It’s why and how things change that is interesting. In China things have changed because Xi and the Chinese communist party have chosen to change them in particular ways. It’s these choices and the consequences of them that we are discussing.
But Xi seems to care about Xi.
Instead Jiang / Hu had their own agendas including moving vast amounts of capital outside and also for themselves e.g. some of the largest VCs there. Some of Xi's policies e.g. restricting movement of capital has to do with this.
I think people like that are the reasons why the world isn't at peace. China could've become the next japan. They could've probably overtaken the US that way too. But now, they've "alerted" the eagle, and the US will never let china become a superpower.
It already is. To the less degree than the US for now. Could go either way in the future. But if you think that the US could go on forever dictating what other countries allowed to do I think you are wrong.
That was a decision that never should have been taken, due to the terrible risk of how things would turn out if it failed, as it did. This was possibly the most disastrous strategic blunder in America’s history. Like yanking defeat from the jaws of victory in the Cold War.
Maybe eventually it will, would just take long time. There are always ups and downs.
The core belief of the communist party is will to power - getting and keeping power by any means necessary. There is no balance of power, separation of powers, checks and balances, independent court system, separation of military from political party, constitutional review or law, individual human rights, etc. Hence the term totalitarian - total control of people’s behavior, speech, and even thought.
All of communist ideology is an elaborate justification and sophisticated plan for getting and keeping absolute and unrestricted power. It is too deeply ingrained, too sticky so to speak, in communist party psyche and identity. Unlike SK and Taiwan it was never going to liberalize and discard itself in favor of democracy, an ideology directly counter to its core beliefs.
So east Germany, Germany and Italy (fascism), the Baltics, Czech, Slovakia, Moldova, Georgia (where Stalin came from), Romania (ciaucescu) etc. Have no hope of ever being democratic?
If we could go back in time and not economically prop up communism in China, and let it collapse the same as the Soviet Union, then I would anticipate a similar outcome there too. But you have to let communism become totally discredited in order to achieve that outcome.
There’s very little evidence that Leninism and its derivatives are any stickier than any other authoritarian system, and essentially all authoritarianism (and most non-authoritarian systems of government, too) appeals to some ideology for its justification (often local nationalism), so your attempt to divide the world of dictatorships into ideological and non-ideological dictatorships is flawed from the start.
> All of communist ideology is an elaborate justification and sophisticated plan for getting and keeping absolute and unrestricted power.
It’s…not. In fact, the part of Leninism that serves that purpose (vanguardism) is its key departure from Marxism, and notionally an adaptation of Marxist Communism to bypass the need for capitalist development as a prerequisite to the socialist stage.
And I don't consider nationalism an ideology, since it's never as philosophically developed as say communism or US liberal democracy. It's just a useful, easy, naturally pre-existing fallback for dictators looking for way to rally their population against the "other".
And you can argue till the cows come home about what Leninsim, Marxism, and Maoism are supposed to be, but what they actually become in reality is clear. Totalitarian systems.
Eh, it could have worked. Not that hu jiantao is a saint or anything but it's pretty clear that he was unhappy with the direction that china is going down and blindsided by what xi has unexpectedly turned in to.
Anyone who chooses to believe something like "It was Kent State, but bigger and more evil!" is just projecting.
>Probably the most widely disseminated account appeared first in the Hong Kong press: a Qinghua University student described machine guns mowing down students in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the middle of the square. The New York Times gave this version prominent display on June 12, just a week after the event, but no evidence was ever found to confirm the account or verify the existence of the alleged witness. Times reporter Nicholas Kristof challenged the report the next day, in an article that ran on the bottom of an inside page; the myth lived on. Student leader Wu’er Kaixi said he had seen 200 students cut down by gunfire, but it was later proven that he left the square several hours before the events he described allegedly occurred. Most of the hundreds of foreign journalists that night, including me, were in other parts of the city or were removed from the square so that they could not witness the final chapter of the student story. Those who tried to remain close filed dramatic accounts that, in some cases, buttressed the myth of a student massacre.
https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananm...
The idea that it's "covered up" is also, likewise, nonsense:
>Beijing Municipality has checked and double-checked all the figures from the Martial Law Command, the Public Security Ministry, the Chinese Red Cross, all institutions of higher education, and all major hospitals. These show that 241 people died. They included 23 officers and soldiers from the martial law troops and 218 civilians. The 23 military deaths included 10 from the PLA and 13 from the People’s Armed Police. The 218 civilians (Beijing residents, people from elsewhere, students, and rioters) included 36 students from Beijing universities and 15 people from outside Beijing.
https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/
It's just understood differently than how Americans wish it was understood. Probably because "heroes" like Liu Xiaobo said things like:
>[It would take] 300 years of colonialism. In 100 years of colonialism, Hong Kong has changed to what we see today. With China being so big, of course it would require 300 years as a colony for it to be able to transform into how Hong Kong is today. I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough.
