You have more faith than me.
I find the country's attitude towards this the most troubling aspect.
America is going backwards. We're regressing. We're getting worse. I hope we pull a Canada and realize out mistakes, but I'm not so sure anymore. This really bothers me, that people don't seem to care that our government wants to take us back to a more unequal, shittier time, and that so many Americans are okay with it.
I hate all of it. China gets maligned so much, but I think a lot of it stems from racism (not in that the acts aren't as bad as they seem, but rather people pretend to care more than they do about it and act more indignant when it's really a front for their bigotry), so it's always grating when people (especially Americans) keep parroting this EVIL YELLOW PERIL shit while not seeing to see that China is getting better and America is getting worse.
Oh well. We'll see how this plays out.
Do you really believe this? What leads you to this conclusion? We're a world leader, sure, but I'm not getting where this "insanely far ahead" sentiment is coming from.
I'm sure that some people do have that as their motivation, but I honestly don't think it's a major part of it. China is a superpower that has a very different view of the world, and that makes many people nervous. China creating incidents to push the issue such as the spy plane prisoners and grabbing the underwater drone don't help, nor does China's highly unusual claim of a huge swath of the ocean.
If most negative views about China were based on racism they'd likely have similar views about South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other countries, but American views on each are quite different from the views regarding North Korea and (to a lesser extent) mainland China. In my experience most Americans dislike China based on the government's policies, not the race of those living there. I'm one of the first in this thread that labelled China as "evil" (I likely would not have if I had known it would cause such a derail). I think Trump is evil as well. My disgust with the government of China does not extend to the people of China. In fact the people from China I met while living in Japan were mostly quite wonderful and most were not a fan of their own government.
I agree that the government of China is getting better, but it still has a long way to go. Suppression of information is a big deal to me, and I don't think I'll have much respect for any government that puts so much effort or resources into keeping its citizenry from accessing information.
I think most Americans do fear that the US is regressing due to the election. I'm hopeful that the press, citizenry, and more moderate members of congress/the supreme court can help minimize the damage until we get someone qualified into the presidency again, but I'm not holding my breath. The fact that the people elected Trump is even worse than Trump himself, but I take solace in knowing that it was an electoral college fluke and not a popular wave as well as knowing that younger voters were overwhelmingly anti-Trump.