Because they see things from a completely different angle, different cultural background, and obviously pre-seeded with what the CCP wants them to see as the truth.
Because really, consider in how many ways the west does not practice what it preaches. Look at how big corporations abuse capitalism, work against customer rights through lobbying. Look at the whole "right to repair" debate. There is plenty of stuff you can pick out and primarily report on on Chinese news. For example, every time there is even just a small protest of black people somewhere in the US, you can be sure it's on CCTV.
Then consider that most Chinese students going overseas are from the big cities, often from families doing well. There are government programs that sponsor studying abroad for students from rural areas, but they make up for only a small share. So you have students from the big cities, living a modern and happy life. And they get here and see that in some areas of everyday convenience, we've already fallen behind. They see China making progress every day, while the west is stagnating, having a lot of obvious internal and structural problems. They see the most powerful country in the world lead by a crazy orange clown being the main source of entertainment on Twitter. Not the prime example for the pros of a democracy.
And then you show them all the stuff that's censored in China, and how the CCP is evil, and how you got freedom of speech and they don't, and they look at how everything is going well back home and just shrug.
So you might conclude they are just brainwashed and don't realize it, but they pretty much think the same about you. The image of China we get presented in mainstream media is horribly biased as well.
In general you need to realize that most people from most countries are pretty content with how things are going. Even though it's not perfect, it's what you've accepted as being normal, since you grew up with it.
Speaking as charitably as possible, comments like these indicate to me that the poster has never been to China and has no idea about the actual conditions there. If you just step outside the select few favored economic zones you will see a very different, much lower, standard of living that accounts for the vast majority of the land area. Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago, but taking a bus from Taicang to Kunshan for instance, on the Eastern coast just out of Shanghai, I rode through villages that didn't even have electricity. People were carrying jugs of water on their heads and walking barefoot through dirt roads like it's 1200 BCE. I doubt much has changed for those people in eight years.
Even in the cities, is it safe to drink the water yet or use ice cubes? Or are we still having a refreshing cup of boiling hot tea at lunchtime on muggy 35 degree summer days?
Is there toilet paper in the public restrooms yet in the tourist districts in Nanjing? Please let me know if things have changed so I can update my image of China that's informed by direct first hand experiences.
It's absurd to suggest that everything is just hunky dory in China or attempt to establish an equivalence between living conditions in China and the United States, or any developed Western nation; so much is obvious to anyone who has spent even one day in a representative median location in both. When videos depicting the real situation are easily available to view on Youtube, it crosses the line into irresponsibility and maybe even propagandism.
> Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago, but taking a bus from Taicang to Kunshan for instance, on the Eastern coast just out of Shanghai, I rode through villages that didn't even have electricity.
Speaking as someone who’s travelled extensively in the region, I’d say you might have been there 28 years ago, not eight. I heard there are still extremely poor villages without electricity scattered in godforsaken places (e.g. deep in mountains), but those tend to be hard to get to in the first place, there’s no way you can simply stroll through one on the way from one city to another.
> even in the cities, is it safe to drink the water yet or use ice cubes? Or are we still having a refreshing cup of boiling hot tea at lunchtime on muggy 35 degree summer days? Is there toilet paper in the public restrooms yet in the tourist districts in Nanjing? Please let me know if things have changed so I can update my image of China that's informed by direct first hand experiences.
People don’t drink tap water afaik. The population in general don’t like cold/icy water anyway, so I was told. I’ve met many people who drink hot/warm water/tea from an insulated water bottle all day, even in the summer. The majority of “water fountains” (for lack of a better word) seem to only serve hot or warm, although there’s no technical reason they can’t serve cold, so I attribute it more to cultural differences. Anyway, I never had problems getting cold drinks myself.
Toilet paper: a (small?) fraction do, you need to bring your own or purchase outside for most. I heard there are initiatives to roll out free toilet paper to more public restrooms.
Anyway, drinking directly from tap or having free toilet paper in public restrooms don’t seem to be necessities, so those don’t contradict gp ether way, while your 1200 BCE claims sound highly dubious to me (I bet I have both longer and more recent experiences than you do, and I’ve travelled to every place you mentioned minus the no-electrcity villages).
China is still mostly a "bring your own toilet paper and soap" country.
The idea that there should be free toilet paper and soap in every bathroom is just not widely accepted in China. Even in Taiwan, a lot of public bathrooms don't have toilet paper. When you ask people why, they generally respond that people would steal the toilet paper / soap.
I expect that some day, the central government will announce that every bathroom must have toilet paper and soap, and then it will be rolled out very quickly. But that day hasn't come yet.
Have you thinker about why there is not toilet paper in public restrooms?
Turns out there is multitude issues, but at the core: the country is still poor. There simply isn't enough fund to support the Western style public facility.
And TBH, public rest room improvement has nothing to do with democracy anyway. In US, there isn't the public rest room in the same definition as China anyway...
