Are the Chinese Especially Puritanical?

[Puppycow]

Beijing Adds Curbs on Access to Internet (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/world/asia/26china.html?_r=1&hpw)

The communist party is not supposed to be religious, but they do seem to be very puritanical.
Is censoring porn because the Chinese are actually that puritanical or because it is a pretext for censoring political speech or both?

[MRC_Hans]

I'd say they are simply old-fashioned. Moral standards (sex-moral, that is) are somewhere in the 19th century. The single-child policy has not exactly helped.

They don't need a pretext for political censoring, they do that quite openly.

Hans

[Puppycow]

"Old-fashioned"? I guess that's one way to put it, although that would imply that the more technologically advanced they become, the less "old-fashioned" they would be.

[Policenaut]

I don't think so. Their Cat. III movies have been quite graphic for over 20 years and they don't censor nudity in them.

[Foolmewunz]

Yes, the old guard - e.g. the ones running the country and thus of the older generation - are rather puritanical. But their approach is sort of medieval; husband = provider and he's just bound to be human and have foibles and need some releases for his energy, after all, wink wink nudge nudge.

The tradition of the syau tai tai (literally "little wife" - e.g. "mistress") is still very real in moneyed circles in China. But the understanding is that daddy's supposed to still be a good provider to the family and go home to them, and that for all things public, his actual wife and children are his family, regardless how long he's been with the syau tai tai (or that he's bought her a condo and/or pays her more than he pays his lawyer).

But the sexuality issue has nothing to do with this, really. The public face is the porn filtering. The less public face is their ongoing battle to stem the free flow of information. It's a losing battle, but they will continue because it's in their nature to try to protect what they have - their positions.

The manipulation of the CCTV report is interesting. Not just that they're manipulating the story but that there are sufficient bloggers out there who caught them at it and are spreading the story. This is why I say it's a losing battle. As they've learned in Thailand - you can't shut it down completely. News and opinion will get out. They're trying to hold back history. Unless they get out there and take away computers by gunpoint and launch into a massive repressive campaign, they cannot do it. They may keep it up for a while, but it's a holding action.

[Matt the Poet]

Puritanism is a Western thing. From what little I know, I don’t think the Chinese quite operate on that cultural axis. It’s more a matter of them falling much further along the authoritariansm spectrum – all kinds of behaviour, including sexuality, must be tightly controlled for the good of social cohesion.

It’s interesting to see Chinese internet commentary on blogs and boards – I know a great deal of it is generated by official sources (check out all the ‘independent’ mentions of Kent State when people started talking about Tiananmen Square a bit ago), but it does suggest a view that if you give people even the slightest bit of license anywhere the whole of society will fall to pieces.

[MRC_Hans]

"Old-fashioned"? I guess that's one way to put it, although that would imply that the more technologically advanced they become, the less "old-fashioned" they would be.
Ehr, in principle, a society could be hard-core Victorian, plus very technologically advanced (just look at certain parts of the USA).

Puritanism is a Western thing. From what little I know, I don’t think the Chinese quite operate on that cultural axis.

I beg to differ. Puritanism is a human thing. I assume it originally stems partly from the need to make sure (for males) that the kids you feed are the ones you sired, plus the general tendency in more complex societies to try to control human urges.

However, puritanism has been implemented in different ways in different cultures. Western cultures use religion, Eastern cultures use ethics. And in all cultures, those in wealth and/or power have a more comfortable version.

Hans

[DC]

why bothering about censoring porn on the Internet?
just cut the backbone lines.... as if there is anything left once you cencor out the porn.... :D

[MRC_Hans]

why bothering about censoring porn on the Internet?
just cut the backbone lines.... as if there is anything left once you cencor out the porn.... :DNot an available option. You cannot run a modern industrial nation without internet access.

Hans

[Eddie Dane]

An acquaintance of mine is working in Shanghai, the stories I hear are far from puritanical. :)

Aside from that: There's this Dutch philosopher -C.W. Rietdijk- who has the theory that authoritarian regimes and religions repress sexuality because it channels peoples energy towards love of abstract structures such as the church or the state.

