For American Pundits, China Is a Fantasyland

choi

James Palmer, For American Pundits, China Isn’t a Country. It’s a Fantasyland. Washington Post, May 29, 2015 (op-ed)
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... eb077d4e_story.html

Quote:

"In heavy rain, our alley  [in Beijing] becomes a swimming pool, and even newly built Beijing streets disappear under a foot of water because the drainage is so bad; in storms in 2012, people drowned in cars stuck under bridges. China’s mega-projects are often awesome, but they’re also often costly and corrupt. The more than 10,000 miles of recently built high-speed rail came in well over the original $300 billion budget [or 30 million a mile], and all but a few lines run at a loss.

“Finding China’s realities can be hard simply because lying is so common here, whether it’s fraudulent government data, false ambulances or tainted baby formula. The collapse of social trust as a result of decades of Maoism, followed by a get-rich-first ethos, has made honesty a rare quality. With no external controls from a free media or civil society, Potemkinism is an everyday skill across the country, whether directed at outside investors or official inspectors.

“The damage done by such arguments goes beyond their individual cases. They reinforce the seductive, and false, notion of efficient authoritarianism.

Note:
(a) fantasyland (n; First Known Use 1967): "an imaginary or ideal place or situation"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fantasyland
(b) "Whenever I want to be cheered up about the future of my adopted country [China], I turn to American pundits."
(c) " 'That used to be us,” Thomas Friedman writes, citing the “impressive' Tianjin Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center 天津梅江会展中心 (thrown up in a few months[; 坐落于梅江风景区]) as an example of China’s greatness and glacial US construction projects as an example of America’s decline. China is 'kicking our butts' because the United States is 'a nation of wusses,' according to then-Pennsylvania Gov Ed Rendell [Democrat; governor 2003-2011; mayor of Philadelphia 1992-2000], who in 2010 lamented his state’s inability to handle snow."

wuss (n; origin unknown): "WIMP"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wuss
(d) “The people [American pundits] telling these tales aren’t interested in complexities or, really, in China. They’re making domestic arguments and expressing parochial fears. Their China isn’t a real place but a rhetorical trope, less a genuine rival than a fairy-tale bogeyman.”

trope (n; ultimately from Greek trepein to turn):
"a common or overused theme or device :  CLICHÉ  <the usual horror movie tropes>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trope

choi

(e) "With a massively changing country, correlation and causation are easily confused. China’s boom years in the 2000s, for instance, correspond nicely with an explosion in the number of pet dogs; perhaps some canine enthusiast is even now explaining how this is evidence that Bo, not Barack, should be making policy."
(i)
(A) “correspond nicely with an explosion in the number of pet dogs”  Here it is not a cause of China’s economic boom, but a result.
(B) In biology it is well known that (statistically) smoking cigarettes correlates with increasing rate of many forms of cancer, which by itself however does not prove causation.
(ii)
(A) Bo (given name)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_(given_name)
(B) Bo (dog)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_(dog)(2008- ; a pet dog of the Obama family)

(f) "Yet these PISA statistics [supposedly representative of China] cover just an elite group of Shanghai schools, where entry depends on bribery and string-pulling. In the rest of the country, classes average 50 students, only a third of rural children make it to high school, and I’ve found innumeracy to be just as common as in the United States."
(i) The "innumeracy" is a counterpart of "illiteracy."
(ii) innumeracy (n): "the lack of the ability to do basic mathematics"
www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/innumeracy

(g)
(i) For American pundits: "China is a lead-in anecdote to their arguments, not somewhere they’re actually interested in."

lead-in (n): "an introduction or preamble that allows one to move smoothly on to the next part of something: [AS MODIFIER]: the lead-in note"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/lead-in
(ii) “Purveying China fantasies in the service of your own vision isn’t new. Voltaire pioneered the technique 2 1 / 2 centuries ago, depicting a government of refined Confucian deists in counterpoint to the barbarities and superstitions of Europe. He took this portrayal from the missionary letters of his archenemies, the Jesuits”

Jennifer Tsien, Voltaire and China. In Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe (an exhibit  in 2010 and Feb 1- Apr 30, 2012--both at Harvard). Department of Music, Harvard University, Oct 1, 2013.
hcs.fas.harvard.edu/soundingchina/Tsien.html
(iii) "In the 1960s and 1970s, the few Westerners allowed into the country were almost inevitably fellow travelers with Maoism, led by the nose by guides who were trained to parrot the triumphs of socialism and who were happy to regurgitate the pap they had been fed to foreign audiences."

pap (n):
"1: bland soft or semi-liquid food such as that suitable for babies or invalids
2: worthless or trivial reading matter or entertainment"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pap
(iv) "The Chinese can be just as dumb, lazy and pig-headed as anyone else."

pig-headed (adj): "willfully or perversely unyielding : OBSTINATE”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pig-headed