If the accusation is "the Chinese government denies it!" the best way to demonstrate the falsehood is by citing the Chinese government not denying it.
It seems pretty straightforward.
> Absolutely.
He's telling you what he is. If you continue to engage, it's on you.
The demonization of China feels incredibly absurd, like when someone wearing an exceedingly ugly outfit, lacking self-awareness, tries to criticize someone else's fashion.
The only citizens whose interests really matter in the US are conservatives, Christians and (of course, because the US is an oligarchy) billionaires. Everyone else is a serf who takes whatever scraps fall from the table.
I mean, Americans are bringing child labor back. Do you think the majority of Americans support child labor? No. Does it matter? No, because even with a Democrat (ostensibly 'left' but nowhere near in practice) in charge, American laws are moving further right than ever.
> The only citizens whose interests really matter in the US are conservatives, Christians and (of course, because the US is an oligarchy) billionaires. Everyone else is a serf who takes whatever scraps fall from the table.
So all my non-conservative, non-Christian, non-billionaire Bay Area tech worker friends, who are doing very well for themselves, are "taking scraps"? Come on, that's ludicrous.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Lacking self-awareness indeed.
In China, elites get disciplined by the party with little recourse.
It's a matter of which class you see yourself in.
>According to Harvard University’s large-scale 2003-2016 study tracking the evolution of public opinion via 32,000 individual respondents, at the time of the study’s conclusion “95.5 percent of respondents were either ‘relatively satisfied’ or ‘highly satisfied’ with Beijing.”
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My friend's wife's family completely disappeared because they said something bad about the local government on WeChat. Their house was empty when she went to check up on them (after COVID). Neighbors said the police came in and they haven't seen them since. She now blames herself for not bringing them to Canada.
The reason the surveys are so high is because they fear it's a trap. If someone asks you if you like the government, your answer better be an outstanding yes.
It's a very popular way for culty diaspora to cope with being rejected by their families, basically identical to QAnon.
It sounds like you don't understand your own history.
Latin America has excelled at destroying itself from the inside while blaming everything on anyone else --a national sport in most countries. Of course, the US is a favorite punching bag in LATAM.
Before you explode into "you don't know what you are talking about", my family had business in the US, Argentina, Peru and Ecuador throughout my entire young life. I lived there for years at a time. Went to school there. Was there during military rule. Etc. I know the history very well. Probably better than most natives because I was not in the grips of the intense reality-distortion-field (indoctrination) pushed onto the masses.
In fact, I call LATAM a time machine for the US.
Everything that has happened in the US over the last couple of decades was, in many forms, tried and tested in various LATAM countries before the shit ideologies arrived here. The problem here is that US students are so ignorant about the history of other part of the world that they actually believe shit like various socialist utopia stories. In a sane society people like Bernie and AOC would be laughed off the stage...because, at the very least, the shit they push has destroyed LATAM over the years.
If you want to get a dose of LATAM historial perspective and reality, take a break from ideology and watch a few presentations from Gloria Alvarez. Here's a video to get your started. This is a quick history of LATAM history starting with the "gifts" from Spain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WylR8EvhnE
It's interesting to observe that pretty much every nation conquered by Spain ends-up, well, a mess. If one is to be honest, there's something to learn there.
Regarding China and LATAM: They are going to absolutely destroy every nation they touch. They are there to own all natural resources, extract as much juice as possible from every corner of LATAM. They will destroy all industrial capacity. The next logical outcome is LATAM economically enslaved to China. You shouldn't be happy about China's involvement in LATAM, you should be horrified.
https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/china-regional-snapshot-sou...
US interventions in Latin American affairs are well documented[1].
You can't just kick the can to Spain, when the US had a much more direct and recent involvement. It doesn't seem you learned much from your time there, as this history is discussed openly and known in detail, from school children to people who actually lived it. The resentment towards the US is very well deserved, in most cases.
Regardless, this is not a thread about the US, so let's not feed GP's whataboutism, and keep acknowledging how evil China is.
[1]: https://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi216/hi453time.htm
I am stating an absolute fact:
In LATAM, blaming others for everything is a national sport. And the US is a favorite bad guy. I can't tell you how many times I have heard this in person in the context of social gatherings, local news and even government/political party communications.
The point is they blame it all on the US. Always.
I did not say the US and other nations have no fault at all. There are subtle and not-so-subtle dynamics at play here.
It's funny how is never their fault. Ever. I guess these are all perfectly run nations and big-bad-USA comes in and fucks them up all the time. Otherwise, it's pink unicorns and bubble-gum for everyone. Right.
World politics being what they are, yes, of course, countries will take advantage of each other when possible. There is no way to claim any nation is without fault in any comparison. Today, China is taking advantage of LATAM in more ways than one...and the people actually think it is a good thing.
