The era of CCP economic rise is over. Middle income trap and aging demographics dictate as much. CCP will now have to contend with

- internal turmoil

- political infighting

- encirclement by democracies (India, Japan, Australia, US, UK, Canada, France, South Korea, Taiwan). Once Merkel is out in sept 2021, Germany will be onboard

- negative sentiment from most of population in the world due to covid

- exploding debt/bankruptcies

- lack of efficient feedback loops to self correct, as dictatorship has little of that. Thus Jack Ma is no more.

If you have a foreign commercial presence in China, expect

- kidnapping of executives (for layoffs, unpaid bills)

- no delivery for paid merchandises

- seizure of molds/machines/factories (nationalization)

- seizure of tangible assets (nationalization)

- trademark/copyrights given to Chinese entities

with no recourses.

Yes, many good points, but some of the same problems exist in the West and in the Asian democracies: covid, debt, aging demographics.

China does have one compelling advantage: its enormous population. Even if a horrible plague or even a civil war happened and 100m people died, they still have plenty of people to accomplish anything they want.

They have Ph.D. scientists, many trained at top Western universities, who are equal to anyone in the West. They are doing an amazing job in manufacturing and technology; virtually all high value objects are manufactured in China, and, increasingly, designed there as well.

They're pushing into automotive and aerospace and every other field. I don't see them slowing down any time soon.

The one child policy makes China’s aging problem particularly rapid, at a time when they are not wealthy enough per capita to make the transition. One child supports two parents and four grandparents. Plus a low retirement age that is only now getting extended. (60 for men, 55 for women previously). Over a third of Shanghai is over 60, as is a quarter in Beijing, Tianjin, etc.

Now the one child policy has been relaxed, but it will take a while before extra kids are available to work, and at this point it’s sort of a cultural norm to have one kid (plus prohibitively expensive to raise two kids and provide them decent resources).

True, they're in trouble demographically. Projections I have read in the past (before one-child was repealed) suggested they would lose 400m people by end of 21st Century. 400m!

Meanwhile, the West has its own implosion well underway... but, unlike China we have immigration. The U.S. population is still growing thanks to immigration, as is Europe's, even though both regions have replacement-level or below-replacement birthrates by natives. Immigrants tend to have higher birthrates however.

I would think this is actually good for them, as more internal demand relative to supply will help further transition away from exports, and also help increases their productivity (at least if they make working hours less insane).

more internal demand but few people working is basically going to increase debt significantly, leave seniors in abject poverty, or some combination of the two. And possibly massive deflation as well since old people are on fixed incomes and don't spend too much.

I thought Chinese household debt was absurdly low, but I guess that's changed.

Still, I would prefer to "quotient out the money", and say either the demand is met or it isn't? To the extent it is met, perhaps there are imports of material goods or domestic labor (nurses?)

I don't think it makes sense to worry about "domestic debt" in the same way, given the non-liberal political economy. Of course that doesn't mean there aren't limits, but the limits maybe would take the form of e.g. rising discontent and decreased productivity if it feels like an old-people-focused service economy with nothing in it for the workers.

So, Lost Decade Japan on steroids. A massive debt hangover after an asset bubble pop, deflation for a decade, and worse employment prospects and economic conditions for young people.

It's silly to think that smaller portion of working age population -> worse employment prospects. That process is very possible but relies on higher order effects.

You can't just blindly apply the economics of traditional liberal economies to a 21st century high tech illiberal economy.

China's 1.3B population is not equal. around 700M still lives on $140/month income, with no education to "accomplish anything they want". It will have 500M 65 year olds by 2050, too old to "accomplish anything they want".

China suffers brain drain to the West. Many of Chinese Ph.D students and scientists I know curse the day Xi Jing Ping declared himself to be the emperor, and is actively moving their families out of China as quickly as possible after 2018.

China has had very little luck in advanced semiconductor or airplane engine productions

>advanced semiconductor or airplane engine...

Not to disagree, but I believe it's just a matter of time. They're working hard in these areas.

Also, recent stats I read somewhere say Chinese Ph.D.'s are returning to China in increasing numbers these days, somewhere around 50% or more compared to the old days when the majority stayed in America or Europe.

there's also alot more chinese students studying abroad, compared to the old days. The creme of the crop stays, and the rest goes back.

The "rest" is still significantly better educated than those who never left, which implies they can fuel additional growth in China

Do they actually have the freedom to decide to leave China?

