I just read Roosh's article over on ROK. http://www.returnofkings.com/9387/when-east-meets-west
I generally tend to stay away from manosphere stuff, because it's mostly all mental masturbation and negativity. I know a friend who got hooked on that stuff, and he has some serious bitterness towards women (despite the fact that he gets laid, is alpha, and is completely ripped).
But this article was interesting. China is truly the most fascinating societal transformation story of the 20th and 21st centuries, if not of all of human history. Maybe it's because I'm Chinese, but I can't read enough about this stuff.
The essence of the article points to a few underlying themes in China:
1) Young Chinese people, especially in big cities, are already culturally acclimated to the western cocktail of sexual liberation, partying, feminism, and gender equality. I don't think this is anything new to Roosh V Forum members. It may not be as pronounced as the west in the aggregate, but I think a case can be made that at the extremes, it may discreetly surpass the west.
2) But running parallel to this is a society that is plagued with enormous disparity. It goes without saying that for all its economic growth and rapid development, China is still a middle-income country at best, with the majority of people still pretty damn poor. What's interesting about the economic disparity in China is that it fuels an aspirational culture. I was arguing with my dad, who came of age at the tail end of the cultural revolution, on how I don't think China will have another revolution. People are just too mesmerized by what they see at the top. You have kids literally selling their kidneys for iphones. People are going to be too distracted by the fantasy lifestyles they want to go up in arms.
3) In the background is a society governed by a more traditional older generation. The Chinese are pretty confucian, which makes them very pragmatic people. They aren't materialistic so much as they want the security that wealth brings. They are risk averse in that sense (though they often make financially stupid decisions, like thinking a house guarantees security, when a house in China is only like a 90 year right to use the property). Because of the one child policy and an inadequate pension system, Chinese parents invest all of their resources in their only child. This means forcing their kid to spend the first 18 years of their lives studying so they can get into a good college. It also means making them marry as soon as possible so that they can see the fruits of their economic labor vindicated through grandchildren. And it means trying to economically trade up when it comes to marriage, so you can have a greater financial support system in old age. Their pragmatism is beneficial in a sense though: Chinese parents want their daughters to marry as young as possible because they at the very least still grasp the notion of female mate value as it is inversely related to age. In China, I think at 27+ a woman becomes a "sheng xia nu", which means "leftover woman." The older generation isn't corrupted by feminism to forget this eternal biological truth (although contemporary culture is obviously trying to forget it - we have more and more movies and tv shows coming out touting how 30+ women can have both a career and mr. right).
#1 causes girls in this article to find the potential suitors (aka white collar betas) their parents find for them "boring." Roosh contrasts this with Ukraine, where no girl would complain of their men being boring. Chinese girls, in the big cities and already in most mid-sized cities, are hopped up on western cultural steroids. Hookup culture and sex is discreet, but incredibly rampant. Abortion is incredibly common (it was even common back in communist days).
#2 is what causes girls to look down on poorer men. It's what causes girls to have "sponsors" - significantly older men who buy them expensive gifts and nice dinners in exchange for sex. At the heart of the new aspirational wealth culture is not materialism, but prestige. I don't think Chinese girls necessarily want the material items themsevles - they want the prestige that comes with a chanel, gucci, audi, and apple so they can show off to their friends. Money in China is much more closely linked to power and has a more 1:1 conversion ratio into status. In China, to be super wealthy, you are either the offspring of government officials, the offspring of CEOs who made it big in the first economic liberalization wave, or an incredibly talented/lucky entrepreneur (like Jack Ma). Most of the wealthy in China are co-opted by the CCP or play significant behind the scenes roles in power. Government and the private sector are incredibly closely linked. Because bribery and corruption are common, money goes a lot farther in China than it does in the U.S. Money is power, money is prestige, and money is god in China.
