I agree but i think you would be hard pressed to get a European to agree with you on that.  they all think America has no culture to speak of.

exactly, however there view of culture is alittle different.  or perhaps it is simply because they don't want to accept americans as equivillent to themselves.

Who names me mutt?

/me barks furiously

"Yes the US is the greatest and most powerful Western empire in the modern age, but that doesn't change the fact that it's your fault for losing your empires. Sometimes I get the idea that your Europeans hate us Americans more than China, and my feeling is "wtf, you want China to replace the US?" The hate is so unjustified. You should love us more, at least we are more civilized than China and are more culturally similar to you than they are."

What the bloody hell? How patronising and megalomanic is that statement? I wouldn't call america "the greatest", and I wouldn't call China "less civilized" (rather other-civilisized).
However, it's true that we are all westerners and that we are in a lot of aspects similar. The difference lies in different accents, but we do share the same foundation. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't critisize eachother, as good and well-founded critisizm is very usefull.
An example, we can all agree that we consider China a terrible place to work and to live (compared to our western countries), wich is a more profound disagreement than when Europeans disagree on certain policies in the US and the other way around.

For a better and more structured explanation, I'd like to refer to Peter Stearns' work

I agree with you Schniepel. Primal power is a remain of the 19th century history writing though, back in the days where the Nationstate was considered the ideal thing..

"the less confronting foreign policy of China"
If we go moral again, may I remind you they already have 1/5 of the pop in there own house alone? That itself is bad enough but I will not start to mention places like Tibet or African countries were they do the same as we Euros but then simply a little more excessive and open. I like the Chinese culture, hell I even speak mandarin and know characters, but don't tell me this about their gov.

@shniepel:
You mix up Americans, there gov, and their country. Bad generalizations this way.

WFS/Schiepel,

China is less civilized because of 1. most of the people still live in rural locations (though this is changing) and 2. they still follow a very legalistic policy (though not to the extent of the Qin or Sui dynasty).

And there's nothing wrong with criticism if it's constructive criticism. We Americans just get irritated with the kind of criticism that involves insults or moral criticism, especially when we sometimes do your dirty work for you.

"Also China is a 3rd world country."

Technically speaking, China is a 2nd world country.

"China is less civilized because of 1. most of the people still live in rural locations (though this is changing) and 2. they still follow a very legalistic policy (though not to the extent of the Qin or Sui dynasty)."

Being rural on its own is not a sign of inferiority per se. Large areas of the USA are entirely rural too, it says nothing about the status of the land, not even if the larger part lives in these rural parts
Your second argument could be culture-related and doesn't really point to inferiority per se.
Your arguments only show why you think China is inferior, it doesn't say anything about their civilization being inferior on its own.
Sounds very much like "orientalism" in the 19th and early 20th century...

"And there's nothing wrong with criticism if it's constructive criticism. We Americans just get irritated with the kind of criticism that involves insults or moral criticism, especially when we sometimes do your dirty work for you."

The old "we do your dirty work" argument. For all I know it's always the americans who want to get involved. And we're all entitled to some mockery, the other party does it all the time too.  I think it actually shows how close we are connected to eachother.. For example: the Belgian people insult the Dutch and the other way around constantly, and that's because they're so closely connected to eachother..

Oh, and Skoe, Australians/Kiwis are western as well

> Wild Flower Soul wrote:

>
Your second argument could be culture-related and doesn't really point to inferiority per se.

well, all ideas of what civilized means is culture-related...

> Wild Flower Soul wrote:

> "i think the only thing that makes China less civilized is the heavy amount of censorship the Chinese government uses."

The thing is that only we in the west are so attached to it, while others don't mind it at all It's again something of the west we project on other civilizations. It's not necessairily something that points to inferiority.

every idea of what points to inferiority is culturally based....

China is totally a "Third World" country, Mao Tse-tung invented the terminology

"First World' is the capitalist imperialist powers

"Second world" is the soviet bloc (sayanora suckers)

'Third World' is the former colonies come into their own independent political and economic system (led by: guess who)

Since Mao announced this paradigm in the early sixties when he broke with Moscow, two of those worlds don't seem to have done so well...hence the pejorative connotation to "Third World"

BTW avo when's the last time an inferior could project his values on you

> Oh, and Skoe, Australians/Kiwis are western as well

Australians/Kiwis are gods.