How American Netizens View China

With the growth of China’s national power, China has become the most powerful country besides the United States. In the new era, how to handle Sino-US relations and how to conduct Sino-US major-country diplomacy will be the core issues of the two countries in the future.
On the one hand, the interconnection between China and the United States has huge economic benefits. But on the other hand, the two countries have a gap in politics. China is worried that the United States will curb its own rise, while the United States is worried that China will challenge its hegemony.
Under the apparent conflict of interest, China and the United States still have deep-seated cultural conflicts. As the master of Western civilization, the United States is very different from China in all aspects. How the two countries will understand each other in the future will be one Big problem.
Putting aside the game between governments, how do people in China and the United States view each other? What Chinese people think of the United States,.
So, how do American netizens view China? Today, I deliberately took some comments from netizens from CNN (CNN, mainstream media) to see how they evaluate China?

1. Anti-China faction: think that China is a threat to the world


This comment represents the anti-China faction in the United States. These people think that China is the most violent and shameless country in the world, and that all of China’s actions are selfish acts that only consider their own national interests. He believes that China’s expansion will suffocate the lives of the South China Sea. If the United States does not ban it, then Japan, India, and Australia will all be shrouded in terror.
At the same time, he expressed great dissatisfaction with US President Trump. He believes that Trump’s isolationism is completely wrong, and that the retreat of the United States will only allow dictators around the world to act recklessly and cause the people of the world to suffer. He believes that the United States has an obligation to rebuild a powerful military to maintain its leadership and world peace.
This comment can be said to be the most dogmatic, extreme, and ideological faction in the United States. These people refuse to see the facts clearly and refuse to recognize any achievements made by China. They even don’t know anything about the current situation in the United States and are extremely divorced from reality.
For example, in this commentary, he kept calling on the United States to rebuild its military to stop China, and criticized Trump for failing in doing things, but in fact, it was Trump who increased the U.S. military budget for the next year. The highest level reached a staggering 686.1 billion US dollars. Trump does not want to give up the leadership of the United States, but does not want the United States to waste its national power and provide free lunch for allies. If the United States runs out of its own national power, will it be able to maintain its leadership?

2. Ideological faction: disagree with China, but distinguish the government from the people


This faction accounts for the majority of the comments, and is a very typical American thinking. They disagree with China’s political system and believe that China is currently an out-and-out dictatorship. But what is stronger than the previous category is that they deliberately distinguish the government from the people. They generally believe that the people are innocent and oppressed, and the mission of the United States is to save these people who are suffering in the “dictatorship” countries. .
For example, this comment specifically emphasizes that the leaders of dictatorships such as North Korea and Russia will use the assets of their country’s people to compete with the West by unscrupulous means, and most of the results obtained are attributed to their personal pockets. This netizen believes that because there is no election, these dictators will unscrupulously suppress dissidents and threaten the world because of their ambitions.
He believes that the United States and the European Union must be ahead of these dictatorships. They should strive to develop and make themselves strong enough. Only in this way can they protect the freedom of the world.
Although such netizens have a certain deviation in their perception of facts, in general, their intentions are kind, and their conflicts with us are more conflicts of values ​​and ideologies, not irreconcilable contradictions.

3. Seeking truth from facts: Recognizing China’s achievements and the US’s shortcomings


This comment is the most friendly to China. He believes that it is a remarkable achievement for China to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, while the democratic system of the West has kept the West stagnant. This representative of some people in the West has begun to recognize China’s achievements and began to reflect on their own problems. With the increasing number of economic and social problems in the West in recent years, more and more Westerners have begun to reflect on the status quo of their countries and questioned the increasingly inferior democratic system.
There were many such people in China in the past few years, but they have almost disappeared in the past two years.
The above three comments are typical ones that I carefully selected. If you are interested, you can go to CNN, BBC and other Western mainstream media to do fieldwork. I believe you will draw your own conclusions.
As far as I feel most intuitively, the comments of American netizens, regardless of their views, are indeed much more moderate than Chinese netizens. I read more than 800 comments on CNN, including anti-China, but none of them can be vicious to the level of Chinese online language. The vicious language and barbaric behavior of the Chinese Internet may only be surpassed by South Korea.
On the other hand, there are many differences in the ideology dominated by online reviews between the two countries. According to CNN’s comments, the ideology of American netizens is still dominated by liberalism. The most frequent word is “We want to save the oppressed people.” The United States wants to protect the democratic world, we cannot be nationalism, isolationism, etc.” Regardless of whether the perceptions of these netizens are correct or not, their original intention is still kind, and they do have the posture of a great power.
The current mainstream ideology in China is still nationalism. In the past few years, it has been especially fierce. At present, it is difficult to find a few people who can really treat the problem peacefully and admit that they have certain shortcomings on the Chinese Internet. “I am relieved to see such a rogue in the motherland.” It can be said that it is China’s biggest political correctness at present. There are extremists in every country, but at least so many malicious speeches are still rare in China. This also proves that although we have the strength of a powerful country, we are still far from a powerful country in terms of mentality.
And whether excessive nationalism will backfire and let us fall to the final step of victory is also worthy of our vigilance. This is just my intuitive feeling, which is not necessarily correct. You can disagree, but please refute it rationally.