No contest.

I'm just a westerner reading reports from other westerners. I'm relating my perception, as gleaned from western media.

"The characterization of Hong Kong..."

IIRC, I read there's a huge swing in the self identification of HK residents from "Chinese" to "Cantonese". Slim evidence, I know. But maybe directionally correct?

"Xinjiang and Tibet..."

I didn't say that. Western media has related that ethnic Tibetans and traditional Muslims have struggled, since I began reading the news in high school (80s).

Hong Kong has some of the most anti-communist people in China, because that's where they escaped to during the Chinese Civil War/ Cultural Revolution.

> Basically Xi's nightmare is the disintegration of the Soviet Union and he's running the opposite playbook that Gorbachev used.

This is certainly what it looked like from Russia in the 90s, when China was just starting to meaningfully rise. I think Gorbachev's main mistake was that people were given political/personal freedoms before economic ones, and it was done way too quickly. After some 70 years without these freedoms, people did not know what to do with them, so a lot of bad shit happened in late 80s and "wild 90s". Economy was decimated, Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia itself was close to falling apart as well. Just read any US geopolitics text from late 90s or early 00s - they all prognosticate that Russia will be no more, salivating to divvy up the spoils. What got in the way of that was Putin, or, to be exact, Russia's national security establishment which installed Putin, since nobody knew who he was 6 months before he became president.

So the way the Chinese policy was perceived from Russia, it was something more sane. For one thing their stated timeframe for the transformation of the country (50 years IIRC, but I might be wrong), seemed more realistic. For another they started introducing capitalism first, rather than give a bunch of dirt poor people completely unrestricted political freedom a-la early 90's Russia, which could only lead to anarchy and disaster.

And I do believe they will succeed in the long term. The best analogy I have is the current obsession in US corporations with quarterly results, leading to suboptimal long term outcomes. This is what the US itself behaves like, except the "quarter" is 4 years long.

China doesn't have to worry about that, they live on a different time scale and can enact consistent policies spanning many decades. This is both a blessing and a curse. It's easier for the US to course-correct, which can be beneficial because most long term plans do not survive contact with reality. But if China gets the big picture right (which to me it seems like they do), and is able to course correct on the margins, they don't really need the randomness that the US system has.

I just wish they'd knocked it off with the concentration camps and child labor at this point. It undermines their own progress.

As to Ma, oligarchs with political aspirations need to be periodically reminded who runs the country. This is why Khodorkovsky ended up in prison for a decade. He got way too powerful, exerted a lot of ifluence in Duma, and thought taxes were optional. None of those three things were acceptable to the Kremlin.

No, that's not why Khodorkovsky ended up in prison. He gave money to Putin's opposition, that's why. As to taxes, its laughable, the ruling mafia in Russia steals $trillions from the till and not even trying to hide it.

Re-read what I said. Dude bought half the Duma by the time Putin went after him and was writing his own laws. And you're right about taxes, but do observe that taxes are only optional in Russia as long as you are an oligarch who doesn't have political ambitions. If you delude yourself into believing you can buy the parliament, they become very non-optional indeed. Selective application of justice can be a powerful thing.

> Basically Xi's nightmare is the disintegration of the Soviet Union and he's running the opposite playbook that Gorbachev used.

I find it funny by how hard people of Western upbringing try find some "higher meaning" to what villainous characters do, the more powerful, and scarier they are.

And they do not want to take the most obvious, explainative, and floating on the surface explanation, because according to them, "it can't be that simple!"

A phrase I hear often is "I don't believe in cartoonish evil characters!!!"

And that despite much of 3rd world dictators very much being such, and their actions being very well explainable by "evil guys, doing evil deeds, because they are evil, arrogant f..ks," and that being their primary motivations, with all their "roleplay" obligations, and nominal official duties coming second to that.

There's quite a lot of evidence that the CCP values social stability (their own definition of it at least) extremely highly, above almost everything else.

I don't agree with you about Westerners not seeing the villainous wood for the evil trees, but I think it's moot when there's an even simpler explanation: they do not want to lose control.

That is it, but that does not preclude arrogance, and evil nature from being a primary driver of such person at the same time as rational desire for self preservation, and, sometimes, even a rare genuine brilliance in political matters.

Take a look at Bin Rasheed, or Li.

It kind of does preclude it. Your argument seems to be "they do bad things primarily because they're just evil" and mine is "they do bad things primarily because they can't bear losing control".

I feel like you just want to make a point about the CCP being evil. Fair enough, but that doesn't really have any connection with what you were trying to say about Western critical thinking.

> Fair enough, but that doesn't really have any connection with what you were trying to say about Western critical thinking.

Western critical thinking seem to be hell-bent on thinking that some grand totalitarian regime cannot be just "dumb evil," and it must always come with some kind of equally grand conspiracy, secret agenda, maybe even some semi-valid point, as they probably think "it must take some brains, complex motive, and talent to run you evil empire at such scale."

It's beyond them to concede that their grand political theories are not the case, and the man is driven just by your regular arrogance, greed, and cowardice, aka lust for power, even if his ways of achieving those may be quite sophisticated at the time.

Let's hope USA 2016-2020 adds "failing upwards" to the list of available OTC explanations.

Even 3rd world dictators are only cartoonishly evil on a surface level. Gaddafi is a prime example. His "Amazon guard" sounds like it came straight out of a comic book. However, after a decade of civil war in Libya, it's clear that he was the only thing keeping it together in the first place.

I find my theory has a better predictive power on what Xi might do next than the simple explanation that he is villainous.

The fact that the communist party made extensive studies of the fall of the Soviet Union has been well documented.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303755504579207...

Believe or not, CCP studied French Revolution and fall of Roma, and the boom and bust cycles in 2000+ Written Chinese history... And many stuff people should be studying... Nothing fancy, just learning from history.

Western people are not misunderstanding China, they just are content with a myopic tiny view, and happy to apply whatever judgement they can at the whim of the moment.

Discussing any China related issues on HN is like arguing with mobs. You either are drowning in downvotes, like saying Mr. Xi is not just a dictator; or arguing with someone who questioned any minor details you raised as a Chinese, often make me questioning did I lose touch with China so much that a random HN visitor actually knows better than myself...