#2 and #3 interacting together creates some interesting phenomena. First, it creates an entitlement complex among Chinese women. i'm of the belief that #3 - traditional conservative culture in non-westernized societies - tends to create a duality of social roles. The woman is considered the bearer of children, childrearer, and overseer of the house. The man is considered the main breadwinner - his role is to provide, but he is also head of the household. When #2 and #3 interact, it creates a noxious mentality in women and unbelievable pressures on men: any woman with options in China (and given the skewed gender ratio, that means many) will believe, due to #3, that the main job of her future husband is to provide. Thus, she feels it is his duty/responsibility to make a good living for her. This usually means a house and a car, at the very least. But when you add in #2, the stakes get raised to obscene levels - they demand, expect, and feel entitled to not just a "good living", but a significantly better living, with "significantly better" constantly pushed upwards by the aspirational trends and polarizing disparity. It's already incredibly difficult for the average man to buy a house and a car in China - #2 creates pressures to buy not just any house and not just any car. #2 and #3 together is the reason why my best friend, who is set to make 160k/yr as a big law lawyer and is graduating from an ivy league law school, still argues on a weekly basis with his girlfriend in China, who, as an 8 on the looks scale, feels he should be buying her haute couture on a weekly basis. He tries to reason with her that he can buy her these things once in a while, but he simply can't afford what she is demanding. She views it as her entitlement for being beautiful - that girls all around her get way more shit from their rich boyfriends, and that she is fending off suitors who are the sons of x,y,z, ie. she feels she is being cheated of her market value. I personally witnessed #2 and #3 in action myself. Every year, there are boatloads of Chinese girls who come to my school for a 1-year masters in law. I managed to make one of these my FB last semester. At the time, she seemed perfectly content with my almost zero effort - I would just call her to come over and we'd bang. I think I made dinner for her once, and we once went on a date to a museum for free. At the end of the semester, I kind of went AWOL on her because I had bounced to China for 3 weeks. I was too lazy to e-mail or skype with her. When i got back, she was practically livid: the entire time she thought we were in a relationship progressing towards something serious. I indicated to her that at no point did I ever behave like her bf or talk about our relationship status. And here was her response: "If I wanted a fuck buddy, it wouldn't be you. What value do you bring me? You don't buy me expensive dinners, you don't drive me around in nice cars, you don't buy me any gifts. If I were to be someone's fuck buddy, it would be with someone rich." She was bitter that she got played, and her response revealed her true ingrained beliefs.
#1 and #3 together creates what I think to be the deficiencies in Chinese men. I think the collective wisdom from this forum on Chinese men in China is that a majority fall into a continuum between supplicating beta and boring beta. Some - perhaps many - have a combination of both. #3 causes most Chinese men to not be taught how to socialize or understand their own sexuality. Their parents lived through some incredibly chaste times, and the government doesn't teach any sex ed, so they are largely left on their own to understand dating and sex. #3 already ingrains in their heads a beta provider mentality coupled with culturally conservative delusions regarding female chastity/virtue. So when pursuing women, Chinese men invariably fall back on the standard beta orbiter/provider game of "be nice to her, do nice things for her, buy her gifts, buy her dinner, carry her books, help her out whenever she needs you, etc etc." #1 seems to enhance this effect because of today's hollywood imports glorifies and romanticizes this kind of "nice guy" behavior. Once in a relationship or married, #3 causes these guys to be horribly bad lovers. Most are "boring betas." Because of a lack of socialization training, they are incredibly boring. They're pragmatic, so they spend a lot of time at work and think providing for their family is enough. They don't really talk to their wives, and when they do, their delusions regarding female sexuality and their lack of understanding of the female psyche cause the to be incredibly complacent. They believe that once they are in a marriage, the girl is "theirs" - so they end up usually bossing the girl around, telling her to cook and clean, being incredibly controlling of who she gets to talk to, and spending most of their time at night watching tv or playing video games. Granted, some Chinese guys will be tempered by #1, which causes them to be "supplicating betas". They're still boring and they still harbor the same delusions regarding women, but they are far more willing to accomodate women in the relationship and will basically take on the role of giant beta supplicating servant: they earn the money, but also cook and clean, while their gf/wife controls their social lives and checks their cell phones. Apparently in China, Shanghai men are reputed to be the "best" husbands because they fulfill this latter "supplicating beta" stereotype to a t.
After all of this, why would Roosh even conjecture that this is a poosy paradise?
Well, I think the consensus on this forum that the days of a white guy going to China and just landing in pussy are over. Too many english teachers have destroyed the novelty effect, especially in the big cities like Shanghai and Beijing.