Free sexual morals are thus seen as sign of decline because they reduce loyalty to the state. According to him, the powers that be instinctively realise that and ban free sexual expression.

[Foolmewunz]

An acquaintance of mine is working in Shanghai, the stories I hear are far from puritanical. :)

Aside from that: There's this Dutch philosopher -C.W. Rietdijk- who has the theory that authoritarian regimes and religions repress sexuality because it channels peoples energy towards love of abstract structures such as the church or the state.

Free sexual morals are thus seen as sign of decline because they reduce loyalty to the state. According to him, the powers that be instinctively realise that and ban free sexual expression.

I guess that explains Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, and Viet Nam, then.
Taiwan under Chiang Kai Shek? One of the most ribald countries.

Maybe he needs to rethink that theory?

ETA: As to your friend in Shanghai? Yes, I mentioned that it's the ruling classes who are of the old school. The younger generation is about as free, sexually, as young people in the west.

[Eddie Dane]

I guess that explains Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, and Viet Nam, then.
Taiwan under Chiang Kai Shek? One of the most ribald countries.

Maybe he needs to rethink that theory?

ETA: As to your friend in Shanghai? Yes, I mentioned that it's the ruling classes who are of the old school. The younger generation is about as free, sexually, as young people in the west.

For the record: I think it's a cute theory.
But I never tried to falsify it, and suspected that it wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. I guess you just blew it out of the water.

Damn! Now my wife will never let me go to Thailand.

[Matt the Poet]

I beg to differ. Puritanism is a human thing. I assume it originally stems partly from the need to make sure (for males) that the kids you feed are the ones you sired

That sounds like a good old sociobiological ‘just-so story’ to me. I could equally say that the female desire to get their offspring fed by whatever males – or indeed females – are handy is a driver for extreme promiscuity.

plus the general tendency in more complex societies to try to control human urges.

And that’s just vague. The words ‘complex’, ‘general tendency’ and ‘human urges’ in that sentence are all to a greater or lesser extent cultural constructs.

However, puritanism has been implemented in different ways in different cultures.

The desire to control sexual behaviour has existed in some way in many human societies, but ‘Puritanism’ doesn’t just mean that – its a word for a particular kind of European religious outlook, involving the inherent belief that the body generally is corrupt and evil. Using the word in a discussion about Asian attitudes to sex is unhelpful in that it ‘smuggles in’ all sorts of assumptions about shame and repression which don’t necessarily apply.

[Foolmewunz]

Matt, I don't think Puppycow really thinks that the Chinese are really 16th Century English Protestant Conservative Puritans (with the upper case P). It's also a euphemism for prudish or "up tight, sexually".

[DC]

Not an available option. You cannot run a modern industrial nation without internet access.

Hans

and this has to do with China what exactly? :D

[Adam Ferguson]

"Aside from that: There's this Dutch philosopher -C.W. Rietdijk- who has the theory that authoritarian regimes and religions repress sexuality because it channels peoples energy towards love of abstract structures such as the church or the state. "

Don't know that much about it, but I seem to remember from reading biographies like Wild Swans and Red Azalia a while back that during revolutionary times romantic love and the attendant sexuality that goes with it were considered bourguoise because one was meant to love the party and the revolution more than mere people, not to say that what went on in private was as puritanical; think of the thriving sex industry in victorian england. I seem to remember a documentary about how Mao would like to take his pick of the young Red Guard members too.

But in public in those days I got the impression that Reitdijk's theory seemed quite apt.

No idea about the modern culture though.

[Wolfman]

Just to reaffirm and expand on what FMW has been saying; when Chinese Communism started, one of the principles was that Communism (as interpreted by the leaders of that time) essentially defined all aspects of life. It wasn't just a political system, it also defined desirable morals and ethics.

Even today, every two years or so, China will go through a "moral purity" campaign of some kind. Defining what kind of clothing is acceptable in public, or how much physical affection can be shown, or all sorts of other things.

