The “ethnocentric” in the title is coded language¹. It was triggered by a paper² I just stumbled over but is the product of by now over two decades of observation (and, to be fair, festering resentment).
I bring attention to a key phrase in the conclusion of this otherwise meandering and unclear paper:
Thus, we suggest that policymakers in China consider emphasizing more on the reciprocity benefits and build a collaborative effort across the scientific community.
What. A. Coincidence.
A study published in the (western) journal³ Humanities and Social Sciences Communications comes to the conclusion that the Chinese government needs to emphasize the benefits of open data sharing.
Yet the very same culture that preaches loudly “open data sharing” and other such nigh-utopian ideals, in a stunning example of “do what I say, not what I do” also practices the precise opposite. For example the Chinese are specifically barred from cooperation in space ventures⁴ with anything that NASA is affiliated with (which is, essentially, all space ventures and most such conferences).
This is not, however, just the USA and just China. Canada (my nation of citizenship), for example, routinely issues thundering condemnation of any nation that treats indigenous peoples badly (unless that nation is aligned with Canada, in which case Japan’s treatment of the Ainu and Taiwan’s treatment of their assorted indigenous groups gets passed over with an embarrassed cough) while it treats its own indigenous peoples in ways that are positively shocking even to this day, despite the facade of rapprochement. (Keep in mind that the last of Canada’s horrific residential schools was closed in 1997—I was 31 years old at the time!—and that in Canada being a native means you are not a “visible minority”, a term fraught with its own weird baggage.)
And you’ll find similar ethnocentric, hypocritical bullshit all over the west, even down to all the (well-deserved!) official condemnation of Hamas over the October 2023 attacks while standing by in embarrassed silence as Israel commits open genocide both in and out of Gaza starting well before October 2023 and continuing to this day.
So… My current view is that western powers are a large collection of hypocritical twats whose views can and should be safely ignored by other peoples of the world as far as is possible when so many (chiefly) American guns and bombs are pointed at them threateningly.
Change my view.
¹ Decoding it: “white supremacist”.
² https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03570-9
³ Yes the primary authors are Chinese in Chinese universities. There are reasons for this.
⁴ The fact that this has backfired, both directly and indirectly, on the USA multiple times is a never-ending source of amusement to me.
Can’t really call it an ethnic thing when all the ethnicities of Europe seem to be in on it
Can’t really call it a white supremacist thing when they include India
OP accuses others of being “ethnocentric” themselves, yet uses phrases like “west” and “white supremacist” to refer to them and rants many paragraphs long instead of letting the Uyghurs out of the concentration camps. Shame on you, OP.
Respondent idiotically assumes the (Canadian) OP has the power to release the Uyghurs from purported concentration camps and completely ignores everything else mentioned in the post.
I’d reply with “shame on you” in return, but people at sh.itjust.works tend to lack shame so it would be fruitless.
You say this like it isn’t literally any country’s leaders. Are there any you can point to that don’t do the same things you blame NA countries for?
So… a few things in order to actually change your view. Some of these may sound like snark, but I promise they aren’t. I love CMV threads and sometimes the best way to do that is to show a weak or broken logic chain and I know those can look like an attack.
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This may be a “politicians” thing, and not a “the West” thing. Every political leader denounces things that other countries shouldn’t do and turns a blind eye to things their friendlier countries do. Hell, every religion does it too. So do political parties. And friend groups. And marriages. No country is innocent because humans can be fucking monsters and can excuse things from the devil they know.
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Somewhat conversely, I don’t know how much you can hold current people accountable for previous regimes. If you can, how far back? Is Biden responsible for things Trump did? How about for Nixon? How about for Taft? How about the Native tribes who were at war and trying to genocide other tribes and take slaves long before white settlers arrived? I bring this up because I’ve known a good number of diplomats and many of these political deals (one of which being providing weapons to Israel currently) was a previous regime. Breaking those agreements make you a bad “partner country” to deal with. Breaking a treaty deal is… bad news internationally. The country you broke that deal with may also have leverage on you to make sure you keep it as well. Maybe things the public doesn’t know about. You also can’t come out and say that the only reason you’re abiding by the treaty is so as to not piss off other people because it makes you seem weak internationally.