The USSR worked hard on semiconductors and airplane engines, but ultimately failed to keep up with the West.

Turns out, people with the means generally prefer living in countries with (a) individual freedom and rights, (b) freedom of the press, (c) an independent judiciary, & (d) economic surplus that responds to demand for luxury goods.

We can whataboutism on where the West currently stands with regards to these things, but if you're pro- and con- ing various options as an educated professional then you have a choice.

And if culture is a major consideration, then you could do worse than the Chinese communities in neighboring democratic states, or the literal democratic Chinese island...

The incentives are pretty bad for researchers in China. Cheating and corruption is the best way to progress rather than innovation. I find it waste of time reading a Chinese scientific article, yet Chinese scientist in the US or Canada are brilliant.

> China does have one compelling advantage: its enormous population.

Which so far translates into ability to outcompete robots on cost and not much else.

China between 1919-1949 China was ruled by "Warlordism" a weak central government and local strongmen controlling 10-100 million people.

Uncle Xi is killing China. After Mao the whole political model was "collective" so no one could become so strong he would become an Emperor, Xi changes that by removing the two term (10 Yrs) rule of leadership. The CCP had one thing for legitimacy, economic growth. For 30 years China become richer and freer. In 2007 even people in HK were proud to be Chinese. That is not the case anymore. China peaked internationally in 2017.

Post-Xi China whenever that occurs will be a large poor country surrounded by enemies without easy access to global markets. It is impossible to use any Chinese product without the possibility of the use of slave or child labour within the supply chain.

China is more likely to return to Warlordism than become rich.

TL:DR - China became richer and freer post-Mao and now that process has reversed and China is becoming less free and poorer.

Is this a documented sequence of events? Is there a book/resource to read into more details on these types of evens played out?

> If you have a foreign commercial presence in China, expect...

In how many months do you expect your predictions will come true, in a way that will cause the majority of Fortune 500 firms to leave China? Three? Six? Sixty? Six hundred?

I, for one, have strong doubts that the majority of those firms will ever leave China.

I will also note that all of your criticisms can be applied even more-so to democracies. Internal turmoil, political infighting, negative world sentiment (for some of them), exploding debt, aging demographics, ossification of political structures and poor ability to self-correct, check, check, check. It's true that, say, the United States is not encircled, but it has a separate problem of having to over-reach to maintain an incredibly ambitious, and unsustainable overseas military presence.

If those criteria were sufficient for a social collapse, then we're all living on borrowed time, and I don't see why you're singling China out as a likely point of failure.

That's a trillion dollar question.

Firms will leave China once democracies around the world make a multi-lateral trade agreement and put our money elsewhere that's aligned with our core beliefs including or primarily free speech, say India. Get the agreement in place, have it come into effect in 2 years ahead of time, provide investment grants or loans to businesses (globally if they're aligned with democracy/free speech) who want to manufacture whatever will fill a gap in production for what the 80% of what consumers buy currently from China.

CCP could easily prevent this redirection of resources by allowing free speech and having elections.

Have you ever been to India?

The fine people of India believes that cows are sacred gods. They also believe that drinking cow piss is good for you. They also believe that bathing and wallowing in cow sh*t is healthy for you, because it’ll help strengthen your immune system.

India has a very very long way to go.

But hey, India has free speech and elections. So maybe you should tell all your multi-national corporations to relocate to India.

Current CPP leaderships are blaming US/West for all the trouble.

Xi is just a little red guard grew up from the culture revolution the only economic solution solution was follow Mao's "Nationalize" way.

Prior to this, seeing the writing on the wall, my previous (Fortune 100) employer was already on the way out. I think there will still be plenty of F500 companies that stay, but they will do a better job of fire walking their business from their operations in China and walking away from all but the highest returns.

most of it is already happening, check chinalawblog (including tales/warnings of kidnapping). the only thing that hasn't happened full scale is nationalization of tangible assets, such as molds, machines or factories. But if you owe some (made up) bills to the local government when you close your factories, the local government will prevent you from grabbing your stuff.

So, when do you expect social collapse, and most of Fortune 500 pulling their presence out of the country? Give me a rough timeline. Three months? Six? Sixty? Six hundred?

It's easy to make non-specific, non-committal predictions of doom and gloom. I can say with absolute certainty that, say, the Euro will become worthless sometime between now and the heat death of the universe. My prediction is as useless, as it is accurate.