The other thing you have to remember is that LATAM governments have been corrupt forever. Entire generations of political families have enriched themselves and their extended circles at the expense of the people and countries. They make deals with countries like the US and international corporations and then turn-around and royally shaft the entire nation. The easiest way to explain things not working when you steal hundreds of millions of dollars and ruin the country is to blame others.
Stories abound of LATAM governments inviting external investment only to later nationalize the companies boosted by this investment and kicking the investors out. They appoint brothers, cousins, family members, extended allies, military leaders to run and pillage the companies and enrich the ecosystem that supports them. Then they turn around and blame others, the US, the IMF, anyone.
I mean, the military government of Argentina invented an entire war over islands nobody gave a shit about just to defocus from the horrors they created.
So, yes, blaming the US for everything isn't only unfair, it's stupid. These countries would have done far better over time had they made an effort to create solid lasting partnerships with the US. Quite a few of these countries could have been manufacturing hubs for world products. That requires focus, hard work, dedication, stability and more. The US and Europe would have gladly outsourced such work to LATAM nations. It didn't happen because the corruption in these nations turned them into sad circus acts everyone took advantage of whenever they could. I know it hurts to put it this way, yet this is the truth.
Trust is a delicate thing. Once you lose it, the only people who are going to engage with you are those who are going to ensure ROI by taking every possible advantage. And you have zero negotiating power. Once again, I point to what China is doing in LATAM.
> You can't just kick the can to Spain, when the US had a much more direct and recent involvement.
Not kicking that can so Spain at all. Spain's legacy is a culture of corruption and a range of social issues Gloria Alvarez discusses in detail in the video I posted. I have not been able to find a version in English, sorry.
Maybe because historically the US has been behind a lot of things?
> Trust is a delicate thing. Once you lose it,
Exactly, people simply do not trust the US in countries where they have meddled in. Rightfully.
Ridiculous to make this into a sob story about people vilifying the US "unfairly".
If you observe what they are saying you’d think these are perfect societies where everyone would have pink unicorns and bubble gum, were it not for external evil actors. And, of course, the US and the IMF are at the top of the blame list.
Maybe one day you'll strike out on your own.
Y'all live in your own little reality.
Second, if you studied Logic at all (obviously not) you would understand that attacking the source is one of the fundamental logical fallacies. In other words, you have no point at all. You can't insult Alvarez and point to House.gov and invalidate what they are saying.
And, of course, calling a woman trying hard to make a difference in LATAM a "worm" is really classy on your part.
Por favor, educate porque realmente no tenes idea de lo que esta pasando en America Latina. Ni idea.
https://www.clarin.com/politica/avance-chino-neuquen-anos-im...
https://www.clarin.com/economia/the-economist-argentina-desa...
https://www.clarin.com/new-york-times-international-weekly/e...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187046541...
Etc.
Good luck with the whole "empire in decline" coping process.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Latin America? "You're ignorant, you know nothing!"
China? "You're under their sway!"
America? "Hypocrite!"
I tend to prefer to simply not allow the discussion to veer in that direction, and keep people guessing if they must.
Your other comment in this thread was even more egregious. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35253829, and please don't post like this to HN.
I came back for a bit to get the latest on ChatGPT, and then noticed that, unsurprisingly, this place is crawling with demented Chinaphobes spreading whatever third-hand hearsay they can find about China. I'm vastly more knowledgeable about this subject than probably everyone here, and have tested my resources against way more capable critics, so sharing some disruptive well-chosen resources here and there isn't too hard.
The fact that the average stance here is something like "I'm not a Marxist, I don't like Marxism, I don't actually know much about Marxism, but I do know this: China isn't Marxist" is just hilarious to me.
If you actually care what China is, which it appears you don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_capitalism
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia-idUSN1...
On the other,
>Fidel Castro argued that “China has objectively become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries,” and in August 2014, he reaffirmed this sanguine outlook: “Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.”
>In May 2018, Professor Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Minister of Finance, assuaged an anxious member of the audience at a Cambridge Forum: “I have to tell you that, from my understanding of China, it’s a very interesting social experiment, in the sense that at the local level or the regional level you now have a boisterous democracy, with popular success stories in overthrowing local authorities, local bureaucrats who have been corrupt.”
>Later that same year, before his 2019 ouster in a US-backed coup, Evo Morales said “I trust China very much. China has always accompanied us in many of our aspirations in the social, cultural, political and economic spheres” and that “China’s support and aid to Bolivia’s economic and social development never attaches any political conditions.”
>In 2020 the former Liberian Minister for Public Works W. Gyude Moore bluntly wrote “China has built more infrastructure in Africa in two decades than the West has in centuries, China is also our friend.”
