debaitable tbh but lets just agree to dis agree on this
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This stems from emotional dependency. Unless you have actually lived here, you cannot truly understand it. In my personal view, the core factor is that Chinese, being an ideographic language, allows each character to convey an independent meaning or multiple meanings, with no strictly mandatory ordering between characters—meaning variations like "ABC," "ACB," or "CAB" could very well express the exact same concept or simply slightly different nuances. Furthermore, modifiers and particles are not structurally essential in Chinese; in fact, they are rarely used in spoken communication outside of formal contexts and are mostly confined to written text. Because the underlying structure of the Chinese language lacks fundamental logical transmission, the general population does not prioritize logic when speaking. (People like myself are rare, and due to the Great Firewall, 95% of those who can access the global internet are highly educated intellectuals.)
Returning to the issue you mentioned—precisely because their speech lacks logical structure, the phenomenon you described is what logic defines as the "Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy": painting the target around where the arrow has already landed.
They first establish a self-determined goal of being superior to others, and then, based on that goal, describe everything around them as if it exists solely to serve it. This trait is also widely discussed in various contexts as the Chinese "utilitarian spirit." Among highly educated domestic intellectuals, there is a dedicated term for this: the "Ah Q Spirit" (originating from a 20th-century literary work that satirizes a protagonist who, after being brutally beaten by a slave owner, consoles himself by fantasizing that the slave owner is actually his son, thereby restoring his good mood). This mindset manifests itself perfectly among the vast majority of Chinese people who have not received a systematic Western education—particularly the rigorous logical thinking training found in STEM fields.
Consequently, when it comes to nationalism, their approach is to claim whoever defeated "us" as part of "us." This results in a variety of schizophrenic official narratives.
For instance, when discussing the Manchu conquest of China, the Manchus are depicted as bloodthirsty, massacring northern savages who oppressed "us." Yet, when the late Manchu dynasty was defeated by Westerners, history textbooks suddenly lament and mourn "our" Manchu dynasty's inability to defeat outsiders, weeping over the Eight-Nation Alliance burning down the Manchu emperor's garden (the Old Summer Palace).—————— In this instance, the Manchus played the role of "physically conquering the Chinese."
Yet, upon seeing American atomic bombs dropped on Japan, they cheered wildly—as if they had built the bombs themselves, and as if they were the ones who had defeated the Japanese. —————— In this instance, the Americans played the role of "spiritually conquering the Chinese" (since the Chinese themselves could not achieve this).
------What is staggering is that these contradicting views are held by the exact same people, who genuinely see absolutely no flaw in this line of reasoning. If you point out this contradiction to them, they will brush it off by telling you that "the Manchu blood was diluted by the Han, so the Manchus became Han," or that "internal conflicts within China and external conflicts with foreigners are two entirely different matters.",“China was merely held back by three centuries of Manchu rule; otherwise, we would have possessed the atomic bomb before the Americans (the reality, however, is that the centuries of Manchu rule constituted the most powerful and enlightened era in Chinese history—a feudal dynasty characterized by the least corruption and the best living conditions for the common people).”---------They simply muddle through using this logic.
Moreover, all three points mentioned above are derived from official compulsory education textbooks—representing the historical perspective officially endorsed and promoted by the authorities.
However, history does present exceptions: the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians are the ones who truly beat the Chinese to a pulp, For the first time in history, China was made to feel a vast gap that it could not rationalize away.---------unlike the Japanese who ultimately lost (though they actually lost to the US and the USSR). As for other modern nations like India—since no large-scale military conflicts ever occurred—they are defaulted by the collective consciousness to be even more inferior.
---------Therefore, while the Chinese still maintain a narrative of being superior to the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians, deep down they actually acquiesce to their superiority—the acceptance of Western-invented skin color hierarchy being a prime example. This special exemption extends to everything the "American Dad" says or does; the collective adopts a cognitive workaround: "Americans may not be as inherently superior as the Chinese race, but the things Americans manufacture and the words they say are correct.
