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.

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[–] Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 30 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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@hexbear.net 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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@hexbear.net 7 points 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