Chinese word of the day

 

The only Chinese word you will need to fight the culture war

Chinese netizens have a slang word to describe what we here in the West would call social-justice warriors, libtards, and limousine liberals. The term is baizuo, which translates as “white left.” According to Chinese writer Chenchen Zhang, the word unpacks in exactly the same way as a white Western dissident would understand his enemy.

According to Zhang, and although the emphasis varies, “baizuo” is used generally to describe those who “only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment” and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”. They are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”. They are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”. They believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”. They are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”.

Zhang says that the first Western figure to be smeared as a baizuo was the childless Angela Merkel. He says a companion term to baizuo is shengmu—which translates as “holy mother” and refers to people who “have too much empathy.” The best Western synonym for shengmu would be “special snowflake.”

This may offer a clue as to why China is gearing up to defeat the West culturally rather than militarily.