Huang Hung: How Has China Used Collectivism To Navigate The Pandemic?

NPR ^ | December 18, 2020 | NPR/TED STAFF

[P.O.E.]

For millennia, China has taught its citizens to embrace individual sacrifice for the greater good. Writer Huang Hung explains how this mindset allows the country to preserve safety during a crisis.

(Video at link)

[P.O.E.]

Your tax dollars spent trying to convince you that China's "greater good" mindset is good for you.

The host plays a "devil's advocate" for a while, contrasting America's individualist mindset.

Money quotes towards the end (minute 10:00 or so) (after being asked how Americans can build back better from the pandemic)

(paraphrasing)

"One of the silver linings to the pandemic is that human race realize.... it is a time to be together than to try to pull the world apart and crawl back to our nationalistic shells"

This part I heard on the radio but was cut from the online video (contrasting collectivist vs. individualist mindsets)

(From transcript posted here:

https://www.wbur.org/npr/947676688/huang-hung-how-has-china-used-collectivism-to-navigate-the-pandemic

ZOMORODI: Yeah, but do you think there could be a middle ground to be found between that collectivist sentiment that you described but without the extreme measures to enforce it?

HUNG: I think there has to be a middle ground. And I think this is why U.S.-China relationship is so important that it's not a breakdown because that middle ground is somewhere between the Western world and the Chinese world. We're all together in the same problem. So it's about the human race either moving on to a higher platform where we recognize our collective good as a human race, or we actually die fighting whose system is better. So from that point of view, I do think that the West has a lesson to learn in terms of collective thinking.

From

[Viking2002]

From NPR to your ear.........

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Huang Hung?

Any relation to Fang Fang?

Or Bang Bang, as Rush calls her.

[lapsus calami]

 

 

I'm of the opinion that this coronavirus debacle is being used to introduce the American public to ChiCom-style collectivism. It's just a matter of expanding the collectivist groupthink beyond just the coronavirus to change our society up.

 

 

[BenLurkin]

There is and will be no need to “build back better”.

All that’re needed are liberty and patriotism.

[Uncle Miltie]

Four legs GOOOOOOOOOOD!

[DoodleBob]

China's official stats are that only 3k people died of the virus and their economy is on a fast rebound.

Ok, stop laughing.

I ran through an extensive analysis of what is the likely PRC death toll. I estimate it at 6MM conservatively, which would make China's fatalities per capita to be 2x the current global leader, Belgium.

Assesing China's economic rebound is a little harder. While our imports from China remain way down, which would cut the legs out of the "China is rebounding" narrative, China isn't too dependent upon imports or exports. If it IS truly rebounding, it's because the govt that sacrificed citizens in 1Q are possibly forcing them to "buy, buy, buy" now.

[P.O.E.]

That’s what struck me about the interview.

Slowly trying to defuse opposition, and engender an embrace of the CCP way.

[P.O.E.]

I’m guessing China has a huge war chest to spend on fire-sale prices of US assets.

While we spend ourselves deeper into the hole.

[farming pharmer]

For millennia, China has taught its citizens to embrace individual sacrifice for the greater good.

Western values of individual freedom are superior. Compare the two cultures.

NPR is such a barrel of communist boot licking faggots...

[Albion Wilde]

How adorable.

[17th Miss Regt]

Salami tactics.

[frank ballenger]

No, but now they can do a remake of Blazing Saddles:

“Hey, I thought they said you was Hung.”
“They were right.”

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I rewatched Blazin Saddles a couple of months ago.

Can you imagine it being played in prime time now?

Just think of all the delicious triggering it would cause!

[rlmorel]

Communist China is Rat Bastard Evil, and it infuriates me that my tax dollars, even a single tax cent goes to fund NPR.

Infuriates me.

“Greater Good” my ass. To them, if taking a bullet in the back of the head serves the “greater good”, then you get a bullet in the back of the head.

Natural Rights that come from GOD will be damned to them.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Fang Fang’s brother is named Well Hung. Perhaps a cousin of Huang Hung.

Red Chinese “collectivism” has tortured and murdered over 60 million of its own people plus those of Korea, the UN Allies, Vietnamese, some Laotians, Cambodians, possibly Thais and definitely Burmese, Indians and Tibetans (by the million).

