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Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

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Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#11

Post by wavefunction »

Cyph0n wrote: post #9
kiba wrote: post #5

From my perspective, it looked like China will overtake the world and maybe prove that democracy is optional for economic prosperity, a blow to Western values and ideal. But how true is that? I hear a lot about corruption and crackdown, and wonder how much does that impact their economy. How critical is good information about the world? Do Western Media do a good job of it, or at least a better one than those in less…

They might take over the world (I think it's unlikely), but in my opinion, the main reason isn't their political system: it's human capital (1/7 of the world population) and homogeneity (very cohesive culture due to China's history). Western countries lack the former, India and others lack the latter.

That's why they have all those knife attacks and bombings and hundreds of young Tibetans self-immolating in protest. All that 'Chinese homogenity' and 'harmonious society.'

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#12

Post by wjn0 »

wavefunction wrote: post #11
Cyph0n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might take over the world (I think it's unlikely), but in my opinion, the main reason isn't their political system: it's human capital (1/7 of the world population) and homogeneity (very cohesive culture due to China's history). Western countries lack the former, India and others lack the latter.

That's why they have all those knife attacks and bombings and hundreds of young Tibetans self-immolating in protest. All that 'Chinese homogenity' and 'harmonious society.'

I'm curious to know the ratio of these crimes to population, as compared to Western countries. Harmonious != 100% peaceful.

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#13

Post by grouseway »

kiba wrote: post #5

From my perspective, it looked like China will overtake the world and maybe prove that democracy is optional for economic prosperity, a blow to Western values and ideal. But how true is that? I hear a lot about corruption and crackdown, and wonder how much does that impact their economy. How critical is good information about the world? Do Western Media do a good job of it, or at least a better one than those in less…

Wasn't it Mao's tongue in cheek assessment of the American democracy experiment that it's "too early to tell"? The same can certainly be said of Chinese current state. They're a remarkable success on a scale unlike anything else in the world's history but lets wait a little longer...

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#14

Post by seanmcdirmid »

vkou wrote: post #3
friendwithwifi wrote: post #2

China under Xi Jinping has effectively turned into a dicatatorship, and so with a dictatorship, censorship and blackouts naturally comes along with it. That's the reason why Beijing has recently cracked down on VPN, sent many of the young, brave democratic protestors in Hong Kong to prison, silenced many of its Xi critics, etc. Will China suffer from the censorship and blackouts? As discussed heavily on HN, probably.…

> China under Xi Jinping has effectively turned into a dicatatorship How was it not one before Xi Jinping?

Xi is a strongish leader, almost as strong as Jiang zemin. Compared to Hu Jintao, he is much stronger, but this is mostly a return to normalcy.

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#15

Post by fspeech »

kiba wrote: post #5

From my perspective, it looked like China will overtake the world and maybe prove that democracy is optional for economic prosperity, a blow to Western values and ideal. But how true is that? I hear a lot about corruption and crackdown, and wonder how much does that impact their economy. How critical is good information about the world? Do Western Media do a good job of it, or at least a better one than those in less…

"How critical is good information about the world?"

Of course it is critical but the access to good information is not entirely dependent on whether there is censorship:

For long form reporting a lot is dependent on budget resources. When newspapers here lose revenue they inevitably cut back on investigative reporting and resort to more editorialization. In China newspapers may have fared slightly better on the revenue side so far (https://www.statista.com/statistics/498028/newspaper-publish...) but the future is uncertain.

Outbound tourism has been steadily growing, reaching 126 million trips in 2016. https://www.travelchinaguide.com/tourism/2016statistics/outb...

There is a large Chinese diaspora connected through social networking.

There are also websites such as Zhihu that is a real force in dispersal of knowledge but is barely discussed here on HN due to the language barrier. Weibo (which is like Twitter), where a celebrity could generate millions of comments, gets more attention from the general public and the government. But if you are after good information Zhihu often provides surprisingly in-depth answers.

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#16

Post by seanmcdirmid »

QAPereo wrote: post #6
vkou wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China under Xi Jinping has effectively turned into a dicatatorship How was it not one before Xi Jinping?

Previously it was a sort of vaguely Maoist gerontocracy; power was concentrated in some central committees, not just the premier.

You mean party secretary. The premier is Li Keqiang, who is pretty powerless, at least compared to Wen Jiabao.