What kind of prediction, with what kind of error bar, are you ready to commit to?

With the election of Biden, the US will shift to a more cooperative strategy for containing China. There will be a higher emphasis on building/repairing relationships with allies in the region, so that American blood is not spilled (allies will help put boots on the ground, backed by American guarantees). How long this will continue and whether this strategy will continue regardless of the changes of leadership in the US is open to question, though.

As part of the 'pivot to Asia' initiated by Obama, America has helped many neighbors of Israel make peace with it formally. Iran vs. Saudi Arabia is the only other major engagement in the region. America will also likely extricate itself from Afghanistan completely in order to focus its resources on containing China.

Maybe your analysis make sense. But I often look opposite analysis to defeat the algorithm of social media. Personally I think it's partially responsible for there are 2 different realities that lead to the Jan 6 Capitol event.

Here's a piece that draws quite different picture from yours.

https://worldaffairs.blog/2020/12/31/from-terrified-to-trium...

a quick glimpse of the link you sent, alot of the economic data depends on you trusting the data coming from a dictatorship which obfuscates every clear economic signals. So I don't buy it personally. As for politics, China aligned itself with small countries/other dictatorships, while the big democracies that composes of 80+% of the world's economies united. As for tech, you need to also believe the claims they made.

> In the midst of all these problems, America’s vassal states — India and Australia — saber rattled in ominous ways. [...] Australia was spanked very hard as a warning to other vassals. If Australia slips into a recession, the next Prime Minister will be a lot less racist and uncouth. And perhaps Australia will be more careful about committing war crimes in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"Objective Nonpartisan Insightful", really now! I think your source needs to learn how to write non-editorial English.

When comparing the outcome of covid, I think we need to consider more than the response of the government. The civil society played a key role, too.

Regarding covid, Taiwan did very well, despite being very close to China.

- The government responded quickly, tracing everyone who entered Taiwan to control for spread of covid.

- The civil society took it seriously, with the experience of SARS.

Taiwan beat covid because the society has trust in science and the government [1].

[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-min...

P.S. your link has a very pro-Beijing tone throughout:

- It calls India and Australia as the vassal states of the US, and framing China's actions towards Australia as sending a warning to other vassal states.

- The numbers cited there are not comprehensive: when measuring space launches, not counting SpaceX.

I agree with most of these. China is massively underestimating the implications from its widening wealth gap. People in China are not stupid.

Westerners have been saying the era of Chinese economic rise is over for more than 20 years now. For pretty much all of the same reasons. One would think the lesson would be learned after 20 years.

over the years, demographics change, macro economics change, geopolitics change, etc etc etc

I remember an episode of Planet Money podcast where they went to the village where a secret agreement was signed by some farmers to divide up the communal land and farm it individually, so they could sell the surplus and make some profit. In the podcast they managed to talk to one of the original signatories to the agreement, and he lamented that fact that after his farming days he had started many businesses but they had all been taken from him by the authorities.

Now given that the judiciary in China is just another arm of the CCP, there is no rule of law, there's just the rule of the CCP and the whims of whomever is in charge.

So you build something successful, someone in charge gets envious, then one small misstep and it all gets taken away from you. I don't actually know if it needs an actual misstep or just enough people to conspire against you.

This is also what worries me about Chinese companies buying other companies and property outside of China. There's a danger that at any moment the entire company will get nationalised and therefore China (or rather the CCP) will own it all. I'm not against some foreign ownership and investment, but usually this has originated from a country where the law rules the land and not some arbitrary dictator. (Yes I'm also concerned about middle-east money flowing in, but to a lesser extent because they don't try to hide it)

Or another way of putting it, and always one of the weaknesses of over-powerful government and an impotent judiciary -- political skill trumps business skill.

Play that out long enough, and you have all the "China {X} Industries" being owned by someone whose chief qualification was working their way up the CCP hierarchy. To the detriment of the company's functioning, and the alternate candidates who could perform better in the position.

And that, ultimately, hurts China more than anyone else.

Anti-corruption drives are no substitute for constant, actual market pressures, because weasels will always corrupt the very vehicles you use to implement anti-corruption campaigns. Or equally inevitably, end up in charge of the entire apparatus.

>Imagine spending most of your life building a massive business and then one day it is taken from you by force by an authoritarian ruler.

I don't think most of the people praising the CCP or (any other similar system where one's life work can easily be taken) know what it's like to be in business for one's self.

