Chinese Submarine Reaches the Deepest Place On Earth (cnbc.com) 112
The Chinese submersible Fendouzhe just reached one of the deepest spots on the planet, reaching a dizzying (and dark) depth of 35,791 feet (10,909 meters), according to a state-run news agency. LiveScience reports: During a months-long expedition, Fendouzhe completed 13 dives into the Mariana Trench -- which boasts the deepest region on Earth -- in the western Pacific Ocean over the course of the mission, which began Oct. 10, according to China Daily. Eight of those dives exceeded 32,808 feet (10,000 m), and the crewed submersible reached its own record depth on Nov. 10 -- plunging to a depth exceeding the height of Mount Everest. The depth world record is still held by Victor Vescovo, a private equity investor who dived to 35,873 feet (10,934 m) on June 26 in his vessel Limiting Factor, according to Guinness World Records. The Fendouzhe's maximum depth reached by Fendouzhe (which means "Striver" in Chinese) exceeds film director James Cameron's solo 2012 dive to 35,787 feet (10,908 m) in the trench, and falls short of the 35,800 feet (10,912 m) attained by the Swiss-Italian-American vessel Trieste on Jan. 23, 1960.
China is doing well (Score:4, Funny)
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"Same place humans have been going for over fifty years."
Sure, but they are doing it without the help of Naz!s.
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We do understand you, but you don't know half of it. The real truth is that China is planting atomic bombs into the trench to blow Japan to the Moon!
The Moon, the deepest trenches (Score:2)
They both seem to be places where you spend a lot of effort reaching them but once you're there you wander about aimlessly for a brief while and then just pack up your bags and leave again.
It's the journey , not the destination.
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It's not the journey. In this case it's a stupid superpower "me too" contest.
Going to the moon in 1969 was also a pissing contest. It was stupidly expensive, but at least it wasn't pointless from a scientific point of view. The Chinese endeavors are only stupidly expensive pissing contests with no scientific value.
Re:The Moon, the deepest trenches (Score:4, Informative)
No, it is the journey.
You cannot get to the deepest points without science and to get there successfully is an affirmation of science. The value of science comes from its application.
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That is "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way" level storytelling.
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No you're confusing that with meeting intersting people and killing them :)
Re:The Moon, the deepest trenches (Score:5, Interesting)
As the other poster says, it's the science but more importantly it's the engineering. If you can go to the far side of the moon and work then you can go anywhere in the solar system. If you can plumb the Challenger Deep then you can go anywhere in the ocean. These two examples are not "pissing contests" in the way the US/Soviet competitions were, crash programs to demonstrate some imaginary superiority. They're engineering projects developed over the last couple of decades, to the point where the Chinese are now confident in their ability to demonstrate to the Third World that they're a modern nation worth partnering with for the future.
I'd disagree that Apollo was "stupidly expensive" compared to anything the military does. Adjusted for inflation the entire program from initiation to the return of Apollo 17 cost $283 billion. The Pentagram has officially spent $778 billion in Afghanistan alone (not inflation adjusted nor counting other expenses of the intel agencies or State Department). At its peak NASA was receiving 4.5% of the US budget, less than 10% of the average Pentagon share in the last half century.
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If you can plumb the Challenger Deep then you can go anywhere in the ocean. These two examples are not "pissing contests" in the way the US/Soviet competitions were, crash programs to demonstrate some imaginary superiority.
If you can go anywhere in local space, you can drop munitions anywhere on Earth. The US/Soviet "pissing contests" were about military superiority, not just for fun. They were, in short, a chapter of the cold war.
Re:The Moon, the deepest trenches (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you're younger than I am, but I really don't remember it that way and most of the people involved in the project didn't either. In reality once the Gemini booster was to the point where it didn't explode more than a quarter of the time the military aspect of the Space Race was over. Even a Saturn I would have been useless as a weapon, needing a special building to construct it, a special transporter to move it to the custom-built launch pad, days to fuel it and months to put it together. Any of several thousand parts could have been sabotaged and caused a launch failure. Sure, the Pentagram likes to take credit for all sorts of things like inventing the Internet, constructing the Interstate Highway System and putting men on the moon, but they're every bit as full of crap in that last claim as they were in the others. The Pentegram's contribution to the space program has consisted mostly in fucking up the Space Shuttle and forcing NASA to fund most of their R&D.
