I can't say I blame Japan and Suga for negotiating defense ties with Vietnam and Indonesia to counter China's overtly aggressive posturing in the South China Sea. I mean, with Trump wrecking alliances and treaties (along with consolidating PA GD thread singularity) these past four nightmarish years, he's done more to undermine worldwide confidence in America coming to the aid of its allies than the Russians and Chinese could've dared hope to dream for the entirety of the Cold War.
The Korean language is a deep source of pride, for its constructed(!) script, its utter simplicity (the boast is that you can learn the alphabet in one day), and its symbol for the resilience of the culture.
The Japanese tried to suppress it too.
"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
The Korean language is a deep source of pride, for its constructed(!) script, its utter simplicity (the boast is that you can learn the alphabet in one day), and its symbol for the resilience of the culture.
The Japanese tried to suppress it too.
Yeah, the love of Hangul is pretty ingrained in Korean culture, and the reverence for King Saejong, it’s creator, is pretty strong. I’m not sure if that is the same in the Ethnically Korean population in China, but I can imagine it is.
And you are right, @Eddy , you can learn the script in about a day. Took me that long when I lived there, though I am still spotty on my W combination vowels. It’s super intuitive though.
The Korean language is a deep source of pride, for its constructed(!) script, its utter simplicity (the boast is that you can learn the alphabet in one day), and its symbol for the resilience of the culture.
The Japanese tried to suppress it too.
Yeah, the love of Hangul is pretty ingrained in Korean culture, and the reverence for King Saejong, it’s creator, is pretty strong. I’m not sure if that is the same in the Ethnically Korean population in China, but I can imagine it is.
A lot of the mythologization of hangul and King Sejong in Korean society happened after WW2, so I think it would depend on when that population settled in China. OTOH, most of the Korean-language media they consume would come from Korea, so it may not matter.
+1
Options
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited December 2020
China has been trying to conquer Korea one way or the other for a couple millennia, not surprised to hear they're still on their bullshit.
"Hanification" is the term in general use by most English media, if you're looking for a starting point for further reading - a reference to the ongoing erasure of ethnic and cultural idenities to be supplanted by a mythologized idealization of Han purity. It makes for a pretty deep dive, and I'm definitely not the one to describe it in proper detail.
Aren't they also trying to remove other Chinese language groups as well though? Like Cantonese? Sorry, I'll admit I'm not very well versed with China's internal demographics besides the Uighur and Tibetan populations.
Aren't they also trying to remove other Chinese language groups as well though? Like Cantonese? Sorry, I'll admit I'm not very well versed with China's internal demographics besides the Uighur and Tibetan populations.
Also if you meant to provide a link you didnt.
For the most part the Hanization and thus the use of Mandarin is what the state prefers. Doesn't mean it has successfully wiped out other dialects but they are taught in Mandarin.
I assumed the endgame was to eliminate all ethnic and regional identities to homogenize China into a nation of all Han that speak Mandarin.
Essentially there has been an ongoing effort to this effect going on in China pretty much for the entirety of Chinese history (at least going back to the writing and legal unification reforms of the Qin dynasty). Attempts by the central government to Culturally assimilate and unify various non-Han people and attempts by those non-han to resist (and occasionally declare independence and/or conquer bits of China for themselves) is a recurring theme in Chinese history.
Edit: and its not like China is alone in this, the idea of a sufficiently organized government not trying to standardize the language its people use through eliminating dialects and other languages and trying to forcefully impose the dominant culture on subject peoples is pretty much a 20th century thing, the best you can find prior to that is certain privileged groups getting carve-outs.
The funny thing is I'm pretty sure most of these attempts at homogenization are pretty much doomed to failure. I'd argue someone is a fool if they believe technology, now makes doing so possible. If anything technology probably makes it even harder because it gives the targeted groups more tools to resist and it's very nature means you get more environments where you countercultures, dialects and slang can spring forth.
Like if I were a government. The only thing in regards to language homogenization I would strive for would be that all government records are kept in an official language, which is different from a country language because people wouldn't be required to speak that language. The only reason you'd do that is for ease of administration, since if someone that doesn't speak the language needs to see those records, they know exactly what kind of translator to bring. Also means, when it comes to hiring people to go through those records, they know exactly what language is needed for the job. This also helps everyone because it cuts down on the possible points of having things lost in translation. For instance, if someone that speaks Korean needs to go through a legal manner, it's far better to know you just need a translator that can go between Korean and Mandarin Chinese. It's kind of a disaster if that Korean speaker shows up and finds out that there translator isn't going to cut it because the document they need to review is in Vietnamese.
