A Chinese factory employee set fire to a textile plant in China’s southwestern Sichuan province in his frustration over unpaid wages of just 800 yuan (or US$111), according to videos posted on social media and eyewitness accounts shared with Radio Free Asia.
I mean, people who think the Chinese people are just ‘peasants’ tend to be pretty goddamn ignorant.
Systems are difficult to oppose in every society. We’re all just trying to get by.
ignorant is too light, I say racism, say whatever you want about china, if you see Chinese people as peasants you’re a racist POS
I see plenty of typical* Americans on the streets who can barely plot their own country on a world map. At some point, it is an actual lack of information, ignorance, whether by their environment or their own disinterest, rather than some racial or nationalist prejudice. It’s offensive and stupid, and shouldn’t be excused, but sometimes I think it isn’t even racism. Or, at least, their own racism - it’s still the effect of a nationalist exceptionalist government and culture, so racism is still relevant to their ignorance regardless of what their own opinions, morals and character might be.
Now, all that said, there are millions who are just racist pieces of shit who know better. So fuck them.
* I know the country isn’t homogeneous and there is no typical American, but I’m not talking about just super rural folk or the centers of cities
The vast majority of people saying Chinese people are ‘peasants’ are racist, but if someone told me that they met someone in Fuckknowswhereville, USA, who genuinely thought that mainland China was still struggling under a feudal regime, living hand-to-mouth with villages of illiterates who lacked the educational tools to organize against their overlords, and was genuinely overjoyed to hear the contrary, that the Qing Dynasty had fallen and that China entered the modern world, rather than disbelieving or dismissive… well, I’ve heard too many innocently stupid opinions from my fellow Americans about international issues to reject that out of hand.
Admittedly, being from Fuckknowswhereville, USA, also greatly increases the chance of them being horrifically racist pieces of shit.