I also agree they're better (probably coincidence that I was raised in a society and education system praising them nonstop). But to what lengths are you willing to go to impose them on people who don't want them?

It's pretty funny that you equate the oppressive actions of an authoritarian regime with what the people want. It's even funnier that you've failed to understand that the whole point of the article is that an authoritarian regime is imposing itself on others.

You contradict yourself but convince yourself you're being rational.

That's the problem with being an unprincipled apologist. You end up compromised.

China has had, in terms of national continuity, a couple millenia more hard-work-and-sacrifice-time than the US, FWIW, if those qualities are inputs to being "better."

It may not be wise to categorically dismiss the shared philosophy and cultural experience of billions of people. We Westerners have a philosophical concept inherited from our ancestors that describes that attitude: "hubris."

Todays China is only about a century old now. Current leaders have done much to erase ideas and icons from the past.

That's a favorite trope but they haven't had a continuous unbroken culture. The last dynasty wasn't even Han.

England is considered to have a continuous culture going back to Londinium and huge numbers of their kings and queens weren't even born in the country.

And Italian Americans are part of a culture extending back to the Estruscans?

> China has had, in terms of national continuity, a couple millenia more hard-work-and-sacrifice-time than the US, FWIW, if those qualities are inputs to being "better."

The CCP has no continuity with the previous imperial government. They love to make that claim when it's convenient but it's bullshit. It would be like the US claiming they have a national continuity with Britain going back millennia.

The US does have a national continuity with Britain going back millenia.

Half of jurisprudence is grounded not in writings that came after the Revolution, but English Common Law. We lean on the First Amendment for issues of free speech, but we lean on the Magna Carta for questions of whether you've produced the right magic slip of paper to prove you own the land your outhouse sits on.

... hell, many of the states have a right to grant exclusive ownership of that land that's fundamentally rooted in a king having granted them that right.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You can't ignore that we're mostly speaking English for some reason...

Basing laws off laws of another country isn't national continuity. The British didn't just accept the Declaration of Independence and remove their agents from the US. The CCP wasn't formally recognized by the imperial government as the new government of China. There's no continuity of government in either case.

It really depends on how one defines "nation" (which is kind of a modern and made-up concept).

> "nation" (which is kind of a modern and made-up concept).

It isn't. Learn your history.

I have, I recommend "Imagined Communities," by Benedict Anderson.

I said history, not pseudo-intellectual pontificating theories of politics.

"Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson (August 26, 1936 – December 13, 2015) was an Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian who lived and taught in the United States." ~ (guess the source)

With respect, between the work of a Cornell professor and an internet rando, I'm going to defer to the professor on the topic the professor wrote on.

I said defer to history, not me.

The treaty of Westphalia would have a word about "modern".

> China has had, in terms of national continuity, a couple millenia more hard-work-and-sacrifice-time

Yes, and China ended up very far behind.

China's progress has come through Westernization. China needs more of it.

> It may not be wise to categorically dismiss the shared philosophy and cultural experience of billions of people.

Billions more know better.

Very far behind what?

China's got a better rail network than the US, more industrial capacity, and produces the world's electronics now. The gap in tech is measured in decades at most, and by that metric the world was behind England (until it wasn't) because England had the accident of thirst for coal and the use for automated, sustained drainage and pumping that allowed them the critical mass of tech and need to build and refine the steam engine.

In terms of world history, the era of European / American tech ascendancy is a blip on the radar.

> China's got a better rail network than the US

It's hilarious that the very first example you pick is the quintessential example of Western industrialization and infrastructure.

Good old Westernization proceeds apace. You admit China needs more of it.

> It's hilarious that the very first example you pick is the quintessential example of Western industrialization and infrastructure.

True. America's failure to maintain and update its rail infrastructure relative to other countries is downright absurd.

The US may have had rail first, but you wouldn't know it to look at them.

You've lost track of your thread. You're now consistently admitting that China's progress has come from Westernization.

Maybe you should have put your thinking on rails.

Who cares? America's progress came from Anglicization. The Brits invented the steam engine, the locomotive, and the electric generator. Then the Americans took those ideas and ran with them.

... now, China's running with the generation of ideas America pioneered and refined, and America's mostly playing catchup because they're off the rails (tragically literally, if you live in East Palestine, OH).

> Who cares?

I do. The Western model is superior. Your Chinese model is inferior.

You can live under the boot of an authoritarian regime if you lack the self respect to stand up for yourself. Liberal democracy and the rule of law do take work, and you do sound lazy.

Maybe you do need to be told what to do.

> tragically literally, if you live in East Palestine, OH

Like trains don't derail in China:

https://apnews.com/article/china-guangzhou-accidents-c179ac1...

China likes covering them up too:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/25/chinese-rail-c...

Now you're just being foolish.

I don't know, I would consider it lazy to write off the political structure coordinating over a billion people as "inferior" when it seems to be working for them. I have no disagreement that authoritarians tend to massage and hide data more (as opposed to liberal democracies, where we just classify it and throw people in jail for dumping those databases, right?), but I observe the way the world works and conclude the jury is currently out on which solution leads to a more stable society in the long term. China's communist experiment is young, but it's grounded in political philosophy and theories of social structure dating back thousands of years... I'll let America get a couple more hundred under its belt before I conclude this Democratic experiment is working.

History suggests previous attempts at democracies were unstable. Maybe the alchemy was right this go around. But I'm watching this one allow itself to be spun up into division and polarization that has resulted in a civil war in the past, so we'll see how it goes. The house has a tendency to win, especially when the house is time herself.

> I don't know

Yes, but don't worry. I do.

> I would consider it lazy to write off the political structure coordinating over a billion people

You're not considering anything. You're only desperately trying to hold on to a losing proposition you've arrived at through a lack of principle, a profound laziness, and a basic nihilism.

> I'll let America get a couple more hundred under its belt before I conclude this Democratic experiment is working.

Such sloppy thinking. You really do need to broaden your horizons.