I'm reminded of Sergei Korolev, who told a Kremlin general wanting to siphon away resources from the Soviet space program, "Our project is much more important than your bombs." Sure, each side celebrated when they were the first to reach a particular milestone, but the engineers, technicians, scientists and astronauts involved would have been overjoyed to be able to pool their resources and knowledge with their counterparts on the other side of the world.
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This is only true if you believe that the only military use of space is ICBMs and weapons - larger boosters with better reliability were a game changer for orbital observation systems, they allowed spy satellites to become both larger, better equipped and as a result more expensive as because you could rely on the booster to work, you could use the latest tech without fear that you had a decent chance of throwing $4billion down the drain minutes into launch...
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An Atlas booster was adequate to launch pretty much anything they wanted on orbit until at least the Eye In The Sky satellites in the late '70s, and Atlas was man-rated by 1962 when it carried John Glenn to orbit.
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Maybe you're younger than I am, but I really don't remember it that way and most of the people involved in the project didn't either.
That doesn't reflect on why there was funding for those projects in the least.
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So do I understand that if China wants to build an airplane they're expected to re-invent the airfoil and the internal combustion engine?
**OF COURSE** they are using technology developed in other countries, so is Space X and no one is whining that Musk "stole" the tech to do it. This hypocrisy on the part of people who should know better never fails to annoy the crap out of me.
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Did Space X reinvent the wheel? No, of course not, they built on the work of NASA, Roscosmos, and all their predecessors going back to the original Chinese gunpowder rockets used to panic Manchurian cavalry. Expecting China to ignore the work of Goddard, Von Braun, Korolev, etc. and start their effort from scratch is absurd and a hoop that no one expects any other space agency to jump through. When the Arduino was put on the market everyone was excited, no one said, "They stole the technology from Intel/
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Pissing contests are what give meaning to life :)
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no they are not stupid pissing contests; even if they are rehashing US achievements from 40-50 years ago.
China is trying to build up their own capabilities without relying on other countries.
Developing the expertise to do a lunar landing and bring materials back to earth is a huge accomplishment; and that expertise would be useful for mars exploration or beyond. What's embarrassing is that for quite some time US lacked a launch vehicle, and had to rely on Russia. China is wisely avoiding that fate.
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And, more importantly, things that other people can't eat, 'cos they haven't been there.
The Empire Is In Decline (Score:5, Interesting)
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No idea. There seemed to be this assumption that seems to have started after World War 2. If weed isn't legal in your country or you have banking regulations you'd rather not, it's probably because of the USA. If your country has oil and some cunt's in power, it's probably because of the USA (Saddam was our guy [wikimedia.org] before he wasn't our guy anymore.) Most of us were completely unaware that such shenanigans were going on in the world. Most of us are like most
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Seems to me that world leadership was pretty much offered to the US in the second half of WWI. Despite the general ineffectiveness of US armies until the very end, Wilson became first among equals in negotiations. The Germans called for an armistice based on Wilson's Fourteen Points (seems to me they should have read them before doing that, but I'm not a diplomat).
After that, the US effectively withdrew from world leadership, and for at least some of the interwar period took a really annoying moralisti
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For all its warts, I’d still much rather the USA who has a judeo Christian foundation which ultimately limits the sociopaths in power.
China has no such limiter, so will happily do whatever it takes in the name of the party, as has every communist regime before it.
Re:The Empire Is In Decline (Score:4, Interesting)
We've been taking our technical expertise for granted for decades while also under-funding the educational system required to maintain it.
Only half, maybe a bit less, of our technical expertise has been due to our educational system. The rest has been achieved by aggressively brain-draining the rest of the world, i.e. immigration. Of course, we've been doing a bang-up job of stifling that lately as well.
Say hello to your robot overlords and underlords? (Score:2)
That's Chinese robot overlords and underlords to you.
And I'm not even going to mention "He whose name need not be mentioned."
Calibration Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Way back in 2011, a US vessel used a multi-beam echo-sounder to perform an extremely accurate depth map of the trench (see here [bbc.com]), so if you could plot your [submersible] location with good accuracy - and if the submersible was equipped with accurate echolocation sensors facing down, it might be possible to calculate by subtraction.
Given the extreme depths, I don't think you could rely on pressure, because that will be a function of water density, which in turn is a function of water temperature, which will be variable over time [possibly seasonally, possibly influenced by ocean warming, etc.].
Just seems like a really neat technical challenge to solve...