>In 2021 Iran signed a 25-year cooperation agreement with China. Despite the vehement insistence of Western punditry, world consensus against China’s “tyranny” fails to materialize.
https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
It's a hard choice for completely politically illiterate people, I suppose!
Self-awareness is not your strong point. And your mix of conspiracy and partisan bile being challenged here is evidence this is a healthy online community, not the opposite. Perhaps you would feel better somewhere that confirms your beliefs instead of (rightly) mocks them.
I don't doubt that. Trolling is fun for lots of people.
Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford, 1979), p. 43.
It's funny how i've said everything I need to say already. You aren't as complicated as you think you are.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Edit: it also looks like your account is on the verge of using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which ideology you're for or against, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do that. More explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Lest anyone think I'm scolding you out of some ideological bias: I've personally spent countless hours defending users who have advocated minority perspectives (including on China), even when they've sometimes broken the site guidelines. That's not because I agree or disagree but because I understand how difficult it is to advocate for a minority view on the internet. If you or anyone wants examples of how this has played out on China-related topics, I put some examples together for a user about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod.
So the problem isn't that you're arguing for a minority view. The problem is that you're doing it with snark and flamewar tropes and ideological talking points. From that point of view your comments in this thread have been abusive.
[editing... one minute...]
Oh and then there's "Dang is a totalitarian liberal thought policeman", "banned every single prominent right winger", "extremely left-winged", "most people on HN are liberals", "socialist hell-hole", "this site leans left", "leftist bots", "always politically left", "skews quite left", "Obviously this website is rigged for the liberal agenda", "the level of wokeness is just absurd", "leftist ideological echo chamber", "run by radical leftists, so no surprise", and much much more! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870.
It doesn't mean they have, therefore, achieved some kind of enlightened balance.
The fact that you can cite a lot of angry right-wingers trying to pull discourse in their direction through whining just means there's a lot of right wingers posting here trying to form critical mass, as one would expect given the composition of America as a country.
You don't get more of those kinds of critiques from communists because 1) there's barely any communists here and 2) we don't argue like that.
Pretty fair modding, though. GJ.
However, "enlightened balance" is not the argument. The argument is that the left-name-calling comments are so isomorphic to the right-name-calling comments that there has to be a common mechanism underlying them. I even think I know what the mechanism is, but I'm too tired (and ok maybe a little too drunk) to type it out for the nth time. If you want to hear it, let me know; otherwise I'll spare you.
Edit: also, hold on a second: you did just argue exactly like that! ("Literally anything left-of-right-of-centre immediately gets flagged (if not outright banned by the mods)"), - which is what prompted me to dig up a few totalitarian-liberal-thought-policemans in the first place.
If so, the Wikipedia article on the event already aligns with that story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
You can't do this here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are, and the site guidelines are quite clear about it. No more of this, please.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
My only comment on that matter would be that one need not reside in any particular location to work for the CCP, they have workers all over the world, from many different backgrounds. I wasn’t implying that he/she was of any particular ethnicity, race, or nationality - not have I denigrated such. To further that point, I then asked where they were from to gain perspective on their comments, there was nothing insulting meant in my asking. (I actually meant to go back and change the accusation of working for CCP comment, and overlooked it.) However, it did seem like they were a new account, with comments not made in good faith (imo), and they were pushing a distinct CCP narrative that I see often in my research in this topic.
Thank you for taking a balanced hand to moderation here. I understand it can’t be easy.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Internet users are far too quick to accuse others of manipulation/astroturfing/etc.* When we dig into the data we nearly always find that someone is simply posting from a different background than the majority here. Different backgrounds lead people to have different views. No doubt there does exist conscious manipulation and abuse; but the dangers of mob effects coming from users who feel like they're seeing that, and then gang up on someone who actually is just coming from a different background, are much more of a threat to the site.
* I mean on political/ideological questions and the like; user intuition tends to be more accurate when it comes to people promoting products and so on - though the two bleed together in the case of big corps and that's a separate thing again.
Normally I would post a warning rather than ban you for this, but it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle, and that's a line at which we ban accounts, especially when (as is the case here) we'd already asked you to stop. (Btw we do this regardless of which ideology the account is battling against or for.)
https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/09/18/china....
See Clinton's Mar 2000 speech:
> "By joining the W.T.O., China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products; it is agreeing to import one of democracy's most cherished values: economic freedom. The more China liberalizes its economy, the more fully it will liberate the potential of its people — their initiative, their imagination, their remarkable spirit of enterprise. And when individuals have the power, not just to dream but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say."
Of course it was all nonsense, Clinton and Bush were just listening to Wall Street interests who saw massive profits in moving US manufacturing overseas to cheap labor zones. (Importing cheap labor to do jobs that couldn't be outsourced, in agriculture, construction, etc. was the other side of that coin).
I'm not a fan of either Clinton or Bush, but this is unfair. There was far more going on.