By the way, the Germanic people entered the category of "superior people" in the eyes of the Chinese merely as a "byproduct"—elevated due to their culture, the ubiquity of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, and their long-term wartime history and cultural homogeneity with the two aforementioned dominant nations. No other country or ethnic group enjoys this "special exemption." Consequently, in the eyes of the Chinese, all other nations are defaulted to the status of "inferior ethnic groups."
what you are describing now is based on logical equation diagrams—something vastly different from the way the average Chinese person thinks.
Finally, non-conformist groups who are fiercely independent and daring enough to resist—such as Muslims (Hui, Uyghur, etc.), the Yi people, and Tibetans—are perceived by the mainstream Chinese population as "ferocious" and are thus met with a form of "awed dread." The logic behind this is actually quite simple: the government fears them, yet the ordinary Han civilians fear the government. It functions, in essence, as a political food chain.
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You get beaten up at school, then the teacher scolds you for fighting, and when you go home, your parents beat you again. Both your teacher and your parents ask, 'Why did they hit you and not someone else?' and 'It takes two to make a quarrel.'
This is an experience shared by the vast majority of Chinese children during their upbringing. Naturally, most of them will never have an awakening, only to eventually turn around and become the exact same type of parents for the next generation.
Even in court, there was this infamous farce: an old hag fell on the street, and a kind-hearted person helped her up. She then sued the Good Samaritan, claiming he had knocked her down. The judge ruled against the helper and, via a nationally broadcast simultaneous video feed, questioned the defendant: 'If you didn't knock her down, why did you help her up?'
Take Buddhism as another example. Buddhism states that suffering in this life is meant to earn blessings in the next. At the same time, it claims that you are governed by the Alaya-vijnana (the storehouse consciousness), which carries all the karmic consequences of your current life and transmits them to your next reincarnation. Yet, in the end, Buddhism asserts that the next life retains absolutely no conscious memory of the past.
In other words, Buddhism is effectively arguing that your current suffering and spiritual cultivation are done solely to allow another entity in the next life—someone with whom you cannot share memories, and whom you do not know at all—to enjoy a beautiful existence.
The Indian philosopher Adi Shankara relied on exactly this type of straightforward refutation to completely dismantle Buddhism, forcing it to degenerate into a marginalized esoteric cult within its own homeland.
Yet, a doctrine so inherently absurd holds an absolute dominant position in China.
Other widely accepted truisms among most Chinese people include: 'Without the state, there is no family,' 'Suffering a loss is a blessing,' and 'As long as your stance is correct, facts don't matter.'
“among most Chinese people”=98%+
These are logical fallacies.
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I often found various issues with the Chinese language, unlike most Indian languages, it would take you years for someone to become competent in the Chinese. Chinese requires you to learn 2000-3000 characters for everyday literacy while most Indian languages are around 50 characters. Chinese characters often encode a meaning while Indian/European characters encode a sound, many Chinese characters consist of two or more characters where for example:
学生 = student
- 学 = study
- 生 = person/life
- 电话 = telephone
- 电 = electricity
- 话 = speech
- 电脑 = computer
- 电 = electricity
- 脑 = brain
Several letters combine like भा +र + त to form भारत which means Bharat aka India.
So even though Chinese characters can pack information much more densely, it also requires you to become much more competent in it and if you come across a new word you are unfamiliar with, you likely won't be able to pronounce it unlike Indian languages where you likely can pronounce it with high degree of accuracy for completely unfamiliar words or instances where you have to write spoken words you don't know how to write, in Chinese it would be difficult whereas in Indian languages it would be relatively easy, That's one of the fundamental design differences between a logographic writing system (Chinese) and abugida writing systems (such as Devanagari, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil).
This sounds like that canonical satire of Chinese spiritual victories called the Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q, self-delusion where losers reframe defeats as moral or clever wins. Ah Q gets beaten but imagines the bully as his son, restoring superiority. This "national weakness" (as Lu Xun called it) persists: rationalizing failures through narrative control rather than confronting root causes. That Texas Sharpshooter thing is exactly how a lot of it works: preset the conclusion ("we are superior/center of the universe"), then warp history, facts, and logic around it. No wonder contradictions don't register.