Granted, I'm looking at this more from a way to minimize people getting fucked over. I'm not looking at this from the Supremacist angle, which is totally the direction the Chinese are coming from. Again, it's a doomed angle because you're going to get all those divergences that run counter to homogenization efforts popping up. it's inevitable and with so many people and over such a large geographic area, it's just going to happen whether the authorities like it or not.
Saying attempts at homogenization are doomed to fail is silly imo. The historical perspective is that such things are very doable as long as you are willing to commit some atrocities and the Chinese government has more then shown it's willingness to do that. If you are comfortable "re-educating" the Uyghurs out of existence, you can do it.
Also, modern technology has hastened homogenization, not slowed it. The introduction of national television and radio, along with the tendency of young people to move out of their hometown for education or work has led to significant reductions in the number of people who speak minority languages or regional dialects.
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
Saying attempts at homogenization are doomed to fail is silly imo. The historical perspective is that such things are very doable as long as you are willing to commit some atrocities and the Chinese government has more then shown it's willingness to do that. If you are comfortable "re-educating" the Uyghurs out of existence, you can do it.
It’s a bit weird looking at it historically, there are instances where cultures are subsumed pretty quickly in a matter of decades, and there are instances where you have cultures that stick around and maintain an independent sense of cultural identity for hundreds or even thousands of years of outside rule. Then you can have national identities that appear to be subsumed into a dominant culture for hundreds of years and then reappear if the dominant culture becomes weak or loses control for some reason.
There don’t seem to be a lot of hard and fast rules as to what happens.
Killing the Korean language by China will be hard because South Korea has become the culturally dominant soft power in Asia and increasingly abroad, to the extent that South Korean movies now top the U.S. box office and movies can win an Oscar.
+5
Options
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Nah, there is a certain point in size and population where it ceases to feasible.
By itself, maybe. But combined with forced relocations and all the other horrors China is doing? It's absolutely, horrificly possible.
See also: many of the totally lost first-nation tribes across North and South America across the last 300 years, or France's efforts to eliminate minority languages over the last 100. In many cases, they have succeeded and entire cultures are lost except in an academic sense. The languages are dead, and their speakers only do so in preservation.
Killing the Korean language by China will be hard because South Korea has become the culturally dominant soft power in Asia and increasingly abroad, to the extent that South Korean movies now top the U.S. box office and movies can win an Oscar.
Oh this is a bit of a misunderstanding of what they are doing.
They aren't out to kill the Korean language overall. They are instead taking their Korean speaking minority and killing it in that group and working to make that group be subsumed into the Han culture. Comparing it to First Nations/Native Americans and the concerted effort to "civilize" them via taking children and banning their native tongue is a good one. It is all in China. A continuation of their policy to either stamp out or remove any non-Han group.
Killing the Korean language by China will be hard because South Korea has become the culturally dominant soft power in Asia and increasingly abroad, to the extent that South Korean movies now top the U.S. box office and movies can win an Oscar.
Oh this is a bit of a misunderstanding of what they are doing.
They aren't out to kill the Korean language overall. They are instead taking their Korean speaking minority and killing it in that group and working to make that group be subsumed into the Han culture. Comparing it to First Nations/Native Americans and the concerted effort to "civilize" them via taking children and banning their native tongue is a good one. It is all in China. A continuation of their policy to either stamp out or remove any non-Han group.
I know, but it is trying to do this in an internal subgroup that is most likely awash in Korean DVDs, songs, and books/manga. It's hard to eliminate an external cultural influence when your entire nation, much less just that subgroup, is tuned into that culture.
Nah, there is a certain point in size and population where it ceases to feasible.
By itself, maybe. But combined with forced relocations and all the other horrors China is doing? It's absolutely, horrificly possible.
See also: many of the totally lost first-nation tribes across North and South America across the last 300 years, or France's efforts to eliminate minority languages over the last 100. In many cases, they have succeeded and entire cultures are lost except in an academic sense. The languages are dead, and their speakers only do so in preservation.
It's also important to understand that a lot of these cultures and languages that are coming back or at least hanging on right now are because governments stopped actively trying to destroy them. Or stopped trying so hard anyway. Or in some cases started doing the opposite. If various governments around the world wanted to continue to actively destroy a bunch of these cultures, they could.
Preserving a lot of these languages and cultures that are in trouble takes active work by the government.
I wonder if in 200 years time China will be desperately trying to preserve the remnants of all those unique indigenous cultures they are trying to crush right now.
I wonder if in 200 years time China will be desperately trying to preserve the remnants of all those unique indigenous cultures they are trying to crush right now.
