CHYNA frothingfash

Feels like back in the 90’s people were a bit more chill and didn’t go into a genocidal lunatic rage at the mere mention of the country. Wild to think people used to get down with hong kong action movies.

  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    i remember so many articles as a kid breathlessly describing “the rise of china” as a sort of neutral/neutral-good thing. everyone thought they were going to get addicted to a market economy and politically “liberalize” aka become a heavily manipulated and corrupted multi-party parlimentary liberal “democracy”. i guess there was a bunch of excitement about looting the place

    i think the anti-corruption crackdowns basically saved the country and the Party

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      They wanted to do to China and Russia what they did to Japan, South Korea and their other allies (make obedient puppet states that they could suck dry) so there was a brief period in the 90s where they were less openly hostile to China and Russia “It’s the 90s! The cold war is over, Russia’s our friend now!”

      But China and Russia have not fully become subservient to the US and so the war drums start

      • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        Russia is more baffling because it was 100% a US client state, the reactionary lib compradors the US chose and propped up are still in power, and Russia was licking America’s boots and begging for approval right up until 2014. The way American officials managed to alienate their own handpicked puppets like that is astounding.

        Like I genuinely can’t understand how and why the US decided to do that, it’s like the real scary, cynical old cold warrior demons won and got the complete American hegemony they’d spent their lives angling for, and then they retired happy and their successors just flailed around and undid it all within twenty years. Like it’s this self-defeating blend of grifters trying to engineer conflicts so their arms dealer stocks go up, and dipshit true believers who think the US is some divine force of ontological good and purity who are entirely guided by the unhinged propaganda the grifters draw up for them, and nowhere in any of this is there a single cynical statesman monster capable of coldly planning for hegemony left holding any sort of power.

        It’s a truly impressive level of rot and collapse that’s only picking up speed as the world catches on to the fact that the machine of imperial hegemony has been hollowed out by graft and no one’s going to fix it.

        • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          The way American officials managed to alienate their own handpicked puppets like that is astounding.

          I’m going to say it’s probably ego. Look at how easy Australia folds to their every whim, for example.

          They didn’t realise that trying that with a powerful country might back fire. Especially because they did tried to debt trap Russia after the cold war

        • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          I think what happened there was that the Russians refused to allow the US to dictate all the terms of the relationship, which is obviously something that’s unacceptable to the poo-brained empire.

      • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        The US started pushing Russia and China into hostile relations with the US after the West screwed up the Yugoslav war.

        At the time, they were really against the NATO air strikes in Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic and his brother proposed that Yugoslavia join the Union State of Russia and Belarus. And NATO almost attacked Russian troops near the border between Kosovo and Serbia for no reason. In addition, the US bombed the Chinese embassy in 1999, which further deteriorated relations, which never improved.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      i remember so many articles as a kid breathlessly describing “the rise of china” as a sort of neutral/neutral-good thing.

      That’s because the Westoid capitalists were making huuuuge buckets of money in China either ! manufacturing for export or selling to the domestic market. Back then China wasn’t a credible military threat or economic competition, so those articles were the capitalist’s feeding call.

      • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        They were also high on end of history histrionics and genuinely believed that economic prosperity would lead to an american style free market economy. And I don’t think people were silly to think that way in the 90s. You had to be in the know to realize the fundamentals at play. That China, unlike the Soviets, did not privatize the commons but instead implemented a market economy. The only hint of how things were going was how Japan was forcefully turned into an american sharemarket economy. China by all indications did not have to and didn’t.

        • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          my grandfather used to describe Hong Kong as like this burning ember of liberal market capitalism that would basically spread across China eventually. that they would become addicted to the wealth generated there and replicate it everywhere (this was in the 90s).

          he couldn’t predict how utterly irrelevant Hong Kong would become

  • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    That’s cuz ppl thought China was goin’ the full comprador route… hence, the media depiction is a bit toned down, compared to now, but there are still some movies with condemnation of revolutionary China during that time, so I’m not sure…

    But even then, Hong Kong and China are kinda different animals; most of the time, what we watch are mostly Hong Kong films, not mainlander filmers…

  • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    I remember Jackie Chan being a thing (movies, that one cartoon) early in my childhood then I feel like he just disappeared from reality (almost like Mandela effect), and by disappeared I also mean the entire genre of movies he usually does.

    • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      and by disappeared I also mean the entire genre of movies he usually does.

      Yeah action comedy martial arts movies aren’t as big as they once were in the west, now the closest thing we have may be marvel movies with their cgi instead of real action and the quips instead of actual comedy

      Action movies in general have gotten more and more pro military with a tone of gritty “realism” (obviously bullshit given these are usually propaganda films) that makes what Jackie Chan does not really possible in the genre

      Like I could see an old school action movie having Jackie Chan as a character and doing his thing and it could fit nicely but this new shit is too grimdark for him

      • anarchoilluminati [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        They were better times.

        I recently torrented the entire Jackie Chan filmography and worked through some of them. They don’t always hold up, but they’re always fun and have such a different style than current movies. It’s mostly a shame for kids.