Delaney on Dodson Chapter 10

In chapter 10 of Dodson’s China Inside Out he explains how the Chinese seem to perceive themselves. What I get from reading the chapter is that they make themselves feel like victims and that they are far more superior to the rest of the world. They seem to play the victim because of the fact that “nearly a quarter of all national and local television programming in China is devoted to the wrongs perpetrated on the Chinese people by any,” (Dodson 204) number of groups of people, especially the Japanese. The reason that they are portrayed as feeling superior to the rest of the world is through their language. They believe it to be the “most cultivated,” (Dodson 206) because it is so difficult to learn. They also feel that just in general they are the “most culturally advanced civilization in the world” (Dodson 206). First of all I do not understand how one can even measure something such as cultural advancement. It just seems to be too abstract an idea. Second, they learn English as well as Chinese, yet we do not learn Chinese alongside English so to feel superior with that is just odd. Another thing that Chinese people have come to be very prideful of is their military. Even though they are second to us, they still feel as if they are just better overall. This chapter makes me question how many people actually feel this way. It seems as if Dodson is making claims based on a select group of individuals and is not posing an opposite view. One way he could make his research better is by adding numbers to back up his findings.