤷‍♂️)

      Or you know, the “great firewall” policy and VPNs as countermeasures against censorship. (I’m living in the US right now, so their firewall doesn’t affect me lolz)