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#17

Post by coumygen »

Cyph0n wrote: post #9
kiba wrote: post #5

From my perspective, it looked like China will overtake the world and maybe prove that democracy is optional for economic prosperity, a blow to Western values and ideal. But how true is that? I hear a lot about corruption and crackdown, and wonder how much does that impact their economy. How critical is good information about the world? Do Western Media do a good job of it, or at least a better one than those in less…

They might take over the world (I think it's unlikely), but in my opinion, the main reason isn't their political system: it's human capital (1/7 of the world population) and homogeneity (very cohesive culture due to China's history). Western countries lack the former, India and others lack the latter.

Human capital doesn't automatically indicate economic prowess; you have to remember there's around 700M in China that still lives in rural areas with under $1 a day, and they can't get the jobs in urban cities because those jobs are going away due to moving to cheaper SE asia countries, robots, and lack of skillsets.

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#18

Post by vkou »

QAPereo wrote: post #6
vkou wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China under Xi Jinping has effectively turned into a dicatatorship How was it not one before Xi Jinping?

Previously it was a sort of vaguely Maoist gerontocracy; power was concentrated in some central committees, not just the premier.

What difference does it make to the common people, or to political activists, that power is spread out among the leaders of dozen CCP committees, versus a single man?

The police will continue to repress, the press committees will continue to censor...

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#19

Post by coumygen »

kiba wrote: post #5

From my perspective, it looked like China will overtake the world and maybe prove that democracy is optional for economic prosperity, a blow to Western values and ideal. But how true is that? I hear a lot about corruption and crackdown, and wonder how much does that impact their economy. How critical is good information about the world? Do Western Media do a good job of it, or at least a better one than those in less…

Your information is old; China is the most indebted country in the world, and its growth in debt is scaring alot of economists.

Re: Western news about China depends on intrepid Chinese ‘news assistants’

#20

Post by musage »

kiba wrote: post #5

From my perspective, it looked like China will overtake the world and maybe prove that democracy is optional for economic prosperity, a blow to Western values and ideal. But how true is that? I hear a lot about corruption and crackdown, and wonder how much does that impact their economy. How critical is good information about the world? Do Western Media do a good job of it, or at least a better one than those in less…

> maybe prove that democracy is optional for economic prosperity, a blow to Western values and ideal.

Huh? It was never about pure economic prosperity. The point is the human being that any prosperity is useless without.

Also, I had to think of this:

> You can have a lot of political 'change' in the United States, but will it really change that much? Will it change the amount of money in someone’s bank account? Will it change contracts? Will it void contracts that already exist? And contracts on contracts? And contracts on contracts on contracts? Not really.

> So I say that free speech in many Western places is free not as a result of liberal circumstances but rather as a result of such intense fiscalization that it doesn’t matter what you say. The dominant elite doesn’t have to be scared of what people think, because a change in political view is not going to change whether they own their company or not; it is not going to change whether they own a piece of land or not. But China is still a political society, although it is rapidly heading toward a fiscalized society. And other societies, like Egypt, are still heavily politicized. Their rulers really do need to be concerned about what people think, so they expend proportionate efforts on controlling freedom of speech.

-- Julian Assange

So yeah, "democracy". Freedom of speech. We can call Bush a war criminal, fine. Yay for us! But are others yearning for the right to speak about grievances and take part in normalizing them, or about correcting them, for good?

What would be the functional difference between capitalism in which one company provides all products and jobs and any other strictly top-down hierarchy? Flavor? And while I do not mean to say "oh it's all the same", and think it would be insane to demean the liberties we (still) have instead of really using them -- just take this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15444607

Just some random quotes describe what I mean:

> They make hardware that we can't control, there's no real alternative to buy, and now we gotta rely on volunteers and wiki pages to give instructions that might work but who knows you might brick it.

> Unfortunately for consumers, there's no way to escape this as even AMD has their own IME.

"Unfortunate". You know, like it's the weather. And now consider at all the double think spouted at other, more minor occasions. Oh, free market this personal choice that. But that stops when it comes to a whole lot of things that matter a whole lot.

In a sane world with people who have their dignity intact, it would be "unfortunate" for AMD and Intel, and companies that engage in war profiteering and a whole mess of other things. We are not living in that world and we are not those people. We could and should be.

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