The blame mainly lies with the Xi dictatorship, where as previously the CCP was ruled by committee. I can't imagine the CCP doing this in the era before Xi and post Deng Xiaoping. imo the CCP is gone. It's the Xi Jinping Party now

The good news for the West and China's Asian competitors is that he is effectively helping slow and cripple China's progress. Xi advocates a return to Mao centralism while ignoring all the good that came with Deng Xiaoping's decentralization reforms. With this act, he is also introducing a lot of uncertainty for any foreign investors. This gives the West time to recuperate since the failure of the anti-BRIC TPP.

This.

Everyone is talking like the CCP are the culprit here. There is big turmoil within the party right now, because Xi has taken absolute control of all areas of government.

He wants to be a Mao 2 and all the moderates in the party are gone (Deng, Chou, Bo, Hu) The good thing about this is hopefully when Xi dies it gives China an opportunity to change things maybe even away from the party. The bad thing is... well dictatorships...

I'm sorry but Guo wen Gui is not a credible source. His past claims have repeatedly been debunked.

Not to mention his deep ties with Steve bannon

Guo Wen Gui has made some previous claims that seemed outlandish at the time, but turned out to be true, such as China forcibly taking control of Hong Kong, causing protesters to flood the streets; the CCP lying/withholding information on the transmission and the origins of the virus; billionaires being kidnapped/murdered after conflict with the CCP.

I would agree that he often exaggerates, and some of his claims do turn out to be false, but I think we should recognize that he correctly predicted a series of unlikely events w/ regards to China. I think his general intuition of the inner workings of the CCP is correct.

if you throw enough shit at the wall, some will stick

doesn't change the fact it's shit

He also continues to claim that Trump will ultimately win the presidency, that covid-19 is a bioweapon deliberately unleashed on the west, that the CCP is in collusion with (just about) every mainstream media, and financial instution, as well as controlling democrats.

He's responsible for the abomination of misinformation that is gnews and gtv which has been consistently spreading absolute bogus regarding the pandemic, the election, and politics, for a really long time.

Yes, Guo is right about some things every now and then, and yes he without a doubt knows more about the inner workings of CCP than 99.9% of people.

But let's not give him more credit than he deserves, he's not a fucking prophet. Let's not build another political cult of personality around an eccentric billionaire. If you take a look at gnews/gtv, a Guo cult of personality really is the only description you can think of.

> but turned out to be true, such as China forcibly taking control of Hong Kong

Pick a random guy from the street of Shanghai Beijing Guangzhou, any college educated person, they'll prefix the same.

> the CCP lying/withholding information on the transmission and the origins of the virus;

This was largely accepted as a fact of any government handling an emergency. CCP of course is worst at this.

> billionaires being kidnapped/murdered after conflict with the CCP

Think about it, if this is true, how Mr. Guo still milking money from his cult followers. It's either that he is producing nonsense that CCP doesn't care, or he is protected by “deep state” or Trump? You probably want to accept the fact that Mr. Guo is producing junks, otherwise you are leaving with a worse alternative...

What benefit does the CCP get by owning Alibaba and Ant? Can't the CCP do whatever it wants anyway? Why does it need to own these companies?

And aren't there a lot of negatives by taking over the largest IPO in history only a few months later???

It sends a message.

It reminds me a lot of the Mikhail Khodorkovsky case. Similar struggle, it feels.

Here's Youtube Channel of Guo Wengui. Target audience is not mainly English speaker though.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO3pO3ykAUybrjv3RBbXEHw/vid...

"As much as people in the West praise CCP's economic rise, and some even point to its authoritarian system as superior to our democracy..."

They do? I don't think this describes a large population.

It's sad to see unsubstantiated hearsay as the top comment. I'm sure every billionaire in China has multiple escape routes. Guo Wengui certainly did, nor is he a "peasant."

I'd be surprised if Jack Ma didn't.

It's odd to experience (afar) what the cold war era people were fearing.

Fearing? They wouldn't be even allowed to grow any business, forbidden by state. This is socialism&capitalism hybrid, seemingly taking the worst out of both. Merciless efficiency (at least for the goals of those in helm, which might not align with long term economic success), not slowed down by some pesky human rights

I meant seeing a big state taking control like russia did post ww2 (probably fueling the us/russia feud) but I only read in books.

He is just lying low. He is not missing.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/alibaba-founder-jack...