The Manchu flip-flopping is hilarious and sad at the same time. "Evil barbarian oppressors who massacred us... wait, that was our glorious dynasty getting phucked by foreigners, how dare they!" Then cheering American bombs on Japan like "we won spiritually." Peak cope. And yeah, the "blood diluted so now they're Han" or "internal vs external" deflections are classic muddling through. Official textbooks pushing this schizophrenic shit explains a lot about the national psyche.
The hierarchy part makes total sense. Anglo-Saxons and Russians actually beat the shit out of China in ways that couldn't be fully rationalized away, so deep down there's that grudging respect + skin color thing. Americans get the "Dad" exemption because their power and tech are undeniable. Germans via Mercedes and discipline. Japanese got humbled by Whites too. Everyone else? Default inferior until proven otherwise by force. India fits right in there, no big wars where we kicked China's bottom or vice versa recently, so in the collective mind we're just another bunch of chaotic browns who never industrialized properly. So until we give them the collective arsewhooping they deserve, they will have this mindset. Fair enough, honestly. No cope from my side.
What you're describing tracks with the utilitarian spirit, results and face over consistent principles. It works great for survival and rapid scaling, but it creates blind spots. Without that hardcore logical/STEM filter, it's easy to slide into self-serving narratives.
On the minority groups: yeah, the political food chain is real. Han fear the Party, Party fears the ones who won't bend (Uyghurs, Tibetans, etc.), so ordinary people develop that "awed dread" respect for the "ferocious" ones. Tribal but understandable.
Damn, this one hits even harder than the nationalism stuff. That school + parents double beating is such a perfect microcosm of the whole mindset. "Why you and not others?" + "It takes two to tango", straight-up victim blaming that trains kids to always question themselves first instead of the bully or the situation. No wonder so many grow up and become the same parents. Cycle never breaks for most.
That's insane, I thought the Japanese court system was pure garbage but this comes a close second if true. Judge basically saying "you helped, so you must be guilty" on national TV? That's not just one idiot judge, that's the culture leaking out. Helping someone becomes a liability because people assume bad intent or want easy compensation. Trust gets destroyed.
The main logical flaw in Buddhist philosophy (as critiqued by Adi Shankara) centers on the doctrine of anatman (no permanent self) combined with karma and rebirth. Buddhism teaches that there is no eternal soul, everything, including consciousness, is a stream of momentary, impermanent phenomena. However, this creates a serious problem: who or what exactly carries karma across lifetimes? If the you of this life is just a temporary bundle that completely ceases, and the next reincarnation has zero memory or continuity with the previous one, then you're essentially performing moral/spiritual labour (enduring suffering, practicing discipline) so that a total stranger in the future can enjoy better circumstances. There's no real personal continuity, it's like paying taxes so some unrelated person in the next century gets benefits. This makes the entire system of karma, rebirth, and spiritual cultivation incoherent and absurd from a logical standpoint.
Shankara and Advaita Vedanta fixed it by reintroducing a permanent, unchanging Atman (the true Self), which is identical with Brahman, the ultimate reality. This Atman acts as the eternal witness and carrier: it observes all the changing experiences, memories, and actions without itself changing. Karma affects the subtle body and ego in the cycle of samsara, but the real You (Atman) is beyond it. Liberation comes from realizing your identity with Brahman, ending the illusion of separate existence. This preserves personal continuity, moral accountability, and makes spiritual effort meaningful for the same conscious entity across time. Shankara used tight logic to show that even Buddhists implicitly rely on some stable awareness to talk about "streams" or "memory," exposing the hole in pure no-self + momentariness. Hinduism (via Advaita) thus offered a more coherent metaphysical framework: the world is relatively real (maya), but grounded in an absolute, conscious reality rather than emptiness or pure flux.
Nearly 2 decades or thereabouts since both these greats made their debut in the FIFA World Cup but our record is still intact .