The average young Chinese person (ie. under 30 yrs. old) tends not to ascribe to such values any more, but the older generation certainly does.

However, in regard to the internet thing, it isn't really as much a moral issue as it is a control issue. Censoring the internet for porn is not going to get the gov't a lot of opposition from overseas. Some people might make noises, but its not going to be a major human rights issue. Thus, gov't attempts at internet control and censorship always tend to revolve around issues of 'cracking down on pornography'.

This recent thing with the Chinese gov't attempting to have special software pre-installed on all Chinese computers in order to control what they can access online is a good example. It was promoted primarily as a way of preventing porn; but left open huge holes that could be exploited to prevent access to any kind of content that the gov't deemed undesirable. The gov't's plan was to require that this software be pre-installed on all computers sold in China.

But there's another side to the story, one that wasn't mentioned so much in the world media. This decision by the gov't caused a huge uproar in China, with tens of millions of people protesting online. University campuses were in an uproar. The people said, quite resoundingly, that they would not accept this.

And the gov't did back down. They changed their policy, and now say that all computers must be sold with a CD that has the software in question, but it is up to the individual user whether or not they want to install it (the vast majority will not).

[Eddie Dane]

and this has to do with China what exactly? :D

I know you're kidding, but this seems a tad behind the times.

[DC]

I know you're kidding, but this seems a tad behind the times.

im joking when we talk about Bejing or Shanghai, but not so much when we talk about Zhaoxing.

[MRC_Hans]

and this has to do with China what exactly? :D(on China being a modern industrial nation)

When were you last in China? Perhaps you are stil nursing the old images of thousands of bikes and parading kindergarten kids with wooden rifles and Mao unifirms? Perhaps the picture below of Beijing by night will change your perspective (It's a few years old, actually, and the murky area to the right is now filed with brand new high-rise buildings).

Hans

[Foolmewunz]

im joking when we talk about Bejing or Shanghai, but not so much when we talk about Zhaoxing.

You realize that Zhaoxing is intentionally that way, right?

Is Vissoie indicative of all of Switzerland?

[Matt the Poet]

Matt, I don't think Puppycow really thinks that the Chinese are really 16th Century English Protestant Conservative Puritans (with the upper case P). It's also a euphemism for prudish or "up tight, sexually".

And I certainly didn’t mean to imply this, only that the word itself throws echoes of that background into the debate. You’ve shown this yourself by claiming the idiom ‘uptight’ as part of the ‘general’ meaning of the word – that in itself still contains the image of ‘constricting’ sexual behaviour that might otherwise ‘escape’ - which is embedded in a highly culturally specific view of the relationship between the self and the body.

My point being that neutral terms are best for a critical, sceptical approach to this sort of discussion – the Chinese government are, for some reason, preventing the portion of their population that has access to the internet from using it to view sexual images. That’s all we know to start with, to say anything else you need data on what Chinese people themselves are saying and doing about it, preferably in Chinese.

[MRC_Hans]

*snip*
The people said, quite resoundingly, that they would not accept this.

And the gov't did back down. They changed their policy, and now say that all computers must be sold with a CD that has the software in question, but it is up to the individual user whether or not they want to install it (the vast majority will not).
The interesting thing is that the Chinese government as gone down a one-way road with industrialization. By now the Chinese middle-class, that is people with some education, a reasonable income (by Chinese standards), access or the potential to access the internet, an at least rudimentary command of foreign language (usually English) is fast approaching 500 million. As long as the government provides future opportunities for these people, the vast majority are busy, and content with, building their own future and that of their single child. But they know what is going on, and if the powers that be should attempt to seriously pull the rug under them, mayhem will ensue.

The Chinese culture is very patriarchal, and the government is seen as the pater of country. As long as it is perceived to conduct good husbandry, most of the people will remain loyal, even if that husbandry involves some curbing of human rights, but......

Hans

[DC]

(on China being a modern industrial nation)

When were you last in China? Perhaps you are stil nursing the old images of thousands of bikes and parading kindergarten kids with wooden rifles and Mao unifirms? Perhaps the picture below of Beijing by night will change your perspective (It's a few years old, actually, and the murky area to the right is now filed with brand new high-rise buildings).