Just like Shelley Miscavige is free and safe.

I often wonder how much the CCP studies Scientology, as I think Scientology has been really successful in avoiding any real consequences.

From what I understand of the CCP, "lying-low" is a polite phrase for "killed" or "disappered for ever".

Well at least west have cheap iphones and other necessities, isn't it?

Corporate geed is the reason CCP is so powerful today.

Every single corporation I have worked with is willing to comply with China,it's censorship laws, and it's atrocities on the work force.

You don't become a billionaire by being naive. Why would anybody choose to become a billionaire under such conditions? Was there a chance he'd come out on top?

Guo Wengui is rubbish. His words mean nothing!

> As much as people in the West praise CCP's economic rise

Who is praising the CCP's economic rise? The American consensus as far as I can tell is that we need to shut them out and push them into decline.

The West should brain drain the best and brightest from China.

>Who is praising the CCP's economic rise?

Did you miss the last 40 years in which US economic policy was underpinned by the thesis that shipping manufacturing jobs to China would give rise to a middle class that supports democracy?

Well, here's a reminder if you needed it.

To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, "It is easy to get a man to believe and promote something, when making massive amounts of money depends upon his believing and promoting it."

>Who is praising the CCP's economic rise?

A majority of Americans until relatively recently? China was seen favorably by most Americans until the last decade. An economic world power that we should strengthen relations with if polls are to be believed.

For example:

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-vi...

We need to get things straight: everyone should praise the rise of Chinese people's living standards, which has been astonishing in the last 45 years or so, and has taken 850 million people out of poverty[0]! This is not something a reasonable person can argue against! The increase in human wellbeing in the whole planet has been almost entirely due to the Chinese in the last 50 years.

That doest' mean we should praise the CCP (at least not in its current form!), though. Far from it!! Now that people have a decent life standard, they should, and probably will, raise against injustices being committed by the governing party.

Maybe they don't want a democracy modelled on the West, and that's ok!! We need to understand that there may be other ways to govern a country as big as China. But everyone in China definitely wants to be given a fair go to live their lives as best as they can, and to have at least a level of freedom that lets them live a happy life without causing problems to others (after the last few days, even the most avid defender of free speech in the US seems to agree a level of moderation in the public discourse is required, the only point of disagreement seems to be in how much).

It is really painful to see China moving back to authoritarianism in this way after a couple of decades in which it looked like they were embracing, slowly but surely, more freedoms and human rights. Let's hope that they find a way out of this instead of incessantly criticising them as if they were the devil all the time!! I honestly believe that even the CCP highest party members want to see the improvement of the Chinese people's lives, it would be completely irrational to believe otherwise... they are just humans like all of us... the problem cannot that they are evil!! The problem is that they have misguided fears of what may happen if the people is given too much freedom and try to mercilessly prevent their fears from becoming reality (like, you know, a revolutionary government taking power by force, which is the worse that could happen anywhere, even in China).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China

> I honestly believe that even the CCP highest party members want to see the improvement of the Chinese people's lives, it would be completely irrational to believe otherwise...

It's completely rational to, especially now, when Chinese analogue of bolsheviks are now in power in the party.

USSR's elites lived in the most obscene luxuries, and the CPC has beaten that few times over.

Their raison d'etre was to get more of that.

Your last point is salient and I think lost on many westerners who have not studied Chinese history.

Chinese civil wars (for lack of a better term to capture the sheer scale and complexity) have had body counts that make the American Civil War look like a drunken bar fight.

And, there is a history of advantage being taken of China during its civil wars. It hasn’t forgotten any of that, and it’s in the National psyche as something that needs to be balanced in the future.

Let me congratulate you on a more balanced comment on China than 99% of the users here. It is still a little bit naive or supremacist but dont let us the perfect being enemy of the good.

Ah.... thanks??! But supremacist, how??

> Now that people have a decent life standard, they should, and probably will, raise against injustices being committed by the governing party.

This has not happened at all in the US with 5X the income per capita (at least in nominal terms), why are you expecting to happen in China?Maybe the relationship is inverse, the more money the Chinese have the less probable they will rebel, same as in America and the rest of the world

> It is really painful to see China moving back to authoritarianism in this way after a couple of decades in which it looked like they were embracing, slowly but surely, more freedoms and human rights.