At the time, there was a strong sense that democracy had won, and that it was inevitable. That empowering people economically would eventually, without fail, lead to democratic reform. Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" is one of the most influential books of the period.
But, Fukuyama and people like him (Reagan, necons, Bush, Clinton, etc.) turned out to be fatally wrong. They created an incredibly unequal world that has eroded democracy to the point where we can seriously discuss a US that isn't a democracy anymore in our lifetimes.
You should read the book. It's an interesting case of someone who originally set out to help people, but who created a hellscape instead.
Could you elaborate? I find this too much of a stretch to think about and am not knowledgeable enough on the topic
Net result was drastically increasing inequality, and a political system with cradle-to-grave capture of politicians by the 1% (or 10% or whatever), using their increased wealth to fund political campaigns, lobbying of those politicians while in office, and to provide cushy revolving door jobs and board memberships when politicians leave office.
Many politicans of one of the two major parties are denying the result of an election. Prominent members are calling for "Democrats" to be forbidden to vote when moving state (without protest from others). An let's not even talk about the whole constitutional convention movement. There are many politicians in the US who only pay lipservice to democracy.
> Could you elaborate? I find this too much of a stretch to think about and am not knowledgeable enough on the topic
Until the 1970s and 1980s we lived in a totally different world. Taxes on the rich were high. Productivity gains were shared with workers whose wages went up. After the 1980s (Nixon, Reagan, Thatcher, Fukuyama, and more broadly neocons) everything changed.
It's incredibly striking, you can see it even is basic graphs.
The share of wages as percentage of GDP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=2KkM Until the 1970s it was pretty stable, then you have a steep downward trend. The capital class who owns things, now that they had many fewer regulations and didn't need to pay taxes, they decided to keep far more of the wealth for themselves.
This is also what gives rise to this famous graph https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2016/10/unn... The gap between labor productivity and labor compensation.
Or just look at a graph of who owns what https://static.guim.co.uk/ni/1415721490539/Wealth_line-chart... You can see it clearly, in the 80s the top 0.1% take off and the bottom 90% of people start to lose.
Even our language clearly shows what's going on. Look at when the term "Rust belt" became a thing: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Rust+belt&year...
Companies in 2022 spent nearly $1 trillion in stock buybacks. Those were illegal until 1982! That money would have gone to workers, instead, it's going to owners.
There's also been a huge shift in competition. Instead of competing with one another, companies now consolidate. This used to be a very rare event, now, in most industries we have only a few big players that absorb everyone else. That's a direct consequence of deregulation, not enforcing antitrust laws, and giving money to capital instead of people. https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wyvntk8Krq0/WQdL-4X-WjI/AAAAAAAAI...
Guess why Trump talks about Making America Great Again? People have a collective memory of a time when wages were going up and when there was optimism about the American Dream.
The crisis we're seeing in the US today is all about these charts and this timing; it's really striking how the 80s are the focal point for all of the problems that people talk about today. People are hurting now, their wealth is sapped, their wages aren't going anywhere, they have little security left. They feel like they have no future and that their children't won't have a future. Not to mention that large parts of the country are deindustrialized.
It's really sad that instead of turning to organized labor, like we saw in the 19th century, these people are mostly turning to the exact people who marginalized them in the first place (conservatives, Republicans and large businesses).
I don't believe the conversion of the industrial manufacturing heartland of the United States to a region now called 'The Rust Belt' was accidental or unplanned. Nor was the destruction of much of the West Coast garment and electronics manufacturing industries.
This has been a deliberately planned policy with a known outcome by its architects, and it's been going on for about four decades. See for example:
https://www.epi.org/blog/nafta-twenty-years-disaster/
> "By any measure, NAFTA and its sequels has been a major contributor to the rising inequality of incomes and wealth that Barack Obama bemoans in his speeches. Yet today—channeling Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton—the president proposes two more such trade deals: the Trans-Pacific Partnership with eleven Pacific Rim countries and a free trade agreement with Europe."
From your link:
> The surplus with Mexico turned into a chronic deficit. And the economic dislocation in Mexico increased the the flow of undocumented workers into the United States.
So they're saying that jobs moving from the USA to Mexico increased the flow of Mexican workers to the USA? That makes no sense at all.
The neoliberal project in a nutshell involved the outsourcing of unionized well-paid domestic manufacturing jobs overseas, on one hand, and the import of cheap expat labor to fill jobs that couldn't be moved offshore, driving down labor costs and creating hundreds of new billionaires, who used their money to buy more politicians to lock in the programs and prevent any change.
I mean that did happen. It's just that it wasnt for seen that it could be snapped back so violently.
China is still definitely more liberalized than it was in, say, 1980, even if it apexed in 2016 (with a long way to go) and retrenched itself since then.
This wasn't autocracy, this was logical health policy: Do you overwhelm hospitals, potentially causing them to fail, or do you limit personal freedom? That's the question that they had to answer.