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Given the extreme depths, I don't think you could rely on pressure, because that will be a function of water density, which in turn is a function of water temperature, which will be variable over time
I'm genuinely curious, does anyone know if there is any significant seasonal change in pressure at those depths due to temperature? I can't imagine that there is a seasonal temperature change in the ocean past a couple hundred feet. Even at 1000 feet, is it enogh to to make the difference more than a couple inches once you get to 35K feet? It does make me wonder what the effect is between the original dive vs. today since the average temperature of the ocean has increased since then.
This. (Score:5, Interesting)
The claimed difference between the world depth record, 35,873 feet (10,934 m), and the Chinese mark, 35,791 feet (10,909 meters), is 82 feet (25 meters), or 82 / 35873 = 0.0023 (0.23%) of the measurement. Measuring depth in the open ocean to such precision is easy; measuring depth in the open ocean to such accuracy is a lot more difficult. Making relative comparisons between two measurements, done independently at different times by different people with different equipment, and at slightly different places in the ocean, turns the exercise into a game of probability, i.e., the only answerable technical question one may ask is, "What is the likelihood that the Chinese mark [differs from / is greater than / is less than] the world depth record?"
This is, of course, separate from the questions, "Where is the deepest spot in the ocean?" and "How deep is it?", questions that have answers that vary over time, as explorers survey with improved equipment. When I was young, Mount Everest was stated to be 29,000 feet high (subtracting the 2 feet added by Andrew Waugh [wikipedia.org]); this number has varied since from 29,028 to 29,035 to the number currently accepted by many today, 29,029 feet (8848 m). The absolute number, of course, is dependent on the definition of "sea level" which, also of course, depends on the geoid [wikipedia.org] one uses in one's definition.
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I mean it's just like all kinds of world records where things differ by some tiny amount. Did that runner really run faster or did he just have a 0.567 KPH wind at his back or was the track sloping 0.128 degrees downward more than the track of the previous record? And if we ran the same exact race tomorrow would we end up with entirely different results?
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Not to mention that the quality of the track, the design of the shoes, the timing methods, etc. have changed so much over time that it's difficult to compare, say, Jesse Owens' performance in 1936 to that of, say, Usain Bolt's performance in 2009.
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Measuring depth in the open ocean to such precision is easy; measuring depth in the open ocean to such accuracy is a lot more difficult.
Really? I don't see why. Unlike atmosphere, water has extremely consistent density, especially if you factor in temperatures, which should make barometric depth readings highly precise and accurate, both. Even if you ignore temperature, the density difference between, say, 60F and 32F is only 8 parts in 10000. But there's no reason to ignore the temperature differences when you actually have to pass through all of the temperature gradients (twice!) and can measure and log them.
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Measuring depth in the open ocean to such precision is easy; measuring depth in the open ocean to such accuracy is a lot more difficult.
Really? I don't see why.
See, for example, this article [ric.edu]. Water may have "extremely consistent density," for suitable definitions of "extremely consistent," but seawater does not, due to its varying salinity (which affects its density due to the mass of the salt). In addition, one must account for the themocline (a region in which the temperature changes rapidly with depth), the halocline (a region in which the salinity changes rapidly with depth), and the pycnocline (a region in which the density changes rapidly with depth), all
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The explanation is appreciated. The snark not so much.
Please accept my apology. It was late, I was tired, but really, I have no excuse.
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Most depth measurements are done via pressure, and if you want to be accurate you need to take a salinity and temperature profile while descending and integrate over the calculated density. If you are measuring via sonar those same profiles are just as important as the speed of sound is proportional to density.
I also wouldn't be surprised if some navigational aids (sonar or laser reflectors) have been placed down there to help map the trench.
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If we were measuring down a few hundred or even a few thousand metres, of course these variables would have negligible impact and we could li
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Sonar uses sound waves, and the speed of sound varies dramatically depending on salinity and temperature--which is why submarines can use knowledge of salinity and temperature gradients to hide from surface ships' sonar. There are limits to where they can hide, of course, but it illustrates the point that sonar can't be relied on to give accurate depths.
Otoh, below a certain depth there's very little variation; so precision, in the sense of repeatable measurements, is not that difficult, assuming you can c
Boasting rights (Score:2)
They are starting to split hairs just for boasting rights. Trying to find a spot a few feet deeper to say they were the deepest. Before long they'll be digging into the sediment to be a few feet deeper than the previous record holder.
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No, that's just them getting more sand to keep the Paracel islands above sea level so they can install air strips and SAM launchers.