No country moves in a straight line (assuming you can even trace its "movement"), you should notice that easily with the US. Compared to 30 years ago China is better in almost all indicators, and yes that includes things like freedom of expression, because despite of still having an iron hand on censorship the CCP cannot avoid the common folk to communicate among themselves in million ways. Western people are too naive or arrogant if they think the regular Chinese just buy wholesale everything that is told. This does not mean the other naive take of course, that they dont buy anything that the politicians say and they will align with the western countries if they just had the chance. It turns out, surprise surprise, chinese are as much people as the Americans.

> The problem is that they have misguided fears of what may happen if the people is given too much freedom and try to mercilessly prevent their fears from becoming reality

This fear is not misguided and it is not exclusive to the Chinese by the way. The external threat is very real, and the CCP as every power structure takes very seriously the internal threats too. If you think the US is different I kindly invite you to revise the history on how any political movement not called mainstream Democrat/Republican party has been treated covertly and in the open by the power structures in America. So again, you are not saying nothing new or particular about China that you could not repeat about your own country.

> 850 million people out of poverty. This is not something a reasonable person can argue against!

I'd argue against it on the grounds that the planet doesn't have enough resources for everyone to live a middle class lifestyle.

So chinese people should just sit down and live low class life. Got it.

You can be aggrieved, blame the west, assign whatever morality you want, it doesn't change the fact that the planet doesn't have enough resources for everyone to live a middle class lifestyle.

So this whole anti china rhetoric had nothing to do with human rights or unfair trade but everything to do with the west not want to squander its middle life style because our planet can't actually support it. I appreciate your honesty but I wouldn't actually expect the chinese to actually sit down and accept it tho

LMAO...

Where is the basis of this not enough resources for middle class life style?

Tell me, what is middle class life style anyway? If you are talking about the American consumerism middle class life style, sure, I think most educated people nowadays do not really like that form of life style, or find it actually comfortable.

And even if that's the style everyone wants to. With tech advancement, why cannot everyone afford that, while still keep the environment health and sustainable for human?

Please enlighten me...

Yes it does. As we automate more, there will even be an opportunity for everyone to work less.

Rather let the Chinese continue to ride on bicycles than the west give up on SUVs.

Are you really arguing that due to limited resources people in less developed countries in Asia or Africa should continue to suffer so that the developed countries can keep their middle class lifestyle?

I didn't say that, I don't know what the answer is. But the fact remains that there are not enough resources for the consumption level where we are now. If another billion people are raised to China levels it will be a bigger disaster.

But that’s not true... it does. Maybe not of US consumption levels... but the US need to sort that out.

It was a very different country 10 years ago. It was comparable to the EU (I lived in both).

Even ten years ago, there were things like the Great Firewall and strict laws preventing any crowdsourced mapping on national security grounds (so OpenStreetMap never quite took off in China). Sure, things were a little freer, but China and the EU were definitely not comparable.

Great firewall is coming to the EU soon.

What propelled such a quick and strong change ?

Xi Jinping rising to power.

somehow I thought he was in place before that.

Polling data on Americans favorability to the CCP is orthogonal to OP noting we're begging the question when we say people are praising the CCP.

The only set of charts that matches your description re: Americans viewing China favorably is the first set of charts, which is in response to question 8b, do you view China _unfavorably_, for a worldwide survey broken down by country.

Question framing matters a lot on surveys, particularly for questions outside people's daily concerns. you'll get dramatically different distributions on the questions "do you view china favorably" or "do you view china favorably"

> Who is praising the CCP's economic rise?

Probably people who have some axe to grind about poverty.

China's rate of extreme poverty from 1990-2016 declined from 66% to 0.7%

During that time the US rate of extreme poverty more than doubled, from .5% to 1.2%

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin...

Most of the Middle East, Africa (up until their debts had to be collected), Indian nationalists (up until the incursions in Kashmir), Singapore, Duterte. Heck, Europe just signed a trade deal with China with full knowledge of the Uighur camps and the HK protests, while on the other side extolling vacuously about democratic ideals in Sub-Saharan or war ridden failed states.

If people counter me and reiterate stating that the EU deal is going to miraculously discipline China somewhat, boy do I have a bridge to sell to you. Maybe some gutter oil to go along with it too.

Do you believe antagonising China even more will make things better? Should the EU stop all deals with the biggest exporting economy of the world, home of one in 5 human beings, because it disagrees with its policies?

