Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping • Hacker News Board

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#231

Post by jimmyvalmer » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 1:20 AM UTC

hosh wrote: post #204

jimmyvalmer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mongolian and Manchurian descended rulers ... were Buddhist. However, the Qing dynasty... Huh? First Manchuria equals Qing in my limited remembrance of imperial history. Second, the Manchurians were Buddhist?

I'll be more precise -- the Qing dynasty (Manchurian) emperor that asserted state power over theocratic power in Tibet was himself personally a Buddhist. This was from a paper I read -- it's a book review of Forging the Golden Urn ; the book is written by Max Oidtmann, and the review was written by Matthew Mosca, published in the Journal of Chinese Studies. In the review, it talked about the Qing emperor trying to as…

Enlightening, but I glitched over "Manchurian [qua Qing] ...rulers had left Tibet as an autonomous region [but] had asserted state power over the theocratic rule," a seemingly contradictory assertion which I, as a speed reader, get mightily bogged down by. I suppose it's possible to preserve Tibetan sovereignty while also making a political declaration of state over church, but boy, it's a bit of a play action fake.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#232

Post by whimsicalism » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #228

whimsicalism wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major problem is that the people directing massive capital investments in the West are simply not as smart as the people directing massive capital investments in China. If your nation gets rich earlier, then hereditary passing on of wealth will mean that in a few generations the people making the decisions about capital allocation are no longer your best and brightest. All you need to do is look at the difference…

Thats of course ridiculous. "Low !Q" wealthy people in the US arent managing their own money. They hire the best and brightest to do it. China has a massive advantage because they can simply copy or steal what works in the US more efficiently than we can come up with the next best thing.

> They hire the best and brightest to do it.

Oh, and how do they determine the "best and brightest"?

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#233

Post by hosh » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

jimmyvalmer wrote: post #231

hosh wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be more precise -- the Qing dynasty (Manchurian) emperor that asserted state power over theocratic power in Tibet was himself personally a Buddhist. This was from a paper I read -- it's a book review of Forging the Golden Urn ; the book is written by Max Oidtmann, and the review was written by Matthew Mosca, published in the Journal of Chinese Studies. In the review, it talked about the Qing emperor trying to as…

Enlightening, but I glitched over "Manchurian [qua Qing] ...rulers had left Tibet as an autonomous region [but] had asserted state power over the theocratic rule," a seemingly contradictory assertion which I, as a speed reader, get mightily bogged down by. I suppose it's possible to preserve Tibetan sovereignty while also making a political declaration of state over church, but boy, it's a bit of a play action fake.

Yeah, it gets weird. The little I know about Korea and Okinawa were cultures greatly shaped by Ming dynasty practice of vassal states, and later, Japanese expansionism.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#234

Post by simonh » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 7:25 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #74

excerionsforte wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll humor and agree with this take given it can take greater than 7 years for macro effects to occur stemming from policies and choices that countries make. Example is the former One Child policy which took a long time for the effects to be seen. Another example is that pumping money into the economy doesn't have immediate effects. India had its own policies ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790 ) tha…

The effects of the One Child policy has actually been pretty much as intended. There are two hidden goals of the One Child policy that aren't communicated very often in the West. The first is proletarianization. Indeed, almost 30% of Chinese people are peasants. This is not efficient. Only around 2-5% would be sufficient; therefore 20-23% of the productive potential is wasted for the same consumption. And so, creatin…

The reasons you give might well be the intention, but it seems misconceived. There were special carve-outs in the one child policy for farmers. If their first child was a girl they could try again for a boy. Also the policy was very hard to apply consistently in the countryside because the bureaucracy is very thin there and its not at all uncommon for families to hide children with relatives. You can't get away with that in the cities.

As for the retirement age, life expectancy in China is significantly lower than in the west. In fact in 1970 is was only 59 years. It's still 6 years behind the USA and it's not uncommon for significant health problems to kick in during your 50s. On the other hand as for making way for the new generation, how are they supposed to learn from more experienced older colleagues if they all retired? Oh well, I suppose that's the problem with centrally planned economies.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#235

Post by op03 » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 9:05 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #94

op03 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who makes better food? Thats all that matter. It was a crucial factor in the fall of the Romans (they hadn't invented pizza yet), the Mongols, the Brits, the Soviets, the Germans etc etc.

This is interesting. Can you expand?

I was just joking :) Mostly to show, the MORE complex and dynamic the system is, anyone can pick random factors and use it in analysis to say whatever they feel like.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#236

Post by bboygravity » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 9:56 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #58

bboygravity wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at the number in China in absolute poverty over the last 100 years. Honestly, your comment seems remarkably ill-reformed. Last 100 years? I was thinking more towards the last 2500 years or so of Chinese and Western history. Will edit my previous comment to clarify. > It is actually quite anomalous for a non-democracy to see these sorts of quality of life improvements. Could you give some counter examples…

> Could you give some counter examples to these non-democracies Given that outside of Greece, the Roman republic, Italian city-states, and a few other exceptions - every single one of thousands of regimes was non-democratic for thousands of years, it seems like those are anomalous and your comment is shot through with historical survivorship bias. > Could you give some counter examples to these non-democracies that w…

> it seems like those are anomalous and your comment is shot through with historical survivorship bias.

Fair point. Maybe. Maybe not. What I mean is: it's hard to compare the outcome of democracies and non-democracies, because in my view the only country that has ever existed to come close to the concept of democracy in the history of humanity is Switzerland. And even that one has plenty of non-democratic aspects. Sample size: 1...