Knowing it is possible is half the battle. (Score:2)
Fuck China (Score:1, Informative)
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China puts Christians into labor camps just for being Christians, and then to really cap off the irony has them make Christmas lights. If there's a minority group, China will shit on it.
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Re: Fuck China (Score:2)
A group can be oppressed in one place, and oppressor in another.
I am all in favor of educating religion into nonexistence, not stamping it out with an iron heel.
I am the same person I have always been, but some of my views have shifted over time.
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Maybe soon, we will see the other Chinese trolls (Barefoot, Caffinated Bacon, AmiMoJo, etc) will finally start telling the truth WRT China.
Re: Fuck China (Score:2)
Eat a dick, you lamebrained troll.
Now do you believe it is me? Dickweasel.
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Has DNS and Bind been taken ver by Chinese trolls. What a sad day for /.
Contradiction (Score:3)
Title: Chinese Submarine Reaches the Deepest Place On Earth
Text: The depth world record is still held by Victor Vescovo
Me: ???
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Slashdot has fallen for the China Propaganda machine. It's like boasting that you reached the top of a mountain, but do not mention that when you got there everyone else was there to greet you.
You obviously haven't read the article because it clearly points out the current record holder. So you fell for a headline and your own dumb assumptions?
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Heck, in defiance of /. tradition, the summary notes the current record holder and gets it right.
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Or maybe we should just ignore this and only accept American Exceptionalism as the only reality.
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What they mean is that the trench is the deepest place on Earth a submarine can reach. This trench in itself isn't flat but it has high and low points. So it is accurate to say "deepest place" and not a contradiction. Note that they didn't write "deepest point" but only "deepest place".
But to tell you a secret, the deepest place on Earth is not an ocean trench, but it is in fact the Earth's core. So go ahead and say it ... IMPOSSIBRU!!!
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You realise I can go to the most hipster nightclub in town and yet not stand as close to the bar as some other guy right? The Chinese went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, that isn't a single point on this planet. It's a place.
Everyone Is Diving To The Same Depth (Score:3)
The depth world record is still held by Victor Vescovo, a private equity investor who dived to 35,873 feet (10,934 m) on June 26 in his vessel Limiting Factor, according to Guinness World Records
For some time Guinness records have been for sale. Usually it is to create a category for the paid record stunt, err "attempt".
The falseness of Veccovo's "record" is that there is only one "deepest place", and it is a smallish flat area at the bottom of the trench where every one who does a deepest dive goes to. Looking at the coordinates of various dives show this. You only get different depth records by having different levels of precision in measuring dive depth. Perhaps Vescovo has the most accurate depth, in which case everyone dived to this same depth. Or his depth measurement is less accurate and he is getting credit for measurement error.
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As you point out, gauges can be off, but even different weather above the ocean, or even different temperatures in the ocean, can change the pressure. Hell, I have to wonder how the melting glaciers on Antarctica and Greenland has changed this from even 60 years ago.
Reaches the Deepest Place On Earth... (Score:2)
...and proceeds to try and pull the plug at the bottom of the ocean so China can claim the newly dry land as part of the Chinese Empire.
Nook (Score:3)
So are they bottoming out and just searching for a little nook here or there for 10 more meters? Or is there a whole lotta mo' to go? Why is everyone stuck near the same level?
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If the former, this is no longer a pressure technology issue for submersible bragging rights but rather a search issue.
good grief. (Score:2)
ALL of these should be regarded as equal.
Oh Dear (Score:1)
So not the deepest depth after all.
So why the misleading title?
This is a new low, even for China (Score:1)
Thanks, I'll be here all night.
Hw deep can it dive? (Score:2)
All the way to the bottom. Once.
1960s record? (Score:2)
How have we not surpassed the record from 1960? I assume the pressure at those depths is a big limiting factor, right? We haven't advanced with materials and engineering enough since the 60s to break that record? That surprises me, given the many technological advancements since then. We've built space stations that people can live in for extended periods, for example.
Re:1960s record? (Score:4, Informative)
How have we not surpassed the record from 1960?
Same reason no one has climbed a mountain higher than Everest.
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Yeah but couldn't they have taken a shovel?
Re:Riiiight. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Riiiight. (Score:1)
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Racist responses are an indication of a problem though.
Racism.
Why do people have a connotation of Chinese = stealing?
Bigotry.
It is certainly not fair to everyone of Chinese descent, but
Excuses.
