The “ethnocentric” in the title is coded language¹. It was triggered by a paper² I just stumbled over but is the product of by now over two decades of observation (and, to be fair, festering resentment).
I bring attention to a key phrase in the conclusion of this otherwise meandering and unclear paper:
Thus, we suggest that policymakers in China consider emphasizing more on the reciprocity benefits and build a collaborative effort across the scientific community.
What. A. Coincidence.
A study published in the (western) journal³ Humanities and Social Sciences Communications comes to the conclusion that the Chinese government needs to emphasize the benefits of open data sharing.
Yet the very same culture that preaches loudly “open data sharing” and other such nigh-utopian ideals, in a stunning example of “do what I say, not what I do” also practices the precise opposite. For example the Chinese are specifically barred from cooperation in space ventures⁴ with anything that NASA is affiliated with (which is, essentially, all space ventures and most such conferences).
This is not, however, just the USA and just China. Canada (my nation of citizenship), for example, routinely issues thundering condemnation of any nation that treats indigenous peoples badly (unless that nation is aligned with Canada, in which case Japan’s treatment of the Ainu and Taiwan’s treatment of their assorted indigenous groups gets passed over with an embarrassed cough) while it treats its own indigenous peoples in ways that are positively shocking even to this day, despite the facade of rapprochement. (Keep in mind that the last of Canada’s horrific residential schools was closed in 1997—I was 31 years old at the time!—and that in Canada being a native means you are not a “visible minority”, a term fraught with its own weird baggage.)
And you’ll find similar ethnocentric, hypocritical bullshit all over the west, even down to all the (well-deserved!) official condemnation of Hamas over the October 2023 attacks while standing by in embarrassed silence as Israel commits open genocide both in and out of Gaza starting well before October 2023 and continuing to this day.
So… My current view is that western powers are a large collection of hypocritical twats whose views can and should be safely ignored by other peoples of the world as far as is possible when so many (chiefly) American guns and bombs are pointed at them threateningly.
Change my view.
¹ Decoding it: “white supremacist”.
² https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03570-9
³ Yes the primary authors are Chinese in Chinese universities. There are reasons for this.
⁴ The fact that this has backfired, both directly and indirectly, on the USA multiple times is a never-ending source of amusement to me.
It’s not a politicians thing. Most times I see westerners talking, at any level, about other cultures, the assumption is that other cultures have to adapt to the western way and not vice versa. That other cultures’ behaviour is bad but that western behaviour of an identical sort is fine. A perfect example of this, though I will again trigger the Sinophobes, is China’s “Golden Shield” (a.k.a. Great Firewall). When China does it, it’s bad. (And make no mistake it is bad! The Sinophobes won’t have read that, however, because they’re too busy jizzing themselves over having the opportunity to bleat about the Uyghurs again.) But when Germany does it? When Australia does it? When the UK does it? When France does it? That’s fine. Because they have their reasons, unlike the Chinese (and because fundamental attribution error is a thing). Oh, and when corporate America does it it’s also fine because “private property”. Going with the article that triggered my little rant, while the Wolf Amendment is a politicians thing, it is a thing that if you asked any random American on the street about they’d say it’s perfectly fine. Even if they were just also asked about open data sharing. There is this intrinsic belief in the west that, basically, the west’s shit doesn’t stink, but PHEW! does it stink if the shit is from Asia. Or Africa. Or South America. Or …
The PEOPLE are accountable for the leaders they elected in democracies. That’s the entire fucking point of democracy, no? The people get the government they want? (In reality you get the government you deserve in a democracy, but most people don’t like to think that way.) So, yes, I hold the current people responsible for choices their leadership made in their name in their voting lifetime. For the individual leaders: Is Biden responsible for Trump’s choices? No, obviously not! Unless, naturally, he keeps those choices active; if he doesn’t reverse the repugnant things Trump did. Is Starmer responsible for Sunak’s support of Israel’s current genocide? No, obviously not! Unless he continues on with it and keeps alive policies that jail Jews protesting it for being antisemitic. (Insert practically any European nation with very little change here, incidentally.) As for deal-making, if you make (and then keep) deals with the Devil, you’re the baddie, to go back to that old meme. Do you really think Biden (and hopefully soon Harris) look strong as they make mealy-mouthed both-sides statements while handing Israel bombs and bullets to commit genocide with? To me they look incredibly weak; like they’re Israel’s bitch, to put it crudely. Not like the leadership of the “strongest country on Earth”.
NASA shares some data with China, but since the political winds are what decides how the Wolf Amendment is interpreted this is unsteady and not reliable. In effect it’s a lottery, though deep space astronomy isn’t as impacted as is, say, NEO study. But this Wolf Amendment has interfered with things in the other direction. The latest lunar samples China took are being shared with the world under ODS principles … except the USA’s scientists are having problems. They can’t legally get access to the samples unless they clear it with the FBI first. Not as a class. As individual researchers. This is putting the USA behind on researching the best-kept lunar samples in the world. Similar problems are plaguing data and operations of FAST. But it’s the Chinese policymakers who have to embrace ODS. Uh-huh.