France is not (really), but Canada is (kinda). So flip a coin, I guess.
I wonder if in 200 years time China will be desperately trying to preserve the remnants of all those unique indigenous cultures they are trying to crush right now.
There is also a difference between trying to exterminate a cultural group that is an enclave of a large and prosperous nearby nation / culture with its own substantial media presence and exterminating a minority that is (for all intents and purposes) non-existent outside your borders and has no meaningful outside support.
Even if they 'officially' stamp out the Korean-speaking Chinese community, it's not like they are going to stamp out Korean culture and cultural influence in those regions of China. I mean short of extermination / driving out anyone who is non-Han Chinese. Which doesn't seem to be outside the realms of possibility.
And 200 years from now, I would expect that those unique cultures will either be fully destroyed and paved under, or the new nationalistic CCP-Han culture will insist any remnants are just part of their own cultural history and not whatever group that has been assimilated / exterminated. After all, that's what all the history books say and if you dispute that you probably need some (re)-education.
0
Options
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
It doesn't even have to be that overt. Look at how history and local cultures in the Eastern US treat first-nations they drove west. Tourist traps and a few national park signs marking where the Iroquois were, and congress ignoring the tribe's petition to be recognized as a formal tribe due to having been made "citizens" forcibly in the 1800s. It doesn't have to be re-education camps and forced marches. It can, and usually is, just the overwhelming grind of massive bureaucracy crushing all local intuitions with red tape and out-performing any local capability to keep cultural norms going. Some local politician or school board saying "No, you can't teach Haudenosaunee in schools, and no you can't have exemption waivers. Teach it in the home if you value it." Then, over decades of being supplanted by usual norms of majority populations moving into the area and the necessity of speaking English to work in that majority-population dominated society the second generation rarely uses it, and even less often passes it down to their kids. In three generations the language is mostly lost except for enthusiasts, and nobody need be marched to a reeducation camp.
Time and migration are insidious when used with purpose, and that's typically how governments do this sort of thing.
The so-called "Indian schools" founded ostensibly out of charitable goodwill by religious groups who saw the plight of starving Native American children were just another avenue for cultural genocide, where students were given "good Christian" names and forbidden to speak anything but English and learn about the history and myths of their own people.
The so-called "Indian schools" founded ostensibly out of charitable goodwill by religious groups who saw the plight of starving Native American children were just another avenue for cultural genocide, where students were given "good Christian" names and forbidden to speak anything but English and learn about the history and myths of their own people.
For sure, but not every part of the problem were as blatant. Plenty of local areas in the eastern US had schools closed that taught historical languages. And not just first-nation. French schools were commonly closed in Maine and elsewhere in New England to prevent French from being spoken by poor and migratory workers during the 1880s through 1920s.
Killing the Korean language by China will be hard because South Korea has become the culturally dominant soft power in Asia and increasingly abroad, to the extent that South Korean movies now top the U.S. box office and movies can win an Oscar.
Oh this is a bit of a misunderstanding of what they are doing.
They aren't out to kill the Korean language overall. They are instead taking their Korean speaking minority and killing it in that group and working to make that group be subsumed into the Han culture. Comparing it to First Nations/Native Americans and the concerted effort to "civilize" them via taking children and banning their native tongue is a good one. It is all in China. A continuation of their policy to either stamp out or remove any non-Han group.
I know, but it is trying to do this in an internal subgroup that is most likely awash in Korean DVDs, songs, and books/manga. It's hard to eliminate an external cultural influence when your entire nation, much less just that subgroup, is tuned into that culture.
That is a really good point I mean, how well would native American culture and languages survived if there was a fairly large enclave of native Americans just blasting movies and TV and video games and manga and whatever 24/7?
Kind of betting that less of the culture would have died off.
China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities into hard, manual labour in the vast cotton fields of its western region of Xinjiang, according to new research seen by the BBC.
Based on newly discovered online documents, it provides the first clear picture of the potential scale of forced labour in the picking of a crop that accounts for a fifth of the world’s cotton supply and is used widely throughout the global fashion industry.
I guess they really want to go for all check marks of recent terrible actions to minority groups and are adding "slave labor picked cotton" to the list of things.
China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities into hard, manual labour in the vast cotton fields of its western region of Xinjiang, according to new research seen by the BBC.
Based on newly discovered online documents, it provides the first clear picture of the potential scale of forced labour in the picking of a crop that accounts for a fifth of the world’s cotton supply and is used widely throughout the global fashion industry.
I guess they really want to go for all check marks of recent terrible actions to minority groups and are adding "slave labor picked cotton" to the list of things.