I will answer that: no it shouldn't. You can have a certain level of engagement even when you strongly disagree with another country. Showing aggressive behaviour, specially taking into account the history of agression and colonisation by the West as recently as 50 years ago, will not do anything at all to make life better to the victims of Chinese prosecution. By engaging with the Chinese, the EU may at least have some leverage to politely request that the Chinese , as sovereign people, start displaying a little more respect to other cultures within their own borders.

That is essentially the thesis of American foreign policy in Asia since the 1980s. The results have been mixed; yes, they have a huge, prosperous middle class now, yet the government remains about as authoritarian as it ever was.

Now, with technology, in fact things are getting worse. Everyone is required to have a cell phone, everyone is spied upon, a "social score" is maintained and if your score dips below a certain threshold, you may not travel etc.

If the EU thinks that making more trade deals with China is going to temper any of these, they're naive indeed.

Over in the land of the free. Are the police not trawling through Facebook imagery and chat messages to arrest the “insurrectionists”? Is the spying ok when it’s sponsored by Facebook?

Well, I don't disagree with you. We're becoming more like China every day. Social scoring, speech codes, nonpersons, government-inspired mob violence.

I can't help but feel this isn't related to political idealism... There is some kind of "well we can... so why not?" and implementing it, and the second/third order effects of doing it are sometimes hard to envision. Like "lets build a chat system (and store it all in a centralised location)" doesn't feel as nefarious as like a Manhattan Project, but ramifications are quite dramatic.

Oh, is today Whataboutism day?

The racism/double standard (which is what it is) hurled at china for things that everyone is doing, but it's some how bad in china, then excusing pointing this out as "whataboutism" is pretty disgusting.

> Do you believe antagonising China even more will make things better? Should the EU stop all deals with the biggest exporting economy of the world, home of one in 5 human beings, because it disagrees with its policies?

Yes. Sanctions can be very effective in curbing China's outsize influence worldwide and cut their economy by half. Just embargo them as long as they persecute Uighurs and HKers.

Unfortunately that can't be done, since American and European companies were too stupid to give away their schematics and let the Chinese copy them outright, while also simultaneously reducing their indigenous production capabilities in important sectors such as rare earths mining and refining, solar manufacturing and extraction technologies.

Ma: Thank god I bought a gazillion overpriced penthouses in London and USA--if he did. Now, if only I could get out

That's why the superich in these countries buy any asset they can in countries like USA and EU. 20 billion is funny money and can disappear...might as well have plan B, C and D ready

The USA is not a democracy it is a federal republic. Anyone who disagrees needs to recite the US pledge of allegiance, and review the US constitution. China is also a republic. But, neither of the two dominant USA parties currently espouse the Marxist Leninist doctrine.

'Democracy' and 'republic' are not mutually exclusive concepts. The US has a democratic|representative|constitutional|federal republic.

It's quite disturbing to see an uptick in this claim in the recent years, as if democracy in principle is not American and ought be discarded in favor of a more illiberal system of governance.

(Also, the pledge is not law, so it's a curious reference to cite as some authority on the matter.)

US is a pretty bad implementation of democracy.

- Non compulsory voting - first past the post - superpacs - the electoral college

All contribute to an oligarchy, not a democracy. The US system seems to be designed to “feel” like a democracy while actually preserving the power of moneyed interests and land owners. It’s crazy to me that the UK has less if an oligarchy despite still having a monarchy.

This is the best short description of what the US and other Western governments are today. My only thing that puzzles me is why traditional authoritarian governments haven't copied them yet

It's mostly the US... New Zealand, Taiwan, Australia do it much better.

Of course the media is still an impressive machine of control (see Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent), but again even the media is a little bit better outside the US.

Every time I see this I think our school system has failed to adequately describe the difference between “democracy” and “republic”.

One is Greek for a concept. The other is Latin for the same concept. How this concept expressed itself in Greek and Roman society and law is complex and there were cultural differences, but what has happened between 1789 and 2021 is a whole lot of tea leaf reading into nothing.

We don’t have a King, nor Nobility, nor Serfs, nor Knights, and slavery has been abolished, so we’re a Republic. Or a Democracy, because we govern ourselves and this is the concept these words describe.

A serf or knight can always blame their Lord for their problems, and Lords can always blame a King, but we get no one but ourselves to blame for our problems because they are entirely of our own making. That’s self-government, that’s democracy, and that’s responsibility.

An apple is not round, it is red.