Christmas in China

Hat-tip to Shelley: while in the US conservatives are trying to shove Christmas down everyone’s throats, in China they’re calling it Western cultural domination that’s causing Confucius to flip in his grave.

[Link] Ten doctoral students from three of China’s top universities have posted an online petition slamming local Christmas celebrations and calling on people to “resist Western cultural invasion,” state media said on Friday.

The students from the elite Peking, Tsinghua and People’s universities railed against “American and European culture” expanding throughout China along with “their technological and economic domination,” the China Daily said.

“Occidental culture has been more like storms sweeping through the country rather than mild showers,” the paper quoted the petition — dated with China’s traditional lunar calendar — as saying.

It was a “failure on the part of the government to maintain Chinese traditions, while encouraging the economy.”

I don’t know if it’s just in the West that conservatives use dry language, rather than florid expressions like “Occidental culture has been like storms sweeping through the country,” or if it’s just that I’m more used to English similes.

But apart from that, there’s no difference between Chinese conservatives ranting about pernicious Westerners and Western conservatives ranting about pernicious Muslims. Western conservatives use universal terms, like human rights, but Chinese conservatives could just as well rant about education or family ties; in all probability, what they care about isn’t education or family ties, but their national dick size.

The conservative opposition to giving people choices comes in plenty of forms. One is opposing their right to choose cultural customs. The nationalist therefore rails against members of his national or ethnic group who celebrate the wrong holidays or eat the wrong food or wear the wrong clothes, and at times against members of other groups wearing his group’s clothes. At times, the environmentalist who cares about cultures more than about people will join him, and indeed radical environmentalists and anti-globalists rant about cultural appropriation just like ordinary conservatives.