America uses slave labor to pick cotton, too. Because remember, slavery was only abolished except "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," a loophole that has been utilized ever since. Hell, we call them "prison plantations."
First is the East Asia thread so discussing China's use of slave labor based on an actual cultural genocide going on right is on topic and worth talking about. American usage of prison labor is an issue but isn't a 1 to 1 equivalent in anyway. And probably is worth its own thread or an entire thread on prison reform.
Some things from the actual article outside of folks sniping:
-China produces about 1/5th of the world's cotton so this means if you buy a shirt you are rolling dice on the use of forced labor by Uighurs. Not new. We know they use similar systems for electronics which not a single large electronic company is clean of including apple.
-This is tied to the "re-education" camps/prisons that China is setting up to destroy systematically the Uighur cultures and languages. The very term Uighur is a simplification under a Stalinist designation of cultural groups and doesn't represent the actual variety of cultures in the region.
-This also ties straight into religious persecution in the region just focused on Islam so I feel it gets less attention in the US and the West.
Feel free to counter or try to make points but this isn't the thread for talking about the US prison system but instead a focus on East Asia and the actions occurring under the CCP which is a straight up authoritarian government that is very much working to eradicate minority groups whole sale and also runs things like the "social credit system" which can lead to people losing their entire lively hood over openly disagreeing with the party line.
I don't think anyone here is blind to the fact the US has screwed up shit, not for this thread.
Also I was being flippant but this wasn't even on my radar of things they were going to do with their heavily imprisoned Uighur population.
Posts
I mean, they basically have a standing military. They just dont call it that.
Yeah, Japan actually makes a lot of military hardware. I but unlike Germany for example, they dont sell much of anything abroad.
yeahhhhhhhhhhh.. germany really likes selling their weaons.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/11/xis-masterplan-for-a-homogeneous-one-china/
The Korean language is a deep source of pride, for its constructed(!) script, its utter simplicity (the boast is that you can learn the alphabet in one day), and its symbol for the resilience of the culture.
The Japanese tried to suppress it too.
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Yeah, the love of Hangul is pretty ingrained in Korean culture, and the reverence for King Saejong, it’s creator, is pretty strong. I’m not sure if that is the same in the Ethnically Korean population in China, but I can imagine it is.
And you are right, @Eddy , you can learn the script in about a day. Took me that long when I lived there, though I am still spotty on my W combination vowels. It’s super intuitive though.
A lot of the mythologization of hangul and King Sejong in Korean society happened after WW2, so I think it would depend on when that population settled in China. OTOH, most of the Korean-language media they consume would come from Korea, so it may not matter.
Still, the CCP continues their efforts to Mandarinize (is that a thing? Like Russification or Polonization?) the minorities in China.
Also if you meant to provide a link you didnt.
For the most part the Hanization and thus the use of Mandarin is what the state prefers. Doesn't mean it has successfully wiped out other dialects but they are taught in Mandarin.
Edit: I assumed the endgame was to eliminate all ethnic and regional identities to homogenize China into a nation of all Han that speak Mandarin.
Essentially there has been an ongoing effort to this effect going on in China pretty much for the entirety of Chinese history (at least going back to the writing and legal unification reforms of the Qin dynasty). Attempts by the central government to Culturally assimilate and unify various non-Han people and attempts by those non-han to resist (and occasionally declare independence and/or conquer bits of China for themselves) is a recurring theme in Chinese history.
Edit: and its not like China is alone in this, the idea of a sufficiently organized government not trying to standardize the language its people use through eliminating dialects and other languages and trying to forcefully impose the dominant culture on subject peoples is pretty much a 20th century thing, the best you can find prior to that is certain privileged groups getting carve-outs.
Like if I were a government. The only thing in regards to language homogenization I would strive for would be that all government records are kept in an official language, which is different from a country language because people wouldn't be required to speak that language. The only reason you'd do that is for ease of administration, since if someone that doesn't speak the language needs to see those records, they know exactly what kind of translator to bring. Also means, when it comes to hiring people to go through those records, they know exactly what language is needed for the job. This also helps everyone because it cuts down on the possible points of having things lost in translation. For instance, if someone that speaks Korean needs to go through a legal manner, it's far better to know you just need a translator that can go between Korean and Mandarin Chinese. It's kind of a disaster if that Korean speaker shows up and finds out that there translator isn't going to cut it because the document they need to review is in Vietnamese.