Hans

the last time i was in China was in 2001.
as i said, the big citys and tourist areas are modern. But leave the citys and its over with modernism. Even if you leave the tourist parts of Bejing you see not much modernism.

[DC]

You realize that Zhaoxing is intentionally that way, right?

Is Vissoie indicative of all of Switzerland?

many villages outside the huge metropoles are not modern at all.

[DC]

(on China being a modern industrial nation)

When were you last in China? Perhaps you are stil nursing the old images of thousands of bikes and parading kindergarten kids with wooden rifles and Mao unifirms? Perhaps the picture below of Beijing by night will change your perspective (It's a few years old, actually, and the murky area to the right is now filed with brand new high-rise buildings).

Hans

btw a picture from Shanghai by night, the new skyscrapers would be far more impressive.

btw i have to add that i liked the in my oppinion unmodern parts of China far more than the modern tourist centers.

[Wolfman]

I live in Beijing (or did until recently, and plan to return as soon as I can), which is an undeniably modern city.

I also spend time living in Lugu Lake, high in the Himalayas, working in villages that haven't even got electricity or running water, who live like they did a hundred years ago. Undeniably not modern.

Is China modern? Yes.
Is China backward/undeveloped? Yes.
Is China a first world country? Yes.
Is China a third world country? Yes.

That's the thing about China...it depends where you look, and what you use to draw your conclusions. In my opinion, anyone who uses any of the terms above to describe China as a whole only demonstrates how poorly they understand China.

[DC]

I live in Beijing (or did until recently, and plan to return as soon as I can), which is an undeniably modern city.

I also spend time living in Lugu Lake, high in the Himalayas, working in villages that haven't even got electricity or running water, who live like they did a hundred years ago. Undeniably not modern.

Is China modern? Yes.
Is China backward/undeveloped? Yes.
Is China a first world country? Yes.
Is China a third world country? Yes.

That's the thing about China...it depends where you look, and what you use to draw your conclusions. In my opinion, anyone who uses any of the terms above to describe China as a whole only demonstrates how poorly they understand China.

I like how the Chinese combine modern with traditional. especially in architecture.

I have seen the Bejing (http://chinavel.com/images/BJ2007.jpg) the tourist guide showed me
but i also saw the Bejing (http://lonelystreets.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/beijing.jpg) i doscovered on my own.

[MRC_Hans]

I like how the Chinese combine modern with traditional. especially in architecture.

I have seen the Bejing (http://chinavel.com/images/BJ2007.jpg) the tourist guide showed me


but i also saw the Bejing (http://lonelystreets.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/beijing.jpg) i doscovered on my own.Taken from the bell tower, right?

The Hutongs are also tourist stuff, otherwise they would have levelled them long ago.

However, you seem to grasp the main point: It makes absolutely no sense to say: "China is.. "-

China is larger and more diverse than Europe.

Hans

[Nosi]

The Chinese use puns to slide pass censorship. An example of this is the "Song of the Grass-Mud Horse". Examples of it are on YouTube. Google will dig up it's meaning.

I'd provide a link, but the meaning is just filthy and would violate rule 10 six ways from Sunday and would likely get me banned. It is so not safe for work...so I'll let you go Googling when you are in the free and clear.:boxedin:

[Vic Vega]

(on China being a modern industrial nation)

When were you last in China? Perhaps you are stil nursing the old images of thousands of bikes and parading kindergarten kids with wooden rifles and Mao unifirms? Perhaps the picture below of Beijing by night will change your perspective (It's a few years old, actually, and the murky area to the right is now filed with brand new high-rise buildings).

Hans


Or perhaps he was just joking.

[gtc]

Not all of Beijing seems to be as modern as is claimed.

Here is an article from Vice Magazine (http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2009/11/17/chairman-mao%E2%80%99s-underground-city/), some swearing, about an underground city under Beijing. Obviously it is abandoned and dilapidated but some of the pictures of the above ground Beijing and the inhabited parts of the underground area don't look too modern.