China had the added complication of not having a vaccinated population. Partly due to them having too many people, partly due to their population being skeptical of "Western Medicine".
Except, the choice was nowhere as binary as you present and/or perceive it. If you look across the world you will see many different responses to the very same problem, but with different answers based on political, cultural, etc. differences.
I kept and keep hearing the usual responses as to why the PRC had to respond in a highly authoritarian manner: the citizens can not handle freedom as they are morally weak. This may be true, but is it not awfully convenient that this always leads to the answer being politically empowering the CCP? Cui bono?
And you didn't see a "many different responses" -- you saw 1: Lockdowns. The whole world did them. Where they didn't do them, hospitals got trashed and lots of people died.
Lockdowns ended when vaccines began, China never got that option, because its population didn't take up any of the vaccines to a high enough percentage. Also, there was never enough mRNA vaccines available to supply the whole world + china, until recently (maybe still not even now).
It 100% was as binary as I present it. Italy, UK, Canada, US, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Korea... the list goes on: They all did lockdowns to some degree to slow spread, and help their hospitals. It had nothing to do with culture or politics... except in the US.
Despite what you may have read Sweden also limited people’s movement and gathering and did localised lockdowns.
What other technique do you think is available to stop a contagion spreading? You limit people’s proximity or their susceptibility … that’s it. That’s the whole tool belt, you don’t need to be an expert, just intuitively it’s easy to understand.
Okay…? How does this address my question about alternative vaccines? Including the fact that the PRC had a local company with an mRNA vaccine license? Was there scientific reasons for this? Lack of industrial ability and know-how? National pride?
Again, I do not have answers for these questions. But I keep being told that the government in Beijing is competent and that its actions were inevitable. To me, it stinks to high heaven and I believe mistakes were made (just like most governments did during the pandemic, like Boris Johnson stating that the NHS was well prepared in January 2020), but that there is an unwillingness to admit this and we get platitudes like “they had no choice”.
> Despite what you may have read Sweden also limited people’s movement and gathering and did localised lockdowns.
And were any of these actions even remotely like what we saw in the PRC? A cat and a lion both qualify as “cats” (felidae), but if you tell me I will share my room with a cat and I end up with a lion I think you will agree that I have both a right to complain and be somewhat surprised. Sweden to the best of my knowledge had government recommendations issued (at least I know that this was the case in Japan), with no criminal prosecution in the case of breaches. Are you really in good faith arguing that what we saw in the PRC was in any way comparable?
> What other technique do you think is available to stop a contagion spreading? You limit people’s proximity or their susceptibility … that’s it. That’s the whole tool belt, you don’t need to be an expert, just intuitively it’s easy to understand.
No, I do not believe that the set of tools is as limited as you seem to believe and nor do I believe that you have showed this to be the case. On the contrary, the range of approaches we saw across the world over the last three years speaks in my favour.
There is not enough of them. Even the local license doesn't mean china can suddenly manufacture 1 billion doses every 12 weeks.
> And were any of these actions even remotely like what we saw in the PRC?
Which country has remotely the kind of population and living density of china? India? Good example of what happens if you don't do what china did: Everyone gets sick, and hospitals fall over.
> No, I do not believe that the set of tools.
It was a question. What other tools do you think there were/are? Where did a country reduce burden on hospitals without either limiting human movement (lockdowns) or vaccinating the population (vaccines)?
This whole thread is standard anti-China rhetoric. It refuses to acknowledge the facts of the situation and prefers to go with the narrative of CCP are dumb and evil.
I don’t assume bad faith, I assume a kind of indoctrination of western group think. To have Americans (a large portion of folks replying here) look down their nose at chinas response while their own country had one of the highest deaths/capita is brainwash territory to me.
Hogwash! I and many others have repeatedly pointed out to you that there was a spectrum of measures with and without legal consequences. Recommendations, lockdowns, police patrols, enforcing mask wearing, not enforcing mask wearing, closed borders, open borders, work from home, not work from home, closing restaurants early, etc. The list goes on and on and on. If you go back and read what I have written and open your mind somewhat, you will see that what I am objecting to is the perspective that Beijing had no other choice than going with what was arguably the harshest policies we have seen across the globe.
I doubly know that your facts about the world are faulty as I stayed in Japan throughout the pandemic and Japan arguably weathered it without any legal mandate at all and “only” closed borders. Now, you can argue that the PRC is not in any way akin to Japan in terms of its readiness, culture, political structure, etc. and that they had to use the policies they did based on those conditions. This is fine and I wrote as much in my very first reply to you (go ahead, read it again). Yet you have never engaged with this idea and simply gone off on tangents about “everyone did the same…”, etc. Which to me is supremely lazy thinking.
> This whole thread is standard anti-China rhetoric. It refuses to acknowledge the facts of the situation and prefers to go with the narrative of CCP are dumb and evil.