But I think the tensions of 1, 2, and 3 create ample opportunities for guys with game to exploit. The caveat, I think, is that the guys heading over there should have reasonably decent jobs or be in reasonably good economic situations. I think it may be even better if you are ABC (American Born Chinese).
First, the competition is just complete weak sauce. There's no need for hardcore alpha game - being interesting, being charming, having the balls to approach, working out a little bit so you aren't skinny fat, and having decent frame control and an understanding of sexual dynamics already goes very far and will make you stand out. Even the super rich dudes who are carting girls around in their porsches are still, for the most part, kinda beta on the inside. These girls may be spreading their legs for money, but they probably don't have very fulfilling sex lives. You may not have the money to wife these girls (but why would you want to anyways?), but you can still bang them behind their bf's backs.
Second, if you like asian girls (and if you are an ABC), i think it's still a better place to get married than in America. First, you're still economically better off than most guys there. Second, you can still find many girls who aren't that corrupted by materialism. I certainly have met a few. It's such a large country that even a sizeable minority of marriage worthy Chinese girls is still greater than the entire marriage-worthy female population of America. And I still think, all else being equal, Chinese wife material still blows American wife material out of the water. Chinese girls are still more feminine, more caring, and less coarse than American girls. And I think they do know how to take care of you, or at least will try very hard, if you have enough game to control the frame and make them truly love you (which is not that hard). Moreover, I think you can make up for any economic deficiencies with game. I think once you meet certain economic targets, your game earns you greater returns in the marriage/girlfriend market. what strikes me as very interesting is that in China, the dating/sexual dynamics is full of extremes. There isn't a lot of balance between money and game. Most men are either poor, or have some economic means but are beta. It's rare to find the financially successful (but not necessarily extremely rich) guy who also has decent game. Guys who have can find a decent expat career in China and who have decent game can fill a really big void in the dating market.
Third, if you are ABC, there's also the prestige factor. There is a show that is massively popular in China called 非诚勿扰/If You Are the One. It's a dating show where guys go up in front of 24 girls and try to bring one home. Almost every ABC who has come onto the show has been successful. As far as i can remember, the only exception was one 25 year old beta self-proclaimed virgin (he confessed to having never even kissed a girl).
I generally tend to stay away from manosphere stuff, because it's mostly all mental masturbation and negativity. I know a friend who got hooked on that stuff, and he has some serious bitterness towards women (despite the fact that he gets laid, is alpha, and is completely ripped).
But this article was interesting. China is truly the most fascinating societal transformation story of the 20th and 21st centuries, if not of all of human history. Maybe it's because I'm Chinese, but I can't read enough about this stuff.
The essence of the article points to a few underlying themes in China:
1) Young Chinese people, especially in big cities, are already culturally acclimated to the western cocktail of sexual liberation, partying, feminism, and gender equality. I don't think this is anything new to Roosh V Forum members. It may not be as pronounced as the west in the aggregate, but I think a case can be made that at the extremes, it may discreetly surpass the west.
2) But running parallel to this is a society that is plagued with enormous disparity. It goes without saying that for all its economic growth and rapid development, China is still a middle-income country at best, with the majority of people still pretty damn poor. What's interesting about the economic disparity in China is that it fuels an aspirational culture. I was arguing with my dad, who came of age at the tail end of the cultural revolution, on how I don't think China will have another revolution. People are just too mesmerized by what they see at the top. You have kids literally selling their kidneys for iphones. People are going to be too distracted by the fantasy lifestyles they want to go up in arms.
3) In the background is a society governed by a more traditional older generation. The Chinese are pretty confucian, which makes them very pragmatic people. They aren't materialistic so much as they want the security that wealth brings. They are risk averse in that sense (though they often make financially stupid decisions, like thinking a house guarantees security, when a house in China is only like a 90 year right to use the property). Because of the one child policy and an inadequate pension system, Chinese parents invest all of their resources in their only child. This means forcing their kid to spend the first 18 years of their lives studying so they can get into a good college. It also means making them marry as soon as possible so that they can see the fruits of their economic labor vindicated through grandchildren. And it means trying to economically trade up when it comes to marriage, so you can have a greater financial support system in old age. Their pragmatism is beneficial in a sense though: Chinese parents want their daughters to marry as young as possible because they at the very least still grasp the notion of female mate value as it is inversely related to age. In China, I think at 27+ a woman becomes a "sheng xia nu", which means "leftover woman." The older generation isn't corrupted by feminism to forget this eternal biological truth (although contemporary culture is obviously trying to forget it - we have more and more movies and tv shows coming out touting how 30+ women can have both a career and mr. right).
