echoing what vpalan2 said below: "If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident." These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their…
Your quote compares the combined wealth of Chinese politicians with the median wealth of American politicians. That's a misleading statistic if I ever saw one.
In addition, it's the wealth of the very top level politicians in China vs median wealth of all politicians (If I understand correctly) in US. A fair comparison should be the senators and representatives.
It's funny, I see this all the time in the media. Yet observers whose opinions I trust far more, have differing thoughts. http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/macroeconomic-insig... And of course, China's stock exchange is holding steady now, around their long term growth average. It was overvalued before, now it's corrected, and definitely hasn't crashed.
roflmao Goldman Sachs lies to people who pay them millions, and you think that anything they publish for free is reliable? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/how-goldman-ex... Any report from Goldman Sachs is designed to advance Goldman Sachs' interests. Any resemblance to reality it might hold is sheer coincidence.
A 2011 article from Rolling Stone proves what? Furthermore, it's not particularly well written or objective.
The point is, they're pretty spot on when it comes to forecasting. More so than pretty much any media outlet. If they say China isn't going to descend into Mad Max style anarchy in the next decade, I believe them.
Selective enforcement of laws in very common in many countries. If they enforce is too harshly then people will protest. For example exceeding the speed limit while driving.
"selective enforcement" is an interesting concept... I have a neighbor (lives across the lake from me) who is a retired police officer...23 years on the job... I asked him once if there was any truth to the rumor that traffic cops had to meet a quota... He said, "Not in so many words...every now and then the Captain, during the shift briefing would say, "Boys, I need to see some paper" and we all knew what he meant."
Selective enforcement has a very different meaning in my country. I mean they force us to pay debilitating bills for electricity but they don't care that 11 years ago's 24/7 availability is now as random as rolling dice. We have to pay taxes for the city when we have been suffering of garbage filling our roads, only to end with them to recollect the waste and throw it in our city historic river. They patch things just for the corruption councils to get another day to play or be played with like a broken pawn. It is still the coolest place if you do not mind assassinations, bombings, mafias, world powers, nightclubs you need to reserve a table at for 10 grands to get in, we protest about everything, we speak words from 3 languages in every other sentence, and have the best food. We can easily hit the beach and 20 minutes ski on awesome slopes this time of the year. We love each other but I hate hearing my neighbor complain about getting 1/200 of my bill when I am sure they steal electricity illegally. But with their background, connections, and stares, I am good.
Because the west has been stepping up propaganda. I remember 5 years ago, most outlets had very pro-China things to say. Now it's undoubtedly taken a very negative turn. Daily stories about China's impending economic collapse, their various 'crackdowns', and so on. Even this article. To be honest, half of the stuff they want to ban isn't even allowable in Canadian media (literally, 3 out of 6 bullet points are strait…
The definitions are far more vague in this case. They could basically make the case that anything is "undermining social stability"; whereas making the same judgement in Canada would be tougher. "endangering social morality or national cultural tradition" could probably even include publishing anything upsetting or otherwise true about the party.
> making the same judgement in Canada would be tougher.
Kind of like stripping the citizenship of and deporting a Canadian who was born in Canada and never stepped foot in the country they're being deported to?
Selective enforcement of laws in very common in many countries. If they enforce is too harshly then people will protest. For example exceeding the speed limit while driving.
Harsh enforcement also causes their revenue to drop. Several of the towns which depended upon speed traps for their funding found out that the Internet is a good resource for letting people know to avoid an area. This will be interesting when self-driving cars don't ever disobey traffic laws.
Not just Internet. When I first saw this AAA billboard in FL, I thought it's a prank. But it is not, and it warns about one of the America's worst speed traps.
echoing what vpalan2 said below: "If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident." These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their…
For those who don't want to do the math 463.8/(106+97) = avg of ~2.28 billion per china congress critter Edit: as pointed out below, the math is more complex as there is 2987 seats in the NPC and I can't quickly find numbers for the number of total seats in the CPPCC, so the average is certainly drastically lower than the above.
Sounds like the normal thing in China. Make something illegal, don't enforce it, if someone's saying something you don't like then enforce it specifically against them, keeps everyone else in line.
echoing what vpalan2 said below: "If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident." These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their…
It's absurd for Chinese government to call itself Communist whilst its leaders have such immense personal wealth publicly visible.
The government censor in New Zealand wants web sites to submit their material, item by item, to the censor's office for approval. Australia and the UK already have firewalls that filter all Internet traffic which "my bad, so sorry" seem to keep "accidentally" including all sorts of sites their backing legislation doesn't justify (at least as far as anyone can tell - the Australian government list is confidential). Th…
Their 'great firewall' is incredibly sophisticated and has lead to domestic companies like Baidu filling in gaps left by foreign companies. Weirdly, I think its helped China become a bigger power.
It's called protectionism and had been the cornerstone of economic power growth for centuries
I would say bad China, but given how polarised and politicised the Western media is, I find it hard to fault them. Unbiased journalism seems such a quaint concept these days, and as the divisions between right and left take on an almost war like characteristic, everything becomes propaganda. Hell, I might even move to China to get away from it all.
Are you joking? In China, non-propaganda is explicitly forbidden by law.