The sickle and hammer is a communist symbol. The Chinese are communists. I think he was trying to be metaphorical.

It was obviously a joke that referenced the hammer that Sun Yang's team used to destroy his vials of blood. It was actually a good topical joke, but the joke must have been picked up somewhere in China and been used to rile up the ever growing Chinese nationalist outrage. Chinese people (and robots) went full psycho.

Twitter is blocked in China and there is a popular alternative, yet suddenly there are thousand of replies in a couple hours to Bogut's Twitter posts? It's the equivalent of a DoS attack, flooding his Twitter with bizarre insults.

It didn't help that Sun Yang claimed that Horton disrespected China and that Bogut is also Australian, but I believe that Sun Yang's unfounded "disrespecting China" statement is a symptom of a rising Chinese mentality. There is a history of a collectivist mentality in mainland China, but now it is being harnessed like never before, especially as China becomes more powerful. It is a movement to combine anything Chinese -- whether that is the people, traditions, the CCP, or even foreign-born Chinese -- into a monolithic category, China. Combine this with the already mature nationalism movement, and it means that when one is challenged or insulted by a foreigner, it generates a widespread reaction as an insult to China as a whole. Don't like a Chinese athlete? You are anti-China. Don't like a CCP policy? You are anti-China.

Then you have the CCP employing people, nicknamed the 50 cent army, and their robots, to stir up support for China online and fight against any online anti-China sentiment.

This may be hard for some people to hear, especially among the most PC people here, but mainland Chinese culture has some very worrying features. You would see them as having a classic bully mentality. As their power grows, they feel entitled, rules don't apply to them, others are now below them, they have trouble managing emotions and aggression, they try to pressure and manipulate others to do what they want, they are unprincipled and selfish, and they abuse any power that they have. But this isn't a personality, it is a culture of the most populous country in the world.

Although I wouldn't be so concerned about all the death threats, because the Chinese online bullies are weak and pathetic individually, Bogut is still likely to receive a bad response from fans as a collective. Bogut could stop this, to some extent, with a grovelling apology, but I can't see that happening.

It's entertaining to read through, but to me it becomes disturbing. There are no Chinese that try to quell the most outrageous, vile and idiotic posts. There is no moderating influence. There is no Chinese-vs-Chinese debate within, it is all a one-way discussion. If the comment comes from a pro-China position, it is considered acceptable without contest, no matter how extreme it may be.

This backlash against Bogut is amusing now, but transpose this nationalist herd mentality into the realm of geopolitics and it becomes quite scary.

While I agree with you, rjd, based on the little I read in the newspapers, how is this very different from US sensitivity to criticism?

Isn't it amazingly coincidental that an Aussie swimmer has been busted for drugs so soon after the Horton protest? Does that sound like political influencing from the powerful Chinese association, or FINA showing a bit of sensitivity and backlash?

Could people say the same about mainland Australia? Lots of miserable country towns or shoddy suburban areas. We have lots of natural beauty, but so does China.

Don't disagree with RJD about the lack of moderating influence. The West has the same outrage culture though so similarities there.

(Haven’t been following any of these topics for weeks - posting from the desert in Utah.)

"how is this very different from US sensitivity to criticism?"

I thought I went through some differences already. The differences include:
- the collectivist mentality (compared with the more individualist mindset of US)
- scale of abuse
- extremity of threats
- no moderating influence from within the same group
- viciousness of language
- ability to understand jokes
- lack of ability to handle criticism of other people or the country without taking it personally
- lack of emotional control
- lack of diverse opinions on offer in the media
- less exposure to a diversity of opinions, generally
- stronger state-stimulated nationalism
- a broader category of tribalism


Mainland Chinese culture has a much stronger us-vs-them mentality. Within their own culture, it manifests as a family (+"useful" friends)-vs-non-family divide, which explains the lack of social cooperation, lack of compassion and care for strangers, greater acceptability to cheat outsiders, and perhaps the dog-eat-dog mentality to some extent. Meanwhile, they have stronger extended family bonds. So imagine this same mentality applied on a national level where the divide is between China and non-China.

^that was me

It annoys when people play the "we're all the same" card. We're not.
And yes, some are "better" than others.

I have worked extensively with and for the Chinese.
(Not people who look Chinese or happen to have Chinese ancestry, but the actual Chinese.)
The ideal that is drummed into their heads from birth, and that pervades their corporations and government from top to bottom, is firstly that "The Chinese Nation" comes first and foremost, and furthermore that it is China vs the world.
Their Xenophobia borders on hatred.
"We" may be far from perfect, but at least we collectively recognise that racism is wrong (even if many individuals fail to get the message.) For the Chinese, racism is mandatory.
And its not just the West they despise. They treat other Asians like dirt, and their hatred of the Japanese is pathological.
I've worked alongside some relatively westernised Chinese. (ie guys born, raised, and educated in China, but who have lived and worked extensively in the Western World.) Rather than being valued for their cross-cultural abilities, they are distrusted by the authorities and ostracised.
In the greatest of ironies, they send these guys to Australia, not because because they are well-suited, but as punishment.

PeterJohn, without taking a side on the issue, the report did state that the recommendation was for Sun Yang to comply and then lodge a protest if his team had an issue with the procedures. Sun Yang team's autonomous decision to destroy the vials, when the testers had reached out for advice from senior officials, was stated to be "foolish" in the report. You can pick and choose details to support both sides in the report. So, yes, the argument can be made that the vials are likely to have never been tested, but they clearly were extracted for the purposes of testing, so your claim of ignorance only comes from semantics.