Why don't I ever write about China?
I was wondering why I have so little to say about Chinese current events, so I watched this newscast of the excellent Chinese Olympic team applauding supreme comrade Xi for two minutes straight.
Shouldn’t the politburo (or whatever it’s called) be applauding China’s Olympic heroes?
And then it dawned on me: Xi’s China is really boring.
Of course, China could get really interesting at any moment over, say, Taiwan.
But, may we all continue to live in uninteresting times.
As a non-American I try to watch the State of the Union address occasionally and I switch off because the clapping and choreography really grates. Looks a bit like the above TBH.
China is fascinating. It’s gone from mass poverty to producing cutting-edge products in less than two generations.
But as you implied its politics is all behind closed door and it provides very little of cultural interest. I think this will change when China becomes another high-income East Asian country. Japan does have cultural exports (manga, Pokémon, video games) that are very popular even if ignored by elite cultural critics in the West. Likewise for Korea with boy bands.
Chinese people are 100x more interested in China than they are in every other country combined. It's not that China is boring; it's that you don't understand it. Fair enough: why would you?