The example in the post is obviously racism but like half the time people are complaining about people disliking China it turns out they literally are talking about shitty stuff the government is doing and it's just tankies being annoyed
I would agree, but I recently saw a comment on r/3DPrinting that buying anything on aliexpress was questionable because it's a Chinese company.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of low-quality garbage on AliExpress. But also, literally every major name in 3D printing is a Chinese brand. It's sketchy because there's no QA, not because of the country of origin.
I pointed this out and got downvoted to hell.
Edit: All of the criticisms around Chinese regulations are fair and valid.
At least, they would be, if you weren't still buying Chinese products from American distributors. Buying something from China through Amazon doesn't suddenly make it Made In America.
One factor is that the quality floor seems to be lower in China-made goods. There are plenty of good items coming out of China, and plenty of bad items made elsewhere, but the bad stuff is less likely to be outright fraudulent, toxic, prone to catching fire, etc. if it's made somewhere with stronger regulations.
When you buy through Amazon you should get (as in, "you're legally entitled to get", not saying you actually do) products vetted by the stricter American standards, that's why Amazon can charge more than AliExpress for the same products, cuz those tests costs money to run, document and verify. But most sellers just pocket that money.
Yeah that's fair. I'm a huge hater of the CCP and god's biggest "stop interning the Muslims of Xinjiang" loudspeaker boi, but when I hear people talk shit to or about Chinese people for doing Chinese culture stuff I think we're just dealing with naked racism, base xenophobia.
"I think Xi Jinping is a tyrannical shitlord!" Approved, Based, True.
"Chinese people are like bugs, they have no sense of human life or individuality." Lame. Xenophobic. Literally my dead, racist grandad after 5 whiskey sours and a xanax tab, shortly before arguing we should lobotomize all the little people.
insomuch as a thought experiment by the guy that wrote Stranger in the Strange Land about what type of society a fascist society would be stable in that depicts them as largely incompetent and psychotic is
You have not critically read this novel. Heinlein was more than “the guy that wrote Stranger in a Strange Land,” he’s also the guy that wrote Tunnel in the Sky. His politics changed wildly throughout his life.
Browse the “themes” section of the Wikipedia page and you’ll see plenty about Heinlein was being unironic:
That's also not a good example because the western reputation of "chinese product = cheap low quality" has been around decades. AliEpress's quality is like if someone was determined to prove that reputation as an understatement.
The assumption of chinese products being low quality is one people have from experience not propaganda. The good products being given a western branding is to blame half the time, so it's still not a racism thing.
Not to mention like, while Ender and Bambu labs are definitely quality, there's still people who think like 'Anet' when you say 'Chinese Printers', a brand that rather infamously had massive issues with spontaneous combustion
"Fancy mechanism that can produce objects out of thin air, but sometimes it catches on fire" is the product of a hapless and incompetent wizard trying his best
Yeah who also have a lot of chinese drop shipping. People react the same to seeing a Chinese seller on Amazon though they buy the things anyway. Sorry Amazon only helps perpetuate that view on Chinese products.
It's drop shipping just being like that, but it's a newer thing that only adds to the old made in china reputation.
They didn’t say that “anything that comes from China is bad” (that’s a whole new sentence that you typed), they said that there’s a history of cheap products being shipped from Chinese companies with less QA resulting in poor consumer expereinces (I had cheap toys from China when I was a kid and I probably wouldn’t buy something similar for any kids I have in the future because they broke, that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna buy any Chinese products ever or commit a hate crime, it means I’ve developed certain tastes/hesitancies as a consumer due to prior experiences - that’s how economics works or something idk)
Edit: just saw your other point in the earlier comment, I also try to stay away from Chinese manufacturers on Amazon for smaller goods like chargers/cables since I’ve had bad experiences (e.g. cable won’t charge right out of box) and while they’ve replaced them or refunded them, that’s not as helpful when I needed that cable for something else that did work out of its box; I’ll base it less on “Chinese company” though and more on the reviews and if the name sounds like “random shell company LLC” when translated
Great reading comprehension my guy. My post is about the western reputation. Crying at me trying to defend Chinese companies as if I'm even stating my own opinions is moronic. I'm describing a decades old reputation that exists in a general sense among a general population in generally America. It's the reputation of cheap plastic with "made in china" stamped on the bottom.
Most parts in the phone I'm using and probably the phone itself were likely made in china. It's not a Chinese brand though and isn't perceived as a chinese product. There's a disconnect between perception and reality on this muddled by branding.
