They use "harmony" the same way we use "freedom": as propaganda for control and imperialism.
How do you sell violence to the populace? For collectivist countries, it's "they are unlike us, we will show them our ways." For individualist countries, it's "we are unlike them, we will show them our ways." It doesn't really matter what noble buzzword you attach to your violent ideology, in the end you have a hierarchical society predicated upon the exploitation of the less powerful.
In describing what I perceive their objectives to be, it does not in any way mean I condone their actions. Only that I desire to understand a great power that is more than likely going to become a great enemy someday soon, unless we can somehow find common ground with their common people and rebel against the violent, coercive elitism in both cultures.
The average person anywhere isn't really all that different, in my personal experience. But their supposed values, most of which go unexamined their whole lives, are largely shaped by the cultural environment they grew up in. More often than not they just toe the line of whatever hero their parents or friends happened to worship, typically some asshole elite. That's as true in China as it is in the USA. That's not a defense of Chinese oppression, it's a recognition of human folly in the aggregate.
For what it's worth, we incarcerate more people than the Chinese, even though they have 4x the population. For every Xinjiang they have we have a Gitmo, for every Tibet we have Afghanistan and Iraq. There are no innocent superpowers; all are evil and got there by doing great evil in the not-so-distant past.
How do you sell violence to the populace? For collectivist countries, it's "they are unlike us, we will show them our ways." For individualist countries, it's "we are unlike them, we will show them our ways." It doesn't really matter what noble buzzword you attach to your violent ideology, in the end you have a hierarchical society predicated upon the exploitation of the less powerful.
In describing what I perceive their objectives to be, it does not in any way mean I condone their actions. Only that I desire to understand a great power that is more than likely going to become a great enemy someday soon, unless we can somehow find common ground with their common people and rebel against the violent, coercive elitism in both cultures.
The average person anywhere isn't really all that different, in my personal experience. But their supposed values, most of which go unexamined their whole lives, are largely shaped by the cultural environment they grew up in. More often than not they just toe the line of whatever hero their parents or friends happened to worship, typically some asshole elite. That's as true in China as it is in the USA. That's not a defense of Chinese oppression, it's a recognition of human folly in the aggregate.
For what it's worth, we incarcerate more people than the Chinese, even though they have 4x the population. For every Xinjiang they have we have a Gitmo, for every Tibet we have Afghanistan and Iraq. There are no innocent superpowers; all are evil and got there by doing great evil in the not-so-distant past.