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Data sharing in astronomy seems like a universal win and NASA does share date with China. The US shared data and samples from lunar missions past at the time. China is just barred from joint-ops missions from government-funded agencies without FBI approval which is not the same thing. This was due to some suspicion of previous data requested that weren’t about space or a mission, but about rocket launching tech that was then put into use for armaments. “It was alleged that technical information provided by American commercial satellite manufacturers to China in connection with satellite launches could have been used to improve Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile technology.” Sharing ICBM information with a hostile foreign government is generally a poor move, defensively.
Are any of those seeming like something you’d like to discuss further?
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It’s not a politicians thing. Most times I see westerners talking, at any level, about other cultures, the assumption is that other cultures have to adapt to the western way and not vice versa. That other cultures’ behaviour is bad but that western behaviour of an identical sort is fine. A perfect example of this, though I will again trigger the Sinophobes, is China’s “Golden Shield” (a.k.a. Great Firewall). When China does it, it’s bad. (And make no mistake it is bad! The Sinophobes won’t have read that, however, because they’re too busy jizzing themselves over having the opportunity to bleat about the Uyghurs again.) But when Germany does it? When Australia does it? When the UK does it? When France does it? That’s fine. Because they have their reasons, unlike the Chinese (and because fundamental attribution error is a thing). Oh, and when corporate America does it it’s also fine because “private property”. Going with the article that triggered my little rant, while the Wolf Amendment is a politicians thing, it is a thing that if you asked any random American on the street about they’d say it’s perfectly fine. Even if they were just also asked about open data sharing. There is this intrinsic belief in the west that, basically, the west’s shit doesn’t stink, but PHEW! does it stink if the shit is from Asia. Or Africa. Or South America. Or …
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The PEOPLE are accountable for the leaders they elected in democracies. That’s the entire fucking point of democracy, no? The people get the government they want? (In reality you get the government you deserve in a democracy, but most people don’t like to think that way.) So, yes, I hold the current people responsible for choices their leadership made in their name in their voting lifetime. For the individual leaders: Is Biden responsible for Trump’s choices? No, obviously not! Unless, naturally, he keeps those choices active; if he doesn’t reverse the repugnant things Trump did. Is Starmer responsible for Sunak’s support of Israel’s current genocide? No, obviously not! Unless he continues on with it and keeps alive policies that jail Jews protesting it for being antisemitic. (Insert practically any European nation with very little change here, incidentally.) As for deal-making, if you make (and then keep) deals with the Devil, you’re the baddie, to go back to that old meme. Do you really think Biden (and hopefully soon Harris) look strong as they make mealy-mouthed both-sides statements while handing Israel bombs and bullets to commit genocide with? To me they look incredibly weak; like they’re Israel’s bitch, to put it crudely. Not like the leadership of the “strongest country on Earth”.
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NASA shares some data with China, but since the political winds are what decides how the Wolf Amendment is interpreted this is unsteady and not reliable. In effect it’s a lottery, though deep space astronomy isn’t as impacted as is, say, NEO study. But this Wolf Amendment has interfered with things in the other direction. The latest lunar samples China took are being shared with the world under ODS principles … except the USA’s scientists are having problems. They can’t legally get access to the samples unless they clear it with the FBI first. Not as a class. As individual researchers. This is putting the USA behind on researching the best-kept lunar samples in the world. Similar problems are plaguing data and operations of FAST. But it’s the Chinese policymakers who have to embrace ODS. Uh-huh.
- As someone who runs an IT firm, I’m in agreement that all of those country-based firewall policies are bad EXCEPT in the case of actual defence of the internet (things like DDOS attacks, active hack attempts, etc.). Some of the businesses we manage have users that travel abroad, so I feel China is raised more as a concern because it’s the most… overreaching in what they block and is in the top 3 for executing the most cyberattacks worldwide (along with Russia and, since the war, Ukraine). In the case of the Chinese great firewall, not only is the content blocked, but it’s one of the the only places where you can also be flagged as a user for trying to access some pretty common data which has some ramifications I really don’t care for. It’s similar to rules in place for North Korea, but they have more talented SysAdmins and better equipment in China by a long shot, so getting around things is harder.