Hogwash – again! How about reflecting on your own behaviour and that you now paint me (a person you know next to nothing about) as soaked in anti-PRC rhetoric? Is it not conceivable that you are talking to a fellow human being that is trying to remain objective, while you instead carry somewhat of a PRC persecution complex?
I have a reasonably deep personal relationship with a number of PRC nationals and I would like to believe that this gives some nuance to my perspective as I know of their experiences throughout the pandemic. Likewise, have I ever argued for “dumb” or “evil”? No, I have argued that mistakes likely were made and things could have been done differently. Again, go back and read what I wrote and try to imagine that I am not some sort of “Western agent”. My perspective is very simple. I think that Beijing messed up, just like every other government. However, I know of no other government that is currently being able to shield itself with “we had no other option” in the way that they are and I think that is a load of crap. The PRC citizens as fellow human beings deserve better than this and thus I am countering this silly rhetoric whenever I see it.
> I don’t assume bad faith, I assume a kind of indoctrination of western group think. To have Americans (a large portion of folks replying here) look down their nose at chinas response while their own country had one of the highest deaths/capita is brainwash territory to me.
Maybe your indoctrination assumption is wrong? Also – spoiler – I am not an American and likewise certainly not defending any government as having the high ground. You remind me of how perplexed PRC nationals are when they have conversations with me and nod along as I criticise the historical and current hypocrisy of “Western” governments, only to somehow be surprised when I have another salvo ready for Beijing. Seemingly the complexity of the world allows there to be far more than simple binary positions and national cheerleading – funny that…
But what you describe is still a lockdown, yes Japan could lower their spread without strict mandates. But it still told everyone to effectively stay inside.
This whole thread is anti China. You said yourself, all the countries mucked up in some way, I was pointing out they didn’t do anything that different to any other country. There was/is a harshness to some of the lockdowns in particular cities in China, but overall their response was not dissimilar to the rest of the world.
Maybe my indoctrination assumption is wrong. True, you’ve at least explained your own thinking. But it’s super clear others are just spouting crap. For instance anyone with any intellectual honest would not refer to “Chinese Lockdowns” as a single things. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and their respective regions and massively different approaches to lockdowns. So when someone says “China did it wrong” - I know they are talking crap. It is equivalent saying “America did it wrong” as if Texas, New York and California all did exactly the same thing. So while you do want to take the high morale “fellow human being” ground… You still grouped up China as if it is one homogeneous thing, run by a single homogeneous government… it’s not… if any of that is surprising to you, then maybe my indoctrination assumption is not that wrong.
Okay…? So you claim that you were unaware of these things prior to me stating them? Yet you argued that there was near global homogeneity in terms of responses? Grouping together Singapore, Japan, the UK, etc. Maybe I am old fashioned, but I expect people in a discussion to do their own homework for their own basic facts.
> This whole thread is anti China. You said yourself, all the countries mucked up in some way, I was pointing out they didn’t do anything that different to any other country. There was/is a harshness to some of the lockdowns in particular cities in China, but overall their response was not dissimilar to the rest of the world.
I am just going to have to disagree with you on this.
> You still grouped up China as if it is one homogeneous thing, run by a single homogeneous government… it’s not… if any of that is surprising to you, then maybe my indoctrination assumption is not that wrong.
Pardon my French, but sod off. That is a low blow and putting words in my mouth and ascribing thoughts to my brain. Your holiness did not mention any diversity in terms of PRC responses until this very response; speaking about the PRC (and US for that matter…) as a single entity yourself. If I see your username in the future and remember this discussion, I will refrain from wasting my time with someone that throws ad hominem like that. You disappoint me deeply on a human level.
You are right that there is plenty of anti-PRC propaganda going around and people parroting it: screw them. However, you seem to me to be either a PRC-apologist or a good old anti-“West” propagandist and frankly I care just as little for these delusions and flavour of propaganda as I do for the anti-PRC one.
You shouldn’t be disappointed in people challenging your ideas. It’s the ideas I’m challenging, I’m sure you’re a great person. Even if we disagree on some subjects.
So no it wasn't comparable.
You wouldn't be at an amusement park and all of a sudden be forced to stay for hours so that everyone could be tested before you could leave. That definitely didn't happen... except in China. Neither would be left to rot to death without food and yet still not be able to go to a local supermarket because of "lockdown". Not the same.
Melbourne, 100% did lock people in their apartments, they didn't used welders, just Police, Guns, and force. They also required mass PCR tests, and had Quarantine Camps (though they used hotels).
I said they had lockdowns, they did not have extended lockdowns.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
Edit: I also reframed for your last comment
> China had the added complication of not having a vaccinated population. Partly due to them having too many people, partly due to their population being skeptical of "Western Medicine".
