111–120 of 371 posts
The West thought once China is full of billionaires, the billionaires having all that wealth would then have the power to oppose and dissolve the CCP. Didn't go as planned.
I have serious issues with China. But I also think that there are lessons to learn from many different models. The ability of the government to take on actors with vast amounts of private capital is, in my view, one of those things worth learning from.
Many are worried that America's rule of law is also being slowly deteriorated. Once you go down the path of authoritarianism, there is no turning back.
Only in extremely rare cases like South Korea managed to go from authoritarian military junta that came to power, built up its economy by exploiting and oppressing labor movements, , to a democratic state with civil elections only really started in 1993.
Even now South Korea still has problems with following the rule of law. It used to be that the judicial committee is "independent" from the President but recently the Moon administration has completely destroyed this delicate mechanism that was built to prevent authoritarianism. UNHRC openly calls Moon a semi-dictator now and Moon is getting cozy with the CCP and turning its back on the US. Before, this setup allowed for the arrest of past two military dictators that came to power after Park Chung Hee's assassination by his own spy chief. Now it's gone.
What I'm trying to say is that democracy is truly a gift when it works, its noisy, people fight but thats exactly what is needed but it can easily be taken away.
This is what worries me most about Trump, with the recent military manuevers within the country (squad of apache helicopters, troop transports, Trump heading to a USMC command bunker) makes me suggest this is a man with nothing to lose and evrything to gain with the military and police behind him (police were seen removing the barricades in capitol hill rush).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US government isn't really THAT much different from Japan and all of Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, etc... Even India and, theoretically, even Russia, too. So, it's not surprising the average Chinese person has a decent understanding of how a basic democracy works. In some ways, China is also not THAT much different, either. But it is more different than pretty much every other major economy in the wo…
> in a lot of ways it is more capitalist than a lot of the West China definitely has big market aspects and private ownership, but I also think this can be overstated. There is still massive public ownership of major companies and banks in China and land in all urban areas is publicly owned as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The west has invested a lot into the Chinese economy hoping to translate the corresponding equity into growth Chinese people are jointly invest in that venture, by (not limited to): * Sacrifice family and personal time, by hundreds of millions of passent migration workers. * Sacrifice health and life quality, even today 996 still a norm, and you can imagine what have been since the opening up * Environment, early p…
> As such, I do welcome campaign like the poverty elimination [1]. Which is inits entirety a propaganda campaign. I have peers from all across China, poorest parts included. All what 6 people saw were a photoshoot, and a potemkin village.
But I firmly support the whole idea of eliminating poverty with the accumulated wealth. Essentially a form of compensation by transferring some wealth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Misunderstanding about the inner workings of China isn't the CCP's fault, at least not at this level. The discourse about China, misunderstandings about how the Chinese systems functions, and lack of even a basic interest in getting a realistic view of China are rampant. The average view of China in the US is so cartoonish it's quite ridiculous. If you talk to an educated, middle-class Chinese audience about the US p…
Serious question: How does one get educated about modern China? (I'm Chinese but mostly Western educated) Having seen my grandparents/parents/relatives escaping communist China and now my generation escaping HK, it has heavily influenced me on how even people who identified as Chinese and hoping for democracy and freedom for their own cousins in China are being played and lied to for multiple decades. My people in HK…
If you have the money, Sinocism[0] is a great newsletter that collects the top (mostly political) stories of the day. Some other good (free) Substacks are Chinarrative[1], which publishes translated human interest stories, and Chinese Journal Review[2], which translates abstracts of a selection of academic papers.
If you would like a local insight into more young/liberal perspectives, Sixth Tone[3] is fairly interesting. Be aware that this is a state-owned media source, so it has an interest in presenting China as progressive in ways that outside of middle class communities in top tier cities it usually isn't. Just because it's state-owned doesn't mean it's not informative, though! China Media Project[4] is perhaps a useful accompanying source to try understand exactly how the state media is biased.
Of the western media, New York Times probably does the best reporting on China (they even have a Chinese language version), but like all western media they struggle to get access. Inside China, Caixin is probably the best newspaper, but unfortunately it is pay-walled.
From left wing perspective I can also recommend Made In China Journal[5].
[1] https://chinarrative.substack.com/
[2] https://chinesejournalreview.substack.com/
Either way, a standard if frequently-forgotten message to innovators in such regimes.
Guo Wengui said back in September 2019 that "Jack Ma would be jailed or killed" on Kyle Bass's youtube channel. [1] At this point its not even a question of whether we will see Jack Ma in public again. Overnight he went from billionaire to peasantry. We've seen dozen cases like this: 1) Billionaire disappears or is "killed" 2) Billionaire's company becomes nationalized 3) Rinse & Repeat Everybody who isn't familiar w…
> As much as people in the West praise CCP's economic rise Who is praising the CCP's economic rise? The American consensus as far as I can tell is that we need to shut them out and push them into decline. The West should brain drain the best and brightest from China.
A majority of Americans until relatively recently? China was seen favorably by most Americans until the last decade. An economic world power that we should strengthen relations with if polls are to be believed.
For example:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-vi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Misunderstanding about the inner workings of China isn't the CCP's fault, at least not at this level. The discourse about China, misunderstandings about how the Chinese systems functions, and lack of even a basic interest in getting a realistic view of China are rampant. The average view of China in the US is so cartoonish it's quite ridiculous. If you talk to an educated, middle-class Chinese audience about the US p…
> The discourse about China, misunderstandings about how the Chinese systems functions It functions like a dictatorship functions. The dictatorship of the party. > And it's actually a huge problem for the West that both government and citizens do not engage China seriously. The West will mostly separate production within about a decade or two. It‘s not a problem at all.
> It functions like a dictatorship functions. The dictatorship of the party.
This is exactly the kind of reductive thinking that is getting the West into trouble.
There is no dictatorship system. At most, it points to a non-democratic system. But that term covers an incredibly wide variety of regimes, from 1920s Portugal to Latin American Cold War authoritarian regimes to the USSR to Maoist China to contemporary China, and all of them are very different creatures. The differences between these are much wider than the differences between democratic systems (e.g. US vs Israel vs India), which are already very wide.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Misunderstanding about the inner workings of China isn't the CCP's fault, at least not at this level. The discourse about China, misunderstandings about how the Chinese systems functions, and lack of even a basic interest in getting a realistic view of China are rampant. The average view of China in the US is so cartoonish it's quite ridiculous. If you talk to an educated, middle-class Chinese audience about the US p…
Would love some pointers to read up on. I am imagining something that talks about how provincial governments work, any factions at play, day-to-day politics of getting things to happen whether by official process or informal etc.