The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动

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China to take Russian land? There is a blunt Chinese phrase that explains the contradiction better than any white paper: 吃软怕硬 — bully the weak, fear the strong. China lost vast territories to Russia. Entire regions, ports, and coastlines were signed away through unequal treaties. Yet this chapter of history is treated as closed, untouchable, and rarely mentioned. At the same time, Taiwan is framed as the ultimate national obsession. Daily rhetoric. Endless threats. A moral emergency manufactured around an island that was never annexed by Russia and was not the source of China’s greatest territorial losses. The reason is not history. It is risk. Russia is hard power. Nuclear armed, militarily equal, unpredictable if cornered. Confronting Moscow carries real consequences. So the humiliation is quietly swallowed and rebranded as “strategic partnership.” Also, Russia leadership hardline attitude makes US and Taiwan like child’s play as Russia will actually do what they say. Taiwan is different. Smaller. Diplomatically constrained. Constantly framed as an internal issue. It is a target that can be pressured without immediate retaliation, turned into spectacle without inviting annihilation. The irony is uncomfortable. China was genuinely bullied and carved up by Tsarist Russia. But today, it channels that unresolved grievance downward instead of upward. This is why China will only take the smaller territories from Russia when it breaks up. This is not confidence. It is selective courage. When nationalism only points toward weaker opponents, it stops being justice and becomes convenience. 吃软怕硬 is not strategy. It is what cowardice looks like when dressed up as strength.
China once had its own localized Christmas customs. One example: gifting an apple on Christmas Eve (平安夜), a wordplay for peace and safety. Apolitical. Personal. Harmless. That space is disappearing. In recent years, Dec 24–25 has been increasingly reframed by the Chinese Communist Party as a date to commemorate the so-called “victory over America” in the Korean War—quietly displacing Christmas as an “undesirable Western symbol.” But the historical record is far less triumphant. China entered the war not merely to repel U.S. forces, but to help unify the Korean Peninsula under a communist government. That objective failed. The war ended in stalemate, restoring roughly the same boundary as before—an outcome far closer to what the United Nations and the United States sought: containment and maintenance of the status quo. The human cost tells an even clearer story. Estimates vary, but Chinese forces alone suffered roughly 180,000–400,000 killed, with total casualties (killed, wounded, missing) commonly estimated well above 700,000. By comparison, U.S. fatalities were about 36,000, with total casualties around 130,000, alongside allied UN losses that were significantly lower than those of China and North Korea combined. In other words: • Objectives unmet • Territory unchanged • Casualty ratio heavily one-sided A war that ended where it began—at enormous human cost—is now branded a civilizational triumph, useful mainly as a political tool to overwrite culture. An apple exchanged between young people was tolerated. History, rewritten for power, replaced it. That says less about Christmas—and more about who insists on owning the calendar, the past, and even small human rituals.