>there’s no way you can simply stroll through one on the way from one city to another
Maybe! I could be wrong. My memory has been degrading for eight years and the situation has hopefully been improving! I'd go try to retrace the journeys I took on Google street view, for my own edification and yours, but of course, it's unavailable for China.
> Speaking as charitably as possible, comments like these indicate to me that the poster has never been to China and has no idea about the actual conditions there.
Ah yes, start off by constructing a straw man.
> If you just step outside the select few favored economic zones you will see a very different, much lower, standard of living that accounts for the vast majority of the land area.
and here we go. OP was talking about students specifically, and I explicitly pointed out from what kind of background they come, and how that makes them perceive the west. It seems you got personally offended by that reality.
> Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago
Eight years is an eternity in China. I've been there almost every year since 2009 and did a lot of traveling and boy do things change.
> I rode through villages that didn't even have electricity. People were carrying jugs of water on their heads and walking barefoot through dirt roads like it's 1200 BCE. I doubt much has changed for those people in eight years.
Of course that still exists all across China. You don't turn a country of a billion into a first world country over night. But what even the guy in the most remote village sees is progress being made. They see what life in the big cities is like and want to live there; not in the west, because it seems on par at best.
> Even in the cities, is it safe to drink the water yet or use ice cubes?
It's funny how you try to invalidate my post with specific anecdotes that you think prove China is inferior to your home country. But I'll play along: No, tap water isn't drinkable anywhere in China. But it doesn't seem to bother them too much since apparently it had been like this forever and it seems possible to get used to buying bottled water or just boiling it. I'd go as far as saying there are far more important things China has to fix internally.
> Or are we still having a refreshing cup of boiling hot tea at lunchtime on muggy 35 degree summer days?
Ah yes, the superior western way of drinking cold beverages during summer. Not that it actually makes you sweat more...
> Is there toilet paper in the public restrooms yet in the tourist districts in Nanjing?
Please let me know if things have changed so I can update my image of China that's informed by direct first hand experiences.
The way I read your whole comment, I think it's more comfortable for you the way it currently is.
> It's absurd to suggest that everything is just hunky dory in China
Which brings us back to our straw man. I never said that!
> or attempt to establish an equivalence between living conditions in China and the United States, or any developed Western nation
Which I didn't do either; again this was from the perspective of a middle-class-or-higher student from a tier 1 or 2 city.
> so much is obvious to anyone who has spent even one day in a representative median location in both.
You can't just go to China for a couple days and think you've seen it all. And you should talk to locals, which is already hard in the cities if you don't speak Chinese. Again younger people with higher education background are your best bet for English. For the rural parts, travel with a native speaker. If you don't understand what makes people tick you can easily brush everything off as stupid/wrong/backwards.
> When videos depicting the real situation are easily available to view on Youtube
Sure you can selectively pick the stuff that floats your boat and make a judgement about how a nation of one billion people feels about the state of their country. That perfectly closes the loop to my initial post about Chinese media portraying the west in a very biased and filtered way, and vice versa. Obviously you can choose to do so yourself on YouTube. There's channels depicting China as the worst communist gulag possible as well as ones that make it out to be paradise. If you feel like it you can subscribe to one side and call it a day.
> it crosses the line into irresponsibility and maybe even propagandism.
Should be deleted as fake news. At least it's not censorship then.
Yes, the orange man hasn't helped the argument, and yes I've noticed a lot of the press (Murdoch in particular) is producing a continuous stream of anti china sentiment lately. To many oligarchs are controlling too many conversations I'm feeling lately. I can imagine many Chinese who grew up in the china of the 50's and 60's and find themselves in charge of the country now see only chaos when they look at us.
Because really, consider in how many ways the west does not practice what it preaches. Look at how big corporations abuse capitalism, work against customer rights through lobbying. Look at the whole "right to repair" debate. There is plenty of stuff you can pick out and primarily report on on Chinese news. For example, every time there is even just a small protest of black people somewhere in the US, you can be sure it's on CCTV.
Then consider that most Chinese students going overseas are from the big cities, often from families doing well. There are government programs that sponsor studying abroad for students from rural areas, but they make up for only a small share. So you have students from the big cities, living a modern and happy life. And they get here and see that in some areas of everyday convenience, we've already fallen behind. They see China making progress every day, while the west is stagnating, having a lot of obvious internal and structural problems. They see the most powerful country in the world lead by a crazy orange clown being the main source of entertainment on Twitter. Not the prime example for the pros of a democracy.
And then you show them all the stuff that's censored in China, and how the CCP is evil, and how you got freedom of speech and they don't, and they look at how everything is going well back home and just shrug.
So you might conclude they are just brainwashed and don't realize it, but they pretty much think the same about you. The image of China we get presented in mainstream media is horribly biased as well.
In general you need to realize that most people from most countries are pretty content with how things are going. Even though it's not perfect, it's what you've accepted as being normal, since you grew up with it.