Would you choose to be Chinese in your next life? (Or would you rather keep your job?)

Danwei reported on September 11 about a poll on Netease which asked if you had another life, would you choose to be Chinese? There were five yes answers (yes+a reason) and five no answers (no+a reason). Danwei translated the results as follows:

In a future life, would you be willing to be Chinese?

38.1%: No, because Chinese people get no respect.
17.4%: No, because you can't afford a house in China, and the good life is too far off.
0.4%: No, because you can't see good cartoons in China.
0.7%: No, because you can't make spoof videos in China.
7.8%: No, no reason.
6.3%: Yes, I want to be a descendant of the dragon.
1.7%: Yes, because China's economy is developing and the future is bright.
6.7%: Yes, because China's long history and vast culture fills me with pride.
2.7%: Yes, because I'm currently pretty happy, and I trust it will be the same in the future.
18.2%: Yes, because I love my homeland, no other reason.

We just learned from this report (in Chinese) that two editors at Netease -- Tang Yan and Liu Xianghui -- have been dismissed. The survey used to be here but is now just a blank page.

The above report mentioned some of the comments on the original survey post. Some people said they would have preferred to have been born in Europe. Other commenters said that the best Chinese people (in terms of moral qualities) were born in the Spring and Autumn Period, which was about 2500 years ago give or take a few centuries. In any case, we have not been able to see the entire spectrum of comments, but we figured that the above report picked the ones that it did because they reflect the sentiments of the people that picked "No."

In some sense, it's just a survey -- we highly doubt that it's scientific or even just representative. Nonetheless, it seems fair to speculate that the sudden dismissals of these high level editors has something to do with the posting of the survey and its results on September 4.

Photo from dee62383's Flickr page.