Other countries don't come close IMO. I don't agree that your examples where anything close enough to democracy. Not even Greece (where only the upper caste of society was allowed to vote, forget slaves etc).

And that's not even considering the fact that we essentially have sample size 0 if we want to compare large true democracies to large totalitarian states.

> but I disagree that that results in quality of life improvement.

Improvement compared to what? Tribal societies? Anarchy? Democracy? It is a fact that many societies that fell into dictatorship had an undeniable improvement in quality of life for the masses (compared to whatever previous society they had), but then also a massive decrease in quality of life eventually (or the other way around or in cycles, etc). And it can happen relatively quickly within years/decades. That was kind of my previous point: totalitarian regimes are efficient in ramping up, but such a system has no way to be stable, because the entire power pyramid depends on 1 person at the top (and a whoooooole lot of manipulative butt-licking corruption down the chain). Nice competent person = instant nice society. Evil/crazy/sick person (possibly the same person that started out nice) = instant hell.

> I don't think any of those examples lifted anywhere close to the same proportion of their population out of poverty. China lifted 880 million out of poverty.

China, the very same political/military system, also got those same people into poverty in the first place in a matter of years/decades (killing up to some 60 million people in the process) through Mao. Again, my point exactly: totalitarian regimes are good at ramping up quickly and messing up equally quickly.

They've quickly gone into poverty before, they can do it again. There's only 1 person between China being "great" and China being nothing in a matter of years/decades. And that's the point I was trying to make before.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#237

Post by dirtyid » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 12:20 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #126

wahern wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They began moving years ago because wages were increasing in China, same reason those jobs left the U.S. decades ago. I'm tempted to say the process was accelerated in China, but then again the heyday of U.S. manufacturing was only 20-30 years, maybe 40-50 if you include 1920s appliances boom[1], as the shift to Japan was in full swing by the 1970s. China is at about the 30 year mark (1990-2020), so if we really want…

This. I don’t have a link handy, but at present China’s superpower is effective final assembly. The common example is the iPhone, where once you subtract out the value from imported parts, China is only keeping something like $4. (From memory, so there may be some more recent and/or accurate numbers)

iPhone anecdote is unrepresentative outlier, at the time due to imported components and funny GDP accounting. IIRC Overall Chinese value capture on exports is 70% in 2016 and rises yearly especially as Chinese suppliers moves up the industrial chain for expensive components replace foreign ones, screens, ram, cpu etc. Though in terms of electronics the important figure is really patent fees: China is massive net importer: $6 in patent fees for every $1 they receive, hence the drive to build / buy domestic patent portfolio.

I think China's superpower is concentrating supply chains and specialization on a scale and to an effect / competitive advantage that's only possible when drawing from a population of 1.4 billion who speak the same language and share the same infrastructure and regulatory frame. No one else is really going to replicate that. The idea that a loose assembly of countries like ASEAN separated by geography, language, laws is going to be more efficient than China... who still has 2X more people to draw from is a nonstarter. India possibly but unlikely.

I think the future is separate assembled in Vietnam and India lines to circumvent tariffs while China gets promoted to designer + manufacturer of advanced products. Though truthfully China can choke even assembled elsewhere prospects if she ever decides to weaponize sanctions like US does. While Chinese manufacturing labour concentrated in coastal regions is has gotten expensive, China is not short of cheap labour. There's about 600M rural people whose income range from Bangladesh to Vietnam in the interior provinces. If China _really_ wanted to, they could recapture all these markets, and there's some indications things might move that way as domestic policies focus on interior development.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#238

Post by ericmay » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

op03 wrote: post #235

ericmay wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. Can you expand?

I was just joking :) Mostly to show, the MORE complex and dynamic the system is, anyone can pick random factors and use it in analysis to say whatever they feel like.

The thing is it almost made sense. I could see “quality of food declining” as a market for a civilization or empire beginning to fail.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#239

Post by throw51319 » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

PrinceKropotkin wrote: post #137

ardit33 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China looks like Japan in the 20s and 30s. Rapidly developing country, with territorial ambitions around the seas /islands close to the coast, and a almost predatory commercial way of doing business, and a almost nazi like squashing of minorities. History doesn't exactly repeats itself, but it certainly rhythms...

This isn't comparable at all. The territorial expansion was always difficult to sustain and grew from a ravenous, irrational ethnonationalist political culture and the need for oil and other industrializing resources. China's mode of imperialism is inherently based on China's geography and centralized bureaucracy. There is no analogue of the Emperor being both absolutely powerful and removed from day to day decision…

He's probably just drawing the comparison as a warning. Because when it comes down to it, the CCP has developed a ethnonationalism of it's own. And that's a powerful thing when the rest of the world is actively trying to shed their identity and become multiculti.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#240

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #234

sudosysgen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The effects of the One Child policy has actually been pretty much as intended. There are two hidden goals of the One Child policy that aren't communicated very often in the West. The first is proletarianization. Indeed, almost 30% of Chinese people are peasants. This is not efficient. Only around 2-5% would be sufficient; therefore 20-23% of the productive potential is wasted for the same consumption. And so, creatin…

The reasons you give might well be the intention, but it seems misconceived. There were special carve-outs in the one child policy for farmers. If their first child was a girl they could try again for a boy. Also the policy was very hard to apply consistently in the countryside because the bureaucracy is very thin there and its not at all uncommon for families to hide children with relatives. You can't get away with…

It's not really that important from where the population is reduced. There is essentially no big difference between the son of a farmer and the son of a factory worker.

China's life expectancy is two 2 years under the US, not 6 years. Moreso, the most important way of learning on the job is experience, learning from a 50 year old vs a 60 year old is not that big of a difference.