I think the irony might be lost here that life in China had returned largely to normal since summer 2020 because of 'CCP dystopian bullshit' which managed to effectively curtail the spread of the virus, in contrast to the paragons of freedom in the West, where everyone has been in periodic lockdowns for over a year.
Almost ever major crisis that has plagued Western democracies over the last two decades can largely be traced back to weakness, not strength of states, yet people seem to be constantly afraid of 'totalitarianism' rather than dysfunction.
I suspect that the Chinese Government are feeling increasingly vulnerable as their citizens become wealthier and begin to question the authority of the communist regime.
The west is probably in the best shape it has ever been in if measured in prosperity, freedom and life expectancy.
China is approaching a nightmarish dystopian society, if it hasn't reached that already.
I'm glad I live in a country where I can spend however much money I feel like on video games without being targeted by an oppressive government.
You just have to love a country where you can be murdered by the government for selling marijuana, yet if you abstain from alcohol for religious reasons you are an enemy of the state and must be turned into authorities.
Authoritarianism of all forms must be opposed worldwide. Who is to say the West won't be subjugated to such systems a couple decades from now, if we don't stand up for freedoms with vigor?
People living in fear. Strong and full censorship for political reasons (it turned out neither strong not being done for political reasons, but rather economical ones). Population control through forced abortions and murders everywhere (it turned out to be not true). Evil communist leaders. Shit-quality manufacturing (that's the fault of western companies; China manufactures to the specs you give and pay for, it's western companies that decide to cheap out on products). Those are all things I've been led to believe through media reports.
The point being, whatever happened there 40 or 60 years ago, currently China is not that much different from the US, and unlike the latter, it's only getting better.
I am deeply disturbed by what we are seeing in China. The Great Firewall, massive concentration camps in Xinjiang, a new "social credit" system - I think the dystopia of 1984 is becoming a reality. I am afraid that as a society we have the complacency that the "good guys" - democracy, human rights, freedom - will always win. Stalinism and facism eventually fell, but the Communist Party of China is still going strong, and seems to be more than able to extend its grip to the 21st century.
This is a bizarrely rose tinted view of China, which not only completely ignores mistreatment of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities - from imprisonment and 'reeducation to literal organ legging; but also the everyday horrors of life under an authoritarian dictatorship.
For example the frequent adulteration of food (including baby food) with poisons. The panopticon surveillance and control of movement which prevents the poor and those living in rural areas from travelling within their own country. Restrictions on free speech, not only political in nature but critical of any aspects of civil society - and the inevitable lack of reforms to public health and safety.
Increasing nationalism, police observation and 'patriotic' violent attacks on foreigners. Violence against medical professionals when patients feel (rightly or wrongly) that they haven't received the treatment they should have.
The rise of an unelected dictator forming a cult of personality and the subsequent reinvigoration of anti-foreign, nativist han Chinese sentiment, and the increased suppression of minorities and dissent that has resulted.
The thousands of 'incidents' of protests (attempted rebellions) that are ruthlessly crushed each year, while being actively hidden by Chinese media and social media.
The incredibly successful censorship of both China's own history and any discourse about political reform.
On and on.
China is a spectacular case of all the ills that can befall a centralised authoritarian regime when people cannot directly criticise their government. This article seems to advocate 'learning from China' in a way that implies replicating their authoritarian control. It reminds me of a bizarre TED talk a few years ago that celebrated the supposedly effective meritocracy of the CCP - just before it became one man dictatorship - while ignoring the fact that the CCP leadership is almost exclusively composed of the children and grandchildren of the communist party leaders that supported Mao. It is in short, thinly veiled propaganda.
Hmm, how can we really know the population is _okay_ with this? Seems like if things are working this is what the outward appearance would be. But the existence of all this social control means there must be some internal risk China sees.
After all, China is continually upgrading its surveillance and other means of social control. They're also committing cultural genocide in Xinjang despite the international media fallout. They must feel like there's some real threat worth fighting to do all this.
Also unlike the other top 8 or so world economies, China has had an internal revolution/civil war quite recently.
I've been to China repeatedly over the last 15 years and you can see the pace of change with your own eyes. Large cities built so fast that you can literally walk through neighbourhoods and not recognise where you are after two to three years, that's not propaganda.
The real danger today doesn't lie in authoritarianism but in a lack of state capacity. Decades of fearmongering have led the US and significants chunks of Europe to a point where governments can't provide cotton swabs during a pandemic and can't build housing in their cities.
Here's hoping the US isn't the one that collapses in on itself this time. My perception of China is that it's government makes life pretty terrible but it seems better organized over there (because of state control).
China is a well run country, but most countries seem that way with 5%+ economic growth YoY.
In reality, it’s slowly becoming a prison of 1.3 billion people that is gently closing its maws on them. Life is good, growth is great, but whenever the next crisis comes, which it will, the government will not be replaced like in Democracy but actively fight back, with technology developed by the best American companies. From there, they will probably close down and self-seal their economy like the Soviet Union did with some success, and embark on a period of profound killing as a means of control.
