151–160 of 250 posts
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Typo there with Chavez? Democratically elected and rose the quality of life of Venezuela.
Typo there with _rose_ quality of life in Venezuela? Pretty sure we've watched that 'democratic' experiment fail spectacularly, at least what news I know of the economy and living conditions in general seem very poor at best. Failed state comes to mind.
> “Winnie the Pooh” — the Xi’s online nickname Anyone have the backstory for this? EDIT: I see a couple of links below that compare him to Winnie the Pooh in pictures. Is the intent behind it to be derogatory or is it just poking a bit of fun?
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It’s amazing to me that the argument of “don’t go after those guys for what they are doing when those other guys are doing bad things too” never dies. Even with all of its blatant fallacy. It will persist until the end of time. And solve nothing.
As a US citizen it is a valid argument because those "other guys" is our own country. It's not "don't go after those guys", but "take care of our own problems first". This way, when offering solutions to other oppressive countries we wouldn't look like hypocrites. Would you believe a massively obese and sickly person telling you the importance of diet and exercise?
Yes, they would be the ideal person to give that advice.
It's amazing to me how China is so effectively creating a 1984-type situation without much stir among the rest of the world. These chat programs are super important for everyday life in China. The same company that provides chatting also provides your ability to pay for everything, and a credit score that determines what you can buy, how much you pay, and more. So if you say something you shouldn't, this could very e…
What should the rest of the world do?
I hope that in my lifetime we see a revolution in China that overthrows the current authoritarian state and things like the great firewall and quasi-private/state run agencies go the way of the dodo bird. Unfortunately I don't see big American companies doing anything but continuing to court China and their growing class of wealthy consumers.
Are you saying that you want to see 100 million dead Chinese people? Because that is what you are implying. You will not have a revolution without spilling blood.
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This. At least in my family most of my older Chinese relatives prefer order and peace to American democracy, for their income increased dramatically over the past 5 years. But I guess after family income gets to certain threshold, people will start weighting more on freedom.
But if you get to any Chinese over 60, they still remember the chaotic cultural revolution very clearly, they definitely don’t want a return to strongman cult of personality Maoism where Xi seems to be going. Xi is the last vestige of Maoism, the last president who grew up under Mao’s shadow. The next generation of leadership is surely going to be much more modern than any before it. That they are delaying it for som…
It's interesting that to note that Xi Jinping is from that exact same generation, and both he and his family were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/world/asia/xi-jinping-chi...:
> When the pandemonium of the Cultural Revolution erupted, he was a slight, softly spoken 13-year-old who loved classical Chinese poetry. Two years later, adrift in a city torn apart by warring Red Guards, Xi Jinping had hardened into a combative street survivor.
> His father, a senior Communist Party official who had been purged a few years earlier, was seized and repeatedly beaten. Student militants ransacked his family’s home, forcing the family to flee, and one of his sisters died in the mayhem. Paraded before a crowd as an enemy of the revolution and denounced by his own mother, the future president of China was on the edge of being thrown into a prison for delinquent children of the party elite.
> ...
> Unlike some youths from elite backgrounds, Mr. Xi did not turn against the party or Mao, but learned to revere strict order and abhor challenges to hierarchy, said Yongyi Song, a historian and librarian in Los Angeles who has long studied the Cultural Revolution.
> “He suffered much under Mao,” Mr. Song said, “but I think that actually increased his belief that those who are ‘born red,’ those children of the party elite, earned the right to inherit Mao’s place at the center.”
Here's a short biography of Xi by the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/world/asia/xi-jinping-car...
> Xi is the last vestige of Maoism, the last president who grew up under Mao’s shadow. The next generation of leadership is surely going to be much more modern than any before it.
Experts were saying that China was slowly but steadily marching on the path to liberalization, but now we have Xi and that that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I fear those predictions, like yours, are fallacious and overoptimistic.
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Typo there with Chavez? Democratically elected and rose the quality of life of Venezuela.
He might have raised the quality of life temporarily (I'm not sure even about that), but what is happening now in Venezuela was practically inevitable. You might be warmer for a little while as you take apart your house and burn it piece by piece, but in the end you will more assuredly freeze. In my opinion, it was a great tragedy that Chavez is not still alive today. Now people can say ridiculous things like this. I…
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If they choose, these ultimately government controlled companies can easily make it so you can't buy things anymore, you are not trusted anywhere America already has that, it's called a credit score and it does this exact thing.
Your credit score isn't affected by what you post on Hacker News. Your credit score is affected if you don't pay your bills. You'll find it harder to get credit in the future. I don't see the relation with state sponsored suppression. Also, you can still buy things with cash. In China they use these apps to pay for things, you can't buy some things with cash.
It's amazing to me how China is so effectively creating a 1984-type situation without much stir among the rest of the world. These chat programs are super important for everyday life in China. The same company that provides chatting also provides your ability to pay for everything, and a credit score that determines what you can buy, how much you pay, and more. So if you say something you shouldn't, this could very e…
> It's amazing to me how China is so effectively creating a 1984-type situation without much stir among the rest of the world. This is perhaps because of several things: 1) That's the way "the rest of the world's" governments and corporate interests want their own countries to go, and have been pushing towards since decades. The rest of the world's leaders (most of them) could not care less for the lip service they p…
> Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery) is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument, which is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda. When criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union, the Soviet response would be "What about..." followed by an event in the Western world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)
I hope that in my lifetime we see a revolution in China that overthrows the current authoritarian state and things like the great firewall and quasi-private/state run agencies go the way of the dodo bird. Unfortunately I don't see big American companies doing anything but continuing to court China and their growing class of wealthy consumers.