#1 causes girls in this article to find the potential suitors (aka white collar betas) their parents find for them "boring." Roosh contrasts this with Ukraine, where no girl would complain of their men being boring. Chinese girls, in the big cities and already in most mid-sized cities, are hopped up on western cultural steroids. Hookup culture and sex is discreet, but incredibly rampant. Abortion is incredibly common (it was even common back in communist days).
#2 is what causes girls to look down on poorer men. It's what causes girls to have "sponsors" - significantly older men who buy them expensive gifts and nice dinners in exchange for sex. At the heart of the new aspirational wealth culture is not materialism, but prestige. I don't think Chinese girls necessarily want the material items themsevles - they want the prestige that comes with a chanel, gucci, audi, and apple so they can show off to their friends. Money in China is much more closely linked to power and has a more 1:1 conversion ratio into status. In China, to be super wealthy, you are either the offspring of government officials, the offspring of CEOs who made it big in the first economic liberalization wave, or an incredibly talented/lucky entrepreneur (like Jack Ma). Most of the wealthy in China are co-opted by the CCP or play significant behind the scenes roles in power. Government and the private sector are incredibly closely linked. Because bribery and corruption are common, money goes a lot farther in China than it does in the U.S. Money is power, money is prestige, and money is god in China.
#2 and #3 interacting together creates some interesting phenomena. First, it creates an entitlement complex among Chinese women. i'm of the belief that #3 - traditional conservative culture in non-westernized societies - tends to create a duality of social roles. The woman is considered the bearer of children, childrearer, and overseer of the house. The man is considered the main breadwinner - his role is to provide, but he is also head of the household. When #2 and #3 interact, it creates a noxious mentality in women and unbelievable pressures on men: any woman with options in China (and given the skewed gender ratio, that means many) will believe, due to #3, that the main job of her future husband is to provide. Thus, she feels it is his duty/responsibility to make a good living for her. This usually means a house and a car, at the very least. But when you add in #2, the stakes get raised to obscene levels - they demand, expect, and feel entitled to not just a "good living", but a significantly better living, with "significantly better" constantly pushed upwards by the aspirational trends and polarizing disparity. It's already incredibly difficult for the average man to buy a house and a car in China - #2 creates pressures to buy not just any house and not just any car. #2 and #3 together is the reason why my best friend, who is set to make 160k/yr as a big law lawyer and is graduating from an ivy league law school, still argues on a weekly basis with his girlfriend in China, who, as an 8 on the looks scale, feels he should be buying her haute couture on a weekly basis. He tries to reason with her that he can buy her these things once in a while, but he simply can't afford what she is demanding. She views it as her entitlement for being beautiful - that girls all around her get way more shit from their rich boyfriends, and that she is fending off suitors who are the sons of x,y,z, ie. she feels she is being cheated of her market value. I personally witnessed #2 and #3 in action myself. Every year, there are boatloads of Chinese girls who come to my school for a 1-year masters in law. I managed to make one of these my FB last semester. At the time, she seemed perfectly content with my almost zero effort - I would just call her to come over and we'd bang. I think I made dinner for her once, and we once went on a date to a museum for free. At the end of the semester, I kind of went AWOL on her because I had bounced to China for 3 weeks. I was too lazy to e-mail or skype with her. When i got back, she was practically livid: the entire time she thought we were in a relationship progressing towards something serious. I indicated to her that at no point did I ever behave like her bf or talk about our relationship status. And here was her response: "If I wanted a fuck buddy, it wouldn't be you. What value do you bring me? You don't buy me expensive dinners, you don't drive me around in nice cars, you don't buy me any gifts. If I were to be someone's fuck buddy, it would be with someone rich." She was bitter that she got played, and her response revealed her true ingrained beliefs.