Re: Riiiight. (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Chinese culture believes in supporting your community and social network above your own self. There is a term, called "guan xi" (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/guanxi.asp), which is considered highly morally ethical in China. An example of this is say your friend or cousin works at a company and is failing to meet a sales quota, you would steer purchases from your company to that person to help him meet his quota, even if his company delivers a more expensive or sub-standard product. In return, he should give you a gift thanking you for his business success and prosperity. In Chinese culture, this is considered morally sound as you are supporting your network, but in Western culture this is considered bribery and highly unethical. Guan xi covers many situations in how to operate in business and makes Chinese people do things that as Westerners we would think are morally repugnant, and the Chinese get highly offended when their offerings are not accepted or they are stopped from performing guan xi by a Western boss. It's a complex issue, and a highly important aspect of business culture to understand for Westerners who do business there.
2) Chinese have a vastly longer view of history than Westerners, particularly Americans. Americans think something is old if it's 30 or 40 years old; Chinese grow up around structures that are thousands of years old. So yes, Chinese do "appropriate" technology, and have little respect for Westerner's perceived rights to technology Westerners developed, and in some ways look like they're stealing it. When you look at the Western-China relationship over the last 40 years, that is a true statement.
Chinese don't look at the last 40 years; they look at the last 2,000 years. And over that period, up until about 1800, China, not the West, was the largest economic power in the world; it's estimated that in the 1400's China was over 50% of global GDP. China developed many things that Westerners appropriated, like paper, gunpowder, movable type, etc. From the Chinese perspective, the West built it's global dominance through highly unethical means; growing opium in India and Afghanistan and selling it to Chinese markets, and when the Chinese tried to restrict it, they used gunpowder weapons (irony, right?) to force the Chinese governments to let them keep making money adn selling drugs. The Chinese view is that the West stole China's natural place as the economic and technological leader of the world. As a side note, arguably China's stagnation comes not from their fault, as the ruling dynasty during this period was not ethnically Han Chinese, it was Manchurian, so there's a lot of complex issues wrapped up in China's fall from it's place of global power.
So in the short, last few decades view of the West, China is appropriating technology from the West. In the long, many centuries view of China, China is simply doing what the West did to it and bringing China back to it's natural place as the global economic and technological leader.
The racist responses are sourced from lacking the perspective as to why China does what it does. I don't think many people are actually racist; there are a few for sure, but most racism is just a lazy way of explaining what is a complex issue requiring effort and empathy to understand. When you read the history of China and work with the people there, you start seeing the layers of complexity and the weight of history and culture that affects everything Chinese do, and is really fascinating in many ways, but it's very different from the experience of most Westerners.
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2) Chinese have a vastly longer view of history than Westerners, particularly Americans. Americans think something is old if it's 30 or 40 years old; Chinese grow up around structures that are thousands of years old. ...
Chinese don't look at the last 40 years; they look at the last 2,000 years.
For the Chinese living on Taiwan I would agree, however the culture of mainland China now only goes back to the Great Leap Forward when they systematically destroyed their old culture and they continue to do so. Is what happened at Tienanmen Square in 1989 part of their culture or not? At this point I would say not.
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I told myself the first comment I saw in this article would be some ignorant twat with his racist shit.
As a statement without context it's not racist, it's nationalist, since he didn't say it was because they were genetically inferior. But it's neither to point out that the Chinese as a nation lie about accomplishments as a matter of course. Citations are legion; I will find some for you if you insist, but I will accompany them with a snarky comment about wiping your ass for you like a baby.
Is it really so hard to celebrate scientific discovery regardless of who did it.
They are not even claiming any scientific discovery. They are doing something several others have done before. Where is
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Not necessarily, although the two are often combined.
The US of A is a nation of immigrants. You can be nationalistic about it without being racist at all, or you can be wildly racist. But you can always be wildly racist.
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You can criticize a country and its people without it being about race. Hating America and its culture doesn't mean you hate white people.
Re:Riiiight. (Score:5, Insightful)
Try living in China for a little while. It won't take long to reset your hipster reality meter.
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Maybe you're the one who should actually live in China for a little while, and you'll realize how your western media and politicians have distorted the reality of China.
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Of the countries on Earth, China has arguably done the best job with COVID-19. The CCP (in Wuhan) built multiple hospitals in record time, whereas the US president say "it will go away", "it's under control" and already quarter of a million died. Who
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Just one more person to add to the list of "people who haven't a fucking clue"
That depends on what you're measuring. In terms of lies of significance China is an absolute king. In terms of lies per day (or per hour since the recent present has set a bar that requires a bit more resolution) the USA absolutely has the Chinese government beat.