Granted, I'm looking at this more from a way to minimize people getting fucked over. I'm not looking at this from the Supremacist angle, which is totally the direction the Chinese are coming from. Again, it's a doomed angle because you're going to get all those divergences that run counter to homogenization efforts popping up. it's inevitable and with so many people and over such a large geographic area, it's just going to happen whether the authorities like it or not.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Uyghurs aren't anywhere near that size especially in China.
It’s a bit weird looking at it historically, there are instances where cultures are subsumed pretty quickly in a matter of decades, and there are instances where you have cultures that stick around and maintain an independent sense of cultural identity for hundreds or even thousands of years of outside rule. Then you can have national identities that appear to be subsumed into a dominant culture for hundreds of years and then reappear if the dominant culture becomes weak or loses control for some reason.
There don’t seem to be a lot of hard and fast rules as to what happens.
By itself, maybe. But combined with forced relocations and all the other horrors China is doing? It's absolutely, horrificly possible.
See also: many of the totally lost first-nation tribes across North and South America across the last 300 years, or France's efforts to eliminate minority languages over the last 100. In many cases, they have succeeded and entire cultures are lost except in an academic sense. The languages are dead, and their speakers only do so in preservation.
Oh this is a bit of a misunderstanding of what they are doing.
They aren't out to kill the Korean language overall. They are instead taking their Korean speaking minority and killing it in that group and working to make that group be subsumed into the Han culture. Comparing it to First Nations/Native Americans and the concerted effort to "civilize" them via taking children and banning their native tongue is a good one. It is all in China. A continuation of their policy to either stamp out or remove any non-Han group.
I know, but it is trying to do this in an internal subgroup that is most likely awash in Korean DVDs, songs, and books/manga. It's hard to eliminate an external cultural influence when your entire nation, much less just that subgroup, is tuned into that culture.
It's also important to understand that a lot of these cultures and languages that are coming back or at least hanging on right now are because governments stopped actively trying to destroy them. Or stopped trying so hard anyway. Or in some cases started doing the opposite. If various governments around the world wanted to continue to actively destroy a bunch of these cultures, they could.
Preserving a lot of these languages and cultures that are in trouble takes active work by the government.
Probably turn them into tourist attractions
Even if they 'officially' stamp out the Korean-speaking Chinese community, it's not like they are going to stamp out Korean culture and cultural influence in those regions of China. I mean short of extermination / driving out anyone who is non-Han Chinese. Which doesn't seem to be outside the realms of possibility.
And 200 years from now, I would expect that those unique cultures will either be fully destroyed and paved under, or the new nationalistic CCP-Han culture will insist any remnants are just part of their own cultural history and not whatever group that has been assimilated / exterminated. After all, that's what all the history books say and if you dispute that you probably need some (re)-education.
Time and migration are insidious when used with purpose, and that's typically how governments do this sort of thing.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
For sure, but not every part of the problem were as blatant. Plenty of local areas in the eastern US had schools closed that taught historical languages. And not just first-nation. French schools were commonly closed in Maine and elsewhere in New England to prevent French from being spoken by poor and migratory workers during the 1880s through 1920s.
That is a really good point I mean, how well would native American culture and languages survived if there was a fairly large enclave of native Americans just blasting movies and TV and video games and manga and whatever 24/7?
Kind of betting that less of the culture would have died off.
I guess they really want to go for all check marks of recent terrible actions to minority groups and are adding "slave labor picked cotton" to the list of things.
America uses slave labor to pick cotton, too. Because remember, slavery was only abolished except "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," a loophole that has been utilized ever since. Hell, we call them "prison plantations."
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Some things from the actual article outside of folks sniping:
-China produces about 1/5th of the world's cotton so this means if you buy a shirt you are rolling dice on the use of forced labor by Uighurs. Not new. We know they use similar systems for electronics which not a single large electronic company is clean of including apple.
-This is tied to the "re-education" camps/prisons that China is setting up to destroy systematically the Uighur cultures and languages. The very term Uighur is a simplification under a Stalinist designation of cultural groups and doesn't represent the actual variety of cultures in the region.
-This also ties straight into religious persecution in the region just focused on Islam so I feel it gets less attention in the US and the West.
Feel free to counter or try to make points but this isn't the thread for talking about the US prison system but instead a focus on East Asia and the actions occurring under the CCP which is a straight up authoritarian government that is very much working to eradicate minority groups whole sale and also runs things like the "social credit system" which can lead to people losing their entire lively hood over openly disagreeing with the party line.
I don't think anyone here is blind to the fact the US has screwed up shit, not for this thread.
Also I was being flippant but this wasn't even on my radar of things they were going to do with their heavily imprisoned Uighur population.
I'm not sure in what way it could possibly be relevant to the East Asia thread outside that context.