WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance • Hacker News Board

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#121

Post by fighterpilot » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

bllguo wrote: post #86

tablespoon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're broadly correct. With regard to China, a lot of people's understanding is driven in large part by wishful thinking, which is a serious weakness and vulnerability. > Sure lots of people disagree with the party, but that doesn't that they want a western liberal democracy. So lots of people will speak in favor of a benevolent elite and against populism or what they see as western chaos or oppression. When…

> When educated Chinese people were better exposed to ideas about liberal democracy, they were very clear that they wanted it This falls flat for me. So the implication is that there are no educated Chinese today with exposure to liberal democracy? I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.

Sure, liberal democracies have had many recent failures, but they're still the most prosperous societies on a per-capita basis by a gigantic margin. If an authoritarian or non-democratic country can achieve over $40,000 GDP per capita, then we can revisit.

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#122

Post by tablespoon » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #64

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-frame the question: if they could have western style liberal democracy without any bloodshed, would they? The answers you're seeing might be tainted with knowing the path to democracy would be painful, and all else equal, that pain is worse than the current power structure.

There is without any bloodshed and without any bloodshed. The Soviet Union fell down with very little bloodshed, but around 7 million people died from the economic disruption, and the democracy that came from it was rapidly compromised both by local oligarchs and foreign powers in most of it. I don't think the Chinese would want a fall of the USSR scenario, however little the bloodshed is. Economic disruption can kil…

> There is without any bloodshed and without any bloodshed. The Soviet Union fell down with very little bloodshed, but around 7 million people died from the economic disruption, and the democracy that came from it was rapidly compromised both by local oligarchs and foreign powers in most of it.

But you're comparing apples and oranges.

Russia was still a command economy when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and went straight to democracy and capitalism at the same time with very little transition (IIRC, mainly because of the bad advice of Westerners who were too ideological and infatuated with markets).

China has already made the transition to capitalism, so I don't think a political transition to liberal democracy there would entail the kind of economic disruption Russia experienced.

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#123

Post by dillondoyle » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

Steltek wrote: post #93

sudosysgen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes and no. Go to reddit for example, you can find endless amounts of people explaining the Chinese perspective and getting voted down and accused of being wumaos, and you'll get banned for it in many places too. At some point I imagine it gets tiring.

Isn't that the problem though? How do you know you're getting a genuine opinion when there's a public, broad, and well funded astroturf campaign? What even is a genuine opinion or free thought when the government employs such ruthless censorship?

I strongly hold this skepticism of there being targeted CCP shills, including on HN. If true, that goes beyond censorship of their own citizens. How do you prove though. There has been some reporting about it, I remember one about their distributed mechanical turk-ified gamification of astro turfing basically.

And I think that not knowing is part of the value for them. The Putin way of power through questioning reality, just throw out lots of lies, deflect, scapegoat, whataboutism. Class troll behavior has invaded the real world.

I also see parallels in the US, at first from the extreme right 'media' just taking this bold faced bs approach and sadly it works.

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#124

Post by em500 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

starfallg wrote: post #78

georgeecollins wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The problem is that the CCP has nothing to replace this cultural vacuum with. I am no expert, but I disagree and I think this is the kind of thinking that has failed the west for the last thirty years. I think the idea started with the fall of the Soviet Union. That culture and ideology was bankrupt. So a lot of western people thought that when there was a free exchange of ideas with China, the Chinese would event…

>My experience of people in China-- admittedly a long time ago-- was they are generally very patriotic or nationalistic, like Americans. They appreciate the CCP and what it has accomplished. They have a strong domestic arts industry making movies, books, games. Sure lots of people disagree with the party, but that doesn't that they want a western liberal democracy. Having been on the inside, it's not that they don't…

Yup. People who get their news mostly from Western media might believe Chinese live in a repressive Orwellian hellscape, and conclude that if there is not widespread resentment against the CCP it must be because it's all suppressed. The truth is probably a lot more pedastrian: life in modern China is not bad at all, both in comparison to their own history and compared to other large countries in the world (NOT compared to exlusively rich countries). So a large part of the population is probably at least somewhat content with the current government.

Life is probably far from pleasant if you're an Uyghur or a Falung Gong, but the overwhelming majority of the population is not too concerned with their lot. The CCP clearly does suppress dissent, but it can be targetted to minority opinions.

The median Chinese citizen doesn't just see Western Europe and the USA and concludes that democracy leads to great results. (S)he can also see that it did not appear to bring great prosperity to India, Brazil or Russia.