- I’d agree that SOME of the people are responsible for their elected officials in democracies - namely the ones who voted for that leader. I’d also agree that people are responsible for not having better options by allowing two-party systems to continue (though I’m not sure how to get rid of those parties at this stage). In that same vein, I’d also hold the people responsible in dictatorships as they haven’t overthrown the government that claims to speak for them. In some cases, leaders can not roll back policy implementation from a past leader due to the way the political system functions or due to treaties as I said. In the US, they kinda ARE Israel’s bitch because Israel is theirs. It’s the only safe US foothold in the area and keeps Iran in check and allows for a base of operations. An overwhelming majority of the weapons being shipped to Israel aren’t even in use against Palestine; they had all they needed to do the horrible shit they’re doing at the outset. The weapons are being used for other purposes, be those future conflicts, or to have a cache of weapons should the US need them for future issues. Is it a bad look? Sure. Is the US still going to try to exert control? Also sure. That’s how geopolitics works at present. We don’t have to like it, but everyone does it to some extent. It’s not good, but again, I don’t know how to remove it, and there are certainly worse systems.
- I totally agree that it may be heavy-handed. It also only applies to US government-funded agencies. At present, these new samples seem to be a carrot to help relax the restrictions, and it may work as researchers are quite unhappy with Wolf since the US isn’t funding missions like they once did. Who knows if they’ll relax restrictions, but ODS data shared with other countries is freely accessible to China through those other countries, so it hasn’t been much of an issue beyond the initial grandstanding. For example, if the US shares ODS data with Canada, and Canada gives data to China, the data shared is the same. China simply can’t make requests for non-shared data (again, like ballistic schematics) or be a full partner in US projects without FBI approval. How much does that matter? I legitimately don’t know. Samples have never been affected by Wolf, however, and have been shared freely upon request to my knowledge.
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To some extent, sure. But “The West” is demonstrably less ethnocentric than China. I have literally been told that I cannot check into a hotel *in Shanghai* unless my Chinese wife is with me. This is not a one-off occurrence, and it gets way worse the farther you get from urban China.
I’ve lived in China since 2001. Let’s just say that I find your story “dubious” and leave it at that. There used to be a distinction between hotels for foreigners and hotels for locals, but this had nothing to do with ethnocentrism and everything to do with facility quality. These distinctions were removed well over a decade ago, so unless this purported incident happened, like, 15 years ago, I’m calling bullshit.
And I’m calling bullshit on your little party line. This practice of turning away foreigners is rampant and there is a ton written about it all over the internet.
There’s a ton written about flat earth all over the Internet. About sex cults in the basements of a pizza parlour. About … well … any number of idiotic things.
Guess which pile I drop yours.
I’d say only about 20% of white Americans are white supremacists, the problem is that’s a large voting bloc that will only support one party, so they get catered to.
I can’t change your mind, you’re mostly right.
Lets get the repugnicunts out of office forever and change that.
Now this is going to be largely anecdotal as many of the places I’m speaking about don’t allow studies for things like this, but… Having now lived in over a dozen countries and been on scores of ExPat compounds the world over, I can safely say that every country and race on the planet has those that think they are superior to everyone else. This isn’t an exclusive thing about the West. Heck, Canada and the US aren’t even in the top 3 worst examples I can think of. I’ve seen it in a much stronger form in Saudi Arabia. We’re talking US slavery-era levels of racism there, and that’s currently.
Oh I certainly agree, last year I passed some time lurking the forums of unironic Mongol Supremacists and their rancidness was very similar to what we see on MAGA darkweb forums.
And also I have personal experience that you are right about SA in specific, and a good chunk of the Middle East in general.
I’m not saying the U.S. is the worst, but white supremacists have actively been trying to overthrow our government so I’m more focused on them right now.