But since you're defending it. People in China prefer paid western vaccines over free local ones. The CCP refused to allow western vaccines to be used in China for COVID.
Melbourne did lockdowns for effectively 4 months, longer than any single Chinese lockdown. So even on that point you are incorrect. This isn’t misinformation.
It didn’t refuse vaccines, you can get them in HK, and Chinese are free to travel to HK (for a variety of reasons). There is not enough of them, that’s the problem.
You claimed Singapore and Taiwan has 'extended' lockdowns. I called you out. Now you're back peddling and trying to justify your statement with "but but but melbourne, you didn't mention melbourne and they had long lockdown!!!"
> It didn’t refuse vaccines, you can get them in HK, and Chinese are free to travel to HK.
It does refuse, and clearly you're not from China or you're just lying because China didn't recognize citizens who returned home with vaccines that were not Chinese.
Not everyone is allowed to travel to HK.
So your statement is completely false.
No, I'm not from China, but that has little to do with any point I've made. Vaccines were never an option for Chinese, they had a locally made one that didn't work well enough, and they could have never secured the number required of mRNA. If it refused them, then how did HK get them?
Which statement that I've made is false?
You claim Singapore / Taiwan had extended lockdowns > This is false.
You claim China could never secure mRNA vaccines > This is false.
You claim Chinese are free to travel to HK (to get the vaccine) > This is false.
Taiwan locked down very early in all cases taking spread to zero and then blocked anyone entering the country. Similar to New Zealand. You don’t call that a lockdown?
Show me where 6 billion doses of mRNA are being produced every 12 weeks? Then I’ll believe China could have procured them.
Chinese are free to travel to hk. There are exceptions of course. But the majority can visit (assuming they had the means)
Your point? Let's look at the difference.
In China when in lockdown, you cannot leave your apartment, period. There's no food delivery. You rely on the government to delivery food packages to you, if they aren't dumping it. You have daily covid testing, if you test positive you get taken away.
Singapore lockdown, leave home to buy food or see doctor, if you have elderly who are dependent on you, you may go visit them or take supplies to them. If you work in the food industry you can continue to work, including delivery drivers.
Taiwan lockdown, same as Singapore.
> Show me where 6 billion doses of mRNA are being produced every 12 weeks? Then I’ll believe China could have procured them.
I don't understand what part you do not get.
China > Refused > To > Allow > Western > Vaccines > From > Being > Used > In > China.
China had the facilities and rights to produce the Pfizer vaccine in China. It was not allowed to produced and used in China because China did not approve the vaccines for use.
They opted for their own home grown vaccine instead of a western one.
How hard is this to understand?
> Chinese are free to travel to hk.
No they were not allowed to freely travel to HK. There were exceptions for /some/ people to travel to HK.
And it doesn't matter if they go to HK and got an mRNA vaccine as China DID NOT RECOGNIZE IT and REQUIRED you to get THEIR vaccine. Even people in Singapore who needed to travel to China were required to get sinovac to go to China as their moderna / pfizer vaccine certs were not recognized.
You are describing lockdowns in “China” when you really mean Wuhans first lockdown, and Shanghai’s last lockdown. Guangzhou for instance was just like Singapores almost identical.
China does not require people to get the vaccine, that depends on local government policy not central government. Unless you are talking about international/returning people.
China invested in its own vaccine which was quicker and easier to keep and distribute (no cold requirement) it also turned out to be a failure. To re-pivot and set up manufacturing of mRNA that late would have been costly and still taken too long，leaving them with Covid0 as their only choice. I have seen no evidence they could have produced the required doses (initially 2 billion, and then ongoing 1 billion/quarter). If they had of tried purchasing it would likely significantly effect their economy… hard to know without understanding the pricing Pfizer were offering them.
lets Get into the real differences though:
Taiwan is an Island. Singapore is an island. The options available to you when you can effectively shutdown/control your borders lets you control people movement in a massively more effective way.
Let’s compare, somewhat comparable geographies:
- China
- Australia
- United States
Australia is a big island. So it could do a Taiwan and stop flights. But it still suffered an internal problem of people travelling between states. So what did they have to do? Super strict lockdowns.
United States also stopped flights (eventually). But its domestic and historic politics didn’t allow it to perform lockdowns nation wide, so instead it did localised ones, and spread was essentially uncontained. Lots of people died.
China suffered all the same things as the US, but could mandate lockdowns nationally. Bear in mind these lockdowns were implemented differently in every city. It saved millions of people, if the US lost 1 million with its half-assed lockdown, China would have lost more than 5 million people… insane that people are frowning at China here given their numbers were nothing close to that bad.
Was India's lack of lockdown, hospitals failing, people dying in the streets on mass "better" than a Chinese lockdown?
it's amazing how people were able to delude themselves for so long, Tiananmen should have been enough to make people and governments realize things weren't going to change