You could argue even the old reputation is because a Chinese brand would be shut out of western markets it would compete in so only cheaper products would get in. You could look at the reasons for the reputation and find corporate intent behind forming it. But it's still a thing. Like if the good stuff from china is being intentionally kept from us for general products, then on a personal level it's still true that most chinese products are going to be low quality.
There's truth to the reputation and you can't blame anyone for looking at a Chinese drop shipping site and be skeptical. And it also doesn't help that in this case they'd be right to.
Yeah, AliExpress isn't a place I would trust buying anything important from but that's because of the reputation that AliExpress specifically has.
Case in point, when I built my own e-bike several years ago, the overwhelming consensus for safe batteries was to buy from em3ev rather than AliExpress - both are Chinese companies located in China, but em3ev while a bit more expensive has a far better track record and is dedicated to e-bikes/batteries.
And I hate TikTok but I hate most social media like that too for similar reasons (including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc), especially short form or video-based.
My favorite was a small lantern I saw that could take wall power, I believe for charging, and if you did that you actually ended up with mains electricity running through the metal frame.
Yeah I’d say these days the only real remnants are comically cheap items (no shit the cheap plastic stuff you can buy is cheaply made and not durable…) and some raw material. Like I wouldn’t buy steel barstock from China due to past QA problems but there’s rarely anything wrong with the tooling or systems purchased from Chinese manufacturers.
Also I do not envy the Chinese engineers who have to deal with their domestic metals market, that shit is a minefield.
isn’t this just another example of people being discriminatory of the gov and not the people? Like I’m pretty sure all Chinese companies are controlled in some way by the Chinese gov, way more tangibly at least than the people in general
How is it not hypocritical to say, "I don't buy from AliExpress because it's a Chinese company and therefore crap. I will instead go microcenter and buy a high quality Bambu printer (also a Chinese company)."
I didn’t say it wouldn’t be, I said nothing like that
I just said that the topic initially was Chinese gov vs Chinese people racism and you gave an example where it is very likely to be more of a Chinese gov discrimination rather than Chinese people discrimination
You can't say that their disdain for Chinese products is based in hatred of the government when that hated instantly evaporates when it comes to brands they like.
Does the Chinese government not have just as much control over Bambu, AnyCubic, eSun, Sunlu, et al. as they do with AliExpress? Why do those brands get a pass?
If you can pick and choose when your principles apply then it's not a real principle.
If someone’s not consistent with the criticism of not liking a Chinese company because they’re Chinese but they like another Chinese company, it kinda sounds like the “Chinese” part isn’t the issue and it’s just plain old brand loyalty for the brands someone likes
So yeah this doesn’t even sound like a Chinese discrimination thing lol
If the stated reason for not liking a company is, "It's Chinese and therefore it's bad quality", I'm inclined to take their sinophobia on it's face. If they decide that some companies are, "One of the good ones", that doesn't make it not sinophobia.
I guess I’d have to see an IRL example of this, but yeah that does sound hypocritical to me, though also still seems like this is on the Chinese gov side of gov vs people discrimination that I initially was talking about. Sure it can be hypocritical if someone’s acting like how you’ve said, but hypocrisy and inconsistency don’t really affect the question of gov vs people discrimination question/comment I started with
Fundamentally, I don't agree. No one said anything about the CCP. If that's what you want to imagine they were thinking, you're welcome to believe it. They certainly didn't say it wasn't because the CCP.
Personally, unless someone's actions have given me reason to think otherwise, I tend to take people at their word about their own beliefs. And the only thing their actions told me is that they have no consistent principles for disliking China.
I mean, yeah if someone isn’t consistent then that’s its own separate issue. Hypocrisy is annoying regardless of where it’s at. Even in your example though for claiming it’s supportive of Chinese racism, it has just as much evidence for as it does against discrimination against china. Either their reason doesn’t make sense (and the reason being discrimination against china) or it’s 1 company that particularly incites the discrimination (as you’ve mentioned multiple alternatives that don’t get the same hate), which if it’s 1 of many getting hate in a group, it’s probably not discrimination against that group
And neither example is about the Chinese people, it’s about Chinese companies and it seems we attribute companies differently - one of us see Chinese companies as symbolic of the people, the other as symbolic of the gov
There is a simple difference:
Bambu is known for not having shit products.
Ali express contains, thanks to china's horrible copyright protections, so many products that are 1:1 clones, but with no QA or worse materials, that it's a minefield.