#1 and #3 together creates what I think to be the deficiencies in Chinese men. I think the collective wisdom from this forum on Chinese men in China is that a majority fall into a continuum between supplicating beta and boring beta. Some - perhaps many - have a combination of both. #3 causes most Chinese men to not be taught how to socialize or understand their own sexuality. Their parents lived through some incredibly chaste times, and the government doesn't teach any sex ed, so they are largely left on their own to understand dating and sex. #3 already ingrains in their heads a beta provider mentality coupled with culturally conservative delusions regarding female chastity/virtue. So when pursuing women, Chinese men invariably fall back on the standard beta orbiter/provider game of "be nice to her, do nice things for her, buy her gifts, buy her dinner, carry her books, help her out whenever she needs you, etc etc." #1 seems to enhance this effect because of today's hollywood imports glorifies and romanticizes this kind of "nice guy" behavior. Once in a relationship or married, #3 causes these guys to be horribly bad lovers. Most are "boring betas." Because of a lack of socialization training, they are incredibly boring. They're pragmatic, so they spend a lot of time at work and think providing for their family is enough. They don't really talk to their wives, and when they do, their delusions regarding female sexuality and their lack of understanding of the female psyche cause the to be incredibly complacent. They believe that once they are in a marriage, the girl is "theirs" - so they end up usually bossing the girl around, telling her to cook and clean, being incredibly controlling of who she gets to talk to, and spending most of their time at night watching tv or playing video games. Granted, some Chinese guys will be tempered by #1, which causes them to be "supplicating betas". They're still boring and they still harbor the same delusions regarding women, but they are far more willing to accomodate women in the relationship and will basically take on the role of giant beta supplicating servant: they earn the money, but also cook and clean, while their gf/wife controls their social lives and checks their cell phones. Apparently in China, Shanghai men are reputed to be the "best" husbands because they fulfill this latter "supplicating beta" stereotype to a t.
After all of this, why would Roosh even conjecture that this is a poosy paradise?
Well, I think the consensus on this forum that the days of a white guy going to China and just landing in pussy are over. Too many english teachers have destroyed the novelty effect, especially in the big cities like Shanghai and Beijing.
But I think the tensions of 1, 2, and 3 create ample opportunities for guys with game to exploit. The caveat, I think, is that the guys heading over there should have reasonably decent jobs or be in reasonably good economic situations. I think it may be even better if you are ABC (American Born Chinese).
First, the competition is just complete weak sauce. There's no need for hardcore alpha game - being interesting, being charming, having the balls to approach, working out a little bit so you aren't skinny fat, and having decent frame control and an understanding of sexual dynamics already goes very far and will make you stand out. Even the super rich dudes who are carting girls around in their porsches are still, for the most part, kinda beta on the inside. These girls may be spreading their legs for money, but they probably don't have very fulfilling sex lives. You may not have the money to wife these girls (but why would you want to anyways?), but you can still bang them behind their bf's backs.
Second, if you like asian girls (and if you are an ABC), i think it's still a better place to get married than in America. First, you're still economically better off than most guys there. Second, you can still find many girls who aren't that corrupted by materialism. I certainly have met a few. It's such a large country that even a sizeable minority of marriage worthy Chinese girls is still greater than the entire marriage-worthy female population of America. And I still think, all else being equal, Chinese wife material still blows American wife material out of the water. Chinese girls are still more feminine, more caring, and less coarse than American girls. And I think they do know how to take care of you, or at least will try very hard, if you have enough game to control the frame and make them truly love you (which is not that hard). Moreover, I think you can make up for any economic deficiencies with game. I think once you meet certain economic targets, your game earns you greater returns in the marriage/girlfriend market. what strikes me as very interesting is that in China, the dating/sexual dynamics is full of extremes. There isn't a lot of balance between money and game. Most men are either poor, or have some economic means but are beta. It's rare to find the financially successful (but not necessarily extremely rich) guy who also has decent game. Guys who have can find a decent expat career in China and who have decent game can fill a really big void in the dating market.
Third, if you are ABC, there's also the prestige factor. There is a show that is massively popular in China called 非诚勿扰/If You Are the One. It's a dating show where guys go up in front of 24 girls and try to bring one home. Almost every ABC who has come onto the show has been successful. As far as i can remember, the only exception was one 25 year old beta self-proclaimed virgin (he confessed to having never even kissed a girl).
