People cognizant in the 1960's, 70's, 80's, or 90's, what was the perception of China?
People cognizant in the 1960's, 70's, 80's, or 90's, what was the perception of China?
Backwater? Growing power?
62 comments
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They made cheap low quality goods and had a lot of rural poor people. Through the 80s and 90s their reputation for making knockoff versions of things improved.
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Early aughts in international relations class they were still teaching students about China being a “sleeping giant” just beginning to come into its own economically speaking. At the time it was emphasized that they had a huge army but it was not well trained in combat. Tianamen and the transition of HK were in the very recent past so it seemed China was more interested in managing internal divisions than challenges on the international front.
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Same thing happened with Japan.
This is before my time but I've known lots of older people who born in the 50s and grew up in the 60s and 70s.
Products made in Japan were once considered cheap things. I ride motorcycles so I talk to a lot of people about the history, especially with Honda and Yamaha. North American motorcycles were first British, German and American. When the Japanese started in the 50s and 60s, everyone laughed at them ... a common racist thing to call them back then was 'rice cookers' ... but within a decade, they took over and by the 80s they were dominating.
The same thing is happening in the EV market. Right now everything is even and the market is still new. But in a decade or two or less, the Chinese will dominate everything.
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In the late '80s, I remember people being pissed at Japan as its economy looked to overtake that of the US. They felt somehow betrayed because the US, and its monetary policy, had helped Japan get to where it was. With the effects of the Plaza Accord and following things, Japan's bubble would pop. In something young me could never imagine, I've been living in Japan a decade now.
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But Japan won by heavily improving the quality and reliability of their products, and that's not what China is doing.
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That's not true at all, China makes both high quality and incredibly cheep at the same time. Look at brands like Anker, Ecoflow, Hisense, Xiaomi, Dji, Lenovo, Chery, BYD, etc
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Can you support that argument?
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A market China has grown it's share in quite a lot is EVs. Their main competitor is the US-based Tesla, which is known to have huge reliability issues. I'd say don't throw stones from glass houses?
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Sure, China is still "the production zone of the world", but China is making Afrika "the productiontion zone of China"
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Nah man.
Chinese automotive tools are improving massively (Harbor Freight ICON is amazing for the price) and the electronic diagnostic stuff is streets ahead of any place else for the cost.
Chinese watches are really coming up. Sugess is beating the hell out of Japanese watches (using a Seiko movement) and the in-country movements are nearing parity.
RISC-V: 'nuff said.
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I mean, they are, but not in the way you'd think.
They don't care much about quality, but they have the data (the critical part) to improve quality anyway, with a fraction of the zealous dedication Japan applied.
A database that shows 1 part always fails for a specific reason is hard to argue against, just change that part.
Technology makes innovation easier.
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Not gonna lie though. The honda cub looked all kinds of fun as a buzz around bike. Nothing to prove, just 'here is a little city road burner.
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Postwar Japan motorcycles were literally old Harley Davidson toolings. They weren’t that good to begin with.
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As a sweatshop, where civilized at all.
And that mostly went for Asia as a whole in the average American portrayal.
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In the 80’s it was a poor backwater that was starting to take American jobs making cheap plastic crap.
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A place with lots of suspicious bath-drownings if a baby had the misfortune of being born a girl during the one child policy.
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Unfortunately, the harsh truth was more often a doctor who was tasked with second pregnancies whose job details made all the other hospital staff realise he was a monster.
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Starving Chinese kids were why I had to gag down my peas.
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For me it was Africans but to each their own I guess.
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Indians. It's why I still finish my beer to this day. " There's sober kids in India"
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I remember the late 90's saw a trend of making bad guys in movies Chinese instead of Russian like they typically were previously. It probably would have continued well into today, but 9/11 made it so the bad guys were now middle eastern.
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I don't watch live action shows much, but in animated shows the antagonists seem to usually be cishet white men, unless they're destined to join the protagonists, in which case they can be diverse.
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90's teenager: Corrupt government that was a maker of cheap goods and claimed to be first in everything ever and had the most bestest smartest refined cultureal history compared to us heathen backwater westerners.
THere's reasons I struggle with looking past my own mindset whenever anything china related in the sciences pop up, as my first thought is 'is there independant verfication there to prevent it from just being government propaganda bullshit?'
....kinda like i'm having to start doing with any 'official' anything here stateside now.
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60's and 70's had the term junky japanese as their products tended to be crappy. china was not even on the radar outside of ping pong diplomacy from nixon.
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That's who I saw things growing up in the 70s-80s. China was full of starving farmers and not much else. And yeah, Japanese products went from having a well-deserved bad rap to Americans going, "Holy shit! They're out competing us! Make it stop!" (In cars and electronics anyway.)
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Growing up in the 70s and 80s: "Oh, that's where all the toys come from!"
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70s and 80s were before my time so that could be why i am mistaken, but i kind of thought it would have been Japan?
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I'm OP's age and don't remember having any toys from Japan. Dad fought in the Pacific Theater, didn't have a positive outlook on Japanese people or products. Funny thing though, we would hunt flea markets, antique shops and garage sales for "Made In Occupied Japan" stamps. Wonder if that's still collectible?
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Japan too, but mostly it was the stamps "Made in China" or "Made in Taiwan".
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In the 90s it was seen as a backwater with growing power. There was a sense that China's economic growth would push it towards democracy. Tiananmen Square seemed like proof of that.
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I remember a 90s Newsweek issue centered around China becoming the tiger in the next century. Believed that since then, and history seems to be bearing that opinion out. I just didn't see America crashing so hard, only China slowly overtaking us.
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With the rise of reformists like Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, it all looked like China will turn around the corner and become a democracy. Even after Tiananmen, which was a direct consequence of Yaobang's death, it looked like the old guard was loosing ground and we would see a free China in the XXI century.
It is strange to consider that most of what is now working in China, was thanks to people like Zhao Ziyang, whom are forgotten and forbidden.
Now I'm worried if it will be the end of democracy as we know it instead.
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Nixon going to China was huge.
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Growing up in the '80s and '90s in rural USA, here's what I remember:
- poverty and starvation are big problems (also how moms got kids to eat all their food)
- it was mostly extremely rural and undeveloped
- they were communist and not to be trusted
- they are not welcoming of outsiders at all
I have a couple of Chinese friends today and would love to visit at some point, but I'm not a huge fan of what's been happening in governance in the last decade and change so will probably hold off on that.
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I worked there a while.
Feel free to visit, but also feel ready to be disappointed.
They're broken in a very fundamental way, a sad way. There are good people there, but also a lot of sociopaths.
Shanghai is a wonder of the world though, I recommend everyone visit, truly beautiful.
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80s into 90s it was starting to become obvious that economic might would shift from the West to China. Mostly because they sold us all of their shit plastics at first, then some good stuff along with even more shit plastics.
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No, 80s were hardcore taiwan and south korea for crappy toys, maybe Japan early on.
Even the early 90s were Taiwan and SK, then China came in and swallowed everything whole.
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In the 90s, my dad and a lot of other guys in my area lost their machining jobs because the work was being done in China. My perception of China (only what I learned from people around me talking about it) was that it was a dirty place where everyone lived in squalor and worked in sweat shops for pennies a day.
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I want to say it was much less on people's minds in the U.S., but I don't 100% trust my memory.
62 comments