However, I don't think all the FT's do agree with you- you have merely surrounded yourself with malcontents,(albeit virtual ones) that's all. You trawl around and feverishly gather all the anti-Chinese material you can, and can't and are unwilling to see beyond it....

Will do a re-post on this one. I speak, read, and write Mandarin. I have spoken to many, many Chinese people of all ages, across all walks of life, in their own language which in the modern day is Mandarin Chinese. After years of socializing I realize that I cannot have a peace of mind if I bought into the values of what most Chinese people hold nowadays. I am confident to say that I have access to things that you do not know about, hence I am able to make these comparisons. There are still positive things related to the Chinese that I am attached to, but those are things that can be called universal to me such as meeting a few good people who generously share their time and resources with me. I view most of the pro-Chinese material out there as insulting to the human mind. The so called modern day glory and development of China was built on the backs of poor folks who had their lands, dignity, and time taken away forcefully and left many with no choice but to head to the city and build fancy looking buildings. The history of China in the words of even the Chinese such as Lu Xun was fraught with nothing but slavery, violence, and cannibalism. The Chinese government blackmails anyone with chinese ancestry with the idea of the Chinese Identity and Chinese Culture as much as they can to get the individuals to believe they are owned by China, which I find deplorable. This is a side to Chinese culture you do not have access to, so you are stuck on the surface level of seeing the rosy images and taking that as the substance, when it is just style. You talk to some of the people on here as if they were less intelligent than you. What you missed on is the fact that you are in fact speaking with folks who have a large trove of information about the country, culture, and habits that you may never have heard of, and you can give yourself a chance to learn about this if only you thought more modestly.

As for malcontents, I used to be friends with a individual who has a rather similar personality as you Mancunian. He is an American who like you was ex-military. It seems as if the programming you guys get while being in there puts a little too much value into blind obedience, and you do not get enough deprogramming so you can regain some common sense with telling right from wrong. I say this because you both state how much you dislike the countries you came from, but usually do not say why. You both also project a 100% positive image of all your hopes and dreams onto another country, one that you always seem to keep a safe distance from actually getting to know and understand. But anyways, this person I knew would go on for hours about how much he hated the USA, and from what he had been through putting up with racism, growing up in a large family poor, and the general tough life he had. What was puzzling was the fact that he almost never had anything new to say, if you got to knew him for more than 1 month he basically would feed you the same information. I in my own naivety gave him too much time as well as sympathy to ramble about the same things. He, also like you thinks that he has higher Status than his peers due to being through some things that most of the population has not experienced, he is a legend in his own mind since nobody in the world seemingly wants to give him credit for his existence. What made me break off the friendship was the lack of empathy on his part when I stated some of the experiences I had, he seemed to want to brush it off and even ignore it. I do not think people's troubles should be put on a pyramid and evaluated for performance value if you actually consider the person to be your friend. I later found out some rather trivial things that he was holding back on(i.e. I would say something, and he reveals that he knew this a long time ago), and this was the final straw that told me to move on. This is not what friends do, and you seem to exhibit the same type of behavior. Mancunian, whatever smarter, more clever, witty, intelligent, or higher knowledge you possess you would need to actually bring others to see things your way for you to claim legitimacy in your stand. You do not have that level of understanding so far as I can see.

I do seem to have a lot of anti-Chinese material to you, don't I? But that's only to you because of the access to the language that I have. I do not spend my time looking for this stuff, I have it in my mind already. I will also say this: I do not find many Chinese (even most perhaps) as well as some expats in China to be very tolerant of finding a middle ground for these kinds of cultural debates. Trying to compromise from my own experience leads to only more abuse from the party whom you're disagreeing with. It doesn't help that in arguments things can always get personal, so as I became more experienced I would sometimes go further down on the opposite end so you can actually budge from your shell of where your position is. I am willing to see beyond it, after all there are 2,000+ active languages with I think 700-800 major ethnic groups in this world. You seem to believe China is all you will need, but you won't even know if that was ever really true since we are only comparing a few places. I myself was only saying 1 place is not as good as a few other places, don't see why you're so, well malcontent on arguing with me.