The authoritarianism is a red herring IMO. The real issue is economic incentives trumping everything else. For example in Japan if you test positive the hospital gets quarantined losing tons of money. In the US, you can end up payong huge medical bills. The fear is the same.
The lesson from WW2 should have been that people are all the same when pushed to extremes. This includes the people who make up the communist party leadership in China and every moral philosoher in the west as well.
My armchair belief is that China has ended up absorbing at a global scale, all of capitalism’s externalities. It is an integral part of the world that gives us many things we take for granted like cheap iphones and many others. We do NOT have the convenience to look away and scapegoat one aspect without taking into consideration the whole.
This ended up kinda ranty but every time coronavirus is used to bring up something whose purpose is to draw an “us vs them” line between the world and China I want to throw something.
This can be very bad news even in the west, but in context of the Chinese totalitarian dictatorship (Btw. Also allied with Russia), this is just an expression of an authoritarian regime suppressing private freedom. It's nothing but another abuse to suppress their own society.
I'm not even sure where to start with this. It's a complex issue and I appreciate the source.
China is putting people into forced labour (or concentration) camps en-mass. Its arrested or exiled thousands of HK democracy protestors. Its going backwards on democracy and rule of law. Not to mention causing the largest pandemic of the 21st century (so far). Its support for North Korea is another whole mess. Oh, and it almost started a war with the neighbouring nuclear power.
If people are satisfied with that, they're pretty socially bankrupt imho.
What's more likely is that with absolute control of the media, the vast majority have no idea what's really going on. They're just reassured about how awful every other country is.
In fairness, the camps and the plague weren't a thing till after the 2016 end of the survey. Xi Jinping only really ramped up his authoritarian storm in the last few years.
I wonder how the average citizen there would react after an hour of straight forwards factual updates on the domestic situation.
All this aside, I am glad they have eliminated extreme poverty. That is progress, socially as well as economically.
The problem is that the West has looked away all the time with the shit China was doing, even back at Tiananmen Square decades ago.
The West could have made a statement back then and uphold human rights, now I fear it is too late and the only way restoring human rights and democracy is either a mass uprising in China (which is unlikely given that many young Chinese are fed propaganda, and so much of it that even Chinese living outside of China defend the Chinese government's actions) or outright war which is next to impossible to win except if China would be nuked to the ground and a full-scale global nuclear war.
The fact that many Western governments themselves are turning towards authoritarianism or outright fascism doesn't help either, and some of them are actually taking quite a bit of inspiration from the Chinese playbook, e.g. in mass video surveillance.
This sounds like how some regions are “due” for another catastrophic earthquake. Unfortunately, the modern notion of when a place is “due” for a revolution doesn’t take account of the sophisticated totalitarian surveillance technology that China has been building for the past 15 years.
You may not intend to give this impression, but the sense I get from casual observers of China (I count myself in this group) is that if we just let China do its China thing eventually it will implode and some different state will emerge, probably slightly better. As an American, this seems like The Way of Things because we are taught that freedom triumphs, even if it takes a long time, even if it comes in fits and starts.
It seems that this historical bias has created a blind spot for the possibility that things will continue to get very much worse for the Chinese people — who will go their own way entirely, as a group influenced by a completely different cultural background, with entirely different notions of what good government is.
China is becoming a horrifying totalitarian state that uses tech to crush opposition. I am afraid that the advances in weaponry and surveillance have rendered a revolution by the oppressed impossible. It was difficult for freedom to be established against tyranny in bygone centuries; even the US required the intervention of France and Spain to win its freedom. Now, it will be only maybe doable with outside help... But with the rising populist and nationalist tides, this is unlikely.
There’s elections in China. There isn’t freedom, but the population of old people with PTSD from the Cultural Revolution seems happy to not have it as long as noone else has it either. And as long as the government is competent and delivers economic growth, which may be coming to an end.
Things like responding to a pandemic are precisely where authoritarian regimes excel.
Authoritarian structures generally excel when you need a lot of people to do a lot of the same thing: responding to disasters in simple but effective ways, high volume manufacturing, grunt and infantry level military operations, and large infrastructure projects.
These are the areas where China leads the world. With the possible exception of the military, America and other Western democracies are downright horrible at these things. We can't build infrastructure, have lost much of our high volume manufacturing, and react to disasters with delay and bickering and population non-compliance.
Where they don't excel is creativity, invention, innovation, culture creation, and maximizing individual well being in peacetime. They're also more politically brittle because there is no graceful mechanism for non-violent political change.
It seems people sometimes forget China is still an extremely authoritarian state. 2 of my good friends moved here from China a few years ago, they never want to go back, there's very little freedom.
I often wonder if laws like these will pressure people not directly affected to do something about it. Then I remember how so much of history was caused by people doing nothing, and I suspect that will continue to happen into the future.
Long term, I don't see China giving up control of anything, only getting tighter restrictions. I just hope this doesn't result in too big a war in the future.
Almost ever major crisis that has plagued Western democracies over the last two decades can largely be traced back to weakness, not strength of states, yet people seem to be constantly afraid of 'totalitarianism' rather than dysfunction.
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