This is just a pet peeve of mine. I hate it when people say, "This is China." It usually reflects some sort of all-encompassing negative projection onto China, and then a rubric in which the listener has to accept it as it is or be vanquished.
When I first moved to China I had a really shitty apartment. It had, as a Chinese friend described it, 3 problems: 1) It's old. 2) It's ugly. 3) It's broken. My apartment was the bleakest dwelling I'd ever had the displeasure to enter. Grease completely covered the windows in the kitchen, the floor was black around all the edges, it reeked of cigarette smoke, the toilet was sunk in the floor and surrounded by a puddle, the furniture was all the cheapest possible variety (and broken), and a single bare bulb hung from the ceiling by a cord in the "living room".
When I complained about this, I would here things like, "This is China." My response would be, "Yes, and in my apartment building, the other apartments are MUCH nicer. They have real curtains and not Snoopy pull down blinds. They have wooden furniture and not just plastic chairs and one rickety rusted metal chair." Indeed, there were plenty of plush apartments, and I had absolutely the worst unit in my apartment complex.
When I objected to some unfair situation at work, another teacher (who was basically a good guy) would often say, "This is China, it's not your job to change it." My gut reaction was I didn't like being told I was powerless and must acquiesce. A little part of my mind up and said, "FUCK THAT! I'm not just going to TAKE IT!" I like to think I have some power and control over my life, even if I live in China, and I can steer things to my advantage. So, when we were told we had to work one weekend because of protests, for example, my friend dutifully went to his classes and I bailed out and took a trip. I didn't have to accept it and there weren't any repercussions. And if there had been, as Socrates famously said, "The unknown is always preferable to a known evil."
Sometimes people will pull out the "This is China" card if I express disgust at some behavior like hawking goobers on the floor in restaurants. Even Chinese people can't stand people cutting in line in front of them, for example, so if I can't stand it I don't need to be told, "This is China."
lastly, I resent the "This is China" statement, because it also implies the speaker knows more about China than I do and can express exactly what China is, as if it were so easily any one implacable thing. There's also the two-fold condescension, that the listener has less of a grasp on China and reality in general, and the arrogance of simplifying China and Chinese as intractably behind.
China is an extremely large and disparate place, and no one label or utterance encompasses all of it. Some cities don't allow honking, for example, while in others not-honking is tantamount to a celibate life. Dege is completely different from Lanzhou which is completely different from Yangshuo which is completely different from Xi'an… There are "no spitting" signs posted in the city I live in, so how is it not accepting China to find spitting disgusting when there are signs posted saying is unhygienic and disgusting.
When someone says, "This is China," I want to say back, "This is the Milky Way." [in other words, don't pigeon hole China and me in it.]