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#125

Post by president » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

hamburgerwah wrote: post #85

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in this thread that there can be chinese companies that are somehow separate from the government. All chinese companies are defacto part of the government. The CEO of all chinese enterprises is Xi Jinping.

Citizens as well as the party must always come first.

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#126

Post by bllguo » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #101

bllguo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When educated Chinese people were better exposed to ideas about liberal democracy, they were very clear that they wanted it This falls flat for me. So the implication is that there are no educated Chinese today with exposure to liberal democracy? I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.

> This falls flat for me. So the implication is that there are no educated Chinese today with exposure to liberal democracy? I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures. I'm not saying "no exposure," I'm saying they were "better exposed" in the past. You can even see changes like that happening in Hong Kong now, under the new crackdown on civil…

my experience is obviously anecdotal but interactions with Western-educated Chinese immigrants, many of whom left in the 80s and 90s, suggest that "democracy is the best" is not some universal wisdom that people will naturally converge to

If it were solely between these two choices? I'm not exactly ecstatic about these options, but I would. The fact that someone like Trump could come to power here - a fact that we, amazingly, seem to be trying to sweep under the rug - says this system is a complete failure and is just waiting to be exploited further.

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#127

Post by president » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

websites2023 wrote: post #88

hamburgerwah wrote: post #85

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in this thread that there can be chinese companies that are somehow separate from the government. All chinese companies are defacto part of the government. The CEO of all chinese enterprises is Xi Jinping.

No idea why you’re being downvoted. This is 100% correct, China requires party members to be on the boards of companies and Xi is the head of the party.

Not saying its true but this is the reason a lot of people suspect the same thing is happening in the US under the guise of diversity organizations that suddenly started popping up in most major corporations over the last few years.

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#128

Post by tablespoon » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

em500 wrote: post #107

tablespoon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're broadly correct. With regard to China, a lot of people's understanding is driven in large part by wishful thinking, which is a serious weakness and vulnerability. > Sure lots of people disagree with the party, but that doesn't that they want a western liberal democracy. So lots of people will speak in favor of a benevolent elite and against populism or what they see as western chaos or oppression. When…

Assume for the moment that you're American, liberal, white collar and live in one of the more affluent blue coastal states. Now imagine that 75% of your countrymen are rabbid red state Trump supporters, of low education, get most of their news and information from low quality Facebook shares, and are clearly misinformed about the world in many ways. Now imagine that the Federal government is much more powerful than t…

> Assume for the moment that you're American, liberal, white collar and live in one of the more affluent blue coastal states. Now imagine that 75% of your countrymen are rabbid red state Trump supporters, of low education....How principled are you really about the rule of democracy?

Though implicit in that fantasy is that, without democracy, the blue-state liberal gets to impose his will on the Trumpers. Something that can keep someone like that committed to democracy is (for instance) the thought that the alternative is could actually be a never-ending dictatorship of Mitch McConnell, beating humanity with its chin waddle forever.

> Now I'm not suggesting that this is a good analogy for the Chinese situation, nor that this is how highly education urban Chinese think about democracy (though I do know a few who do seem to think that way). What I am suggesting is that democracy is not always and everywhere the slam dunk win that some Western liberals appear to think it is.

Are you saying that educated urban Chinese are hesitant about democracy because they get to vicariously impose their will (or something close enough to it) on the rabble via the CCP?

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#129

Post by bllguo » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #121

bllguo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When educated Chinese people were better exposed to ideas about liberal democracy, they were very clear that they wanted it This falls flat for me. So the implication is that there are no educated Chinese today with exposure to liberal democracy? I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.

Sure, liberal democracies have had many recent failures, but they're still the most prosperous societies on a per-capita basis by a gigantic margin. If an authoritarian or non-democratic country can achieve over $40,000 GDP per capita, then we can revisit.

that's true. but none of this is happening in a vacuum. liberal democracies are also the ones trying to change or destroy non-democratic regimes by force. imo you can sum up everything evil China is accused of, and it would not come close to what we pulled in South America, the Middle East, and Asia

I'm all for a fair comparison. And as someone who currently benefits from Western ideals of personal liberties, I'd be happy to see it proven that they are superior. But let's make it fair

Re: WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance

#130

Post by bllguo » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #92

jjaammee wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's maybe true when young people in China first learned western democracy ideas. Nowadays I think most of educated Chinese believe democracy is not suitable for China. They didn't get the whole picture of western world, but who does nowadays. They see signs of culture revolution in western social movements and rejected those wholeheartedly.

> Nowadays I think most of educated Chinese believe democracy is not suitable for China. Isn't that exactly 1) what the Communist Party wants them to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote?

I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.