Somebody at NPR didn’t receive a proper Red Chinese history lesson, if at all. (They should try reading the works of Prof. Robert Walker, Un. of So. Carolina” including his short but powerful study for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Sen. Judiciary Com, 1972, “The Human Cost of Communism in China”. Should be online.

NPR- National Peking Radio (National Peiping Radio).

[Zhang Fei]

Re collectivism, this is a clear case of who you’re gonna believe - him or your lyin’ eyes. 2200 years ago, over a century before Spartacus, a jumped-up peasant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Gaozu_of_Han joined an uprising against the First Emperor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang, whose idea of collectivism was that everyone should join together to help him unify the known world under his rule.

Were the rebels one big, happy family? No. They slaughtered each other even while fighting the ancien regime and continued this endeavor after the regime was toppled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu%E2%80%93Han_Contention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Xin#Service_during_the_Western_Han_dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Yue#Death

Was the First Emperor’s ancien regime one big, happy family? No. There were multiple assassination attempts against him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Third_attempted_assassination He died of poisoning, allegedly while trying out a potion that promised him eternal life. Or was he deliberately poisoned? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Elixir_of_life And after the First Emperor’s death, his closest advisor, the head eunuch, killed *two* of his sons - the putative heir apparent *and* a (puppet) child emperor that this eunuch appointed as a successor to the imperial line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Gao#Coup_following_Qin_Shi_Huang‘s_death Did the regime’s remnants “unify” under this eunuch? No - they fought a known-down-drag-out war against each other even while fighting the rebels who were out for their heads.

China has always been a seething mass of individual ambition. Elite struggles for power have been part and parcel of historical chronicles outside of China. What’s unique about China, IMHO, is that the ambition goes all the way down to the lowliest peasant. As pointed out earlier, 2200 years ago, a jumped-up peasant joined a mass revolt, vaulted to the top by (1) playing a secondary role in defeating the ancien regime and (2) wiping out the players who played the primary role, then established a regime that lasted 400 years (with an interruption caused by an ambitious courtier who revolted and set himself up as emperor), thanks to his precaution of either forcibly retiring or killing the military commanders (each of whom had their own agendas, much like term-limited Roman consuls) who had brought him to power.

At the slightest opportunity, charismatic men possessed of organizational skills have repeatedly rallied large numbers to their banners and either established new regimes, or come within striking distance, doing great damage, and paving the way for the next challenger to finish the job. That is why Chinese rulers are never at ease - the principal lesson of Chinese history is that the smallest spark could set off a nationwide conflagration.

It is raw individual ambition, not collectivism, that sets the Chinese experience apart, no matter how much regime propaganda over thousands of years keeps trying to convince the population that they are mere cogs in a machine. Overwhelming regime power convinces the hoi polloi that they should observe the forms of obedience - by not overtly criticizing the regime or opposing it. But in the background, they are bribing officials for relief against tyrannical impositions, evading tax payments and the draft and generally skirting the law to the extent prudent. And when their moment comes - they join general risings and attempt to elevate themselves to the top ahead of everyone else around them.

[dfwgator]

Everybody Huang Hung Tonight!

[HereInTheHeartland]

Hitler pushed the same thing .
Collectivism is evil.

[Zhang Fei]

[Hitler pushed the same thing .
Collectivism is evil.]

---

Germany is the only place collectivism has been paid more than lip service. 10% of the German population died during WWII, vs 4% in Japan*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties The Russians fought because the alternative was root and branch extermination. The Germans fought for Hitler. The Japanese were the usual mess of independent warlords in all but name fighting for personal glory, using a puppet Emperor’s name as a shield and rubber stamp, much as the shoguns before them had, for close to 800 years.

* Japanese soldiers fought because they were told they would be tortured and killed if captured alive. Ditto for Japanese civilians who committed suicide on Okinawa. Once it became clear that they would be unharmed, mass surrenders followed. Whereas the Germans fought until Berlin lay in Soviet hands, costing Germany 100,000 dead in 2 weeks of hard fighting, rivaling the worst weeks in in WWI battles. Okinawa involved a similar death count, but that took place over 3 months, not 2 weeks.