[Verde]

The Chinese culture is very patriarchal, and the government is seen as the pater of country. As long as it is perceived to conduct good husbandry, most of the people will remain loyal, even if that husbandry involves some curbing of human rights, but......



True, but I don't think that is unique to China.

All the places I have lived in could fit that description, including my current home, the US.

V.

[Wolfman]

Not all of Beijing seems to be as modern as is claimed.

Here is an article from Vice Magazine (http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2009/11/17/chairman-mao%E2%80%99s-underground-city/), some swearing, about an underground city under Beijing. Obviously it is abandoned and dilapidated but some of the pictures of the above ground Beijing and the inhabited parts of the underground area don't look too modern.Ummmm...

...first of all, I don't think that anyone is claiming that 100% of all buildings and residences in Beijing are 'modern' or developed. Hell, I could go to any city in the world, regardless of how 'modern' or developed it was, and find similar examples. Big cities attract people. Inevitably, some of those people fall through the cracks. Slums develop. And those who can't even afford to live in the slums will appropriate whatever living space they can.

There are stories in cities like New York about homeless people living in caves in parks, or in sewer systems.

In regards to the above-ground area, anyone with even a fleeting knowledge of Beijing knows there's nothing 'hidden' or 'secret' about this. The hutongs (where the pictures are taken) not only are a popular part of any tour to China, but are also the center of a great deal of controversy. A lot of the buildings in those hutongs -- as dilapidated and outdated as they may be -- are hundreds of years old (some of them pre-date the founding of the United States). There is a distinctive style of building, the "si he yuan", or four-sided courtyard, that is considered a part of Beijing's cultural heritage.

In its quest for modernization, and to create more living space (typically, 5-20 people will live in a si he yuan...whereas an apartment building on the same space could house hundreds of people), the Beijing gov't has been systematically bulldozing these areas, and rebuilding them. Which inspires screams about the destruction of historic communities with deep cultural heritage and significance.

Thus, they're kinda' screwed whatever they do. If they leave them there -- then someone posts pictures and says, "See? They're really not all that advanced, look at what they're hiding from you!" And if they act to rebuild them, then someone posts pictures and says, "See? That greedy government doesn't care about its own cultural heritage, they just destroy everything in the name of progress."

BTW -- That 'underground city' is far from 'unknown', as the author claims. Sounds to me like he's just fallen for a nice-sounding bit of local folklore. The newspapers in fact have regular stories about migrant workers and beggars being 'ousted' from such areas, as part of the "rebuilding and purification" campaigns that are carried out regularly.

[Nosi]

Whoops...duplicate

[Darth Rotor]

Yes, the old guard - e.g. the ones running the country and thus of the older generation - are rather puritanical. But their approach is sort of medieval; husband = provider and he's just bound to be human and have foibles and need some releases for his energy, after all, wink wink nudge nudge.

The tradition of the syau tai tai (literally "little wife" - e.g. "mistress") is still very real in moneyed circles in China. But the understanding is that daddy's supposed to still be a good provider to the family and go home to them, and that for all things public, his actual wife and children are his family, regardless how long he's been with the syau tai tai (or that he's bought her a condo and/or pays her more than he pays his lawyer).

In short, the Chinese are very French .:) How very urbane. :cool:

But the sexuality issue has nothing to do with this, really. The public face is the porn filtering. The less public face is their ongoing battle to stem the free flow of information. It's a losing battle, but they will continue because it's in their nature to try to protect what they have - their positions.

The manipulation of the CCTV report is interesting. Not just that they're manipulating the story but that there are sufficient bloggers out there who caught them at it and are spreading the story. This is why I say it's a losing battle. As they've learned in Thailand - you can't shut it down completely. News and opinion will get out. They're trying to hold back history. Unless they get out there and take away computers by gunpoint and launch into a massive repressive campaign, they cannot do it. They may keep it up for a while, but it's a holding action.