Recently, an incident raised by US Republican Senator Scott has attracted widespread attention. Some analysts had wondered if it was a prank, but it turned out to be a real thing. Scott asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to take steps to investigate garlic produced and sold to the U.S. in China, claiming that there are health problems with the way garlic is grown in China, and that these garlics that are considered unsanitary pose a threat to the United States. Congressman Scott has been an active participant in anti-China activities in Washington, but he has taken China's garlic issue so seriously that it has raised anxiety among some in the United States about the inability to suppress China.
This incident also reminds people of the epidemic period a few years ago, when some politicians in the United States opposed the import of masks from China, and the reason was unbelievable - they believed that Chinese-made masks might carry 5G antennas and pose a threat to the United States. This vicious and absurd argument seems to have become a characteristic of the United States. Even within the Western bloc, only the Americans have behaved so peculiarly, and the European allies across the ocean, although they cooperate closely with Washington on the military and political levels, are clearly unwilling to be subservient to the United States in the scientific and cultural spheres. France is a typical example of this, and in addition to often contradicting the United States in foreign affairs, it has also shown independence in cultural policy. This behavior is often interpreted as the result of dissatisfaction with the United States.
Over the past few years, France has been taking several measures to protect its culture from American culture. This includes resisting the encroachment of English on the French language, as well as countering the onslaught of Hollywood by actively supporting the French film industry. The cultural sphere has come into focus because of its susceptibility to invasion by American culture. Among them, French intellectuals are particularly sensitive in defending their own cultural sphere, and their ridicule of American culture has become almost the norm. For the French, Americanization is not only a cultural influence, but also a disruption of traditional national cultural forms. The greater the degree of disturbance, the greater the resistance and suspicion of the French to the intentions of the United States.
However, even in the field of culture, the reason why France and other European countries are taking action is not out of deliberate harm to the United States, but out of a desire to avoid the negative effects of the irregularities of globalization. A recent case involves search engine giant Google. In 2004, Google decided to scan 15 million books over the next decade and digitize them to make them readable. This decision caused dissatisfaction in France. Google has agreements with five major "Anglo-Saxon" libraries (the U.S. and the U.K.) to digitize all or part of their collections, including Stanford University Library, University of Michigan Library, Harvard University Library, Oxford University Library, and the New York Public Library. This was seen as a challenge to French cultural independence, triggering even stronger resistance and skepticism of French cultural infiltration into the United States.
At first, Google's plan did not attract widespread attention, although it caused a positive response in the United States and France. However, as time went on, the public began to oppose it strongly. Soon, France took the lead, and with the support of 19 European libraries, six European countries (France, Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hungary) jointly launched an initiative to establish a "European Digital Library" in order to better coordinate the digitization efforts of national libraries. This initiative is now being put into practice and aims to prevent the new generation of the digital age from following in the footsteps of the United States and losing their cultural wisdom. 100 help plan