First of all, I want to say that it’s wonderful to see all of you here, and your critical support of the nation I proudly call home. But more and more recently, especially reading through Chinese internet too, there has been a sense of overconfidence and overglorification of China. It is honestly a little worrying at times for me, because as much as I love my homeland and is proud of what we are doing, I know full and well that we are still a long way to go. I see this sentiment of China being the glorious land far away as a bastion and utopia against Western Imperialism and while there’s a lot of truth behind that sentiment, and I definitely understand why one not living in China would choose to believe this (I live in the US now and I understand your pain, fellow US comrades). I just want to remind everyone to exercise dialectal materialism on this subject and try to look at China in a less idealised way. We cannot grow to be better without recognising our mistakes. Anyways that is my little message to you all. Have a nice day!
Aye, over the top glorification has been a problem for a while domestically with phrases such as 厉害了我的国 quite common on social media. There is still a long way to go and one can’t afford to be overconfident with powerful enemies still trying to destroy them.
What does that phrase mean? Googling it suggests a movie of some sort
It roughly translations to “so amazing, my nation” which (prior to the 2018 documentary naming) had been a common phrase online used to celebrate the many achievements of the nation (e.g. J-20, 055 destroyer and aircraft carriers being built).
That in itself isn’t a bad thing, but many ended up posting overly confident content as if they were at the stage where they wouldn’t have to worry about anything coming from the west or the US.
Trump being elected and the further rabid wave of Sinophobia that swept through ever since has to a degree alerted and woke many up from this overconfidence.
Thank you for the explanation. In the same vein, do you think it could be a sign of nationalist tendencies?
It could be likely in some of the more extreme cases when hearing phrases such as “only a nation/peoples such as ours could accomplish this feat”.
Fortunately in terms of ethnic nationalism, the PRC is not a ‘Han nationalist ethnostate’ that liberals would bullshit about to paint them in an extremely negatively light. The PRC’s constitution states that “to maintain unity amongst the people, nationalism, especially Han nationalism and local nationalism must be opposed”.