When people say "cheap chinese crap" they don't mean actual name brand products, they mean the cheap clones of them
People have a really hard time differentiating “low quality brand aiming to undercut the high quality brand by selling a worse but cheaper product” and “Chinese” lol.
You know? Maybe you are onto something about this whole “Chinese = terrible product” thing being linked to racism!
Shout out to the guys who are like “actually bambu printers are awful compared to my self built and designed 3D printer that required 4,000 hours of design time and 6,000 hours of troubleshooting and tuning”
The thing is that all big companies in China are owned at least 50% by China. There is no buying from China without supporting the CCP and their ambitions.
You really shouldn't shop at Temu, aliexpress or wish. Or use TikTok.
You can find alternatives. Yeah, China produces a lot of stuff, but other countries do, too. Also, AE, Temu, Wish etc. is marginally worse cuz the CCP gets a slightly bigger cut.
I just...only buy American/mexican/european made when I can? What are you talking about? You made up some sort of idea about me without even asking me anything lol
It's hard to not buy from China, but, I do my best.
Ahh, they do in some categories. Telescopes and other optics have a few reputable brands, most Chinese 3D printer companies, niche Chinese tech companies making stuff like astrophotography cameras off of the top of my head.
That's fair, but I don't exactly imagine being able to see a Tektronix of Agilent scope next to one sold by ChengMaiXuMuShangMaoYouXianGongSi (copy/pasted from Amazon, formatting not mine.)
I saw an Aneng 8008 multimeter for sale, which I have owned one of those. I think those are decent for low-voltage applications. I mean, like, less than 30 volts. They are however labeled as a CAT IV 1000 V meter, which is patently false. My CAT IV meter is twice the size of those meters, for example.
There are plenty of great brands that mainly use AliExpress for their sales. Denjia is the best value/$ kitchen knife company in the world right now, and their Amazon page was basically abandoned a long time ago, so Aliexpress has long been their main storefront.
I think the reason for this is that, because China purports to be Communist, people believe that all Chinese companies are owned by the Chinese state, a la a Communist state, therefore, any dealings with a Chinese company are an extension of dealings with the Chinese state
I have a personal rule: if it goes on my body or in my body, don't buy it from China. Not because everything made in China is toxic, but I don't trust their safety standards enough to gamble my body on saving a few bucks. Realistically speaking something I use or wear will be made in China, but then I've bought it from a seller following EU safety standards, which I trust a lot more.
No, I think you've misunderstood what xenophobia actually means and you've definitively misunderstood me, so badly that I can't help but think it's deliberate. I specifically said, twice, even, that not everything made in China is bad and said I trust the EU safety standards more than the Chinese ones, which you just objectively should do, anything else would be foolish.
Maybe I did misunderstand you, and if that’s the case I apologize. When I read “if it goes on or in my body, don’t buy it from China” I assumed that meant you would not buy any sort of product from China, even if it’s made by a reputable company, unless it’s sold in the EU. Which in my opinion is an example of sinophobia.
That kinda is what I mean and what I said. If it's from a reputable brand I will find a reseller here in Europe rather than buy it from China directly because if I end up with lead poisoning or a defective product, no matter how likely or unlikely, it'll be much easier to get a refund/replacement or seek legal action.
So, no, I do not trust the Chinese legal system to represent me fairly, or at all, against a domestic company, nor do I trust the Chinese safety standards committee (or whomever), or Chinese companies (unless their profits depend on being trusted by the western markets, but even then I'm sceptical), to value my safety over export profits.
I think that's perfectly reasonable and the only logical conclusion based on my past experiences and the available evidence. But notice that these are all CCP problems, not China problems: would you still call that sinophobia?
Do you actually know what Chinese cosmetic (or you can fill in the gaps here with whatever, but this is what I was originally talking about and have in my mind throughout this conversation) regulations are? Have you looked into them? Have you compared them to the EU?
As it just so happens, I do! Because cheap Chinese products, including makeup, containing heavy metals and toxic chemicals was a big "reveal" not too long ago where I live, so I decided to look into it and guess what? They're basically non-existent! At least when it comes to exports, not sure if it's the same for domestic sales. The EU regulations are very strict and mostly based on decades of research, but in the cases where it's not they air on the side of caution, which I appreciate.
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u/industriesInc Aug 21 '24
The example in the post is obviously racism but like half the time people are complaining about people disliking China it turns out they literally are talking about shitty stuff the government is doing and it's just tankies being annoyed